Edward

Chapter Eight

Slaters Beach, Massachusetts - 2004

It's hot. It's august. It's even hot at the Clark's house on the beach.The weather there is almost always perfect -every summer day— no matter rain, wind, heat. No matter what is happening in town or even at the local public beach. Some days at horseback beach are so sweltering that your flip flops feel like they are melting under your feet, on the asphalt. Even the shaded sandy walk way to the snack bars and shower houses emanates heat. We are used to it. Those of us who live in town. My best friend who works at Dunkin Donuts—she knows the swelter, getting out of a hot sticky Volkswagen Golf, ten o'clock at night. To work the night shift, the drive through window.

My mom and dad even with our nice, middle class house with four acres, mom's garden beds and vegetable garden.Even us, hot nights at our barbecues. And, Jack always looks comfortable on our metal and vinyl lawn furniture - pottery barn-which mom thinks is designer. Mom (and I until I came to know the Clarks) thought Pottery Barn was upscale.We thought my pubic high school was elite-because of the neighborhood and test scores. We knew nothing of Exeter and east coast boarding schools-until Jack and his family. But, just like at the public beach, just as in his role s lifeguard, Jack was perfectly at home in the middle class culture of my family. Maybe it's easier to enter and move around without notice than the other way around. My entry into Jack's family's world was unusually welcoming. The was because of Carol, Jack's mother, she too to me. Jack was her favorite and one day he brings  his 16 year old girlfriend over to meet her. She said she liked that I knew the value of a dollar. She plied me with intimacies and I saw reflected back in her eyes she found me delightful.

At that time, I liked the Clark's summer place more than I did my own family's farm house victorian. My mother's pride. When she had summer's off from teaching English in Wareham, she'd spend the time renovating and decorating. My dad-a family lawyer- took a whole month every summer to indulge her. She was kind and charming and he'd sit at night, a vodka and soda resting on the pottery barn outdoor lounge chair. Mom's drink untouched as she installed a cobblestone circular patio or dragged unearthed shrubs to create "outdoor rooms." He'd indulge her as she talked. He'd get up from the chair and let her direct him as to where to place a heavy bush or move a wheelbarrow. The summer I met Jack they went on a week long antique / flea market tour that spanned all states from Massachusetts to Delaware. They stayed at Inns and rented a U-haul and returned with enough furniture to completely redecorate our living room, kitchen, and dining room. Even with them away on their trip, I preferred to be with jack and his family at their Sumer home in Salters. I went back to my house only to water the plants, check on things, and pick up clothes or cds. I didn't even have to wash my laundry at the Clark. They had two full time housekeepers and a groundskeeper who helped the family in all sorts of ways from starting the fire pits to setting up canopies on the lawn for parties. He stayed there year round in a small gatehouse. 

One year a young woman writer stayed on a guest house on an adjacent property. For a summer-the summer I was 17, she did some cooking and housekeeping and the Clark's paid her a stipend so she could write and spend the summer on salters. She had a voluptuous prettiness. Still innocent but a Marilyn Monroe kind of vulnerability. She wasn't quite the sex symbol but she had sexiness despite her plain pale uniform. Years later I would find out she was one of the main characters in Edward's first novel. He would always change the subject—one time secretly telling me it was a really bad copy of catcher in the rye. I wanted to know if he was in love with her like Holden Caulfield was in love with Jane Gallagher.

Antoinette.

Jack and I watched as Antoinette brought the casserole dishes in from the kitchen. It was Edward's birthday, July 18 and Mrs. Clark-a little tipsy- had insisted on paella- a dish Antoinette did not know how to cook, but luckily the other housekeeper did as she'd made it for years-every summer for Edward. And in the two summers before Antoinette came Edward didn't seem to notice. The only reason his lack of interest in the paella was something I remembered was the way Mrs. Clark made such a big deal out of it. Edward would stiffly sit, ordinarily still in a short sleeve Oxford shirt and kaki shorts for dinner. Still well put together, every year regardless of the fact that Jack and I were comfortable in t-shirts and sweat pants or shorts our hair still sandy from swimming. Not Edward. He was somehow above the rest of the Clarks He stood out. And at that time, his mother wasn't so transparent in her contempt for her oldest son. Not like she would be later. At that time she would fawn and make a fuss and on July 18-his birthday-he'd eat the paella and dispassionately relent that it was indeed his favorite meal. But, the summer Antoinette was there, it was so markedly different- Edward's reaction. It was a scene from the Victorian novels he read at that time-still in graduate school. She was so pretty - more so towards the end of that summer after she and Edward started meeting up at night in the small guest house on the empty property next door. I'd been in there once Mrs. Clark had asked to deliver a list to Antoinette before she went into to town to buy groceries. I don't know where Jack or Edward were but I was at the beach house-I had been sitting on the deck with Mrs. Clark. She'd bene doing a crossword puzzle and I'd been reading The Handmaid's Tale. That day Mr. Clark was expected to  return home and Mrs. Clark had already had some crisp white wine. By noon she was already a little light and loose and affectionate. "Would you mind sweet heart? You really are a darling."