Summer People (17 page)

“Yeah, I'm fine. Are you okay? Do you need any help taking this stuff somewhere?” He gestured at the furnishings clustered in the front driveway.

“No, I'm all right for now,” Mr. McAlister said, turning to face the sight of his smoldering home.

Nathan dropped off the blanket at the back of the fire truck, then headed down between the expansive lawns of Admirals Way. On the street, an older couple in tracksuits asked him what had happened.

Nathan said, “Mr. McAlister's house caught on fire,” and hurried onward. At Ellen's house, he checked to make sure she was still sleeping, then mixed a drink. He walked down Parson's Beach and far enough up Mr. McAlister's backyard to see that the firemen were still arcing a thick stream of water into the house, but that they were also packing up their gear. It wasn't until he was walking back along the beach, mulling over the best way to recount the story to Leah, that he wondered where Mr. McAlister would spend the rest of the summer.

 

I
n the morning, Nathan told Ellen what had happened, and a fissure deepened between her eyebrows as she stared at him.

“You weren't here?” she asked.

“No, I went out for a walk,” Nathan said, taking a sip of his juice. He felt frustrated by what he took to be an implicit expectation from her and from her son—perhaps even from his father—that Nathan's every waking hour should be spent at her beck and call, and he was increasingly worried about the ramifications of last evening. The dozens of neighbors who had seen him outside Mr. McAlister's would want to know why he had been in the house, and wouldn't the older man reclaim some respect (after such an embarrassing episode) by explaining that he had called Nathan over to dress him down for driving so recklessly—putting Ellen's safety in jeopardy as well as nearly killing his wife? Even if Nathan wasn't prosecuted, how long would it be before the gossipmongers told Glen and he yanked him out of Brightonfield Cove?

Nathan wanted to talk this over with Ellen, but he was uncertain about
her capacity to understand the full implications of everything that was happening. He said, “I thought the more newsworthy part of what I said is that Mr. McAlister's wife is very angry with us, thinking of pressing charges against
me,
and that Mr. McAlister's house burned down.”

Ellen smiled and shook her head incredulously but continued eating her toast, glancing out at the yachts sailing toward the sunny horizon of the Atlantic. In the living room, she demonstrated little interest in watching the tennis match on television, and after a while, walked over to riffle through the drawers of her desk. From a bottom drawer, she pulled out a red address book and carried it with her to her recliner, where she eased down and reached for the phone.

This would be the first call Nathan had ever seen Ellen initiate, and he wondered if the laws of etiquette required him to leave the room. Ellen sat facing the French doors and blue sky while Nathan remained in his recliner, hoping it would be enough for him to just feign interest in an old
Sierra
magazine.

Of course Ellen would try to call Mr. McAlister, Nathan thought, so he was not surprised to see her hold the phone to her ear for a while and then set it back on the receiver. But then she flipped through the yellowed pages of her address book and appeared to dial a different number.

Cradling the phone to her ear, Ellen said, “Yes, may I speak with Bill, please?” There was a pause, then a heavy sigh. “This is Eleanor Broderick.”

Ellen listened, then pursed her lips in irritation. “Well I don't—,” she began, then stopped. “Hello?” she said, and finally set the phone back on the receiver. Settling herself deeper in her chair, she looked at Nathan, but he was careful to act as if he was too engrossed in the article about snow leopards to notice whether she was still talking on the phone. When she stood up to shuffle around the house, and then onto the porch, Nathan waited a few minutes before he stepped out to join her. She was sitting on her swing, pushing herself back and forth gently as she stared out at the harbor.

Sitting down in one of the nearby wooden chairs, Nathan asked her if she wanted something to drink, but she declined. Even though he knew
he'd already told her this earlier, Nathan said, “I don't know if I told you this earlier, but Mr. McAlister is completely fine. The paramedics checked him out while I was there and gave him a clean bill of health.”

Ellen nodded and said, “I'm relieved to hear he's okay.”

But her uncomfortable smile left Nathan wanting to do more. Frustrated, he said, “If you want, we could drive by his place so you can see what happened.”

 

L
ong before they pulled out of the driveway, Nathan knew this was a stupid,
stupid
idea. Mr. McAlister's home no doubt carried many fond memories for Ellen, and the fact that he would most likely not be there would only exacerbate her nervousness. Still, Nathan had told her he would take her, and so he drove beneath the arching trees of Admirals Way until, on the horizon, the smoldering mansion inched into view.

Yellow police tape stretched around the trunks of old oak trees to surround the perimeter of the yard, and all the furnishings they'd rescued last night had been removed. The west side of the house appeared untouched, but the east side was more devastated than Nathan remembered. Most of the tile roof had collapsed into a blackened maw from which wispy ribbons of smoke twisted out into the air. The outer brickwork was still standing, with upturned tongues of ash above the windows, but the interior appeared to have been mostly hollowed out by the flames.

“Can you see it?” Nathan asked, pushing back against his seat to allow her to see past him.

“Yes, I can.”

Nathan turned the car around in the cul-de-sac to give her a better view. He let the car idle as they both stared out at the house. Ellen began to fumble with her door handle.

“Whoa, where are you going, Ellen?”

“I want to talk with Bill.”

“I don't think he's here. I think the yellow tape means they've closed it up so that nobody disturbs anything before the insurance company gets here.”

Ellen paused. “I think he might still be here.”

“What makes you say that?” Nathan asked, looking out at the house for something he hadn't seen. The windows on the west side had their draperies closed, and he tried to remember if they had been that way before the fire.

“I just think he might.”

“All right, well, I tell you what,” Nathan negotiated. “Why don't I go out and check. That way you won't have to make a long walk for nothing.”

On his way toward the house, he stepped between puddles of soaked grass and pulled the yellow tape over his head to pass underneath. He rang the doorbell and no one answered. Turning to look back at Ellen, he gave her a
no one's answering
shrug, then walked around the east side of the house. He stared through broken windows into the blackened jutting of charred floor and furniture still smoking below. When voices began to call to one another from the opened windows of the neighbor's house, Nathan retraced his steps across the lawn.

“Well, nobody answered,” he explained, once back in the car. “I'm sure he probably just spent the night at a neighbor's. Or who knows? Maybe he spent the night here and just went out to get lunch or something.”

Ellen nodded and pulled her white cardigan more closely around her neck. As Nathan drove away from the house, he asked if she'd like to watch tennis at the club, but she just sniffed and shook her head. “Turn here,” she said, pointing left down Birch Hill Boulevard, in the opposite direction of her house. Nathan turned as she directed, driving in silence. Long before they reached the end of the road, he tried to lead them away from the destination he suspected Ellen had in mind. He took an abrupt right on First Street, but she guided him onto Shore Road, where they curved along the Atlantic and ended up approaching the Point.

“Turn here,” Ellen said, gesturing at the next driveway, ahead of them.

Nathan's hands tightened on the wheel as he let his foot up on the gas. “Why do you want to go there, Ellen?”

“To visit a friend.”

“Which friend?”

“Well, my friend Bill McAlister,” she said, her gaze fixed on the curving slope of the driveway.

“But we were just at his house.”

“I want to check his other house.”

“Ellen, I don't think that's such a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, because she was so rude to us the last time we were here.”

Ellen turned to stare at him blankly, then looked up at where the slate roof of the house could be seen above the pine trees scattered along the hillside. “She may not be here.”

“Well, we don't know that. So why don't we just head back home and try calling him again later on. We'll give him a call in a little while to find out where he is, okay?”

Ellen didn't answer, but as the car rolled past the driveway, Nathan pushed his foot on the gas and propelled them quickly toward home.

 

W
ithout Leah around, Nathan's life seemed to creep at a glacial pace—making breakfast for Ellen, eyes glazing over at morning television, watching tennis at the club, sitting out on the porch—with nothing to break up the routine. As expected, Leah did not return on Wednesday. But on Thursday, while Ellen napped, Nathan checked the post office box and discovered two cocktail party invitations, a flyer for the Brightonfield Cove Lobsterfest and Firehouse Fund-raiser, and a distinctive pink envelope. His blood surged through his veins and he felt a shortness of breath. Instead of walking back to the house, he decided to walk down to Big Beach, where he could sit undisturbed and devote his whole heart-wrenched attention to the letter. He thought he would wait to sit down before he opened it, but after a minute or so of speed walking, Nathan discovered he couldn't wait. He tore open the envelope and read while staggering like a drunk between the blacktop road and
sandy berm.

On the beach, Nathan reread the letter several times, sitting with his el
bows on his knees, his hands clamped over his ears. He sighed and lifted his head to squint at the families on beach towels and beneath oversize umbrellas, scattered along the ocean's edge. So they hadn't done anything really evil to each other yet.

No, not evil, he supposed. But then what was it to fuck someone else while knowing how much Nathan still loved her? Taking off his shirt, he arranged it behind him so that his back wouldn't touch the hot sand. He draped an arm over his eyes to shield them from the sun and visualized Sophie fucking her dull-eyed, Cro-Magnon boyfriend. The Cro-Magnon kissed her, then bent her over and fucked her with a thick-dicked ferocity that left her panting for more. Nathan had never had these kinds of dark fantasies before Sophie dumped him, fantasies about other, often hugely endowed men having sex with his old girlfriends, but lately he imagined such scenes all the time. At first he worried he might be gay. But remembering that “my cheating wife” stories appeared often in
Penthouse
letters, Nathan felt more at ease. He suspected the fantasies had something to do with self-loathing, and he wondered if dating Leah and eventually feeling better about himself might mean such thoughts would no longer plague him.

Turning to lay his head on his arm, he raised a hand over his eyes to stare at the parents in low, canvas beach chairs, their children in Day-Glo bathing suits frolicking in the shallows of the ocean. How enviably simple and wholesome their lives seemed! After squinting at them for a while, he was surprised he hadn't noticed Eldwin earlier. Even from fifty or so yards away, his heavy-looking head was recognizable. He was sitting in a beach chair, and after a few minutes, Nathan pulled on his shirt and approached him.

“How's it going?” Eldwin said. Despite his wraparound sunglasses, peering up from his book, his face was still pinched by the sun.

“All right. How's it going with you?”

Eldwin stopped craning his neck to look at Nathan and faced the ocean. “Okay,” he said, nodding, as if testing the word to find out if it agreed with him. In the shallows of the incoming tide, Eliot and Meghan were searching
for shells to take to older children who were constructing a castle.

“What are you reading?”

Eldwin held up the hardback and said, “
Homo Ludens,
by Johan Huizinga. It's about play, about the importance of play.”