Nantucket Nights

Theo

“Baby. Oh, baby, oh, baby, baby.”

Like his worst nightmare, or maybe as an answer to his prayers, he felt arms around him and over the arms he saw Antoinette’s face, or almost. The arms and the voice belonged to his mother, that much he knew instinctively. He wanted to throw the arms off, lash out: What the fuck are you doing? Leave me alone! But instead he let himself get pulled in. His mother’s arms. She loved him. She must know about everything by now, and yet she loved him. His whole life she’d told him that she was a safe place to go, that no matter what he did she would forgive him, and that he never had any reason to be afraid. And yet the last eight, nine hours he’d been very afraid as he watched the diver sweep the bottom of the ocean floor looking for Antoinette’s body. He’d cried and watched and prayed to the God he wasn’t even sure existed. Thinking that if they did find her dead he would drown himself, too. Because how could he live without her? Now he was in his mother’s arms looking through tears at a face that was almost Antoinette’s, but not. He let himself cry.

“I love her,” he said. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“Ssshhh. Ssshhh.” His mother’s hand ran through his hair. She knew, and she wasn’t angry. He had been sure his mother would be angry; he was sure the news would devastate and scandalize everyone- his mother, the rest of his family, the island of Nantucket. Antoinette had thought so, too, and that was why she had wanted to get an abortion-because of what his mother would say. And so, he despised his mother and he loved her. His emotions were tangled, knotted like a fishing net. It was too much for a kid of eighteen. Too fucking much.

Theo had known Antoinette his entire life. In the green vinyl photo album there was a snapshot of Antoinette holding him as a baby. She was twenty-seven years old and a complete fox in a black leotard and a black leather miniskirt. In the photo she looked strangely sad, a little like the Mona Lisa, he thought. Theo removed the snapshot from the family album- it was the only photograph of her in existence, she said. Theo placed it on Antoinette’s nightstand. He sometimes looked at it when they made love.

“That picture makes me feel old,” she said. “Elderly.”

But he liked it. It proved they had a shared past.

Theo had known Antoinette his entire life. And so there was nothing to hide. She baby-sat once when he was thirteen and certainly old enough to baby-sit his sisters and brother himself. Except that his parents were going off-island, to Boston for a long weekend. Antoinette slept on the sofa under an afghan that Theo’s grandmother crocheted, and she slept in the nude. Theo got up in the middle of the night to pee, and he sneaked down to the living room, and there was Antoinette asleep on the couch, covered with the afghan, her clothes in a pile on the floor. It was dark, but his parents kept a light on over the kitchen sink at night and so Theo saw part of her shoulder, a slice of her ass, and what he thought was a nipple poking through one of the holes in the afghan. His penis grew so hard it actually hurt, and he hurried back to his bedroom and stroked himself until he came. Antoinette was his fantasy for a long time after that.

But it wasn’t an obsession or anything. Because before this past April, Theo had been a normal kid. He did well in school, he played third base on the varsity baseball team, he had friends and girlfriends. The summer between his sophomore and junior years, he’d had sex with two girls-Gillian Bergey from his class, and a summer girl named Ashland. He’d told his dad about both girls. His dad asked if Theo had used a Trojan, and Theo said, Of course. (Though a couple of times with the summer girl he’d forgotten, but she’d sent him three perfumed letters the following fall, and there was no mention of any problem.) His dad had said, “Sex is healthy and highly enjoyable, but I always want you to be smart. And considerate. Do you hear me?”

Theo had known Antoinette his entire life, but she didn’t enter his life until the April evening when he bumped into her at the Islander Liquor Store.

Nearly every night after baseball practice, Theo shuttled his teammates Brett and Aaron (catcher and left field) to the Islander to get Cokes and chips and Slim Jims, and Theo-the only one of them who was eighteen-bought scratch tickets and a tin of Skoal for Brett, who was addicted to the stuff. They sat on the curb outside the store and opened the Cokes and the bags of Doritos and pork rinds, they scratched the silver film off their scratch tickets with quarters, and when nobody won anything, they flipped the tickets into the trash bin near the front door. Theo was well-deserving of this hour and its pleasures: the hot shower in the locker room, the blaring radio in his Jeep, the soda, the chips, the cold curb under his rump as he turned his baseball hat backwards and shot the breeze with his friends.

The night Theo saw Antoinette, he gnawed a Slim Jim, and Brett spat nasty brown loogies into the parking lot. Aaron talked about his job that upcoming summer as a beach boy at the Cliffside Beach Club and how he would date all the hot nannies.

“Nanny,” Theo said. “There’s something twisted about that word, man. It’s like something you would call your grandmother.”

“I call my grandmother Gramma,” Aaron said.

“I call my grandmother Mimi,” Brett said.

“What about Granny?” Theo said. “Rhymes with nanny.”

“You know, the foreign chicks aren’t technically nannies,” Aaron said. “They’re au pairs.”

“You need to find an au pair who’s got a pair,” Brett said.

Antoinette rode her bike into the parking lot while they were laughing about that. It was getting dark, but there was no mistaking Antoinette-curly hair, wearing a black leotard and leggings and black Chuck Taylors. Brett let out a low whistle. Theo bowed his head. Because he wasn’t exactly elated to see one of his mother’s friends as he sat on the curb outside a liquor store. Antoinette didn’t see him. She leaned her bike next to the trash bin and went into the Islander, the bells on the door jingling.

“That woman is fine looking,” Brett said.

“I love black women,” Aaron said. “Like Naomi Campbell? I would definitely do it with Naomi.”

“Fuck you guys,” Theo said. “I know that woman.”

“You do not,” Brett said. He spat.

“She’s a friend of my mother’s,” Theo said.

“You’re kidding,” Aaron said. “I wish my mother had friends like that.”

The bells jingled again a few minutes later, and Antoinette came out. She pulled three bottles of wine from a paper bag, tossed the bag into the trash bin, and slid the bottles into the black leather backpack she was carrying. Theo watched her, trying to decide whether or not to say hello. Antoinette didn’t look their way; she wasn’t the kind of person to pay attention to teenagers. She threw one graceful leg over her bike. Then Brett spat and Antoinette glanced over. She locked eyes with Theo, but in a way that let him know she wouldn’t say anything unless he did. Aaron knocked Theo with his knee.

“Hey, Antoinette.”

“Theo.”

That was all she said, just his name, but it brought back a host of tucked-away feelings. Her voice was deep and throaty.

“Do you want a ride?” he said. “I have a car.”

She laughed. Immediately, he felt like an ass. “No thanks,” she said. “You guys just keep on keeping on.”

“Bob Dylan,” Aaron whispered.

Brett spat again-he claimed the urge to spit with tobacco was uncontrollable-but it was disgusting. Theo reddened.

“Antoinette,” he said. “These are friends of mine from the baseball team. Maybe you want to come see one of our games sometime?”

She laughed again and pedaled away.

“Damn,” Aaron said.

That very night, the phone rang. Almost always the phone was for Theo or Jennifer, but this time when his mother answered, she kept talking. Theo was upstairs in his room with the door cracked, half reading The Scarlet Letter, half listening to his mother’s voice. When she hung up, she said to Theo’s father, “That was Antoinette. She wants to come with me to Theo’s next game.”

And so, truth be told, it wasn’t Theo who did the pursuing. Had Antoinette not called, he probably would have forgotten all about her.

“You wanted me, didn’t you?” he asked her, months later. “You wanted my ass.”

She shrugged, said nothing.

Antoinette came to the game against Nauset High School. She stood out in her black T-shirt, black jeans, Chuck Taylors; she looked like she belonged on a street corner in New York City asking for change. Theo’s mom on the other hand looked like the other moms: blue jeans, white turtleneck, lilac fleece vest. Antoinette was her eccentric friend in tow. Everyone stared at her, including Brett and Aaron, who whispered something about your mom’s hot friend, smoking hot as they sat on the bench waiting to bat. Theo felt the need to impress just as he did when some chick was there to watch him play. When his turn came at the plate, he tapped the bat against the insides of his cleats, knocking off clumps of dirt. His mother clapped and said, “Come on, Theo!” Antoinette said nothing as far as he could tell. (He was too self-conscious to look her way.) Theo stood for four balls in a row and then trotted to first base, where he got stranded.

Theo kept his attention resolutely on the game, although as a rule he hated when guys on the team acted too absorbed in the game to say hello to their own mothers. He knew his mother had three other children and better things to do with her time than sit on a wooden plank on a chilly afternoon watching him play baseball, and yet, because Antoinette was there, he didn’t go over to say hello. He was nervous, embarrassed; he had butterflies. His second time at bat, he popped up to Nauset’s first baseman. Theo did make one great play on defense-catching a line drive and then nailing the runner on second. Everyone clapped and his mother yelled, but Theo, who occasionally took a bow after making a good play, didn’t even smile. His third time at bat, he walked again.

His team won, 1-0.

After the game, Theo listened to Coach Buford’s speech about who needed to work on what at practice the next day ( “the whole team, batting… the batting in this game left something to be desired… “). Then he put on his letter jacket, tucked his glove under his arm, and trudged over to where his mom and Antoinette were waiting for him. Antoinette had goose bumps on her arms, and she wore no bra. Her nipples poked out like hard little pellets.

“Hey,” Theo said.

“Great double play,” his mom said. “I can’t wait to tell Dad.”

“Thanks,” Theo said. He took a deep breath and smiled at Antoinette. “What did you think?”

“You’re quite an athlete,” she said.

“The batting wasn’t very good for either side,” Theo said, gazing out at the now-empty field.

“I enjoyed it,” Antoinette said.

Theo’s mother hitched up the strap of her purse and checked her watch. “Listen, I have to pick up Cassidy B. in town in like five minutes, and then go home and get dinner. Can you do me a huge favor, mister, and give Antoinette a ride home?”

“You don’t have to,” Antoinette said. “I can walk.”

“Walk? To Polpis?” his mother said. “Theo will drive you. He loves to drive.”

“I’ll drive you,” Theo said, looking at the ground, embarrassed and thrilled. “Just let me shower. I’ll be fifteen minutes.”

“You sure?” Antoinette said.

“Sure.”

He got ribbing from Brett and Aaron when he told them he couldn’t hang out at the Islander because he had to drive Antoinette home.

“Holy shit,” Brett said. “You lucky dog.”

Aaron rubbed Speed Stick under his arms and pulled a gray T-shirt over his head. “You’d better fuck her,” he said, “or we’ll never forgive you.”

The locker room smelled like feet and clanged with locker doors opening and closing. Mist from the showers gave everything a shimmer.

Theo dropped his bag and collapsed on the wooden bench. “Man, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not how it is,” Theo said. “She’s a friend of my mother’s. This is an errand, you know, like going to the store.”

“I’d like to go to that store,” Aaron said.

“Me, too,” Brett said. “Anyway, how about we come along? This lady lives on Polpis, right? We’ll hit the Islander on the way back.”

“No,” Theo said.

“Why not?” Aaron said. His black hair stood up from his scalp like porcupine quills. “You said it was like going to the store.”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” Theo said.

Because the truth was, it felt sort of like an errand for his mother, but sort of like a date, too. Or not a date, but giving a girl a ride home. Antoinette was waiting in the parking lot, leaning against his Jeep, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“You can get in,” he said. “You look cold.”

“I’m all right.”

He threw his bag in the back, dug his keys out of his front jeans pocket, and started the engine. Antoinette closed her door and stared straight ahead. Theo worried what he must smell like-what if he’d carried out the stench of the boys’ locker room? The radio was on way too loud, and he quickly turned it down. Why was he so nervous? He left the parking lot.

“You used to have a Jeep like this, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I had a CJ7,” Antoinette said. “Drove it until it fell apart.”

“And now what do you drive?”

“I don’t,” she said. “As you saw the other day, I ride my bike.”

“Oh. Isn’t that tough, though, I mean, living out on Polpis? What about the store and stuff? Or if you have to go to town?”

“I call a cab,” she said. “Or I hitchhike.”

“You hitchhike?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, if you’re ever in a pinch for a vehicle, I can give you a lift. Dad and I split the cost of this thing on the condition that I’m at their beck and call at, like, any given moment. So, if you need a ride…”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

But he could tell she thought he was an idiot.

He said nothing else and neither did she. She wasn’t like his mother’s other friends, who always had a question for him: How was school? Who was he taking to the prom? Had he given any thought to college? Antoinette, he was sure, cared nothing for his little life. He didn’t even know why she was friends with his mother. They were nothing alike. His mother was so normal. They’d been friends a long time, though, since before he was born, and Theo respected that. He understood that in certain instances, time could fill in for common ground.

As he turned onto the dirt lane that was Antoinette’s driveway, Theo allowed himself a glance at her chest. He remembered her nipples poking through the holes of the afghan, and it was an arousing thought. So he looked to see if her nipples were still erect from the cold, and she caught him. He averted his eyes slightly to make it seem like he was looking out her window-but no. He’d been caught checking out her tits as surely as if he’d reached over and touched one.

Antoinette smiled out the window.

Theo hit the gas, and the Jeep went shooting up the driveway to the house. He braked and turned on his lights; it was starting to get dark.

Antoinette sat quietly, making no move to get out.

What was she waiting for? Was she pissed off? Did she expect an apology?

Theo coughed. “My dad built this house for you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he did.”

“Thought so-”

“Theo-”

They both spoke at once and Theo laughed. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you want to come inside?”

“No, I’d better get home.”

“How old are you, Theo?” she asked.

“Eighteen,” he said. “I’m eighteen.”

“You’re graduating, then?”

“No,” he said. “I’m only a junior. I repeated third grade because I had mono.”

“Mono. The kissing disease.” Antoinette smiled again, and Theo reached for the gear shift. She didn’t make a move to get out or anything, so Theo shifted into reverse.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m a year older than everyone else in my class. I used to hate it, but now it’s kind of cool. I have my license and stuff.”

She touched her lips and studied the front of her house. “You know, I think I remember that year you were sick. I definitely remember when you were born. Can’t believe eighteen years have passed. I must be getting old.”

“You’re not old,” Theo said.

Antoinette opened her door and hopped out. She raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, but I am,” she said.

He saw her again a few days later. Life was funny that way-he hadn’t given Antoinette a thought in five years, and now all of a sudden, she was everywhere he looked. He was at baseball practice, standing at third base while the assistant coach, Ned, who had hit.325 for the University of Arizona and had biceps the size of grapefruits, smacked balls to all the infielders. Theo had just caught a line drive that was so hot it burned the pocket of his mitt, when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye: a woman wearing a long black raincoat, riding a bike. Kevin Shaw, the shortstop, saw her, too, and he said, “Oh, look, the Wicked Witch of the West.” It was Antoinette.

Brett, who was leaning against the backstop with his catcher’s mask secured on top of his head, said, “Theo, man, there’s your girlfriend.”

The rest of the team turned around, and Big Ned sent a ball past Joey Mackenna at first base. Theo felt his face get hot. He shot Brett the finger, shielded from Ned’s view by his mitt. Theo heard the squeal of brakes, and he could tell without turning around that Antoinette had stopped just on the other side of the fence.

Please go away, he thought. Though a part of him was soaring-Antoinette had come to see him! It changed his whole day, and even after Ned barked out, “Gentlemen, pay attention!” and even after Theo heard the clickety-click of Antoinette’s bike chain resume, he glowed with the fact that she’d sought him out. Ned sent him a choppy grounder, which he plucked out of the air and aced to Mackenna on first.

“Theo on fire,” Brett said.

He started taking the long, long, long way home from the Islander so that he could drive by her house. An exercise in futility, because he couldn’t see the house from the road, only the first twenty yards or so of dirt driveway. Theo began to look for tire tracks. Did they seem fresh? Had she just gotten home? Was she still out somewhere on her bike?

One evening, he stopped right there on Polpis Road in front of her driveway. He wanted to pull in, but he was too afraid. He’d nicked a can of WD-40 from his father’s toolbox, thinking that he could stop by and offer to oil the brakes of her bike. He waited for about thirty seconds, listening for another car, which, if he didn’t get moving, would rear-end him and probably kill him. His father had lectured him for almost an hour about being a safe driver-one accident and the car got taken away, blah, blah, blah.

Then, without warning, the passenger door opened and Antoinette climbed in. Wearing black jeans and a silky black blouse, holding a long stick.

Where had she come from?

“Hi,” he said. “I was just…”

“Waiting for me?” she said.

“No. I, uh…”

“Too bad,” she said. “I went for a walk in the woods just now and I saw your Jeep. I thought maybe the reason you were peering down my driveway was because you wanted to see me.”

Theo’s eyes were drawn to the way the material of her blouse lay against her chest. Black material, brown skin.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” he asked. “I can give you a ride.”

“How about you drive me home?”

“You are home.”

“Up the driveway,” she said.

His heart sailed like a home run. Going, going… He shifted into first and zoomed up the driveway to her house.

“Do you want to come inside?” she said.

As soon as she asked, he got an erection, a definite indication that his answer should be no. You’d better fuck her or we’ll never forgive you.

“No, I can’t. I have to get home.”

Now it was her turn to look-her eyes targeted the crotch of his jeans, the thickening there. Could she detect it? She reached out one of her long bronze arms, her slender fingers, and stroked him back, forth, like she was painting him. Theo groaned. The touch was feathery light, in honesty he could barely feel it, but the whole idea of Antoinette stroking him made him turgid. What was happening?

“I think you’d better come inside,” she said.

He followed her into her cottage, noticing only peripherally what his mother referred to as “Antoinette’s cool stuff”: the funky, hand-painted furniture, the African drums, the colorful candles knotted and twisted like magician’s balloons. He would see all that later. That first time, he followed Antoinette into the bedroom, where she stripped her clothes, casually, as though she were going to shower. She was a woman like none he’d ever seen. Like a flute carved from a single piece of wood.

Somehow he, too, undressed and sat on the bed, and Antoinette knelt before him and took him in her mouth. Sucking and stroking him as he watched the perfect arc of her spine and willed himself not to explode. He wanted to touch her, but he couldn’t. His hands were propping him up.

She climbed on top of him and his hands were pinned again, this time above his head. She was holding his wrists together as she slid up and down. Up and down, up and down, until she moaned and Theo knew it was no use holding back. He was gone, cut loose into a part of the world so wonderful he could never have predicted its existence.

Afterwards, he lay on his back, agitated, his mind floundering like a freshly caught fish. He thought of his father first and that led dangerously to thinking about his mother. His mother. Oh, shit.

Antoinette lifted herself off him and went into the bathroom, shutting the door, turning on a light. The rush of water. The flush of the toilet. Theo lay back, terrified to move and yet tense with the understanding that he had to get out of there. He had to go home. Go home! How would he be able to go home and eat dinner with his parents and his sisters and Luke, for God’s sake, when he had just had sex with Antoinette? He thought of running away, and maybe if he’d lived on the mainland, he would have called home and told his mother a lie about staying at a friend’s and then he could have driven to another town and eaten quietly at a diner and taken steps to make himself feel more like an adult-drunk coffee, smoked cigarettes. Collected himself. Because he felt scattered, like he’d been broken into pieces: an ashamed piece, a scared piece, an intrigued piece. But since he lived on this island, where there was no place to hide, he’d have to put on his clothes, get in his Jeep, and hope that five miles of cool air through an open window would do the trick.

He dressed. Then the bathroom door opened, and there was Antoinette, still naked, standing before him, backlit.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

He thought she was making fun of him. Maybe the whole thing was a joke, then, some kind of Mrs. Robinson-type thing to her. Seducing her friend’s teenage son. Nothing about this scene was original- at least he had that much straight. Older woman, younger man. Much younger. Twenty-six years younger. It happened, probably, all the time.

“No, thanks. I gotta go.”

“Your mom makes dinner every night?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“So you should go.”

“Yeah.”

“But tomorrow you’ll stay for a glass of wine?”

“Tomorrow?”

“You’re busy tomorrow? Well, come back when ever you’re not busy. I have something I want to show you.”

“You can show me now.”

“No, next time.” She stepped back into the bathroom and was lit up again. Her skin was the color of dark honey. She stood in front of the mirror and wiped a finger tip under each of her eyes.

“Okay,” Theo said. He busied himself with his shoes, then he stood up, checked for his car keys, but was pretty sure he’d left them in the ignition. He didn’t know what to say. That was amazing? Thank you? “Listen, I’m going to go.”

She didn’t look his way. “Okay,” she said. “Bye.”

Theo rode home with both windows open, the stereo thumping. The moon was rising pale and round, and Theo howled at it. He felt okay, didn’t he? He felt great! For this moment, he let himself feel great.

He arrived home at a quarter to eight. Late for dinner, which was always at seven. Okay, so he would have to tell his mother he stayed late at the Islander with Brett and Aaron. He would get yelled at, and possibly even lose his Islander privileges for a few days; his mom didn’t like him hanging around there, anyway.

But things at home were odd, different. Instead of a regular family dinner-everyone sitting around the dining table, bright and chattery-the dining room was lit only by candles, and it was just Theo’s parents and Jennifer eating shrimp scampi from the fine china, drinking wine from the crystal. The three of them smiled at him when he walked in. His place was set.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” his father asked.

“What?”

“Your mother made scampi, and you’re old enough to enjoy it with some chardonnay,” his father said. “Trust me, it’ll wake your palate right up.”

“I’m having some,” Jennifer said proudly.

Theo shed his jacket and took his seat at the table. He watched his father pour golden wine into the glass. His mother passed him the linguine, then the scampi, then Caesar salad. He piled his plate high. He was starving.

“Where are Luke and Cass?” he asked.

“They wanted to eat hot dogs in front of the TV,” his mother said. “So I let them.” She shrugged. “I figured if they wanted to eat like kids, then the four of us could eat like adults.”

“I wish we could do this every night,” Jennifer said.

“I guess,” Theo said. He sipped his wine and the taste exploded on his tongue. He hadn’t kissed Antoinette, not once the whole time. He picked up his fork-heavy, the silver-and ate.

“I hear you’ve been playing some terrific baseball,” his father said. He reached into the salad bowl for a crouton. “I promise I’ll make it to the next game.”

“Me, too,” Jennifer said.

Theo looked at his parents and his sister. Their faces glowed orange in the candlelight.

“You all look really beautiful,” Theo said.

No one seemed surprised by this. His mother smiled at him. “So do you, sweetheart,” she said. “So do you.”

That dinner was a divine gift. A sign. He didn’t feel alien in his house at all; he’d made love to Antoinette and then he’d gone home and drunk chardonnay and eaten scampi by candlelight with his parents and his sister. It all seemed part of a contiguous whole. He was eighteen years old. An adult.

So why not go back the following day? The only obstacle was Brett and Aaron, and they were thrown off track like a couple of stupid dogs.

“I can’t go anywhere after practice,” Theo said. “I have to take my sister Cassidy to the library”

Brett and Aaron winced in sympathy.

Theo reached Antoinette’s at a quarter to six; he had an hour, which seemed like plenty of time. He was glad for the parameters. When he pulled into her driveway, he allowed himself the luxury of looking around. There was a half-moon window high up on the front of the house, a deck off the back with built-in benches, an outdoor shower. Patterned shingling, a crisp brick chimney. A neat pile of wood was stacked next to the house and leaned against it, a red-handled hatchet. Did she chop her own wood? The lawn around the house was greener than it should have been in April, and freshly edged around clumps of daffodils. Did she mow her own lawn? Theo had the urge to pick a daffodil and take it inside, but then he ridiculed himself. He was an ass.

The main door stood open and Theo peered inside. The living room was growing dark. Two candles on the coffee table were lit. Theo took in the details of the room: the fireplace, the bookshelves crammed with books, the jewel-colored Persian rug. Theo stepped in and closed the door behind him. The half-moon window threw a shape of fading light onto the wood floor.

And then he heard music, a flute, and Antoinette appeared. It was like she grew out of the floor. She was reaching and stretching and waving her arms, kicking her legs in long, fluid arcs. She was dancing. Theo held his breath. She moved her body in amazing ways, bending backwards while her arms fluttered forward. She wore black leggings and a man’s white undershirt. No bra. The T-shirt was threadbare; it was as good as wearing nothing at all, and when she bent backwards he was reminded of the night before and how she’d taken him.

He stood where he was, feet planted on a bamboo doormat until finally she collapsed in a heap on the floor, breathing hard. Theo wasn’t sure what to do; he didn’t know if she’d seen him or not. He wanted to think the dance was for his benefit, but he sort of doubted it, and he didn’t want to scare her or have her think he was spying on her. He waited until she composed herself, and then he retreated a few steps and knocked on the inside of the door. She turned her head slowly to him, her face unsurprised. So she had known he was there, after all.

“You said you had something to show me,” he said.

“Did I?” she said. Her hair was wild around her face, and she tried to secure it in a bun held together by what looked like a chopstick, but strands sprang free. She plucked the T-shirt away from her chest and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Do I? Maybe I do. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Sure,” he said, afraid to move. He watched her take two crystal glasses out of the cabinet and a bottle from the fridge. “Is that chardonnay?”

“It is,” she said. “Do you like chardonnay?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, good.” She nodded at the sofa. “Let’s sit down.”

Theo moved to the sofa. He tried to breathe, to relax. “I liked your dance.”

“Did you?” she said, in a way that made it sound like she couldn’t have cared less. He wished he had a word to describe how it made him feel. Well, aroused, it aroused him, but he couldn’t tell her that.

Antoinette handed him a glass of wine and he took a long swill. He looked at her books. Could she really have read them all? “I’m reading The Scarlet Letter,” he said. Then he remembered Hester Prynne and the A for adultery and he closed his eyes. Why had he said that?

“Let’s have a toast,” Antoinette said. “To your return.”

They clinked glasses. Theo took another swallow.

“Now, what was it I wanted to show you?” Antoinette said. “Oh, yes, it was something in the bathroom. Come with me.” She pulled him up by the hand.

The bathroom was huge and fancy with a green floor. Theo saw her toothbrush, her baking soda toothpaste, a pink disposable razor. One of her dark hairs curled on the rim of the sink. Theo tried not to look any further. Being in the bathroom with her embarrassed him.

Antoinette lifted a seashell off the back of the toilet and handed it to him. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s a shell,” Theo said. “A whelk shell.” It was white as a bone with a perfect crown, and the faintest hint of peach inside.

“You gave it to me,” she said.

“I did?”

“A million years ago. I took you and your mother to Tuckernuck Island, and you found that shell on the beach. Your mother asked you what you wanted to do with it, and without hesitating you marched through the sand and gave it to me. You were only three years old.”

“And you kept it?” he said.

“I hadn’t gotten a gift like that in a long time. Nor have I gotten one since.” She touched his lips and then she kissed him. She tasted smoky and sweet, and the word persimmon came to his mind, though he had never eaten a persimmon, or even seen one, for that matter.

They made love again, and Theo thought of his little boy self on the beach at Tuckernuck, handing the thing most precious to him at that moment to Antoinette, and in thinking about that he felt even more like a man.

He returned again the next day, and the next. At first it was as if his hour with Antoinette were pure fantasy, a visit to another planet where there were no rules, where nothing mattered except their attraction to each other. But then, as more days passed, the opposite became true, and Theo’s life at school and at home turned into the fantasy-a false life, a lie he was living until six o’clock came and he was driving along Polpis Road toward Antoinette’s house.

Baseball season ended. At the awards banquet, held upstairs at Arno’s, Theo was named “Outstanding Infielder.” His parents glowed with pride, and Theo walked to the front of the room as everyone applauded. He took the trophy from Coach Buford and saluted the crowd with two fingers, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was like he was watching himself, or wondering what Antoinette would be thinking if she were watching. He’d won an award at a stupid high school sports banquet where they’d eaten stuffed chicken breasts and ice cream sundaes. So what? He left his trophy on the table on purpose-it was too childish to take home-but his father noticed it and carried it out to the truck for him.

Theo took Gillian Bergey to the junior prom. Her parents belonged to Faraway Island Club, so that was where they ate-in the club dining room that smelled as damp and mildewy as the hull of a ship. They double-dated with Gillian’s friend Sara Poncheau and Sara’s date, a kid named Felipe from Marstons Mills. The rest of the people eating at Faraway Island were older, the age of Theo’s grandparents, and they smiled kindly at the prom couples. Theo sweated in the white dinner jacket he’d rented from Murray’s. Two months earlier, going to the prom with Gillian and eating at the Faraway Island Club had seemed like a good idea. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over.

During the shrimp cocktail, he asked, “Do you think this club has any black members?”

Felipe, who was Hispanic, said, “Shit, no, man! Don’t you see all these granddaddies looking at me like I’m the busboy?”

Theo nudged Gillian with one of the black plastic shoes that came with his rented tux. “What do you think?”

Gillian was a pale blonde whose skin looked translucent next to the electric blue satin of her dress. Two red circles surfaced on her cheeks. “I have no idea, Theo. I’m sure everyone is welcome.”

“I’m not sure,” Theo said. “I mean, look around. Everyone is white.”

“Everyone on Nantucket is white,” Gillian whispered. “Please don’t make an issue of it. I’ll be embarrassed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” Theo said. He wondered how he had ever found Gillian attractive enough to have sex with. She was so pale you could see her veins. Theo pointed the tail of a shrimp at her. “And FYI, baby doll, not everyone on Nantucket is white.”

Theo danced with Gillian three times at the prom; then he drove her out to the post-party at Jetties Beach. She changed her clothes in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and that would have been the time to make his move-when she was out of her dress but not yet into her shorts and T-shirt-but Theo waited politely outside the Jeep, standing guard, wishing he smoked cigarettes, wishing that he was not at his prom at all, but with Antoinette instead. He took Gillian home without kissing her or feeling her up or anything. Gillian seemed disappointed by that and on Monday she told her girlfriends that he was a jerk, but Theo didn’t care. All he cared about were his afternoons with Antoinette.

In June, after school ended, Theo started his job at Island Airlines, and he fell into the habit of stopping by Antoinette’s on his way home. The only conceivable danger was his mother showing up unannounced. But at that time of day, she was busy with other things: chauffeuring one of the kids, making dinner. She did ask him once, “You’re not still hanging out at the Islander, are you, Theo? After work? You know I don’t like it.”

“Not the Islander,” Theo said. He had a foolproof answer all prepared. “I’ve been exploring the island. Looking at the architecture. I want to study architecture when I go to college, and I thought I might as well get a head start.” He pulled a book out of his backpack titled 300 Years of Nantucket Architecture’, he’d checked it out of the Atheneum with his sister Cassidy’s library card. “So I’ve been driving around, studying.”

His mother thought he was a wonder. She told his father about the book over dinner.

His father perked up when he heard the word architecture, but otherwise seemed distracted. He was busy, especially after he got Ting in June, and Theo understood his father would never notice if he disappeared for an hour each day.

In this way, it was surprisingly easy.

What wasn’t as easy was being in a relationship with an actual woman. With Antoinette.

At first, it was just sex. Seeing her, Theo would get a stubborn erection and Antoinette would make love to him until he cried out, or just plain cried, so grateful was he for the incredible pleasure, a pleasure bordering on pain. Sex made him feel alive, and feeling alive brought on a new fear of death. When he drove, he always fastened his seat belt.

By the time school ended, the sex wasn’t enough. Theo wanted to know Antoinette, he wanted her to talk to him, he wanted her to listen to him. Theo worked his job at the airport-loading luggage onto planes, taking luggage off planes, telling passengers to follow the green walkway-and he became distraught at how little he knew about Antoinette. He looked around her house each night and picked up an object and studied it, hoping for clues. He memorized a few of the titles on her bookshelves and bought them from Mitchell’s Book Corner: Go Down, Moses, by Faulkner, Continental Drift by Russell Banks. He read these books, wondering what they meant to Antoinette, what she gained from them. He didn’t tell her he was reading them.

He started asking her questions at the end of their hour together, simple things.

“What did you do today?”

“What did I Jo?”

“Yeah, you know.” He propped himself on one elbow on her bed. “What do you do in a normal day? You never talk about it. You must have a routine.”

“Oh, Theo,” she said. And she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he said. “I want to know what you do. Is that so odd? To want to know what my-” He almost said “girlfriend,” but when the word was on his tongue he realized how wrong it would sound. “-my lover does all day?”

“How does it feel,” she asked, “to be an eighteen-year-old with a lover?”

“It feels great,” he said. “But you’re avoiding my question.”

“What question is that?”

“See?” he said. He punched one of her feather pillows like it was someone’s face. He felt himself losing patience. “What the hell do you do all day?”

She got out of bed and put on a plain black cotton sundress with skinny straps.

“I do what everybody else in this world does, Theo. I try to survive.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, look, I eat, I dance, I read, I satiate my sexual desires.”

“Do you want to know what I do?” Theo asked. “Do you want to know how my day at work went?”

Antoinette batted her eyelashes. “How was your day at work, honey?”

“Never mind,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said.

There were funny little things about her. Like, for example, she had no photographs of herself. No pictures of her family. When Theo brought the snapshot of her holding him as a baby, she gazed at it for a long time. “That’s me,” she said finally, as if there had been any doubt.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “How come you don’t have other pictures?”

“Pictures of what?”

“Of yourself.”

She looked truly puzzled. “Why would I have pictures of myself? I already know what I look like.”

“What about your parents, then?” Theo asked. His voice was thick and nervous. It wasn’t fair-she had known him since the day he was born. “Are they still alive?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Theo asked.

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” she said.

He asked a lot of questions but received no answers. Maybe there were no answers, Theo thought. It was as if Antoinette were a mirage, a phantom who had no past and whose likeness couldn’t be captured on film. He tasted her skin, he sniffed under her arms, he tangled his fingers in her coarse, curly hair to reassure himself that she was real.

He was brave enough to bring up Antoinette with his mother only once. Just after school ended, he was helping in the garden and he said, “I saw Antoinette on my way to work today. Riding her bike.”

“Oh, really?” his mother said. She was kneeling in the dirt, staking her tomato plants; it was Theo’s job to hold the plants against the stake while his mother tore strips from one of his father’s old white T-shirts and tied the plants up. “I should call her, I guess.”

Theo stared at the earth, as rich and brown as chocolate cake. “What’s Antoinette’s story, anyway?”

His mother looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Theo said. The sun was hot against the back of his neck. “She’s just so… weird. How did she end up here? Was she born here?”

“No,” his mother said. “She came from New York City the same summer I moved here. We lived together. You know that.”

“What did she do in New York?” Theo asked.

“Ballet,” his mother said. She moved on to the next plant and Theo followed. “That’s really all I can tell you.”

“How come?” Theo said. “Is her life, like, classified information?”

His mother ripped his father’s shirt down the middle in a way that seemed almost violent. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

One evening in mid-June, Theo told Antoinette that he loved her. They had finished making love, and Antoinette was bleeding a little. She had her period.

“Ugh,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t mind,” Theo said. “I love you.”

Antoinette disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door. Theo could hear her opening a drawer, rummaging around. He sank his head back into one of Antoinette’s feather pillows. He’d never told a woman that he loved her before. He never said the words, not even to his mother and father. I love you. It was an overused phrase, but that was how he felt, that was who he’d become-someone who loved another person. He felt vulnerable, exposed, scared. He put on his clothes.

“I love you, Antoinette,” he said to the closed door. “Are you listening?”

Oddly enough, it was his father who caught him. One night, the week after the Fourth of July, Theo sat in his Jeep at the end of Antoinette’s driveway. He saw a red Chevy coming from the north, but there were a lot of red Chevys on Nantucket-and besides, his dad was working in Monomoy, which was to the west. But then the driver flashed his lights. Theo threw the Jeep into reverse and backed up ten feet, bent his head, and closed his eyes, praying that the truck would pass. Instead, when he looked up, the red truck was stopped right in front of the driveway, and there was his father, window down, staring at him.

“What are you doing here, Theo?” his father said. “Did your mother send you to get something?”

What could he say? He clawed around for some likely reason for being in Antoinette’s driveway.

“I was out exploring,” he said, “and I made a wrong turn.”

His father stared at him. Theo willed another car to come along and end the issue, but none did. Then his father waved a hand.

“Follow me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Theo pulled out behind his father, reviewing the lie in his head. He’d made a wrong turn while exploring. He’d forgotten it was Antoinette’s house until he pulled up, and then, because it looked like she wasn’t home, he’d turned around. Nothing wrong with that.

They drove to Monomoy, to the Ting house, such as it was, barely framed out. Still, the views across the water were incredible. Theo climbed out of the Jeep; he was sweating.

“No wonder you’re never home,” Theo said to his father. “It’s beautiful here.” “It’s beautiful at home,” his dad said. “This is nothing but work.”

“Yeah, well. Huge house.”

“Biggest house on the island.”

“Yeah,” Theo said.

They walked inside-the walls weren’t completely up yet-and headed toward the front of the house where giant windows overlooked the harbor. The wooden floors were littered with tools, nails, an electric sander. The sun was still up above the steeple of the Congregational Church. Seagulls cried. Theo’s hands were shaking.

“So tell me again,” his father said. “What were you doing at Antoinette’s?”

“I made a wrong turn,” Theo said. How long had it been since he’d lied to his father? He couldn’t look his father’s way, but with a view like this, there was no need. Theo focused on the sailboats, which looked like bits of confetti scattered across the water. “I was hunting for a certain dirt road, and I drove up Antoinette’s driveway accidentally.”

“The roads back that way are confusing,” his father said. “I got lost a few times myself when I was building that house.”

It had been two weeks since Theo had told Antoinette he loved her, and she’d said nothing in return. Okay, then, she didn’t love him back. Did he really expect her to?

Theo looked at his father. His mother always said his father was a lucky man. “I’ve been seeing Antoinette,” Theo said. He kicked a nail across the floor. “We’re sleeping together.”

His father’s eyes closed and opened again. Brown eyes flecked with gold, like Theo’s own eyes and the eyes of his brother and sisters. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

“You have to believe me,” Theo said. “It’s true.”

“What the hell are you telling me?” Theo recognized the expression on his father’s face-he was holding back his anger, keeping himself in check. When Theo’s father was a teenager, he’d flown out of control all the time-started fistfights, punched holes in walls, broke legs off dining room chairs. But not anymore. “Theo,” his father said, in a voice so low Theo could barely hear it. “What’s going on?”

Theo spewed forth the story, an edited version, from the baseball game forward, up to the part where Theo now knew himself to be in love-only instead of the kind of love that made things bright and clear, this kind of love obscured things, confused them. This was the kind of love that was like walking through the dark woods alone, terrifying, unknown.

“I haven’t told anybody else about this,” Theo said. His voice broke. “I want her to love me back, Dad.”

His father put his arm around Theo and squeezed hard. “Trust me when I say you’re in over your head. And what about your mother?”

“What about her?”

His father turned Theo’s face by the chin. “What am I supposed to do? Keep this from her?”

“Yeah,” Theo said. “I mean, you can’t tell her.”

“Well, then, you shouldn’t have told me.”

“Except you’re my father.”

“That’s not going to work, Theo. I’m not getting warm, fuzzy father-son feelings about this conversation. Because what you’re telling me spells danger for you and for your mother. You especially. You’re going to get creamed in this, I promise. Antoinette is too old, too sophisticated, too goddamned complicated. But mostly too old. Do you hear me? Now, I understand wanting to get laid. I understand that part just fine. But not Antoinette.” He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned through the empty window. “What the hell is that woman thinking? You’re just a kid.”

“I’m an adult,” Theo said. “Eighteen, right? Old enough to go to war and all that.”

“It’s wrong,” his father said. “What Antoinette is doing is wrong.”

“It’s not her fault,” Theo said. “Please don’t say anything to Antoinette.”

“Well, it’s over now. I’m making it over.” Theo’s father blew air out his nose, like a bull ready to charge. “You’re forbidden from going over there again.”

“You can’t forbid me to do anything.”

“I sure can. I’m your father.”

“What about you always telling us to make our own choices, to develop our independence? What about that? Was that all bullshit?”

“This isn’t a sound choice, Theo.”

“Just let me deal, okay? I told you because, well, because I needed to tell somebody, and you asked. Whatever, just let me make this mistake if that’s what this is.” He poked his father in the back. “If you tell Mom, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t threaten me, mister.”

Theo kicked some more nails, then a hammer. What he needed was some help, some understanding. Didn’t his father see that?

“Just forget it,” Theo said. He left the house, got in his Jeep, and headed home.

Theo studied his mother for any sign of change and saw none. So there was that. Either his father respected his decision or he was too afraid to tell Theo’s mother the truth. His father was cold with him, distant, and that hurt because his father wasn’t home that often anyway, and so Theo went from getting a small amount of his father’s attention to none at all. So what could Theo think but, Fuck him? All his father cared about was building some huge house that-according to the principles of 300 Years of Nantucket Architecture-would ruin the character of the island forever.

…

And then, Antoinette missed her period.

She’d been irritable for a few days-if a person who almost never communicated could be called irritable-she didn’t want to be held or kissed. She slapped Theo across the face while they were making love. She pretended like it was an act of passion, except that it hurt, and tears came to Theo’s eyes. When it was over, he said, “Why did you hit me?”

She rolled away from him on the mattress. “Sorry, I was letting out some frustrations.”

“What kind of frustrations?” This was what ate away at him: Antoinette had frustrations and he didn’t even know about it. “Frustrations with me?”

She stood up and looked him over.

“I missed my period.”

“Oh, shit,” he said. They had never used condoms because Theo figured Antoinette would take care of herself-the pill, IUD, menopause for all he knew. “So you think you’re pregnant, then?”

“Well, it’s been a while, but it feels the same.”

“Wait a minute. What feels the same? You’ve been pregnant before?”

“I have a daughter,” Antoinette said. “Or I had a daughter. Twenty years ago.”

“You’re kidding,” Theo said. “You have-a daughter who’s older than me?”

“I gave her up for adoption,” Antoinette said.

“Really?” Theo said. “How come?”

She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me,” Theo said. “You never tell me anything.” He touched his cheek where she’d hit him and wondered if she’d left a mark.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed out the window into the woods. “Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Why would you want to know about an old woman’s life? What could it possibly mean to you?”

“I want to know you, Antoinette,” Theo said. “I show up here every day and we… we screw and I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t know anything about your family, your parents, this daughter. Just tell me about the daughter, okay?”

“It’s old stuff,” Antoinette said. “Old and sad.”

“Please,” Theo said.

“You’re going to be shocked,” she said.

“I won’t be shocked,” he said, although he felt completely shocked-Antoinette thought she was pregnant, and she’d been pregnant before. “I promise.”

Antoinette wound a strand of black hair around her finger. “I got married right out of college,” she said. “My husband and I lived in Manhattan, and my husband was a consultant for Price water house. He had projects in California, so he was away a lot, but that didn’t bother me. I was getting my master’s in dance at NYU, I had a great apartment on the Upper East Side to decorate, I was busy exploring the city. Then, after a year or so, I discovered I was pregnant.”

“Okay,” Theo said.

“I was a twenty-three-year-old dancer whose husband was all but living on the West Coast. There was no place in my life at that time for a child. I wanted to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Get an abortion?” Theo said.

“Get an abortion. But my husband talked me out of it. He wanted the baby. It’s going to be great!’ he said. “We’re starting a family!’ He convinced me to leave school, which I did, and in return I asked him to leave the project in California and take a project closer to home. So he did. He took a project in Philadelphia and he was less than two hours away by train. He was home every weekend. He walked with me in Central Park, he took me to see Aida at the Met, he went out in the middle of the night to get me watermelon from the Korean deli.” Antoinette tightened her fists and brought them to her ears, like she was trying to block out an awful sound.

“Then what happened?” Theo asked. Here was Antoinette’s history, her real history, that even his mother might not know.

“One day when I was pretty far along, seven months or so, I found myself down at Penn Station, and I decided to surprise him. I got on the Metroliner and walked from the train station to his hotel. The front desk clerk knew I was his pregnant wife. He gave me a key to his room; he was happy to do it.”

Theo felt like he was standing on a cliff where he was drawn to the edge, yet afraid of falling. “And?” he said.

“And I walked in on him having sex with two women. Monica, who was his consulting partner and another woman, their client. The three of them were so… involved with each other, they didn’t even notice me standing there until finally I thought to scream. They all noticed that.”

Antoinette was openly weeping, wandering the room like she was looking for something. A tissue, maybe. She disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a hand towel.

“His name was Darren.” Antoinette blew her nose into the towel. “I haven’t spoken that name in over twenty years. Darren Riley.”

“You still use his last name,” Theo said.

“I loved my husband. I loved him desperately. He was one of those special people who everybody loves-men, women, dogs, babies. He was charming, dynamic, funny. And that was his downfall. Women fell over themselves for him, they allowed themselves to be degraded. Monica later told me that there had been other threesomes, in other cities, in California, and before that, even.”

Theo thought he might vomit. He grabbed a pillow and pressed it to his crotch. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I went back to New York, alone. Darren didn’t bother trying to get me back. I guess he knew he blew it. He gave me a quick divorce and lots of money. But it was like he didn’t even try. He didn’t apologize, and suddenly it seemed he didn’t want the baby after all. When she was born, I couldn’t make myself feel anything but anger. I couldn’t feel any love for her; I couldn’t even give her a name.”

“So what happened?”

“I tried to kill myself. I took pills. My neighbor found me unconscious, the baby screaming in her crib. I hadn’t fed her in, like, twelve hours. Social services took the baby away and by the time I was released from the hospital I realized I couldn’t raise her. I didn’t want to raise her.” Antoinette pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and threw the towel into the corner of the room. “What has stayed with me after so many years is how Darren made me love that child and then he stole that love away. It is the cruelest thing I’ve ever known anyone to do.” After a few seconds, Antoinette straightened into perfect posture. “After the baby was gone, I moved away and started over.”

“You came here?” Theo said.

“I constructed a life that allowed me to survive day to day. Minimal interaction, no one to care about but myself. Here in the woods on this island thirty miles out to sea. This is it, Theo. This is my life.”

She retreated into the bathroom. Theo dressed quietly; it was past time for him to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. No information for months, and now a deluge.

“So now you think you’re pregnant again?”

She stood with her hands on either side of the sink, staring into the mirror. She nodded.

Here was the one thing that Theo had been afraid of ever since he knew enough to be afraid of it, and now he wasn’t afraid at all, he was excited. Thrilled. Antoinette, pregnant.

“It’s okay,” he said. “If you’re pregnant, it’s okay.”

“It’s anything but okay,” Antoinette said. “God is punishing me.”

“For what?”

“For you,” Antoinette said. “For sleeping with an eighteen-year-old.”

“I want to have a baby with you,” Theo said.

“No, you don’t. We’ll do what’s easiest for both of us. If I’m pregnant, I’ll have an abortion.”

“But I love you! I’ve been trying to tell you I love you for weeks, but it’s like you don’t hear me.”

“I hear you,” she said.

“But you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” she said.

“But you don’t love me back.”

“There’s no way to make you understand. You’re too young. And so you’re just going to have to trust me, Theo.” She walked toward him and took hold of his face, her hand resting exactly on the spot where she had slapped him, only now she was gentle, as gentle as if he were a baby himself, and he saw that her eyes were filled with something, and he let himself believe that it might be love.

There was a day or two of reflection. Theo marveled at the power of his own body; he’d created another human being. He ran through scheme after scheme, one more unlikely than the next. He and Antoinette marrying, raising the child. Theo would graduate from high school in a year. He would forgo college and work for his father. Or, if his parents disowned him, he and Antoinette and the baby would move off-island. To California. France. South Africa.

In the evenings, Theo tried to get Antoinette to talk about her past some more, but she wouldn’t. Sometimes she was upbeat, and when he arrived she’d be sitting on the built-in benches of her deck with a glass of chardonnay and a book. Other days he found her in the bedroom with the shades drawn, and when he knocked on the door or tousled her hair, she opened one eye and murmured, “Go away, Theo. Go home to your mother.”

Then, on the first of August, a day when his job at the airport had been particularly hellish-all the July people leaving, the August people arriving- she showed him the pregnancy test. It was one of the evenings when she was out on the deck. She poured him a glass of wine, and they sat quietly listening to the birds in the surrounding trees, and then she went into the bedroom and came back with a white plastic stick with two purple stripes. Antoinette held it out to him, turning it in the fading light as though he might want to inspect its authenticity.

“Well,” he said. “Now what?”

“I’ve made an appointment off-island for the Tuesday after Labor Day,” she said. “An appointment for an abortion. That gives me four weeks to think it over.”

“Don’t have an abortion,” Theo said. “Please.”

“I don’t see any options,” Antoinette said. “You, my dear, are in no position to think about being a father. Not at eighteen.”

He no longer felt eighteen, and he said so.

“Well, then, what about Kayla?” Antoinette said. “This will devastate her. Your mother’s one of my few friends in this world, and I’m not prepared to destroy her, or the rest of your family, for that matter.”

“What my mother thought didn’t seem to bother you before,” Theo said.

“It bothers me now. I’ve crossed a line.” She looked at him with genuine sadness. “I’m sorry, Theo. I’m sorry for starting all this.”

“Why did you, then?” he said. “If you don’t love me, I mean?”

“Oh, Theo.”

“No, really, I’m curious. Was this all about the sex? You came to my baseball game and you liked my body? You figured because I’m only eighteen that I’d be okay with sex, no strings attached?”

“It wasn’t that.”

“What was it, then?”

“Look at my life, Theo.” She gestured to the surrounding woods, which were growing dark. “It’s pretty damn solitary. I don’t believe in other people. Not after what happened to me.”

“Why did you let me into your life, then?” Theo asked.

“Because you’re young, you haven’t acquired a lot of the crap that older men carry around with them. You’re clean, you’re honest. You’re good. You’re Kayla’s son, and Kayla is one of the people I feel safe with.”

Theo set down his wineglass and leaned over the railing of the deck. Fireflies lit up the woods. “First you tell me you want to abort our child because of my mother and then you tell me the reason you slept with me in the first place is because I’m my mother’s son and therefore a safe harbor for you? What I would really like is for you to forget about my mother. Our relationship, our baby, is about you and me.”

“I wish that were true, Theo.” She finished her wine and disappeared into the house. Maybe she wanted Theo to follow her, but he wouldn’t do it. He hopped the railing and strode across her soft, green lawn. When Theo got into his Jeep, he saw it was nine o’clock.

“Where were you?” his mother asked when he got home. She was alone in the kitchen, drying the dinner dishes. “This exploring of yours is getting a little suspect.” She got in his face and sniffed his breath. “Have you been drinking, Theo?”

He stared at his mother. She had a tan and her hair was lighter now that it was summer. When he was a little boy, he always told her how pretty she was. Now, he wanted to slap her.

“Fuck you,” he said. He breezed past her and went up to his room.

Hating his mother gave him focus; he funneled all his anger, his hurt, his frustration into dealing with her. She had been a good person to him his whole life, and he had tried to return the favor. But now he couldn’t look into her face without thinking of the abortion. His child, the only thing he had ever created, ripped from Antoinette’s body and discarded. It was his mother’s fault.

Hating his mother transformed him. His anger swirled around him like a wind, blowing his mother-and father and brother and sisters-away. His mother was afraid of him now, he could see it in her eyes, and that made him hate her more. “Fuck you,” he said. “Please just shut the fuck up, and lose some fucking weight while you’re at it.” He left the house without explanation. He shunned his chores. And on one night when Antoinette had refused to sleep with him, saying it would be best if they cooled things off, he drove his Jeep through his mother’s garden. He threw the Jeep into four-wheel-drive and ran over the puny wire fence she put up to keep rabbits out. He drove back and forth over her herbs and vegetables, breaking zucchini and cucumbers, squashing tomatoes, until every plant was mangled and the garden was marred by deep tire ruts. Fuck you, he thought. Fuck you and your stupid garden.

He kept expecting to be punished. He expected his father, at the very least, to say something. But his parents steered clear; they let him go, his anger trailing behind him like a stench.

As Labor Day approached, Antoinette grew more distant. When he stopped by, she no longer offered him wine, and making love was out of the question. Seeing her still aroused Theo-and once he excused himself to her bathroom, where he masturbated into one of her hand towels. He didn’t care if she knew what he was doing.

When they had a week left, he asked her, “You’re going through with it?”

“Of course, Theo,” she said. Again, on the deck drinking chardonnay but not offering him any. She looked at him as though he were the paper boy. “Don’t you think you should be heading home?”

Then the Friday of Labor Day weekend arrived and Theo knew Antoinette would be going for her annual pilgrimage to Great Point with his mother. Before she left, Theo drove to her house to confront her, because he was sure that spending time with his mother would only convince her further that an abortion was the right thing. He walked into her house without knocking, to show her that he wasn’t timid anymore. He wasn’t the boy that she’d led inside in April. But he checked all the rooms-no Antoinette. Then he heard a car door and peeked out the window. Antoinette climbed out of a taxi. He met her at the door, even though he could see the girl driving the taxi was Sara Poncheau, from school. Antoinette was carrying a plastic tub of lobsters; he took the tub from her and brought it into the kitchen.

“What are you doing here?” Antoinette asked.

“I don’t think you should go tonight,” he said.

She laughed. “That’s not your decision.”

“Still.”

Antoinette poured herself a glass of wine. “Well, I’m going.”

“I’ll have a glass of wine,” Theo said.

She stared at him a second, then took out a goblet and poured him some wine. It was a small, small victory. “You haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Do I need a reason to come by? A man should be able to come by and see his own child when he pleases.”

“There’s no child to see,” Antoinette said. It was true: No sign of pregnancy had manifested itself yet on her body. She was wearing another black outfit: leotard, leggings, Chuck Taylors; and her stomach was pancake flat. “But speaking of one’s child, it just so happens that my daughter is coming tomorrow.”

“Your daughter?” he said. “The one you gave away?”

“That’s the one.”

“How did she find you?” he asked.

Antoinette drank her wine, and Theo felt a surge of protectiveness for his own unborn child inside her, whom he was helpless to protect. Just a cluster of cells,, really-still, with a beating heart, probably, and a sex-and here was Antoinette drinking wine because she didn’t give a shit. Theo took a deep breath.

“The Internet,” Antoinette said. “She hooked up with some group on the Internet that connects children with their birth parents. A representative called me and said Lindsey had been making inquiries and asked if I would let them give her my phone number. With the understanding that she might not use it. But then she did call and we talked. She sounds amazingly normal.”

“I’m surprised you let her call you,” Theo said.

“I surprised myself.”

“But you’re still going to kill our baby?” he said. He grabbed her wrist and her wine sloshed.

“Don’t, Theo.”

He clenched her wrist so tightly that she dropped her glass and it shattered against the kitchen floor. “I’m not going to let you do it,” he said. “I’ll follow you off-island if I have to. I’ll follow you right into the clinic.”

“This isn’t your decision, Theo,” Antoinette said. “God, why don’t you just let me be, boy? Let it go? You’re young, you’ll have plenty of children once you’re older, once you’re married. This isn’t something you want, Theo.”

“You’re not going to kill our child, Antoinette,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

Her voice was icy. “It’s time for you to leave.”

He kissed her hard on the lips, leaving behind a fleck of dill from the cucumber salad he’d eaten at home. He tried to wipe it away, but she swung at him. “Get out!” she said. She bent down to pick up the shards of glass but did so with her eyes trained warily on him, as though she were afraid he might attack her. This made him feel powerful-finally, she noticed him, respected him-but it made him feel sad, too.

“I want you to have our baby,” he said. “I don’t want you to kill it.” He pounded his fist on the kitchen counter; it was granite, cold and unyielding against his hand. He felt tears rise. The thought of the little baby, his baby, helpless against Antoinette’s will drove him mad. How had he gotten here? Eighteen years old, in a dangerous love affair, things spinning so hideously out of his control?

Antoinette held the largest shard of glass out like a weapon, and Theo thought of her cheating husband and how that pain made Antoinette stronger, how it made her think she could do whatever she wanted.

“Antoinette?” he pleaded.

“Leave,” she said.

He returned later, when he knew she would be at the beach with his mother. He ripped her cottage apart. He swept her books off her shelves, he tore the clothes out of her closet and dumped the contents of her dresser drawers onto her bed. He smashed her wine goblets and snapped her fancy candles in half, like he was breaking bones. Before he left, he stole her red-handled hatchet from the woodpile and climbed in his Jeep, sweating, breathing hard, his heart pounding. God, was he angry! He drove to the Ting house. He walked into the living room where he had stood two months before with his father. The walls were up now. Theo swung the hatchet into the fresh plasterboard, leaving huge, garish holes. He could kill someone, he could! He could chop someone’s hands off with that hatchet, someone’s head! He swung the hatchet until the walls were a pile of powdery rubble and his arms were heavy and sore. And then suddenly it was as if his anger had drained, he’d expelled it, and he felt better. When he arrived home, in the minutes before his mother called from the Wauwinet, before Theo heard his father on the phone giving instructions, and before his father told him the news-Antoinette was missing-Theo had actually felt better.

“Baby, baby. Oh, my poor baby.”

His mother led him to her car, saying they would come back for the Jeep, saying they needed to get him home. The woman who was Antoinette but not Antoinette-her daughter, Theo realized-glared at him. A look of hatred. What could he think but that it was Antoinette looking at him? Hating him so much that she had disappeared.

“What am I going to do, Mom?” Theo said.

“You’ll do what the rest of us are doing,” his mother said. “You’ll wait.”

Theo crawled into the backseat of the Trooper, and miraculously, his mother produced a blanket and beach towels. She created a nest for him.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “Try and sleep, Theo.”

Theo watched the diver surface and shake his head-no, nothing. “But my baby-”

His mother put a hand on his back.

“Lie down,” she said.

He lay down. The towels and blanket smelled faintly of fish. The engine started, and the car bounced over the sand, rocking him to sleep.