The Summer Cottage (18 page)

C
HAPTER
22

 

T
homas lay on his bed, fully awake, even though it was three thirty in the morning. He could not get to sleep, or perhaps he had been asleep and was now awake, but it seemed like he had been staring out the window since he got into bed at midnight. He counted the stars, thinking that doing so, like counting sheep, might lull him to sleep, nature’s nocturnal anesthesia. But instead, it frustrated him, and he was frustrated already. He stopped counting at forty-eight and got out of bed. He grabbed a T-shirt from the chair in the corner of his room and pulled it over his head. He retrieved his jeans from the floor and pulled them on over his boxer shorts. Cautiously, quietly, he stepped out into the hallway and headed for the stairs. Maybe he was hungry.

As he walked down the stairs, he heard a noise on the porch. Once on the landing, he heard more noises, barely audible moans. He peeked around the corner and found Charlotte and Steve Johanson making out on the couch. He pulled back, wondering if he could get past the opening to the porch, through the living room and dining room, and into the kitchen without their knowing. Very gently, Thomas stepped down off the landing and into full view of the moving mass of arms and legs on the couch. Nothing. He took another step. Nothing. Confident, he took three more steps.

“Dad?” Charlotte asked, sounding anxious.

Thomas waited a few moments, then took another step. He looked back over his shoulder to see if Charlotte was looking at him and met her gaze. “Hi,” he said.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding slightly annoyed. Steve, by this time, was standing next to her, tucking his shirt into his jeans and running his fingers through his hair.

“Hey,” he said casually to Thomas, as if they were meeting on the street. Thomas said nothing. While he disapproved of his sister’s slutty behavior, he disapproved even more of the boys who took advantage of it. “I’ve got to go,” Steve said to Charlotte.

“Yes,” she said, still looking at Thomas. Steve left the living room and walked out the porch door, holding it afterward so it wouldn’t slam. “So,” said Charlotte, “the question stands. What are you doing?”

“I couldn’t sleep, Charlotte. So I came down to get something to eat. I live here, too, so I don’t need any crap from you.”

“I wasn’t going to give you any crap,” Charlotte said, coolly. “I just didn’t know what the hell you were doing up at”—she looked at her watch—“three thirty.”

“I’d ask you the same question, but I already know what the hell you were doing.”

“I get enough lectures from Mom,” said Charlotte, combing her hair with her fingers. “I don’t need them from you.”

“Well, apparently you haven’t been listening.” Thomas turned his back on his sister and continued on through the dining room and into the kitchen. She followed him.

“You sleep like the dead, Thomas,” she said, closing the swinging door behind them. Thomas turned on the light over the sink and walked to the fridge. He opened the door and looked in, wondering if there were any leftover meatballs. His mother wasn’t big on what she considered ethnic food, but meatballs had enough of an American following that Claire made them once in a while. In the summer, they had them in grinder rolls, with potato chips and homemade coleslaw.

“Not tonight.” The meatballs were gone. He remembered that he and Helen had finished them off the other night when they came in from swimming.

“Is something bothering you?” asked Charlotte, fixing one of the buttons on her shirt that she had inserted into the wrong hole.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas, even though he most certainly did. He also knew that Charlotte was not the best choice of people to confide in. She had a penchant for telling her friends’ most intimate secrets at the Thompson dinner table, much to the consternation of their father and mother, who, as a rule, avoided unpleasant talk altogether during dinner. She also shared her friends’ foibles, Thomas suspected, in the hope that her parents would see that her behavior was not as bad as they thought. She preached that all seventeen-year-old girls got into one kind of trouble or another every now and again. Her parents were inured to her tactics, often asking Pammy to “pass the butter” when Charlotte was looking for an acceptance or at least an acknowledgement of her argument. John and Claire were not above employing their own tactics, especially when they knew that being ignored frustrated Charlotte even more than being grounded.

Thomas took the packages of bologna and American cheese from the cold cut drawer and tossed them onto the counter. He next grabbed the mustard and mayonnaise from the door shelf. “Get some bread, will you, Charlotte?’

She walked into the pantry and grabbed a sliced loaf from the bread box. She was staring to get hungry too. “You have no idea if something’s bothering you or not?” she asked, taking four slices from the plastic bag and then resealing it with a twist tie.

Thomas looked at his sister. She was a young woman like Anna. Maybe she could give him some useful advice. Maybe she would be able to tell him what Anna was thinking or what she wanted to hear. “I think I’m in love.” There. His secret found air.

“What?” Charlotte stopped spreading mayonnaise on her bread and looked at her brother.

“I’m in . . .” Thomas began.

“No, I heard you,” said Charlotte, knife hovering over the bread. Suddenly uncomfortable, Thomas looked down at his feet. Charlotte finished with the mayonnaise and then put mustard on the other slice. “Why,” she asked, reaching for the bologna, “does that keep you up at night?”

“Because I think about her all the time. She’s always there.” Thomas pointed to his head with his right index finger.

Charlotte ate half a cheese slice and offered the other half to Thomas. “That’s kind of sweet, Thomas. I think every girl wishes she’d find somebody who thinks about her all the time, and not because he wants to take off her shorts. Or maybe that’s it. Maybe you just want to get her undressed. Are you in love or lust?” Charlotte made her sandwich, cut it down the middle to form two triangles, and then raised one of the halves to her mouth.

“I think I’m in love.” Thomas ate the cheese slice and then three bites of his uncut sandwich. He talked while he chewed. “Hell, you’re in love all the time; how do you do it?”

“No,” said Charlotte, pouring two glasses of milk. “I don’t fall in love. I play love games.”

“Why?”

“Because you lose control when you fall in love. You do things you don’t want to do because you’re half out of your mind.”

Thomas drank half the glass of milk. “You got that right.”

They were silent while they finished their sandwiches. Wiping the breadcrumbs from her mouth with her fingers, Charlotte walked back into the pantry. She emerged seconds later with the ceramic cookie jar, half full of the oatmeal raisin cookies Claire made the day before. Charlotte took it to the other side of the kitchen, where a round wood table, painted blue, stood with its two matching chairs. Thomas refilled their milk glasses and joined his sister. “Who is this girl?” asked Charlotte, sitting and then taking a cookie from the jar and biting into it.

“Anna Santiago. The woman with the daughter.”

“You just met her, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve known her for three weeks.”

“Then you’re not in love, Thomas. You’re in lust.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” said Charlotte, taking another bite. “In the beginning of a relationship, I can’t get enough of the other person. And then it starts to get old. And before I know it, I’m looking around for something better.”

“I don’t think I’ll find anyone better.”

“Trust me, Thomas. You will.” Charlotte finished her cookie. She stood, walked over to the sink, and rinsed her hands and then dried them on the dishtowel that hung on the inside of the cupboard door beneath the sink. She turned to look back at her brother. “In the meantime, Thomas, have fun. Summer is not the time to get poetic over a girlfriend.”

“Umm,” Thomas muttered, trying to decipher Charlotte’s words to see if they had any merit. He was unsure about following her advice, or even the possibility of following it. His love for Anna seemed outside of Charlotte’s relationship parameters. He questioned whether he could bring it inside.

“Eat another cookie,” said Charlotte, “then go back to bed. She’s not worth losing sleep over.”

“I think she is.”

“She must be one in a million then,” said Charlotte. Thomas nodded his head. Charlotte leaned back against the sink. “As long as we’re confiding in one another, can I tell you something?”

“Yes.” Thomas looked at Charlotte, whose face crumbled. He left his seat and stood next to his sister, the sister who was closest to his age but with whom he rarely spoke; the sister who avoided hard work as passionately as he sought it; the sister who routinely disrespected their parents for sport; the sister who ignored their sisters, who ignored everyone who wasn’t advancing her perceived needs and desires. He hated everything about her. But the fact that she was his sister and that she was crying mattered to him. Charlotte made a point of keeping her emotions in check.

“I’m pregnant.”

The words hit Thomas like the slap of a hand to his face. He wanted to return the slap, to strike his sister for her irresponsible behavior. He inhaled. “Steve’s?”

Charlotte looked into his eyes. “No. Rick’s.”

Fuck, Thomas thought. Fuck him. Fuck her. He waited and then said, “Does he know?”

“No.”

“Does anyone know?”

“You do.”

“And we’re going to keep it that way. Do not tell a soul, Charlotte. Give me a couple days to figure this out. How far along are you?”

“I’ve missed one period,” said Charlotte, “so five or six weeks.”

“Give me a couple days.” Thomas repeated. “We’ll fix this.”

Charlotte turned to leave the kitchen. At the door, she turned. “Thank you.”

“You can thank me when it’s over.”

After Charlotte was gone, Thomas took two more cookies from the jar. He wasn’t hungry anymore, but he wasn’t yet ready to return to his dark bedroom, where he now had two reasons to watch the clock until sunrise.

 

Thomas wasn’t sure where to find a doctor who would perform an abortion on his sister. His father, of course, could have provided him with a name, even done the procedure himself, but this, for obvious reasons, was out of the question. Nor could Thomas seek his mother’s counsel. He did not want to go to a public place, so Planned Parenthood was out. And he did not want to talk with Anna about it, even though he was tempted to do so. Anna didn’t know Charlotte. And for reasons Thomas couldn’t name, he did not want this to be the first thing she knew about his sister. So, as he did with lesser issues or for philosophical discussion, Thomas turned to his best friend at the beach, Eddie Kozlowski. At first glance, Eddie was an unlikely friend for Thomas. He smoked cigarettes. He used the word “fucking” as an adjective in front of just about every other adjective or verb or noun in at least fifty percent of his verbal sentences. And he couldn’t swim, which Thomas thought was inexcusable for an eighteen-year-old beachside resident. However, Eddie was loyal and reliable, characteristics that Thomas sought in friendships. Eddie also happened to have an interest in young women who, like Charlotte, might take their pants off for a burger and a beer. And while Thomas disapproved of this behavior in his sister, he was somewhat more tolerant of it in Eddie.

“I need your help,” Thomas said to Eddie the next night as they walked the beach streets.

Eddie lit a cigarette. “Mr. Princeton in the fall needs my fucking help?”

“It’s about Charlotte.”

“Tell me she has a crush on me, and you will just have made my fucking day.”

Thomas hesitated a moment, wondering if Eddie was the right person to talk to. “She’s pregnant.”

Eddie stopped walking. “Not that asshole Steve Johanson.”

“Rick Jones. Another asshole.”

Eddie took a deep drag. “As well as a prison inmate. What a fucking idiot.”

“Anyway,” said Thomas, “the fucking idiot got my sister pregnant.”

“And I take it,” said Eddie, “that she’s not interested in keeping Rick’s progeny.”

“No.”

Eddie gave him the name of the doctor who took care of this issue, Eddie’s issue with Darlene, last year’s girlfriend. The doctor operated a clean abortion clinic just over the state line into Massachusetts, and he accepted cash as payment. It would cost Charlotte two hundred dollars. She would have some pain, cramping Darlene had called it, and bleeding afterward. But the mistake would be corrected; the problem would be solved.

The next day, Thomas called the clinic and made an appointment for the following week, on a Tuesday. He took the day off from work and drove Charlotte to a small town outside Springfield. She didn’t say a word, the whole way up, which was unlike her. Charlotte always had something to say, appropriate or otherwise. She could be very witty and was way smarter than she let on, even though she did poorly in school and made abysmal life choices. They listened to the radio instead. He could tell she was scared; she didn’t have to admit it. He understood how she felt because he was scared, too. If something went wrong, the two of them would have to live with it. It would be an unpleasant bond between them. And they would have to tell their parents. And that conversation would yield additional unpleasantness in the form of consequences that neither Thomas nor Charlotte would be able to argue against or ignore.

On the way home, she cried quietly as Thomas drove. When he asked her if the procedure hurt, she wouldn’t say anything. When he asked her if she was in pain, she closed her eyes. When he asked her if he could do anything, she told him to shut up. “I don’t want to talk about this, Thomas, ever. Thank you for taking me. Now let’s just go home and never bring Rick’s name or this day up again.”