Summer Nights

  “To win the race, dummy.”

  She was closer than he had thought, but still he could not see her. Con was wasting valuable time worrying about it; in a race you had to think of your own speed and destination, not somebody else’s. He swam hard. He loved the pull of his own muscles. Con loved athletics. No matter how angry or irritable you were, if you ran hard, fought hard, or hit hard, you felt so much better.

  With each powerful stroke he calmed down.

  After a while he heard noise from Kip. Then she shouted, “I made it, I’m first, Con.” He swam harder but did not touch bottom. Kip splashed loudly as she raced back in for the return swim. He touched sand, staggered onto the beach, and resisted the temptation to cheat. Fully out of the water he yelled back, “Swim harder, Katharine Elliott! You’ll never win this one!”

  He raced back in. It was strangely difficult to get his bearings. The Duet was out of sight, probably by Lincoln Bridge where the water widened and turns were easy. But this was a dark stretch of river, and the few twinkling lights on shore told Con nothing. He swam hard, but nervously. A racer without a goal in sight has no real speed.

  Midriver he stopped. He could hear nothing. “Kip?” he called.

  No answer. Sound carried well over open water. It was not possible that Kip had not heard him. “Kip!” he shouted. No answer.

  Con tread water.

  There was no splashing sound. The river was eerily quiet, smooth as oil slicks.

  “Kip!” he screamed.

  Faintly he could hear water lapping the shore. Faintly, too, the repetitive drone of the Duet’s engines. If Kip was in the river, she, too, was treading water in silence. But Kip never played jokes. She did not have a mischievous bone in her over-achieving body. “Kip?” Con said. “Are you all right?”

  Molly struggled to think up a logical fiction to explain why she was wearing somebody else’s engagement ring. Blaze was already very edgy in this gathering of hostile strangers. If the girl he had just asked to squire him around town was in fact engaged to somebody who was not even here—who had not ever been mentioned—Blaze would vanish like rain in August.

  Blaze didn’t want a girlfriend. He just wanted fun. A temporary companion.

  What is a friend? Molly thought. Do I have to have a yearlong calendar for a boy to qualify? Does he have to include school dances to count? Can you have a ten-day friendship? Would it be a waste of time? Was friendship ever a waste of time?

  She was overwhelmed by a world of school that was gone, and a new world she seemed to have no access to. Thickly Molly Nelmes said, “Oh, this! Oh, Blaze. It’s a good thing you noticed it. I had completely forgotten.”

  Blaze looked at the substantial, glittering diamond. It would be a hard thing for a girl to forget.

  “It’s my friend Emily’s,” Molly said. “She dropped it. I picked it up and put it on my hand for safekeeping.”

  Blaze did not have a girl’s knowledge of rings to realize that dropping one’s diamond ring was a rather unlikely event. He said, “Emily? Didn’t I meet her?”

  “Yes.” Molly jumped up. “I’d better give it back now while I think of it. Come on.”

  What on earth do I say? she thought. What will Em and Matt say back to me? Does Matt even know?

  Blaze took her hand. It was a sexless sort of thing, as if she were the teacher and he the child, and they were on their way to assembly. She yearned for the touch to be something more intense, to be far more than guidance. But what Blaze needed was a friend, not a girlfriend. Molly had been a girlfriend to more than she could count, but a friend—almost never.

  How do I turn nice? Molly thought. Is it like turning a steak on the coals? Are you done on one side and raw on the other?

  They found Emily and Matt alone in the dark beneath the dancers. The drums throbbed, their rhythm meeting the rhythm of the engines, so that the entire lower deck trembled. Molly’s skull trembled with it, and her thoughts jounced.

  She yanked the ring off her finger before Em and Matt noticed her. Blaze was obviously planning to enjoy himself. Probably figured he would be witness to a reunion between fiancée and ring, and everybody would cry with delight and hug each other forever.

  Molly, who could crash any party and split any couple, was shocked to see Matt and Emily. They were leaning on each other, and both their faces were wet, but with whose tears, she could not say. Sharing grief made them impenetrable. She could hardly step toward them. “Emily?” she said in a high voice completely unlike her usual bright, brittle tones.

  Emily stared at her, expressionless. It was worse than a fierce expression. It was dead. Matt simply looked weary, as if he was worn down, and there was nothing left of him.

  “I’m sorry I took so long,” said Molly desperately. “You—you dropped your ring. I picked it up to give you and somehow it slipped my mind. Here it is. I know you must have been worried sick.”

  The ring was in the palm of Molly’s hand. She held it out. The circle of gold gleamed, the diamond facing Matt.

  Emily did not speak, did not reach for her ring, and did not look at any of them.

  It was Matt who, tiredly, took the ring and told Molly how nice of her that was, how thoughtful, how very grateful he and Emily were to her. It sounded like memorized lines from an etiquette book. How to Thank the Person Who Brings Back Your Missing Jewelry.

  Taking a breath so deep it could split lungs, Matt asked if Molly and Blaze would not like to join them.

  “Oh, no, thanks, gee,” said Blaze, horrified, “that’s nice of you, really, another time. Molly and I, well, we just made a special request of the band, and, um—”

  “So we’ll see you later,” finished Molly, and she and Blaze stumbled away.

  Tripping on each other and the shadows, they went back up, into the fresh river air, and the breeze. “What was that all about?” breathed Blaze.

  “I think she broke up with him.”

  “I am so glad,” said Blaze emphatically, “that I am going off to college. If I had to think of things like engagements and diamonds and marriage—” (he said this as if referring to death by dismemberment) “—I would collapse.”

  “So would Matt and Emily, I guess,” said Molly. They walked up to the combo to request “Just the Way You Are,” by Billy Joel.

  She and Blaze danced, but only momentarily. “I’m not in the mood,” said Blaze, so they sat.

  “I’m glad I met you,” he told her. “Westerly doesn’t seem like such a dump anymore.”

  Molly laughed out loud. “Believe me, Blaze, it’s still a dump. But I’m glad I’m the one who cheered it up for you.”

  He talked to her about New York, and college, and courses, but she didn’t listen this time. She was remembering a plan that shot through her head back when she was following Kip, and figuring out that it had to be a surprise party for Anne. She had wanted enough time to buy Anne a good-bye present. Something really meaningful. She had had in mind baby clothes—just to remind the perfect couple of their not so perfect result.

  “…because there’s so much action in a big city, and my parents liked the idea of a small men’s college, but you know how it is…”

  I didn’t do it, Molly thought. I didn’t hurt Anne. I don’t know if I can actually be your basic nice person, but at least I can ease off on being your basic mean person.

  “What are you doing tomorrow, Blaze?” she interrupted him. “You’ve done the river now. Want to do the golf course at the country club?”

  “Don’t know how to golf.”

  “You live in a climate like Arizona and you don’t golf? Sick. We have to fix that.”

  Blazed grinned. “Tomorrow then. Deal.”

  Deal, he said, not date.

  Molly made a deal with herself. One date, one only, with Blaze, before he left. And he had to ask or it didn’t count.

  Chapter 20

  KIP ELLIOTT PAUSED IN midstream to orient herself. Her feet sank. She treaded water loosely.

  S
omething hard and hooked grabbed her left ankle.

  Kip didn’t scream, only because she hated girls who screamed. She jerked her foot frantically and was pulled underwater. Then there was no scream because she had no air to scream with. She fought, hitting water, striking the river, trying to get free.

  Every Jaws, Jaws II, and Jaws III rerun she had ever watched on television played before her. She would have no foot left, there would be blood roiling on the water, and incredible agonizing pain.

  But nothing happened. Her foot remained prisoner and she ran out of air. Kip surfaced, nose barely above water, and sucked in air. Distantly she could hear Con calling her name. She had no time to worry about swimming contests.

  I’m drowning, she thought.

  Something is trying to drown me.

  Kip tried to be rational. This was Westerly River. A flat, boring, current-free river with no menaces whatsoever. Her foot could not be moved. Kip took a deep breath, and ducked back underwater, prickling with terror, her air lasting far less time because fear took a lot of the oxygen for itself. She opened her eyes, but it was black as the sky above and she was blind. She surfaced again.

  She was amazed how weakened she had become in only a few moments, her energy sapped by horror.

  What is happening? Kip thought. She thrashed like an animal in a steel trap, trying to get free. Nothing happened.

  She would have to get down to the level of her own ankle and see. Feel, actually.

  Kip could not bear the thought of losing her fingers as well as her ankle. She found herself reconciled to going through life without her left foot, but a horror of her hands coming off made it impossible to dive down. She jerked herself backward, at every angle, but was pulled below the surface by the relentless grip on her foot.

  A branch, she thought. It’s a tree, washed downstream by the hurricane last fall. Low enough in the water that shallow-bottomed boats like the Duet never touch it, but my foot, pointing down as I tread water, lodged in a branch.

  She pictured the tree, inanimate, un-moving, its own self stuck deeper down in mud. Mud, where it would lay Kip to rest with its ignorant, uncaring power. She imagined its bare branches, the fish swimming among them, the debris of old soda cans and tires caught like her ankle.

  She saw her own death, her own body at the bottom.

  Okay, all I have to do is lower myself, tug at the branches, and get my ankle loose, she said to herself. Piece of cake. Stay calm.

  How easy it is to be the commander and order others to remain calm. How hard to be the one whose life is at stake and must obey the commander who says “Stay calm.”

  Kip dove under, trying to get at her own foot, but the water defeated her and washed her back, swirling her to the side. She might have thought the Westerly had no current, but all rivers flow, and she was very tired.

  Surely just flexing the ankle, first left, then right, would have to free it from whatever notch it was caught in. Surely her own strength was enough to break the water-rotted twig that had her.

  She flung herself in every direction, yanking and kicking and thrashing and wearing herself out. Above water, below water, hands reaching, fingers pulling.

  Once more she heard Con’s voice, and she would have answered him this time if she could, but she could not find the strength.

  She thought of tomorrow’s local paper. She would be a headline. Next fall she would be a warning from the school principal to that year’s students not to take silly risks. And that would be the sum total of Katharine Elliott’s life.

  Anne could not stop pacing around the tiny boat. With every step the Duet diminished, turning from a romantic party ship to a row-boat crammed with strangers.

  And strangers they were.

  She had never felt so isolated.

  How totally your own life contained you, as if you were just so much Pepsi, locked in your own can. You sat on a shelf, and nobody could tell you from any other aluminum can.

  There was Emily with Matt. There was Molly with the new boy. There was Beth Rose with her new boy. Con had literally swum out of her life.

  Until Anne was pregnant, all those eons ago, she had felt like the most Belonging person in school. She belonged to the In group, she belonged to the cheerleading squad. She belonged to the Art Club and she belonged to the concert choir. Most of all, she belonged to Con, and therefore to that enviable group of girls who always had a date and were always wanted.

  Pregnancy made her very different and if you were different you could not belong. She frightened her friends by being what she was, and she terrified Con. Nobody could talk to her and nobody wanted to. She stood alone for a while and then it became unbearable; she accepted the offer of Beth’s aunt to live with her until Afterward.

  She acquired a whole new vocabulary to pretend that nothing was happening. When It was over, she would come home. And they would put It behind her, her mother liked to say.

  But for Anne, It was always there. She carried It with her for nine months and when she signed the papers and gave away the baby she had held only moments, the knowledge of It was just as heavy.

  She, actually. Not it. A little girl.

  All the rest of her senior year Anne did not belong. She tried. Put It behind you, everybody said, and everybody else managed to. Anne did not. She was not another teenage girl; she was a mother herself. She was not Con’s girlfriend, and he was not her date; he was the father of their child.

  To belong—to belong!

  She knew suddenly that the job had appealed to her because in crossing the world among strangers she did not have to pretend to belong, nor strive to belong. She would be isolated, in fact, and people would admire her for it. She and Miss Glynn would be a pair, bound by airline reservations and interview schedules. She would belong to a jet set in motion.

  Even tonight, on this boat, at a party given for her, recipient of gifts, hugs, and kisses, Anne Stephens did not belong. They were all planning next year—dorms, roommates, courses, majors, vacations, letters. Even Emily or Molly, still in Westerly, still belonged. Westerly was always theirs, and they were always Westerly’s.

  The dark of the night and the dark of the river, the dark of the trees that came down the hills and closed in tight ranks along the banks of the river surrounded her.

  And when I come back? Anne thought. Will I belong then? Will they take me back? Will they even be here in order to take anybody back? Will they all belong someplace else, or to somebody else?

  What did it mean to belong? Or not to belong? And how much did she care?

  She thought of the neat pile of passport, airplane tickets, and traveler’s checks lying on her bureau, waiting for morning. In every journey, Anne thought, there is loss.

  She wanted Con fiercely. Not to touch, and impossible to have. Just to be near, and remember when once she had belonged.

  Anne walked back to the rail and said to Beth, “They’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Yes,” Beth said, “we’re starting to worry.”

  “Not to worry,” ordered Jere, hoisting his camera. “They’ll appear the moment I take the lens cap off, I promise you.”

  Molly and Blaze joined them. Molly wanted to suggest that perhaps Kip and Con had decided to spend the night together on Swallow Island, but forced herself not to. Blaze chatted away, about how Molly was taking him to play golf on Sunday and would Jere and Beth Rose like to come along?

  Beth gave Anne—not Molly—a long look.

  I’m not worth looking at? Molly thought, the old rage percolating.

  Jere said eagerly that that would be great, although he’d only been golfing once and would embarrass everybody. “You can’t embarrass me,” Blaze said. “I’ve never been golfing at all.”

  Molly hated how Beth and Anne were carrying on a personal conversation with their eyebrows, darting little looks of scorn Molly’s way, announcing to each other that the idea of spending a Sunday with Molly was pitiful.

  “Beth was telling me about h
ow she’s going to teach sixth grade,” said Jere.

  “We had that conversation, too,” said Blaze.

  Molly almost said how pathetic it was—everybody else discussing college, poor old worthless Beth stuck in elementary school. She curled her tongue on the roof of her mouth to stop herself.

  “Why twelve year olds?” remarked Anne. “I hated sixth.”

  “You get the human body and blood and lungs,” said Beth. “You get control of the multiplication tables at last. You’re the big kids in the elementary school. You put on your first musical and study pyramids. I get all excited thinking about that whole year.”

  They laughed and Beth blushed. “Okay, so it’s not much of a goal when other people want to be Hollywood directors or race car drivers,” she admitted.

  “Who wants to be a race car driver?” Blaze wanted to know.

  “Rumor has it that Matt O’Connor is off to be a member of the pit team for Saylor Oil’s racing cars.”

  Both Blaze and Jere were on their feet. “No! You’re kidding! The lucky guy! I can’t believe it. Which one is Matt O’Connor? I have to talk to him. Point him out!”

  “He’s the one we just talked to,” Molly said.

  Blaze stared at her. “The one you gave the diamond ring back to?”

  Molly nodded.

  Blaze and Jere abandoned Anne, Molly, and Beth Rose. They exploded on Emily and Matt like comets in the sky, shouting, “Really and truly? Pit crew? Races? Indy 500? Saylor Oil?”

  Molly stood alone.

  Anne and Beth drew together.

  Molly felt like somebody from an entirely different race, or planet.

  “What ring?” Anne said.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Molly told her.

  “I’d believe anything disgusting that you could get up to,” Beth Rose snapped. “What on earth do you have to do with Emily’s diamond ring?”

  Molly turned away. Why tell them? They’d never believe it. She’d have to have lawyers, witnesses, sworn depositions, and even then Beth and Anne would refuse to believe that Molly ever did anything except to be mean.