What I Thought Was True

Chapter Twenty-seven

“He’s robbing her blind,” Vivie says. She hangs a hard left in the Almeida’s van, throwing both Nic and me against the passenger doors. “He’s divorced, right? He cheated with the underage babysitter and now her family’s asking for hush money, his ex took him to the cleaners even though she was having it on with the doorman, he’s broke because he’s embezzling from his boss, and he’s counting on Mommy to bail him out. Without her knowing.”

“Wow. You got all that from what I just told you?”

“Drama Queen,” Nic says.

“I’m not.” Viv jerks the wheel, tires squealing, to turn onto Main Road. I land hard against the door.

“Why wouldn’t he just ask her for the money?” I say, righting myself, kicking upright the bag of quahogs at my feet—we’re doing a clam boil for St. John de Brito Church tonight.

“Those guys never talk to each other,” Nic says. “I swear, we were painting the dining room at the Beinekes’ today. Place was draped in sheets and stuff, and Hoop and I are doing the edging, but Mr. and Mrs. Beineke and their poor granddaughter are still eating in there. It’s all ‘Sophie, can you ask your grandmother to pass the butter’ and ‘Sophie, please tell your grandmother we are running low on salt,’ even though the table’s four feet by four feet and Grandma and Gramps can hear each other perfectly. They just let everything important stay unsaid.”

“The question is, do I say anything?” I ask. “Or should I—”

“Left up here!” Nic interrupts, pointing right.

Viv turns left.

“No—that way!” Nic points right again.

Viv swears under her breath, making a U-turn that tosses Nic and me against the doors again.

“Do you think this is a handicap, Vee?” Nic asks. “Do you think the academy won’t take me because I always have to make that little L thing with my hand?”

“Maybe you’ll get a special scholarship,” Vivien says, patting his shoulder, squinting at me in the rearview. “Gwenners, the thing is, you don’t really know anything. You’ve worked for them for a few weeks. They’ve had a lifetime to complicate and screw up their relationship. Don’t get involved.”

Don’t get involved. Don’t think about it. Nas histórias de outras pessoas.

Thinking those thoughts is starting to seem like the snooze button on an old alarm clock, one I’ve hit so often, it just doesn’t work anymore.

“Gracious, Gwen, where are you today?” Mrs. E. waves her hand in front of my face, calling me back to the here and now. On her porch, nearly at the end of the day. A day I’ve spent daydreaming about Cass and preoccupied about Henry, going through the motions with Mrs. E., who deserves better.

“Clarissa Cole tells me the yard boy, dear Cassidy, is teaching your brother to swim.”

The island grapevine is evidently faster than a speeding bullet. Mrs. E. rests a hand, light as a leaf, on my arm. “Oh, uh, yeah—yes. He’s got a lesson tomorrow.”

“Would it be too much to ask if an old Beach Bat could come along?”

“To swim?”

“Merely to observe. I spend too much time in the company of the elderly, or”—she lowers her voice, although Joy-less the nurse has not yet arrived, having called to say she’ll be late, and somehow making that sound like my fault—“the cranky. I’ve missed several days with the ladies on the beach—just feeling lazy, I’m afraid. It would be a pleasure to see how your dear boy handles this.”

“He’s not my dear boy, Mrs. E. We just go to school together.”

She looks down, turning the thin gold bracelet on her wrist, but not before I catch the flash of girlish amusement. “So you say. Well, I was a young woman a very long time ago. I cannot, however, pretend that I haven’t noticed that while the neighbors on either side have grass that is growing rather long and paths that are a bit overdue for weeding, my own yard has never been so assiduously tended.”

Have to admit, I’ve noticed that too. And when he called to figure out a time for Em’s next swim lesson, there was a certain amount of lingering on the phone.

Cass: “So I should go . . .” (Not hanging up) “Uh . . .”

Me: “Okay. I’ll let you go.” (Not hanging up) “Another family thing?”

Cass: (Sighing) “Yeah. Photo shoot.”

Me: (Incredulous) “Your family thing is a photo shoot?”

Cass: “Stop laughing. Yes. We do the annual photo for my dad’s company website, you know . . . It’s a tradition . . . sort of an embarrassing one, but . . .”

Then all at once, I remembered that. Mr. Somers and the three boys. I couldn’t see her, but Cass’s mom must have been there too. Standing on the deck of their big sailboat tied off the Abenaki pier, white shirts, khaki pants, tan faces. Cass bending his knees to try to rock the boat, his brothers laughing, me starting to climb down the ladder to clamber aboard. Dad catching me and saying, “No, pal, you aren’t family.”

“You still do that?”

“Every year,” he said. “I may be the black sheep, but apparently I photograph well.”

His tone was light, but I heard something darker in it.

Silence.

I could hear him breathing. He could probably hear me swallow.

Me: “Cass . . .”

Cass: “I’m here.”

Me: “Are you going to do it? What your family wants? Say it was all Spence, go back to Hodges?”

Cass: (Long sigh. I pictured him clenching his fist, unclenching.) “This should be easier than it is.” (Pause) “Black and white. He’s my best friend. But I’m . . . My brothers are . . . I mean . . .”

It’s not like him to stammer. I pressed the phone closer to my cheek. “Yeah?”

Cass: “I’m not Bill, the financial whiz kid. I’m not Jake, the scholar/athlete.”

Me: “Why should you be?”

Cass: “They want the best for me. My parents. My family.”

At that point, Mom came into the room, sighing loudly as she took off her sneakers, flipping on the noisy fan. I told Cass to wait, took the phone outside, to the backyard, lay down in the grass on my back, staring at the deep blue sky. We had never talked like that to each other. His voice was so close, it was as though he was whispering in my ear.

Me: “I’m back. And the best thing for you is?”

Cass: “The whole deal. An Ivy. A good job. All that. I may not be as smart as my brothers, but I know that it . . . looks better . . . to graduate from Hodges.”

Here’s where I should have said that it didn’t matter how it looked. But I couldn’t lie to him. I knew what he meant. Instead, I asked, “Is that what matters? Looks? To you.”

Another sigh. Then silence. Long silence.

I remember Cass’s brother talking to him outside Castle’s that day. Saying Spence would always land on his feet.

Me: “Wouldn’t Spence be able to bounce back? He’s pretty sturdy. And didn’t his dad get the expulsion off his record?”

Cass: “Well, yeah. But if I sold him out, that would be on my record. In his head. In mine. I mean, who the hell would that make me?”

My next thought was unavoidable. That you ask? That you worry? Not who I thought you were.

Finally, Cass: “Okay, I really do need to go.”

Me: “Yeah, me too. I’ll hang up now.”

(No hanging up)

Cass: “Maybe if we do it on the count of three.”

“One. Two. Three.”

I don’t hang up. Neither does Cass.

Cass: (Laughing) “See you tomorrow, Gwen.” (Pause) “Three.”

Me: (Also laughing) “Right. Three.”

Both phones: Click.

Mrs. E. insists that we drive her Cadillac to pick up Emory and then head to the beach for his lesson. Emory is clearly astonished being in a car that doesn’t make loud squealing noises, like Mom’s, and where the seats are overstuffed and comfortable, not torn up like Dad’s truck. “Riding. A bubble,” he says, mesmerized, stroking the smooth puffy white leather. “Like Glinda.” His eyes are wide.

This time Cass has yet more Superman figures for Emory to rescue, and a fist-sized blue-and-green marble. He places that one pretty far out in the deepening water, and tells Em he has to put his entire face under to get it. Em hesitates. Cass waits.

I squeeze Mrs. E.’s hand. I’ve set up a beach chair for her and am sitting in the sand beside it.

“My Henry was afraid of the water as a little boy,” she tells me quietly. “The captain was most impatient. He tried everything, saying he was a descendant of William Wallace and Wallaces were not afraid of anything—although I must say I doubt William Wallace could swim—and promising him treats and giving him spankings—that was an acceptable practice back then. But Henry would not go near the water.”

Cass is lying down on his stomach next to Em, tan muscled back alongside small, pale, bony one. I can’t see Emory’s expression. I have to grip on to the armrest of the beach chair to stop myself from going to the water, pulling Emory out, saying this was a bad idea. Mom’s words echo, that he’s my responsibility, that he can’t care for himself, that it will always be my job. I start to rise, but Mrs. E. presses down on my shoulder lightly. “No, dear heart. Give him a little time. I have faith. You must too.”

I sit back. “So, how did Henry ever learn to swim?”

“Well, one day the captain took him to the end of the dock and dropped him in.”

I’m completely horrified. “What did you do?”

“I wasn’t there. I heard about it later. You must understand that some people were much tougher with children in those days. I would never have allowed it, but this sort of thing happened.”

Cass has rolled over on his side in the water, propping himself on an elbow. He ducks his head sideways, completely under, then pops it back up, says something I can’t hear to Emory. I hear the husky sound of Emory laughing, but he still doesn’t lower his head.

“So what happened? Did he sink? Did someone dive in and save him?”

“No, he doggy-paddled his way to the pier. He was too terrified not to. But he didn’t speak to his father for two weeks.”

Can’t say that I blame him. The captain sounds like a jerk

Slowly, slowly, Em ducks his head. I catch my breath, as if I could hold it for him. His hand reaches out, out, out and then his head splashes up at the same time his hand does, triumphantly holding the marble.

“Way to go, Superboy. You saved the planet!” Cass calls, and Em’s grin stretches nearly from ear to ear.

“He’s not your young man?” Mrs. E. leans over to ask, her lavender perfume scenting the salty air.

“No. Not mine.” Cass is talking to Em, folding his fingers around the marble, pointing out to the end of the pier. Emory nods, seriously.

“Then I may ask him to be mine.”

“Gwen, wait up!” Cass calls as I’m pulling out of the parking lot at the beach, Mrs. E. and Emory equally worn out and drowsy.

He’s got his backpack slung over his shoulder and his hair is still dripping wet, scattering droplets onto his shirt. “I thought maybe I’d come by tonight.”

Grandpa informed me this morning that he was the bingo host tonight, so no way. If things were awkward with my family, they would be even worse with Grandpa’s friends raising and lowering their eyebrows and nudging one another over the fact that Ben Cruz’s granddaughter is finally being seen with um joven. Even if she’s just helping him with English.

“Not a good night for tutoring.” I look down at his feet, rather than at his face. Man, he even has nice feet. Big, neatly clipped toenails, high arch. I’m checking out his feet? Jesus. He edges the sandy gravel of the parking lot with his toe.

“Yeah, well, not tutoring,” Cass says. “I thought . . . maybe . . . I’d just come by.”

I don’t look over at Mrs. Ellington. Nor do I have to. Her I told you so is loud and clear.

“Like for another sail?” I squint dubiously at the sky, where thunderhead clouds are moving in.

“Or . . . a walk . . . or whatever?” Cass slides his hand to the back of his neck, pinching the muscles there, shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Maybe kayaking?”

I could point to the gathering clouds in their deepening shades of gray, or mention that the wind seems to be picking up. I could remember the poised, distant boy who climbed into the Porsche and say “no way.” Instead I say, “Around six?”