Summer Darlings Page 13

  She turned to Ruth. “I want to change my hair. Will you help me?”

  Ruth set the broom against the wall. “Sure. Now?” When Heddy nodded, Ruth ran her fingers through Heddy’s shoulder-length mane, the way hairdressers do when they take stock of a woman’s tresses. “A trim?” Ruth opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and pulled out a pair of Ted’s haircutting scissors and a comb.

  “Chop it. I want it short.” The shorter the hair, the harder they’ll stare, she’d overheard someone say once.

  Ruth put a towel around Heddy’s shoulders. She sprayed her hair, soaking it, combing her wet hair flat against her head. “Never make a rash decision about your hair. Let’s trim it.”

  “No, I want it, short. Roman Holiday short.”

  Ruth grimaced. “But you’ll look like a boy.”

  “I’ll look like Audrey Hepburn. Like I’m planning a trip to London, just because.”

  Ruth held the scissors to the first lock. “Are you sure?”

  Heddy tugged on her hair. “Come on. Before I change my mind.”

  With the first snip, Heddy gasped, a long chunk of hair drifting into her lap. Ruth paused, resting her hands on Heddy’s shoulders.

  “Sorry, keep going,” Heddy said.

  She watched each lock fall into her lap—snip, snip, snip—clumping it in her fingers. Without all that hair, her cheekbones seemed higher, and her lips were soft and pink. Kissable. She looked kissable. When Ruth was done, she stepped back to admire her work. “It suits you. You need more eye makeup, though.”

  Heddy felt the back of her neck where her hair used to hang. It was bare. The cut was girlish, framing her face perfectly, just like she’d imagined.

  “I love it. Really, I do.”

  Ruth put her hand on her hip. “Then why are you crying?”

  Heddy wiped at her eyes, laughing. “Because it’s perfect. I belong in one of those Pepsi-Cola advertisements. ‘The sociables prefer Pepsi.’ ”

  Heddy loved the spangly earrings with her short haircut, how the shape hung from her ear like a swing. “Maybe you don’t need to go to school, Ruth. Why don’t you just open a salon?”

  Then everything seemed to stop. A car traveled up the gravel driveway, the unmistakable popping of rocks under tires. The truth rushed at them: They were in Jean-Rose’s bathroom, wearing her jewelry, Heddy’s hair in a pile on the tiled floor. Ruth ripped the towel off Heddy’s shoulders.

  “Put those things away. I’ll sweep,” Ruth barked. They worked quickly, Heddy frantically pulling the earrings off her ears, returning them to their satin square. She unclasped the necklace, spiraling the chain back into place.

  Outside, the engine turned off. “Stall them,” Ruth said, broom in hand.

  Heddy closed the top of the jewelry box as beads of sweat gathered at her temples. She needed to turn down the record player, still playing the album she’d put on earlier. She didn’t think Jean-Rose would mind her putting on music, but she didn’t want to seem unhinged to her boss, who always kept the music low. Heddy took the steps two at a time, a nagging feeling that she’d forgotten something, but what?

  “Morning.”

  Heddy whipped around to see Ash standing on the porch. He was freshly showered, the smell of soap and aftershave wafting through the screen. “Wow. You look different.”

  “Hi,” she said stupidly. She exhaled, her hands clasped behind her back; she felt Jean-Rose’s tennis bracelet slide on her wrist. She’d never returned it to the jewelry box.

  “You changed your hair?”

  She nodded, hoping he would say something else, while stuffing the bracelet into her shorts pocket.

  “I like it,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she smiled, unable to meet his eyes for a moment.

  He peered behind her into the house. “I’m looking for Ted. Is he here?”

  “They’re at the club.” Upstairs, Ruth was shaking out the bathroom mats, her arms out the window, slamming them against the house.

  “Do you think you could leave this in his office?” Ash handed her a sealed yellow envelope. “Came to me by accident.” A postmark from Worcester, Massachusetts, Ted’s name written in messy black pen on the front.

  Tucking the envelope under her arm, Heddy stepped outside the porch doors as he descended the steps. Watching him go was like watching egg white slip away from yolk, a slow unraveling, and she was determined to stop it. She sat in a pretty recline on the steps, stretching her legs the length of them. “I had fun on the surfboard,” she said.

  Halfway to his car on the slate walkway, he turned. “You want to try again?”

  She fluttered her eyes. “Is that an invitation?”

  “You’ll be with Teddy at Katama Beach on Wednesday, right? Come back on the board. I’ll teach you.” He crouched down, reaching his hand to her cheek. She held her breath, staring at his wet hair, golden at the tips. She imagined them sitting at the high-tide mark at sunset, how his face would look serious just before he kissed her. How he’d smell like vanilla, and the salt air would nudge them closer.

  “There’s some hair, from your haircut,” he said, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. He turned to leave, and she watched his truck disappear around the bend, hollow with longing.

  Ruth came out on the porch and sat beside her, a dirt-streaked rag in hand. “You’re so red you look like you’ve been rubbed with Indian rocks.”

  Heddy buried her eyes in her fists. “He thinks I’m nothing but ordinary.”

  Ruth leaned her head on Heddy’s shoulder. “I asked around about him, you know, and I heard some things. You know, rumors.”

  Heddy lowered her fists. “Like?”

  “Like he needs to roll it up in Saran Wrap.”

  Heddy pushed Ruth away, erupting into belly laughter. “You’re disgusting.”

  Ruth played innocent. “And old Mary at the boatyard told my cousin’s friend that he has a thing for the wives.”

  “Why would he waste his time?”

  Ruth grabbed the cleaner. “I dunno, to convince them to buy into his development.”

  “That’s outrageous. Many of them could be his mother.”

  “Just telling you what I heard,” she said.

  Heddy bit at the skin around her thumbnail. Her short hair. It had been for him. But what if the rumors were true?

  She climbed the stairs to her room, diving headfirst onto her made bed, propping herself up by the window and staring out at the choppy water and the mainland beyond. She glanced at Ash’s cottage, feeling her bare neck; she was spending too much time thinking about this surfer who was nothing more than a flirt. In her journal, she turned to a blank page and wrote: school, school, school. She tapped the pen’s tip to the page, creating a burst of dots. Her conversation with Ted was pathetic, and she was certain she wouldn’t try again. What could she do? An image of Gigi popped into her head. Gigi, with the slick legs and big ego, digging her gaze into Heddy.

  “You will fight, little girl. That’s what. Now do something.”

  Heddy sat up, words coursing through her, forming an argument that she had to get on paper. She would fight. She would do exactly what the women on this island would do: Act entitled. Blame others for anything standing in her way. Before she lost her train of thought, she sat at her desk, pulling a sheet of paper from the top drawer.

  Dear Members of the Financial Committee:

  I am a third-year student in Wellesley College’s Department of English, and I was informed that my scholarship was revoked. It is devastating to my future, but it’s also a detriment to Wellesley.

  Sometimes it feels like I’m the only student who didn’t grow up in a place like Darien or Scarsdale. I ask the committee how many students at the college come from a less affluent background? How many of your students work at the diner after school and send most of their earnings to a single mother in Brooklyn?

  Here’s why you need students like me at Wellesley: I lend a different perspective to your
rarefied air. Many of the women I’ve met at college are there because their parents force them through the wrought iron gates. I’m not at Wellesley to earn a “Mrs. degree,” I’m there to graduate and earn an advanced degree. I want to be a writer. Or a teacher. I’m not certain, and I think that’s okay. But what I am sure of is how much I want to learn. I want to slide into a desk chair every morning and be given the chance to dream my way out of the Brooklyn tenement where I grew up.

  I ask you, respectfully, to review my transcripts one final time. You’ll see that my failing grade in biology was an anomaly. I will never make the same mistake.

  She signed her name, folded the letter into thirds, and slid it into an envelope. The committee would change their minds about her. They had to.

  TEN

  “Why do you drive so slow?” Ruth gulped down something she’d brought in a red thermos, handing it to Heddy.

  “I like to take my time.” Heddy sniffed the rim, repelled by the strong smell of rum. She took a sip anyway, the liquor stinging her chest.

  “We might not get there before midnight, but okay. Sorry I couldn’t drive—I didn’t know my dad needed the car.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

  Heddy took a sarcastic tone. “Cards again? Well, it’s good to have a passion.”

  Ruth sipped her thermos. “Not if it’s messing everyone’s life up.”

  While Ruth hunted for a station on the radio, Heddy wondered about Ruth’s father. Heddy, having longed for a dad all her life, imagined that her father would have anchored her, bringing with him a whiff of cologne and a wallet of cash, a warm kiss on the cheek before bed. Ted wasn’t a perfect dad, but he didn’t have any threatening vices, like alcohol, and he provided his children with a lovely summer house, the best cuts of steak, a steady roster of activities. Sure, he disappeared sometimes, and maybe she’d thought a father would be more present, but still, Ted was there when Jean-Rose needed him. That a father could cause pain, that someone could curse their father’s existence, interested her the way algebra did. A strange equation adding up to an unexpected outcome.

  “You don’t have to stay on the island.” Heddy could see the fairgrounds up ahead. A large Ferris wheel rotated over the treetops. It took twenty minutes to drive up island, which is what Ruth called this part of Martha’s Vineyard. It was more rural, farther away from the ports with their crowds and charming commercial strips.

  “Where would I go?”

  “You could come to Brooklyn.” Heddy clicked on her blinker, turning into the parking lot where people emerged in groups from cars, doors slamming. “There’s a cosmetology school there, or you could get a job.”

  “But you’re going back to Boston! I don’t know a soul in New York.”

  Heddy put the car in park. “We could be roommates in the city after I graduate.” She still hadn’t told Ruth about her scholarship.

  Ruth checked her lipstick. It was the first time Heddy saw her wearing makeup. “Me? In New York? What a daydream.”

  They wandered the rows of games, colorful stuffed animals hanging from tented walls of the booths. “Step right up, miss. Three balls for a quarter, three balls for a quarter,” called a hunchbacked man with thick stubble on his beard.

  “Don’t waste your money.” Ruth took Heddy’s arm, leading her away. “No one ever wins.”

  The grass was muddy from being trampled, and with the sun setting, the breeze turned chilly. Heddy zipped the “KATAMA BEACH” sweatshirt she’d grabbed in the mudroom. They stopped to watch people slamming a sledgehammer on a silver discus, hoping to win a stuffed pink puppy if the “Strong-o-Meter” announced them a “Master.” But no one, no matter how muscled, seemed to get beyond “Bulging.” Ruth kept an eye out for someone named Jerome, who was bringing the boy Jean-Rose had arranged for her.

  “We have to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl.” Ruth pointed to the flamingo-pink capsules shaped like hamburger buns, spinning around while zipping along a track.

  Heddy put her hand to her stomach. Rides made her queasy, but she didn’t want to be a spoilsport. “Let’s get some popcorn. My treat,” she said, stopping at a cart manned by a teenager in a striped hat. Heddy reached into her satin clutch for a dollar, realizing now how light the bag was. She’d taken five dollars out of her sock drawer and put it in her wallet, but then the children had distracted her and she left her wallet on her dresser. Her heart sank. “Oh, Ruth, this is so embarrassing. I must have left my wallet—”

  “Cheapskate.” Ruth smiled, and Heddy felt a tight line form in her lips and a blush in her cheeks. When Heddy was twelve, she and her mother were paying at the grocery store and they hadn’t had enough. They’d put back crackers, a hunk of cheddar, shampoo, just so they could pay, while the clerk rolled her eyes. “As if you’ve never had a hard week,” her mother had snapped at the cashier.

  The carousel’s music played on, and the popcorn clerk sighed, tapping his metal scooper, while Ruth dug coins from her change purse: “Lady, do you have enough or what?” the clerk said.

  “Maybe we should get to the back of the line,” Heddy said, tugging on Ruth’s arm.

  “No, I have it.” Ruth gave him the dimes and nickels.

  A man behind them cleared his throat, reaching his hand between her and Ruth’s shoulders, dangling three dollars at the zitty kid behind the stand. “We’ll take three large tubs,” a baritone voice rang out.

  “No, please. It’s fine, we’re…” When Heddy turned around to apologize—she was so mortified at not having her wallet and for slowing the line down—she came face-to-face with Ash, his eyes glistening, looking quite pleased with himself. Had he been behind them the entire time? She tried to remember what they’d been saying.

  “It’s okay, really. I just left my wallet, and Ruth, she wants to pay with…”

  “Get me next time,” he said, handing Heddy one tub of popcorn and Ruth the other. He stuffed a handful of buttered popcorn in his mouth. “Enjoy.”

  And he was gone, his broad shoulders disappearing into the crowd. Her instinct was to follow him, to find out who he was with. Who was he with? A rickety roller coaster zipped by, the screams of riders shrieking as they flew past. Still stunned, she followed Ruth to a small circus tent where she bought three tickets a piece from a man with stubby hands—Ruth counting change again to pay—then to the spinning ride they’d seen earlier.

  “Jerome, over here!” Ruth was standing on tiptoe, waving to a boy holding a bag of cotton candy. The boy had tight red curls, narrow eyes, and a face full of freckles. He grinned when he saw Ruth in line at the Tilt-A-Whirl, revealing two gapped front teeth.

  “Hi, pretty lady. You just get here?”

  Ruth nodded. “Heddy, this is my friend, Jerome.”

  “We’re more than friends. I’d say we’re very close friends.” He put his arm around Ruth.

  “It’s true—our mothers have known each other since they were both in service at the Harbor View Hotel and we were both in diapers.” Ruth didn’t pull away, she nuzzled him.

  Heddy avoided looking at them, glancing at a clown on six-foot stilts waving to the crowd. She thought it odd Ruth didn’t mention she had a boyfriend.

  “Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom,” Heddy said.

  Jerome blocked her. “Wait, I want to introduce you to my buddy.” He turned around, pulling at the shoulder of someone Heddy thought looked familiar. He was wearing the same round tortoiseshell glasses, his hair the same tidy buzz of closely cropped hair.

  “Sullivan?”

  “Oh, hey, Heddy. I didn’t recognize you for a second—your hair. How’s the kite? I mean, the kids?” She was impressed he remembered her name, smiling at him when he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  “It hasn’t been windy enough”—then, flustered, she managed—“did you know this was happening, when I saw you at the park?”

  “You two know each other?” Ruth faced them, her hand on her hips.

  Jerome patted Sullivan on the back, like he was c
ongratulating him. “You’re always one step ahead, paper boy. But you couldn’t have planned this one, even you aren’t that good.”

  “Paper boy?” Heddy looked at Sullivan for an explanation, but Sullivan shot her a look, like Jerome was a bit of an idiot whose behavior needn’t be explained.

  “Can we hop on with you?” Jerome cut into the line beside them, panting like an excited puppy. Nearby, a man in a candy-striped suit was spinning cotton candy onto paper cones, sending the sickly sweet scent of spun sugar all around them.

  “Sullivan is the guy that helped me with the kite.”

  “The one with the annoying dog?” Ruth blurted out. Heddy kicked her.

  “He did bark a lot,” Heddy told Sullivan.

  “That’s what dogs do.” Sullivan stuffed his hands in his pockets. The roller coaster whizzed by again, the shrieks of riders fading into the distance.

  “We’re waiters down at the Clamshell,” Jerome bellowed. “Paper boy is my rowing pal. He rows; I watch.” He held up his hand to high-five Sullivan, but when Sullivan went to slap it, Jerome pulled his away. “Too slow, man.” Jerome snickered, looking at Ruth and Heddy for a laugh but getting nothing. Sullivan opened his mouth to say something, then wrinkled his blond eyebrows; his hair dirty blond.

  “I row at school.” Sullivan tapped his thigh with his fingers, a fast-ticking clock, until he noticed Heddy glance down. His hand stilled.

  There goes Mr. Fidgety, Heddy thought. She couldn’t believe this was “the catch” Jean-Rose rounded up, Sullivan the waiter. She willed herself to find her manners.

  “Where’s school?” asked Heddy.

  “Boston.”

  Jerome pushed Sullivan’s shoulder, like he couldn’t believe him. “Listen to you. Boston.”

  Heddy remembered his Harvard sweater from the ferry. “I attend Wellesley.”