The Summer House (27 page)

She pulled her sweater closer around her now, feeling the sudden damp chill that always came with island rain. BeBe was still out walking and Danny was gone again. She hoped he was with BeBe, and that the two of them had found some shelter from the rain. Clay came into the room.

“Is there any boarding up we should do?” he asked.

“Boarding up?”

BeBe appeared behind him, her orange hair plastered to her wet head, her short cotton dress sticking to her body. “I haven’t been here in almost over a decade. Leave it to me to visit the same time as a hurricane does.”

“A hurricane?”

“It was a gorgeous, damn sunny day,” BeBe muttered. “I should have known better.” She headed up the stairs to her room. Liz turned to Clay.

“A hurricane?” she asked again.

“Hurricane Carol. Haven’t you seen the news? She missed the Carolinas and is heading this way.”

No, Liz had not seen the news. She had not wanted to hear about polls and politics and the chance that in a few more months, she might be the woman looked up to by so many women in America and maybe the world. She had not watched the news because she did not want to know these things. Any more than she wanted to hear now that a hurricane was headed their way.

As quickly as he could manage, Danny had climbed into the van, started it up, and raced down the driveway, the tires spitting up clamshells as he pressed his palm down on the fucked-up accelerator.

As he sped down the road around one winding corner, then another, he wasn’t sure if that was rain on the windshield or tears in his eyes. He winced at the clichéd imagery, then blinked and decided it was both. If he could feel anything below the drawstring of his sweatpants, his proverbial belt, he wondered if right now he’d be feeling his intestines expand and contract, bail open then clamp shut, the way they used to when he had to speak in front of an audience, back when he had a real life and did those kinds of things. He sank his upper teeth
into his lower lip, unable to hold back the rush of his thoughts.

Josh Miller was his father
.

Michael Barton was not his father.

And Mags was not his sister.

And Greg was not his brother.

And his mother was a liar.

And Josh Miller was his father.

He took a corner too fast. He grabbed for the hand brake too late. Rubber hydroplaned across wet pavement. The trees on the side—big, thick—trunked trees whose leaves arched across the road—rushed up to meet the metal of the van. Then the brakes anti-locked and the van slid sideways. Danny held his breath and waited for the crash. It did not come. The van came to a stop within inches of a tree.

“Fuck,” he shouted, staring at the brown, peeling trunk of the withered-up oak. Death would have been easier. Death would have been less painful to face.

He punched up “Reverse,” jammed down on the accelerator, and jilted back onto the road. The rain was coming down harder now, sheeting up on the hood, smacking the windshield wipers. He whacked the shift into “Drive” and sped down the road, his adrenaline pumping, his anger blazing. All he could picture was the fat-assed TV commentator on the news:
Mr. Miller … Martha’s Vineyard … It has been reported that is where Mrs. Barton is
 … and then that smile. That godawful smile.

Did everyone in the whole fucking world know except him?

Did everyone in the whole fucking world know and keep it from him? Why? Before his accident had they ever planned to tell him? And now, no one wanted him to know … no one wanted to upset the poor crippled kid?

He frowned. “But what about the fucking election?” he screamed at the windshield, then banged his fist against the steering wheel. “How can any of them get away with this?”

He spotted the road to Lobsterville Beach. Without thinking, he ripped the wheel toward the road, the van’s rear end fishtailing behind him. If he was on real land he would keep driving forever … to California, if possible, or even Alaska … as far as the van would take him, as far as he could get.

But he was stuck on the island. And all he could do was look at the sea … maybe there he would find an answer … or maybe he could pretend to get lost the way he had done so many times when he was a kid trying to escape from the watchful eye of Gramps and the constant feeling of responsibility pushed upon him just because he was named after Daniel and because … why? Because he was Ken and Barbie’s son?

He wheeled around the corner and came to the dunes. The small, tired sand mounds that now stood in solitude were getting pelted in a steady staccato symphony, abandoned by all bathers who had the sense, unlike Danny, to go in out of the rain. Then again, he reasoned, they probably had homes to go to. Homes and families, families who really were families, not half-bred, lied-about people they thought they belonged to because they’d always been stupid enough to believe people, to trust people, for godsake, people like his mother and his … shit. Not his father. Michael Barton was not his father.

He came to a halt at the top of a dune overlooking the water, facing Cuttyhunk and Penikese Islands—Penikese, that wretched, untalked-about place where the lepers were once kept, lepers, society’s dysfunctional, much like himself, those whom others did not want to face, did not want to see, did not want to look at lest they be reminded that there is pain and deformity and fucked-up shit in the
world. And then, a disjointed thought rushed at him in an instant: Danny wondered if his father … if
Michael
knew.

His gut went empty. He did not, of course, feel it, but rather he sensed it, the way most men (or women, he supposed) sense there is a facial hair sticking out where it doesn’t belong, or that a fly is unzipped when there is no breeze blowing. For at least two of these past three wheelchair-bound years, Danny’s senses had been acute enough to know when he’d peed in his bag.

“Fuck,” he said again, more quietly this time for he felt not so much angry now as ashamed. He looked down at the bulge in his pants that he knew wasn’t caused from an erection—would never be from an erection—but from the clear plastic bag that was undoubtedly filled with warm yellow liquid, warm yellow pee.

He told himself it could have been worse, that it could have been brown, that it could have been shit.

Tears once again stung his eyes. He wiped them away and tried to take a deep breath, tried to figure out what to do next. Straight ahead was a bluff, a wall of sheer rock that dropped twenty, maybe thirty feet into the water. He wondered what it would feel like to go over the ledge, not in the van but on his own, in the wheelchair, in his own death trap. Would centrifugal force keep him tightly plastered to the chair, like that amusement park ride where people stood around the perimeter of a wheel and spun up and down and around and around without falling off? Would those same forces of nature make them—man and machine—tumble over and over, down to their fate? Or would Danny be flung from the chair, then crashed against the rocks and careened into the sea—never having felt the plunge or the slams into his body, the mass of broken bones from his waist down to his toes?

Who would find him?

How long would it take?

And would his rescuers already know that Josh Miller was his father?

Everyone on the island probably knew. The Vineyard had a way of protecting its own, even the summer people who had been there since God.

But if he killed himself, would no one be elected president? Would both Michael and Josh have to withdraw from the race in humiliation? Would someone like Pat Buchanan or Donald Trump or that wrestler guy from Minnesota step in and claim victory?

He stared off at the horizon, that never-ending horizontal line separating this world from the next, reality from the unknown. Then Danny realized that the responsibility of having a Buchanan or a Trump or a wrestler in the White House was not going to be his, no way.

Silently, he opened the van door, loosened his pants, and juggled the catheter that, indeed, was quite full. He dumped the liquid out the door, watching as it splashed yellow tears up from the pavement, the waste of a man with a waste of a life, reduced to performing such a menial, physical task that had become essential to perform if he wanted to live in this great thing called society.

He put himself back together—physically, anyway—and looked out across the sea, searching for answers where he knew there were none.

And then he saw the
Annabella
. Docked at the pier across the inlet was LeeAnn and Reggie’s catamaran. LeeAnn and Reggie—his Vineyard friends! They must not have had a charter to Cuttyhunk today. Maybe it was because of the forecasted rain, which already was happening, or maybe they didn’t have a party willing to pay a high enough price.

Well, Danny didn’t give about the damn rain and, as he’d learned from Gramps, what good was having money if it couldn’t buy you friends?

He backed up the van and drove down toward the bike ferry, where he could get safe passage across the inlet. Keeping his eyes on the
Annabella
, Danny smiled. Maybe there were at least two honest people left in the world, after all, a friend who had once been his good buddy, and the friend’s sister who had once been a great … well, he thought with a shrug, she had been, back then.

Getting across on the bike ferry had been simple. He’d left the van and wheeled down to the small raftlike boat, removed the ropes, and started the engine with the key that someone—the owner, apparently—had left behind. Danny had never been sure exactly who owned this Mark Twain–like ferry, but as far back as he could remember it had been used on an honor system by whoever wanted to get from one bank of the Menemsha inlet to the other, pedestrians and bicyclists alike. But because it was free, and because it was used on a first-come, first-served basis, when the ferry sat on the opposite bank, hugging the charcoal rock-jetty that carved out the bay, that’s when the hopeful travelers were SOL—shit out of luck, tough darts, better luck next time or next year or whenever you’d be coming back to the Vineyard again.

Danny was grateful he was not SOL today, especially because of the rain.

As simple as getting across on the bike ferry was, the rest posed a huge problem, that never-going-to-go-away problem that added to his pain right now and just simply pissed him off: where the ferry was easy to glide onto, the
Annabella
had a four-step step stool that Danny could not have traversed if his life depended on it, which, right now, it felt like it did.

“Fuck,” he said, running his fingers over his rain-soaked
scalp. With his hand still feeling the shaved stubble on his head, Danny had a sudden thought:
dark hair
. Unlike Mags, unlike Greg, Danny’s hair was thick and dark, had always been thick and dark.
Thick and dark like Josh Miller’s hair
.

He yanked his hand from his head and screamed into the water-drenched air. Why had his life become so fucked up and why was this all happening to him?

“Danny? Is that you?”

He lifted his eyes toward where the voice had come from. From the hole in the galley of the catamaran a head popped up. A head with dirty blond hair that hung straight and lifeless but framed a face that showed nothing but life. Life, a deep, sunny tan, and bright, sky blue eyes. “LeeAnn,” Danny said. “Yeah, it’s me.”

LeeAnn pulled herself up from the hold. Gray sweats fell over her slim, well-toned body, the product of days on the water hoisting the mainsail and hauling the rigging, or whatever it was called by those real sailors who spent more than a few days each summer adrift on the water. “Jesus, what are you doing here?” she asked. “And have you noticed it’s raining?”

The sound and sight of a friend was almost too much to bear. He bit his lip again and hoped he was not going to cry. “That’s a fine greeting. I haven’t seen you in almost three years and that’s all I get? Besides, I’m the son of the next president,” he added, pushing down the reality that those words would be the truth no matter who won, no matter who lost. “And yes, I noticed it’s raining.” He swiped his hand over his wet head again. “Where’s Reggie?”

She slung her legs over the side of the boat and sat on the edge. “I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to be such a dick. I guess all this notoriety was bound to change you.”

Danny lowered his eyes, then raised them again. “Fuck you,” he said, and was grateful she did not say “Been there, done that.” Instead, she smiled.

“Reggie’s over at the Texaco station listening to the shortwave. Rumor is there’s a hurricane headed our way.”

Great
, he thought.
Just great
.

“Would you like to sit out here all day in the rain or come inside?” LeeAnn asked.

Danny mimicked a laugh. “Do you happen to have a crane that can haul me up the steps?”

“Shit,” she said, not awkward, really, about Danny’s problem. Not awkward, like so many others. If anything, she seemed a little embarrassed that she’d forgotten, which was, of course, the best Danny hoped for from people.
Just forget it
, he’d often wanted to say.
Just forget it, the way I would like to
. “Reggie should be back in a minute,” LeeAnn continued. “He can help …”

“I can wait,” he said with a shrug. “No charters today?”

She smiled. “Nope. We were about to stock up with food when the rains came. Not many tourists want to trek to Cuttyhunk in this weather.”

“I do,” Danny said, not knowing until this moment that he did, not knowing until now that getting off this damn island and away from having to face his mother and away from having to think about what had happened and all that it meant and would mean …

“Yes,” he repeated, “I want to charter the
Annabella
. Is my credit any good?” He noticed that the rain was beginning to soak through his jeans now. He wondered if his legs were already wet. He wondered if he’d “catch his death of pneumonia,” as his nurse in Switzerland had always warned of when Danny insisted on sitting on the balcony overlooking Lake Lucerne even on the dampest,
wettest days. His nurse, Anna, so much prettier than Clay. And so … well, like LeeAnn …