Summerland: A Novel (23 page)

Ava had pursued a second pregnancy the same way she used to play volleyball on the beach: ruthlessly. She did all the things that the desperate-to-conceive do: she bought a kit that tracked her ovulation, she took her basal temperature, she hunted down Jordan night after night so they could try out new positions that she’d heard might help: her on top, him behind her, her hanging upside down. For a while he’d loved it—what man wouldn’t? But as the years passed, she grew frantic. It was bad enough that Ava was the only member of her family who had married an American, now she was also the only one who was having problems conceiving! (Dearie, it was well known, had gotten pregnant with Ava’s youngest
brother, Damon, at the age of forty-two
while she had an IUD in place!
) Ava began to suspect that she was unable to conceive precisely
because
Jordan was American. And an only child. She accused him of having lazy sperm; she suggested one night that perhaps he’d secretly had a vasectomy. Jordan was then subjected to a hospital visit during which he had to jerk off into a plastic cup just so the lab technician—Charlotte Volmer, whom he’d gone to high school with—could reassure him that all was well. He had millions of healthy swimmers.

The chase for baby number two grew tiresome. Ava used to appear at the newspaper on the night of a deadline and demand that Jordan lock the door to his office and have sex with her right then. The first time it happened, their subsequent emergence garnered a round of enthusiastic applause from his staff. The tenth time, hardly anyone looked up.

In ways too numerous to count, the Prices’ obsession with progeny had ruined Jordan’s life.

When it began to seem clear that a second baby was never going to happen, when Jordan had given up hope and he believed Ava had as well, Ava returned to Australia alone. She had planned to stay for two weeks, but she ended up staying for six. During their phone calls, Jordan gently inquired as to when she might be coming home. He missed her. He missed her as his wife, and he missed her as Jake’s mother; she had left him as a single parent, and he also had a newspaper to run. Jake was only twelve years old at the time, and Jordan had to feed him, help him with his homework, and chauffeur him all over the island. Jordan was careful not to press too hard, however: Ava’s trips to Australia were a touchy subject because for all the times that she had gone back, Jordan had never accompanied her. He told her it was because he couldn’t leave the newspaper, which was true enough, but more than that, it was because he didn’t
want
to go. In this particular instance, Jordan understood that her extended trip to Australia was
something of a consolation prize: it was what he was giving Ava because he hadn’t given her a baby.

When Ava had been gone for four weeks and three days—a detail that Jordan couldn’t forget—she mentioned in a phone call that she had been spending time with Roger Polly, the man fifteen years her senior with whom she had once been in love. The man who had broken her heart.

“ ‘Spending time’?” Jordan said. He was incensed by this news, and completely panicked. “What does that mean, ‘spending time’?”

“We’ve been out,” Ava said. She then let it slip that Roger’s wife had drowned the year before at Kuta Beach in Bali while on vacation with some friends, adding that when she heard this news, she had called him to offer her condolences. This had led to a second phone conversation, then a meet-up for coffee, then dinner at Fraser’s in Kings Park. When Jordan looked up Fraser’s on line, he learned that it was one of the nicest restaurants in Perth.

He thought, She’s not coming home.

He decided that though he’d refused every chance to go with Ava to Australia in the past, he would go after her right that second. He didn’t care if he had to walk and swim.

As it turned out, though, Ava returned of her own volition ten days later. Jordan arranged for Jake to sleep over at the Alistair house that night. Then he brought Ava home and made love to her in a way that he hoped would exorcise all traces of old, distraught widower Roger Polly, as well as establish the national superiority of the United States.

And six weeks later, they discovered that Ava was pregnant.

Now Ava was livid that Jordan wouldn’t come to the barbecue. “I suppose they’ll think we’re divorced, then,” she fumed.

“Why would they think we’re divorced when I just uprooted my whole life and left the newspaper for an entire year so I could bring you here?” Jordan asked.

That hushed her up. He had made the ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t have to shake hands, drink beer, eat kangaroo sausages, or talk about footy with a bunch of Prices. But Jake did.

“Please kiss your grandmother,” Jordan told him, feeling like the ultimate hypocrite.

“I can barely remember what she looks like,” Jake said.

“She’ll be the one on the throne,” Jordan said. “Wearing the tiara and velvet robes.”

“Honestly, Dad,” Jake said. “Can’t you please come?”

“No,” Jordan said.

“I could refuse to go too, you know,” Jake said.

“It would break your mother’s heart,” Jordan said. “Showing you off to her family has always been her favorite thing. So be impressive, okay?” He clapped Jake’s shoulder, then lowered his voice and added, “Nobody knows about the accident, nobody knows about Penny. You won’t have to talk about it. You won’t have anyone feeling sorry for you. You can just be yourself.”

Jake looked at his father. “I don’t know who that is anymore.”

Jordan swallowed. What he couldn’t tell his son was that he felt the same way. He was a newspaperman without a newspaper. He was a citizen without a country. He was a man without the woman he loved.

“You’ll be fine,” Jordan said. “You’ll be great.”

Because he wasn’t working, Jordan had every day free, but today, with Ava and Jake off at Heathcote Park for an all-day affair, he was
really
free. He sat on the bench in the back garden and read the
Sunday Australian
while listening to the gurgling of the fountain. It was a pleasant hour in the sun; the
Sunday Australian
was a nice little newspaper. It featured a weekly column on wine whose author seemed very well informed—Jordan usually wrote down his suggestions—and it made him wonder if perhaps he should add a wine column to the
Nantucket Standard.
Maybe in summer.
Maybe in winter. Whenever he thought about the newspaper, he got an itchy feeling. He was just biding time here in Australia; he was treading water for Ava’s sake, for Jake’s sake. Ava had undergone an immediate and complete metamorphosis upon their arrival in Fremantle. She was drinking, smoking, and partying like a teenager; she was sailing and going to the beach and once again singing along to Crowded House in the shower. She was living. Looking at the remarkable bloom of the flowers surrounding the fountain, Jordan thought that Ava was like a native plant that he’d uprooted and transplanted in a hostile climate. Now here she was, back on home soil. Flourishing again.

But he, most certainly, was not.

He went inside. He found himself tiptoeing like a burglar to his desk in the den. He hadn’t used his computer once in the three weeks they’d been here. He had been keen to set it up, eager to establish a connection with his home ten thousand miles away, but then as soon as he’d gotten it up and running, he’d felt afraid. He wasn’t sure he could handle news from home. After all, back on Nantucket, summer was in full swing. There would be things happening every day and every night: talks at the Atheneum, concerts, plays, benefits, dinner auctions, cocktail parties, golf tournaments, fishing tournaments, book signings, art openings. There would be bands playing at the Cisco Brewery in the afternoons and at the Chicken Box at night. Jordan had never been able to make it to every event in a typical summer week, but he liked to get to as many as he could. In recent years he and Zoe had attended functions separately but together. He loved nothing more than seeing her dressed up and chatting away, sipping her wine, throwing him meaningful looks, whispering funny things as they brushed past each other in the crowd. Sometimes Zoe would be catering one of these events, and Jordan would find her in the kitchen. She would be wearing her white chef’s jacket with the words
Hot Mama
stitched over the breast pocket, her hair held back by a turquoise
bandanna. Her Jamaican waiters would all break out in knowing smiles when they saw him: “Coming to kiss the boss lady’s hand,” they’d tease. They thought he came back to the kitchen for the food—a special ramekin of the truffled mac and cheese, his own plate of mini lobster rolls. And while it was true that Zoe plied him with special treats, really he came just to lay his eyes on her, to hear the jingle of her long, dangly earrings, to listen to the sound of her voice.

He had been in love with her. Besotted by her. He still was.

He wondered what Zoe’s life was like this summer. He figured she had turned down all catering jobs. Possibly she’d even taken a leave of absence from her job with the Allencasts. She had a small trust fund, enough money to live on for a little while, anyway. Although maybe not: the Allencasts paid her health insurance, which she would need now as she never had before, given Hobby’s condition.

Jordan envisioned her working for the Allencasts for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening, then spending the rest of her time at home with Hobby. She wouldn’t go out at night. She was just as definitively exiled from their previous life as Jordan was, even though she was right there.

He pictured her on her back deck, drinking wine. He pictured her screaming at the ocean. He pictured her in bed, lying among the dozen pillows that she required, crying for Penny. Her little girl.

He tapped the keyboard, and the screen sprang to life. He would email her, he decided. She might not respond, she might delete the message, but even if they were no longer lovers—
for so many reasons
—they were still connected, they were still simpatico. He knew she thought about him, they had a shared view of the world, they spoke the same language, they held common opinions. They were friends, goddammit, above and beyond and before everything else, they were
friends,
and he was going to
email her. The house was empty, Ava and Jake would be gone for hours, and how often was he going to get a chance like this?

To: Z

From: J

Subject:

But what should he say? “I love you”? “I miss you”? “I’m thinking about you”? “I never
stop
thinking about you”? “I feel as if my heart had been ripped out and fed to a koala bear, and koala bears are surprisingly nasty little creatures”?

Zoe was right: it was always all about him.

Maybe “How are you?” Or “How are you doing?” “What are you thinking about?” “How is Hobby?” “Is there any moment of your day that is even a little bit easier than the rest of your day?” “Are you working?” “Do you need anything? Do you want anything? Aside from the obvious…”

Jordan deleted the unwritten email.

He succumbed to his nagging curiosity and pulled up the on-line version of the
Nantucket Standard
. When he saw the lead story, he coughed.

Island Remembers Nantucket High School Student

It was an article about Penny.

Jordan read every word, then he read it again, thinking he must have missed something. He read the quotes from Annabel Wright and Winnie Potts (Winnie’s should have been edited, possibly even cut, he thought; it was too honest for this kind of piece). He read Hobby’s quote and felt tears coming to his eyes: “I guess I’ll have to find a way to take care of my mother…” Jordan’s sadness, and his shame and regret—he should have published this article, or one better than this, before he left—were cut only by the fact
that there wasn’t a single mention, anywhere, of Jake. Very little about the crash itself—only a brief acknowledgment at the lead-in that Penny had died in a one-car accident—and nothing, not a word, about her boyfriend, his son.

It was beastly. If Jake saw this, he’d… well, he’d feel empty and bewildered and hurt. New, fresh hurt on top of all of the other hurt.

Jordan shut down his computer. He dropped his head into his hands and yanked at his hair. Then he raised his face; he could see himself now in the dark screen of the monitor. He adjusted his glasses and sniffed.

He and Jake and Ava were gone from Nantucket, yes, they had gone away, but the surprising thing was that they had also, apparently, been forgotten.

He still had hours before the others would get home. Nothing good could come of his sitting in the house alone, he knew, and so he went out and wandered the streets of Fremantle. It was, he had to admit, a charming city. He headed up Charles Street and across Attfield, admiring the bungalows, many of which were better kept up than the one they had rented. He liked the classic limestone with redbrick quoins around the windows, the tin roofs, the bullnosed terraces that curved over the deep front porches. There were variations on the theme: on one house the trim had been painted lavender, another had stained glass in its front windows, and in yet another someone was practicing scales on the piano. Jordan stopped for a second to listen. If he were a different kind of person, he would be able to take enjoyment from the place where he found himself, rather than longing to be somewhere else.

But he wasn’t that kind of person.

He stepped into a pub called Moondyne Joe’s. He could have gone to the Sail & Anchor, which was a little nicer (or more “toff,” as
Ava would have said) and which had chili mussels on the menu and artisanal beer and a scrubbed-clean clientele. Or he could have gone to the Norfolk Hotel, which had an outdoor courtyard and two guys strumming Midnight Oil songs on the guitar. But Jordan was in the mood for someplace dark and gritty. He had discovered Moondyne Joe’s on one of his aimless walks through the city. It was the kind of place where men drank up their dole money; it attracted a tough, tattooed crowd. It smelled like cigarette smoke, beer, and old beer. The concrete floors were sticky, and there was no “food” to speak of other than a warming case that held a selection of Mrs. Mac’s meat pies. A TV hung in the corner of the bar, a huge, boxy thing that seemed as outdated as a cassette deck (the Ute that Jordan had bought from the car-rental agency had one of those). When Jordan was here before, it was midafternoon on a Tuesday, and there were only four or five men at the bar keeping the bartender—a stout, matronly woman who looked as if she ought to be running a home for wayward boys—company. But today the place was packed, and Jordan found himself elbow to elbow with fifty or sixty sweating blokes. (That seemed such an appropriate word for this breed of Australian men; Jordan reminded himself to look up its etymology when he got home.) He wanted to step back out onto the street, but once he was in the pub, he felt committed. Stepping back outside because he didn’t like the looks of the other patrons would have been a cowardly move.