That Summer Read online

  Kelly and Maeve have both told her about Great Hollow Beach. The Irish and English kids who work at the restaurants come there when they’re off-shift, along with teenagers on vacation. There’s a volleyball net, set up on the sand, and boom boxes blaring competing radio stations, and usually beer, and sometimes pot.

  “Over here!” Diana peers along the beach until she sees Maeve’s waving hand. Maeve is wearing a green maillot, cut way up on her thighs, and her red hair is in a French braid with tendrils that brush her cheeks. She introduces the boys that she’s with: Fitz and Tubbs and Stamper and Poe. “Are those your real names?” Diana asks, and the boys all start laughing.

  “We’re the men of the Emlen Academy,” one of them—Poe?—tells her.

  “Ignore them,” says Maeve, in her Irish accent. “They’re arseholes.” She hands Diana a beer, and Diana sips it as one of the boys snaps open a beach towel, letting it unfurl and float down onto the sand. He’s wearing blue board shorts and a Red Sox cap over dark, curly hair. His blue T-shirt says EMLEN across the chest. His teeth are straight and very white. There’s a patch of hair on his chest and a trail leading down toward his waistband. Diana lifts her eyes to find the boy watching her. She blushes, but he just grins.

  “Want to sit?”

  She hopes she looks graceful as she eases herself down, feeling his scrutiny, wishing that she’d worn lipstick, or at least a swipe of mascara. Ever since she came to the Cape, she hasn’t put anything but sunscreen on her face. But her skin is tanned golden-brown and her hair is as glossy as a chestnut shell. Instead of flinching from his attention, she sits up straighter and toys with one of her bikini’s straps.

  “Tell me everything about you,” he says.

  She laughs, even though she isn’t exactly sure if he meant to be funny. “Which one are you again?”

  “I’m Poe,” he says. “Where are you from?”

  She tells him that she’s from Boston, that she is working as a mother’s helper. He says that he just graduated from this Emlen Academy, and that he and a bunch of his classmates have rented two of the Flower Cottages that line the curve of Beach Road, so that they can be together for one last summer, before they all go off to college.

  Diana knows, from friends, and from novels, that she is supposed to listen to him, to flatter, to ask him questions and keep him talking. But this guy, Poe, wants to know about her. Does she like living in a city? (“It’s noisy,” she says, and tells him that she can’t get over how quiet it is here at night, how brightly the stars shine against the black of the sky.) What grade is she in? (Tenth, she says, and hopes he’ll think that she just finished tenth grade, when, really, it’s the grade she will start in September.) What’s her favorite subject? (English, of course.) What does she want to do after high school?

  “I’ll go to college,” she says. “Maybe Smith or Mount Holyoke.” She’ll need a scholarship to attend either one, but Dr. Levy, who went to Smith, tells her it’s more than possible, and that she’d be happy to help Diana with her essays when the time comes.

  “And how about after that?” asks Poe.

  “I think I’d like to be a teacher.” This sounds more realistic and less arrogant than telling him she wants to be an artist or a writer. “I like kids.” She doesn’t—not really—but this seems like the kind of thing a boy would want to hear.

  “I believe the children are our future,” he tells her, deadpan, and smiles when she laughs. They’ve both worked their feet into the sand while they’ve been talking. As she watches, he scoops up a handful of fine sand and lets it spill slowly from his hand onto her ankle. She stares at the trickling grains. Poe isn’t even touching her, but still, this feels like the most intimate thing a boy has ever done to her. For a minute, she’s sure she’s forgotten how to breathe.

  When the last of the sand has fallen, he turns, squinting up at the sun. “I should get going.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Well, it was nice meeting you.”

  “Nice meeting you, too.” She’s dying inside, her insides curling in on themselves like a salted slug at the thought that this is the end, when he says, casually, “Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow?”

  She nods. “Tomorrow,” she says. She can still feel her ankle tingling. Strolling back, she feels shiny, and beautiful, tall and strong as the breeze blows her hair and sunshine warms her shoulders, and she falls asleep picturing his face.

  * * *

  Every afternoon for the next week, she and Poe meet at Great Hollow Beach. “Ahoy!” he calls when he sees her walking toward him, and she feels her heart rising in her chest, fluttering like a bird. One day he asks if she’s thirsty, and passes her a water bottle that says EMLEN on the side when she nods. She puts her lips on the bottle, right where his had been, one step away from kissing, and she can feel his eyes on her mouth and her throat as she swallows.

  Most of their talk is banter, teasing and big-brother-y. He asks if she’s ever had a boyfriend (no), or if she’s learning how to drive (not yet). When she asks him, after taking a day and a half to work up the courage, if he’s dating anyone, he tells her that he’d dated the same girl for the winter and spring of his senior year, but that they’d agreed to break up after prom, so that neither of them would be tied down when they went off to college.

  “Do you miss her?” she asks. He’s piling sand on her again, handful after handful, until her feet are just vague lumps at the end of her legs.

  “Sure,” he says. Then he looks at her, right into her eyes. “But I can’t say I’m sorry to be single right now.”

  Diana knows she isn’t beautiful, not like Marie-Francoise, with her high cheekbones and her gray-blue eyes, not like Tess Finnegan at Boston Latin, who has a perfect hourglass figure and dark-brown hair that falls in ringlets to the small of her back. But when Poe looks at her, she feels radiant, like a sun-warmed berry, with her thin skin pulled taut over the sweet, juicy pulp of her insides.

  Sometimes, she’ll realize that she doesn’t know very much about Poe. She knows that he is handsome and likes to play pranks, and that the other Emlen boys look to him as their leader. She knows, or can intuit, that he comes from money. He wears leather dock shoes, Brooks Brothers shirts, and Lacoste swim trunks, and, when she’s close, he smells like good cologne.

  She doesn’t know what he does at night, when she’s back at the house, reading or watching Masterpiece Theater and eating ice cream out of a mug. Maybe he’s at parties, or at the bars in Provincetown; maybe he’s meeting other girls, older ones. She wonders if he thinks about her, if he sees her as a little sister, or as a potential girlfriend, and what will happen as the summer draws to a close.

  He occupies her thoughts every minute they’re not together. She thinks of him when she’s locked her bedroom door, when she’s directing the flow of water between her legs, or using her fingertips to touch herself, gently, then more urgently, until she’s gasping and trembling. The boys at home all seem like children, like outlines of the people they’ll eventually become. Poe is a finished portrait, filled in and vivid, every detail complete. In bed at night, she pictures the way his shoulders pull the fabric of his shirt taut, the dusting of hair on his forearms and the pale hollows behind his knees. She thinks about how it would feel if he were to pull her close, until her head rested on his chest; how it would feel for him to kiss her, how his lips would be firm and warm and knowing, how his touch would be possessive and sure. I love you, she imagines him whispering, and her stomach flutters and her toes curl, and she falls asleep with a smile on her face.

  * * *

  Too soon, it’s the last week of August. In four days, Poe will be going home, to pack up and start college orientation at Dartmouth. On Friday, she and Poe are lounging on his towels at the beach when he sits up straight and whispers, “Look! It’s the nudists!” She peers across the sand to where he’s pointed and sees an elderly man and woman, in matching white robes, holding hands as they make their way slowly around the curve
d lip of the beach.

  “Oh my goodness,” she says. Poe has told her about them—an elderly husband and wife who walk to a deserted inlet and lie naked in the sand—but she’s never seen them before.

  “They’re cute,” she says. “They look like matching wallets.”

  Poe looks at her admiringly. “Good one,” he says, and she flushes with pleasure. She hopes he’ll bury her feet again, but just then one of the other boys comes trotting across the sand with a volleyball in his hand.

  “Hey, lovebirds, wanna play?”

  Lovebirds. Diana feels her face get hot, and she ducks to hide her smile.

  “What do you think?” Poe asks.

  “Sure,” she says, and lets him pull her to her feet.

  Her gym class did a unit on volleyball the previous year. Over nine weeks, Diana barely managed to get her hands on the ball, but that afternoon, she is unstoppable. They play three games, and win all three. Twice, she sets the ball, and Poe spikes it, sending it rocketing over the net and into the sand. The first time, he high-fives her, but the second time he grabs her in a bear hug, lifting her up, holding her so that they’re skin to skin, chest to chest. She thinks that he’s going to kiss her, and that it will be perfect, an absolutely perfect first kiss at the end of the day at the very end of summer, but instead he sets her back, gently, on her feet.

  When the game is over, he touches her hand and says, “Hey. A bunch of us are getting together tomorrow night. The last bonfire of the year before we all go off to college. Can you come?”

  She nods. She has been waiting for this, waiting for him, since the day her sister gave her the yellow bikini; since the first day of that summer, since, maybe, the day she was born.

  * * *

  What to wear, what to wear? Diana’s antsy and distracted all day, desperate for the hours to pass. After the beach, she takes an extra-long time in the outdoor shower, shaving her legs and under her arms and at the crease of her thighs, then rubbing oil into the bare skin. Alone in her room, she towel-dries her hair and works mousse through it, from the roots to the ends, then lets it air-dry, touching the curls anxiously, hoping they’ll look right, that she’ll look right.

  At dinner, which is Dr. Levy’s famous lobster Cobb salad, she casually says, “Some of the kids I’ve met are having a bonfire on the beach tonight. Is it okay if I go?”

  Dr. Levy and her husband exchange a look across the table. “What would your parents say?” Mr. Weinberg finally asks. “Do you think they’d be okay with it?”

  Diana knows the answer is that her parents would probably not be okay. Like her sisters, she won’t be allowed to date until she’s sixteen, and she knows what they’d have to say about a party with older boys and drinking. She puts on a thoughtful expression and says, “I think they’d tell me to be careful, and not to drink anything, and to be home by midnight.”

  “That sounds sensible.” Dr. Levy gives her a look. “You have to promise, though. I see your mother every day and she’d kill me if anything happens to you on my watch.”

  Diana nods, her head bobbing up and down eagerly. In her imagination, she’s picturing Poe, the line of his back, the way his face lights up when he sees her. She’s remembering how it felt to have his arms around her, his whole body pressed against hers, her skin on his skin.

  In her bathroom, she swishes mouthwash over her tongue and teeth, brushes her teeth, flosses and rinses again, and looks at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are bright; her cheeks are flushed. The narrow straps of her white sundress set off the gleaming golden-brown crescents of her shoulders.

  Good enough, she thinks, and eases open the sliding door and steps out into the night. She takes the steps two at a time, and once she’s on the beach she races, fleet-footed, over the sand, toward the glow of the fire, the smell of smoke, the sound of music and raised voices.

  Poe is waiting by the bonfire for her, in khaki shorts and a Ballston Beach tee. She feels suddenly awkward, like her legs have gotten too long, and she doesn’t know what to do with her hands, but then he puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her against him, and she feels herself relax. He smells like fabric softener and whiskey, and she can see a tiny dab of shaving cream on his earlobe that he’s neglected to wipe off.

  “Come on,” he says. She follows him to the fire, sits down beside him, and lets him pull himself against her so that her head is leaning on his shoulder. He takes one of her curls between his fingers, pulling it straight, letting it boing back into place before he tucks it behind her ear, and rubs his thumb against her cheek. Her eyes flutter shut. She thinks she might faint, or swoon with the pleasure of it.

  “You know what I thought, the first time I saw you, on the beach?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I thought you looked like summer. Like, if I was going to paint a picture and call it Summer, it would look like you.” He gives an embarrassed laugh. “That probably sounded stupid.”

  “No!” She opens her eyes and looks at him. “It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. It’s perfect.” You’re perfect.

  Smiling, he takes a red plastic Solo cup from somewhere and wraps her hand around it. “Bottoms up.” The moon is full and shining, and the stars are brilliant pinpoints in the sky, and she can hear the wind, the churn of the waves, the heave and toss of the dark water, the endlessness of it. As she raises the cup to her lips, she thinks, I will never be happier than I am, right now, in this moment. She thinks, This is the best night of my life.

  Part One

  The Two Dianas

  1

  Daisy

  2019

  Daisy Shoemaker couldn’t sleep.

  She knew, of course, that she was not alone, awake in the middle of the night. She’d read Facebook posts, magazine articles, entire books written about women her age consumed by anxiety, gnawed by regret, tormented by their hormones, fretful about their marriages, their bodies, their aging parents and their troublesome teenagers and, thus, up all night. In bed, on a Sunday night in March, with her husband’s snores audible even through her earplugs, Daisy pictured her tribe, her sleepless sisters, each body stretched on the rack of her own imagination, each face lit by the gently glowing rectangle in her hands.

  Picture each worry like a gift. Put them in order, from the mildest to the most intense. Imagine yourself picking up each one and wrapping it with care. Picture yourself placing the gift under a tree, and then walking away.

  Daisy had read that technique on some website, or in some magazine. She’s tried it along with all the others. She had imagined her worries like leaves, floating down a stream; she pictured them like clouds, drifting past in the sky; like cars, zipping by on the highway. She had practiced progressive muscle relaxation; she played, in her noise-canceling headphones, murmurous podcasts and Spotify mixes of soothing, sleep-inducing sounds—the chiming of Tibetan singing bowls; Gregorian chants, whales moaning to one another across the vast and chambered deep. She had swallowed melatonin and slugged down valerian tea, and trained herself to leave her phone charging in the bathroom instead of right next to her bed, with the ringer turned up in case her daughter, away at boarding school, should need her in the middle of the night.

  Thoughts of Beatrice made her sigh, then look guiltily over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t woken Hal. Hal was still sleeping, flat on his back, arms and legs starfished wide. They had a king-sized bed, and most mornings Daisy woke up clinging to the edge of her side. Hal, while not unsympathetic, had been notably short on solutions. “What do you want me to do?” he’d asked, sounding maddeningly reasonable and slightly indulgent. “It’s not like I’m pushing you off the bed on purpose. I’m asleep.” He’d given her permission to wake him up. “Just give me a poke,” he’d said. “Shake my shoulder.” Probably because he knew she never would.

  Sighing, Daisy rolled over to face the window. It was still dark outside, the sky showing no signs of brightening, which meant it was probably two or three in the m
orning, the absolute pit of the night. She had a big day coming up, and she needed to try to sleep. Breathe in, two, three, four, she coached herself. Hold, two, three, four. Breathe out. She exhaled slowly, trying, and failing, not to think about how the dean had sounded when he’d called to inform them of Beatrice’s latest transgression, which had involved gathering up the members of the Emlen Feminist Liberation (pronounced Ef-el) and spray-painting the word RAPIST across a male classmate’s dorm-room door.

  “Unfortunately, this is not Beatrice’s first infraction of our honor code,” the dean had intoned. “We’ll need at least one of Beatrice’s parents to come up here to discuss this.”

  “Okay,” Daisy had stammered. “Although—would you mind calling my husband? You have his number, right?” She wanted Hal to handle this. Hal was the Emlen graduate in the house, the one whose own father had attended the school, a loyal alumnus who donated money each year, in addition to paying Bea’s tuition. He’d know what to do… and, if the dean called, Hal would hear the news from the school and not her.

  “Of course,” said the dean. Daisy had hung up, her legs watery with relief, thinking, Hal will fix this. Hal will talk to him. He’ll figure it out, and by the time he comes home, everything will be fine.

  But Hal hadn’t, and it wasn’t. Two hours later her husband had stormed into the house, wearing the blue suit and red-and-gold tie that he’d left in that morning and a thunderous look on his face. “They’re probably going to expel her,” he said. “We need to be there Monday morning. Don’t look so happy about it,” he’d snapped before Daisy had even said anything, and Daisy turned away, her face burning. He brushed past her, on his way to the stairs. “I’m very disappointed in her. You should be, too.”

  “But…” He was already halfway up the staircase. When she spoke, he stopped, his hand on the railing, his body telegraphing impatience. “Did the boy do what she said?”