Nantucket Nights (27 page)

Theo heard this from Aaron, just after first period, calculus—where the teacher, Mr. Eviasco, had started on derivatives and Theo stared helplessly at the numbers on the blackboard, unable to concentrate. As soon as the bell rang, dismissing them, Aaron yanked Theo into an empty classroom and told him the rumors that were going around.

“Man, is this the woman we saw at the Islander? And at the game? Your mom’s friend?”

“Shut up, Aaron. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m asking because I care about you, man. There’s some serious shit going around. Perpetuated by Gillian and those bitches. They’re saying you
killed
her, man.”

Theo looked into the empty classroom at the rows of desks. He felt so alien here, like an impostor at
his own high school. He didn’t belong anymore.

Aaron ran a hand across the top of his spiky black hair. His neck started to splotch the way it sometimes did when he stood at home plate on a full count; he was nervous. “Man, is it
true?
Did you kill her?”

Theo grabbed the front of Aaron’s T-shirt and pressed his lips against Aaron’s ear. “Get one thing straight,” he whispered. “That woman is not dead.”

…

By lunchtime, Theo sensed the other kids moving away when he walked through the halls. Mrs. Waverly,
his English teacher, giggled nervously when she called his name for attendance—and she had been
his teacher since sophomore year. She liked him. But she squeaked when she said
his name, as if noticing for the first time that he had three arms or something. They all thought he’d killed Antoinette. Or that
his mother had killed her.

Because he was a senior, he had off-property lunch privileges, and Theo watched the other kids in
his class fly out the doors when the bell rang. The guys from the baseball team—Aaron and Brett among them—stripped off their shirts. Theo heard them say they were going to Surfside Beach to eat at the snack bar. They didn’t ask Theo to join them, although Theo figured he would still be welcome— for a price. He’d have to throw them a bone, a lie or something about Antoinette, his mother, the vandalism. He wasn’t up to it.

Grief flooded Theo as he sat in the lunchroom, alone, with the egg salad sandwich that his mother had packed for
him despite everything. His sister Jennifer sat at a table of ninth-grade girls, but even she wouldn’t make eye contact with
him. Last year her friends had all been gaga over him; now they thought he was a psycho. Theo’s vision blurred and the tables of other kids decked out in their new clothes melted into a horrible stew. His old life decomposing.

He couldn’t eat. He shoved his sandwich back into the brown paper bag and left the cafeteria. He walked out to the parking lot, climbed into the Jeep, and drove away.

He ended up at Antoinette’s house. The police car was gone, but the yellow tape remained. Theo took down the pieces of tape over the front door and let himself in. The place was pretty much as Theo had left it—Antoinette’s books all over the floor with the wine bottles, the sofa cushions, the broken candles. Theo picked up a wine bottle and wandered through the house holding it like a club. A cocktail napkin was secured to the refrigerator with a magnet—in blue ink it said,
L, Cape Air, noon Sat.
Theo stared at the napkin—her daughter, he realized after a minute. Lindsey. Had Antoinette really meant to pick up Lindsey, or was this just a decoy? When Antoinette’s body didn’t turn up in the coast guard search, his suspicions were confirmed: Antoinette had been planning to disappear during Night Swimmers for a long time. But that napkin. It bothered Theo. He folded it carefully and put it into his jeans pocket.

He moved through the house touching all the things that Antoinette might have touched, the light switches, the doorknobs. He’d dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and that’s where they remained—a mound of black T-shirts and black jeans and black sundresses. He buried his face in one of the dresses, rooting for her smell, but he couldn’t identify it. The dress smelled like fabric softener. He swept the clothes off the bed and turned back the sheets, looking for a stain from their lovemaking or one of
his hairs, something to prove that he had lain with Antoinette in this bed, he had created a child here. But the sheets were clean, crisp even, Antoinette’s Egyptian cotton sheets.

In the bathroom, Theo saw pills on the countertop divided into neat, colorful piles. Theo checked himself out in the mirror—he looked awful, like a sick person, a dying person. He had dark half-moons under his eyes, and
his lips were cracked. His hair stuck out all over the place. That napkin was a bad clue. That napkin said:
I am planning on being around Saturday. I’ll see you at noon!

So she drowned.

Or, it was a trick. An Antoinette trick.

What Theo wanted the napkin to say was:
I love Theo Montero and I love our baby.
What he wanted the napkin to say was:
Meet me in Newport, Rhode Island, noon Sat., and we’ll run away together.
What he wanted the napkin to say was:
I am thinking of you, Theo.
Yes, even that, only that. What had she expected
him to do? How had she expected him to feel? Did she really expect him to survive the love affair and then the pregnancy? He was only eighteen. His heart had been broken and entered, ransacked, robbed.

Theo studied the piles of pills.
Take them,
he thought.
Wash them down.
It might be as easy as falling asleep.

As Theo picked up the first pill, the whelk shell caught his eye. It sat on the back of the toilet. Here was what Theo had been looking for—a piece of himself in this house. He cradled the shell in his hands as though it were a small animal. He kissed its smooth, cool surface, and then he brought the shell to
his ear and listened to the ocean.

Even though it was the middle of the day, both of Theo’s parents were at home. His father had lost the Ting job, although he insisted it wasn’t Theo’s fault. It was because of the newspaper article, that prick detective. Theo’s father went out to Ting to gather
his sawhorses and his tools, the Dumpster, the vans. He fired two men from his crew—Micky and Carter, saying that he wanted to pare down the operation. Mainstream. Montero Construction had projects lined up for the next thirty months with people who needed a builder so desperately that a mere accusation of murder wouldn’t deter them. Losing Ting was a blessing in disguise, Theo’s father said with false cheer. Because really that house was preposterous. That cathedral.

But Theo’s father hadn’t started on any new projects yet. He’d been at home trying to find a lawyer to defend him against the assault charges. Theo’s mother hadn’t left the house for errands or shopping because she was afraid to see anyone she knew. “They all think I’m a murderer,” she said. “My own children think it.”

Theo didn’t think his mother was a murderer. He longed to climb into his mother’s arms and say,
It’s my fault. Blame me.
But both
his parents insisted on protecting him. He wasn’t even going to get in trouble for the vandalism. He’d gotten off scot-free— except for Sara Poncheau. But now that Theo thought about it, he was glad Sara had told everyone at school about him and Antoinette. It made his pain real. Sara had seen them together only a week before. She had seen that it was real.

When Theo opened the sliding glass door, he heard his parents yelling. He wondered if this had been going on all morning while he was at school—
his parents home alone in the empty house, screaming.

“… you’re throwing me out!” his mother said.

“Call it what you like, Kayla. I need time alone. I need time to think.”

“You want to get rid of me,” his mother said. “You hate me.”

“I’m angry,” his father said. “I’m hurt. But this is for you, too. You need to get off the island for a while.”

“I won’t know what to do,” Theo’s mother said. “The kids, I’ll miss the kids.”

“The kids will be fine. I’ll take good care of them.”

“What about Theo?”

Theo tensed. He locked his knees and pressed the soles of
his Nikes into the kitchen tile.

“What about Theo?” his father said.

“He’ll need a counselor. He has to have time to grieve.”

“We’ll take care of that.”

“You’ll find another woman while I’m gone,”
his mother said. “Someone to replace me.”

“Are you listening to yourself, Kayla? You sound ridiculous.”

“Okay, fine, you want me to go, I’ll go.”

“It’ll be good for both of us,” Theo’s father said.

“I doubt that.”

There was silence. Theo thought to stomp his feet or otherwise make himself known, but before he could move, his mother said, “Theo?”

Theo looked around. How did she know he was there?

“I see you,” she said. “In the picture frame. What are you doing home?”

Theo walked into the living room, where his parents were pacing like a couple of caged animals.

“I left school,” he said. He collapsed on the sofa. “The kids
… whatever, everyone thinks I’m a psycho.”

“Well, you’re going to have to rise above that,” his father said.

Theo shook his head. “No can do,” he said. “Not going back.”

“Oh, Theo,” his mother said.

“What? I don’t see you two running out to face the general public.” He remembered the piles of pills. “I want to kill myself,” he said. “I want to be dead.”

His parents exchanged a look.

“And what were you two yelling about?” he said. “Are you getting a divorce?”

Another look. His mother at his father, as if to say,
This one’s all yours.

“Mom’s taking a vacation by herself,” his father said. “Just for a month or two.”

“I want to go with you,” Theo said. “Mom, please?”

“The idea is for your mother to have some time by herself. A change of scenery.”

“I need a change of scenery,” Theo said.

His parents were quiet. His father tousled Theo’s hair the way he hadn’t done in many years. “We’ll see about getting you some help.”

“I don’t want to see any counselor,” Theo said. What came to mind was some cinder-block room in the school. Being forced into meaningful conversation with Mr. Permanente, the guidance counselor, who had hair growing out of
his ears. “Just send me away,” Theo said. “Send me to the moon.”

They didn’t make him go back to school, and so Theo spent the weekend and the early part of the following week driving around aimlessly in his Jeep with the cocktail napkin that Antoinette had written on in the pocket of his jeans and the whelk shell next to him on the passenger seat. He called the police station each morning to see if they’d found any clues. Most mornings he talked to a Sergeant Webster, who sounded young and bored.

“No news,” the sergeant said. “But hey, no news is good news.”

The guy was a bonehead, Theo thought. The third time the sergeant fed
him this line, Theo responded, “No. Good news would be my girlfriend turning up alive. Got it, pal? Let me speak to Paul Henry.”

Most always, Paul Henry was on the other line, or out on a call, or busy organizing the Rotary Scholarship Auction, and Theo was put through to
his voice mail. The one time Paul Henry called Theo back, he said they hadn’t found a body and they were starting a limited missing persons search. Subpoenaing access to Antoinette’s post office box and all that.

“So you think she might be alive, then?” Theo asked.

“Oh, Theo.” Paul Henry’s tone of voice was just like that of Theo’s parents—sad and indulgent. “I haven’t the slightest idea what happened to the woman. But we’re going to cover all the bases for you. Okay, son? The important thing is for you to go on with your life.”

Except that he had no life without Antoinette. “Yep,” Theo said. “You bet.”

And then, Thursday, thirteen days after Antoinette disappeared, Theo saw her bike leaning against the side of the Glucksterns’ house. Theo stopped at the
Glucksterns’ with a paper bag of Val’s things that his mother had asked
him to return—some books, a green glass vase, a bundt pan. His mother was finished with Val as a friend, and she couldn’t bear to give the things back herself. So she sent Theo to do it—in the middle of the day when no one would be home. As Theo hurried across the lawn toward the front door, anxious to drop the bag off and get out of there, he noticed a bike, which struck him as strange because the
Glucksterns weren’t the bikeriding type and they didn’t have any kids. Then Theo realized it was Antoinette’s bike. There was no mistaking it. It was a green Schwinn with a tattered basket on front that was connected to the handlebars by two disintegrating leather straps. Theo felt like shouting. Her bike! He’d never thought to look for her bike!

Theo touched the handlebars and his nose tingled with impending tears. Her hands, God, her hands had touched the handlebars. He put his hand on the black vinyl seat, which was warm from the sun. He let himself remember back to the first night at the Islander when Antoinette had pulled in on her bike. And then later, when she drove by the baseball field. The bike had been an integral part of their relationship, it had meaning, and without thinking twice, Theo walked the bike over to his Jeep and hoisted it in the back.

As he drove away, he wondered what it was doing at the
Glucksterns’ house. He couldn’t very well call up and ask. More pressing was what Theo would tell his parents when they saw it. He decided to tell them that he’d gone up to Antoinette’s and taken it as a reminder of her. They wouldn’t fight him. As for the
Glucksterns, well, they’d probably assume the bike had been stolen. Or they might not even notice. It was just an old bike to them—but to Theo, it was much more.

A few days later, matters were decided. Theo’s mother was going to Puerto Rico for six weeks on a vacation that she didn’t want to take. And Theo’s parents decided that Theo would live with his grandmother, Sabrina Montero, in Boston. Attend Boston Hill, a private high school in Cambridge. Start a new life. Theo packed one huge duffel bag, tucking the whelk shell, the cocktail napkin, and the snapshot of Antoinette holding him as a baby among his clothes. He’d managed to convince his parents to let him take the bike to Boston. “If Antoinette shows up and wants it back, I’ll return it,” Theo said.