Summer Secrets (31 page)

I see Ellie just as we are leaving, her hair and clothes disheveled, looking more like Julia than Ellie. It is the first time I actually see a family resemblance. I think of walking over to her to say something, but there is nothing to say. I can’t make it better, and seeing me here will doubtless make it worse.

I am walking through the car park when I hear my name and I stop in my tracks, unwilling to be shouted at yet again, unwilling to turn and listen to whatever it is she has to say.

But I do turn. I walk slowly over to where she is standing.

“Cat, thank you.” Her voice is rasping and rough, but authentic. “Thank you for being here.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, and then she just looks at me, as if she is going to say something else, but she doesn’t, and I give her a rueful smile and leave.

I don’t know what Ellie’s story is. I don’t know if she drinks in the way we tend to drink in our family. I don’t know if she was drunk last night, or if she just needed to let off steam. I do know it is not my place to judge her. I do know that as I walk into the streams of sunlight hitting the car park, I am filled with gratitude that I am no longer the kind of mother that can’t be there for her child; I am no longer the kind of mother who goes AWOL, who finds herself in bars with strangers, is more interested in being in bars with strangers than raising her daughter. I thank God that I am not showing up in the morning drunk, smelling of booze and cigarettes, because my family was never my priority.

How easily this could have been me. This
was
me. For years. Jason protected me from the full horror of how bad a parent I was. But what if I hadn’t had him? I doubt I would have been able to be present last night in the way that I was. My daughter would have been “fast,” “advanced,” because how else do you survive when you do not have a mother? How else do you survive when your mother is too busy planning her next drink, or binge, to know or care what you are doing, until of course the terrible thing happens, when you wail down the phone and fortify yourself with booze on the ferry over, to get you through whatever pain awaits you when you arrive?

*   *   *

Annie is home, being looked after by Sam the nurse. Eddie dropped in with an “Eddie” bear that I thought Annie would discard, announcing she is much too old for stuffed toys, but the Eddie bear is squeezed next to her in bed as Sam runs up and down the stairs tending to her every need.

Here I am, at the ferry, to collect Jason. I have parked a little ways up the street and walk down to watch the boat come in, the hordes of people that swarm off. I never understand where all these people disappear to. It is such a small island, but never feels crowded, although every day I see more people arrive. I’m never here to see the same crowds leave.

I’m in a reverie about where people disappear to when I see Jason, and my heart starts to smile, for he looks so very English in his slim-cut jeans and trendy sneakers, his V-neck T-shirt and cool metal aviators. He looks English, and handsome, and I wish to God, oh how I wish to God, my heart didn’t do an involuntary flip. But it does, and I take a deep breath, compose my features into something that does not give away the fact that I still think this man is the most perfect man I have ever seen, and I wave.

“Hey, you,” he says, and he puts his bag down and gives me a hug.

*   *   *

I could stay here forever. I give myself the luxury of closing my eyes so I can fully appreciate the loveliness of being in his arms again, if only because he is trying to comfort me, comfort himself perhaps, and when we pull away I try to be very matter-of-fact to hide the fact that even though we are divorced, even though he is now very much with the poison dwarf, he still has the ability to make me come completely undone.

“How is she?”

“Happy to be out of the hospital. Worried about Trudy, her cousin, actually, who is still in the hospital, and very much enjoying having Sam and Eddie run up and down stairs and bring her treats.”

“Eddie?”

“Sam’s new friend. I know, we’ve only been here five minutes, but he seems to have lucked out. He brought Annie a huge teddy bear this morning that she engulfed.”

He runs his fingers through his hair as he shakes his head. “I can’t actually believe our daughter was in an accident. You always think these things happen to other people, never to you. Jesus.” He pauses. “How grateful am I that she’s okay.”

“Speaking of grateful, there are incredible meetings here.”

“You’re going?”

“Almost every day.”

“Cat, I’m so happy that you’re really doing it this time,” he says, as we reach the car. “You really are so different.”

“Thanks,” I say lightly, swallowing the lump in my throat, because if I’m so different, if I’m really doing it, how come you still don’t want me?

*   *   *

“Daddy!” If Annie hadn’t been covered in bandages and stitched up everywhere, if she could have leaped out of bed to jump into her father’s arms, she would have done.

“Bobannie!” It has always been his nickname for her after a childhood song:
Annie Bannie Bo Bannie, Banana Fana Fo Fannie, Me My Mo Mannie, Annie!
She would make him sing it over and over, giggling hilariously each time, and Bo Bannie, over time, became Bobannie, which became Bob-any, emphasis on the Bob.

“Daddy!” She nestles into his arms, joy exploding out of every pore. I didn’t tell her he was coming, wanted this to be a surprise, and I step back to wipe the tears from my eyes, then go downstairs to make some lemonade.

“Where’s Eddie?”

“Gone to fight fires.”

“Actually?” I turn to Sam, impressed.

“No. He’s gone to get some fish.”

“Does that mean to the fish market or out on a boat with a rod?”

Sam raises a withering eyebrow. “You look at him and tell me what you think. Is he mincing round the aisles with a red plastic basket hanging prettily from his very strong, sexy forearm, or is he ruggedly on a large boat, gritting his teeth, his muscles bulging as he hauls in a giant swordfish?”

“Fishing, then?”

Sam nods, then puts down the magazine he was reading, a freebie we picked up on Water Street with a list of houses for sale on Nantucket.

“I was thinking I might buy somewhere here,” says Sam, examining the cover, “until I saw what the prices are. It’s insane, Cat. I don’t think I could even afford a shed here, let alone a sweet little two-bedroomed cottage.”

“Are things already that serious between you and Eddie?” I’m impressed. “You’re actually thinking about buying a house here?”

“No, sweetie.” He sighs. “It’s just what I do. Thank God the only porn I indulge in on a regular basis is real estate porn. You have to look, indulge in the fantasy of what if. What if Eddie and I fell madly in love and decided to live out the rest of our days on Fantasy Island?”

“You do realize he might have to tell his mother he’s gay if that were to happen.”

“Oh, we’ve already had that discussion. Many times. I keep telling him life’s too damn short.”

“Anyway, he’s a builder. You don’t have to buy a house. If we’re going to indulge in fantasy, you could probably buy an adorable piece of land somewhere for next to nothing and have Eddie build you a palace.”

“There
are
no pieces of land on Nantucket for next to nothing. There’s nothing under a million. Not even land. Also, I don’t want a palace. I want a grey-shingled house with window boxes filled with geraniums and lobelia, and banks of blue hydrangeas, and a white crushed-oyster driveway, and French doors from the bedroom that open onto a gorgeous little balcony with tons of old terra-cotta pots and a couple of chairs for Eddie and me to sit in when we have our morning coffee or our evening glass of wine.”

“Will the balcony overlook the sunset?”

“Well, of course it will!” says Sam. “And the sunrise.”

“Oooh. Same balcony? Tricky!”

“Maybe the balcony will be on the roof. What do they call that thing? A widow’s walk! So we can just turn the chairs around.”

“Or have a backless bench so you can sort of face each other and simply turn your heads one way to watch the sunset, and another way to watch the sunrise.”

“I like it!” He gives a slow grin. “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re good.”

“I’m available for decorating services anytime you need.”

“Sweetie, the one thing I don’t need is decorating services.” He gestures around at the new-look house, for even though he swore he would stop at the living room that first day when we went shopping, every time he goes out he comes back with a little something to make the house even better. The kitchen table now has a burlap runner going down the middle of it, and assorted sizes of glass lanterns, and I’m pretty sure those white ceramic bowls on the sideboard weren’t here yesterday.

“So.” He peers at me. “How is having hunky ex-husband over here?”

“Nice,” I say, getting up and making myself busy at the kitchen sink because Sam has a horrible habit of getting the truth out of me, and I’m not sure I’m ready for him to see how much I still care.

“Nice in a you still want to sleep with him way, or nice because you feel supported and it makes Annie happy?”

“Those days of wanting to sleep with Jason again are long gone,” I lie, as someone clears his throat in the doorway, and I turn, horrified that Jason is standing there, mortified that he heard, my cheeks turning a swift, startling red.

“Well, that told him,” says Sam happily, who loves nothing more than being witness to a horrifyingly embarrassing situation.

“I’m just going to use the bathroom.” I dash past Jason, my head down, and up stairs, where I throw myself onto the bed with a huge groan. I can’t face him again. I just can’t. I grab a hat, tiptoe down the stairs and out the front door, managing to avoid everyone. When I’m safely out of sight of the house I text Sam that I’m going for a walk along the beach and I’ll see them later.

I go to the end of the road, climbing the long wooden steps to the beach, taking deep breaths and trying not to think about the fact that Jason just heard me say I wasn’t interested in sleeping with him.

I suppose it’s marginally better than hearing me say I
was
interested in sleeping with him.

Sleeping with him.

Oh, how I loved sleeping with Jason.

Jason has always made me feel safe. I had never been able to sleep comfortably in a bed with anyone before Jason. Granted, I don’t remember most of my one-night stands and brief relationships in my youth, only remember waking up the next morning with a sinking feeling in my stomach, but the few I do remember, I remember not wanting to be touched.

I never understood spooning, for example. How could anyone sleep pressed into someone’s hot body? How could anyone sleep even touching someone else? No thank you. I wanted to be all by myself, on my pretend island on my side of the bed.

Until Jason. The first night we spent together was in my apartment, not his. It wasn’t a drunken falling into bed but a sober experience, in more ways than one. I still remember everything about it. How we had spent the evening kissing, and kissing, and kissing on the sofa. How I knew then that this was it, that he was the one for me.

I remember that I got up and went to the bathroom and started getting ready for bed. I brushed my teeth, took my hair down, and got undressed. I pulled on my pajamas and padded back into the living room, where I think Jason was shell-shocked, wondering where on earth I’d gone, what I was doing. He never expected me to come back into the room in my pink and white flowery pajamas.

I walked over to him, sitting on the sofa, took his hand, and saying nothing at all I led him into my bedroom, sat him on my bed, then straddled him, taking his face in my hands and kissing his face everywhere but his mouth. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to remember everything.

And finally, gently, I kissed his lips, back to his neck, and back to his lips, and it was the sweetest, slowest, most loving kiss I could ever remember.

He buried his face in my hair, in my neck, murmuring my name. It had been such a long time coming, Jason and I, friends for so long, this unspoken attraction unspoken for so very long, that allowing it to emerge was an almost spiritual experience.

He unbuttoned the buttons of my pajamas very slowly, kissing all the way down, as I moved my hands under his T-shirt, unable to believe I was able to do this, feel his skin, feel his tongue in his mouth, when it was all I had thought about for so very long.

It was soft, and sweet, and slow. Loving. It was the first time I had ever known the difference between sex and fucking and making love. This was making love, and when he was above me, moving inside me, leaning down to kiss me all over my face, in just the way I had kissed him all over his when I first sat him on the bed, I was astonished to feel tears leaking their way out of my eyes.

He stopped moving. “You’re crying. Why are you crying? Am I hurting you?”

I shook my head. I had no words. I had no idea how to explain that these were tears of joy, because I had never cried tears of joy before.

Afterward, he pulled me in tight, spooning into him, and I sank back into his body, wanting to drink in his taste, his smell, his strong arms wrapped around me.

I woke up to daylight streaming in through the cracks at the sides of the curtains, Jason’s arms still around me, still holding me tight, and I had had the best night’s sleep I had ever had.

It was how we always slept. No matter how bad things were between us, we slept together, in the middle of the bed, Jason’s arms wrapped tightly around me, and however bad things had been, however much we had fought, as soon as I felt his arms, I knew everything would be all right.

*   *   *

I stay on the beach for a long time. I wish Jason hadn’t heard me say it. Even though I said I didn’t want to sleep with him, what the hell am I even doing putting the words “Jason” and “sleep with” in the same sentence? Surely he’ll think I am thinking about sleeping with him. Maybe he’ll even laugh about it when he’s home, lying in bed with the poison dwarf, both of them feeling sorry for me, the single mother who threw her life away and won’t find anyone to love her ever again.