Page 19 of Dead of Summer

HENRY

Jean’s boat pulls into the dock below Henry’s window.

Henry straightens his shirt, wishing he’d thought to check on the state of his hair in the bathroom.

He starts to raise his hand to wave and stops short.

There is a young girl with Jean this time.

Surprising. His heart twists anxiously as she follows Jean up the steps, holding up fistfuls of brown shopping bags from Danny’s.

“Morning, Henry,” says Jean, and he sees now that her hand is wrapped with a thick white bar towel. “Had to bring this one along to help.”

“Hello,” he says, his voice rough from lack of use. “Are you Gemma?”

Jean pauses at the door, and Henry sees the slight panic in her eyes. “I should have brought one of the kitchen staff but they’re all so busy this time of year. Gemma, why don’t you leave those and wait down by the boat.”

But the girl has already stepped into the house with the bags. She gives Henry an easy smile. “Where should I put these?” Henry hasn’t seen a new person in the house in so long. He tries not to stare as she moves around the kitchen island.

“Please, let me,” Henry says, taking the bags by the handles.

He has all but forgotten what young people look like, the slight awkwardness to them, as if they are still new in their skin.

She reminds Henry of the young egrets he often watches fish down on the rocks.

Their gawky bills as they dive their heads into the water, like they are pretending to be adults. He tries harder not to stare.

Jean watches nervously. “We’ll be in and out,” she says, glancing behind her at the door as though worried someone might be watching.

“She didn’t want the help, but I insisted,” Gemma says, plucking at a stack of small beaded bracelets on her wrist, her plump cheeks flushed with youthful enthusiasm.

“That sounds like Jean,” Henry says, getting a glare from his sister-in-law in return. “What happened there?” He points at her hand. A small spot of bright red has soaked through the towel.

“It’s nothing, slicing lemons. I just went clean through it,” Jean says. Her eyes shift between him and Gemma and she steps awkwardly between them, forcing Gemma to step away. Henry knows why. His neck goes hot with shame.

“That looks quite bad,” he says of the growing stain.

“See, that’s what I said,” Gemma interjects from the living room.

She is looking around his house, taking it all in.

Henry sees his home through her eyes and is filled with embarrassment at the cracks in the walls, the chipping linoleum.

He cringes at the piles of papers on the table, the small mountain of laundry, still unfolded against the corner by the washer.

She picks up an old clay sculpture of a bird Margie made back when she was in her short-lived pottery-making phase.

“Careful,” Henry says quickly, unable to bear the thought of it breaking. She puts it back and continues on, craning her neck to look through the telescope. Henry panics for a moment, trying to remember. It must have been pointed at the Clarkes’ house.

“You can see everything with this, can’t you?” She moves it.

“I usually just watch the stars,” he says quickly. Jean’s eyes flick toward him at this obvious lie.

“Let’s hurry up and unload things, Gemma,” Jean says, and Gemma reluctantly steps away from the window and comes to help in the kitchen. Jean pounds around pointing at drawers and doors.

The three of them work in tandem, Gemma lining up cans of tuna and bags of pasta on the counter for them to put away. Henry stops and holds up another unfamiliar item, wrapped this time in brown paper packaging. He looks from it to Jean, questioning.

“Oh, that. It’s some sort of fancy new chocolate cookie.

Thought you might want to try ’em,” she says brusquely.

“I noticed the ice creams were a hit.” Henry ducks his head shyly.

He hadn’t eaten anything so decadent in years.

He’d offered one to Margie when he opened the box, but she’d refused.

She’d shrunk lately, he noticed, a lump forming in his chest. The comforting width of her hips whittling down so that her pants formed little flaps on each side.

“You go ahead, though,” she’d encouraged him before turning heavily toward the bedroom.

He finished them off in four days, eating one after dinner each night.

They were possibly the best thing he’d ever tasted.

His mouth waters at the thought of another sweet treat.

“Why don’t you both stay and have one?” he asks Jean, beginning to clear the newspaper from the top of the table. He should have cleaned up a little, he thinks guiltily, pulling a pile of old newspapers into the seat of one of the dining chairs. “I could make some tea.”

But Jean shakes her head quickly. “Nope. No. We have to get back to the Crab. Going to be a big day with that Bermuda sailing race. Let’s go, Gemma. Chop chop. No time to waste.”

Jean folds a paper bag, and something wet spatters onto the floor.

“Your hand, Jean,” Henry says. The blood has soaked through the towel and left an arc of dark drops along the floor.

“Damn it,” Jean says, looking like she might break down. “I don’t have the time for this.”

“You do. It’ll only take a minute.” Henry leads her to a kitchen stool. “Sit,” he says. He removes the soaked bandage from her hand.

“That looks quite deep,” he says of the gash.

It gapes open, quickly pooling with blood when he releases pressure on it.

He finds an ancient tube of ointment and squeezes it into the cut, wrapping her hand again with a fresh dish towel, tighter this time, and pinning it in place with an old fishing lure.

“Be careful, or it’ll get infected.” He looks at the towel where the blood has already started to soak through again.

“I’ll be fine.” She sighs.

“You look so in love,” Gemma says, startling them both.

She is across the kitchen, looking at a photo high up on the wall.

It is of Margie and Henry on their wedding day.

In it Margie is wearing a flowered dress.

“None of that virginal princess stuff for me,” she’d said emphatically, which was more than fine by Henry.

The ceremony was held at the lighthouse on the far edge looking out over the sea.

Henry wore a brown suit and a blue dotted tie that flapped insanely in the wind as they stood to say their vows.

They’d only invited a few people: their parents, who were still alive then, and Jean, of course. Always Jean.

“Do you take this woman?” the officiant had started, and a seagull had swooped down and nearly landed on his head. “I object!” Margie had joked in her best impression of a seagull screech. The photo was taken immediately after, when Henry’s and Margie’s heads were thrown back in laughter.

“Is this your wedding day?” Gemma’s young, clear voice interrupts Henry’s memory.

“Let’s go, Gemma,” Jean says, frustrated. “No time for all this chitchat.”

“Yes, it’s been fifty-five years now,” he says quietly, looking to the bedroom to see if Margie heard, but there’s no sign of her stirring. He thinks she’ll be sad to have missed a visitor.

“I mean it.” Jean takes Gemma by the shoulders and steers her firmly toward the door.

“We have work to do.” Henry says goodbye, then watches Jean rush the girl down to the dock.

Once they are in the boat Jean looks back up at the house.

He sees the relief spread across her face when they pull out into the water.

Henry goes to make another coffee when he sees Gemma’s little beaded bracelet left in the center of the counter.

Its white beads are made from some sort of shell strung on a thin piece of blue elastic.

It’s a gift, he thinks, picking up the bracelet.

She’s left it for him. His heart beats faster as he strains to pull it on over his large hand.

It fits him, though the beads do not dangle delicately the way they did on her arm.

They are tight along his wrist. He leaves it there, liking the feel of it, and goes back to the telescope with a new cup of coffee.

The lens is focused on the back of a row of old buildings down by the docks.

They’ve been repainted since the Clarkes took over the property.

Back before the family started buying up every private marina on the island, the murky sand in front of them was always the best place for clamming.

Henry had once gone every Sunday, bringing home a bucketful to cook with tomatoes and herbs in the evening. Until the day she’d shown up there.

He’d been ankle-deep in the surf, using his feet to scan the surface for air pockets, when a young voice had cut through the air behind him.

“I said, excuse me.” Henry had turned back to see the girl calling to him from shore.

He’d looked around, unsure to whom she was talking, but there seemed to be no one else around.

Worried she was in some sort of trouble, he made his way back, a bucket of clams in one hand.

She rushed to meet him. She was dressed plainly, in shorts and a red V-neck T-shirt. A backpack hung over one shoulder.

“Hi, I’m—”

“Alice Gallo,” he finished. “I know who you are.” She stopped and smiled, following him up to where he’d left his shoes by the side of the building.

He’d never spoken to her before, only seen her.

But she didn’t seem surprised he knew who she was.

On an island this small, everyone knows everyone else.

Up close, with her large dark eyes and heart-shaped face, it was clear she was already the kind of pretty that gets young women into trouble.

“Yes, that’s right. Well, I was just wondering, do you think I could draw you?” Alice had said.

“Me?” he’d barked, feeling his face grow hot.

“Yes, you,” she’d replied, her face serious. “It’s for an art project, for school.”

“I shouldn’t.” He’d shifted uncomfortably, the bucket getting heavy in his hands. Margie would be expecting him soon.

“Oh, please. It’ll only take a little while. We could do it right here.” She gestured to the wharf building.

“We’ll need to be quick about it.” Henry glanced out toward the Rock, wondering if Margie would be able to see him here.

“Yes, thank you!” Alice said, clapping her hands together in excitement. It was this gesture that reminded Henry that she was still just a child. She kicked over an orange bucket and set it in front of the wall where the red paint peeled through to the wood below.

“Here, sit on this, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a better background?” he asked as she dropped her bag to the ground and began to pull out a box of pencils and a large drawing pad.

“Nah, this is more real. I like the texture, don’t you? Seems cooler.”

“I guess so,” he’d said, not knowing what was cool about something falling apart.

“What should I do?” he asked, afraid for a moment she would want him to smile. Would his teeth look crooked? Would he be able to hold it on his face?

“Nothing. Just be yourself,” she said, as though it were really that easy.

Henry swallowed and followed her to the bucket, sitting down primly on top.

Alice pulled her hair back from her face and twisted it, securing it with one of her pencils.

Then she got to work. Every so often she’d squint at him and then back to the page.

Henry couldn’t see what she was drawing but her concentration on him made him squirm.

Henry had grown up debilitatingly shy. In school his lanky frame made it hard for him to disappear and he was often the target of bullies who followed him home from school, hurling hunks of seaweed at him as he raced home.

Would Alice laugh at him also? But the girl was all business.

As she drew, she chattered in a friendly way, telling him about the art college she was planning on applying to in New York, commenting on the weather, asking him about the Rock.

The conversation relaxed him, and he was amazed at the ease with which she conducted herself.

She seemed older than her age, he’d thought, which couldn’t have been more than fifteen or so.

He found himself sitting up a little straighter as they spoke.

She’d been drawing for about fifteen minutes when a hard scraping of wheels came from the side of the building.

A car door opened and shut. And then footsteps crunched on the gravel.

“Alice?” It was the young Clarke boy, David. “I didn’t know you’d be busy, sorry,” he said, a strange implying tone in his voice that immediately made Henry shrink back and want to disappear again.

“We can finish later, okay?” Alice had said to Henry.

“I’ll find you.” He’d ducked his head in a shy nod, slipping his socks and shoes on under David’s disdainful gaze, feeling as though he had done something untoward.

He’d snatched up the bucket of clams. He could hear the Clarke boy’s voice as he walked down the dock to his boat, as it carried toward Henry over the wind: “What are you doing with that weirdo?”