Page 4 of Summer Skate

I make dinner. I give baths. I put them in pajamas.

I read stories, vaguely paying attention to whatever is happening with the mouse and the giant strawberry.

My husband comes home just in time to tuck them in, all clean and pajama-clad.

The sweetest part of the day and he gets it.

In my next life, I’m coming back as a dad.

My daughter jumps out of bed. “I can’t stop thinking about lions,” she says, and I drag her back. The baby cries. I sing to him.

How much is that doggie in the window? Arf-arf. I do hope that doggie’s for sale. Arf-arf .

“He’s still crying,” I say to Alejandro. “Why is he still crying?”

“You’re singing a song about adoption.”

And then, they are asleep. The apartment is quiet.

We are done. We lie on the couch and stare into space.

Alejandro wants to watch a show about Vikings.

I want to watch the Kardashians get their hair done in their oversized mansions.

I should work. I’m finally free. But I can do nothing.

I can only listen to the gentle hum of Kourtney’s anxiety about how she’s a control freak, they all are, and it’s their mother’s fault.

My agent calls again, and I let it ring. If necessary, I will pull a full-blown Costanza and hide under my desk. My next book? He’ll have to find me first.

On Saturday night, I sneak out of the house at eleven to go to a concert.

I don’t really have to sneak, but if Alejandro hears me then he’ll have free rein to leave me with the kids some other night and stay out as late as he wants, and I don’t feel like giving him that ace in his pocket unless I get caught.

After the show, while I’m in a taxi home, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the phone rings from an unknown number. I watch it ring. So late? I’m tempted. I pick up.

“You’re alive.”

It’s my agent.

“It’s two in the morning!”

“You weren’t answering my calls during business hours. I figured I had to pretend to be an ex-boyfriend calling with regrets in order to reach you.”

“Well played.”

“I’m calling because I have a client with an empty house in the Hamptons for the summer, in case you were interested in getting away from your family and getting some actual writing done, not that that’s the kind of thing you’d be interested in.”

“Which client?”

“Don’t make me say it. You know which one.”

“He said that I can use his house? Why? ”

“You know he loves you.”

“He loves all women.”

“For lack of a better way of saying this . . . You’re special.”

“I feel sick, suddenly.”

“Okay. I’ll stop.”

“Well, I can’t leave my family for the entire summer! I’d be excommunicated from society. People would throw tomatoes at me whenever I left the house.”

“What about . . . say . . . a month?”

I inhale dramatically. “Maybe . . . maybe . . . Would anyone else be there?”

“No. You’d be completely alone.”

“Completely alone? What about a sexy gardener, or a nosy pool guy?”

“Nope.”

“Neighborhood eccentric?”

“Completely alone.”

“I don’t know if I could handle that. I’m a city girl, with a family. I’m never alone. On a slow day, I have four doormen at my disposal.”

“Think of it as an exercise in resilience. Alone and roughing it in the wilds of the Hamptons.”

“ Will she survive? Or will she finally learn about love, family, sex, greed, jealousy . . . life. Maybe she’ll finally learn about the ties that bind them . . . Or will there be a devastating event that changes everything?”

“For a novelist, you have a surprising amount of hostility toward book jackets. Look. Maybe you’ll get some material out of it. It’ll build character. Maybe even a character or two.”

“So, this house . . . Is it an adorable charming little shack with creaky floors and ghosts in the attic and maybe the electricity goes out sometimes and I’ll have to write by candlelight?”

“It’s the Hamptons. It’s small, but unlikely haunted.”

“Damn.”

“I can have somebody go in and cut the electric sometimes if that’s what it takes?”

“See, now you’re really working for me, babe.”

To take off from my family for a month, I know I have to do something drastic.

And it has to involve tears. Alejandro knows I’ve been struggling, so this won’t be shocking to him.

He’s been seeing my mental health deteriorate as the book deadline looms. But I have to pull out all the stops.

So I pretend to be going insane, which I very nearly am.

I believe, in the psychiatric business, it is called “leveling up.”

When he gets home from work, I am high as a kite and organizing my books.

I have taken all our books off the shelves and thrown them into the center of the room.

I start reshelving them by size, color, author name, period in my life that I read them, you name it.

I tell him I’ve been doing this all day.

“You didn’t write today? When is your deadline again?” he asks.

And then I start to cry. I explain the situation. My agent and his evil demands that I comply with a contractual obligation. That monster .

I stare at him, maniacally, with glassy eyes. “I think I have to go to the Hamptons.”

“Really?” he says, in a mocking tone. “This is the only way you can write?”

“I see no other way.”

When I first get to the house, it’s late at night and I am still not well, mentally.

I spend all my time looking out the windows, searching for any sign of life.

But I’m surrounded by farmland. It is a degree of black I am unused to.

Across the farm, I can see a light or two, in the great distance, perhaps the home of the farmer who owns the land.

But it is so far away that it is barely discernable from the reflections inside my house.

There are a few houses around me, but I can’t see them because of shrubbery or patches of woods.

There is only one house, much larger than mine, that lurks close by.

It is so large that it looms over the row of trees and hedges that separates our houses on one side. The windows are dark.

I can hear cars whizzing by sometimes, but there is not a person in sight.

In the city, I like to sit at my window to see other human beings, potentially overhear their conversations.

In this house, I see and hear nobody. On my first night, I make a lot of calls to Alejandro.

I fall asleep at three A.M . to the sound of my fourth Friends episode.

I don’t get any writing done the next day because I’m disoriented. Also, super busy on neighborhood watch.

On my second night, I hear a car on gravel. I jump. Finally . I see the shine of headlights against my window, followed by the rumble of feet and the sound of voices next door. Voices! I run to the window, like a golden retriever desperate for its owner.

There is a lit window. A lit window! Just a yellow square, but it is the sweetest sight.

It calms something inside me. Gives me a profound sense of well-being.

The light is all I need. I sit down at my computer and imagine people milling about the house, and it is infinitely comforting to me.

I go back to the window, staring at the light, making sure it hasn’t disappeared.

Then, I go about my business. But I keep coming back.

I write. I check for the light. I read. I check for the light.

As long as it’s on, I am okay. I am among friends.

It has been only two hours and yet I fear the light being taken away from me.

Before I go to sleep, I keep the shades only halfway down.

Watching television in bed, I feel I have company, like I’m watching with somebody I know in the next room.

I lower the shade just enough that I can still see the light as I drift off to sleep.

The next morning, I awaken to what sounds like a hundred people in a backyard.

I never heard cars. Or anyone coming or going.

Just the sudden sound of a hundred people.

How did they get there? Are the cars parked on the other side of the house?

Was there . . . a party bus? I can’t figure it out.

I sit outside by the pool, consumed by voices.

I write their words down for a college party scene I’m working on, a play on the ancient Greek tradition of symposium.

Basically—a drinking party. It must be a “darty,” or daytime party.

I’ve heard my sixteen-year-old babysitter throw around this term.

I listen to the partygoers on the other side of the bushes. How old are these people? I try to figure it out.

A thumping bass. Mass confusion. A crescendo of screams and squeals.

Somebody yelling, Alex! An Alex is needed.

Do you need any help? A humanitarian in the crowd.

Hey Ava! Let’s do it . A jumble of What’s up?

And: What the fuck! Ava. Chill. AVA. Amaaaazing .

The sound of banging on the wall of a porta-potty.

Hey man, do you have a . . . Awwww don’t think like that.

WHAT? AHHH! WOO! More banging. I gotta piss, bro!

Hi Sara . . . I miss you! Olympia, STOP!

Conclusion: It’s a bunch of young people of indeterminate age having a party. At ten A.M . Well, I can live with that. Brings a little life to the neighborhood.

I make myself a watermelon margarita. I have to write a sex scene now and I could use some loosening up. I down half my drink, then go for a swim. I spend the next five days alternating between writing, swimming, and spying on the house next door.