Summerland: A Novel (44 page)

“That I saw them together.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Hobby said. “You saw them together, so what? They used to be together all the time. They were friends. You know that.”

“I saw them
together
together,” Demeter said.

“What? You mean, like, kissing?”

“I mean like more than kissing.”

“For God’s sake, Meter,
what?”

“I saw them… well, I saw them having sex. On the deck of your house. A couple of days before graduation.”

Hobby stared at her. His expression was inscrutable. This, Demeter decided, was the most frustrating thing about life: it was impossible to tell what other people were thinking.

“What do you mean, you saw them
having sex?
” Hobby said. “I don’t get that.”

Demeter’s hands were shaking. She needed a drink. But she
was never going to drink again. Never again, for the rest of her life. That was impossible of course, but that was what Dr. Field and her parents had been trying to convince her of. In less than an hour she would be picked up and transported to Vendever, where counselors and doctors and addiction experts were going to teach her how to live without drinking.

“I saw them having sex,” she said. “I cut school. That Thursday.”

It had been a glorious day with a scrubbed-clean feel to the air and a pure June-blue sky. That morning Demeter had drunk the dregs of a bottle of Dewar’s, the last of her parents’ stash, and she had also taken a few swigs off the bottle of Jim Beam that she’d swiped from the Kingsleys’. But she needed more alcohol, another bottle at least, and the idea of stealing from someone she knew had lodged in her brain. It had been so easy to lift the bottle from the Kingsleys’ house. Demeter ran through a list of all the people she knew, or whom her parents knew, who drank, and Zoe was the most promising candidate. Zoe always drank wine, though Demeter also had memories of margarita parties at the Alistairs’, and cosmopolitans and martinis, and hot rum toddies in winter. She knew Zoe’s kitchen practically as well as her own, she knew that Zoe would be at work, and she knew that the sliding door facing the ocean would be unlocked.

So Demeter drove to the end of Miacomet Pond and parked her Escape. She told herself she was just going for a walk on the beach, no crime there. She trudged the two or three hundred yards to the Alistairs’ steps. She left her sandals on the beach and was unusually light and quick up the steps in her bare feet. She was dreaming of having a cold glass of white wine, and maybe a short nap in the sun on the chaise longue, before returning to school after lunch, just in time for English, which was the only class she could stand.

Demeter was just four or five steps from the top of the stairs when she heard the breathing and whispering and moaning. She
didn’t quite know what to make of it; she never heard such noises in her own house. She listened. She thought, Turn around and leave, right now. Zoe had a man up there. Demeter had no reason to be surprised by this; Zoe was single and she was young, barely forty. But instead of turning around, Demeter crept upward. She had a feeling that she couldn’t identify. This was obviously something private that she was about to witness, something secret. She had never been privy to any kind of secret before, other than her own hideous secret about her drinking. She knew that other kids kept secrets and told secrets, among them Annabel Wright and Winnie Potts and Anders Peashway, kids who had a lot more going on in their lives than she did.

She kept going, up one step then the next until she could see clearly: Zoe and… Jordan. Zoe naked, straddling Jordan on the very same chaise that Demeter had been planning to use for her nap.

Demeter turned and flew down the stairs and, after grabbing her sandals, dashed across the sand toward her car. When she was safely out of view, she slowed down and tried to catch her breath and slow her galloping heart and her racing mind and her careening emotions.

Zoe and Jordan.

She was shocked, God, she felt as if she’d been electrocuted and was now vibrating and buzzing, but could she honestly say she was
surprised?
Zoe and Jordan. They were always together, always somehow
aligned;
they had seemed far more comfortable together than Jordan and Ava, even though Ava was Jordan’s wife and Jake’s mother. Everyone remarked about how Zoe and Jordan were such great friends. They were friends like Jerry and Elaine on
Seinfeld,
or like Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins in the books Demeter had read growing up. Best friends: one boy and one girl. This kind of relationship was frequently portrayed in books and movies and on TV, but it never seemed to happen in
real life—except in the case of Zoe and Jordan. But now that myth was dispelled. Their relationship was something else entirely.

“I was looking for booze,” Demeter explained to Hobby. “I knew I could get some at your house. So I walked down the beach and up the stairs, and I saw your mom and Jordan on the deck. And they were—”

Hobby held up a hand like a traffic cop. Demeter shut her mouth.

“Why?” he said.

Demeter wasn’t sure what he was asking.
Why?
Why was she looking for booze? Well, now he knew, now everyone knew: she was an alcoholic. Or did he mean, why were Zoe and Jordan together? That wasn’t something Demeter could answer.

“Why what?” she said.

“Why did you tell Penny?” he whispered.

Why
did
she tell Penny? She had asked herself this question half a million times: Why did I tell Penny? She must have known that Penny would be stunned; she must have known she would be hurt. Confused, sad, angry, disgusted. Yes, Demeter had known all of that. But the answer to why she had told Penny was that she had been unable
not
to tell Penny. The news was like a gold ingot in her hand, and for someone as emotionally impoverished as Demeter, it had been impossible not to squander it. The secret was valuable only if it could get her something she wanted, and what she had wanted, more than anything in the world, was Penny Alistair’s complete attention.

“I told her because I finally had something she didn’t. I had social currency.”

“ ‘Social currency,’ ” Hobby repeated.

“I knew she was going to be upset,” Demeter said. “But I thought I could help her work through it. That was what I wanted.” The words were so brutally honest that Demeter couldn’t believe she was actually uttering them. “My plan was to tell Penny the
news and then be the one to help her deal with it. It was a secret that was going to bond us together.” She swallowed; her throat was dry and sore. “It was supposed to make us friends.
Real
friends.”

Hobby blew out a stream of air. He looked pale and sick. It occurred to Demeter that telling Hobby this news about his mother and Jordan might turn out to be a second disaster. Back in the dunes, with Penny, she had spoken with the self-righteous assurance that she was doing the correct and just thing by exposing the nefarious lies of the adults in their lives. Now, with Hobby, she was confessing only to her own transgressions. What had taken place between Zoe and Jordan was nobody’s business—not Penny’s, not Hobby’s, and certainly not Demeter’s.

“If I could take it back…,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” Hobby said. He was rubbing his forehead aggressively, as if willing his brain to work.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know that what happened with Penny was my fault. That was what I told her. She seemed cool with the news at first, like it was no big deal. But then, by the time we got back to the car, she was a mess.”

“ ‘A mess,’ ” Hobby said.

“I killed her,” Demeter said. “I might just as well have put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

Hobby was quiet. Demeter thought he might try to say something to make her feel better, but he did nothing of the sort. So he was going to hold her responsible. He was very possibly going to report all of this back to Zoe, and then the whole world would hold her responsible for Penny Alistair’s death. But Demeter had concluded that telling Hobby was the only thing that would make her feel better. She could tell the story in group therapy at Vendever, but it wouldn’t have any meaning. Telling strangers would offer no relief from the insidious pressure that had been building inside her: I told Penny a horrible thing. I got in the middle of
people’s personal affairs that had nothing to do with me. I am the reason Penny Alistair is dead. Me. If I had kept my mouth shut, Penny would still be alive.

Hobby struggled to his feet. Really? Demeter thought. He’s just going to leave? She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Yelling, maybe. A scene. But there was a way—wasn’t there?—in which this was Zoe’s and Jordan’s fault. They, after all, were the ones who’d been lying and cheating. They were the ones who had crossed a line. They were
adults—
really good, cool, important, responsible adults, or so Demeter, and Hobby and Penny and Jake, had always been led to believe. And yet there they were on the deck, having
sex,
making those animal noises. Demeter hadn’t wandered into anyone’s bedroom. They were
outside,
practically in
public.
Demeter had wondered if perhaps she’d happened across a onetime thing. Maybe Jordan had stopped by to help Zoe change out her storm windows for screens, and they’d gotten to waxing nostalgic about graduation, and to talking about Penny and Jake and how much in love they were, and then one thing had led to another, and what Demeter had witnessed was like a shooting star that burned bright once, then faded away.

But Demeter didn’t think so. She’d glimpsed them only for a split second, just long enough to imprint in her mind Zoe’s bare back (with the white stripe of a tan line), and Jordan’s arms locked around her, and their movements and their sounds. It had seemed like they fit together perfectly in a way they might not have done if it were their first time. (Although what did Demeter know about sex? Really, what did she know?) And when she thought back on the way that Zoe and Jordan
were
together—their easy camaraderie, their inside jokes, the fact that they always sat next to each other, whether it be at a dinner table, at the beach, or in the ski lodge—she knew that this had been going on for
a while,
probably months, possibly even years. It was an industry of lies that they had produced. They had been lying not just to poor Ava Randolph
but to
everybody.
Including their own children. Didn’t that make it Zoe and Jordan’s fault? Did Demeter have to take the blame just for repeating the awful truth?

Demeter wanted to initiate this debate with Hobby—and it would have to be here and now, while she was still around, while the topic was still hot and immediate—but she didn’t know how to broach it without making it seem like she was trying to pass the buck and deny the blame.

No, she thought. There would be no passing the buck or denying the blame. She was seventeen years old. That was old enough to accept responsibility for who she was and what she’d set in motion.

“I’m sorry,” she bleated.

Hobby shook his head violently, as if trying to dislodge something. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

O
ne thing at a time. Maybe before the accident he could have dealt with
both
Demeter’s shell-shocking news and telling Zoe about the baby, but he couldn’t do it now. His head was filled with white noise. Too much, too much.

His mother and Jordan. Whoa. He would have to think about that carefully.

If he’d had two good legs, he would have chosen to walk home, but the cast necessitated that he climb into the car with his mother, who was paging through an issue of
Bon Appétit.
She set the magazine down and looked at him.

“That go okay?” she asked.

“Not really.”

She regarded him for a second. He could feel her eyes, feel the questions hanging in the hot air of the car.

“Believe me,” he said, “you don’t want to know.”

Still she watched him. Hobby made a fist over and over again with his left hand. He wanted her to drive. He wanted the air-conditioning on full blast so he could cool down. He wanted to get back to Claire. But he couldn’t tell Claire about this; he couldn’t tell anyone. Demeter had just saddled him with a ridiculous burden. Did she feel better now? he wondered. He hoped so. He really fucking hoped so.

“Hobby?” Zoe said.

“Please drive,” Hobby said.

“I can handle it, you know,” Zoe said. “If you want to tell me something, if you want to talk this out with me, I can handle it.”

“You’ve handled enough,” Hobby said. He felt a surge of pure, vermilion anger at Demeter. She had used his mother’s secret as
social currency,
to
bond
with Penny, to try and make them
real
friends, but what had it cost
her?
Penny had lost her life, Zoe had lost her daughter, Hobby had lost his twin sister and the agility and quickness and coordination that had been his natural gifts. Demeter had lost nothing. Sure, she might feel as if she were losing something because she was being carted away to Vendever, but that was destruction by her own hand. Demeter had drunk and stolen and drunk some more because she couldn’t handle the truth: she had caused the accident.

But what was up with his mother and Jordan, anyway? Would his mother
do
that, sleep with Jordan while he was married to Ava, who was her friend too? Was his mother lonely and desperate enough to do that, and if she was, what did
that
say about her? Was she
in love
with Jordan? Of course she was in love with him. God, it seemed so obvious to Hobby right at that second that it was painful for him to think about. The phone calls and the texting and the way Zoe was always happier when Jordan was around,
the way she made special food for him and he made such a big deal about how delicious everything was, and the way they liked the same music and had the same politics. If a certain Springsteen song came on over the car radio, Zoe would call Jordan’s cell phone and play a snippet into his voicemail, no words or explanation needed. When Barack Obama was elected President, the first person to call Zoe was Jordan: before midnight on November 4, 2008, they spent more than an hour talking on the phone together, as giddy as kids. “Do you miss Jordan?” Hobby had asked his mother a few weeks ago. “Yes,” she’d said. “Yes I do, actually. I miss him very much.” And then he’d heard her crying that night and thought she must be crying about Penny. He wondered now what it was like for his mother to have Jordan so far away; he would have liked to ask her, but at that moment he realized he didn’t want to know his mother’s innermost thoughts. He didn’t want to know about her sex life or her heart’s secrets. He wanted her to be his
mother.
Although of course he also wanted her to be happy. Jordan Randolph certainly made her happy. So did he want Zoe to be with Jordan? He wasn’t sure. His brain wasn’t working correctly, goddammit. He couldn’t make sense of any of this.