Less than three weeks ago, things had been so easy between us. But now Gil was quicksand, and any time I spent near him only got me in worse and deeper trouble.
When I showed up at Minnows on Wednesday, Gil waited until the end of class, and then he made a beeline for me. There’d been a set to his body, a force to the way he planted his feet in front of me, like a soldier reporting for duty.
“How’s it going, Jean? I kept thinking you’d come over and talk. So I’ve let you be. But maybe you don’t want to be the one to come over.” He paused. “So here I am. Did you want to say something to me?”
“No, not really,” I lied. And then I couldn’t speak.
But I wasn’t tough. I barely knew how to act tough.
Of course he knew I wanted to talk.
“It’s just,” I began again. “This thing.” I swallowed. My nerves felt like steel bands around my throat. “This thing that we did. It feels like a big thing.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, softly. “It’s been on my mind.”
“Listen, I don’t regret it.”
“God. I mean, good, I mean, Jean, Jesus, I had no idea—I didn’t know you were a—”
“No, no.” I waved his words away. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning that I’d never—anyway, you’re off the hook.” My laugh was tinny. “I’m sorry to keep showing up here. But I don’t know how to feel okay about what we did, because I don’t. Feel okay, that is,” I finished miserably, picking at the edge of the denim skirt I’d finally chosen after half an hour of debating what to wear for him.
“Can I tell you something?” His eyes crinkled with his smile. “I don’t feel so great about it, either.” Then he laughed. “Boy, it feels good to say that out loud. Hey, you wanna go somewhere?” He reached for my hands and pulled me up off the sand. “Someplace we can hang out? I think we can—I think we should—deal with this better than how we’ve done. Sound like a plan?”
“Yes. Oh my gosh, yes!” I could feel relief expanding through my whole body. Friends. Better than friends. “What about the von Cott house? It’s closed this summer, but I have a key.”
“Ha, of course you do. And I’ve been wanting to scope out that place since the fake party.” He winked at my obvious embarrassment.
“I’ve got some lunch, if you’re hungry.” I’d packed it almost to dare myself. It was the same bag I’d used to bring the gin and tonics the other night. Now it held a couple of innocent sandwiches and a thermos of limeade.
But if Gil thought I’d been presumptuous, he didn’t let on.
“Perfect” was all he said. Taking my knapsack and swinging it over his shoulder. A gentlemanly gesture that filled me with gratitude. He was kind. He did care. Or at least he wanted me to think that he did.
Lunch became another secret between us.
No gin. Nothing sexy—so far. Just lunch together on Wednesday.
Then Thursday, and then next Monday, Wednesday, and again on Friday.
If anyone had been watching us, they wouldn’t have seen so much as a stolen kiss. As for why Gil kept agreeing to meet or to make a plan—was it his guilty conscience? Did he think I’d run and tell everyone about what we’d done together, and how he’d been a cad about it, if he didn’t keep me happy?
No, I concluded. It wasn’t all guilt. It wasn’t only to soothe my feelings. It was because the spark between Gil and me hadn’t died. If the whole summer was like this, that would be enough. Me, waiting on Looking Glass Lane, bringing my book and knapsack to the bench beneath a sugar maple. Gil, strolling over after Minnows to pick me up. Looking Glass Lane was unused and far away enough that we never ran the risk of being seen together. Even if a tiny part of me wouldn’t have minded the gossip, the issue of Gil’s trust was by far the more important.
At the von Cotts’, we shared another picnic on their deck roof while catching up on general news: movies and music and regattas and tennis.
As usual, we didn’t discuss Fritz.
As usual, we didn’t speak of our night together.
If these were Gil’s rules, I was ready to play by them. Seeing him every day was enough reward. And Gil himself seemed comfortable enough with the arrangement that today, watching him drink from the Thermos I’d brought, his eyes closed and his hair starting to curl out a little wild, like a young lion, I let my mind wander. Maybe these lunches were Gil’s shifting toward a realization that while Fritz might remind him of some hometown fun, I was ultimately his real and better choice?
I didn’t let myself get too carried away with it, but it was hard not to hope.
These past days, no matter what had been in my schedule, tennis and tea, beach parties or backgammon, I could always count on a secret little marker of joy for the next time I got to see Gil. Even in those painful moments when I’d spy him going around with Fritz—the two of them playing beach volleyball or riding bikes or strolling a path or sharing an ice cream—as awful as those run-ins were, I could hold my head high, because I knew that sometimes he was my Gil, too.
“So, Monday, then?” he asked, as we gathered the plates, the Thermos and napkins. “If we all survive this weekend and aren’t still barfing up red, white, and blue.”
“I’m already looking forward to it.”
And I was. Monday was a twinkling diamond in the plain band of my weekend. It didn’t matter that I’d be spending most of it with Bertie, if I secretly belonged to Gil.
“Something’s going on with you, Jean. You’ve been like the cat that ate the canary,” Rosamund mentioned, the next day. We were all at Bertie’s, in the shade of the verandah, testing Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe’s new low-slung Indonesian teakwood patio furniture that everyone thought looked strange but was carefully complimenting anyway. Morning tennis was over, and there was nothing to do but sit with the girls and breathe through the blue haze of charred ribs.
“Yes, Rosamund’s right. You’re being strange.” Sara’s eyes were still red from last night’s conversation with Tiger, who’d finally had to sit her down and let her know that no matter how furiously she flirted with him, she had absolutely no chance. “Strangely happy,” she concluded.
“What’s there for me to be unhappy about?”
“I guess that’s true. You really are the luckiest of us. Bertie’s such a love,” said Sara dolefully, as we watched the guys fooling around at the grill, basting and flipping. “Can’t you see him as a dad? He’ll be so sweet with your kids.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Sara.” I sighed and stretched and shifted in my chair so that I didn’t have to see Bertie. “You make me feel like we’re all thirty. We’re not old and bald just yet!”
“Heigh-ho, Young Miss—I heard that!” Mr. Forsythe looked up from where he was reading, on the other end of the porch, rattling his paper as he mock shook his fist. Mr. Forsythe was mostly bald, and at the moment, he looked so much like Bertie, it felt like a knife in my heart.
“There’s morning showers predicted for tomorrow,” said Sara. “And then it dries out.”
“ ‘Into each life, some rain must fall,’ ” I quoted.
Rosamund scrunched her nose. “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re not yourself, Jean.”
“As long as I’m all right,” I said lightly. “Am I all right, Rosamund?”
Rosamund shrugged. She didn’t like my question; she thought I wasn’t taking her seriously—and I wasn’t.
Because there was nothing wrong with me. Maybe I couldn’t tell her my best secret, but whatever else the others thought of me, I was more myself than I’d ever been.
FRITZ
“Nothing gold can stay.”
“Ah, you’re the best. Goddess of the breakfast run.” Julia leaned up in her bed and squinted out the window. “It looks so dark out. Is it raining on our Bicentennial?”
“Just drops. Here ya go. Extra ketchup, no pepper.” I reached into the paper bag and tossed her a foil-wrapped egg and chee
se on a roll, our latest breakfast obsession, compliments of the deli section of the grocery store.
Then I got back in my own bed. We chowed blissfully. “There’s so much sand in my bed, it’s like I’m sleeping in a sugar donut.” Julia brushed out a few crumbs, then wiped her fingers with a paper napkin. “But I’m not gonna shower till after we swim.”
“Me, either. I could eat, like, six more of these.” I popped the last eggy-cheesy bite in my mouth. “Is Oliver setting up at the beach this morning?”
“Yeah. Gil, too, I’m sure. All the able-bodied dudes report for duty.”
“I love the Fourth. The food, fireworks.”
“You’re definitely getting some fireworks tonight!” Julia gave me a smirk as she balled and tossed the foil wrapper, missing the trash basket by a laughable distance, then swung out of bed and pulled on her bathing suit. “I’ll dump all our junk into one beach bag, okay?”
“Yeah, great.” I got up, too, to help her grab for stuff—lemon-juice spritzer for lightening our hair, cocoa butter, a few of the loose A&W’s we kept stored on the bookshelf. “Hey, Jules. Answer me this. When you see Tiger, are you okay with it?”
“With what?”
“You know. That you did it. With him, I mean.”
“Do I regret that I had sex with Tiger?” She stuck a comb and a pack of fruit-stripe gum in the bag’s side pocket. “No. The opposite, probably.”
“You never wish your first time could have been with Oliver instead?”
“Not really. Last summer, I was so into Tiger, don’t you remember?”
“So you did it because you wanted Tiger? Or because you were ready?”
Julia had to think a minute on that. “Both, I guess. No regrets.” Now she lifted an eyebrow and made her hand into a microphone. “Fritz O’ Neill, will you tell our studio audience and all the folks watching at home, are you and Gil Burke thinking seriously about going all the way?”
It was my turn to quirk my eyebrows. I couldn’t do the classy one-brow lift like Julia. “Wanna know a secret?”
“Spill it.”
“Hang on.” I went and listened at the door to make sure none of the girls were lingering in the hallway. “I think tonight, this might be Gil’s first time, too.”
“Gil the Thrill? No, no way!” Julia clapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes rounded in disbelief. “Uh-uh. He’s so old! How do you know?”
“I don’t. But he says things. He wants everything to be perfect. And yesterday afternoon, we biked out to this bed and breakfast place in Robbins Rest . . .”
“Fritz, the minute this goes down, I want every single detail.”
“I don’t know—it feels so weird to talk about. Even with you.”
“You can’t get all secretive. Not with me, when I’d tell you anything about me and Tiger—or me and Oliver—if you wanted.”
“Okay, okay.” I couldn’t deny that going all the way with Gil was all I was thinking about. It was also a relief to tell Julia, and to get her approval—not that I thought for a second she wouldn’t give it.
“Let’s swing by Thriffaney’s before the movie,” she said, on our way out. “I need rickrack for my minidress.”
“No sweat.”
Thriffaney’s was a tiny secondhand shop near the harbor, just by the six-foot chain-link fence topped by two feet of barbed wire that separated Sunken Haven from Ocean Bay.
As we propped our bikes against the fence, I saw Floyd’s Clam Shack on the other side. It wasn’t even ten o’clock and there was a brunch crowd. People were braving the spitting rain to dine on plastic patio furniture. Even though I’d just eaten, my mouth watered for a Floyd’s lobster roll. I hadn’t had one since last summer. These days, lunch was usually an after-shift grilled cheese at the club. Gil and Tiger sometimes enjoyed a chow-down at Floyd’s together after Minnows class, but I’d never been invited. Gil had made it pretty clear it was a guy thing.
Mrs. Walt had started Thriffaney’s after Mr. Walt died, and it was open whenever she was in the mood—and always on Sundays, because she never went to church. I’d heard she was still annoyed with God for stealing her husband. The cottage was a dumping ground of secondhand stuff, with profits going to Sunken Haven’s treasury. One dollar got you christening blankets stained with baby spit-up, or an entire shelf of chipped plates. The only new items Thriffaney’s sold were sewing supplies and matches.
Mrs. Walt was in her usual spot, smoking and playing solitaire behind the register. “There’s no money in the strongbox. Unless you have exact change, you’ll need to use your house account,” she said, without looking up from her cards. Mrs. Walt hated that I used cash, and she always made sure I knew it.
“Not a problem, Mrs. Walt,” said Julia sweetly.
I went straight for the display case. Sometimes there were fun costume pieces here, castoffs from Sunkie moms cleaning out their jewelry boxes. The other day I’d bought a puka-shell bracelet to take back for my mom, and that’s when I’d seen those earrings.
“They’re not here,” I said.
“You looking for the emeralds?” Mrs. Walt shuffled her cards and cut the deck. “They got snapped up. They were too valuable. ‘Nothing gold can stay,’ ” she added, in a quavering recital voice.
“But they weren’t real,” I said. “They weren’t emeralds.”
Mrs. Walt looked up to make sure I saw her disapproving face. “They’re as real as you want them to be.”
“Or as real as fake things can be,” I said softly, as Julia trotted over with her tape of rickrack, which she signed to her parents’ account.
“Is this for your mom?” Mrs. Walt asked her.
“No, it’s a project for me. I’m jazzing up an old dress.”
“Lovely. You inherited her knack for . . .” Mrs. Walt suddenly looked unsure of herself. “You must have caught the bug from watching her.” Her teeth raked at her bottom lip, as she returned to her cards.
We banged outside. Thunder was rumbling in from the ocean. A patter of rain on the porch roof almost instantly joined it. Real rain, this time.
“Did you hear that? I did inherit it,” said Julia. “The reason I like to sew is because Mom does.”
“Of course you did. Come on.”
But Julia stood there, staring into the rain, piecing a twist through her hair.
“Don’t let batty old Mrs. Walt get to you.”
“I’m not.”
“Let’s sit,” I suggested. “We’ll wait it out.”
Julia nodded.
All at once, rain was dumping down in buckets. We could hear the whoops from Floyd’s as dockside customers ran into the restaurant for cover. We plopped on the top step of Thriffaney’s porch. “I grew up watching Mom sew,” said Julia, “learning patterns and stitches from her.”
“Mrs. Walt’s a loon.”
“I could practically see the flashing neon sign in her head: ‘Julia’s adopted! Julia’s adopted!’ It always reminds me about what happened with me and Jean. I mean, I’m past it,” she added quickly. “Or maybe, mostly past it. But then it hits . . .”
“Jean? What does Jean Custis have to do with you being adopted?”
“You know that stupid story.”
“No, I don’t know that stupid story. I never heard it. Tell me.”
Julia dropped her chin in her hands and looked across. I followed her gaze to a view of rain and chain link. From this angle, we could have been in a prison yard. Sunken Haven was the only village on Fire Island that had built a Keep Out wall. Today it looked especially harsh.
“Okay,” she started, shaking her head like she was clearing the cobwebs. “So remember how I told you, the summer before you first started coming here, that Jean and I had been good pals?”
“Kinda,” I said. “But then you had a fight or something?”
“It wasn’t really a fight.”
“Jean stopped being friends because she found out you were adopted?”
“No, I stopped being friends
with her, because she went and told everyone I was adopted. Mom and Dad hadn’t said anything to anyone, and you can guess why. Adopted at Sunken Haven isn’t the same as adopted on an army base. There’s tons of adopted kids in the army. But hardly any here. That we know of, anyway.”
I nodded. Sunken Haven was all about celebrating your excellent bloodlines. Adopted kids could sort of interfere with that enjoyment. “But what’s Jean got to do with any of it?”
“She was spending the night, and we were up late. I told her I’d been adopted back when Dad was stationed in Germany. I didn’t say it as a secret. But she knew it was private. And then the next day, Jean blabbed it to everyone.
“By lunch all the Minnows knew, and they were teasing me, talking in pretend German, asking if my ‘real’ parents were Nazis. I got upset, naturally, and I went crying to my mom, and she was so mad. There are people here, like the Burkes, who took it so far as to tell Mom they felt like she’d lied, trying to ‘pass me off’ as theirs.” It was rare for me to see Julia lose her composure, but I could sense the memory ran deep in her.
“Sunkies are snobs about the dumbest stuff,” I said quietly. “It shouldn’t have any shock value left, but it always surprises me what they care about.”
“Me, too.”
“Come on, let’s go. I’m sure everyone’s at the casino by now. And by the way, thanks for that story, because I didn’t even need another reason not to like Jean Custis!” I made a face, and was glad for Julia’s answering laugh as we grabbed our bikes and dashed out into the downpour.
“Yeah, I know how much you love her. That story was just a freebie. But what I always say about Jean, she’s her own worst enemy,” said Julia. “She steps right into it, and then she can’t get rid of the smell, you know?”
Gusts of rain had made puddles around the tennis courts, sending wavelets in both directions as our bikes cut down Ridge, making us squeal as water splashed our shins. Sunken Haven was never prepared for bad weather. Every thunderstorm flooded out the stiles and caused a boatload of damage that volunteer crews went out and rebuilt like happy beavers.
As we turned in to the casino, bikes were doubling back from Ocean Walk, while a few kids, still in their Sunday best, were heading over from church. Inside, the door and windows were taped up with red, white, and blue crepe paper, in preparation for the informal dinner tonight.
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