Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

Hobby struggled to his feet. Really? Demeter thought. He’s just going to leave? She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Yelling, maybe. A scene. But there was a way-wasn’t there?-in which this was Zoe’s and Jordan’s fault. They, after all, were the ones who’d been lying and cheating. They were the ones who had crossed a line. They were adults-really good, cool, important, responsible adults, or so Demeter, and Hobby and Penny and Jake, had always been led to believe. And yet there they were on the deck, having sex, making those animal noises. Demeter hadn’t wandered into anyone’s bedroom. They were outside, practically in public. Demeter had wondered if perhaps she’d happened across a onetime thing. Maybe Jordan had stopped by to help Zoe change out her storm windows for screens, and they’d gotten to waxing nostalgic about graduation, and to talking about Penny and Jake and how much in love they were, and then one thing had led to another, and what Demeter had witnessed was like a shooting star that burned bright once, then faded away.

But Demeter didn’t think so. She’d glimpsed them only for a split second, just long enough to imprint in her mind Zoe’s bare back (with the white stripe of a tan line), and Jordan’s arms locked around her, and their movements and their sounds. It had seemed like they fit together perfectly in a way they might not have done if it were their first time. (Although what did Demeter know about sex? Really, what did she know?) And when she thought back on the way that Zoe and Jordan were together-their easy camaraderie, their inside jokes, the fact that they always sat next to each other, whether it be at a dinner table, at the beach, or in the ski lodge-she knew that this had been going on for a while, probably months, possibly even years. It was an industry of lies that they had produced. They had been lying not just to poor Ava Randolph but to everybody. Including their own children. Didn’t that make it Zoe and Jordan’s fault? Did Demeter have to take the blame just for repeating the awful truth?

Demeter wanted to initiate this debate with Hobby-and it would have to be here and now, while she was still around, while the topic was still hot and immediate-but she didn’t know how to broach it without making it seem like she was trying to pass the buck and deny the blame.

No, she thought. There would be no passing the buck or denying the blame. She was seventeen years old. That was old enough to accept responsibility for who she was and what she’d set in motion.

“I’m sorry,” she bleated.

Hobby shook his head violently, as if trying to dislodge something. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

One thing at a time. Maybe before the accident he could have dealt with both Demeter’s shell-shocking news and telling Zoe about the baby, but he couldn’t do it now. His head was filled with white noise. Too much, too much.

His mother and Jordan. Whoa. He would have to think about that carefully.

If he’d had two good legs, he would have chosen to walk home, but the cast necessitated that he climb into the car with his mother, who was paging through an issue of Bon Appétit. She set the magazine down and looked at him.

“That go okay?” she asked.

“Not really.”

She regarded him for a second. He could feel her eyes, feel the questions hanging in the hot air of the car.

“Believe me,” he said, “you don’t want to know.”

Still she watched him. Hobby made a fist over and over again with his left hand. He wanted her to drive. He wanted the air-conditioning on full blast so he could cool down. He wanted to get back to Claire. But he couldn’t tell Claire about this; he couldn’t tell anyone. Demeter had just saddled him with a ridiculous burden. Did she feel better now? he wondered. He hoped so. He really fucking hoped so.

“Hobby?” Zoe said.

“Please drive,” Hobby said.

“I can handle it, you know,” Zoe said. “If you want to tell me something, if you want to talk this out with me, I can handle it.”

“You’ve handled enough,” Hobby said. He felt a surge of pure, vermilion anger at Demeter. She had used his mother’s secret as social currency, to bond with Penny, to try and make them real friends, but what had it cost her? Penny had lost her life, Zoe had lost her daughter, Hobby had lost his twin sister and the agility and quickness and coordination that had been his natural gifts. Demeter had lost nothing. Sure, she might feel as if she were losing something because she was being carted away to Vendever, but that was destruction by her own hand. Demeter had drunk and stolen and drunk some more because she couldn’t handle the truth: she had caused the accident.

But what was up with his mother and Jordan, anyway? Would his mother do that, sleep with Jordan while he was married to Ava, who was her friend too? Was his mother lonely and desperate enough to do that, and if she was, what did that say about her? Was she in love with Jordan? Of course she was in love with him. God, it seemed so obvious to Hobby right at that second that it was painful for him to think about. The phone calls and the texting and the way Zoe was always happier when Jordan was around, the way she made special food for him and he made such a big deal about how delicious everything was, and the way they liked the same music and had the same politics. If a certain Springsteen song came on over the car radio, Zoe would call Jordan’s cell phone and play a snippet into his voicemail, no words or explanation needed. When Barack Obama was elected President, the first person to call Zoe was Jordan: before midnight on November 4, 2008, they spent more than an hour talking on the phone together, as giddy as kids. “Do you miss Jordan?” Hobby had asked his mother a few weeks ago. “Yes,” she’d said. “Yes I do, actually. I miss him very much.” And then he’d heard her crying that night and thought she must be crying about Penny. He wondered now what it was like for his mother to have Jordan so far away; he would have liked to ask her, but at that moment he realized he didn’t want to know his mother’s innermost thoughts. He didn’t want to know about her sex life or her heart’s secrets. He wanted her to be his mother. Although of course he also wanted her to be happy. Jordan Randolph certainly made her happy. So did he want Zoe to be with Jordan? He wasn’t sure. His brain wasn’t working correctly, goddammit. He couldn’t make sense of any of this.

“Just drive,” he said to his mother again. “Please.”

Zoe started the car, and the air-conditioning kicked in. They backed out of the parking spot, and Hobby felt marginally better with the movement.

“Did you see Lynne on your way out?” Zoe asked.

“No,” he lied. He had seen Lynne standing over by the vending machines, talking to Percy Simons, who served on the Board of Selectmen with Al Castle, but he’d walked right past them.

“I wonder how Demeter is getting to Vendever,” Zoe said.

Hobby shrugged. He imagined just coming out with it: “Demeter told Penny that she saw you and Jordan having sex. And that was the thing that did it, I guess.”

That really might have been the thing that did it, too, he thought. Penny had been so close to their mother. Penny told Zoe everything, and it would have come as a devastating shock that the river didn’t flow both ways. Penny had always been happy that Zoe didn’t date; she wanted her all to herself, whereas Hobby had always worried that their mother was lonely. But she had never seemed lonely when Jordan was around.

Then Hobby remembered the journal. Penny had kept nothing private from Zoe except her close relationship with Ava Randolph. So it was a double whammy: not only had Zoe betrayed Penny, she had also betrayed Ava, who was Penny’s friend and confidante.

This might have been what drove Penny to do what she did. But it could just as easily have been the knowledge of Jake’s kissing and touching Winnie Potts in the Pottses’ basement after the cast party. Or it could have been the whispered news that Hobby had gotten Claire Buckley pregnant and they had scheduled an abortion.

The whole world had secrets, Hobby thought. Everyone was fallible. Everyone. Zoe Alistair, Jordan Randolph, Ava Randolph, Al and Lynne Castle-all fallible. Penny would have hated that answer. She’d been tethered to this world only by her belief in the people around her. If she’d somehow lost that belief, if the people she loved and trusted the most had turned out not to be who she thought they were-yes, Hobby could see how she could have just floated away.

Which was exactly what she’d done.

It had been her choice. Penny herself was to blame. She had caused the accident. She had killed herself.

“Listen,” she’d said to him. “I’m going now.”

Hobby felt tears running down his face. He wiped at them, and this immediately attracted his mother’s attention.

“Honey,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Claire’s pregnant,” he said.

September

The day before school started, Zoe took Hobby to get his final cast off. They had spent an absurd amount of time at the hospital over the past three months, and now, with Claire having the baby, there would be even more hospital time in front of them. But that would be good, happy hospital time, just as getting the cast off was good. Hobby sat on the examining table, all six foot six of him, and Ted Field got out his Sawzall and cut the plaster into pieces. Hobby’s leg underneath was pale and shrunken, which only emphasized how brown and strong his other leg was. He looked like a doll that had been cobbled together out of mismatched parts.