Anger, perhaps, or a deep pain she has to protect. I stay quiet, not sure what to say, not sure what she wants from me.
“Enough about me,” Susan says after a moment, shaking away the moment like a dog shaking off water. “Let’s talk about you. Tell me about your interests.”
I hesitate, stepping to the side as a car ambles slowly by.
“I guess I’m not sure yet.”
“There’s got to be something.”
“There is reading,” I say. I shrug.
“Reading is good. What do you read?”
I shrug again. “My sister sent me some novels I liked.” I don’t feel comfortable, like I’m trying to talk about something I have no knowledge of. So I’m relieved when she stops me and points to a dandelion that is twirling about, though there is little wind and nothing else around it is moving with the same force.
“Look at that,” she says. “How can anyone not think there is some great energy in the world, propelling things?”
She says things like this often, making me think. Susan makes us dinner most nights, but she refuses to do dishes because of her eczema. Somewhat proudly she shows me the inflamed, dry skin on her palms while Eli’s father, a quiet, gentle man, stands scrubbing at the sink.
“Oh, please,” Eli says, annoyed. “You could do dishes if you didn’t aggravate the eczema with paint.”
Susan doesn’t look at him. “Eli has eczema too.” She turns to him with her calm exterior, but I see that there’s something more volatile brewing beneath. “I’m so sorry about that, honey.” She reaches for his hand but he yanks his back.
“I’ll live,” he says.
Her face crumples, revealing things I didn’t know but are suddenly clear—how much she needs Eli’s love and approval, how insecure she really feels. She turns and walks from the room, but Eli doesn’t seem to care.
Eli works some odd jobs, cleaning and repairing boats, painting houses. Some days, if it’s something quick, he takes me with him. I sit in the grass in the sun with a book and observe. Eli is tall and muscular. He has ropy veins in his forearms and big, masculine hands. I love the way he looks, the size of him. When he hugs me, I feel safe.
One night he goes out with a friend while I stay at his house with Susan, drinking tea and talking. An hour or so after I’ve gone to bed I wake to him struggling with something in the room. I sit up, confused. He pushes a huge terra-cotta container with flowers toward the bed. It’s at least two feet around, the kind of decorative pot one finds outside a store.
“Look,” he says, laughing, clearly drunk. “I brought you flowers.”
“Oh, my God.” I cover my mouth, trying not to laugh. “You’re crazy.”
“Crazy about you,” he says. He crawls into the bed with me, his hands still covered with dirt from the pot. He reeks of beer. He wraps his arms around my middle and kisses me. He slips off my T-shirt and underwear, and we make love. Really make love, which I’ve never done before him. We kiss tenderly, look into each other’s eyes. He moves slowly, waiting for me before he comes. After, his breath even, his eyes closed, I tenderly brush a curl back from his face.
This is what it feels like to love a man.
Susan asks me to sit for her so she can paint me. I’m thrilled she thinks enough of me to want this. Each day, while Eli works, I sit for an hour in her studio while she paints.
When the painting is done, she gives it to me. The background is busy with flowered wallpaper. In contrast, my image is serene. I wear overalls, one strap falling off my shoulder, childlike. My expression is slightly sad. I try to see what she sees, who I really am. Eli takes me out on a sailboat to his family’s island. The sun sparkles on the bay. Little whitecaps scatter across the surface from the wind. The boat glides quickly. Eli shifts positions, keeping the sail taut while I sit back, admiring the scenery. Thick pines fill the many islands we pass. Osprey pass over the boat. Eli explains his mother’s family is wealthy.
“My mom won’t take any of the money,” he says over the sound of the wind. “It’s so stupid.”
“She’s mad at them,” I say.
He looks over at me. I can see the anger in his eyes. “She can do whatever the fuck she wants, but she should consider me. I’d like that money. I’m fucking entitled to it.”
I don’t say anything, knowing whatever it is it will just piss him off further. I close my eyes, letting the wind blow my hair back, feeling the warm sun on my face.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he goes on. “You have money.”
He spits this last part.
“I’d take your mother over my family any day,” I say, defensive.
“You can have her. The two of you can sit around and bitch about your families all day.”
I press my lips together. He’s being mean, and I’m starting to learn it’s best to stay quiet when he’s feeling that way.
Eli anchors the boat, and we take the small rowboat waiting at a buoy to the shore. An old, white clapboard house sits on the island. Gray driftwood is piled around the grassy meadow, and pine trees cluster behind the house. Inside, Eli explains the house has no electricity. Candle sconces line the walls for light in the evening. An old generator runs the plumbing.
We climb on to the large driftwood, no longer thinking about our argument on the boat, and make love outside in the sandy grass. We walk naked through the pinewoods surrounding the house, just because we can.
I don’t ever want to leave.
The few times I do go back to New Jersey, I make Eli come with me. New Jersey is gray and busy. The highways are filled with cars, everyone heading somewhere in a hurry. I am continually edgy and twitchy here and afraid I’ll run into one of the Jennifers, but I never do. To combat the nervousness, I go shopping. It’s old habit when I’m back here, the best way to stave off unwanted feelings. The first time I take Eli with me to the mall, though, I’m embarrassed. I don’t want him to know this side of me, the side that wasted so many afternoons here, shopping for clothes with my father. For all the ways Eli feels gypped of the plush life he believes he’s entitled to, he also has pride about his family’s self-sufficiency. Perhaps because of what he didn’t get, he’s defensive about it. He gets mad when he sees things coming easily to other people. If he has to work hard, everyone else should too. So I’m surprised by the way his face lights up when, out of my guilt for being one of those people for whom things come easily, I offer to buy him clothes with my father’s credit card. Eli eagerly leads me into Eddie Bauer and Banana Republic where we rack up Dad’s bill.
To keep Eli with me, I also agree to quit smoking, and quitting winds up being much easier than I thought it would be. In August, Dad and Nora rent another house in Dunewood on Fire Island, and we all take the ferry once again. The ocean stretches out beyond the deck of our house. The warm sun beats on to the sand. I see details I didn’t notice last time I was here: the sparkling light on the water as the sun moves across the sky, tiny sand crabs that dig down into the sand when I try to catch them. Eli and I lie together on the deck with glasses of lemonade and work on our tans. Sometimes we hold hands. It’s strange to be here again, this time with a boyfriend. I watch the teenagers lying on the beach, none of whom I recognize from two summers before. There’s no sign of Justin, either, which is a relief. I don’t have that old anxiety as I walk along the boardwalks, the terrible whisper at my ear: Who will love me? Who will love me? Eli loves me now.
About a week into our time on Fire Island, a longtime family friend, Bill, comes to stay for a few nights. He and his now ex-wife used to be close with Mom and Dad when they were married couples. They were one of the ones with a loft in SoHo. Like most of Mom and Dad’s friends, Bill chose to remain friends with just one of them after the divorce. He chose Dad.
One night, sitting out on the deck and drinking too much wine, Bill tells me that following my parents’ divorce, my mother tried to have custody of Tyler and me given to my grandparents. As he speaks, his voice full of outrage at my mother for trying to keep us from Dad, I suddenly remember myself at eleven, visiting a private high school somewhere near where my grandparents live in Florida. The memory comes to me as though from a great distance. I get nothing but the image—the large Spanish buildings, the spiky green grass—no feelings, no thoughts. I can smell the moist, earthy air, can sense the bright sun in my eyes, my sister and grandparents beside me. I
