28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (16 page)

Mallory throws back what’s left of her wine and goes to the fridge for another bottle. She’s glad she’s not the one who’s getting married this weekend.

The talk turns to Fiella, which feels inevitable. Fiella Roget learned the “art of storytelling,” as she puts it, at her grandmother’s feet. Fiella grew up in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, with one new cotton dress and one new pair of sandals per year. She had a rag doll named Camille that she dragged everywhere and a picture Bible. Her favorite story was Daniel in the lions’ den.

“If you think about it,” she says, “
Shimmy Shimmy
is just a postmodern retelling of that story from the perspective of a young woman of color.”

Leland’s eyelids flutter closed—clearly she has heard this a few thousand times—and although Mallory could listen to Fifi all night, she knows she should gracefully end the evening.

“I’ll clear the dishes,” she says. “You’ve had a long day. Sleep as late as you want tomorrow. I go running early, but I’ll set out things for breakfast.”

“Leland will go to bed,” Fifi says. “But I’m a natural night owl. I’ll help you clean up. One more glass of wine and I’ll spill the salty stories—losing my virginity to Mr. Bobo the loan shark, then stealing money from his wallet in the night. He was a heavy sleeper and I never got caught, though I shudder to think what would have happened if—”

Leland clears her throat. “Fifi, stop.”

“I can handle the dishes,” Mallory says. “But thank you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mallorita,” Fifi says, picking up the breadbasket. “Let me help you.”

“Mallorita” seems to be her new nickname, which is fine, though Mallory is sensing some pretty heavy static coming from Leland. Mallory and Fifi start washing the dishes and wrapping up the leftovers. It’s nearly eleven, and Mallory wonders if the rehearsal dinner in South Bend is over. Are Jake and Ursula spending the night separately? Do people who have been together for so long follow the usual traditions? Mallory guesses yes. Ursula will stay at her mother’s house and Jake and Cooper will stay with Jake’s parents. The wedding is at five o’clock the next evening. Mallory isn’t sure how she’s going to feel tomorrow at six o’clock, when Jake is officially married. Will all of her love, longing, guilt, joy, misery, and confusion condense inside her? Will her heart become a black hole? Or maybe she’ll feel exactly the way she does now—numb. Jake isn’t hers; he has never been hers. Their time together is something she borrows. Or, okay, steals.

The bedroom door slams, startling Mallory so badly that she cuts her finger on the serrated bread knife. A line of blood rises. It’s not bad, but still—what the hell? Mallory spins around, sucking her finger. Fifi is standing at the head of the harvest table, the last of the dirty silverware clutched in her hand like a postmodern bouquet of flowers.

“Please excuse her,” Fifi says. “She’s throwing a tantrum.”

Mallory doesn’t need to ask why; she knows why: Leland is jealous. Fifi paid too much attention to Mallory, and Mallory was unsuccessful in reflecting that light back onto Leland. Mallory wonders if this happens often, maybe even every time they’re out with someone else.

“I cut myself,” Mallory says.

“Let me see.”

“No, it’s fine. I just need a Band-Aid.”

“She’s insecure,” Fifi says. “I have to admit, I’m starting to find it tiresome.” The statement is an invitation for Mallory to join Fifi in some Leland-bashing. There’s no denying it’s tempting. Leland has real flaws—but then, so does everyone. And Leland must be traumatized about her parents’ split and her father’s relationship with Sloane Dooley, of all people. Can anyone blame Leland if she feels sensitive, even suspicious?

“I’m going to bed,” Mallory says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Mallorita.”

The nickname instantly becomes cloying. Fiella Roget hasn’t known Mallory long enough to bestow a nickname on her. But this is how she draws people in, how she wins them over, makes them feel special.

“My finger,” Mallory says. “I’ll see you in the morning. Stay up as late as you want, but please don’t go walking on the beach.”

“Is it not safe?” Fifi asks.

“It’s safe, but…”

“You’ll worry?” Fifi says. “That’s sweet.” Before Mallory knows what’s happening, Fifi takes Mallory’s wounded finger into her mouth and sucks on it gently. Maybe it’s the effect of the wine, but Mallory has the sensation of stepping out of her body and watching this interaction from a few feet away. She sees herself with her finger in Fiella Roget’s mouth. Her first thought is
How bizarre, how bizarre,
which makes her want to laugh because, guess what, kids, this really
is
bizarre. Mallory’s finger instantly feels better, held tight by Fifi’s lips and tongue.

The bedroom door opens and Fifi quickly but gently removes Mallory’s finger from her mouth and pretends to study the cut.

“What’s going on out here?” Leland asks.

“Nothing,
mon chou,
” Fifi says. (The whole history of the world, Fiella has come to realize, is a matter of timing. Five more minutes and she might have been able to kiss adorable, straight-as-a-pin Mallorita. There’s no denying that, for Fiella, there is still a deep thrill to be found in such conquests.) “I’m coming to bed.”

The next morning, when Mallory gets home from her run, she hears Leland and Fifi screaming at each other. They’re in the kitchen; Mallory can see them through the screen of the back door. Leland is wearing white silk pajama shorts and a matching camisole. Fifi is naked. She’s standing in a shaft of sunlight that makes her skin look like molten gold. Fifi’s breasts are firm and upturned; her stomach is a smooth, flat plane with a dark oval divot for a navel. Fifi’s lower half is blocked from view by the counter.

“You’re trying to seduce her!” Leland says. “Not because you’re
attracted
to her, not because you find her
interesting
…you’re doing it to make me
angry!
”

Mallory’s eyebrows shoot up. Wow.

“She’s your friend,” Fifi says. “I want to know her.”

“Oh, right,” Leland says. “Like you wanted to know Pilar.”

“Pilar was a mistake,” Fifi says. “Anyway, Mallory is straight.”

“
I
was straight until I met you!” Leland says. “Every woman is straight until she meets you. And Mallory is particularly suggestible. Easily swayed. I told you that before we got here. She’s a follower—”

“I think you might be wrong about that. She has spunk. She’s uncomplicated, maybe, but she’s hardly a doormat. She reads—”

“She reads what people tell her to read,” Leland says. “The entire time we lived in New York, she borrowed a book as soon as I was finished with it.”

“The point is, she’s harmless,” Fifi says. “And she’s nice. You should try being nice sometime—”

“Ha!” Leland says. “If I were nice one day, you’d leave me the next—”

“Oh, do shut up,
Leland,
” Fifi says. The name on Fifi’s tongue sounds like a taunt, probably conveying Fifi’s disdain for her lover’s WASPy-ness.

“
You
shut up!” Leland says.

Suddenly they start kissing, and then Leland’s mouth travels down to Fifi’s breast. Mallory is trembling with rage and humiliation and other feelings she’s probably too
uncomplicated
and
nice
to identify.

“Hey, is anyone awake?” Mallory yells through the screen. She stamps her sandy sneakers against the welcome mat to give them a moment to compose themselves, and by the time she steps inside, Leland is standing at the counter pretending to inspect the platter of muffins. Fifi has disappeared into the bedroom.

“Hey,” Leland says, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “How was the run?”

“It was…
nice,
” Mallory says, hitting the word with a sledgehammer. “So, listen, I’ve had a change of plans. You guys are on your own today and probably tonight as well.”

“Change of plans?”

“Yes,” Mallory says. “And unfortunately, I’m taking the car, but there are two bikes, or you can call a taxi. The numbers are listed in the phone book.”

“Mal,” Leland says. She knows, or suspects, that Mallory overheard, and now she’ll backpedal, apologize, or, worst of all, downplay what she said and try to persuade Mallory that she meant something else.

“Forget that,” Mallory says. “I’ll bike. You two can take the Blazer.”

“Mallory.”

But Mallory is having none of it. She goes into the bathroom, grabs a towel, and heads for the outdoor shower.

An hour later, Mallory is sitting at the bar at the Summer House pool drinking a Hokey Pokey, which was purchased for her by the man sitting next to her, Bayer Burkhart. The name Bayer, he tells her, is spelled like the aspirin, but he pronounces it like the animal that he sort of resembles. He’s a burly guy with a dark beard. He asked Mallory if he could buy her a drink and she said yes, a Hokey Pokey, because her sole intention was to get drunk. She wondered if this counted as being suggestible. What she was…was easy to get along with. Unlike some people.

“I’m easy to get along with,” Mallory says once she has sucked down her Hokey Pokey. “Unlike some people.”

“Cheers to that,” Bayer says. “Looks like someone needs another drink.”

Isolde and Oliver don’t work at the Summer House anymore and neither does Apple—she’s back at the camp for girls in North Carolina this summer—so Mallory is anonymous, which feels wonderful. Bayer seems to have the exact same goal as Mallory: To drink the afternoon away and tell the complete stranger on the next stool all his troubles because he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him but we are all human and therefore can offer empathy and an unbiased opinion.

“So,” Bayer says. “Who are you?”

Mallory, she says, though she doesn’t reveal her last name in case Bayer is a serial killer. She’s the daughter of an accountant and a housewife; she grew up in Baltimore, lived in New York City briefly until her aunt Greta died and left Mallory her cottage on the south shore and a modest sum of money, at which point Mallory moved to the island permanently and now she’s an English teacher at Nantucket High School.

“Now for the real question,” Bayer says. “Why are you drinking all alone in the middle of the day?”

“Two reasons,” Mallory says. “One is I have houseguests. My best friend from growing up and her lover, also a woman, who is famous. I can’t tell you who she is…” Mallory pauses and studies Bayer more closely. Does he look like a person who reads? He has intelligent-seeming brown eyes and he’s wearing a polo shirt and a Breitling watch with a blue face (expensive, she knows). “Do you read?”

“Mostly nonfiction,” Bayer says. “And biographies. My favorite book of all time is
October 1964
by David Halberstam.”

Mallory mentally adds this book to her list, then chastises herself for being suggestible. “Anyway, my friend Leland and her girlfriend had a fight, a loud fight, during which they said insulting things about me and I overheard them.”

“Ouch,” Bayer says. “What were the insulting things?”

“Not important,” Mallory says.

Bayer tips his glass. “To me, you’re flawless.”

“Because you just met me,” Mallory says. “I haven’t had a chance to disappoint you yet.”

“Amen,” Bayer says. “What’s the other reason?”

Mallory is still coherent enough to stop and ask herself just how honest she wants to be with her new-friend-but-maybe-serial-killer Bayer. “My ex-boyfriend is getting married today.”

“That,” Bayer says, “is quite the double whammy.”

“Tell me about it,” Mallory says.

Bayer suggests food for both of them, says he’s buying, she should get whatever she wants, and she confesses that she used to work at the Summer House and she knows the best thing on the menu is the bacon cheeseburger. She’ll take hers medium rare with extra pickles and she’d like her fries seasoned and crispy.

“I love a woman who knows how to order,” Bayer says. “I’ll have the same.”

“Now you talk and I’ll listen,” Mallory says. “Why are you drinking all alone at the Summer House pool today?”

Bayer just arrived on Nantucket on Wednesday, he says. He sailed in, he’s living on his boat, and he’s rented the slip for the entire summer, though he’s not sure how long he’ll stay. He has a larger boat in Newport—that one has a crew—but he needs time away from them and them from him so he set off on his own for a while.

The Hokey Pokeys have done their job; Mallory has no inhibitions. “What do you do for a living?” she asks. “You sound rich.”

Bayer throws his head back and howls with laughter, and it’s this laugh—and
not
the fact that Bayer Burkhart owns two sailboats, one with a crew—that makes Mallory see him differently. While laughing, Bayer becomes instantly desirable, even sexy.

“I invented a bar-code scanner,” he says. “The one used in most retail stores across the country.”

“Oh,” Mallory says. She grapples with this a minute. He’s not a lawyer or a doctor or an investment banker. He’s an inventor. He invented a bar-code scanner. “How old are you?”

This makes him laugh again and he says, “How old do you think I am?”

Mallory fears the answer is forty or maybe even forty-five, which would be too old. Mallory can date someone ten years older, maybe. “Thirty-seven?” she asks hopefully.

“Bingo!” he says.

They eat and have more drinks, though how many more, Mallory can’t say. At some point, however, she realizes she is too drunk to bike home. Bayer says no problem, he’ll call her a taxi that will deliver her and her bike safely back to her cottage. This is very kind, but Mallory won’t deny that she’s disappointed.

“Don’t you want to invite me to see your sailboat?” she says.

“If you’re too drunk to bike home, then you’re too drunk to see my sailboat,” Bayer says. “I’m not like that.”

Mallory frowns and Bayer lifts her chin with one finger. “I will take your number, though, if you’re willing to give it to me.”

Mallory arrives back at the cottage around sunset. The Blazer is gone; Leland and Fifi are out. Mallory gets herself a glass of ice water and passes out facedown on her bed. She feels like she’s forgotten something. The oven? No. The iron? No. Well, if she can’t think of it, then it must not be that important.