Page 6 of Dead of Summer
Instead, she types,At the pool currently. It’s so pretty here.And then as though to prove it, she takes a photo looking out from the porch. But the picture doesn’t do the place justice at all. The vast yard shrinks and dulls in her phone’s lens. She stands up and walks to the other side of the pool where a broad set of stairs spills onto the sprawling green lawn. A wide slate stone path picks up at the bottom and leads straight toward the shimmering blue water. Faith follows it, stopping every so often to raise her phone and snap a photo. Up close the private beach is bigger than it looked from afar, fringed with cultivated clumps of seagrass and several clusters of wooden Adirondack chairs.
She takes off her slides and steps down into the sand. It is surprisingly soft, a light gray powder that has been recently raked. She walks out to the shoreline and lets the waves run up over her feet. When the water hits her, she yelps with cold but doesn’t move away. Instead, she forces herself out another step, staying in the water until her legs begin to get used to it. She takes another picture. This one is better than the first, a crescent of beach, a dappling of clear water with a few sailboats in the distance. She sends this one to Elena.
Seconds later her phone dings.
So pretty there! Where are the yachts?
But there are no yachts. At least none that Faith can see when she shades her eyes and looks out to the horizon. There is only a tiny islandoffshore with a small single-story house balanced on top of stilts. So odd, she’ll have to ask David about it.
Faith turns back to the house with its sparkling swimming pool and imposing marble exterior. Maybe they could get married right here? Faith imagines the pathway is the aisle. She steps lightly across the stones back toward the veranda. There could be rows of chairs on either side and an archway down at the end made from flowers, all in white, of course, with the water glimmering in the background.
Faith sees her mother suddenly and stops. She is sitting in the front row on one of the white chairs. She is frozen the way she exists in Faith’s memory, her skin overly tan and her hair damaged from boxed dye bought at the grocery store, the fin from a faded tattoo of a dolphin poking up from the bust of a dress she got from Marshalls. Too tight and glittery, of course, but she thinks that’s what makes it fancy, her impression of wealth pieced together from whatever Bravo show she is currently watching. Her eyes are red-rimmed.
“Hey, Peanut,” her mom’s voice says in her imagination, hoarse as usual from smoking and self-neglect. The rest of Faith’s fantasy dries up and floats away and she is left standing alone on the lawn with her mom. “Look at you,” her mom says a little sadly, a smile flickering across her thin lips.
A guilty lump forms in Faith’s throat. She looks away from the lawn, her eyes blurring. She wouldn’t invite anyone from her family to the wedding, of course. It was too risky.
To rid herself of the icky taste that has crawled up into her mouth, she takes out her phone and texts Elena.You’d love it here.
Faith wouldn’t have even met David if it wasn’t for one of those benefits Elena was always dragging Faith to. A thousand dollars a plate for cystic fibrosis or an auction to raise money for glaucoma research. These things were always filled with the kind of people who made Faith feel especially shy and introverted. She could never quite figure out where she belonged among them, what she was supposed to say, who she wasmeant to be. She’d said no at first but Elena, always eager to network and in the market for her own rich boyfriend, had been relentless this time.
“It’s for Atlantic Ocean animal habitat restoration, Fay,” she’d said. “Why do you hate ocean animals?” She’d pulled up a photograph of a manatee on her phone and turned her lips down into a pout.
“Okay, fine.” Faith had laughed. “I can’t say no to a manatee.” And she also couldn’t turn down a cocktail hour underneath the belly of the giant blue whale sculpture in the museum’s Hall of Ocean Life, where she was assured the who’s who of New York would be in attendance.
It was one of those perfect New York days in late September when the air has a hint of crispness to it and the city feels like it has woken up after the slumber of summer. Faith had felt a rare surge of optimism as she and Elena had arrived at the Museum of Natural History, laughing and tapping up the steps in their high-heeled sandals.
Elena had dragged her around the room, introducing her to people along the way. They were mostly WASPs with names like Chip and Birdy, a subset of the population that felt foreign and exotic to Faith. She took it all in, downing her drink quickly.
“Come meet Lauren Stamford. She’s the queen of Park Avenue,” Elena had said, grasping her elbow and pulling her into a darkened exhibit room where a woman with a blond bob and rigid posture was holding court.
“Ah, Elena, good to see you.” The woman had kissed Elena’s smooth cheek. Faith was always impressed by how well her friend blended in, how she always knew what to do while Faith had to work at it like she was learning another language.
“This is Faith. She’s up-and-coming in the PR world,” Elena had introduced her generously, giving Faith a little nudge forward.
“What’s your last name, dear?” the woman had said, peering down her aquiline nose at Faith. The rest of the group stopped chattering and turned their eyes on Faith, waiting to see if she was someone they should care about.
“Ellis,” Faith stammered, feeling her cheeks growing hot. The woman had given a little sniff.
“I haven’t heard of you,” she’d said simply, and she turned toward a man to her right wearing an ascot, icing Faith out.
“She seems nice,” Elena had said dryly as they retreated to one edge of the room where a diorama of ocean animals glowed from the wall.
“I don’t fit in with these people,” Faith had moaned, wanting to leave.
“Don’t take it personally. If anything, she’s just jealous,” Elena said, brushing it off.
“Of me?” Faith said in disbelief.
“She’s from that generation that hates any woman younger than them. She’s a nightmare to work for apparently. And totally insecure after that facelift. But her husband’s business is on the verge of collapse. Her reign won’t last much longer,” Elena said, her eyes twinkling.
“How do you know so much about people?”
“It’s a hobby,” Elena said. “My version of sports.”
Faith had smiled at her friend, grateful not to have to navigate the Mitzis and Tads of the world on her own. She tilted the last of her drink into her mouth as Elena used the new vantage point to scan the room. There was something in the way she would look for the richest and most influential person in the room that reminded Faith of the old version of herself, the one she’d been trying to escape.
Faith turned away from the party and pushed her face close to the glass of the diorama. When she was growing up, the ocean always felt mystical to Faith; with its rainbow of corals and shimmering fish, it was a magical place that felt as mysterious and otherworldly as a fairy-tale kingdom populated with unicorns. This diorama showed a giant squid attacking a whale. Its tentacles were wrapped around the whale’s belly, ready to pull it into the deep. “I think I dated that one,” she joked to Elena.
