Garrett called up a favorite saying of his father’s: It’s fruitless to speculate. Garrett would simply have to wait until the fifteenth. There would still be plenty of summer left. In the meantime, he tried to make it through the hours. The mornings dragged, even when he managed to sleep until nine, which wasn’t often now that he was falling asleep shortly after nine at night. The sun rose at five and a stripe of light fell across his face around six-thirty, and that usually woke him. He figured he might actually knock a couple of books off his summer reading list. He finished Franny and Zooey, which he liked, even if he didn’t fully understand it, but then he got bogged down in A River Runs Through It. Talk about a boring book! Ten days would seem like a very long time if you were standing knee-deep in cold water trying to catch a fish without any bait.
The worst punishment for Garrett was having to spend time with Winnie and Marcus. They were so happy, so obviously a couple now, that it turned Garrett’s stomach. Winnie practiced driving the Rover with Beth in the passenger seat and Marcus in the back; he went along for moral support, Winnie said. Garrett thought meanly that Marcus would probably never get his driver’s license; he would never own a car, and could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d taken a cab. Still, Marcus joined the driving lessons, leaving Garrett alone in the house to contemplate the injustices in his life.
On the fourth day without Piper, Beth asked where she was. Garrett was shocked by the question. Although he hadn’t told anyone about Piper being banished to Cape Cod, he counted on Beth, at least, to intuit it. Why else would he be moping around the house?
“She went to see Rosie,” Garrett said. “She’ll be back next week.”
His mother raised her eyebrows. “She went to see Rosie,” she repeated. “How about that.”
On the seventh day, it rained. Winnie and Marcus started a Monopoly marathon at the kitchen table. The wind was out of the southwest and the house shook. Garrett helped Beth close all of the shutters and the storm windows, while Marcus and Winnie rolled the dice. Garrett watched them, stupidly wishing that he could play, but resenting them too much to ask. Beth, probably taking pity on him, asked him to build a fire while she went to work making a vat of clam chowder. Garrett got the fire roaring, then helped his mother by peeling potatoes and dicing onions. Once the soup was simmering, he crashed in the recliner in front of the fire and vowed not to get up until he’d finished A River Runs Through It.
He was eighteen pages from the end when the electricity went out. He heard a cry from the kitchen-“Oh, no! Our game!”-and he knew Beth would be rummaging through the utility drawer for candles and matches. Garrett put down his book and leaned back in the recliner.
You love me, too, don’t you?
Yes.
A few minutes later, Beth brought him a candle. “How’re you doing?” she asked.
“Fine.”
Garrett was surprisingly grateful when she sat down next to him.
“I don’t like being angry at one another,” she said. “This thing with you and Piper…”
“I love her,” he said. It felt brilliant to admit it. “I’m in love with her.”
His mother searched his face. “Okay.”
“You think we’re getting too serious too fast,” he said. “I know you think it. But you’re not me and you’re not Piper.”
“That’s true,” she said. “Do twenty-five years of experience count for anything?”
“You don’t remember what it feels like to be young,” he said. “You don’t know what I feel like. She’s only gone for ten days, right? But it feels like forever.”
“I do remember what it feels like,” Beth said. “I was in love at your age.”
Garrett felt a split second of connection with his mother, until he realized what she was referring to. “With David?” he sneered.
“Yes, with David. I was in love with him. We were having sex.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Garrett said.
Beth faced the fire. I know what I’m talking about! she wanted to shout. Please believe me! Instead, she said, “You’re so young, Garrett. Piper is just one in a long line of girls.”
Garrett held his book up so that it blocked Beth’s face. “See, you don’t know what I feel like. Because if you knew, you wouldn’t say that.”
“Summer does something to the brain,” Beth said. “It’s intoxicating. Everything shimmers. And when you fall in love in the summer, it’s the best love you can possibly imagine. Especially here. Because there are sunsets and walks on the beach and fireworks. But summer loves aren’t meant to last. They burn very hot and bright, and then they go out. Eventually, Garrett, they always go out.”
“You’re not making me feel any better,” Garrett said. “You’re making me feel worse.”
“If I never split with David, honey, I wouldn’t have married your father.”
He felt a different kind of sadness then, a sadness because the ease with which he used to talk to his mother was gone. Now, every conversation was unpleasant for him. “Please don’t say anything else,” he said.
Garrett waited for Beth to leave the room, but she remained next to him in the candlelight, lost in thought. After a minute of listening to the howling wind and the rat-tat-tat of rain against the shutters, Garrett returned to his book. He wasn’t really reading, he was skimming, because damn it, he wanted to finish. And more important, he wanted Beth to understand that his relationship with Piper was his; it wasn’t some reincarnation of her and David. She couldn’t predict the ending based on something that happened a generation ago.
Garrett finished the book and set it victoriously on the side table. Beth was asleep, thank God, and since there was nothing else to do, Garrett blew out the candle, eased back in the recliner and closed his eyes. You love me, too, don’t you? Yes.
That night, a gust of wind pushed open Garrett’s bedroom door. Garrett was tired, and he contemplated leaving the door open, but he felt oddly exposed, so he got up. Then he saw something move in the hallway. Somebody: Marcus slipping into Winnie’s room.
Garrett’s first instinct was to sound an alarm. Hey! Stop! You can’t go in there! This isn’t allowed! If Marcus were sneaking around in the middle of the night then he must be having sex with Winnie. So Winnie had lied to Garrett and Beth, lied right to their faces. Garrett was suddenly wide awake. He crept down the hallway toward Winnie’s room.
He stood outside Winnie’s door and suspended his breathing, thinking of his mother banging on the bathroom door while he was inside with Piper. Winnie’s door didn’t close properly, and when Garrett pressed his forehead against the door frame and squinted, he could see in. He was a despicable person after all, a Peeping Tom, a pervert. If you want details of someone’s sex life, get your own. He was a hypocrite! But he was propelled forward by his desire for justice. It was bad enough that Marcus was here for the summer, but having sex with Winnie! Garrett would turn them in; Beth would be forced to send Marcus home, and she would have to admit she never should have invited the kid here in the first place.