A Hundred Summers

“All right,” said Nick. “Palmer, you run across, like I’m throwing to you. Lily, just run straight down the side, the right side. Ten yards and turn around. Hold your hands like this, Lily.” He showed me, making a triangle with his forefingers and thumbs. “Keep your palms soft, your fingers soft. Let the ball do the work. Got it? On three.”

  I had no idea what On three meant. We lined up in the hot sand, Norm and Nick and me on Nick’s right side. Budgie winked one round eye at me. She was sweating, but with a kind of delicate female dewiness, a sheen over her glowing skin. I dug my toes into the sand and waited.

  Nick said something rhythmic and incomprehensible, and all at once we were in motion, Nick stepping back, Norm Palmer shooting forward. I began to run, counting off steps until I reached ten, and I turned around.

  The ball sailed from Nick’s fingers toward me.

  Palms soft, I thought. Fingers soft.

  The ball landed gently in my hands. Without thinking, I turned and darted forward, and there was Budgie, dancing at me, smiling widely, going for the tackle. I started one way, then another.

  “Lily! Over here!”

  Nick was running up on my left side, holding out his hands. I didn’t stop to wonder. I tossed the ball toward him.

  My aim was off, far too high in my exuberance. Nick leaped up into the air, stretching his long body to its limit, exposing the lean muscles of his abdomen beneath the ends of his white shirt. His fingertips grazed the ball. He almost had it.

  But then my vision was obscured by the barreling form of Graham Pendleton, by Graham’s legs driving into the sand and his broad shoulders bent for attack. He caught Nick in midair, right in the ribs, and Nick crashed to the ground.

  The ball made a drunken roll and settled into the sand next to his head.

  FOR A MOMENT, we stood frozen, like actors in a play who have suddenly forgotten the script. We stared together at Nick’s prone body in the sand, at the back of his hair ruffling in the breeze, at his white shirtsleeves and rolled-up trousers and his heels sticking up toward the sun.

  Then Kiki gave a little scream and ran to his side, and everyone jumped into motion. Budgie dropped to her knees and began to wail; Graham swore and put his hands to his head and called for a doctor and swore again. I forced my limbs to action, forced myself toward Nick’s body, to kneel next to him, to grasp his shoulders and turn him over and slap his pale cheeks.

  “He’s breathing,” I heard myself say, quite calm. I looked at Graham. “Go into the clubhouse. Charlie Crofter is playing bridge with my mother. He’s a doctor.”

  Graham took off at a run. I laid out Nick’s limbs with care, put my hand on his chest. His breathing seemed shallow but regular. His eyelids were as still as death over his hazel eyes. “What’s the matter?” whimpered Kiki. “Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s not dead. He’s been knocked unconscious. He’ll be all right,” I said. “He’ll be all right. Won’t you, Nick? Talk to him, Kiki. I’m sure he can hear you.”

  Lord, let him be all right. I’ll do anything. Let him be all right.

  “Nick, wake up,” said Kiki, in a tearful voice, not her own. “Please wake up. It’s Kiki. Please wake up.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t a nurse. My heart was crashing in my ears, but I felt unnaturally calm, almost serene, as if I were in a dream and not myself. I unbuttoned Nick’s shirt and spread it carefully apart. His ribs were already purpling from the force of Graham’s hit. Broken, possibly. I would have to tell Charlie about that.

  “You’re all right, Nick,” I said firmly, quietly, because Kiki was now babbling. “It’s Lily, Nick. It’s your Lilybird, remember? The doctor’s coming. You’ll be all right. You must be all right, do you hear me?” I heard Budgie behind me, still wailing. “Your wife needs you, Nick. Wake up for her.”

  Anything, Lord. Even that.

  I looked over my shoulder. Budgie was crawling in the sand toward us, her mascara running in gritty black streaks from her eyes. I had never seen her cry before, really cry. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I told him to play. It’s my fault. He’s dead, isn’t he? I can’t look.”

  “He’s not dead,” I said crisply. “He’s only unconscious. He’s breathing well. The doctor’s coming.”

  She wrapped her hands around her middle. “It’s my fault, it’s my fault. Oh, God. I can’t look at him like this. I need a drink.”

  I hissed at her, “Pull yourself together, Budgie. You’re his wife, he needs you. Pull yourself together.”

  Kiki was smoothing away Nick’s hair from his forehead. “Wake up, Nick. Wake up, Nick. It’s Kiki, it’s your Kiki. I need you, Nick. Please wake up.”

  Nick’s eyelids flickered.

  A shadow loomed over his face. I looked up and saw Charlie Crofter silhouetted against the sun, breathing hard. “What happened?”

  I made room for him. “We were playing football. He was hit in the ribs and went down. I think he landed on his head. He’s been unconscious. His ribs may be broken.”

  Nick moaned.

  “Ah, that’s it,” said Charlie. He looked at me. “I sent Pendleton for my bag. Keep a lookout, will you? Is Mrs. Greenwald here?”

  “Right here,” said Budgie, wiping her eyes.

  “Mrs. Greenwald, I need you to sit by your husband and talk to him. No, the other side. Somebody get the girl out of the way, for God’s sake.”

  I took Kiki’s hand and drew her gently away. She resisted me. “I want to stay! He needs me!” she said. Her cheeks were gleaming wet, stuck with bits of sand and strands of dark hair.

  “He needs Mrs. Greenwald,” I said, in her ear. “She’s his wife. She’ll let us know how he’s doing. Come along. Let’s give him some air. The doctor’s here, he’ll be fine.”

  I gathered Kiki in my arms and nudged her slowly away and sat with her, rocking her, stroking her hair. She gave way to paroxysms of sobbing, weeping as I had never seen her weep, burying herself in my middle. A hand fell on my shoulder: Aunt Julie.

  “What a to-do,” she said softly, sitting next to us. “Will he be all right?”

  “I’m sure he will. His eyes were already moving when Charlie came up. It happens all the time in football.”

  Graham came over the edge of the dunes, sprinting, a black leather bag in his hand. He brought it to Charlie and opened it for him. I peered between the two of them and thought I saw Nick’s head moving, thought I saw Nick’s eyes open.

  “You see?” I said. “He’s awake.”

  They were pulling Nick upright, Graham and Charlie, until he was sitting in the sand, shaking his head. The blood seemed to drain from my body under the weight of my relief. My heart was still thudding, but slowly now, a measured preternatural cadence, with long, silent gaps between each beat. The same way it once had after making love.

  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  “Lily, I can’t breathe,” said Kiki, and I loosened my arms a fraction.

  “See, darling? He’s sitting up now,” I said. “He’ll be just fine. Just fine.” She started forward, but I held her back. “Not yet. He’ll have to go home and rest. You can visit him later.”

  Kiki sat in my arms, still and silent now, watching Nick with her vivid eyes. They were talking to him, asking him questions. Budgie sat next to him, her head in her knees, weeping. My own eyes ached from dryness.

  Some instinct turned my head in the direction of the clubhouse. A small crowd had gathered on the veranda, arms shading foreheads, watching the scene on the beach. I recognized my mother’s tall plump figure, her white dress and straw hat. She held something in her left hand, a highball glass, probably.

  As I watched, she dropped her arm from her eyes and turned back into the clubhouse. The annual end-of-summer bridge tournament, I remembered, was in full swing.

  GRAHAM STOPPED BY AFTER DINNER, his eyes heavy and his shining hair unnaturally unkempt, as if he’d been running his hand through it all evening.

  “He’s fine now,” he said. “Gav
e us a bit of a scare at first. Didn’t know his own name. Kept muttering nonsense about birds.” He glanced at me and took a drink.

  We were still sitting around the dining room table, Aunt Julie and Kiki and Graham and me. Mother was having dinner at the club tonight, the bridge club dinner. Marelda had just brought in coffee and her famous iced lemon cake for dessert. Graham had taken one look at the refreshments and made straight for the tray of liquors on the sideboard, most of which dated from before the war, except for Mother’s favorites. He poured himself a glass of scotch with no ice and sat down heavily in a chair.

  “But he’s all right now, isn’t he?” asked Kiki, with anxious eyes.

  “Well, his head hurts. And the ribs. Someone’s sitting with him tonight. When you’re concussed you’re supposed to wake up every hour or so, just to be on the safe side.”

  “And Mrs. Greenwald isn’t up to the task?” Aunt Julie lit herself a cigarette.

  “Don’t smoke, Aunt Julie,” I said. “Mother will smell it when she comes back in.”

  “I don’t happen to give a damn. Graham? How is Mrs. Greenwald?”

  Graham drew a circle into the polished wood of the table. “Budgie,” he said, with a slight emphasis, “was understandably distraught and had to be sedated. She’s sleeping now.” He reached for Aunt Julie’s cigarettes and drew one from the pack. Aunt Julie’s lighter lay beside the coffee tray, but he stuck his hand into his pocket and produced his own. His fingers were trembling; it took several tries to light the end.

  “Is Nick sensible?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. Good old Nick. Didn’t want to go to bed, in fact, but everybody insisted. He took the guest room, of course, to avoid disturbing Budgie.” Graham took a drink. “He told me . . .” He shook his head, sucked on his cigarette. “He told me not to worry, that it was his fault, laying himself out like that. Jesus.”

  “It was an accident,” I said swiftly.

  Graham leaned his head into his palms. “Was it?”

  “Of course it was.” I smiled. “Anyway, you can’t hurt Nick. He’s like old leather. Remember how he broke his leg, the first time I came up to New Hampshire? And the next morning, he drove all the way down to Northampton, Massachusetts.”

  Kiki sat up in her chair. “Drove down where? Isn’t that where you went to college? Why did he do that?”

  Graham lifted his head and looked at me. I looked at Kiki. She looked between the two of us.

  Aunt Julie took a long drag of her cigarette, blew out the smoke, and said, “Because Nick used to step out with Lily, a long time ago.”

  Kiki turned to me. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates, as blue-green as the ocean. “Nick was your boyfriend?”

  I put my hands in my lap. “Yes, he was.”

  “But you . . . but . . .” She looked at Aunt Julie, and then at me. Her eyes began to shine and pool. “Why didn’t you marry him?”

  “It’s a long story, sweetheart.”

  She hit my arm. “You could have married him! He could be ours! You chased him away, didn’t you, and then he married nasty Mrs. Greenwald and has to live with her.” She hit my arm again, crying openly now. “He could be living right here, right here. He could be . . . he could be like my father.”

  “Stop it, Kiki.” I grabbed her arms. “Stop it. I know you’re upset.”

  “He could be my father!”

  “You have a father!”

  “No, I don’t! Not a real one. Not one who talks.”

  Graham stood up, grabbed his drink and cigarette, and left the room.

  “Now, look what you’ve done,” I said angrily. I threw Kiki’s arms back at her and fled after Graham.

  I FOUND HIM sitting against the elm tree in the garden, looking across Seaview Bay. I couldn’t really see him in the darkness; the glowing end of his cigarette guided me. I took it from his fingers and stubbed it out in the grass, took the drink and set it aside. I knelt between his spread legs. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  “Yes, it was. I’ve thought it over, looked at it over again in my head, and I’m pretty sure I did it deliberately. Saw old Nick, perfect old Nick, stretching out his soft underbelly, and wham!” He made a swoop of his arm. “Couldn’t resist, could I?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You were playing football, that’s all.”

  “Oh, of course. That’s it.”

  He reached for his drink, but I put my hand around his wrist. “Don’t.”

  “Lucky Nick,” he said. “He’s got his wife head over heels in love with him, and his ex-fiancée, too. Even his own long-lost daughter.”

  “His what?”

  “His daughter.”

  I stared at him, at what I could make out of him in the darkness. The sliver moon picked out the whites of his eyes, the whites of his teeth. My ears buzzed with shock. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Lily. The whole world knows.”

  “Knows what? Knows what, exactly?” The quiver in my voice seemed to belong to another person.

  “That Kiki’s yours. Yours and Nick’s.”

  I shook my head. My numb hand dropped away from Graham’s wrist. “That’s ridiculous. Kiki is my sister. My mother had her. I was right there in the hospital when she was born.”

  Graham gave me a little push and stood up, snatching his drink along the way. “I’m not going to argue. Have it your way.”

  I took his shoulder as he turned away. “Is that what people are saying? Tell me the truth.”

  “For God’s sake, Lily. You only have to look at her. That hair and skin.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I repeated. “Mother’s hair is dark.”

  He said nothing, moved not at all. His breath filled the air between us, scented with cigarettes and scotch whiskey, reminding me of the evening at the roadhouse. His hand touched my chin. “The way you love her, Lily.”

  “I do love her like a daughter. I admit that. I’ve practically raised her by myself. Mother . . . well, you know my mother, she’s not terribly warm. And she was too busy taking care of Daddy, and all her projects. . . .”

  “Ah, God, Lily. Never mind. I just wish somebody loved me like that.”

  I put my hand over his, where it rested on my chin. “Thousands of people love you, Graham. Millions, maybe. You’re a hero.”

  “Do you love me, Lily?”

  “Of course I do.”

  His other hand came up and cupped my cheek. “Enough to marry me?”

  “Graham.” It was so dark. I wished I could see him, but the clouds had covered the moon again, and the house was too far away. His physical beauty was lost to me. I could only smell him, and feel him, and hear him.

  I felt him now, his forehead touching mine. “You bring everything back to life, don’t you, Lily? Your little girl. Nick, there in the sand. So bring me back.”

  “You’re already alive. Too alive, if you ask me.”

  “No, I’m not. I . . . Jesus, Lily. You don’t know the half. I’m not worthy of you, not for a second, but if you’ll just . . . give me a chance, Lily. I swear to God, I’ll be good to you. You’ll make me good, won’t you?”

  “You are good, Graham. You’re a good man. All this summer, you’ve been a perfect gentleman, a . . .”

  “Stop talking, Lily. I can’t listen to you. You’re killing me.” His hands went into my hair, gripping me. His breath came hard against my skin.

  “Easy, now,” I whispered. “Hush. You’ve had too much to drink, Graham. Too much of everything.”

  “Lily.” He kissed my forehead and my cheeks. “If I could just wrest one thing, one thing away from him. Just one thing. Just you.”

  “You have me, Graham.” I put my arms around him. “Shh. You have me. Nick has Budgie, you have me.”

  Graham laughed. “That’s right. Of course. He has Budgie, I have you.”

  I said nothing. I ran my hands along his back, up and down. The muscles flexed beneath my touch.


  “You’re like milk and honey, Lily. Do you know that?” He kissed my mouth. “You’re comfort and joy. You’re the antidote to all evil.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  His fingers worked at my dress, his mouth worked at my mouth. “Yes, you are. My milk-and-honey girl. Serene little Lily.” He dropped to his knees and grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Marry me, for God’s sake. Marry me now.”

  “Stop it, Graham. You’re so terribly drunk.”

  “No, I’m terribly sober. You’re my last goddamned hope, Lily Dane.”

  “Ask me again in the morning.” My half-unbuttoned dress sagged away from my breasts. I held it up with one hand and held Graham’s hand with the other.

  “Will you say yes in the morning?”

  “I might.”

  “Say yes, for God’s sake, Lily. Nick’s married, you can’t have him. Take me instead.”

  I knelt down to face him, holding up my dress, holding up his hand. “What do you really want, Graham? What are you really after? You only think you want me because of Nick. You don’t want a wife, not really.”

  “I need a wife. Someone to keep me on the straight and narrow. I’m so fucking lost, Lily, you don’t even know how much. I need you, Lily. Why won’t you say yes?”

  I put my arms around his neck. “I don’t know.” I kissed him. “I don’t know.”

  Graham’s fingers spread across the bare skin of my back. “I know. Damn it all.”

  We knelt there, clasped, breathing against each other, while my dress hung limp from my shoulders. The insects scraped their wings in the grass around us. Drop by drop, the tension drained away from my limbs, at the warm breadth of Graham’s chest against my cheek, the meditative trace of his hands on my back. A quarter-mile away, Nick lay on the bed in a guest room, ribs aching, head aching, someone waking him every hour. Budgie lay in their bedroom, in an intoxicated sleep, exhausted from hysteria. Both of them seemed very distant now, next to the solid dimensions of Graham Pendleton, muscular and needful, holding me in the darkness like an object of precious value.

  Somewhere in my middle, physical desire began to tug and to melt at the series of barriers I had created there, piece by piece, each one nested carefully within the next. My breasts tingled. I lifted my head and reached high and kissed Graham, pressed my hips against Graham.