High Sun

We were drunk at the beach club. High sun. We had been there hours. Picnic baskets. Thwack of flat sandals on the decking. The constant, constant shaking of martinis. Gimlets. Margaritas, even. We were having gimlets. Gulls circled overhead. I heard the Wallaces’ truck pull up. A gas-chugging, off-roading jeep you could hear coming from half a mile away. Story was, Judd Wallace had won it at auction, overbid on it while he was drinking at a big car thing in Vegas and wound up stuck with it the next day. Had to ship it home and everything. Now the brakes squeaked, too. I didn’t see the Wallaces come in. Or go. I saw the Blakes, briefly. And the Cavanaghs. The Wolfs. You are the wolves, I always wanted to say to them when I had been drinking. Wolves, there are two of you. I liked May Wolf enough. I’d drink with her and be fine about it.

And then Maeve got there. I saw her right away. Maeve. A baby in each arm, both blond, topless, diapered. A toddler behind her. She was wearing a black V-neck one-piece and linen pants and a floppy straw hat. The dip of the V was deep. She was pregnant again, too, though not enough to really show. I heard her say it to several people as she made her way in. She didn’t want anyone thinking she had just gained weight. Maeve rode a beach cruiser with a baby seat on it. She hosted art salons on certain Saturday nights. She used to be a trader, but now spoke of it with disdain. She would shrivel you with a look if you asked her about trading. I heard she met her husband at Goldman. I didn’t know much about him other than that he clearly loved fucking her carelessly. I had seen him at a million things like this—beach things, neighborhood things. I could never remember his name. He was a tall guy, gray. Seemed much older. Attractive because of his tailoring and barbering and the sheen of his cleanshaven skin. He was probably parking the car or sending an important email or making clandestine plans with someone even younger than Maeve. My husband loved Maeve. The way you love someone on a television show. The way it is understood to be unrealistic. He thought she was just the neatest thing, didn’t he. So incongruous in this neighborhood. He had actually said it: incongruous.

Big day at the beach club. Big day. Opening of Summer Cocktail party. That’s what was printed on the signs, someone miscapitalizing it like that. I was surprised by this oversight. Such attention to detail at the Lobster Fest and at the party later in the summer that the board had named Bonfire of the Vanities. I watched Maeve. She unpacked her things onto her table, the one closest to us. She shook out her tablecloth, the wind catching it like in a commercial and holding its hem aloft for one second, two seconds, then letting it flutter down so it sat perfectly. Not a bump, not a wrinkle. Maeve.

“Is that Julia,” she said, looking straight at me. The brim of her hat covered one of her eyes, turned her into a movie star. As if she needed any help.

No, I wanted to say. Nope, your eyes are playing tricks. Just to be a bitch.

“Hi,” I said, and drew out the i for as long as I could before it sounded completely put on. “It’s me.” My husband was standing already. He’d probably noticed her well before I did. He had probably felt her presence in the change of the air around us. Heard her bike’s tires on the lot’s gravel, heard her coasting down a faraway hill. Well, he already had his arms around her in a neighborly hug. Loose, limp, tame. In a way I’d never want to be hugged by a man, ever. My husband did not give me limp hugs. He was a tough guy, construction. Big and gruff and rough-edged. Lots of people didn’t like him at first. They wondered how people like us even got into the neighborhood, until they heard the last name. But for Maeve he was a puppy, always. I watched. Drank. A little sip. Another little sip. Three little sips until he was done with his business and I stepped forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek and then felt like an idiot when she pulled me back for a kiss on the other one. See what I mean?

“You look beautiful,” she said. “So refreshed.”

“Oh, you’re sweet,” I said and shook my glass at her. “But it’s this. Lots of this.”

“Stop that,” she said, and moved her eyebrows to give me a stern look.

“Congratulations, by the way. Such a happy time!” This was not easy for me. I was cool to the idea of her children. To her children and all children. They were sweet and lovely and innocent and great—great. But not for me. I, too, had married someone older, but Bill already had kids, twins of his own with his ex-wife. Another grown up. The twins were sweet and lovely and college-bound, and so he, Bill, already had everything he needed. He was done when I met him. I could keep my figure and my clean walls and keep our white couch pristine. A victory. I smiled and felt glad that I’d had my teeth bleached recently. I’d given up red wine because of it. Hence the gimlets. It was an adjustment at first but by then I was all set.

“This is it,” she said. She patted her belly. “Five is it. I don’t care what Harris says anymore—” Harris. His name was Harris. Harris and Maeve Kelly. I had entertained the idea of Harris before. Harris and me in a big bed, sun streaming in. Harris and me in a big bed, liquored to the brink. Harris was my type, I guess. When it was time to do something like that, it’d probably be someone like Harris. Or Harris himself, I don’t know.

The sound system blared loud for half a measure, some summery old jazz, and I missed part of what Maeve was saying. But then the music went back down, all the way to muted, and the voices rose again. A din. A man named Chas was in charge of the music, and Chas finally found the right volume. Set it there at unobtrusive, just enough to serve as a soundtrack. It changed everything, having that soundtrack.

“Well, I do think you’re something,” I said. Was I drawling? A bit, I think. Out of nowhere. “I would never do it. Could not.” I even shook my head at this. I was resolute. I wanted to push. Something in me wanted to push. “The life I have, we have—” The gimlets didn’t help it. No, the gimlets teased and whistled, luring it up. Bill put his hand on my thigh. I felt his fingers squeeze, hard so I would know but not enough to crease my shorts. That was another thing: no jeans at the beach club. I was wearing chino shorts. They aged me, the pleats, the length. But I think Bill liked it. Something about the way they looked wrong on me, he liked that. I shut up. He let go.

“My brother and his wife are coming,” Maeve said. She had her phone in her hand and was craning her head toward the lot. This gesture was for show because we couldn’t see who pulled up from where we sat. Only who walked in. “They should be here any minute.” I was surprised Maeve had a cell phone. I figured it would interfere with her creativity. That she was too immersed in her art and her children and her home and her garden to be bothered. She had no social media accounts—I had checked. I imagined her using a landline, riding her bike to send letters at the post office, a basket on the front holding fresh bread, red apples, the ribbons of her hat trailing in her wake. But, see that. Never what you think. “They know how to get here, but still,” she said.

The babies she’d carried in were crawling around a shaded playpen ten feet from us. I felt like reminding her of them. Go ahead, Maeve, they’re crying for you. Also, where is the toddler, and where is this fourth child? They had an au pair for that, though. A blonde teen peering over the pen’s edge, her sunglasses sitting on the top of her head. She cooed at all of them. Wrangled and corralled with the patience of a nascent mother.

Maeve turned back to me. “You know him,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, and nodded. At first I thought she meant, You know him, like: eye roll, You know him, always late. But that’s not what her look said. That’s not what she meant. “Wait, what?”

“My brother was your year in high school.” She winked at me, subtle. What? I ran through names in my head: Jennifer Kelly, Ryan Kelly, Paul Kelly, no relation, any. Was her brother Ryan Kelly? But, no, wait, Kelly was Harris’s last name.

“What’s your last name?” I said. “Maiden name, I mean.” The gimlets roared and crested and broke in me. “Can I have another?” I asked Bill. “Please?” I leaned toward her. She was sitting at our table. I didn’t remember when she had moved. I should slow down, I thought. I will sip the next one. Really sip, I mean. I think it took me a minute to look back to her.

The second her mouth made the shape of a B I knew what she was going to say. I knew.

And she said it. “Bancroft.” Tom Bancroft. Fuck me. Of course she was Tom Bancroft’s sister. I saw it then. It was all over her face, the way she moved, the way she let eyes rest on her. “Tommy’s my brother.”

“How come I don’t know you?”

“You do know me,” she said, teasing. Bill laughed. Back with my drink just in time to laugh at this clever girl.

“From high school,” I said. “You know what I meant.”

“I went to private school,” she said. “I was bad and so my parents sent me away. To an all-girls’ school in the woods.” She made a mischievous pout that involved her eyes and it was all for Bill, so I let him take it in. Go get it, Bill.

“Oh,” I said. That’s all I could come up with.

Thomas Bancroft. Everyone called him Tommy. I called him Tom. Whispered Tom, actually, in the cabana at his parents’ house, July fourth, summer after senior year. First time. The floor was slate. I had marks up my spine for a week. I had to skip several pool parties. “Small world,” I said, cool, easy, though I had turned sweaty; the overhead fans were doing nothing. Tom drove a convertible that summer. T ook me to the dock not far from where we all sat at that very minute. In the car, on the car, on the sand near the car, on the bow of the boat he had wanted to show me— his father’s. I looked to see if I could make it out: that dock, that small stretch of sand. But it was a cove, after all, hidden around a bend to the west. It was embarrassing the way I had loved him. Even then.

“Such a small world,” Bill said, repeating. Smiling like he was amazed, like I had found a mine in our yard. A bald eagle in our bed. Bill didn’t care who I knew or when. Bill did not care about much. Two things, really: money and whether I was available for his needs. His children, too, but in a different way.

“Tom’s sister’s name was Nannie,” I said. I guess I thought I could prove her wrong. Nannie in the group picture on the mantle, features still too big to be beautiful. Nannie is staying up at school through the summer; Nannie is meeting us on the Cape for Labor Day. Nannie, Maeve—she laughed.

“That was a nickname, Julia. Do you think my parents would really name me Nannie?” A little sharper. Hoping, maybe, to see if Bill’d wag a finger at her. Bad girl.

“You should have said something sooner,” I said. I can’t say I was sizzling yet. T hat I was unmoored or trembling or nervy head to foot with the idea of seeing him again. It had been a long time. I was an adult now, after all.

I ran a refrain: It is a small world, it is not fateful.

Another of Maeve’s children, the fourth, had materialized. He put his head on her lap, wet hair blooming onto the beige linen of her pants.

“I guess I didn’t think about it,” she said, and pet her child. This child might have come with Harris, because there was Harris: impeccable, dry, a white shirt folded to the elbows as though creased by a stylist.

I was beyond drunk by then, thinking stupid. Harris was holding two drinks. Double-fisting. But could I say that out loud? He handed one to the man on his left. Drinks in real glasses, martinis. Olives floating. I thought of swimming in one. Being very tiny, dodging olives. Gulping mouthfuls of cocktail when I got too tired to hold myself up. Flailing. The eyes. Hi. Tom Bancroft. “Tom,” I said, and that’s all I had because that’s when I got nervous. When it got me.

He was going to call me Jules, open up that door.

“Jules,” he said. “Holy shit.” He came over and leaned to hug me hello. He hadn’t put his drink down and it spilled onto my shirt. I smelled the brine of the olives. The tang of the gin. The little swimming me splashed over the edge, fell down onto the deck. Gone. Bye. The cold drip slid between my shoulders, would have caused chills if I had been any sharper. “Hi,” he said, and patted my back. I smelled him when he pulled away. Spicy cologne. Refined. “I’m Tommy,” he said to Bill, offering his hand. “I knew your wife in high school.”

It was quick and heavy and hot, what I was hit with. Made me cross my legs. I watched him shake with my husband, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek, just to do something. The cabana, my back, the hundred times after that, it was all I could think of. How had I not been thinking of it all this time? These years?

“Where’s Tanya?” Maeve said. “Does she need help?” She looked toward the lot.

“Tanya’s sick,” Tom said. I thought he said it with a kernel of meanness. “They all are.”

Isn’t that a shame, my mouth started to say. Thank God Maeve said something instead.

“Again? Jesus,” she said. “You didn’t give her the syrup I made, did you? I never get sick and it’s because of the syrup, I’m telling you.”

Hush, Nannie. Be a good girl and go play. Take Bill with you. “I think I’ll have another one,” I said to Bill. “Can you get me a martini this time? They look so good.” Bill never stopped my drinking because he knew what it would afford him later. Carte blanche. Movie things. Filth. He got up.

Tom with his spicy cologne and his same hands. Of course they’re the same hands, you idiot, I reminded myself. Tried to calm myself. But no, those hands. He touched the side of his glass, brought his thumb away, wet. Licked it. Fuck.

“Wow,” I said. “How are you going? I mean, how’s everything going? This is so funny.” I had no control of it at that point. Myself. Anything. Small world.

“Same,” he said. “I’m exactly the same.” He shook his head, finished his drink. I turned to look at the water because I had to. You would have done the same thing. I could see heat rising from the beach. Wiggling up in lines that were thick, almost tangible. Like I could catch and eat them. T he water beyond was calm and clear and almost tropical. I imagined floating on my back and then I imagined the sting of the salt when I opened my eyes underwater to see the sun rippling along the soft sandy bottom. But it was an illusion. I knew it was murky and churned, rife with seaweed and other floating things. Rocky. These beaches were no great shakes. Still, I wanted to swim. I needed to move.

“Who’s going in today?” I said when I turned back to them. “Anyone other than the children?” Bill didn’t swim, ever. I was thinking about that. “Not today,” Maeve said, patting her abdomen. Her abdomen was all that mattered. Harris shook his head. Harris had not yet said a word.

Bill put the martini in front of me. Sip, I said to myself like I was talking to a dog. But it was already too late. The damage was done. Or the potential for it was there, the framework, in place already. It didn’t matter what I drank.

“Someone, please swim with my wife,” Bill said, and put his hands together in fake prayer, shook them. “So she doesn’t try to make me do it.”

“It’s hot. I’ll swim,” Tom said. Game, Tom, always. “Let me get a refill first.” He gave his glass to Harris, who had already reached for it. He turned to the toddler circling Maeve. “Lux, want to come swimming?” Maybe he wasn’t a toddler. Maybe he was six. I was not good with the ages of children. She had named her child Lux.

“Yes,” he said, shouting, pumping a little fist into the air.

There was hesitation in me before I took my clothes off. One second and then it was gone. My shirt, my shorts—the chinos—I folded and put them on the bench where I had been sitting.

Lux could swim, thank goodness. Kept himself busy. We watched him inching out toward the rope line. We stood there, in up to our waists. Tom always tanned, never reddened. The sight of this body— solid, familiar—I could sense the energy coming from it. I knew what it could do. How it worked.

“Does your husband know who I am?” He smiled. A smile I had not seen much. A smile he had always saved for adults and pretty girls, people he had yet to charm. He was a rare thing. A stranger who you, who you—an intimate and then a stranger. A delicious thing. I could taste it.

“You’re Maeve’s brother,” I said, and looked at him for a second before I pushed off the rocks, slimy underfoot, and breaststroked out into the Sound.

I swam to the diving dock and he followed me. I treaded water when I got there, waiting until he was out, arranged under the umbrella. Then I took my time up the ladder. Let him see each piece of me.

“You look all right, Jules,” he said.

“Stop. I’m winded from that swim, even,” I said. I made a show of collapsing onto my front, lying down.

The gentle rocking could have put me to sleep if I’d let it. I watched Lux swim, over by the far rope line, near to the shore. From here I could see the Bay Association, see its members on the lawn. They had a band, always did. I could hear it. I could taste their drinks. I wished for a well-pressed pastel dress and to be happy hanging on the arm of an old husband. This, all I wished for.

Tell me about you, I must have said. Or Catch me up, because he was going on. The things he was saying: two children, gifted school, Tanya a former model (of course), his parents long dead. On and on.

“What else?” I said, not looking at him, still on my front. I was knotted up, waiting for something.

“What else, what else,” he said. “I think that’s all I’ve got for you,” he said. “In the way of catching up, I mean.”

Tom stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankles. Our bodies made a T. Then he hooked his toe into the waistband of my bathing suit bottom. Stayed, as though gauging.

There you go.

It made me nauseous. It was not the drink. Everywhere inside, immediately, things pinged and zipped and my lungs filled with something quivering. Just that one little bit of him, and look what it did. Can you believe this? Is it that easy? Is this what people did?

I was a coward, though. A good and virtuous coward. Clean and good. Not here, not like this.

“I’m hot,” I said. “I think I’ll go back in.” I turned over and his foot fell to the dock. “Julia.” He said my name slowly, like he was smoking a cigar and sipping a brown drink on a tufted bench in a study. Like he had time. “Look how you’re looking at me. No one can see us out here.” I remembered half a dozen other things about Tom Bancroft then.

“Your nephew can see,” I said, and chinned at Lux, at where I thought he would be. I scanned the water. No Lux. “Tom.”

“Mmm,” he said. His eyes were closed, head back, hand resting at his waistband. “I can’t see Lux.”

“Back with his mom, probably,” he said. And then I saw them lined up on the shore, waving their arms. Little Bill, Little Maeve, Little Harris. People in a painting. Disaster at Bay Hills, oil on canvas, 2019. We were so far we could barely hear their screams. Bits. Scraps, the high ends. Tom was right. We could have done any number of things out here, unseen.

“Jesus, something is happening,” I said. “Tom, something is wrong.” He opened his eyes and sprang up and dove into the water, all in one movement. Went toward the center of the swimming area. I went behind him, clumsily. I had not been on the team as he had. That was another thing about him. Chlorine-scented. Taut. Pruned pool fingertips up and down and inside.

It’s hard to look for someone who was swimming and who is no longer swimming. Especially in those dark waters, green even in that high, high sun. You cannot lift the water up like a rug and look under it. You cannot move the water to one side and move it back.

Then in the distance, just outside the rope, I saw Lux’s small brown head coming nearer. I squinted. “Tom,” I said, breathy. Something sexy about it, actually, if it had been a better time. “There.” I raised an arm up to point but, as I said, not a great swimmer, and tired already and still drunk and so I kind of sank a bit. He swam over to me. Saw what was happening, put his arm around my back to buoy me up. Lifeguard, too, did I mention that? The zinc and the whistle and the red shorts. Beach boathouse once.

“Lux, come here, kiddo,” Tom said. Lux was coming toward us. But that sun. The green water. All the debris swirling. Dirty. Should not swim on the North Shore. Should not. Something had happened. Lux was too small. He’d shrunk in that high sun, had become desiccated and then reconstituted improperly, and it was all our fault. Tom let go of me but stayed close, opened his arms even though they were under water. Lux came closer. It was true, something was very wrong. He zipped between us, frightened, his—its—little head, this fake Lux, an animal, slick as though greased, fur shining in the light, fat flat tail touching my abdomen’s left side and leaving what I would imagine as a burn or a scar for weeks afterward. Forever. Not Lux, a muskrat.

I screamed, went under, took in a mouthful of that water. Came back up coughing, sputtering. Tom got me. “You’re fine, you’re good,” he said, arm at my waist. “I see him; he’s back with them.” He looked over my shoulder, toward the beach. He swam us back to the float, rested me on the ladder’s lowest rung. “All good. Catch your breath,” he said. I turned around and sure enough, there was Lux, the real Lux, coming out of the water, his back to us. A line of little backs to us, all walking up to the pavilion.

Let’s have lemon ices, one of them said. Another drink, after that, Bill said to Harris. Lux, why would you do a thing like that? Maeve said to her son, her six-year-old son. What would make your mind work in such a way? Do I not give you enough attention?

The muskrat—by now a hundred yards to the east—was a thin line cutting the water. The wind had changed. Brought with it the strains of the Bay Association’s quartet, more jazz. How nice. Also, the music from our beach. Canned, but nice still. Our man in charge of music was doing a good enough job.

Tom was between my knees and he had pulled himself up a bit and pushed me back so that the wood of the dock was pressing a line across my shoulders. Same mouth, I’ll tell you that. Same clean teeth and cold mouth and he was taking handfuls of me everywhere. He was taking handfuls away or putting them in. His fingers on the place where the tail had touched. His thumb caught and held my bathing suit bottom and his nail glanced my skin there and that was it.

No, I should have wanted to say. But it was time. That time was as good as any.

“Yeah?” he asked. Went to lift me up. 166 AGNI