Page 46 of Endless Summer: Stories
Every time he tries to imagine how his family will react—with abject horror, disgust, anger, or, worst of all, mirth—he wants to put Sallie on the ferry back to the mainland. They should keep their union a delicious secret. How did he let her convince him that bringing her along was a reasonable idea?
Part of him wonders if he’s overreacting. Maybe it’s no big deal that he’s dating a forty-three-year-old woman. After all, everyone in the family likes Sallie. George is proud to be worthy of her desire and affection (he won’t presume love, though he feels they’re moving in that direction), and doesn’t he want to show it off?
Every second he’s back here massaging this quandary, he’s leaving Sallie out front by herself in the dark. George gropes around the patio for a loose brick, pries it free, then smashes the lower quarter pane of the back door’s window and reaches through to unlock it.
In his haste, he slices his hand on a jagged shard of glass, a nasty gash in the meaty part of his palm, just below his thumb. Even in the near dark, he can see a line of blood rising up in his white flesh. After he opens the door and steps into the kitchen, he grabs a dish towel hanging over the lip of the sink. He feels right away that it’s crusted with something—dried ketchup or a smear of melted Velveeta cheese. He’ll probably end up with gangrene but at least he’s inside—a triumph!—and with the towel pressed to his wound, he gallantly welcomes Sallie to his ancestral summer home.
He gives Sallie a quick tour of the house’s charms—the mural on the dining-room walls, the “buttery” hidden under the stairs, his great-grandmother’s collection of whirligigs and whimmy-diddles. Nothing in this house has changed in decades except for the key—where is the goddamn key? Now George is going to have to explain the broken window, but that will wait until tomorrow.
He lets Sallie pick which bedroom she wants, and she chooses George’s great-grandmother’s room, the one with a bed so high it requires a footstool. This is the last room George would have picked. Exaltadiedin this room and all George can think is that her spirit is hovering around in the cobwebbed corners or hiding in her cedar closet. Exalta had a reputation for being an imperious grande dame who could bust a grown man’s balls with one withering look, but George remembers a kind old lady who kept a stash of cherry Charms lollipops hidden in a drawer of the dining-room buffet. She would give one to George and one to Genevieve every afternoon, even though their mother forbade sweets before dinner. Exalta used to pinch George’s cheeks and tell him he looked just like her late husband, Pennington Nichols, “the finest man I’ve ever known.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay down the hall?” George asks, but Sallie pushes him back against the bed and undoes his belt, and George hopes Exalta’s ghost is averting her eyes.
He’s a fool for love.
He wakes up to birdsong and gentle light nosing in around the window shades. He gazes first at the white curve of Sallie’s ass; this is a lovely distraction from the angry, throbbing wound on his hand. He peels back the dish towel but his blood has acted as an adhesive, so the process is painful (and gross—the towel, he now sees, is stained with egg yolk).
He probably needs stitches; the wound is a deep black mess, though it might be too late for that. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, George finds a bottle of hydrogen peroxide that’s likely older than he is and a roll of white medical tape. He fixes up the wound as best he can, longing for a bottle of Tylenol, even expired Tylenol. His head is pounding from the three martinis. He descends to the kitchen, hoping for bread so he can make toast, and sees the broken glass glittering on the floor. He grabs a broom, thinking he’ll need to call someone to fix the window, but who? Mr. Crimmins is dead. Have they hired anyone to replace him?
In the refrigerator, George finds only one thing: a bottle of Moët et Chandon champagne, Sallie’s favorite.Aha!he thinks. What incredible luck! He checks the pocket of his khakis and finds one soft, wrinkled five-dollar bill. (He paid for the martinis the night before in an attempt to be a magnanimous host, but there’s a reason Sallie pays for everything, which is that she has money and he doesn’t.) He heads out the back door.
George’s first stop is the A&P down by the ferry dock, where he buys a carton of orange juice. He wants flowers as well but the only bouquets in the produce section are carnations (George once bought Sallie a bouquet of carnations and he noted the look on her face. Never again). He decides instead to cut a hydrangea blossom off the bush in front of All’s Fair.
With this mission in mind, he heads back up Main Street. He’ll find a tray and bring Sallie the champagne in an ice bucket, the juice in a glass pitcher, the hydrangea in a bud vase. He strolls past an open-bed farm truck parked in front of the Camera Shop and slows to check out the cartons of fresh-picked strawberries that a woman is setting out. He wonders what she’s charging for them; he has three dollars and eighty-five cents left.
The woman turns and her eyes meet George’s. Does she look familiar? She’s older, probably close to his grandmother’s age, with long, hippieish gray-blond hair; she’s wearing a shapeless chambray dress and Birkenstocks.
“Good morning,” George says. “How much for a quart of berries?”
The woman studies his face for so long that George grows uncomfortable. The plastic bag with the juice is biting into his bad hand.
“Do you belong to the Nichols family, by any chance?” she says. “You’re a dead ringer for a man I used to know named Penn Nichols. He lived on Fair Street.”
“My great-grandfather,” George says, offering the woman his good hand. “I’m George Whalen, Blair’s son?”
The woman takes his hand and holds it between the two of hers. “Blair’s son, I can’t believe it. I’ve known your mom since she was born.” The woman laughs. “Though I haven’t seen her in thirty-five years.”
“She’s in Paris right now,” George says, gently but firmly reclaiming his hand. “Working on her doctorate.”
The woman shakes her head in amazement. “She was always so smart, reading her little books…”
George says, “Yes, that sounds like my mom. Well, it was nice to meet you.” He glances up the street, desperate now to get away. “I have to be—”
“Here,” the woman says, handing him a carton of berries. “Take these, a gift from me. They’re organic, picked early this morning from a farm I’m working on by the artist colony on Polpis Road.” She pauses. “Tell your mom I said hello, and your grandmother too, for that matter. My name is Rain.”
Rain?George thinks as he heads up the street. He has a hard time believing that either his mother or grandmother knows an aging hippie named Rain—but he is psyched about the free berries.
George bursts into the kitchen through the back door, excited to tell Sallie that the berries are organic (whatever that means) and even more excited to set down the bag with the juice. His hand is killing him, and when George looks, he sees he’s bled right through the white medical tape. As he moves to the sink, he hears a thunder of footsteps and then voices.
What?
George’s nine-year-old cousin, Frog, runs into the kitchen. “George is here!” Frog shouts, wrapping his arms around George’s middle.
No!George thinks.No, this isn’t happening!Two seconds later, he hears a shriek come from upstairs. That would be Aunt Magee, discovering a naked woman in Exalta’s bed.
Tiger and Magee and the kids are stayinghere?How did George not know this? They always stay at the beach house! George’s head starts spinning; his vision splotches black and yellow before narrowing to a pinpoint. He crumples to the floor.
3. NEWSENSATION
