Page 37 of Dead of Summer
“Just that there was a man coming the other way, and they sort of converged.”
“Could you see who?”
He shakes his head. His mouth opens and closes helplessly. Jean looks at him for a moment as though she is trying to decide whether or not to believe it. Then she presses her fingers into her eyes.
“Jean, are you all right?” He trails behind her as she walks to the door.
“No. I’m afraid,” she says.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure the girl will be okay.” His heart twists with the desire to make it better. For Jean or for himself, he isn’t sure. He puts his hand out toward her shoulder, wanting to comfort her, but he stops himself. It hovers just above, where she can’t see it. He can feel the bracelet Gemma gave him. It digs into his skin, hidden just below the cuff of his shirt.
“I’m not afraid only for Gemma, Henry. I’m afraid for you.” She stops but does not turn to face him. Instead, she lets her body fall, exhausted, slumped into the doorframe.
“For me?” He almost laughs. But Jean’s face is stricken when she finally turns around to face him. Her eyes water dangerously. Henry can’t bear to see her crying.
“Jean, please don’t worry, I—” He tries to comfort her.
She stiffens and turns back, walking through the door and onto the deck; when she reaches the stairs, she stops. “They will come for you, Henry. They will lock you up. And this time no one will be able to protect you.”
“But Margie…” he begins helplessly. She gives him a look. It is stern mixed with pity.
“Now, I know it’s been hard for you,” she starts as the panic begins to fill his chest.
No no no.He backs away from her. His limbs feel weak.Please don’t say it.
“Margie wouldn’t want me to let you keep going like this. It’s not… healthy.” Jean sighs, ignoring his pleas and stepping toward him. “Stop it, Henry. She’s dead! Dead! You can’t keep walking around this little place pretending she is still alive.”
He lets out a low moan and covers his eyes.
How hard he’d tried to convince his wife to leave the island for medical care, begged her to go to the mainland. “I’ll go with you,” he’d pleaded.
Margie would hear none of it. “Those doctors, you can’t trust them. They’ll say I need treatment, and the next thing you know I’ll be hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines and god knows what else.” She’d bustled around behind the counter, rubbing it down with a rag as though scrubbing away any idea he might have of her going anywhere.
Henry opens his mouth now to speak, but whatever words he might come up with are lodged firmly in his throat.
He flees back inside as soon as the motor starts.
“Besides,” Margie had said, swatting him playfully on the knee as she brushed past him toward the kitchen. “What would you do without me here?”
Eight years on and Henry still doesn’t know.
ORLA
They were of course supposed to go to New York together, Alice and Orla. But it was only Orla who went in the end. Her parents came on the ferry to the mainland, where they put her on a bus that would take her to the city all by herself. It was a blustery day and she had vomited twice in the ferry’s miniature bathroom as they chugged across the sound.
“I’m sorry this isn’t happening the way you wanted, Orla,” her mom had said, but she failed to hide the relief on her face that Orla was finally leaving. Orla’s father had said nothing but hugged her to his thick chest. She couldn’t blame them. Orla couldn’t have been easy to be around; she had spent the last two years of high school in a state of total depression. With Alice and David both gone, the color drained out of her life. She stumbled between classes, disengaged. She knew it was a miracle that they let her graduate at all. When the letter arrived from the New School, she almost didn’t open it. Her parents, however, insisted.
“Why not try it out, Orla?” her dad had said while her mom nodded encouragingly next to him. “Will be good for you to have a change of scenery.”
From the bus window Orla had watched as they turned back to board the ferry home. She had to grip the seat below her legs to keepherself from leaping up and running after them. She didn’t know if she could do it. New York alone was almost unthinkable. Without Alice. Without David. Orla no longer even knew who she was.
At art school she was quiet and cautious. She felt disassociated from the others who were excited to be mingling and socializing completely free from the confines of their families for the first time. But Orla didn’t know how to do any of it without Alice, wasn’t sure how to be the kind of person who went to parties or made new friends. She had always relied on Alice for that.
So instead of developing friendships or dating, Orla studied. She took the core art classes she needed and tried to work on her craft the best she could. She painted hundreds of still lifes and nude models, learned the basics of every major medium, gouache to clay. At the end of each day, she would hole up in her dorm room with a sandwich from the deli and draw. Aside from the paths she took through Washington Square Park every day, she barely even looked at the city.
Despite all her hard work, nothing she was making had any spark of inspiration.
Somehow, though, Orla managed to pass her classes. She was focused in a way she hadn’t been before. After all her effort, she was technically proficient. Art school is like that, she came to realize by the beginning of her senior year. If you can pay your way, and you do the work, they are bound to give you a degree whether you are any good or not. Instead of finding it depressing, this became a comfort to Orla.
