Summer People (2 page)

Offering Beth a tissue was the least Marcus could do. Because what all four people in the car knew but nobody acknowledged out loud was that if Arch hadn’t been defending Constance, he wouldn’t have died. And so, Marcus
would
be a slave to these people if that was what they wanted. He’d haul out the garbage cans, he’d sweep sand off the porch, he’d rub oil onto their backs so they didn’t burn in the sun. Yes, he would. Before Marcus left New York, his father, Bo, said,
These people didn’t have to invite you, son. So be a big help, and make me proud.

As they drove out of town, the houses grew farther apart. Then Beth signaled left and they turned onto a dirt road. Bumpy. Dirt and sand filled the air, gravel crunched under the tires.

Marcus would offer to wash the car.

He saw the ocean—it was in front of them suddenly, glinting in the sun like a big silver platter. Beth shut off the air-conditioning and put down all four windows.

“We’re here,” she said. She pulled into a white shell driveway that led to a house—a big, old, gray-shingled house—which sat on a ledge overlooking the water.

“Whoa,” Marcus said.

Beth shut off the engine and climbed out of the car, raising her hands to the sky. “It takes my breath away every time. I feel better. Kids, I feel better already.”

Marcus stuffed his feet into his very uncomfortable white-person shoes, wondering if he should help unload the car, but before he could make a move, Winnie took his hand and pulled him to the edge of the bluff. “Look, Marcus. What do you think?”

Marcus thought he might be experiencing some kind of reverse claustrophobia. Because he felt queasy, unsettled, unable to place himself. He was used to the Elmhurst section of Queens, and Main Street, Flushing. He was used to dirty streets and bodegas that smelled like too many cats and the long line outside the yellow brick public health building on Junction Boulevard. He was used to Shea Stadium and LaGuardia Airport—obnoxious Mets fans in their blue and orange hats crowding the subway cars, jumbo jets overhead at any given moment. He was used to sitting in the back row of the classrooms at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School so nobody could stare him down. He was used to a dark, low-ceilinged apartment that he shared with his father, his sister LaTisha, and the belongings of his mother—her head scarves, her record albums, her knock-off Prada bag—things that now simply took up space because she would never be back to reclaim them. He was
not
used to this—a Range Rover with leather seats, a white shell driveway, a golden beach, the Atlantic fucking Ocean, not to mention people who were civil to him even though they knew his mother was a murderer.

“It’s cool,” he said.

Winnie steered him toward the front door. “Come inside,” she said.

Beth pulled the key out from under the welcome mat.

“Has that been there all winter?” Marcus asked.

“It has,” she said. “And this is the last time we’ll use the key until we leave in September.”

“You’re kidding,” Marcus said. “What if somebody steals your stuff?”

Beth laughed. “That’s the beauty of this place. Nobody’s going to steal our stuff.”

When Marcus got inside, he realized there wasn’t much worth stealing. He followed Beth through the rooms, nervously thinking of Garrett behind him carrying bags. He should be helping Garrett. But Winnie had taken his hand and now he was sandwiched between Beth and Winnie both asking him,
Didn’t he just love it
?
Didn’t he think it was magnificent?

The house was big. Marcus could say that with confidence. There was a hallway where you walked in with a living room on the right. A flight of stairs on the left. Past the stairs were a kitchen and dining room that had a row of windows and glass doors looking out over the water, and a deck beyond the kitchen with a green plastic table and chairs. The house was big but not fancy. The furniture was white wicker, except for one nasty-looking recliner the color of a dead mouse. The pictures on the walls were faded watercolors of the beach; the curtains were a creepy filmy material. The floorboards creaked and the house had a smell. An old, grandmother smell. Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d expected—he guessed he pictured something like a fashion magazine, something more like the Newtons’ apartment on Park Avenue which he’d seen for the first time that morning—with real antiques and Oriental carpets and brass candlesticks and sculpture. This house didn’t feel like poverty, just like a house owned by white people who’d stopped caring. How had Arch described it?
A funky old summer cottage
—and Marcus had pretended to understand what that meant. Now he knew, it meant this. This was how white people lived when they relaxed at the beach.

Marcus checked out the view from the deck and then wandered back through the first floor. Garrett brought in a second load of stuff and dropped it at Marcus’s feet in the living room. Marcus was looking for the TV; he didn’t see one anywhere.

“Is there TV?” Marcus asked.

“No,” Garrett said. “Sorry, man, you’re going to have to do without
Bernie Mac
for the summer.”

“Hey,” Marcus said, straightening his shoulders in his new white shirt that was so fine it felt like money on his back.
Fuck you
was on the tip of his tongue. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was that a racial comment already? Well, why not? Why not put him in his slave’s place right away? Before Marcus could prepare a response, Garrett was headed out the door again, aiming for load number three. Marcus followed him out.

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Marcus said. He sounded, ridiculously, like a homeroom teacher. Garrett didn’t even turn around. “I’m sorry I’m bumming you out. I don’t want to ruin your summer with your family.” Marcus couldn’t believe he was talking like this. What he’d learned in the past nine months was that the easiest response to other people’s shit was silence. Let his eyes drop to half mast, pretend like he hadn’t heard. Pretend like nothing they said could bother him. Marcus would get his revenge on everyone later, once his book was published.

“Why did you come then?” Garrett said. “I know my mother offered. But you could have said no. You could have spent the summer at home. Closer to … your own family. Why did you come with us?”

Marcus felt guilt rising in his throat along with his long-ago-eaten breakfast. He
should
be at home. His father was going through a very stressful time trying to live without Mama. But things at home had gotten so horrible that Marcus needed to escape. At home, the phone was always ringing, the press calling, or people who had somehow gotten their number who wanted to share their feelings about what a monster Constance was. Marcus had lost all his friends, he suffered cold-eyed glares from his neighbors and teachers and people he didn’t even know. He couldn’t get an aspirin from the medicine chest without seeing all of Constance’s half-used make-up, the tubes of lipstick, the skin stuff she loved that made her smell like apricots. He couldn’t walk in or out of the apartment without thinking of Angela and Candy’s bodies bleeding onto the floorboards. The worst had passed—the weeks after the murders when they were forced to stay in that fleabag motel, the humiliating afternoon in the swim team locker room—but Marcus’s life in Queens, his new identity as the
murderer’s son,
suffocated him. His mother was gone forever but at the same time she was everywhere, tainting every moment. He wanted out. On the whiter, brighter side, there was Marcus’s book deal, Mr. Zachary Celtic, true crime editor at Dome Books, the thirty thousand dollar advance that no one knew a thing about except for Marcus and his English teacher. At home, Marcus would have had to get a job. Here, he had the luxury of a summer without work—long days of quiet hours to write the truth about his mother, whatever that was.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Garrett. He reached past Garrett into the car for his own bag—a black leather duffel that had cost him nearly two hundred dollars. He’d bought it to impress these people, but in the Nantucket sun, Marcus saw it was all wrong. It looked like a drug dealer’s bag with garish brass buckles and a strong smell of leather.

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “But here I am. A nigger boy on your turf.”

Garrett glared at him. “That’s a low blow. You’re calling me a racist, and that’s not what this is about.”

“What’s it about, then?” Marcus said. He felt himself sweating and worried about the expense of dry-cleaning his new shirt. It was at least ninety degrees out.

“It’s about us losing our father,” Garrett said. “That’s what this summer is about. That’s what every day has been about since his plane crashed. That’s the only thing anything’s going to be about ever again, okay?” Garrett got tears in his eyes, but because his hands were full, he wiped his face on his shoulder.

“Okay,” Marcus said. He was proud of himself because he understood not only what Garrett was saying, but what he hadn’t said.
Our father is dead because of your mama. If he hadn’t been defending her, he wouldn’t have gone to Albany. If he hadn’t gone to Albany, his plane wouldn’t have crashed.
Arch was another victim of the day Connie Tyler lost her mind. Marcus wanted to apologize on his mother’s behalf, but apologizing wouldn’t help. If Garrett hated him, Marcus would have to live with it. It wouldn’t be worse than the other stuff Marcus was living with.

Suddenly Winnie appeared, tugging on Marcus’s arm in an eager, excited way, like a little kid. All three of them were seventeen, but Winnie seemed younger. Maybe because she was a girl. Or because she was so skinny. She had no body to speak of, certainly not the way some of the girls at Cardozo had bodies—with huge tits like balloons under their sweaters and curvy asses. Winnie was a stick person—right now she was wearing jean shorts that showed two Popsicle-stick legs, and her torso was swimming in her sweatshirt. She had blond hair like her mother and she was cute in a way that elves are cute. But not womanly. Even Marcus’s twelve-year-old sister LaTisha had more action going on than Winnie.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you your bedroom.”

“In a minute,” Marcus said. He wanted to finish with Garrett, although he could see that the moment had passed. Garrett walked by them with his load of luggage and Marcus slung his bag over his shoulder and reached for another box. He needed to catch up.

“Come on,” Winnie said. “Please?”

Marcus managed to stave her off until he and Garrett had unloaded most of the car. In silence, except for the squeaky complaints of Marcus’s shoes.

“Come on, Marcus,” Winnie said.

Marcus picked up his leather duffel, which looked nothing but ugly compared to the Newtons’ luggage, and followed Winnie up the stairs.

“This is your room,” Winnie announced. She could feel herself gushing but she didn’t know how to stop. Ever since Marcus appeared at their apartment at, like, five that morning, it was as if Winnie were wearing some kind of electric bracelet that sent shocks up her arm to her heart. She’d had a crush on him since the minute she knew of his existence. More than six months ago now, since the morning that Arch took her to EJ’s Luncheonette to have breakfast (she and her father both loved the red flannel hash). They were supposed to be talking about grades, school, her prospects for college (he wanted her to apply to Princeton; she wanted to stay in the city—NYU, Barnard), but instead they got on the topic of Constance Tyler’s case and once Arch was on that topic, he couldn’t stop.

He’d read about the murders in the
New York Times
the day after they were committed. That was a second morning emblazoned in Winnie’s memory. Her father so engrossed in the frontpage story and the photograph of the dead girl wearing black party shoes, that he held his hand up for quiet when Beth asked him what his schedule looked like that day. He drank the story in, and then hurried with the newspaper into the living room where he plucked his Princeton face book off the shelf and rifled through it, holding up the paper for comparison—because next to the picture of the dead girl in the Mary Janes was a picture of the suspected murderer, Constance Bennett Tyler, a public school teacher.

“Bingo!” Arch shouted. “Constance Bennett, Queens, New York. I went to school with this woman.” He held the face book up. “Nineteen-seventy-five freshman class, Princeton University.” Then his expression crumbled. “Well, she killed someone.”

“That’s Dad for you,” Garrett said. “He loves all things Princeton. Even the murderers.”

“Did you know her, Dad?” Winnie asked.

“Never seen her before in my life,” Arch said. He tucked the paper into his briefcase and Winnie forgot all about it.

But not Arch. Although he didn’t generally handle criminal cases, he made a few phone calls that day, and discovered that the woman’s case had been taken by a P.D.—no real surprise— and the D.A.’s office had already announced it was seeking the death penalty. They wanted Constance Bennett Tyler to be the first woman to die of lethal injection in the state of New York. Arch decided to go to Rikers where Connie was being held and talk to her. She had been indicted for the murder of her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law’s nine-year-old daughter. She explained the whole story to Arch, and he was so intrigued by the circumstances and by Connie herself that he took the case and refused to be paid a penny.