The Castaways (18 page)

We have to support Greg,
Jeffrey said.
He needs us.

Delilah was furious. Whereas Tess was heartbroken, devastated, incredulous, and confused, Delilah was just angry. She believed April Peck.

Greg said,
No one at home wants to hear me play.

True.

Greg tasted like beer.

True.

Greg played her “Tiny Dancer.” This was Greg’s favorite song. It was his theme song. It was the best song in his repertoire, his sexiest, most soulful song. It was the song he sang when he wanted something from his audience. It was his seduction song.

Greg said,
Please don’t leave. I need… I need… I need…

What?

Delilah knew what the next word was. He had said it to her only a few weeks before.

Something.

Greg was suspended from his teaching position for two weeks. “Suspended” was the word that went around town, with all its negative connotations. Greg was a restless teenage boy who had gone looking for trouble and found it. The school administration called the suspension a “temporary leave of absence.”

Dr. Flanders, the superintendent (who, Delilah knew through Thom and Faith, had more than a few skeletons dangling in his own closet), said, “Mr. MacAvoy is taking a leave of absence while we sort the matter out.”

April Peck took a “leave of absence” also. Her mother, Donna Peck, who had encouraged April to confront the administration, whisked her away to Hawaii. The Four Seasons, Maui.

Delilah felt betrayed. Greg needed “something,” but why did that “something” have to be April Peck, a seventeen-year-old siren with a voice that was a cross between Renee Fleming’s and Alicia Keys’s? April Peck was too obvious. She showed up at nine o’clock on a Sunday night, a contestant from a wet T-shirt contest and crying to boot, and Greg didn’t have the willpower or the common sense to kick her out?

Well, he said he did, but Delilah didn’t believe him.

I need… I need… I need…

What Delilah thought was,
He was supposed to need me.

What certain people knew (Delilah, Jeffrey, Addison, and Phoebe) was that the Chief had had a private chat with Dr. Flanders on Greg’s behalf. The two men had met in a secret chamber at the police station. The Chief either slipped Flanders the equivalent of a maitre d’s fifty-dollar bill or he exerted his considerable authority. The Chief talked to Flanders as a favor to Andrea, who wanted it for Tess, who wanted it for her kids.

This has to get swept under the rug. He can’t lose his job. What will we do for money? He has to be fully exonerated.

And in fact the school administration decided to believe Greg. Not in absolute terms, perhaps, but enough to salvage his job and dismiss April Peck from the High Priorities. Both Donna Peck and Derek Foster, April’s boyfriend, protested this ruling, but they had no clout. Greg had tenure, he had worked in the school for twelve years without incident, he was the father of two young children, he was well respected and well liked in the community, his wife was a teacher in the district, he was a fine musician and an all-around asset to the music department, and the High Priorities were a source of local pride: they had won competitions at the state and national levels; they had traveled to Italy and Luxembourg.

And there was the chief of police factor.

And what the administration knew that no one else did was that the high school phys ed teacher, Bob Casey, had long been complaining to the superintendent’s office that April Peck was lascivious, her behavior in school inappropriate and dangerous to teachers who were only trying to help her.

And and
and!
When the superintendent and his “inquiry team” asked April Peck which book she had gone to retrieve from her locker on the night in question, Sunday, October 23, April Peck floundered.

“Which
book?
”

“That’s the question, Miss Peck. Which book were you coming to school to get?”

“You mean the title?”

The inquiry team frantically scribbled notes.

She said, “Why do you want to know that?”

“It’s just a question,” Flanders said. “We’re asking you the title of the book you came to get.”

Finally she said,
“A Separate Peace.”

Which was required reading for freshmen. Not seniors.

With news of this prime-time flub, the plaintiff caught in a lie, Greg crowed his innocence with a previously unseen confidence and vigor.
The girl’s a liar! She’s been lying all along!

What Delilah chose to believe was that Greg was both lying and telling the truth, as was April. The truth fell somewhere in between. The truth was an amalgam of his details and hers. But the truth had been burned in the incinerator, dumped in the ocean a hundred miles off the coast. They would never know the truth.

For weeks and then months, Delilah was cool and distant with Greg. She had been denying him for years, yes, but for all of those years she had been in love with him. Surely he realized this? Surely he understood that turning to April Peck would wound her? The cocktail napkins and cardboard coasters that came to her now said,
Do you still hate me?

Onstage, he said,
This song is for you, Ash
. And it was Natalie Merchant’s “Kind and Generous.” Or it was “Landslide,” Delilah’s all-time sentimental favorite.

In February, once the matter was dead and buried in the public eye and almost so among the eight of them, Delilah said, “You had everyone else fooled, but not me.”

And he said, “That’s too bad. You’re the only person who matters.”

Which sounded like total bullshit, but she was won over anyway.

If the story had ended there, it would still have been awful, but ultimately it would have been forgivable. It would have been catalogued under
We all fuck up. So what?

But then.

Fast-forward almost as far as you could go (there was an end point now, because Greg was dead), to the night before Greg died. Another Sunday night. It was now June 19, and the Begonia was filled with tourists whom Delilah didn’t know. It was a blah night; Delilah was feeling a little flat, a little premenstrual, a little down. Greg and Tess’s anniversary was the following day, they were going on a sail to the Vineyard, they were taking a champagne picnic, Greg was taking his guitar, he had written Tess a song, they were going to stay overnight in a Relais & Chateaux property. Fabulous.

Would Delilah watch the twins while they were gone?

Delilah had a Cinderella complex going; her ego was hurt, and her heart, and her hopes. Nine months earlier Greg’s marriage to Tess had been looking like a terminal case, but now here it was, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes. She pretended to be happy for them, but she wasn’t.

At five minutes to ten, April Peck walked into the Begonia. Delilah nearly stumbled in her very high and wicked Jimmy Choos. She was surprised the alarms weren’t going off. The little-lying-bitch alarms.

Delilah rushed her. April was wearing a shell-pink slip dress embroidered all over with tiny flowers and a pair of expensive-looking silver stilettos. She looked stunning and mature and confident—nothing like the other girls who had tried to pass themselves off in here. If Delilah hadn’t known better, she would have said the girl was of age, or close enough to let slide. But she did know better.

“The kitchen just closed, April,” Delilah said. “And you’re underage. So I can’t let you in.”

April stared. “How do you know my name?”

Delilah stared back. What was the savvy answer? The truth? They lived on an island where everyone sort of knew everyone else. Delilah and Jeffrey went to all of the High Priorities concerts to support Greg, so Delilah supposed the first time she had seen April Peck was in the high school auditorium two springs earlier. Even among all the lovely songbirds, April Peck had stood out. She was the most beautiful of the beautiful, and she had a solo in “Fire.” Her voice had been rich and smoky and simmering and strong. Before all this shit with Greg, April Peck had been the kind of teenager adults noticed because she had star quality. And after all this shit with Greg, Delilah was mortified to admit, she had stalked April Peck a time or two.

Once she had seen April standing in front of the magazine rack at the Hub (paging through
Elle
—predictable), and Delilah had lingered on the other side of the store, fingering the polished shells they sold from barrels. She studied April Peck, she deconstructed her: the hair, the jeans, the ass, the breasts, the lips (moving ever so slightly as she read, which made Delilah feel sorry for her). April’s cell phone rang—it sounded like the bells of Westminster Abbey—and April answered in her silk-sheets voice. “Allo?”

She left the store, and Delilah followed her. April Peck was fascinating. Why? She was the object of Greg’s desire. Greg had been so bitter and banged up on that Sunday night in October that he might have made a pass at anyone. But it had been April Peck for good reason. She was flawless. Delilah allowed herself a few seconds of sheer envy, then decided she would find a flaw. She followed April Peck up Main Street. April climbed into a white Jeep Cherokee while she was still on the phone. She backed up without looking in her rearview mirror and nearly rammed into a guy in a Ford F-350. The guy opened his window to shout, but then he saw April and whistled instead.

There you had it.

How do I know your name?
Delilah thought.
When you pulled a stunt like you did with Greg, you instantly became famous.
Surely April realized that. Still, the question threw Delilah. It made her feel defensive and weirdly at a disadvantage. She knew April Peck, but April Peck did not know her. April Peck was a celebrity and Delilah was a nobody. But this was a ploy by April Peck, a stall tactic.

“I can’t let you in,” Delilah said. “You’re underage.”

“No, I’m not,” April said.

“You—”

April opened her straw clutch purse and produced an ID. A Massachusetts license that furnished her name, April Peck, her address, 999 Polpis Road, and her birth date, June 1, 1988. Which made her twenty-one years and eighteen days old. Delilah peered at the license closely. It was a fake, of course. It looked real, but it was fake.

“You’re handing me a fake ID?”

“It’s not fake. It’s real. I’m twenty-one.”

Delilah laughed. “You just graduated from high school. I know who you are, April, and I know how old you are.”

“It’s a long story,” April said wearily. “I don’t need to eat. I ate. I just want to sit and listen to Greg play.”

Greg.
That was a nice touch, calling him Greg. Delilah was wearing a Diane von Furstenberg dress that put her boobs on magnificent display. (When she’d walked into the Begonia earlier that evening, Greg had said, “Would you wear that dress every night for the rest of your life? Please?”) But the dress also stretched tight against the premenstrual bloating at her abdomen. Compared to April Peck in her sleek size zero, Delilah felt like a lumpy cow. She crossed her arms.

“I’m not letting you in.”

April Peck exhaled in one long stream, to let the world know she was growing impatient. “Call the police. Have them run the license.” She stared defiantly at Delilah. “Be my guest. I’m serious.”

Delilah had been fantasizing about a showdown, but now that it was happening, she was uncomfortable. She had been ambushed; she didn’t have her footing. It was a tug of war, and Delilah was about to end up facedown in the mud.

There was a hand on her back. Greg.

“Let her in,” he said.

Delilah turned to him, stunned.

“She’s not of age,” Delilah said.

“Delilah,” Greg said. “Let her in.”

April sidestepped her way around Delilah and walked into the bar. She took a seat, alone, at the table closest to the stage. Delilah felt like she was watching a horror film. Greg followed April and talked with her for a minute. April said something, and he laughed. He laughed! Then he climbed up onstage, and with the predictable toss of his hair, he sat down in the chair and started singing.

Delilah never drank during service. It was a good rule, adhered to even when Addison and Phoebe were in, or the Chief, even when a table full of college boys offered to buy her what they called a glass of “chardonnay wine.” But now Delilah hip-checked Graham aside and poured herself a goblet of cabernet and a shot of Wild Turkey and carried both of them to the ladies’ room. She locked herself in the handicapped stall and threw back the whiskey first—awful—then chased it with a deep swallow of wine.

This was hideous, right? Greg had trampled Delilah’s authority; he had humiliated her. And for whom? For April Peck bin Laden, the lying bitch seductress with her fake ID. The very same woman—girl!—who had trashed his marriage and his reputation. She had nearly cost him his job, and his life here, and yet there was Greg defending her, ushering her in, then laughing at whatever insipid thing she’d said. He was up onstage playing for her now.

Delilah strained to listen from the confines of the bathroom stall. “Tiny Dancer.” Impossible. But yes, he was singing it. He had not sung that song since the mess with April Peck had occurred back in the fall. But he was playing it now. Delilah sucked down more wine, but the wine only fueled the fire of her rage. It was absconding with the last shreds of patience and understanding that she had left. Should she call the Chief? Have him send someone down to charge April with identity fraud? Should she call Tess? And say,
Greg is onstage right now singing that song to April Peck.

The door to the ladies’ room swung open and Delilah could hear Greg singing more clearly. The second verse.

The head waitress, Amelia, who was a real hard-ass, barked, “Delilah? Are you in here?”

Delilah drank more wine. “Yeah.”

“Are you planning on coming back out?”

Delilah left her wine on top of the toilet paper dispenser. She did not want a scene where April became the adult and Delilah the adolescent.

“Yes,” she said.

April Peck left at midnight, when Greg took his break. She had consumed three glasses of pinot grigio; one of them, Graham told Delilah, had been comped by Greg. April left a huge tip—forty bucks—which made her Queen for a Day in Graham’s mercenary eyes. April had slipped out while Delilah was in the ladies’ room polishing off yet another shot of Wild Turkey chased by yet another goblet of cabernet, and Delilah did not see her go and did not have the opportunity for another parry. Which was good or bad? Good, she decided. She was drunk by closing time; she couldn’t do the counting that cashing out required, and so she had Graham do it and slipped him twenty bucks for the trouble.