Summer Rental (9 page)

“My granddaddy showed me how to bait a hook right out there,” Ty said, pointing to the ocean. “I was probably about five. He used to catch the hell out of the red drum in the fall.”

“October,” Frank repeated. He looked over at Ty, who was still gazing at the place where he’d caught his first fish. Raindrops, big fat ones, began plopping on the sun-bleached walkway over the dunes. People on the beach started gathering up chairs and towels.

“Listen, Ty,” Frank said suddenly. “You think you want that stove, we could run over to my place and throw it in the back of the truck. Might as well haul the old one outta here and drop it at the dump.”

Ty held out his hand and the men shook. “You got a deal.”

9

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Thanks!

Dear Mr. Culpepper. I take back all the nasty stuff I said about you. The fleas and ants are gone. The new stove is a huge improvement, and I’m sure you’ll notice a savings on your water bill since the leaky faucet has been fixed. Also, the new (old) dishes are very sweet. My friends and I just love china with pink roses. Dorie, who is one of our group, says she thinks her grandmother had that exact same china pattern. So again, thanks! Ellis. P.S. What can you tell us about the guy who lives in the garage apartment here? He seems to keep very odd hours—we’ve noticed the light st
ays on over there all night long. He’s not a serial killer, right? (Just kidding. Mostly.)

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Garage guy

Dear Ellis: Ty Bazemore is harmless. He tells me he makes a living day trading, but maybe that’s just a cover story for an international white-slaver. (Just kidding. Mostly.)

“Hey, you guys,” Ellis said, putting her iPhone back into the protective plastic pocket of her beach bag. “Mr. Culpepper says that guy above the garage is a day trader. That’s why he stays up all night.”

“Interesting,” Julia said. “I wonder if he literally stays up all night?”

“Julia!” Ellis said, not really shocked.

“Mmm,” Dorie said drowsily. She was stretched out facedown on her canvas-covered chaise. Her fingers trailed in the sand, and her body was slick with suntan lotion and perspiration. “What time is it? I think I can only take fifteen more minutes on my stomach.”

“It’s three o’clock,” Julia said, propping herself on one elbow to assess her friend’s tanning progress. “You’ve only been like that for fifteen minutes, and you already look like a boiled lobster. I swear, Dorie, you are the whitest white girl I have ever known.”

“Mmm,” Dorie said. Moments later, she was softly snoring.

“Such a party animal,” Julia said. “Come on, Ellis. I’m bored. Walk down the beach with me, okay?”

Ellis glanced down at their sleeping friend. “Should we just leave her like that? She is getting pretty burnt.”

Julia took a beach towel from her bag and gently draped it over Dorie’s motionless body. “She’ll be fine,” Julia said. She slung her beach bag over her shoulder. “Let’s walk down to that ice cream shack near the pier. I’m starved.”

Ellis pulled her cover-up over her bathing suit, tucked some money into the pocket, and, as a second thought, added her phone.

Julia, who never missed anything, rolled her eyes. “Another thing I don’t miss about living in the States! You people and your mania for your mobiles. Do you ever go anywhere without that thing? Can’t you just relax? At least while we’re together?”

Four days of living in close quarters with Julia had taught Ellis to shrug off her friend’s caustic comments. “What about you?” she countered. “
Don’t you supermodels have to keep in touch with your agencies to find out about bookings or whatever you call it?”

“I am so
not
a supermodel,” Julia said. “Anyway, I told the agency I was taking the month off.” She picked up the pace, and with her long lean legs had soon left Ellis a couple yards behind.

“Wait up,” Ellis called, nearly sprinting to catch up with her friend. “I thought this used to be your busy time,” she said.

“Things change,” Julia said. “Anyway, I’m on vacay.”

Ellis followed Julia up towards the boardwalk crossover and was walking as fast as she could, but even though she wore flip-flops the flour-fine sand scorched her feet.

“I thought I was doing a pretty good job of relaxing. As for worrying—well, I can’t help it. I’m thirty-four years old. I’ve had some kind of a job since I was fourteen years old. I’ve been in banking since Daddy helped me get my first job at Savannah Bank when I was seventeen. Now, well, I just don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, ever,” Julia said, gesturing wildly with her hands. “That’s my whole point, Ellis. You’ve got no control over anything, so why not just sit back and take life as it comes?”

Now it was Ellis’s turn to roll her eyes. “That’s fine for you to say. I mean, I know you’re not an heiress or anything, but at least you’ve got a nice inheritance to live on. And work that you can do anytime, anywhere. You’ve been all over the world. And let’s face it, you’ve got Booker. Me? I’ve lived in three places in my life: Savannah, Charlotte, and Philly. And I’ve got me. And Mama. Daddy left her just enough to live on, if she’s really careful. And she’s not. It’ll be me taking care of her eventually, not my brother. So yes, I worry. I guess if I had your life, I wouldn’
t have to worry. But I don’t. So I worry a lot. But I’m trying not to let it ruin this month for us.”

Julia walked on, three or four steps ahead of Ellis, who couldn’t catch up with her friend’s long-legged gait, no matter how hard she tried.

Ellis was already regretting her outburst. It was tacky to talk about Julia’s money that way. It wasn’t like Julia went around flaunting the fact that she was semirich or the fact that Ellis and Dorie were semipoor.

When they got to the paved road, Ellis trotted until she was right beside Julia. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

“Nope,” Julia said. “I’m not going to get mad at you for saying what you’re thinking. At least, I hope I won’t. It’s just that you don’t really have a clue what my life is like.”

“I don’t?”

“Not really,” Julia said. They’d reached the open-air ice cream shop. It was a concrete block affair, painted with circus-bright red-and-yellow stripes. A dozen people stood in line in front of them, waiting to order, and the picnic tables, located in the shade of the shop’s overhang, were full. Rock music blared from speakers mounted on wooden columns. Ellis and Julia crowded close together, seeking refuge from the searing ninety-plus heat.

The song was Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” Without thinking, they started swaying their upper bodies to the music.

“What’s this song remind you of?” Julia asked, reading the chalkboard menu.

“Me?” Beneath two days’ tan, Ellis blushed.

“I knew it!” Julia cackled. “Ellis and Mikey Cavanaugh, gettin’ jiggy at my fifteenth-birthday party.”

“Would you please shut up?” Ellis said. “People can hear you.”

“So what?” Julia twirled around, juking right and left, humming the song that had been their junior high anthem. “Oh, you were so hot for Mikey Cavanaugh back then. My mother saw you making out with him behind the garage, you know. She was gonna call your mama and tell her, but Daddy told her to mind her own business. Oooh, Ellis, you were a bad little girl back in the day.”

“Shut up,” Ellis said, going pink with the delicious memory of kissing the cutest boy at the party.

“Take your order?” The girl behind the counter was Hispanic, and she wore a pained expression and a ridiculous paper cap made to look like an ice cream cone. “Ma’am?” she said loudly, to the oblivious Julia.

Ellis jostled Julia’s arm. “Come on. It’s your turn.”

“Oh. Yeah. Let me see. All right. Do you have gelato?”

“Julia! This is Nags Head, not Rome,” Ellis said. “It’s ice cream, all right?” She leaned into the counter. “She’ll have a single scoop of Rocky Road in a cup, and I’ll have a single coffee chocolate chip in a sugar cone. And two large cups of ice water, please.”

Before Julia could stop her, Ellis handed over a five-dollar bill, and plunked the change in a tip jar displayed prominently on the counter.

By mutual agreement, they perched at the end of a picnic bench at a table where a young mother busily spooned ice cream into her sandy toddler’s wailing mouth.

“I can’t believe you remembered about the Rocky Road, and the cup, no cone, after all these years,” Julia said, dipping the tiny plastic spoon into the ice cream.

“And I can’t believe you still won’t let me live Mikey Cavanaugh down—twenty years later,” Ellis said. “Did your mother really see us together, or are you just saying that to torture me?”

“She really did!” Julia nodded vigorously. “You know, until the day she died, she still thought you were a bad influence on me.”

“Me?” Ellis hooted. “I was the voice of reason. The sane one. If it weren’t for me, you would have gone to jail or hell, long ago.”

“I know,” Julia said. “Ellis Sullivan, designated driver for life. Mama always thought I was the angel and you were the devil, and I wasn’t going to tell her any different. And you know, when you got out of college and got engaged, Mama told me she was glad, because you were finally going to settle down with that nice boy. She didn’t even really mind that he was Jewish, and a Yankee.”

Ellis sighed. “Bless her heart, your mama never did have a clue.”

“You ever hear from him?” Julia asked, tilting her head. The three of them, Julia, Dorie, and Ellis, had all pledged, long ago, to never again speak the name of Ellis’s ex-husband. “He’s dead to us,” Dorie had proclaimed at the end of the three-month-long marriage.

And his name, which was Ben Greene, and the wedding and marriag
e, as far as her friends knew, seemed to have miraculously faded from Ellis’s memory. It was such an un-Ellis-like thing to have happened that she could almost persuade herself that it hadn’t. Almost.

“I haven’t heard from him in years,” Ellis said, which was technically true. “Last I heard, he’d gotten remarried. I think they have a baby.”

Through the magic of Google, where she’d found
Greene Acres,
his second wife’s chatty blog, Ellis knew exactly where Ben was living (Winnetka, Illinois), what he was doing (running his family’s furniture-import business), and the name of his new wife (Sherry). She knew they had two shelties (Lulu and Lucky) and a two-year-old son named Sam (after Ben’s favorite uncle).

And she would have died if anybody,
especially
Ben, knew just how often she read
Greene Acres.

“Well, thank God for small favors,” Julia said vehemently. “He’s somebody else’s problem and not yours. Sweet Jesus! Can you imagine having a baby with ears like his? You’d have to put a sidecar on the baby buggy just to accommodate ’em.”

On the contrary, Ellis had seen photos of little Sam, and she thought he was the most adorable toddler she’d ever laid eyes on. He had huge, soulful blue eyes, a thick fringe of pale hair, and a perfect, cupid-bow’s mouth, which he must have gotten from his mother, because everybody in Ben’s family had nearly nonexistent upper lips.

“Ellis?” Julia was looking at her strangely.

“His ears weren’t that big,” Ellis said. “You just never liked him from the get-go.”

“And was I wrong? Did you have to file papers on him even before you’d finished writing the thank-you notes for the wedding presents?”

“You were right,” Ellis said, wadding up her paper napkin and crushing it on top of her unfinished ice cream cone. She tossed both, underhand, into the metal trash basket, and took a long drink of ice water. “I hated you for it at the time, but you were oh, so right.”

Everybody but Ellis had known just how wrong Ben was for her. And the day Ben realized it too, just three months into the marriage, he’d calm
ly, coldly announced, at dinner, two days before her birthday, that the whole thing had been a regrettable mistake. That was the exact word he’d used, too. Regrettable. There’d been no fight, no ugly scene, just Ben, in his pale-yellow golf shirt, pushing back from the table, setting his fork at the edge of his dinner plate, saying, his eyes serious but dry, “I’m sorry, Ellis, but we both know this will never work.”

Pressed by his tearful—well, hysterical, really—bride, Ben had finally uttered the words that had stilled the tears and broken Ellis’s heart for good. “I’m just not in love with you. I thought I was, I wanted to be, but I’m not.”

Before the night was out, Ben had packed his clothes, his books, his CDs, and moved out of their apartment. And before Ellis could even really comprehend what was happening, the divorce was final and the marriage was almost, but not completely, forgotten.

Nobody but Ellis knew how she still grieved for what was gone. Her marriage was the first thing she’d ever really failed at. Afterwards, she’d packed away all the wedding china, silver, and crystal, which she could no longer bear to look at, and simply thrown all her energy and talent into her job, winning promotions, rave job evaluations, and raises. But the loneliness never subsided. She missed living with a man, having somebody to eat dinner with and buy shirts for. She missed having somebody waiting at the airport baggage claim when she came home from a business trip, and
she missed slow, delicious Saturday morning lovemaking. Oh God, had it really been ten years since she’d had sex? More. Eleven and a half years, if you didn’t count some heavy petting with a man she had dated in the year immediately following her divorce, when she’d been desperate to prove to herself just how over Ben she was.

Julia stood up abruptly. “Come on, we better get back to Dorie. I don’t want to have to be giving her oatmeal baths like we did that summer at Myrtle Beach.”

Ellis grimaced. “What were we thinking, slathering ourselves with that nasty baby oil and iodine mess? It’s a wonder we don’t all have skin cancer. ”

“We weren’t thinking. We were drinking,” Julia reminded her. They strolled back across the street and over the dune to the beach below.