The Love Season (23 page)

“What happened?” Pierre said. His voice had the lilt of a flowery accent. From the Caribbean, Renata thought.

“Hit in the head with her board,” Miles said. “She went down and it took a while for someone to find her. She was under for almost three minutes, they think. But she’s breathing now. Unconscious, though, and they said maybe brain damage.” At this, Miles teared up. Pierre put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, man, it’s okay.” “Okay” sounded like “okee.”

Renata joined them. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Renata. I’m the one who called you.”

Pierre and Renata shook hands. Renata watched their two clasped hands, one huge and dark, one skinny and sunburned. Her qualms subsided a bit. Pierre seemed very capable.

“They need her date of birth, her age, stuff like that,” Renata said. “And do you know how to reach her parents?”

“I have it all in my files,” he said. “At the bar. I have her tax information and her emergency contact. I’ll go get it.”

“Thank God,” Renata said. “Thank God you came.”

“Don’t thank me. I love the girl.” He said this simply and sincerely, and Renata was helpless to do anything but nod along in agreement. One hour she had known the woman and she had felt Sallie’s pull.

“Excuse me!”

The three of them turned. Admitting Nurse had come out from behind her desk and was approaching in what looked like an official way. Her face said nothing good. “I have something to tell you.”

She’s dead
, Renata thought. The floor under her feet moved and she fell toward the chairs. Pierre caught her arm.

“Whoa!” he said.

“Ms. Myers is being helicoptered to Boston,” the admitting nurse said. “She needs help we aren’t equipped to give her here.”

“Where in Boston?” Pierre said.

“Mass General.”

“Okee,” he said. He pulled out his keys. “I’m going to get the information. Her emergency contact. Okee? I’ll be back in five.”

Miles sank into a chair. “Boston?” he said.

Admitting Nurse repeated herself, using different words. “The care is much better there…the equipment more sophisticated…not even in the same league…”

Renata followed Pierre out the automatic door, but whereas he headed into the parking lot and climbed into a Toyota Land Cruiser, Renata just stood on the hot sidewalk and turned, slowly, in circles.

She heard the helicopter before she saw it—a great roar followed by a
hammering. It sounded like machine-gun fire. And then, several seconds later, Renata saw it rising, straight up, as though it were being pulled by an invisible hand. It hovered above the hospital for a few seconds, long enough for Renata to think,
Sallie
. And then, like a dog following a scent, the helicopter dipped its nose and flew away.

Even with Sallie gone, Renata was hesitant to leave. If she stayed at the hospital, there might be something else she could do. Miles sat slumped in the chair like he was planning on making it his permanent home.

“What should we do?” Renata asked.

“Once Pierre comes back, we’ll call her parents,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”

“We could go to Boston. We can be there when she wakes up,” Renata said.

“Are you kidding?” Miles said. “Why would you want to do that? You don’t even know her.”

Renata took the seat next to his and lowered her voice. “She asked me to keep an eye on her,” she said. “And I didn’t.”

Miles crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if you had seen her go down, there was nothing you could have done. You weren’t going to be able to find her any faster than the guys who were out there did.”

This sounded like an easy answer, but Renata was grateful for it. “You don’t think?”

“There was nothing we could have done,” Miles said. “And there’s nothing we can do now except call her parents.”

“Right.”

“You should go,” he said. “I’ll wait for Pierre.”

“Go where?” Renata said.

“Back to the house.”

“I’ll just wait for you,” she said.

“I’m not going back there,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I quit.”

“What?” Renata said.

Miles had his chin tucked to his chest and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Just go home,” he said. “Please.”

“How?” Renata said.

“Call your boyfriend,” Miles said. Renata had already realized that her love affair with Miles was over, but his words stung nonetheless.

“Fine,” Renata said. “Do you have money for the phone?”

He wiggled a finger into the tiny Velcro pocket inside his bathing suit and produced fifty cents. He told her the number of the house.

Renata didn’t want to call the house, she was afraid to talk to Cade, she wanted to quit, like Miles, but she had no choice in the matter. She located a bank of phones and made the call.

An unfamiliar voice answered the phone. “Driscoll residence.”

Renata paused. Who was it? Then she thought,
Nicole
. “May I please speak to Cade?” Renata said. “This is Renata calling.”

Ten minutes later, Cade pulled up to the emergency room entrance in the family’s Range Rover. Renata had spent those minutes trying to piece together a plausible story, but in the end she decided to just tell him the truth, minus the part where she had sex with Miles. Cade got out and opened the passenger door for Renata, though he didn’t speak to her or touch her. She hadn’t seen him since the night before—it seemed like years. She was startled by how handsome he was, how upright with his military-school bearing, his perfect posture. He had taken a shower. His
hair was damp and freshly combed, and he was wearing one of his beautifully tailored shirts, blue, with a white windowpane pattern. His mouth was a grim line. Renata felt like she had skipped school and now had to face the truant officer, the principal, her father. She was afraid that once she started to speak, she would never stop.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
.

He pulled out of the hospital parking lot, the only sound in the car the ticking of the turn signal. Cade’s window was down; the air felt good. Renata tried to imagine what Action might say in this situation.
What are you feeling sorry for? He doesn’t own your ass!

In her nervousness, Renata selected exactly the wrong words. “I’m starving.”

Cade turned to her with a look on his face like he just could not believe it.

He’s not the boss of you
, Renata heard Action say.
Why is he all of a sudden acting like he’s the boss of you?

“Well, I am,” Renata said. “I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

“You ate a banana,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“True,” she said. “I ate a banana.” She wondered how he knew this. Did Suzanne
count
her bananas? Did she hunt through the trash for the peel? Was there closed-circuit TV footage that showed Renata throwing the banana and breaking the bud vase? On the road, they passed a group of bikers wearing fluorescent yellow T-shirts. Cade slowed down, then stopped at the intersection so the bikers could pass. Ever the gentleman. He took a left when Renata suspected that home was to the right.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“For a drive,” he said. “I’d like you to explain yourself.”

Now Renata was the one with the incredulous face. Explain herself? He spoke like he was indeed her father, like he did indeed own her ass. She had to give him something, some reason for her absence, some
excuse. She’d had a plan a minute ago, but that was before he pulled up and she had to confront the disappointment on his face. What had her plan been? To tell him the truth? Was she nuts?

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“That’s bullshit!” he shouted. The veins in his forehead were popping. Renata had never seen him this angry before, and certainly not at her. In fact, in the ten months of their dating, they’d had only one argument. There was a night when Cade’s parents had asked them for Sunday dinner at the apartment on Park Avenue—Cade’s aunt and uncle were visiting from California—but Renata decided to go with Action to her parents’ house for Chinese food instead. Cade had pleaded, and when Renata turned him down he was exasperated and disappointed; a long conversation about Renata’s priorities ensued. But there hadn’t been any shouting. “You never showed up at lunch! You left my mother
stranded
at the yacht club.”

Renata nearly laughed. It was impossible to strand Suzanne Driscoll; the woman had three thousand friends.

“So when we got back from our sail, my mother went on and on about how you’d stood her up, how you never showed and never phoned to explain. But she was worried, too, and so we all went home to figure out
where Renata was
, and Nicole informed us that she passed you and Miles on the road in Miles’s Saab. She told us it looked like you were going to the
beach
.” He smacked his hands against the inside of the steering wheel so violently that Renata feared the air bag would explode. “How do you think it made me feel to know that my girlfriend, my
fiancée
, blew off lunch with my mother so she could gallivant around the island with the
help?
”

The help?
Renata could hear Action’s voice loud and clear.
The Driscolls have servants. They have slaves
.

“You went sailing,” Renata said. Her voice was calm and even. How this was possible she had no idea, but she was grateful. “I figured you’d be gone all day.”

“Not all day,” he said. “We were back at two. Two thirty.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going,” she said. “You didn’t leave me a note. You just took off.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound at all sorry. Renata let the words hang in the air of the car so he could hear his insincerity. “It was important to my father.”

“What about what was important to me?” Renata said. “You brought me to Nantucket and then you left me to fend for myself.”

“We spent yesterday together,” Cade said. “All day yesterday. And it’s not like I
abandoned
you. My mother said she’d take you to lunch.”

“You said we were going to the beach. I was looking forward to it. I didn’t want to have lunch with your mother.”

“Nice,” Cade said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. You should have told me you were going sailing.”

“I didn’t know until this morning.”

“You could have left me a note.”

Cade snapped his fingers fiercely, like a magician breaking a spell. “It’s not going to work, Renata.”

“What?”

“You’re trying to make it seem like
I
did something wrong.
I
did not do anything wrong. You are the one who disappeared.”

They were quiet for a while as they rolled down the street. The story of Renata’s day filled her until she thought she would burst. Cade prided himself on being reasonable, tolerant, on being able to place himself in other people’s shoes. That was what he did best. That was why she loved
him. And yet she knew there was no way to explain her afternoon to Cade so that he’d understand.

“Why did you go with Miles?” Cade asked. He swallowed; his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. Another man would have been jealous, but Cade had skipped over jealous and gone right to hurt. He was hurt.

“I wanted to go to the beach,” she said. “He was going. He invited me to join him. He said we’d be back by three. But things happened.”

“What kind of ‘things’?” Cade said.

“We picked up a girl. Sallie Myers. She’s a friend of his. She came to the beach with us and she went surfing.”

“What did you and Miles do?” Cade asked.

“Sat on the beach and watched her.”

“Is that his shirt you’re wearing?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you wearing his shirt?”

“Because I was getting sunburned. I forgot to put on lotion.”

“That wasn’t too smart.”

“I know,” Renata said. She nearly said,
Nothing happened between me and Miles
. But Renata couldn’t bring herself to lie. Only when Cade out-and-out accused her would she out-and-out deny it. She sighed. The sunburn hurt, she felt like she had a fever, she was suffering from guilt at a ten, she was hungry, her throat was dry and sore from vomiting, and she was tired. She had a headache. “Sallie got hit in the head with her board. She went under. It took a few minutes to find her. When they brought her out, she wasn’t breathing. The paramedics came. They took her to the hospital. They asked Miles and me to follow with Sallie’s stuff. We didn’t know how to reach her parents. I called her boss and he showed up. Then they sent her in a helicopter to Mass General in Boston. Miles
decided to stay at the hospital until everything was settled. I should have stayed, too, but I didn’t. I called you. End of story.”

“Is it?” he said.

“No,” she said. “Actually, it’s not. There’s something else I have to tell you.”

He took his eyes off the road to look at her.

“We went to Madequecham Beach. And on the road that leads to the beach, we saw a white cross. It was a cross for my mother.”

Cade knit his eyebrows. “What?”

“There was a white cross on the side of the road. Marking where someone had died. My mother was killed in Madequecham. The cross was for my mother.”

“Are you sure about that?” Cade said.

“I’m sure.”

“Did the cross say anything?” Cade asked. “Did it have your mother’s
name
on it?”

“No, but it was for her.”

“How do you know?”

“I could tell,” Renata said. “I could feel it.”

“Oh, honey,” he said. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Was he sorry? His sympathy sounded forced to Renata, just as it did every time she brought up her mother’s death. Like when she told him the story of her high school graduation, her father walking up to the podium with an armful of American Beauty roses to thunderous applause.
Everyone felt sorry for me, because I had no mother
, Renata said.
Why do you look at it that way?
Cade said.
They clapped because they were proud, and impressed
. He didn’t get it. He could cluck and apologize all he wanted, but he didn’t understand what it was like to be her and he never would. Even now, he couldn’t get that patronizing look off his face, as
though Renata had told him she believed in UFOs, or Santa Claus. She was prepared to hate him at that moment.
Hate
him. She was ready to put down her window and throw her twelve-thousand-dollar diamond ring into the high brush at the side of the road, to spit the truth in Cade’s direction:
I had sex with Miles in the sand dunes. He was bigger than you
. But then, in an instant, Cade turned back into his usual, princely self.