David was quiet for a moment. “How did you explain the part where you left me?”
“I explained it like it happened.”
“And how, exactly, did it happen?” David asked. He raised his palms and showed them to her, then he placed them on the sides of her face. She pulled back-this was already too much contact-but his hands held her steady. In her mind, she saw a struggle, she sailed over the deck’s railing to the ground where the newspaper lay in the mud.
“Let go of me,” she said, as calmly as she could.
“I loved you,” he said. “And you left me.”
“Yes,” she said.
He dropped his hands from her face and stuffed them into the pockets of his gray canvas shorts. Beth gazed at his tan legs fleeced with golden hairs, his crooked toes. His person was so familiar to her and yet he had changed. They were both different people now from the characters in the story she had told the twins. She noticed for the first time some gray hairs around his ears.
“I’ve thought about it so much this summer,” David said. “I haven’t seen you in what-three weeks? four?-and yet I’ve thought about you every day. I thought about kissing you.”
“David.”
“I thought about making love to you.”
“David!”
“And I asked myself over and over, What do you really want from this woman? She just lost her husband. What do you really expect?” He grabbed onto the rail and leaned forward as though he were the one contemplating a headlong dive. “Do you know what I decided?”
“What?”
“I want to know why you left me.”
Beth bounced on her toes. She felt the bike path calling her. She didn’t want to explain herself; she wanted to run away, just as she had twenty-five years ago.
“There were a lot of reasons,” Beth said. “Mostly, I wanted to finish college.”
“You could have finished on the Cape.”
“I wanted to finish at Sarah Lawrence.”
“You have no idea how snotty you sound,” he said.
“Maybe that is snotty, or maybe I just like to finish what I start.”
“Except in the case of our marriage,” David said.
Beth stared at the pond, which was a shade darker now. It was going to rain. “I couldn’t stand to disappoint my parents.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I wanted to live my life the right way, David. Graduate, get a job, get married in a church with my parents’ blessing.”
“You were a coward,” David said. “You weren’t brave enough to follow your heart. When you actually agreed to marry me, I thought I had changed you into the kind of person who took risks. But when you left I saw that you were the same scared little girl you were at sixteen. Afraid of doing anything wrong, afraid of being your own person.”
He was trying to hurt her and she couldn’t blame him. At the time, Beth felt she had a choice between pleasing her parents and pleasing David, and, in the end, she chose her parents. But deep down, Beth also knew she was doing what was right. Thinking about that lunch at the Mad Hatter made her cringe inside, even now. She wouldn’t have lasted eighteen years as David’s wife. She would have taken off long before Rosie had. This, however, wasn’t a sentiment that ever needed to be spoken out loud, even if David was prodding her to admit it.
“I acted as my own person,” she declared. “I left of my own free will, because I knew it would be better for both of us.”
“Well, it wasn’t better for me.”
Beth stood up. “What is it you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Of course I’m sorry! Of course I remember what happened. When I was telling the story to the kids, I remembered every single detail down to what Danny and Scott were eating for breakfast the morning I went back home.” She glanced at David and was dismayed to see that there were tears in his eyes. Why was he ripping the scab off this old wound? Leave it alone! she pleaded silently. We’re old now. We have gray hair. “I was wrong for the way I left you. I was wrong not to tell you to your face, but I simply couldn’t. I was afraid. I knew I was going to hurt you and I didn’t have the courage to sit and watch. I loved you, David, in that blind way that teenagers love each other. But I was smart enough to realize that it wasn’t love for the long haul. When I left, I did us both a favor. That doesn’t make it right. I’m sorry. Even now, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do me a favor by leaving,” David said. He lay across the chair like he’d been shot. His neck was exposed, and his Adam’s apple; she could see his pulse. Beth imagined her young self climbing onto the back of his dirt bike, and holding on to him for dear life. Kicking up dust into the sunset. That was how this all started, and this was how it was going to end, here on the deck of a complete stranger’s house.
“I am sorry, David.”
“So am I.”
They remained silent until the first raindrops fell, and then Beth announced that she should let him get back to work.
“I’ll see you out,” he said.
They walked down the hall, past the rooms with their heavy smells of paint and blaring music and the teenage boys who would ask one another on their lunch break if Beth was David’s estranged wife. A few of the kids would say yes, a few would say no, and nobody, Beth realized, would be completely wrong.
Chapter 7
G arrett’s days with Piper were dwindling. The Newtons were scheduled to leave the day after Labor Day, and when Garrett checked the calendar, he found himself staring at the fourteenth of August. They had less than three weeks left.
That night, Garrett and Piper went to the Gaslight Theater to see a heist movie. Piper knew a guy who worked there and so they were able to buy beers at the bar and take the beers into the theater with them. Piper took one sip of her beer and excused herself for the bathroom. She was gone a long time-she missed all of the trailers. When she returned, she took Garrett’s hand and squeezed it so hard that Garrett winced and looked over, even though as a rule, he disliked it when people talked in movies.
“I threw up,” she whispered.
Garrett moved his arm around her shoulders. “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.
She shook her head and slumped in her seat toward him. Garrett hoped she wasn’t getting sick; the thought of even a day without Piper disheartened him. He drank his beer and the rest of Piper’s as well.
After the movie, Garrett drove to the beach. No matter what they did at night, they always parked at the beach on the way home. But when Garrett pulled up to the water, shut off the engine and made a move to kiss Piper, she raised her hands to shield her face.
“Hey,” Garrett said. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel well,” Piper said.
“Still?”
“Still.”
Garrett rested his hands on the steering wheel and looked helplessly out the window. Even though they had more than two weeks left, everything had started to take on a sheen of nostalgia. The ocean at night, for example. Garrett soaked in the sight so that when he went back to New York he might remember what it was like-the waves, the reflection of the moon on the water, the way it felt to have Piper next to him.
“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.
Piper didn’t respond. A few seconds later when Garrett looked at her, he saw she was crying again. Piper had cried three nights in the past week because she was so upset about his leaving. That was probably why she threw up earlier. Garrett knew from his experiences with Winnie that girls threw up when they got upset. He didn’t like the fact that he was causing Piper to cry and vomit, although he was glad she was going to miss him.
“It’s only a year,” Garrett said. “Not even a year. Nine months-September to June.”