The Summer House (9 page)

BeBe scowled. “This is not wartime, Daniel. Vietnam is a stupid mess that’s killing everyone it touches.”

“You should be proud of your brother for serving his country,” Father said, then added, “Besides, not that many are dying anymore.”

Heat rushed into BeBe’s cheeks. “How many are too many, Father? What makes you think Daniel won’t be one of them? Because he’s Daniel? Because you won’t
allow it? Well, I’ve got news for you. Vietnam is wrong. And I, for one, will not be proud to have my brother serve in that hellhole.” She slammed her mug down, ignoring the splash of hot chocolate that splattered onto the table. She jumped up, stomped over to the back door, and turned when she reached it. “By the way, Daniel, where’s your fellow soldier?”

Her brother met her eyes. “Michael? He left on the last ferry. He thought the family should be alone until …”

“Until you leave,” BeBe finished. “And when will that be?”

He played with his mug a second, then said, “Tomorrow. I have to be at Fort Dix Monday morning.”

BeBe grabbed the car keys from the hook by the door and stormed out.

When Lizzie was six Father had taken the whole family to Washington. It was cherry blossom time, spring vacation from school, and the air in the capital was thick and sweet and cotton-candy pink against blue sky. In fact, Lizzie thought Washington looked like a coloring book, with perfect colors of pink and blue and green for the grass and white for the monuments and big hollow buildings. (She later learned they were called
hallowed
, not
hollow
, buildings, even though the rotundas and the hallways did seem too big and too empty.)

Liz sat on the bed where she had sat not that long ago, watching the clock, wishing for time to pass quickly so everyone would go to bed and she could sneak out and meet Josh. Now, she only wanted the ticking to slow down long enough for her feelings to catch up with her brain, for her to grasp what Daniel’s leaving really meant—for him, for her, for their family, and for this country where, in one of those hallowed buildings, someone had decided to send Daniel off to war.

BeBe did not believe in Vietnam.

Father said Daniel must go, that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Daniel said a war hero makes the best presidential candidate.

Mother had nodded and Roger had said nothing and Liz had finished her hot chocolate in silence, feeling scared as a little girl and not at all like the daring woman who had just met a perfect stranger in the darkness of night.

Instead, she was feeling more the way Madelyn Reynolds—a girl from school—must have felt when her brother, Ronald, was sent to Vietnam and six days later was killed in a minefield. He came home in a body bag minus a few parts.

For weeks, Madelyn could be seen darting into the girls’ room, gripping the porcelain sink, sobbing into the metal-framed mirror until her legs buckled beneath her and she sat down on the floor. No one had known what to say or do, Liz included.

She picked at the white knots on the bedspread now and wondered if she might end up the one on the cold, tile floor, and Daniel in the big, zippered bag.

BeBe drove to Menemsha, the quiet little fishing village that was so small it was hardly a village at all. She turned off her headlights so as not to awaken the neighbors, then drove down the narrow, cottage-clustered road until she reached Tuna’s. Tuna was the island boy nicknamed for his prowess with yellowfin, the boy she’d known for many years, the one she’d depended on for a good screw every summer since she was fourteen and he, twenty-one.

This would be the first time she’d seen him this summer. She pulled onto the small lawn and parked next to Tuna’s “rusted but ready,” as he called it, pickup truck. Just being here made BeBe feel better already. She got out
of the car and made her way up the flagstone walk that she’d walked up countless times, eager to see him, for he would distract her and nothing else would matter, not even the war.

She knocked on the peeling blue-painted door. A moment later a lamp was lit inside, then the door opened. But it was not Tuna who stood there; it was a young woman with long black hair, a quite pregnant belly, and a very traditional wedding band on the third finger of her left hand.

“Ah,” BeBe, who was not used to stammering, now stammered. “I have a little car trouble. I know it’s late, but I wondered if I might use your telephone.” Peering into the room, BeBe saw the familiar homemade coffee table and the overstuffed, slightly torn plaid sofa.

“Sorry,” the young woman replied with a sleep-weary smile. “We don’t have one.”

No, BeBe thought, of course they did not have one. This was only the seventies, after all, and the pay phone at the Texaco station on the pier worked just fine.

“I could wake up my husband,” the mother-to-be continued. “Maybe he could help with your car. Is that a good idea?”

“No thanks,” BeBe said. Definitely not a good idea. Then she apologized for disturbing her and pretended to walk toward the station, a bit sorry she would never see Tuna’s penis again, for it was a good one and knew what to do.

Down at the harbor, BeBe sat on a rock and pulled up her knees, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her face there.
Dammit
, she thought.
Dammit, dammit
.

She let herself cry quietly, a weep more than a real full-blown cry, with babylike tears instead of real adult sobs. Barbara Beth Adams, after all, had nothing to cry about,
did she? She was one of four children born with that great silver Adams spoon shoved into their mouths, and all the accoutrements, like a Mount Holyoke education and a summer house on the Vineyard.

No, BeBe had nothing to cry about. She was not one of the frail, almond-eyed women she’d seen on the TV news, the ones who had babies in rice paddies and spent every waking and probably sleeping moment in fear of the lives of their parents and husbands and children and selves. She was not one of the women Daniel was being sent to defend.

She had nothing to cry about, yet she could not seem to stop, as if fingers were tightly squeezing at the insides of her heart. She wondered why men like Daniel had to die for their country and women like her didn’t have a chance even with a man like Tuna and a house with no phone.

What made her think she deserved even that? She was not smart like Daniel, not lovely like Liz, nor even content like Roger. She was simply the mediocre, trouble-making third child of Will Adams, with a special talent for finding trouble and for fucking almost any boy who asked, and some who did not.

She’d even fucked a girl once, no, twice, back at college, if fuck was the proper word for two girls together, sucking each other’s dark, hard nipples and little pink places, pretending to do it in order to know how they tasted to boys, yet curiously savoring the warm rush of orgasms they each had created.

The girl’s name was Nadine and she was a lot richer than BeBe, but her family was from the Midwest so they didn’t count. Her father had invented some kind of equipment that increased the milk production of dairy cattle. BeBe wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe the fact that Nadine had been raised on a farm had something to do with the girl’s overactive imagination,
which seemed fixated on sex more often than even BeBe’s.

They met in the riding stables one afternoon about two weeks into their freshman year: they rode together through the yellow-red-orange trees and across the leaves that crunched beneath hooves. They became fast friends; even faster after they had fucked, that first time behind the stables, the second in Nadine’s dormitory room. A few days later, Nadine’s room was empty.

“Her father dropped dead,” another girl explained. “She’s gone home to Iowa.”

BeBe felt sad for a few hours or maybe more, but she suspected it was probably all for the best, because she didn’t really want to turn into a lesbo and with Nadine’s sexy appetite and no boys around she supposed it was possible.

Beyond that, BeBe Adams knew she was not much good to the world or anyone in it. Certainly not good enough for even a tuna fisherman to want for a wife, nor good enough to stop a brother from going to war.

She was thinking these things between her tears, as she heard the approach of sneaker-soft-footsteps.

Chapter 8

“It’s cold out, Beebs.”

It was Daniel’s voice. She did not look up. “What are you doing here?”

“Stupid question.”

He sat down on the pier next to the rock where she sat. She still did not look up. “I took the car,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“You walked?”

“God, you’re a genius.”

“It must be three miles.”

“Two, I think. I took the bike ferry.”

Ah
, BeBe thought,
the bike ferry
—the wobbly, barely-get-you-there raft that shortcutted the basin across to Menemsha and was especially essential when one had a mission. “You’re an asshole,” she said.

“So are you.”

She stayed in her position, head down, cheeks now, she knew, streaked by her tears. She did not want Daniel to see that. She did not want him to think she’d been crying about him, or worse, about her.

“If you’re planning to stay on this rock for a couple of days, we might need to borrow the car,” Daniel said.

She listened to the water lap against the rock. “How’d you know where to find me?”

He cleared his throat. “Tuna,” he said. “I figured you’d come and find Tuna.”

They had never talked about BeBe’s “friends.” But BeBe had always known that Daniel knew, the way Daniel seemed to know everything. “He’s married,” she said.

“Yeah. I found out.”

“Oh, God.” BeBe looked up without thinking. “You went there too?”

“Don’t tell me you were serious about him.” And though Daniel could have laughed, he did not.

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Just humiliated, I guess. That even a tuna fisherman wouldn’t want me.”

“Beebs …” Daniel slid from the pier onto the rock and slipped his arm around her. “You didn’t give a shit about him. And it has nothing to do with the fact he’s a fisherman.”

Her jaw tightened; she turned her head. “I take whatever happiness I can grab, Daniel. I’m not like everyone else in the family. I have no special talents.”

“Yes you do, Beebs. You are a great and wonderful independent woman. Even the clothes you wear show the free spirit of your soul. If you let it, that spirit will take you far.”

She closed her eyes and cried again, this time for real, this time for grown-up real. She cried into his broad West Point shoulder and wondered what the hell she was going to do if anything happened to Daniel. “You son of a bitch,” she said, half weeping, half shouting. “You have no right to go to Vietnam.” She smacked his thigh with a closed fist. He did not wince.

“It’s my duty.”

She pulled herself from him. “Fuck your duty.”

“I’m trained for it, Beebs.”

“Big deal. I can’t believe Father couldn’t stop it.”

“Vietnam is bigger than Washington.”

“I don’t care about Washington. I care about you. It’s going to change you, Daniel. If you come back at all, you’ll be different.”

“I’ll be older. That’s all.”

“I watch the news. So do you.” She looked down at her feet, then at the water that lapped the rock. She kicked at it, splashing it up onto her legs, up onto Daniel’s. What she really wanted to do was dive onto the rocks and into the water and never come up.

“Maybe I’ll be a hero,” he continued. “Don’t you want a brother who’s a hero?”

She shook her head. “I want a live brother. Not a dead hero.”

This time he did not respond, but his arm held her more tightly, as if maybe, just maybe, he was a little bit worried about that godforsaken hot jungle, too.

Tears stung the corners of Evelyn’s eyes. She sat in the rocking chair of Grandfather’s dimly lit, stale bedroom and tapped her feet to the erratic beat of his labored breath. With each tap, her anguish rose another notch.

Daniel Adams was off to war and she had to hear it from the postmaster who was also a neighbor and who had run into Michael Barton at the ferry; Michael, when questioned, had not denied that Daniel’s orders had arrived.

Which, of course, Evelyn had prayed would happen because one did not get to be president by being a pansy, or at least that was what Grandfather always said. Still, Daniel should have told her himself that the orders had finally arrived. Then she wouldn’t have had to call the
Adamses’ house at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning and wake up the whole family.

However, she was not welcome to see him. “Family time,” he explained, “you understand.” Well, she didn’t, not really, but he said he’d write when he had a chance. And he would, she knew he would.

In the future, after all, they would be together.

From across the room came the mournful sounds: hish, swish; hish, swish.

She looked at the old man who lay under the sheets, and ached with the fear that he would die before she and Daniel were married and that Daniel wouldn’t want to marry her once her grandfather and his connections were gone. She’d be all alone then.