Summer Darlings

by Brooke Lea Foster

  She rested her plate on the side of the boat, calculating what she should share, how much. “Oh, I dunno. I suppose my details are boring. I grew up in Brooklyn. My dad wasn’t around. Mom works at Tiffany’s, and sometimes the laundry, and she paints, watercolors. My grandmother lost her husband young and she helped raise me. She died last year.”

  Ash sipped his wine. “That’s some strong women in your lineage.”

  Heddy stared into her tumbler. “Yes, I’m grateful to them. I love Wellesley, though. Well, now I do. At first, I felt like I was in outer space.”

  Ash wiped his mouth, discarding his plate. “It makes sense to me now, why you’re so tough. And empathetic, too. You were raised feeling different, and that’s made you more accepting of people who are different from you.” Every time he said something like that, she wanted to kiss him.

  “Just what I need—an analyst for a boyfriend.” Her cheeks were hot. Had she just called him her boyfriend?

  “An analyst? No. But I know this much. You look for the good in people.” He touched the tip of his finger to her nose. “You’ve certainly found the best in me. It’s why I like being around you. There’s no rain, even on a rainy day.” A flutter tickled her chest; she liked that he saw something in her that she didn’t see in herself.

  Ash pressed his lips in her hair. Not quite a kiss, but the beginning of one. “What’s one of your best childhood memories?”

  Heddy stared off at the horizon, the sun sinking lower behind the distant lighthouse, flashing. “I was ten. My mother took me for high tea at the Plaza Hotel. She’d sold one of her paintings, a scene of Central Park in the rain. She wore a lilac dress and mascara, and she looked so happy when she ordered, like we were a pair of regulars.” Heddy imitated her mother’s accent: “ ‘Someday I’ll take you back to Ireland, where we drink our tea with milk. Here, we put a spot in the cup, of course, but it’s nothing like brewing true Irish breakfast tea. The world over wishes they had tea as good as ours.’ ”

  Heddy pretended to pout, one leg folded into a triangle underneath her, the memory evoking sudden insight. “Mother is quite proper for the servant class, you see. She seems more sophisticated than she is, and she gave me this way of being, of carrying myself, that has allowed me to be a chameleon. I think she got it from her father. He was a statesman in Galway, you know. Our family’s shining star. But he died of influenza when he and my grandmother came to America in the 1920s. My mother was a child. They could have gone back, but they were determined to make it.” She smiled.

  Ash cupped the side of her shoulder, squeezing. “Like I said, you have some strong women in your lines.”

  The boat rocked with a wave. Perhaps she needed to remind herself of that sometimes: she was raised with a fighting spirit. “What about you? What’s your favorite childhood memory?”

  He squinted, struggling to settle on one. “Here’s one,” he laughed. “Dad used to call me Little Mickey, because I could throw a baseball clear to the neighbor’s yard, like Mickey Mantle. One summer—I was eight years old, I think—he’d come in my room on weekends and wake me at dawn, saying, ‘Want to work on that tree house, Little Mickey?’ He gave me this toolbox he put together, and plank by plank, we built a tree house in an oak tree in our backyard. It had a roof, windows, a ladder up the trunk. I don’t remember playing in it as much as I remember making it.”

  “You were close to him, then.”

  His mind seemed far away, until he spoke. “My mom tries to make up the difference, but she can’t. Nothing’s the same without him.”

  The inky sky pushed shadows across Ash’s face. She ran her finger along a tiny scar she found near his hairline, wondering how he’d gotten it. A gash sewn up sloppily. He smiled at her.

  “Funny the moments you remember as a kid,” he said. “I have snapshots. My mom’s red velvet dress on Christmas, or my sister’s sneer when she called me stupid, or the time the dog threw up on my rug. But to be hugged by Mother or to have my dad’s hand pat my back with pride, I wish I could remember that feeling.”

  “That’s why I love writing; you remember everything,” she said. They were quiet for a moment, listening to the gentle lap of the water against the boat. She tucked her hands under her thighs. “I had an idea for a movie—I’ve been developing it, in my head.”

  “Oh yeah? What is it?”

  “It’s about a woman who leaves her husband for another man, but the man murders her, so her husband is forced to solve her murder and he falls in love with the female detective who helps him track the killer.”

  He laughed, his eyebrows cocked. “That’s what you want to write? I thought it would be a sappy love story or a tale of an underdog. You want to write about a nasty love triangle? A murder?”

  She cast her eyes down to the silvery water, the rising moon changing the color again. Heddy loved to read a good whodunit, but she thought many of the mysteries out there were geared to men; hers would be written for women. But now, she was losing confidence. “I suppose it’s silly.”

  “No, no,” he said.

  “Just some stupid idea…”

  He stood, hollering. “Stupid? Heddy, it’s brilliant. You’ve got to write it. I want to see that movie.” He pulled her to her feet and spun her around the boat, chanting: “Brilliant, brilliant.”

  Heddy was against his chest now, staring up at him, their lips inching closer together. “What is it about you that makes me feel like anything is possible?” she whispered.

  Heddy closed her eyes, waiting for him, and when he was finally there, his lips were soft and velvety. He cradled her face in his hands, giving her quick kisses on both of her cheeks, her chin, her forehead.

  When he pulled away from her, she nearly yanked him back.

  He kissed the top of her hand. “I liked you since you showed up on my doorstep this summer.”

  She was sheepish. “I thought I’d lost the children. You acted like you barely noticed me.”

  “Maybe it was when we got off the surfboard then.” He positioned his finger at the spot where her shirt was unbuttoned, running it up and down her bare skin. “But I didn’t think I had a chance with you.” It was the other way around, she’d thought. Ash lifted her chin so she looked in his eyes. “It’s rare to meet a girl like you. You think big, but you’re honest. So very honest.”

  She grinned. “My grandmother used to say my nostrils flared if I tried to lie.”

  “You’re so authentic, and true, and—”

  “But I’m not, I need to tell you…” But he shushed her, taking her hands and squeezing them. “It’s about Wellesley,” she tried.

  “Let me finish,” he said. “Look, someday the world will try to ruin you, kitty kit. Chip away at your weak spots and make you hate yourself. But right now, you’re good. You make me want to be.” He looked guilty then. Of what, she wasn’t sure, and she pulled him toward her. In his lips she felt a part of him she hadn’t known before—a vulnerability—and that’s what she hadn’t expected. That kissing could do that. She thought about what it would feel like if he unbuttoned her shirt, his shirt, in the cool night air, arching her back to the sky. But he pulled away, and she slowed her breath.

  “I want to show you something.” Ash picked up the flashlight, and she wondered why he’d stopped. How he could wait.

  She billowed her shirt. “You think it’s dark enough?”

  He waved her over to the side of the boat, where they shined their lights into the water. Heddy saw a rock, a few pebbles, rocking with the waves along the sand below. Dizzy with the smell of him, she pretended to be interested.

  “We have to wait,” Ash whispered.

  In the quiet, the fiberglass bottom creaked with their weight as they moved to the other side, shining their flashlights on the bottom of the sea, green and brackish in the shining light. “There’s one,” Heddy yelled. A blue crab as big as a food-cart pretzel walked sideways underwater, moving straight across a cluster of slipper shells. It crept faster
when it sensed the shadows looming above, and they lost it to the darkness of the sea.

  Ash turned off his flashlight. “Crabs have a sixth sense about danger. When that light goes on, they probably think we’re martians coming down to abduct them.”

  Heddy scanned the boat. “We are! You have a net, right?”

  He turned his flashlight on again, and they spent some time hunting for others, plunging the nets in the water at the sight of one. The more crabs they found, the sillier they became. Heddy was the first to catch one, and when she pulled the spider crab up out of the water, she squealed at its long, spindly legs and threw the net on the boat, howling. The crab scurried down the floor of the boat, sending Heddy and Ash up on the padded bench. Ash managed to scoop it in his net and throw it overboard, unharmed, and they couldn’t stop laughing.

  Ash shined his flashlight on the nearby beach, dug in his pocket for matches. “Want to start a bonfire?”

  She pretended to shiver. “I am getting chilly.”

  Ash hopped off the boat first, holding his swim trunks up, so the sea, which came up to the middle of his thighs, didn’t soak his shorts. “I’ll carry you in.”

  Heddy wiggled off her shorts so she was wearing his button-down shirt and nothing but her bathing suit bottom. She sat on the side of the boat, her legs dangling over, her toes grazing the water. She shined the flashlight to make sure there weren’t any crabs and slid in. The sea was balmier than the air, and its heat closed around her like a warm bath. It wasn’t until they walked toward shore, emerging from the tepid waters into the cool night air that she got cold. She wrapped a towel around her waist to cozy herself.

  “I can help with that.” He tossed the box of matches in the sand. Ash pressed her body to his, spreading his heat around her. He whispered to her: “I like seeing you in my shirt.”

  Heddy was terrified then, because she knew how easy it was to forget her mother’s warnings with Ash. The reality was: she was standing on an abandoned island in the middle of Vineyard Sound kissing a man like she’d never kissed anyone before.

  He brushed his lips against hers as they stood facing each other, and already her body felt loose. She must have spread out the towel because she was lying on it now, Ash on top of her, and he was kissing her neck. He moved up to her lips, tracing a path of sensation everywhere he went. She started to unbutton the top button of her shirt, but he continued the job, burying his face in the tops of her breasts as soon as he’d exposed them. With a firm grip on his shoulders, she pulled him back up to her face and imagined that somehow all her goose bumps from earlier had changed into something else, little pinpricks of longing. She pictured dominoes falling one by one, each one stacking on the last and building momentum as they went. What came after the kissing, she wasn’t so sure. She only knew what happened last.

  Her ears caught the sound of a motor, and it edged closer. She knew Ash heard it, too, because he went still. He sat up, and she pushed on to her elbows, cool pebbles digging into the backs of her arms. She buttoned her shirt back up, then remembered her shorts were on the boat.

  The boat slowed, and Heddy heard voices. The distant echo of two men arguing over which way to go, the faraway laughter of both.

  Ash rubbed at the back of his neck. “There’s something I need to tell you.” His voice sounded small, like a boy worried over spilled milk.

  She gulped in the night air, steeling herself for whatever he was going to say.

  “I haven’t been truthful.” He dropped his head between his knees, massaging his temples. “When I told you about the Coconut Coast, I left something out.”

  She took his hands in hers, squeezing them. “I did, too. You see, it’s…”

  “No, Heddy. You’re perfect. There’s nothing you could say that would change how I feel about you.”

  “I feel the same,” she whispered, a feeling of satisfaction overcoming her.

  “I wish we could stay like this until dawn,” he said, running his lips along her forehead.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him fiercely. “I didn’t know men could be like you, Ash Porter. It scares me how much I like it.”

  She unbuttoned the top buttons of her shirt again, and he watched with interest. When she finished, she brought her lips to his neck, trailing her mouth up to his ear, then finding his lips. He pulled his shirt over his head and returned her kiss. She felt his fingers slide under the straps of her bathing suit, sliding them off her shoulders and down her sides. He looked like he wanted to devour her.

  She ran her fingers along the contour of his chest, kissing him right above his navel. The crinkle of a wrapper in Ash’s hands, the necessary pause to slide it on. He lowered her down, coming down along with her, pressing all of him everywhere, their breath quickening, until there was nothing left to feel except zigzags of bliss coursing through her.

  When it was over, they laughed at nothing in particular, and then everything, rolling on their sides and lying there. She felt like she’d experienced a small earthquake, like something unexpected had shaken everything up between them, and when it stopped, it left them different.

  * * *

  He drove her home around one, and with the Victorian dark except for the porch light, they kissed one more time, a sweet press of the lips.

  “And there she goes,” he whispered as she opened the car door.

  Her steps up to the house were as light as her head, and she turned once, blowing him a kiss good night.

  She’d made it with Ash Porter, and it was glorious and sweet and felt like love. She knew what her mother would say. She knew what Jean-Rose would say. But Heddy ignored their voices.

  Moving to the island had tossed her cards in the air, and now, even she could see, she’d been dealt an entirely new hand.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The next few days fell into a comfortable pattern with the children since Heddy, feeling light and happy, threw herself into keeping them busy and well tended. They went bug hunting and painted watercolors. They wrote and illustrated their own books, and Teddy made a comic book about a bumblebee, while Anna wrote about getting a cat.

  She and Ash spoke by phone that week, and she’d chatted with Sullivan on Friday morning, after she canceled their date. She chose to stay in with the children that night to work her way back into Jean-Rose’s good graces; she and Sullivan would go out the following Friday instead. But even as her mind was on the fall and finding Jean-Rose’s bracelet, her head ping-ponged between these two men. And as the last few days of July blended into the first days of August, she vowed to break it off with Sullivan.

  And yet, she couldn’t. Something urged her to go on the date anyway—perhaps, fear that Ash wasn’t being true—and before she knew it, she was meeting him at Navy Sea. She’d go, she’d decided, so she could be sure about not choosing him. With the kids at camp that morning, she ticked errands off for Jean-Rose, and then helped Ruth clean.

  August 3, 1962

  We turned the house upside down looking for the bracelet one last time—moving the couch out, edging out the grandfather clock, hunting the grass along the porch’s edge. I even rifled through Jean-Rose’s jewelry box, but to no avail. I fear I will pay the consequences of a crime I didn’t commit. So much for asking for that job in the city.…

  Sullivan went on promptly at six, playing to an older crowd, which was incredibly quiet and laidback compared to the raucous young people who’d cheered him when she and Ruth had come before. Cigar smoke wafted toward the sea, while one woman, a silver-haired, artist-type with huarache sandals, closed her eyes and tapped to the beat. By the time Sullivan finished his set, around eight, younger people were ambling down the beach.

  “Where ya going, Sully?” said a young kid strumming a guitar. Sully was pulling Heddy past him.

  “Sorry, Jimmy. I’m taking a girl to dinner.” The kid, Sullivan explained, was a young musician named James Taylor.

  The powder-blue Aston Martin pulled onto the main drag, drivi
ng through open fields until they passed the narrow streets and white picket fences of historic Edgartown, a former whaling port, where the finest French wines were paired with lobster dinners at a premium.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, praying they didn’t run into Ash.

  “I have something planned.” Sullivan smiled sideways at her, his cheeks dimpling. The wind smacked at the convertible’s plastic cover as they parked on a two-automobile car ferry for a five-minute ride across Edgartown Harbor to Chappaquiddick Island, or “Chappy,” which is what everyone called it. She’d heard that a relation of the Kennedys had a house there—there were rumors of wild parties with the president’s younger brother Ted, who visited from Hyannis. She’d never been to the island, but she’d seen the colorful red-and-white cabanas of the members-only Chappaquiddick Beach Club from Edgartown.

  Sullivan pulled the car down a gravel road marked with a white sign and black lettering: 10 MEETING LANE, and she labored to remember where she’d heard it before. A large sprawling gray-shingled house sporting three chimneys—twice the size of Gigi McCabe’s estate.

  She tried to hide her shock. “Is this where you live?”

  “It’s where my parents live—they prefer to be out of the social fray, when they’re not socializing. There’s a joke that if you’re crazy enough to live on Chappy, town hall will say nothing of what you do over here. I stay in the garage. Ten Meeting Lane, Unit B.” He laughed, but it was hardly a garage, more of a carriage house with three garage doors and a second floor lined with paned windows, tidy black shutters on the gray shingles.

  “Come on.” Barkley wagged his tail inside the front door.

  Sullivan’s living room had a neat arrangement of couches, and through a wall of windows, Heddy could see the ocean, the waves foamy and white, crashing along the vast shoreline. There was a pool table, textbooks stacked on top, and on the formal dining table, glass cases with insects on pins. A yellow highlighter illuminated constellations on a poster of the night sky on one wall, a storage rack on the other held three black cases, presumably his saxophones. He puttered around in the kitchen for a moment, pulling out two glasses, cracking an egg, and folding the white into a highball glass with gin, seltzer, and lime. “I think this is what girls like these days.”