Page 80 of 28 Summers
“Thanks for jinxing me,” Mallory says. “I know I’m a good teacher. I don’t need outside validation.”
“But you do need seventy-five large,” Apple says.
“Yes,” Mallory says. “Yes, I do.”
It was a cold, windy, rainy spring on Nantucket, and the roof of Mallory’s cottage leaks. She had a roofer named G-Bow come look at it and he found extensive rot and places where the wind had blown off shingles.It’s waterfront, built in the 1940s,G-Bow said.Roof was probably replaced sometime in the 1970s. It’s time for a new roof.
Mallory asked how much it would cost.
Not much,he said.Forty to forty-five grand.
Mallory has the money that Aunt Greta left her conservatively invested, but she has dipped into it for various home improvements and a new Jeep to replace the K5, which died on Eel Point the summer before.
Technically, Mallory has the money to replace the roof, but it will leave her very depleted.
She could ask Fray for the money, or part of it. He’s generous when it comes to Link; the child wants for nothing and Mallory knows that college will be handled. But it’s not Fray’s job to support Mallory. She’s the mother; she has primary custody. The roof over their heads is her responsibility.
Kitty and Senior?
No, never.
Announcing the teaching award was cruel, Mallory decides. It’s all she thinks about now. She wonders who’s on the committee—any parents of the kids she’s taught? Well, she’s taught everyone’s kids, so the answer is yes and it’s true that most parents love her. At Christmas, Mallory always receives the biggest haul of gifts—pumpkin muffins, scented candles, bottles of Sancerre, hand-knit scarves, monogrammed toiletry cases, cookies, cookies, cookies, gift certificates to Mitchell’s Book Corner, fancy hand lotion, Christmas ornaments, Whitman’s samplers, Bacon of the Month Club. Some of it is bribery—Mallory writes as least two dozen college recommendation letters each year—but most of it is due to genuine gratitude and affection. In teaching, as with everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it.
Mallory susses out her competition for the award. There’s Mr. Forsyth, who teaches biology. At nearly seventy years old, he’s a legend; everyone adores him. One year, his students made T-shirts that saidRESPIRATION IS THE RELEASE OF ENERGY IN THE FORM OF ATP.He’s the sentimental favorite. There’s Rich Bristol, the music teacher and choral director of the Accidentals and Naturals. He’s young and handsome and the theater girls love him; he’s their heartthrob, though this might work against him. And then there’s Apple, but she’s guidance and therefore not eligible, which is unfair, though Mallory is also a bit relieved, which makes her feel like a terrible friend and a bad person. She doesn’t deserve the Excellence in Teaching award.
Yes, yes, she does. Positive thinking. One of the leaks in the roof is right over Link’s bed.
If she wins, she thinks, she’ll pay for the roof and donate the rest to the Boys and Girls Club.
Except she knows she won’t. Life has too many surprises for a single working mother to be that magnanimous.
She goes back to Rich Bristol. There were whisperings about him and a student named Danielle Stephens. Too chummy, someone said. Red flag. Mallory thinks back to her second year of teaching and the incident with Jeremiah Freehold. She shudders. She was so young then, and now, of course, Mallory would no sooner take a student off the property in her car than she would lop off her own hand. But back then she had; she was in the same space then that Rich Bristol is in now, maybe worse. Do people remember about Jeremiah? Is it a stain on Mallory’s reputation that will never fully come out?
Apple is asked to be the administrator of the committee. She has no decision-making powers but she will attend all the meetings. She will know the front-runners. She knows the committee members.
“I can’t tell you a thing,” Apple says. “I shouldn’t even have told you I’m the admin.”
“How about one thing?” Mallory says. “Is Mrs. Freehold on the committee?”
Apple inhales and Mallory’s heart slips a notch in her chest. “No,” Apple says.
Link is ten now, old enough to spend the entire month of August up in Vermont with Fray and Anna. Fray lives on Lake Champlain. He has a motorboat; they water-ski and fish for trout; they mountain-bike; they build fires to cook over. Link loves his Vermont summers, but this will be the last one. Fray is launching his Frayed Edge coffee brand this fall, and he and Anna are moving to Seattle.
Link is a well-adjusted kid. He knows he has to make the most of his trip to Vermont this year and he’s also excited about eventually visiting his dad and Anna in Seattle. The Space Needle is there, and Pike Place Market, and the Seahawks!
Mallory supposes Link will get used to flying cross-country. Fray will probably put him in first class—at least, until Fray buys a plane of his own. And here’s Mallory, trying to figure out how to replace her roof.
Her obsession with the roof and the award and Link flying to Seattle in a G5 serve one purpose: The summer zips by. Labor Day is on her doorstep and Mallory vows that she will not worry about the roof while Jake is here. She will not worry about anything.
Friday night, September 2, 2011: The burger patties are in the fridge covered with plastic wrap. The corn is shucked, the tomatoes sliced and drizzled with balsamic, the charcoal is a pulsing orange, turning gray at the edges. The hydrangea blossoms—three this year, the bushes were late due to the chilly, wet spring—are in the mason jar next to the one votive candle.
“Can we have extra candles this year?” Jake asks. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”
There’s always a year’s worth of catching up. Where do they even start?
“How’s Leland doing?” Jake asks.
Not well, Mallory says. After she and Fifi broke up, Leland moved to Brooklyn, a neighborhood called Williamsburg, where property is nearly as expensive as in Manhattan. Mallory has a hard time believing this and she can’t quite picture Leland in anouter borough. Back in 1993, you couldn’t even get a cab to take you to Brooklyn. But now Brooklyn is gentrified; the people are artsy and liberal, and the restaurants are outrageously good. But although Leland has friends and a community, she pines for Fifi. Leland finally leftBard and Scribeand started an online journal calledLeland’s Letterwhose target audience is “strong, independent women from ages eighteen to ninety-eight.” She has fifty-one thousand subscribers and twenty-two advertisers. Even so, it’s not enough to make a living on yet, so she is also working as the director of the summer publishing course at NYU.
