The Love Season (16 page)

“Montrose. Couldn’t shake him.”

“And what did you two talk about?”

“None of your business.”

Sallie looked at Renata and rolled her eyes.
Men
.

“Renata’s engaged, you know,” Miles said.

“What?” Sallie said. She moved her face so that it hovered directly over Renata’s face, blocking out the sun. “I thought you said ‘boyfriend.’ ”

“Well…,” Renata said. She realized she had her left hand, her ringed hand, tucked under her butt, and she kept it there.

“I’m trying to talk her out of it,” Miles said. “She’s only nineteen.”

“You’re trying to talk me out of it?” Renata said. “Suzanne won’t like that.”

“Who’s Suzanne?” Sallie said.

“The woman I work for,” Miles said.

“My future mother-in-law,” Renata said. Something about the beer and the pure lawlessness of the afternoon made Renata want to throw Suzanne under the bus. She reached for her bag. “Look what I found this morning,” she said. She pulled out the list and did her best to smooth it flat. “Suzanne is trying to plan my wedding without even asking me.”

Sallie took the list and read it. Renata hoped she might share her outrage, but instead Sallie got all dreamy eyed.

“Weddings are a sick fantasy of mine,” Sallie said. Miles guffawed, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I love to think about this kind of stuff. The dress, the flowers, the champagne, a hundred and fifty people standing up when you walk into the church, band or DJ, sit-down or buffet. I’ve always wanted a big wedding.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Miles said.

“Don’t you?”

“I haven’t given it a second’s thought,” Miles said.

“Me, either,” Renata admitted.

“My parents eloped on Antigua,” Sallie said. “They were pregnant with my oldest brother.”

“That’s romantic,” Renata said. “Isn’t it?”

“Well, they’re still married,” Sallie said. “My mother regrets not having a big to-do. She’s pinned all her hopes on me, poor woman.”

“You’ll get married?” Renata said.

“No,” Sallie said. “Not in any way that they’d approve of.”

There were a few seconds of silence. Staying on this topic was like sitting bare butted on a barnacled rock; Renata wanted to get off. She gently reclaimed the list from Sallie, folded it up, and tucked it back into her bag.

“May I have another beer, please?” she asked.

Miles jumped up. “I’ll get it.” He opened the cooler and flipped the top off a bottle. “Sandwich?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“Look at you, catering to her every need,” Sallie said. “How sweet.”

“I’m a sweet guy.” He sat back down next to Renata, even closer than last time. Meanwhile, Sallie laid a hand on Renata’s bicep; her fingers grazed the side of Renata’s breast.

“I’m going back out for a beating,” Sallie said. “Will you keep an eye on me?”

“Since when do you need a spotter?” Miles said.

“Since today. It’s hairier out there than it looks.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Renata said, though she had no idea what this entailed. If Sallie did get caught in a rip current, Renata would never be able to save her. All she had wanted from the afternoon was a swim, and yet the waves were pounding the shore so brutally that Renata was afraid to go in, lest she lose her top or get knocked on her ass.

Sallie pointed a finger and smiled. “Don’t go getting married while I’m gone,” she said, and with that she picked up her board and paddled out.

“Yep,” Miles said, once Sallie was past the first set of breaking waves. “She likes you.”

Renata sipped her beer. “Shut up.”

“What?” he said.

There had been something familiar about it, Renata thought. Miles on one side, Sallie on the other, competing for her attention. It was like all the hours she spent, early on, in the company of Cade and Action—until they realized they didn’t like each other that much, they were jealous of each other, they resented each other. Boyfriend, best friend: It didn’t work out that well. Renata had spent the last year juggling, compromising, trying to keep them both happy. She sipped her beer and closed her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Renata said. Miles was on her towel now, or part of his leg was. He had stretched out, and his lower leg and foot were on her towel. And when he spoke, he leaned closer and his right elbow sank into the sand next to her towel and his left hand was on her towel.

“I asked if you were okay.”

She nodded, confused. She was lying: She wasn’t okay. She felt lost. Cade, Action, her father, Marguerite, her mother, Suzanne. And now Miles, who, if she wasn’t hallucinating, was leaning down to
kiss
her. She closed her eyes. Was this happening? He kissed her. He scooted closer and kissed her again, really kissed her, with his tongue. He tasted different from Cade, though she couldn’t say how. She didn’t have time to think about it; she was too busy worrying about the three hundred witnesses to this treachery—the four girls sunbathing near them, the hairy beast Montrose on the other side of the volleyball net, and most crucially Sallie: What on earth would Sallie think if she saw Renata and Miles kissing only seconds after she had discovered that Renata was engaged? Renata
propped herself up on her elbows and did a quick scan—the girls were asleep, the volleyball game was its own spectacle, it had drawn a crowd, and Sallie was indistinguishable from the other surfers. No one had seen them, thank God. Miles took hold of her chin. “Hey,” he said. “I’m over here.” He kissed her again.

I’m trying to talk her out of it
.

Stop!
Renata screamed at herself.
Stop right now!
But all she could think was:
I want more. How do I get more?
Miles was turned on, she could tell through his bathing suit that he was hard, and her mind rooted out possibilities: the dunes, the water, his car? Her body was begging for more—she wanted him to reach inside her bikini top and fondle her breast; she wanted him to slip his hand between her legs.
Look what you’ve done to me
. Wait a minute!
Cade
, she thought.
Cade, Cade, Cade
. Thinking about Cade didn’t help. He’d said they would go to the beach together today, but he had vanished without so much as a note. He would expect her to understand; he was sailing with his sick father. How could she argue with that? She couldn’t. Cade was, as always, doing the right thing, whereas she, in her anger and confusion, was doing the wrong thing.

Renata broke free for a second, checked around them again. The girls, the volleyball game—on someone’s radio, John Mellencamp sang “Jack and Diane.” Miles probably kissed girls on this beach all the time. He was a predator; she should escape from him now, while she had the chance. Renata narrowed her eyes and tried to pick Sallie out of the water. If Sallie would only come back, she’d be safe.

“You want to get out of here?” Miles asked.

This was her chance to turn him down, to prove she was pure of soul, worthy of three karats, worthy of Cade, upstanding fellow—but instead, Renata nodded mutely. Miles wrapped a towel around his waist and led
her away from the girls and the game, past an older couple, an anomaly in this thirty-and-under crowd, the woman heavyset and topless, lying facedown, reading a novel, the man even heavier in a webbed lawn chair with his binoculars trained on the surfers. They didn’t move as Renata and Miles snuck past.

Up a second, smaller staircase, up to the bluff, into the dunes. There was nothing behind them—no road, no houses, nothing but eel grass and bowls of soft, white sand, some with circles of ash where people had lit bonfires, some with empty beer cans and condom wrappers. Renata followed behind Miles, every so often turning around to look at the beach. No one was shouting after them; no one would notice they were gone. Cade was on the other side of the island, possibly still sailing. He would never know.

If you did a bad thing and no one ever found out
, Renata asked herself,
was it still a bad thing?

Just as Miles led her into a deep bowl, deep enough so that they would never be seen and as wide as a king-size bed, Renata’s head began to clear. What was she
doing
? Miles unwrapped the towel from his waist and laid it down in the sand. He sat.

“Come here,” he said.

She could have run, or claimed she had to pee and
then
run; she could have started to cry, owning up to her guilt—any of these strategies would have worked. But she wasn’t strong enough or mature enough to turn down something she wanted so badly. She’d wanted him since the first second she’d seen him at the airport, when his forearms flexed as he lifted their luggage into the back of the Driscolls’ Range Rover. And then with the hose. And then making the sandwiches. Now here he was, offering himself up on a platter.

As she stepped down into the bowl, her feet sank into the soft sand.
He reached out and pulled her onto the towel. If he had been any bit rougher or more insistent, she would have stopped him. But he kissed her slowly and gently in a way that made her think
love
. This was a trick, of course; she hadn’t been kissed by that many men, but she recognized his tenderness as a trick, a lure. He took his shirt off her body and his hands went where she had willed them to go earlier. She was panting; she wanted his bathing suit off; she wanted him right on top of her. He was taking his good old time, going slower and slower to maybe see if he could get her to think
love
again. But who was he kidding? She cried out softly in frustration, “
Oh, come on!
”

He stopped. His bathing suit was uneven around his hips, his cock strained through the nylon. He was sweating. It was blistering hot in the bowl of white sand, blocked from the ocean breeze. By now Renata’s bathing suit top was off, discarded, buried somewhere, she didn’t care where. She didn’t care! She wanted to scream the words:
I DON’T CARE!
About Cade or her father, or even, at that point, her mother, and the sad little white cross that marked her demise.

“I’m thinking of you,” Miles said. He had his hands by her ears; he was holding himself above her, shading her, his knees resting between her open legs. “You’re about to burn your whole house down.”

She thought of Sallie kissing her jaw and Cade kissing her last night on the guest room’s deck and Action, who had kissed her on the mouth and each of the palms the day she left for the woods of West Virginia. She thought of her father kissing her good night on the forehead every night for fourteen years that she could recall. She thought of Suzanne kissing her upon the announcement of her engagement, kissing her with reverence and pride, like a mother would. Renata did not have a single memory of kissing her own mother.

“Burn it down,” she said.

2:40 P.M.

The tart was a new recipe, flagged in a copy of
Bon Appétit
, June 1995, so not really new at all, but new to Marguerite because she had never tried it. She had marked the page and cataloged the magazine, however. Just in case.

Marguerite turned on different music: Tony Bennett singing Cole Porter. Happy songs, sad songs, love songs, lovesick songs. Marguerite whistled and, now that the mailman had come and gone, she hummed.

The first thing she did was tackle the tart crust. This was a pastry skill, and pastry skills had never been her strong suit. She loved to bake bread, but crusts were different from bread. Bread could take a beating, whereas crusts wanted to be handled as little as possible. Bread liked warmth and humidity, whereas crusts liked the cold. The butter had to be cold; the egg had to be cold. Marguerite minced the herbs, relishing the feel of her ten-inch Wusthof in her hands—a knife older than her dinner guest—and the sound of the blade against her cutting board. Dicing, chopping, mincing, all like what they said about riding a bike. Marguerite had always been gifted with a knife; she had cut herself only once, in the early days at Les Trois Canards. Gerard de Luc had been screaming at her in French, something she didn’t understand, and Marguerite, who was aiming for a perfectly uniform
brunoise
of carrots, put the knife through her second and third fingertips to the tune of fifteen stitches. After that, she worked to achieve a kind of zen with her knife. When she held it, she blocked everything else out.

The scent of the herbs intensified once they were minced—minty, peppery, pickly. For some reason, this smell got to her. Marguerite started
to cry. She wasn’t tearing up like she might over an onion but crying. Crying so that she had to leave the herbs in a wet green pile on the cutting board next to the carefully measured flour and salt, crying so that she had to return the butter to the fridge, where it would stay cold, and find a place to sit down. Not the kitchen table, the chairs were too hard; not the bedroom, the bed was too soft. She wandered like Goldilocks through her own house, her eyes blinded by tears, to the sofa in the sitting room where, on any other day, she would have been reading her Alice Munro stories. She settled in a way that felt like collapsing.

Okay, what was it? What was wrong? She was sobbing, gasping, wheezing for air. Classic hysterics. And yet she was curiously detached. Part of her was watching herself cry, thinking,
Go ahead, get it out, get as crazy and as dramatic as you want now, better now than the second the girl walks in; we don’t want to send her running back down Quince Street with the news that you actually have lost your mind
. The rational part of Marguerite did the watching. The irrational part of her, the part fully engaged in the sobbing, was feeling all the things she had forbidden herself to feel for the past fourteen years, because she might have wailed like this each and every day. She had been thorough and adamant about stripping her life of all sensory reminders from her old life, like the smell of those herbs, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to dwell on what she had lost. It wasn’t only her taste buds that had been numbed; it was her heart, too. But now, just for a minute, with snot and tears dripping down her face, she felt.