Summer Nights (8 page)

“Here we are, Beth. Throw that guy the line right behind you, okay?”

She grabbed the rope he was pointing to. It was odd, throwing a rope (which partially stayed with you) instead of a ball (which left completely). It was caught by, of all people, Con Winter, who whipped it efficiently around a cleat. The
Duet
idled, its engines quieter, and the little skiff banged gently against the tubby sides of the bigger boat.

“Hi, Con,” Beth said. “The ice cream has melted away. If you wanted it solid, you should have waited for me.”

Con just laughed. “The
Duet
waits for nobody,” he informed her. “Sailing times are never flexible. Those who are tardy make separate voyages. Welcome aboard.” He reached a hand down for her. Beth was frightened. The skiff felt awfully tippy. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to step, or anything to grip with her other hand.

Gary materialized next to Con with two more hands out, and with a push from Blaze she was up and over. The boys enjoyed it, but Beth had never felt so awkward nor so heavy.

“Con?” she said. “Can Blaze come to the party, too?”

“Sure, the more the merrier. Let me ask the captain if we can just tie his boat and let it follow us in the wake.”

Con darted off. Blaze, surprised and pleased, waited. Gary whispered in her ear, “So who’s this, Beth?”

“This is my friend, Blaze,” she said, making introductions. “Gary—Blaze.”

The dark, sleek boy on board half-saluted the tanned, sharp-edged boy sitting in the bobbing skiff. It seemed to Beth they were eyeing each other very warily. Perhaps they’re both in love with me, she thought, and they’re checking out the competition.

She laughed to herself. It was just dark, and they had to narrow their eyes to see each other.

“Captain says no problem,” Con informed them. “He saw the skiff; he’s going to radio Calvin Rentals to tell him this one’ll be in later.”

They retied the skiff in another location and yanked Blaze aboard. Con said that any friend of Beth’s was a friend of his, which was certainly news to Beth. Beth began introducing Blaze to everybody. It was enormous fun. Blaze was good-looking, and completely unknown. Where Beth could have found a boyfriend from Arizona in the few hours since they had seen her last was something they were dying to know. In honor of the occasion, Blaze put his shirt back on and accepted a Coke.

“Blaze, this is my friend Anne,” began Beth Rose, “the party’s for her. And this is my friend Susan. And my friend Mike. And my—”

Molly?
What was she doing here? They had not invited her! They would never invite her! It was unthinkable to have Molly—who had tried to get Con to abandon Anne when she was pregnant—who had tried to get Anne falsely arrested only last New Year’s Eve—

Beth wanted to throw her right overboard.

But there she stood, smiling at Blaze, her little head with its cute new haircut turned to the side, so that her earrings danced. Elfin. Adorable.

She’s a troll, Beth Rose thought grimly, waiting under a bridge to capture the innocent.

But Beth had introduced everybody else as “my friend so and so.” She couldn’t change the pattern, it would be too cruel, too obvious. She didn’t want Blaze to think she could be mean to people she didn’t like.

“And this is my friend Molly,” said Beth unwillingly.

M
ATTHEW O’CONNOR FELT AS
if he had lost both sight and hearing. Maybe muscle coordination as well. Around him a party whirled—there was shouting, dancing, laughing, talking. He felt like somebody who had spent too long on a carnival ride, and got off with a distorted sense of balance, and was staggering across the grass, trying to get hold of his own brain.

The music was like a headache, punching him.

He could not bring himself to look in Emily’s direction. She was standing all hunched over, as if she expected to be struck by something—or had been already. But
she’s
the one who struck
me
! Matt thought. Throwing away my ring?

Everywhere he turned, his eyes seemed to land on diamonds—stars in the sky, sparkles in the water, gleams off ice in glasses, glitters from other girls’ earrings.

Matt had loved choosing that ring, selling his car to pay for it; he had loved the tiny velvet box it came in and the feel of Emily’s hand when he slid it on. He had felt powerful, like a rescuer. Now he felt limp, like a failure.

Emily had had a difficult childhood. Her parents weren’t very nice people, and it was hard to find anything good to say about either one. He used to marvel at how sweet, generous Emily could have sprung from two mean, thoughtless manipulators like the Edmundsons. When the parents decided on a divorce, they virtually abandoned Emily in the process. Emily had ended up living with Anne for quite a while, and Matt had wanted her to stay with his own family, a suggestion his mother squashed in a hurry.

Through it all she remained sweet and funny and amiable. Matt had thought that nothing could shake Emily; that she could go through hell smiling.

So now he had a great job, would be away for a few months, and she was acting as if their lives together were over.

Thrown away his ring! Why didn’t she just give it back to me? he thought.

He imagined a date in which his girl handed him back his ring. I would have thrown it away myself, he realized. Or thrown it at her.

Emily pointed suddenly, her hand white in the dark. “There’s Con. With Gary and Mike and those new boys. You wanted to tell the guys all about your fabulous job, Matt. Here’s your chance. Con is dying for a change of subject, he’s sick of hearing about Anne’s terrific job, so tell him about
your
terrific job instead. Let them all be jealous of
you
for a while.”

He shrank from the bitterness in her voice.

How much of
my
proposal of marriage was because I wanted to be the Good Guy who rescues the Girl? And now she’s better; she’s living with her father; she’s come to terms with both her parents and she doesn’t need rescuing. The pressure’s off. I can go do my own thing instead.

But Emily had never put pressure on him. If anything, she was the one who had been reluctant to get engaged to start with.
He
had pressured
her.

Confused thoughts rose and collapsed in his head like patterns in a kaleidoscope.

He knew he was wrong and yet he knew he was right.

“Emily,” he said thickly, “we have to talk.”

Her pixie face was white and pinched in the shadows. “You mean you have to talk me into seeing things your way,” she said. She walked away from him.

He didn’t follow her. If they couldn’t talk alone, they certainly couldn’t talk in front of all these people. Matt, who loved crowds and parties, felt swamped in voices and personalities. There were too many people; he could not distinguish them, he could not even care about them. All he wanted was for this not to be happening.

Emily slipped into the press of kids. How involved with their own lives they were! They had their own problems and jobs and families and loves and hates—they neither knew nor cared about Emily’s. Nobody would notice that she and Matt were silent in the dark. Nobody would peer down at her left hand to see that her ring was gone. It was nobody’s responsibility to see that she had a good time at Anne’s party, and nobody would notice if she didn’t.

If I want to talk this out, she thought, I have to grab a friend, haul her away, hand her the facts on a platter.

But the only person she could really talk to was Matt himself.

Why am I being so horrible to him? she thought. I rejoice for Anne going abroad. I rejoice for Kip getting in the school she worked so hard for. Why can’t I rejoice for Matt, because all his skills took him in the direction he’s best at?

Matt’s perfectly right, it isn’t the end of the world; we can still be engaged, we can still get married someday.

She walked up to the counters. The real food had not yet been brought out. There was still the chips, dips, vegetable sticks, crackers, cheese, and peanuts. Emily felt if she did not have solid food pretty soon she would faint. She took another soda. She had had so much carbonated junk tonight she was one big bubble.

It’s because I am the one left behind, she thought. The person going has a destination. The person left just sits and mopes. There is nothing worse than being the one left behind.

She heaved a huge, painful sigh.

She would have to go over to Anne’s house tomorrow, after Anne had left for the airport. She would have to say to Mrs. Stephens, “Hi, my diamond ring is in your grass. I brought my brush and comb, do you mind if I comb your whole yard looking for it?”

N
OT ONE GIRL ON
board the
Duet
had ever enjoyed what Beth Rose Chapman was enjoying at that moment. Not even Anne, unarguably the most lovely girl who ever went to Westerly High. Not even Molly, who had gone out with an awful lot of boys. Not Kip, nor Emily, nor Susan, nor Lynda.

For Beth Rose was surrounded by three boys.

Gary, whom she had dated a year before, was definitely back and definitely interested.

Blaze, whom she had picked up on the dock just that afternoon, was also present and interested.

And Jere, whom they had written off as some employee carrying a camera, was inching forward, getting closer.

And Beth, like any girl flirting with three boys who flirted with her first, was having the time of her life. The girls were angry and hurt. It was not fair that they should have none and Beth Rose three. They almost forgot their envy of Anne, as they stared at Beth.

Beth was sitting on a bench, her knees crossed, and the soft cloth of her yellow dress flowing around her. On her right sat Gary, whom she was facing, and into whose eyes she laughed. Above her perched Blaze, sitting on the brass rail, elbow on knees and face in hands, so he was hunched right down between Beth and Gary. And sitting cross-legged at her left, sprawled on the glossy deck, was Jere.

“It’s like she’s holding court,” said one girl.

“Somebody go bother them with potato chips and celery sticks,” said another girl.

“Somebody tell that band to start playing,” said a more intelligent one. “She can only dance with one at a time.”

“Good idea. And we’ll get to see which one she cares about most, too. That’s the one she’ll dance with.”

The others knew better. Beth Rose wouldn’t do the asking. The boy who danced with her would simply be the one who asked first. Lynda suggesting placing bets but nobody would bet; it made them too irritable. Right at that moment, no matter how wonderful her own future looked, there was not a girl on the deck who would not have exchanged places with Beth Rose.

The combo—two guitars and a drummer—set up on the open upper deck and began playing the current number three on the charts. The party abandoned the chips and dip, and the soda and peanuts, and swarmed up the narrow, almost vertical, metal stairs to dance in the moonlight.

Anne and Con were already there, dancing the first dance.

Molly was not shy. She had nothing to lose, and no worries, and hadn’t Beth Rose introduced her as a friend?
She
was not going to that upper deck without a partner in tow. Molly walked right up to the quartet of Gary, Blaze, Jere, and Beth Rose. She perched on the railing next to Blaze. “Hi there, everybody.” She reserved her smile for Blaze.

He smiled back. “Hello, Molly.”

She was immensely pleased. He had remembered her name. “Blaze, I don’t want you to feel like a stranger. How about a dance?”

He looked startled more than anything else, but he hopped off the railing with her and off they went.

Beth Rose watched them go. Of course, Blaze could hardly have retorted that he liked feeling strange and would Molly please buzz off. Still, she would have liked…

Con Winter leaned over the upper deck railing and yelled down to her group. “Hey! Jeremiah Dunstan! What do you think you were hired for? Get up here and film the dancing. You already missed Anne and me alone for the first dance. Now when you film it, it’ll be fake.”

The boy Jere, whom Beth had scarcely met, got silently up from the deck, picked up his camera and vanished.

Well! thought Beth. Didn’t take long for my circle of admirers to dwindle. She was very aware of Gary’s presence. After a long absence he was next to her again. Of course with Gary it was hard to tell if this meant a thing. She hoped he would ask her to dance; he was a wonderful dancer. But he didn’t. He talked to her about the restaurant, and how his father had agreed Gary could help design the addition, and how hard it was to hire and keep busboys.

How could Gary, who had once seemed perfect to her, be boring? Beth changed the subject rather than think less of Gary. “Doesn’t the idea of all our group going on to other things make you feel like a part of history?” she said to him. “We’re even in a book. Caught there, in our yearbook, in black and white, like a text. We are the past.”

Gary blinked. He said maybe he would drink another soda. She said she’d have one, too. “Do you look at your yearbook much?” she asked him when they reached the bar.

“I’ve never looked at it once. It ended with high school.”

Beth kept her yearbook propped open. Into the page where Emily’s photograph smiled out at her, Beth had slid Emily’s engagement announcement. On Anne’s page went the newspaper’s early May interview of Ivory Glynn and the brief announcement from the PEOPLE page about Anne’s job. From the high school guidance department column, she had snipped many a one-liner “…and we are proud that our brilliant Katharine Elliott has been accepted at no less than four top schools…”

“You’ll be the class historian then,” Gary said. “You’re going to be the only one left anyway, so you can read the papers and keep up with it all. Hey, look, real food! What are those?” he asked the waiter.

Four vast, deep, hot trays were being laid out. “Lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, ravioli, and cheese manicotti.”

“I’m in heaven now,” Gary said. “Who would want to dance when there’s decent food around?”

Beth laughed. “Normally I would argue the point, but so far today I have had one banana and one yogurt. Pass the plates, I’ll be the first into the lasagna.”