a relief to Adam. He had gotten a job as a dishwasher, and as soon as he got his first paycheck, he rented a dilapidated one-room cottage on Crystal Lake, just a few miles away, where peepers and frogs chorused nightly and lilies broke open each morning. I split my remaining time on Cape Cod alternating between two homes and two families, something I’d been doing my whole life, and waitressing at one of the more popular seafood restaurants in town, Sally’s Clam Bar.
Over the course of the summer, things cooled with Adam. We struggled to get along, but our differences were too stark on my home turf. And although we were heartbroken, we were both strangely eager for August to roll around, for me to leave for college in New York, for our relationship to get to its final resting place.
* * *
A few days before I left for college and made what I imagined would be my permanent escape, the Southers came for an end-of-the-summer Wild Game test weekend. They had been meeting regularly while I was traveling and were compiling their successful recipes. My mother’s best friend, Brenda, was also visiting. Brenda was the first person after me to learn about Ben. Like me, she had become enmeshed, regularly meeting Malabar and her lover for drinks at the InterContinental in New York City, the hotel where Ben and Malabar stayed during their trysts. Brenda had known my mother since they’d worked together at Bloomingdale’s in their early twenties. She had been a bridesmaid at Malabar’s wedding to my father and had supported my mother through the dissolution of that marriage after she met Charles.
I was on the back porch scanning the reading requirements for Columbia’s core curriculum and daydreaming about lofty dorm-room discussions of The Iliad and The Symposium when I heard the Southers pull into our driveway. As soon as I put down the college pamphlet, Ben bounded up the steps and enveloped me in a bear hug.
“We missed you, Rennie,” he said, and I understood that “we” did not refer to himself and his wife. Ben considered me an integral part of his affair with my mother, a secret second daughter.
Lily gave me a peck on the cheek. “Good to see you home in one piece,” she said. “Your mother must be over the moon.”
I took in Lily’s appearance, searching for any indication that her health might be declining. Was she frailer than when I’d seen her last? She looked birdlike and brittle but no worse than before, as far as I could tell. Then I realized what I was doing and felt my face grow hot with shame.
I led the Southers through the house to the opposite porch, the front one facing the bay, where Charles and my mother were sitting at the table underneath the large umbrella. Brenda, who wore clothes that covered her pale skin from head to toe, occupied herself deadheading the flowering plants that ran along the bench on the wraparound deck.
“How do!” Ben called, announcing his presence long before he got to the screen door.
When Ben reached Brenda, he lifted the brim of her enormous hat and gave her a quick kiss. “Brenda, throw this God-awful thing out and get some sun,” he said. “You look like a ghost.”
“Brenda, please ignore him,” Lily said cheerily. “He’s incorrigible.”
Charles sighed as he stood. He acknowledged his old friend with a left-handed handshake but looked past him to Lily, whom he greeted warmly. “Good to see you, Lily,” he said and then gestured for everyone to sit before sinking heavily back into his own chair.
My mother brought out a tray with long stirring spoons and six tall glasses filled with ice and garnished with fresh mint and lemon wedges. She poured freshly brewed tea into each glass and offered everyone a choice of simple syrup or Sweet’n Low.
“Well, this sure feels like old times,” Ben said, wrapping his large hand around my knee. He took a sip of tea. “I can’t tell you how happy we are to have you back in our clutches.”
The rose hips and honeysuckle bushes that grew wild along the bank above the beach nodded in the breeze. The tide was ebbing, and the constantly shape-shifting sandbars inched their way toward the water’s surface. The channel had changed in the year that I was away. Now at low tide, the lobster boats had to swing in a wide loop to avoid the shallows instead of passing directly across.