Summerland: A Novel (29 page)

Selfish, horrible thoughts, but there you had it. They were real.

She was too spooked by the cross to stick around for very long. She thought maybe she should
do
something, throw a rock at it or kiss it or kick it or cry in front of it, but none of those things felt right.

She climbed into her car and turned the key. It was nearly nine o’clock. She needed to get home to Hobby. But she sat for a
second, staring at the ocean. Over the course of a single day she had gone back to work and then had come to look at the cross. These things seemed noteworthy. She wished there were someone she could tell.

But there was only one answer to that: Jordan.

Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. Zoe didn’t have the strength to think about Jordan. But she couldn’t stop thinking about him, either.

There was that night during Christmas Stroll, the two of them embracing up against Jordan’s car, which they later referred to as “the moment.” The moment when they knew.

Nothing happened after that. The next time they saw each other was in early January. They were in a crowded gym, at a middle school basketball game in which Hobby scored 28 points. Jordan walked in with his notepad. Sitting down next to Zoe, he told her that he’d come to report on the game.

She asked, “You’ve been demoted?”

He said, “My sportswriter quit.”

She said, “You spell our last name A-L-I-S-T-A-I-R.”

He said, “Yes, I know how to spell your name.”

And in this way everything returned to normal. The night in the new December snow was tucked away somewhere deep inside Zoe. She was sure that Jordan treasured that night also, but she was equally sure they would never speak of it again.

Fast forward: June 29, not of that year but of the following one. The twins were fifteen years old. Zoe traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to watch Hobby play baseball in the Cape and Islands All-Star Tournament. She had reserved a room at the Charlotte Inn as a treat for herself and Penny. She knew that booking such lavish accommodations made her seem snooty (the rest of the parents were staying up the street at the Clarion), but she had been doing this All-Star thing since Hobby was nine years old, and she was tired of weekends away that included overly chlorinated indoor
pools and communal “dinners” consisting of bad pizza and margaritas from a can. She still had some of the money left to her by her parents, though she didn’t broadcast that fact; she constantly had to reassure herself that it was nothing to be
ashamed
of. She was going to get a nice room for her and her daughter, and they were going to have a nice dinner. Let the other parents talk.

But then Penny didn’t come with her. Annabel Wright was having a birthday, and her parents had gotten tickets to see
Mamma Mia
in Boston and invited Penny to go.

Even better, Zoe thought guiltily. She would luxuriate in the room at the Charlotte Inn all by herself. She would light candles and read in the clawfoot tub. She would order room service from L’Etoile. She would sleep naked between the luscious 1000-thread-count sheets.

She thoroughly enjoyed step one: she soaked in the peony-scented water and read the final chapters of John O’Hara’s
Appointment in Samarra
by the light of three beeswax tapers that she’d asked the front desk to place in her room. She washed the dust and the sweat of the ball field off her skin and took breaks between pages to remember Hobby on the mound, the lean, graceful form of him throwing fire at the alternately eager and fearful batters from Harwich, South Plymouth, and the Vineyard. Nantucket had won all three games for the first time in its forty-year history of playing in the Little League. Hobby had pitched a no-hitter, and over the course of the three games he had gone nine for twelve as a batter, including two home runs. After each game Zoe had watched her son accept handshakes from the coaches of the other teams. She studied Hobby closely: he was grinning but not gloating. He was a good kid. Zoe imagined him at that very minute devouring spare ribs and potato salad at a barbecue with the other teams. He was spending the night with the family of the Vineyard’s first baseman, in Oak Bluffs.

As Zoe climbed out of the tub and reached for her waffled robe,
her cell phone rang. Penny, she thought, calling to tell her about the musical. But when she looked at the display, she saw it was Jordan.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m on the Vineyard.”

“I know,” he said. “I am too.”

“You are?” she said.

He told her he had come over that afternoon for a fund raiser for a Democratic congressional candidate—Kirby Callahan, Zoe knew of him—and that afterward he’d met Joe Bend, the publisher of the
Vineyard Gazette,
at the Navigator for drinks, which had turned into a sail on Joe’s sloop. Jordan had then headed to the airport to catch the six-thirty plane, but he’d missed it. So now he was stuck.

“You’re at the airport?” Zoe asked. She checked the clock in her room. It was five minutes past seven.

“Turns out that was the last plane,” he said. “So I’m at the Wharf Pub.”

“In Edgartown?” Zoe said. It was right down the street.

“Come meet me,” he said. He sounded drunk, which was novel. He always drank beer and water side by side so as not to get “carried away,” and he always limited himself to two beers. On special occasions he might have a third beer, but by “special occasion” he meant Christmas, or the Super Bowl. At dinner parties he had one glass of wine.

“Um,” she said. The menu for L’Etoile was spread open on the bed. Zoe had already decided on a bottle of the Cakebread chardonnay, the prosciutto-wrapped watermelon and haloumi cheese appetizer, the softshell crab entree, and the grilled pineapple with macadamia crunch ice cream for dessert. Was she supposed to give all that up?

She met him at the bar of the Wharf Pub. He was drinking something amber-hued in a highball glass.

“What is that?” she said.

“Glenmorangie.”

“Scotch?” she said. “You?” She gave him the once-over. He was in a navy blazer and tie, a snappy blue- and-white-striped shirt, crisp white pants, his Gucci loafers worn without socks. She rarely got to see him this dressed up, and she had never seen him drinking scotch. She gamely took the bar stool next to him and ordered a glass of Sancerre; her regret over the missed softshell crab faded away. She ordered a lobster roll with french fries and an extra side of coleslaw.

“Have you eaten anything?” Zoe asked.

He bobbed his head. “I had a cracker on the boat.”

She ordered a lobster roll for Jordan as well. “Where are you staying tonight?” she asked.

“Campground.”

“Seriously?” she said.

“Seriously,” he said. “I checked with the Chamber of Commerce. Every hotel room on the island is booked.”

She studied him. “How did you know I was here?”

He snorted. “I run a newspaper. I know everything. Cape and Islands Babe Ruth All-Star tournament this weekend, where else would you be? Plus, Penny told me.”

Of course. Penny would spew forth all of Zoe’s business without giving it a second’s thought. “Did she tell you where I was staying?”

“The Charlotte Inn,” he said. “Fancy.”

“Lap of luxury,” she said. “I’m not sure why I’m sitting here, eating with you.”

“Because you love me,” he said. Something about the way he said this made Zoe turn. His voice was tender instead of teasing. There was only a quarter inch of scotch left in his glass. Zoe didn’t think it was the alcohol talking, though certainly two or three or six Glenmorangies had eased the way for those words. Zoe saw
that she had a choice: she could either laugh the words off or affirm them.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

He pushed his glass away. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” He stood up and threw a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

She remained planted on her stool. So many years, and now, out of the blue, he was… what?

He stared at her. “Zoe,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and she followed him out.

She remembered the kissing that night, and she was certain that half a world away, wherever Jordan was now and whatever he was doing, if he was asked about that night on Martha’s Vineyard, what he would remember was also the kissing. It might have been the influence of their younger counterparts, Penny and Jake, at work. Zoe and Jordan had been witness to the sweet urgency of their lips and tongues, their desire to taste each other, to consume each other. It was a powerful narcotic, kissing. Zoe and Jordan were lying on top of the field of white cotton that was her sumptuous hotel bed; they were hidden from the eyes and ears of Nantucket, from their children and from their friends. It was just the two of them and the history of their friendship that night.

Later, after Jordan fell asleep—no campground for him—Zoe picked up the phone and ordered the softshell crabs.

And later still—at two or three in the morning, when Jordan awoke and croaked that he needed a glass of water, and Zoe, unused to slaving over anyone except her children and uninclined to begin now, lay silent and still until Jordan fended for himself by sucking from the bathroom spigot—they talked.

Zoe said, “Question.”

Jordan returned to bed with her wine glass, which he had filled with water. He said, “I took six Advil. Shoot.”

She said, “Did you miss that plane on purpose?”

He said, “I missed the plane legitimately. But I lied about calling the Chamber of Commerce. I didn’t even look for a room. I knew you were here, and I wanted to be with you.”

“Oh,” Zoe said.

“Even if you made me sleep on the floor,” he said. He rolled over so he was facing her. “I have been lonely for you for so long.”

“You mean just lonely,” Zoe said.

“No,” he said. “I mean lonely for you.”

In the morning, sunshine streamed through the windows, and Zoe heard birds in the garden outside, and there was a knock at the door: the coffee she’d ordered from room service, before knowing about Jordan, for seven o’clock. She opened the door wide enough only to get the tray through. Jordan was an unidentifiable lump in the bed.

She poured coffee—real, percolated coffee, with real cream. The other baseball parents would be drinking the drip stuff if they were lucky, and instant with creamer if they were not. For some reason this thought threw Zoe into a panic.

What had she done?
She had slept with Jordan Randolph, another woman’s husband. Not only had she betrayed Ava, she had also betrayed her kids, she had betrayed the community, the island. How could she sit at Hobby’s game today and cheer with the other parents? What if one of them had been at the Wharf Pub last night and seen her and Jordan there together? That would be far worse than their being spotted together anywhere on Nantucket, especially when paired with the knowledge of Zoe’s fancy hotel room at the Charlotte Inn. What if someone had seen them hurrying up Main Street?

“Jordan,” Zoe said sharply.

Jordan sat bolt upright in bed, a glazed look in his eyes. He had no idea where he was, Zoe could tell. Oh God, this had been such a mistake. He reached for his glasses, and when he could see her, he smiled.

She said, “You have to get out of here.”

He frowned. “Okay.”

“And this can never, ever happen again.”

His frown grew deeper. “Okay,” he said.

She sat next to him, on the edge of the bed. She reached out and pushed his hair out of his face. She loved him, and she knew he loved her, but come on—if everyone slept with the person he or she had secretly fallen in love with, the world would be chaos.

“You have to promise me—” She stopped. She wouldn’t put the onus on him. She started again. “We have to promise each other that we won’t let this happen again, okay?”

“Okay,” Jordan said.

But of course, they didn’t keep that promise.

There had been good days with Jordan and there had been bad days. They developed a routine of keeping Tuesday and Thursday mornings just for themselves, and those mornings became anticipated and sacred. When they had to skip a day for one reason or another—Jordan had a meeting he couldn’t miss, or one of the kids was home sick from school—Zoe felt her world tip off kilter. They saw each other in public too, sometimes in the company of Al and Lynne Castle, and every once in a while Ava would emerge from the house to attend a school function or other event, and Zoe would be treated to the sight of the incredibly beautiful, broken woman she was betraying.

It was usually after seeing Ava and Jordan together that Zoe would try to end the relationship. She would call Jordan’s cell phone and say the predictable things to his recording: “I can’t do this anymore, it’s not fair to Ava, it’s not fair to me or to you or to the
kids. If you’re going to stay married, then stay married. But you can’t have us both, Jordan.” She would pause dramatically, then shout,
“You can’t have us both!”

She had broken up with him at least a dozen times in this way.

It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning in Perth. What would Jordan be doing now? She had no idea.

Their longest breakup had lasted eighteen hours. It happened on September 30, which was Jordan and Ava’s wedding anniversary. Zoe had respectfully kept her silence that day—no texts to Jordan, no phone calls. She was the one who had, in the preceding days, encouraged Jordan to mark the occasion with a card or flowers or dinner out at Le Languedoc, which had once been Ava’s favorite restaurant. Jordan had protested: Ava didn’t want to mark the occasion, he said. All she wanted was to be in Australia. All she wanted was Ernie back. Zoe acknowledged that this was probably true, but still she prodded him to do something special. She was talking out of guilt; she wanted him to celebrate the marriage in order to mask the fact that he was betraying it. But then, when the day itself arrived, Zoe experienced a gripping jealousy. Jordan would bring Ava breakfast in Ernie’s nursery, she imagined. They would make love. Zoe actually retched into the toilet at the thought, then wanted to slap herself for being so hypocritical. When, at four o’clock, Jordan texted and asked her to meet him at the now-closed snack shack at Dionis Beach, she couldn’t get there fast enough.