Summer People (4 page)

“Well, we're all a little not right,” his father said, in a way that made it easy to imagine his sad smile. “How else are things up there?”

Nathan exhaled. “Wonderful. How are things there?”

“I'm doing all right,” his father said, grunting as he reached for something. Nathan knew he wasn't doing all right, though, and he listened to the older man shaking a cigarette from a pack of Camel Lights. Nathan might have tried to say something to him again about smoking, but the last time he'd tried, his father had muttered bitterly, “Give me a break here, okay?” So Nathan answered questions about his drive up from Cleveland on Friday, and the weather, but afterward there did not seem much to say. He was tired of talking with his father, frustrated by the weariness in the man's voice, which always reminded Nathan of his dead mother. When he hung up, he stared out at the glimmering bay, fighting his urge to hurl the phone against the far wall.

A Letter to Sophie ~ Visiting the Alnombak Club ~ Kendra Garfield Requests the Pleasure of Nathan's Company ~ In a Black Bikini Leah Speaks of Love

T
he next morning, Ellen sat in the living room, watching television, while Nathan washed the breakfast dishes then went upstairs to search for something to occupy his time. He masturbated to a seminude photo of Geena Davis he found in an old
Rolling Stone
on his closet shelf. Then he wrote a letter to his ex-girlfriend.

Later that afternoon, Ellen asked to be taken to watch tennis, and on the way to the club, Nathan brooded over the letter. Had it been too much to make the girl an NYU film student when Sophie, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art now working full-time at Dugan Florist, spoke longingly of film school? And what about the arrangement of those last two paragraphs? The soul-sickening fiction of it notwithstanding, was it better to remind Sophie he might want to marry her before attempting to pique her jealousy? Or was it better to pique her jealousy and then remind her that there might still be time for her to win him back? Pondering these questions exhausted him, and pulling beside the blue mailbox across from Gilman's, he fed the letter into its mouth.

 

T
he Alnombak club was so close to most members' homes that they did not need to drive there, and there was no parking lot anyway. Nathan parked Ellen's car on the quiet, shady street off Birch Hill Boulevard, and
stared out at the kind of club where he could envision a plucky, aristocratic Katharine Hepburn character striding across the green lawn. An immaculately manicured, waist-high hedgerow separated the road from the grounds, and on the far side men and women in white were playing tennis on four flawless clay courts. High wooden fences kept balls from bouncing off of the clay, and on the near side, viewers sat on wooden benches or chairs, in the shade of a modest green-and-white-striped canopy. Everyone seemed to be talking and laughing in the easy, confident way Nathan associated with having bankfuls of money.

When he escorted Ellen to a chair, a gaggle of older women in white visors greeted her warmly, until, finding her as politely uncommunicative as she'd been at church, they gradually turned to watch the tennis matches and resume their earlier conversations. A few of them had introduced themselves to Nathan, but none of them asked him any questions about himself. He stared out beyond the tennis courts where the golf course stretched out in verdant, rolling hills to a horizon broken only by St. Michael's church. Sitting there was reminiscent of junior high dances when his date wouldn't talk to him and he couldn't see anyone else around he knew.

“Would you like something to drink?” Nathan asked Ellen.

“How about a half-and-half?” Ellen said, smiling up at him from beneath her visor.

“What's that?”

“Half tea, half lemonade.”

Nathan frowned contemplatively, but nodded, and stood up from his chair.

Something about the rugged gentility of the clubhouse, with its roomy wraparound porch and wicker chairs, gave Nathan the feeling that the place had enjoyed a past life in colonial Africa. Inside, after he ordered at the counter, the mousy woman said, “Name?”

“My name? Oh, Broderick,” Nathan said. He pushed his wallet back into his pocket and grabbed the two drinks.

Turning toward the door, he noticed affixed to the wall, between the
ancient wooden tennis rackets and golf clubs, a collage of old photographs representing the club's nearly 100-year history. Time marched backward from color to black-and-white and finally to a sepia photo of the “First Alnombak Club Golf Tournament,” dated 1899. The shot had been taken from almost the exact location where Nathan had parked the car. Dressed in suits and corseted dresses, everyone in the photo was blurry, as if shivering, and Nathan's eyes settled on a young couple standing in front of the clubhouse porch. The woman wore a pale and lacy long-sleeved dress, and held a parasol, while the young man beside her wore a closely fitting suit that accentuated his gangly frame. His arm hooked around her waist, but he stood a few feet away, as if this was the first time he was reaching for her. For an instant Nathan wondered where they were now, but they were all dead, of course—even the little girl dashing around the corner of the clubhouse so quickly in her fluttering dress that she appeared little more than a haze of light.

On his way down the front steps, Nathan tried to see the people gathered outside as figures in a photograph that would be seen a hundred years in the future. But the melancholy detachment he'd cultivated was blown away by the sea-smelling air, the blue sky, and the cheerful vitality of the people surrounding him. One of these cheerfully vital people—a thirtysomething woman Nathan found rather attractive—had taken a seat in his chair. Nathan handed Ellen her drink, and after learning that the woman was Ellen's niece, Kendra Garfield, he pulled over another chair to sit beside them.

“So, you're Ben's son, right?” Kendra asked, leaning forward so that Nathan could see the constellation of freckles stretching beneath her brown, attentive eyes. When she talked she focused on one of Nathan's pupils, then the other, so that although her voice sounded calm, if a little abrupt, Nathan sensed it belied an inner tension. He was also surprised by the question. His father had lots of wealthy clients, but the fact that his reputation had preceded him at this club left Nathan feeling an unfamiliar, muted pride.

Kendra said, “We were going to stop by and see him and Regina when
Lucien—my husband—and I were in Cleveland last month for a wedding, but you know how those things go, the whole weekend was over before it had even begun.”

“Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it,” Nathan said. He had no idea who Regina was, but he assumed she was someone at Varclow and Powell, his father's firm. The last time he had visited his father's workplace was in grade school when his father had been a financial manager at Parker Fasteners. Nathan remembered little about the visit except the photograph of himself and his mother on the desk and the otherwise depressing lifelessness of the bare, neon-lit room. His father's new office at Varclow and Powell at least had windows—he had mentioned this one evening at dinner soon after taking the job—but, perhaps guessing his son would not be interested, he had not invited him downtown for a tour.

“Do you go to college there, in Cleveland?” Kendra asked.

“No, now I work at the Cleveland Public Library.”

“Oh, they let you have the summer off?”

“Yeah, pretty much. It's like an unpaid sabbatical kind of thing,” Nathan said. Not because this was true, exactly, but because he was embarrassed to say he had dropped out of college and didn't have a real job and because taking a “sabbatical” was how he had pitched it to his supervisor. Nathan had explained that he'd be gone for two months, and that he would return to his part-time job at the end of the summer, but his supervisor had only frowned at him. She would, of course, accept Nathan's application when he returned. But she could make him no guarantees.

When Nathan asked Kendra about herself, her face brightened. Wrinkles appeared in the corners of her eyes when she smiled, but her button nose, which resembled Ellen's, made her appear spry and youthful despite the primness of her lips. She said she'd been born in Cleveland but after college had moved to Boston, where she was now married, with a child, pursuing her graduate degree in architecture. What she wanted to do with her degree was restore old homes in the Boston area, making them as beautiful as they once had been. Nathan sensed within her a lust for
order and immaculate furnishings that made him want to have rough, messy sex with her.

Despite her flirtatiousness—the occasional touching of his arm, the disbelieving look she gave him when he mentioned he didn't currently have a girlfriend—Nathan knew it was in his interests not to brood over his attraction to her. She was wealthy, married, and a mother—i.e., unlikely to be interested in him. Yet, as she stood up to leave, she asked Nathan if he had any free time.

“Yeah, I think so. I'm usually free in the afternoons, when Ellen takes a nap, or sometimes in the evenings when she's gone to bed.”

Kendra pulled a pair of Jackie O. sunglasses from out of her ponytailed strawberry blond hair, so that Nathan could no longer see her eyes. “Well, I'm inviting some people to take the yacht out tomorrow afternoon, if you'd like to come.” Kendra bent down to kiss Ellen's cheek. “You're welcome to come along too, Aunt Ellen, but I know how much you like sailing.”

“Is that all right, Ellen?” Nathan asked.

Ellen affected a pout and said, “No.” But then she laughed and glanced at both of them.

Nathan flashed a charitable smile and asked Kendra how long she thought they'd be gone.

“Oh, not too long. Maybe a couple hours.”

Nathan knew that Ellen's naps only lasted about an hour and a half, but he could not help seeing himself as a young JFK, sailing the blue waters of New England, surrounded by elegant women. Kendra said they were meeting tomorrow at one o'clock at the yacht club, near Gilman's, and Nathan told her he'd be there.

 

O
n the way to the yacht club the following afternoon, Nathan felt more welcomed and respected by the people he smiled at along the road. It was true that members of the Alnombak club hadn't been particularly friendly toward him yesterday, but after all, they didn't know him, and maybe once they did get to know him, their attitude would change. Kendra had gotten to know him, and now she was inviting him on her
boat, wasn't she? That meant she saw him not just as hired help, but as the type of person you'd want sailing with you, and he wondered what he would do if her husband wasn't there and she continued flirting with him that afternoon. He imagined scenes in which Kendra asked him to free her of her clothing and inhibitions in some darkened hold of the yacht.

A quarter-mile past Gilman's, Birch Hill Boulevard bent sharply south, and beside a gravel driveway a posted sign read:

 

B
RIGHTONFIELD
C
OVE
Y
ACHT
C
LUB
NO TRESPASSING
Members and Guests Only

 

Nathan walked down the driveway until he reached a small parking lot where he saw, with some disappointment, that except for a single Alfa Romeo Spider, the cars were no more expensive or exotic than those parked on his father's street back home. Directly ahead, an embankment sloped down to the inlet where three narrow boarding docks held dinghies roped to each side. The dinghies, Nathan realized, were used to ferry club members to and from their yachts, which were anchored behind him in the deeper waters of Albans Bay. Yet no one was on the docks. It was still shy of one o'clock, but he could not help wondering if perhaps Kendra and her friends had left without him. On the far west side of the parking lot, a two-story, white stucco clubhouse sat beside the channel or “gut” connecting the cove to the bay, and as Nathan walked over, he noticed a small cluster of people, including Eldwin Lowell, the pastor, standing on the pavement near the water's edge. He was an even heftier man than he appeared in his black robe, and was wearing dark sunglasses, his arms folded across his black polo shirt. His blond son was crouched beside him, picking at something in the lawn.

Seeing them made Nathan think of Leah and compounded the uneasiness he was already feeling. It had been nearly two whole days since he had seen her. Last night, after waiting for Ellen to go to sleep, he had
walked over to see if Leah might be interested in taking a walk. Eldwin's wife, Rachel, had answered the door. She was a pallid, angular woman whose loose-fitting shirt and sweatpants hung from her like clothes on a rack. Frowning in the porch light, she'd told him that Leah had taken the kids to Brightonfield to see a movie.

“Oh, do you know what time you expect them back?”

“Not too long from now,” Rachel had said, struggling to push back a panting black Labrador behind her. “Do you want me to tell her you stopped by?”

Nathan had said yes, but Leah hadn't come over to the house that evening, and the memory increased his self-consciousness as he stood in the sun-blasted parking lot, his hand shielding his eyes from the glare. He turned in place, surveying the grounds for signs of Kendra, and wishing that someone would approach him to tell him where to go. Walking toward the clubhouse, he hoped she would be inside, and if not, perhaps he could use the restroom to sit and think about what he should do. He was halfway up the porch steps, glancing through the glass doors, when Kendra appeared beneath him, rounding the corner of the building. Nathan called her name and she turned to squint through her sunglasses.