Page 29 of The Castaways
He sent her love notes on cocktail napkins and cardboard coasters:You look beautiful tonight. Will you run away with me?He made her CDs and left them in her car; he sent her text messages from school:U staying late 2nite?He dedicated songs from the stage:This one’s for you, Ash(because her maiden name was Ashby). He told her dirty jokes, he noticed when she got a pedicure. He said,You are my best friend.When they were all together, the eight of them, the group, he sent her a signal—two fingers, crossed.You and me, babe.
Then came April Peck.
Greg had a day job. He was the high school music teacher. It should not have been allowed—to put someone so goddamn good-looking, with so much magnetism and talent, in that position. But there it was. Greg taught music appreciation to all ninth-graders, he taught guitar to juniors and seniors (this was mostly boys), and he directed the exclusive all-girls a capella group, the High Priorities. It was the girls who were the problem. These were girls with voices like angels, with perfect pitch. When a girl made it into the High Priorities—it was fiercely competitive; tryouts were the first week of May every year, and the whole student body held its breath to find out who made it—she stayed until she graduated. The High Priorities, the twelve of them, were Greg’s darlings. They were all in love with Greg; that was no secret. They were his groupies, his harem. They baked him cookies, they left elaborate illustrated notes like “We â?L U, Mr. Mac!” on his chalkboard while he was at lunch, they endured painful scales and voice exercises(“Red leather, yellow leather!”). They memorized lyrics in twenty-four hours. Greg lifted his hands and they sang; he brought his hands down and they stopped.
All the girls were beautiful. Even if they were heavy (and yes, it did seem like the best singers were heavy) or had acne or wore braces or their toes turned in. They were all beautiful when they were onstage in their white jeans and pink cashmere twinsets. They were sassy and sexy, they were luminous, aglow. So much feminine beauty and energy and talent, those bodies blossoming, those hearts unfolding, the desire and the jealousy and the yearning for praise, for distinction and admiration—God, it was a time bomb. Delilah had warned Greg about this: all those girls with their raging hormones, their new breasts, their asses squeezed into skin-tight jeans, all falling over themselves to make Greg MacAvoy happy, to be chosen for solos, to sing like a nightingale. It would get him in trouble one day. He had to be careful.
But Gregwascareful. Delilah had for years watched him be careful. He taught his girls to sing together, to practice blending their voices.Harmony!he shouted.Listen to one another!He agonized over who to give solos to; he never played favorites.You’re all my favorites, he told them again and again.You’re all my highest priority.
But teenage girls were fragile. They were both brave and stupid. They were innocent and cunning. A few girls, over the years, had fallen so in love with Greg they nearly drowned in it. Greg was always kind, always firm, always funny and avuncular.You feel this way now, but you’ll get over it. You’ll grow up and shine your light and I will seem very small and faraway to you, I promise.
Sometimes the girls showed up at the Begonia “for dinner” in low-cut tops and lower-cut jeans, and when Delilah told them, at ten when the kitchen closed, that they had to leave because they were underage, they—well, they whined.I want to see Mr. Mac play. Just one song. Please?Delilah had small children at home, she knew how to deal with whiners.Off you go. Come back when you’re twenty-one.
They really love you,Delilah said to Greg.
Yes,he said.But do you?
Delilah swatted him, sashayed away. People talked about Greg and those girls, but the crushes were innocent and funny; it was an after-school special.
Until April Peck.
Why April Peck and not some other girl? Like anything, most of it was timing. Delilah had sensed things coming to a head between Greg and Tess. He complained about Tess all the time, and his complaints were angry and mean-spirited. He and Tess were in a rut—sexually and emotionally. The summer had brought the Debacle of the Roof. (Greg dwelled on the roof more than Delilah thought necessary. It was a home improvement project! Could it really fell a marriage?) Tess and Greg had had some serious leaking in the spring rains, and they’d discovered they needed a new roof. They were quoted a price of thirty-seven thousand dollars to replace the roof, which they couldn’t afford. Greg decided to replace the roof himself. He hired two Lithuanian day laborers; he bought twenty-two bundles of shingles at Marine Home Center. He rented the tools and the ladders, and with aDIYwebsite as his professional reference, he got to work. They spent a week getting the old shingles off and a thousand dollars dropping them at the dump, then another two weeks reshingling in the brutal July sun, only to discover that the roof still leaked and had to be torn off and redone by professionals. Tess did not handle this well. There was a lot of innuendo about the roof caving in on the marriage, literally and figuratively. By the time school started in September, Tess and Greg were depleted, stressed out, and sick of each other.
There had been a lot of drives to Cisco Beach to talk that September, a lot of Greg pushing and Delilah resisting. He grew belligerent.
You don’t care about me.
Because I won’t sleep with you, I don’t care about you? Even you, Greg MacAvoy, are too emotionally mature to believe that.
I need…he said.
What?she said.
Something,he said.
April Peck was a senior. She had lived on Nantucket for two years. She lived with her mother in a huge beach house owned by her mother’s parents. There was a father and a brother in New York City. A bad divorce, apparently.
The night in question was October 23, a Sunday night. According to Greg, things at home had been okay: they were having a fire, Tess had roasted a chicken, football was on. Tess wanted to read the rest of the Sunday paper and watch60 Minutes,and she had to make the kids’ lunches and get her lesson plans straight for the week. Chloe had a fever of 100.7—not anything to worry about, but still. They, the MacAvoys, had not gone over to Delilah and Jeffrey’s house for cocktails and a six-foot sub for the usual Sunday afternoon drunken free-for-all because of Chloe’s fever. If she had something, Tess didn’t want her to pass it on to the other kids. Tess also didn’t want Chloe to get run down. They were staying home, Tess had told Delilah over the phone, to have a “family night.” Delilah had been disappointed and a little hurt—weren’t they all family?
Greg had not wanted to stay home. He loved their friends and the tradition of the free-for-all Sundays. He loved Delilah and Jeffrey’s house, he adored Delilah’s cooking (her repertoire was straight off a sports bar menu—stuffed potato skins, Reuben sandwiches), he loved taking his guitar and getting everyone singing. Sundays, he said, were the days that made him glad to be alive—the drinking, the music, their friends, the kids running around. He could not believe they were turning down a Sunday just because Chloe felt a little warm.
“A hundred point seven is more than just ‘a little warm,’” Tess said.
Greg huffed and considered slamming around the house to demonstrate how pissed off he was, but then he got the great idea that he would put the kids to bed and head over to Jeffrey and Delilah’s alone. He switched immediately into model parent mode. He got the kids in the bath, he gave Chloe a dose of Motrin, he supervised the tooth-brushing and hunkered down with them through three chapters ofCharlie and the Chocolate Factory.Downstairs, Tess finished the newspaper, made herself a cup of chamomile tea, and watched60 Minutes.
Greg came down from reading to the kids, but he did not speak to Tess. If he told her he was going to Jeffrey and Delilah’s, they would fight. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to be free. He felt like he was shackled to the house. He opened the fridge and got a beer.
Tess said, “Are the kids asleep?”
Greg said, “What do you think?”
He was angry. And resentful. He felt like a sullen teenager that Tess had grounded.
“Go over there if you want,” she said.
He did not appreciate the way she’d read his mind. She was so sure she was always one step ahead of him. He said, “I’m going into work.”
“Work?” she said.
