Page 9 of On Fire Island

“Yeah, well, sorry about that too, kid. See you on the field this weekend?”

Matty nodded, and Joel stood and patted him on the shoulder again, this time more in empathy than salutation. Matty drownedhis sorrows in his soup until the shore appeared in the near distance. He squinted, looking for his best friend, Dylan.

Every year, Matty rose from his seat as the ferry reached the harbor and waved his arms back and forth over his head like a madman, or a mad boy, really. And every year, his best friend, Dylan, would return the favor from the shore, jumping up and down like a puppy spotting its owner. Today was no different. Add in the catastrophic shifts since summer last, the predictable sight of Dylan greeting him from the dock filled Matty with a palpable sense of relief—and me with love. When I was lucky enough to witness these two in action, they had always tugged on my maternal heartstrings.

Dylan’s father, Jake Finley, was the ferry captain. He looked out at Dylan from his vantage point, towering over Matty, and shook his head. I had no doubt he was considering what kind of trouble these two would get themselves into this summer. The list of past infractions was long. Especially for a strict single parent like Jake.

Matty took in Jake’s barreling legs. They were the size of tree trunks, especially compared to his own father’s, which were more like twigs.

“Hello, Matthew,” Jake said, barely acknowledging Matty’s response as he walked away.

Things had definitely changed between Jake and Matty in recent years. Not that he was ever warm and fuzzy, but when they were young, Jake would let Matty and Dylan ride the ferry back and forth for fun and would even allow them to sit in the captain’s chair and steer a bit. And on his rare days off, he’d take them out fishing on the Boston Whaler he kept docked at the market. Those youthful days of innocence were long gone. Matty was definitely cautious around Jake now that the two kids’ summerantics had elevated to fooling around. I knew from Renee that Jake was mostly misunderstood. Yes, he was as big as a lumberjack and strong as a longshoreman, but his heart was a lot softer than he let on. There was no doubt he was feeling the weight of his baby girl leaving the nest.

Yes, Matty’s best friend, Dylan, who could skim a rock on the bay and make it skip seven times if it skipped once, was a girl. At least she was until a couple of summers back when, to everyone’s great shock, a woman with breasts, a bikini, and a belly button ring showed up at the ferry dock.

Breasts aside, Dylan and Matty had been best buds since I arrived on the island. But, since postpubescent teenagers can rarely put breasts aside, it recently began to escalate into something different. The two spent many hours last summer kissing and groping on chilly August nights. Ben and I embarrassingly witnessed them making out on the bleachers or at the beach on more than one occasion during Sally’s nighttime walk or when returning home from dinner in town. I knew they rarely saw each other over the winter, and Matty’s parents seemed clueless about the change in their relationship status. The two kids usually picked up right where they left off, and I hoped, for Matty’s sake, this summer would be the same. He’d certainly weathered enough change lately.

Matty tossed the cardboard soup container in the trash and bounded down the stairs of the ferry to be the first one ashore to meet Dylan. Seeing her was the only thing he had looked forward to in a long while. Dylan was extraordinary—like lightning in a bottle.

Part Two

Summer is, after all, the season of escape: the landscape in which to contemplate, alone, our failures and our possibilities; the safety valve, the frontier that none of us wants—or can afford— to see closed.

—JOAN DIDION,

“American Summer,”Vogue, May1963

seven

Dylan Finley

Most year-round residents experienced a mix of happiness and dread as the summer people arrived on the island, but for Dylan Finley it was pure happiness. The main source of that happiness was the chance to spend time with her best friend, Matty.

Dylan navigated the crowd, setting herself up in a prime spot to greet him, as she had been doing for years. She used to make her dad phone her up at the first sight of Matty and his parents on the mainland, but Jake hadn’t acquiesced to that in ages. Now she just waited for Matty to text her. Aside from the standard check-ins for Christmas and whatnot, the two barely kept in touch over the winters. When scrolling back, his text that morning of “Meet me at the 4 o’clock ferry?” had been the first he’d sent her in months. Although he did call a few times this winter to vent about his parents’ sudden divorce.

Dylan took in the crowd. It was the typical bedlam.

For starters, let me explain that everyone basically knows each other here. So, the happy people getting off the boat have only seconds to call out “Hello” and “Goodbye” and “Why are you leaving on such a glorious day?” to the not-so-happy people waitingon the dock for their ride back across the bay. When the boisterous exchange of passengers is complete, the new arrivals fan out onto the sidewalk, most dragging their bags over to the adjacent wagon park. There are usually a spattering of guests being picked up by their hosts, whose big welcoming smiles usually mask their true feelings:Why did I invite them, and when are they going to leave?

I recognized the three Fauser sisters waiting with empty wagons, hoping to make a few bucks carting people’s belongings to their houses. I saw Bonnie Zucker with a beaming smile on her face, searching the throngs for her children and grandchildren. A deckhand tossed a prescription from the pharmacy on the mainland down to Ruth, the zinc-faced doctor’s wife, and another passed a large box of fresh mozzarella from the Italian grocer in Bay Shore to one of the kids who work at the town’s beloved market.

Everything seemed to be as it always was, though of course it very much was not.

Dylan controlled herself from charging the boat when she saw Matty debark, mostly because she was aware of her father’s watchful eye, I’m sure. Matty must have been aware as well; when he reached her they hugged cautiously. Dylan grabbed his duffel and threw it in the basket of her bike, while Matty gave her a once-over, landing on the bikini top peeking out from under her denim shirt.

I wondered if she just threw on the outfit without a second thought to meet her BFF or contemplated every aspect of her appearance in the mirror to meet her BF. My gut said it was a combination. She caught him looking, and he blushed.

“Nice pegs,” he teased, motioning to the fresh additions of two metal tubes sticking out from either side of her back wheel. Heswung his leg over her rear tire and stepped on them for a lift home. Dylan scanned the crowd for Matty’s mom or dad before shoving off.

“You’re alone?”

“Except for Houdini.” He turned his back so that Dylan could say hello.

“My mom’s coming later tonight, she let me come out alone—you know—it’s part of the broken-home dispensation package,” Matty joked.

Dylan joked back, “That and the not-so-broken home.”

Matty had obviously caught on that he was in the “I’m sorry that we failed you” post-divorce window, where it was possible to get away with nearly anything. Dylan hadn’t been in that window for years.

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