by Meg Donohue
To Dani, Happy Hemingway—Sam—is just some guy who is probably a lot like a lot of other guys. She doesn’t think in terms of fairy-tale endings or fate. She likes sex and she likes men, but she is not looking for a life partner. It’s not that she is itching to die alone, but she wants to do more than some guy in the library.
She is aware that she is the only one of the three of them—Kate, Vanessa, and herself—who is not focused on coupling and procreating. She knows this makes her a rare twenty-nine-year-old female. She does not anticipate ever having to leave work early to care for a sick child or having to quit a high-powered job because she needs work-life balance. She should probably use this power for good and break a glass ceiling or two. She should run a Fortune 500 company or do something to further womankind. She feels embarrassed by the small life she has led, her perpetually unfinished novel, and her string of failed jobs. She is so far from where she thought she would be.
Joyce the librarian is making a beeline for Sam’s table. “Working on your lesson plan already, Sam?” she asks in the drippiest whisper Dani has ever heard (she can’t help it, she’s carrying that ice cream metaphor now). “It’s only July.”
“Summer school,” he answers. “I have a few lucky kids who will be rereading The Call of the Wild this month.”
“They are lucky,” Joyce says. To be alone with you, Dani imagines the sentence continues in Joyce’s head. She laughs out loud at her own joke as she is prone, and not at all ashamed, to do. Joyce spins on her heel and peers over her standard-issue librarian bifocals at Dani. Sam looks at Dani too.
“E-mail forward,” Dani calls, gesturing toward her computer screen. “Hilarious e-mail forward.”
Joyce turns back to Sam. “You’ll let me know if I can pull anything for you. I’m dying to sink my teeth into a new research project.”
The Call of the Wild. It was Colin’s favorite book back when he still read for the fun of it—which meant middle school, before he tried pot for the first time and lost interest in most other ways to pass the time. Dani seems to recall that it is a dog book, which explains why it was Colin’s favorite. Every member of the Harrington family has always been crazy about dogs.
Often when Dani’s father was working late, Dani would join the Harringtons for dinner. She loved these nights—these glimpses into the life of a normal family, a family with married parents and a sibling. They would usually eat out, the addition of Dani the only excuse Kate’s mother needed to plead off cooking duty, and at some point as they walked the city streets one member of the family would inevitably spot a dog in the distance—it seemed to Dani they all had extraordinary vision—and yell out something like, “Beagle-Weimaraner!” Then they would wait as the dog approached and sometimes another family member would amend the original call with “Beagle-schnauzer!” or the like and they would eventually anoint a winner when the dog was close enough to make a fair call about its breeding. The amazing thing was that they never disagreed about this final call. That whole family, Colin included, saw eye to eye on dog breeds, if nothing else.
A year after Colin died, the Harrington’s golden retriever, Melly, died too. Kate said her father didn’t leave his bedroom for an entire day. Mr. and Mrs. Harrington never got another dog. It felt strange going over to their house now, and not just because of the void created by Colin’s death. They were a dog family without a dog.
Kate adopted Grace Kelly from a shelter while she was in law school. Dani still remembers the voice-mail message Kate left her announcing this news. I got a dog! Kate had said, and then added about one hundred more superfluous words to the message. Listening to Kate’s voice, Dani had experienced a sharp pang in her chest. It would have been understandable—Dani, for one, would certainly have understood—if losing Colin had made it hard for Kate to love, but instead losing Colin seemed to make her love harder, with more ferocity.
Her brave, brave friend, Kate.
What if all of those people who had told Dani that the best was ahead of her were wrong? What if childhood is like summer—the time when life is at its lush peak, before everything begins to wither and fall?
She remembers watching Colin and Kate talk on the beach the day after the fire eight years earlier. Their conversation seemed fraught with tension; Colin’s arms were crossed and Kate bit at her fingernails, hopping from foot to foot on the hot sand. Colin, Dani thought, watching them, of all the dumb things you’ve done, this might be the dumbest. Why had he set fire to that lifeguard stand? It was like asking herself why birds fly. Colin sabotaged himself because it was in his nature to do so. Of all people, Dani should have understood this. But even though Dani made questionable decisions when it came to partying, it seemed that her future was being held secure for her, high above the mess she made in the present. A couple of her Brown writing professors had offered to introduce her to their New York agents—all she had to do was write. Colin had been given no such promises; his present bled into his future, darkening the path. DUIs, fights, failing out of Lehigh, and now, arson.
Kate ran into the water, upset. Dani had started to rise from her towel to follow her when Colin strode up.
“Let’s go get a drink,” he said.
She glanced over at Vanessa. Jeremy Caldwell was sound asleep, face down on a towel beside her. “I’ll make sure Kate is okay,” Vanessa said.
Dani looked back at Colin. It had been clear all morning that Kate was upset about the fire and Colin’s arrest and now she had yelled at him, reprimanding him. What Colin needed, Dani thought, wasn’t another lecture, but for someone to try to understand him, to let him know that he wasn’t the only one who made mistakes. With golden child Kate as your twin sister, it was so easy to disappoint. People expected it of him by then. It’s okay, Dani would tell Colin. There’s still time to be young and stupid.
She had thought she was so wise. She had been glad she could be there, understanding Colin when he needed to be understood.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They rode their bikes to the Princeton and sat at the bar facing the part of the cavernous, neon-sign-strewn room that was a liquor store. Colin was silent through much of his first beer. He seemed defeated. She’d chipped away at his mood by doing her well-worn impression of Ms. Antonelli, a math teacher at PFS who had frequently interrupted her class to give Colin a sympathetic shoulder squeeze or to lob a chalkboard eraser in his direction. Dani liked to play Ms. Antonelli as a Southeast Philly Mrs. Robinson. Colin, jeet yet? Want some wudder? How ’bout an ahrenge? Just show me yer lacrass stick. You know the one. After a half hour of this, Colin’s mood seemed, if not lighter, at least not any heavier.
“So,” he said, “what’s going on with Vanessa and Jeremy?” Two brunettes in bikinis and flip-flops and not much else showed their IDs and paid for a case of beer at the register near the door.
“She seems really into him,” Dani said. “But you know V. She’ll like him for a week and then kick him to the curb.” Colin took a long sip of his beer, his gaze on the door as it swung shut behind the girls. “Why?” Dani asked. “Jealous?” She tried to make this sound like a joke, but really she had suspected that Colin and Vanessa had had crushes on each other since high school. The thought made her angry. Neither could be trusted with the other’s heart—together, they’d self-destruct, taking all of their friendships along with them.
Dani was sure that Kate saw the way Colin and Vanessa looked at each other, though none of them ever brought it up. It must have killed Kate not to discuss it—Dani knew how hard it was for her to keep her thoughts unspoken—but not discussing it kept it from becoming a thing. Dani was grateful for Kate’s uncharacteristic restraint. She didn’t want any of them to talk about it—words would give it power, and power could shatter them, this family they had created and that Dani needed more than any of them.
She didn’t know then that within hours she would be the one to shatter them, that in the end there would be no one to blame but herself.
�
�Sure,” Colin said drily. “It’s eating me up inside.” He finally looked over at Dani and shrugged.
Dani realized that her grip on her beer bottle was tight. She let it loosen. “Three more weeks of summer,” she said. What she meant was three more weeks of being in Avalon; three more weeks until she and Kate and Vanessa and Colin went their separate ways. Technically, it would still be summer when Dani went back to Brown for her senior year, but it wouldn’t be summer.
“The thing about summer,” Dani remembers Colin saying then, looking again toward the door in a way that made her wonder what—or who—he was waiting for, “is that there’s always another one.”
13
Kate
Kate wants to watch The Kids Are All Right, but Dani is putting up a fight.
“It got rave reviews,” Kate says.
Dani groans. She has a problem with things that everyone loves. “I’ll just read a book if that’s what you guys want to watch,” she says. Dani is always reading several books at once. It is clear that these fictional worlds appeal to her more than the actual world, and this hurts Kate’s feelings.
“It was nominated for an Oscar,” Vanessa says. She sounds ambivalent. Vanessa does not have a problem with things everyone loves, but she prefers to be the first to love said things. When Kate admits she is surprised Vanessa has not seen The Kids Are All Right yet, Vanessa explains that she could not get Drew to agree to it. Something about this admission makes Dani relent, and after popcorn is popped and lights are dimmed, they sink side by side onto the couch with Kate in the middle. Their bare feet form a row on the cushioned ottoman—Kate’s and Vanessa’s are still sandy despite turns in the outdoor shower.
They don’t speak for the length of the movie. They’ve never been the sort. Even Kate.
By the time the movie is over, the sky outside is full of stars that are visible from the couch. None of them move. Avalon is never silent. The wind rustles the dune grasses, and the waves break in the distance. Gracie lies by the screen door, gnawing loudly on a bully stick and pausing every so often to sniff the breeze.
“Who wants wine?” Kate asks, switching off the television. She is afraid one of them might beg off to bed soon.
“Not me,” Dani says. Kate immediately feels bad for offering. She’d forgotten about Dani’s resolution.
“I’ll have a glass,” Vanessa says.
Before Kate can get up from her spot in the middle of the couch, Dani rises and walks toward the kitchen. She returns with two glasses of white wine and hands one to Vanessa and one to Kate. Then she flicks through her father’s CDs and inserts one into the stereo. There are at least one hundred CDs on the shelf, but Kate can only remember five ever playing in this house: Gypsy Kings’ Greatest Hits, Bob Marley’s Legend, Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, The Eagles’ Greatest Hits, and Grateful Dead’s Skeletons from the Closet. These are the songs of Avalon, songs that Kate can hardly bear to listen to anywhere else. She feels the skin on her arms prick as Neil Young’s plaintive voice fills the living room.
She grew up in a small town, never put her roots down.
Daddy always kept movin’, so she did too.
Dani looks peaked. Even before she speaks, Kate can tell it’s more than just the remnant of her hangover.
“Suz,” Dani says, managing to make the name sound like a curse. “My father is going to marry someone named Suz.”
“At least she’s a girl’s girl,” Vanessa says. The sound of Dani’s laughter meeting Vanessa’s has a hard, metallic ring, like a knife sliding against a sharpening rod.
Kate looks down into her wine, unsure of how she ended up with a glass. She places it on the floor; she is not going to have another sip of alcohol for her entire pregnancy. Not even in the final month, which is when she remembers Vanessa telling her that she had started treating herself to a small glass of wine every other day. She had called it medicinal—it was the only thing that soothed her aching back.
Everything Kate knows about pregnancy she has learned from Vanessa and movies. Who will run out to the corner store to buy her ice cream when she wakes up with a craving in the middle of the night? Who will be in the delivery room with her, telling her to breathe? Who will buy her a necklace with her son or daughter’s first initial on a charm after the baby is born?
If she didn’t long desperately for just one fun night with her best friends, one night of normalcy before she admits that everything is about to change, now would be the perfect time to announce her pregnancy.
“At least your dad seems happy,” she says instead.
“Did he seem unhappy before?” Dani asks.
“No,” Kate says, “but maybe he was. It’s lonely being alone.”
“Kate—” Vanessa says.
“I’m not lonely,” Dani says.
“How is that possible?” Kate asks. “Are you happy?”
“I’m not unhappy.”
Neither Kate nor Vanessa says anything.
“ ‘Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,’ ” Dani says.
“Shakespeare again?” Vanessa asks flatly. She takes a long drink of her wine, finishing it, and then exchanges her empty glass for the one Kate had set on the floor. She’s in a pensive mood, and Kate hopes she isn’t gearing up to pick a fight. She really does not want to be the referee for the entire weekend.
“Hemingway.” Dani is silent for a moment and then adds, “There was a guy who looked like him at the library today.”
This piques Vanessa’s interest. “Oh, really?”
“Settle down. He wasn’t my type.”
“No facial hair?” Kate asks.
“No tongue piercing?” This is Vanessa.
“No Lycra-blend rock-star pants?” Kate continues, rapid-fire.
“No enormous tattoo creeping up his neck?”
“You two are hilarious,” Dani says drily, but she can’t contain her smile. These reminders of how well they know one another light matches in each of their hearts. Dani is lonely. Her father’s marriage will only make things worse. Kate hopes she has good friends in San Francisco, friends who joke with her like this, friends she spends time with on couches, watching movies, sober. She knows so little about her friend’s life across the country. I’ll go visit, she tells herself. While I’m still early enough in my pregnancy that I can fly.
“Anyway, Kate,” Dani says, “we all know who we should be discussing right now. How was your romantic beach stroll with young Gabriel?”
Kate feels herself blush. She doesn’t know what compelled her to agree to a walk with Gabe when he asked. The easiest answer is that it felt good to be wanted by someone. She had been curious too—what did he see in her? Of all the girls in the Princeton the night before, why had he sought her out? Why had he come to find her on the beach today? As they walked, he told her he had just graduated from Penn, where he had studied history. She told him she’d majored in history at Penn seven years earlier. The revelation of her age had no discernible effect on him. He is starting a research fellowship at the Center for Law and Social Policy in D.C. in the fall.
Kate had studied him, wanting to make sure that Dani was wrong, that he didn’t look anything like Colin. And he didn’t. But of course even just the possibility that he might seemed a bit like sacrilege to Kate—no one looks like Colin. Maybe in the eyes, there was a hint of resemblance, but that was it. And even there . . . no. Colin’s blue eyes had a stormy cast while Gabe’s are clear.
Gabe told her his family had been coming to Avalon forever, but his last name—Dorrey—was not familiar. They both remember getting bubblegum ice cream with rainbow jimmies at Dippy Don’s, back when Dippy Don’s existed. Gabe also runs along the Schuylkill River in Philly on Sunday mornings; they’d probably run right by each other more than once. His mother breeds Bernese mountain dogs in Mount Airy—she’d trained his favorite dog, Teddy, to drop his Penn acceptance letter into his lap four years earlier. As he told her this story, Gabe plucked a piece of smoky
green sea glass the size of a quarter from a tangle of seaweed at their feet. When he handed it to her, their fingers touched and Kate’s heart flipped. She hadn’t seen sea glass in Avalon since she was a kid. The glass is in the middle drawer of the bureau in her room downstairs now, next to a bottle of prenatal vitamins.
“He’s sweet,” Kate says, “but he’s twenty-two. He just graduated from college.”
“He looks even younger than that,” Vanessa says.
“So what?” Dani says. “If we were guys, we’d be high-fiving one another right now.”
Kate holds up her hand and Dani smacks it. “Feel better?” she asks.
“That depends. Are you going to bang him?”
“Dani!”
“What? I think a good summer shag is just what the doctor ordered.”
“No,” Kate says. “It’s not.”
“Maybe Dani’s on to something,” Vanessa says. “You don’t have to have sex with him, but why don’t you guys go out for a drink? He could be a great distraction. You don’t have anyone to answer to, Kate. You’re free to do whatever you want.”
Vanessa takes a long sip of wine, locking eyes with Kate over the glass. Her skin glows with the day’s sun; her eyelashes are long and thick and dark even without mascara; her oversize tortoiseshell sunglasses are still perched between her hairline and her high ponytail. She looks like a movie star. It occurs to Kate that maybe Vanessa is just bored. Kate knows that marriage and a baby do not always equal happiness—just look at Dani’s parents—but still, she’d like to believe that Vanessa could be happy if she didn’t always want more. She wonders when exactly Vanessa started thinking about Jeremy Caldwell again—was it after Drew kissed that woman, or before? Maybe it isn’t even a matter of when she started—maybe she had never stopped. Kate wants so badly to believe that marriage and family can work. She decides it’s okay to hang on to this idea, despite everything.