Edward

Chapter Fourteen

Slater's Beach, Massachusetts - 2006

It's only two days left of the summer. Jack's dad has insisted we go sailing. The Clarks' have a yacht and my mom was put out because she wanted me to come home and spend some time at home. She disguised her insistence on me coming home as concerned that I've over stayed my welcome. In reality I knew she wanted to spend time with me before I went back to school and I intuited the she really didn't like carol. I rejected her offer to take a short trip to the cape or even a weekend with her and dad somewhere-which I knew would inevitably end up at flea markets somewhere in New Hampshire or Vermont.

Instead we went out on the boat with Mr. Clark.

"Annie, Come up here." Mr. Clark says to me. He's at the front of the boat. Carol is already on deck. I'm surprised to see Edward is there as well—no Antoinette. She left for Spain the night after the clam bake. Edward is now absorbed in a book, a windbreaker and baseball cap. He's settled on the deck too, back against the rail. The wood deck below him wet but he doesn't seem to care. Jack is helping the ___ . I study Edward for a moment and it does irk me that he doesn't participate more than he absolutely has to in the family. I'm in my bikini with a pair of cut off shorts. My hair is back in a pony tail. Carol looks up at me, her hair back in a bun. She pulls her sunglasses up and rests them on top of her head. She is tanned and looks young for a middle-aged woman. she has a classic beauty and if I hadn't know she'd been raised in the working-class town of Wareham I would have thought she had the same pedigree as Mr. Clark. Her hair was light blonde and she wore small gold hoops. She was in aa one piece bathing suit, black and white Chanel looking. A halter top. She stretched her legs on the chaise she was reclining. "Come sit, Annie."

Edward looked up and examined me through his mirrored aviator glasses.

"Mr. Clark wants my help" I said

Edward says "he wants your help?" He can't say or reference his father without tangible contempt.

Carol pulls her glasses back down "Oh Edward would you just stop."

He turns his head in her direction. "Is he going to teach Annie how to sail."

"Maybe you could get up and do something."

Edward looks back down at this book. I now notice he's holding a pen and jots something in the margin of the page he's reading. I'd like to read what he scribbled I thought.

"Anne." Mr. Clark again "Annie get me. Gin and tonic on your way."

Edward scoffs and I see him shaking his head.

"Darling, after you help Mr. Clark come back and sit with me, won't you?"

The boat is a yacht but it's not big. Big enough to have a young deck hand and sometimes a captain -when like ordinarily Mr. Clark or "the boys" aren't around to captain. There have been a handful of times this year that Carol and I went out of the boat and sat back drinking Pino Grigio at sunset, playing rummy or reading and talking. She's never cared that I'm too young to drink by law and says that there are different rules for drinking age on a yact. It's a rich person joke that I don't totally get but I like the eurpphoia and the hot sun, shaded by a canopy as she showers me in adoration.

When I tell mom about these times—particularly on the boat-she scoffs too, gets a little irriated. I used to think she was mocking me, my clear class difference but I found out after my first year with Jack that she thought the Clarks' were a "ostentatious snobs." Her words. I resented her attitude and sharing it with me. She was tainting something I valued. I felt she was jealous of my relationship with Carol. I never had problems with my own mother but I think she felt threatened that I would bond so much with Jacks mother. But, truth be told she bonded with Jack. Not the same way, not full adoption of him as a son in law while we were dating, but she really liked him and the three of us spent time over the years