Summer People (25 page)

Leah whispered, “Don't say that.” She shifted onto her side to face him, but stared down at the patterned blanket now colored shades of moonlit gray.

“Why?”

“Because we're going to be leaving here soon.”

“But that doesn't mean we can't see each other again.”

Leah picked at stray threads in the blanket without responding. So Nathan continued, “I've actually been thinking lately about maybe leaving Cleveland and checking out someplace else for a while…like maybe New York.”

“You mean live there?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What would you do there?”

“I don't know. I mean, anything, really. But I was thinking maybe I would get a job where I could do illustrations, like making storyboards for TV shows or movies or something.”

Leah frowned. “Do they still use storyboards?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's with computers. But if it is, then maybe I'd try to work for DC or Marvel Comics.”

“I thought you hated those comics.”

“I don't
hate
them. I'm not that into superheroes, you're right, but maybe I could do that during the day for money and then work on my own stuff at home.”

“Hmm,” Leah said, her lips pressed together in an expression that seemed noncommittal.

Smiling, Nathan said, “You don't sound very excited.”

“No, if that's what you want to do, you should do it,” Leah said. “I just don't want you to move there for my sake, because I don't really know what I'm doing right now.”

“Yeah—no—I wouldn't be moving there just for you.”

Eying him with impatient sorrow, Leah explained, “I just had a really hard time with my first breakup. And the reason Marcus and I aren't dating anymore is because I didn't want to get into anything too serious again. He wanted us to move in together in New York and I didn't want to. I mean, I did but I didn't. I just wanted time to figure out how to be happy on my own for a while.” She let her gaze fall back to the blanket. “You know?”

Nathan managed to nod and say, “Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I wasn't saying we should move to New York
together.
I was just saying that there may be a time when I move to New York, down the road sometime, and then we could see each other.”

“Well, I think you should if you think you'd like it there.”

“Yeah, well, it probably wouldn't be for a while, anyway.” Nathan drank the last of his wine and then stared out at the surf. In the more primal and inarticulate depths of his brain, the dark, unrelentingly churning, chaotic ocean seemed to him like the force of life, always threatening to drown him. Eventually he would be too tired to resist, but, inspired by a flickering memory of resistance, Nathan flung his glass toward the Atlantic, where it landed in a barely noticeable puff of sand.

Leah flinched and tilted her chin down as if attempting to swallow something. “Whoa, are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” Nathan said, seriously at first, until he chuckled at the pathos of his gesture. To leave the wineglass where it fell seemed like an unnecessary theft from Ellen, and if broken, the shards of glass would be a danger to the children who would be frolicking on the beach the next morning. Nathan stood and ambled over to pluck the glass from the sand.

“What?” Nathan asked on his way back to the blanket.

Leah smiled, and said, “I'm the one who's supposed to be the drama queen.”

“What am I supposed to be again?”

“Subdued, restrained.”

“All right.” Nathan was tired of the high irony that characterized so much of their conversation and also of the different conceptions of manhood the world thrust confusingly at him. He wished he knew what Aristotle had to say about manhood because what he said about bravery sounded true. You become brave by doing brave acts. Pushing a stray tendril of hair from her face, Nathan caressed Leah's cheek, and she let him. He kissed her uncertainly at first, then more deeply, warring against the possibility that from now on he would be kissing her good-bye.

 

F
or most of the next day, Nathan thought about Leah. He thought about her while watching tennis balls steadily volleyed across the Alnombak courts, he thought about her while having lunch; and he thought about her later that afternoon while taking a long drive with Ellen. He told Ellen he was looking for a particular kind of candy—what the name was, he couldn't remember, but he thought she would love it—while he stopped at two gas stations and a grocery to find the brand of extra-thin condoms he feared were the only kind thin enough to allow him to maintain an erection.

Once home, however, Nathan found he couldn't wait for Leah. He hustled into the upstairs bathroom and performed the minor exorcism necessary to allow him to think about other things.

When Ellen trudged up to her bedroom after the game shows were over, Nathan turned the channel on the television and eased himself into her recliner. He was finishing his third rum and Coke as large, handsome TV faces filled the darkened room with flickering light. Having ridden the wave of lust that crested upon him that afternoon, Nathan was now in the trough, contemplating the possibility that he had made his affection for Leah too obvious for her to think it worth having. Of course, she'd said she wasn't interested in getting involved in a serious relationship because she'd been wounded in the past, but for the love of God, who hadn't been wounded? And isn't that what people always said until they met someone who really interested them? Convinced that she was taking him for granted, Nathan picked up the phone.

When Leah answered, sounding buoyant, his conviction faltered. She said she had to bathe but she would be over in half an hour.

Nathan stammered, “Actually, I don't think I can tonight, or at least not till later on.”

“What happened?”

“It's nothing with Ellen. A friend just called when I was making dinner, and I was so tied up that I didn't have time to talk with her for very long. But she's making this documentary film about graphic novelists and she wants to profile me. So I have to give her a call back in a minute.”

“Wow,” Leah said, sounding excited for him.

“Yeah, well, we'll see. I don't know how much of my part will end up being included in the final film.”

“That's great, though. How long do you think it'll take?”

“I don't know. I think she's got some personal stuff going on right now, too. So I'm not sure. You're not mad, are you?”

“No, I'm sure I'll see you soon.”

“I just thought that since our relationship is a summer fling it wouldn't be that big a deal.”

Leah didn't reply.

“I'm joking,
joking,
” Nathan said, his nervous laughter sickening him
even as it erupted from his mouth. “That was a joke. I'm sad about not being able to do anything with you, but she's just someone I'm kind of close with, and I'd feel bad if I didn't call her back. Do you want me to give you a call if I get off with her early enough?”

“That's fine. Some people were getting together at Danielle's, so I may just go over there, though.”

“Okay,” Nathan said. He asked her questions about what she'd done with the kids that day—hoping he could cause her to forget his foolish comment—and Leah answered briefly before reminding him to hurry up and call his friend. Nathan hung up and stared down at the black rotary phone as he sipped his drink. Then he picked up the phone with both hands and tried to break it in two. He grunted and slammed the unbroken phone back onto the receiver. The house was quiet except for the almost inaudible murmuring of TV voices and tree branches occasionally scraping the house. He decided he would wait another twenty minutes for Leah to take her bath and then go over and catch her before she left for Danielle's. If she asked about the conversation with his friend, Nathan would say: Oh, well, they had talked about her dissatisfaction with her boyfriend, and she'd asked some interesting questions about Nathan's art, but she mostly wanted to make sure he'd swing by New York on his way home so they could hang out and she could film him. Nathan glanced at his watch. He was on his way into the bathroom to check the diminution of his bruise when an unearthly sound echoed from upstairs.

“Dora!”

Nathan froze, his heart attempting to burst from his chest. The raspy voice had called out in a long, plaintive tone—but then stopped so abruptly that he almost wondered if he'd imagined it. He listened to the low whistling of the wind.

“Doraaaaa!”

Openmouthed, Nathan stared up the shadowy stairwell until his frightened, booze-addled brain finally comprehended that Dora was Ellen's cook. He cursed and hurried back to the phone. He wanted someone to tell him what was happening. When he dialed Ellen's home in Cleveland,
the answering machine picked up, and Nathan sputtered, “Hey, Dora, Ralph, this is Nathan up in Maine, and I'm calling because Ellen's talking really loud in her sleep, and I was just wondering if you guys had ever had something like this—”

“Doraaaaa!” Ellen howled. Nathan hung up the phone and ran up the stairway to her room.

The door was slightly ajar, but Nathan hesitated to push it open out of respect for her privacy and because he didn't want to see her half-naked. His first evening in Maine, Nathan had carried Ellen's three leaden suitcases up the staircase to her room, then said good night and gone downstairs where, a few minutes later, he'd heard her calling his name. Five feet and a few inches tall, Ellen had stood on the top steps, wearing an essentially translucent gown. Beneath it Nathan had seen the outlines of her panties, the waistline lost beneath the sag of her belly, and the white no-frills bra containing her freckled, potato-skin-colored breasts. She had only wanted help unfastening one of her suitcases, but Nathan had never seen a woman so old so scantily clad, and he didn't want to see her that way again.

“Ellen?” he said softly, tilting his head toward the narrow space between the door and its frame. “Ellen? Are you all right?”

“I think I'm…,” Ellen said, but her voice trailed off into murmuring.

Nathan took a step backward, breathing easier. “Ellen, you're all right. You're just talking in your sleep.”

For what seemed a long time, Nathan listened to the sound of tree branches clicking against her bedroom window and the distant, high-pitched whine of the television downstairs. Then Ellen laughed a rumbling, bitter laugh Nathan had never heard before: a gurgling noise that developed into a wet, congested cough. “I—I don't think I'm sleeping.”

Nathan pushed open the door, turned on the light, then stared in disbelief at Ellen's bed. It was still made. The lacy white draperies billowed away from two opened windows, and Ellen was nowhere to be seen. He
took a few steps farther into the room and found her sprawled on the carpet on her side, legs splayed like opened scissors, her pale hair fanning out across a dark stain of blood.

“Jesus!” Nathan cried, kneeling beside her. She was wearing the same white cardigan and navy blue dress she'd worn all day. He placed his hand on her hip to comfort her as she abruptly vomited—a thick, gray-pinkish liquid. Nathan clenched his teeth and turned away. When she'd finished, he asked, “What happened?”

Ellen only shook her head and glanced down at the grayish goo as it seeped into the carpet and congealed with blood and more vomit. “It's disgusting, isn't it?” she croaked.

“No, it's not that bad,” Nathan said, even though he was leaning back so he would not have to see. “You're going to be fine. I'm going to call an ambulance, and we'll take care of you, okay?” Nathan let go of Ellen's shoulder and leapt over the bed to the phone.

 

I
n retrospect it would seem to him that all of his mealtime monologues that summer were in preparation for this moment. After calling the ambulance, Nathan knelt beside Ellen with his hand on her shoulder, and spoke in the warmest, most soothing voice he could muster about whatever passed through his mind. He reasoned that she must have fallen skull-forward into her dresser, then slumped onto the carpet, where she had lain drifting in and out of consciousness until he'd heard her. He told her that she was tough, that she had to be tough to suffer a blow like that and still have the strength to call for help, and each time she vomited or coughed, Nathan squeezed her shoulder and reminded her that the ambulance was on its way.

When he finally heard the siren—faintly, at first—then growing louder as the ambulance navigated the hairpin turns of the neighborhood, Ellen's eyes widened with apprehension as he attempted to reassure her. The siren stopped some distance from the house, but soon Nathan heard tires crunching the gravel, ambulance doors opening and closing, and men's
voices. Nathan told Ellen he would be right back, he was just going to let the paramedics inside. But as he approached the stairs, three men in blue jumpsuits were already opening the front door. They marched up the stairs and past him. Two of them squatted beside Ellen while the short, crew-cut man hung back beside Nathan.

“Do you know how she fell?” the man asked.

Nathan said, “No. I think she probably tripped and hit her head on the dresser, but I didn't know about it until I heard her calling me…or, actually, she was calling for her cook in Cleveland, so I think she's a little disoriented. She's definitely a little disoriented.”

“How long ago did you hear her calling?”

“Like half an hour ago.”

“Is she currently taking any medication?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

Nathan wasn't sure. Luckily, on the day after they'd arrived, Nathan had been in Ellen's bedroom, helping her to move her suitcases, when he'd noticed a box of see-through pill containers on top of her bureau. Each container was divided into seven rows, one for each day of the week, and each row was filled with colored pills. When he'd called the house to ask about them, Dora had said some were vitamins, others were prescribed by Dr. Peters, and that it was important that Nathan give them to her every morning at breakfast. Nathan told the paramedic that Ellen took the pills every day, but that he had no idea what they were. “I can bring them with us, though, if that helps.”