Chapter 62
“You were in love with him, weren’t you?” Hannah said, leaning forward across the hospital cafeteria table, propped up on her elbows.
Zooey shook herself out of her reverie. “Yes, I was. Hook, line, and sinker – even more so after that night. Before, it had been more of an infatuation. Of course, I did everything I could to hide it. I knew he didn’t feel that way about me. I was like a sister as far as he was concerned. To me, he was the only person who’d seen me, really saw me, since my father died.”
“As far as my friends were concerned, I was just Zo, the bookworm geek who went along with whatever they wanted to do. My mom, like I said, she loved me but she couldn’t be there for me. She couldn’t even be there for herself. In some ways, she was younger than I was. She went back into the family fold with her sisters and she was safe there. But, me, I was out there by myself and here was this kind wonderful guy simply seeing me, hearing me, understanding. It was like food, like air. I needed it that badly.”
“Anyway, I needed you to understand that before I went on with the rest of the story. I wouldn’t make sense otherwise, what happened.”
Hannah said, “What? What did happen? I just don’t get the secrecy. Here my dad was Mr. Popularity and so was my mom, they have a kid a little too young and out of wedlock, but so what? It’s not that unusual of a story.”
Zo looked at her for a moment and then nodded. “Wait. I’ll explain.”
The next day, everything was good again between Keeley and Michael, the argument settled sometime after Michael left Zooey’s house that night. When she’d seen him to the door, he gave Zooey a big hug and kiss on the side of her head near her ear, which made her heart ache. Nodding at her living room, he said, “See? Your house is safe. No problemo. See you tomorrow.” He stepped out of the door, gave a backwards wave, and walked off down the boardwalk, sauntering as he always did in his no-worries way, as if the argument with Keeley was already resolved.
Keeley got her wish for a big party only a few days later. Clay’s parents had to be off-island for the week, both of them pulled away by work emergencies, leaving nineteen-year-old Clay in charge of his younger sister and their little house down-island. Shannon, his sister, was three years younger than Clay and a bit of a wild-child, taking every opportunity she could to shock her elders and thrill the other kids with her antics. Her greatest fascination was with her own naked body and she loved to flash her small breasts, streak 70’s-style, and moon people at every surprising opportunity. Between their temporary lack of parental units, Clay’s acquisition of a beautiful new girlfriend, Rose, and Shannon’s general craving for attention, they were a party-explosion waiting to happen.
The four girls got ready at Pam’s, their usual go-to house for questionable behavior and party-prep. Amy’s parents were welcoming, but strict and alert to trouble. Zooey’s house was too far up-island, and Keeley’s, well, that house was a nightmare that even Keeley avoided for the most part.
Keeley’s parents’ intermittent and abusive parenting had morphed into complete neglect as she grew into her teenage years. Both seemed to forget they had a daughter and were completely immersed in their own lives. Keeley’s father was a full-time advertising account executive and a part-time functioning alcoholic who spent any off-time in either the bar of his country club or, in the summer, drinking at the island’s little yacht club.
Keeley’s mother, who rarely spoke to Keeley after that terrible night with the knife, communicated entirely through notes left on their dining room table, primarily errands she wanted her daughter to run or chores to be completed around the house. Instead of focusing her attention on her daughter, Mrs. O’Brien was busy saving her soul. The autumn after their worst summer, Keeley’s fourteenth, her mother had met a handsome young minister at the Fairfield Garden Club’s bake sale where she’d been inspecting the banana-nut loaves. He was in charge of the congregation at the new Grace Church that had opened in a strip mall two towns over. Bowled over by his keen observation of her deep need of saving, she’d been promptly converted from an occasional Episcopalian to a full-fledged holy-roller fundamentalist Christian.
According to Keeley’s mother, both her husband and Keeley were lost souls, going straight to hell when they died, utterly unredeemable. Her only hope was for her own soul and, other than cleaning the house so vigorously the smell of disinfectant hit you as soon as you walked in the front door, the rest of her time was spent down at the Grace Evangelical Church in the Riverview Shopping Centre, a blue-carpeted store space with plastic folding chairs instead of pews and a podium instead of an altar.
Whenever Keeley and her mother passed each other at home, her mother made the sign of the cross and mumbled frantic prayers under her breath, as if in the presence of the Devil himself. This was rare, though, as Keeley avoided going home. In Fairfield she stayed at various classmates’ homes that were open to her regular overnight stays, and on Captain’s she stayed at Pam’s. Pam’s was the obvious choice, the only house where everything was easygoing and questions weren’t asked.
Pam’s mother, an elementary school teacher, had two loves: chocolate and fat paperback mysteries. Every summer she indulged both loves sitting on her chaise lounge on the screened-in back porch of their house on Captain’s. Whatever her two children did during the summers, provided it wasn’t dangerous or illegal, was fine as long as it didn’t disturb her as she worked her way through another box of Mallomars and the latest Mary Higgins Clark. With her father still at work most of the time, only visiting the island on the weekends, her year-younger brother off running around with his own friends, and her mother ensconced on the porch, Pam’s house was a haven of permissiveness, privacy, and safety.
They were in Pam’s bedroom getting dressed for the party when Keeley slipped a black silk camisole over her head, turned around and stuck her hip out in her white jeans and said, “So, what do you think?”
Pam, trying to button a jean skirt, but unable to see past her shelf of a chest, glanced up. “It’s nice. You forgot your bra, though.”
Keeley flipped her hair back and put her hand through it. “No, I’m wearing it like this. A bra would ruin the line of it.”
Zooey turned to look at Keeley, who seemed to glow after their day together at the beach, her skin burnished brown by the sun, hair gilded by sunlight. The black camisole clung to Keeley’s pert breasts and contrasted perfectly with her crisp white jeans. It made Zooey’s stomach knot. Why? Why couldn’t she look like that? She looked down at herself. She needed a looser top; something bigger might give an illusion of a chest. Maybe Pam had something.
She looked back up to see Amy squishing up her face at Keeley. “You look like a tramp like that. You’ve got to wear a bra.”
Keeley shook her head and made an annoyed sound. “Shannon will be wearing something like this and she never wears a bra. She looks hot. I want to look hot, too.”
Amy said, “You don’t need to try, you already do. Besides, you and Michael are getting married. What do you need attention for?”
Keeley, who had turned to look at herself in Pam’s full-length mirror that hung on her closet door, spun around, her face turning red. “Don’t you ever say that again. We’re not getting married. Promise you’ll never say it.”
Amy put her hands on her tiny hips, looking like an indignant toy. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you marry Michael? Are you nuts?”
“Hey!” Pam said, stepping between them. “We all agreed. First college, then careers, then marriage. It’s just not time yet, that’s all, Aim.”
“I hate when you call me Aim,” Amy said, “It’s Amy. And who says our plan’s written in stone? I’m probably not going to college.”
“I thought you were going to SUNY with us?” Pam said. “I thought you applied?”
Amy shook her head. “My parents don’t have money for that. Your parents scrimped and saved for it, not mine.”
Pam gestured at Keeley, “Keeley’s getting financial aid. Her parents aren’t taking care of her.”
“Ha!” Keeley barked out. Having turned back to the mirror, she was combing her hair back with her fingers and fluffing it. “You can say that again.”
“Well,” Amy said, shrugging. “I’m not going. My cousin already has a job lined up for me in September. I’m going to be a manager at the lighting store where he works. Well, eventually. First, I have to be the order clerk. But, still. Why wait to have a job when I can have one now?”
“Oh!” Pam protested, her hands out in supplication. “Amy! You’re ruining everything!”
“No, I’m not,” Amy said, unperturbed. “The one who’s ruining everything is Keeley. You don’t just throw away your one true love. You won’t get another one, you know, Keeley. This is it. Michael.”
Keeley turned around again, head held high, her hand on her hip, her eyebrows raised. In a cool voice, she said, “Oh, really? Well, watch me meet ten more one-true-loves once I go to college. And then, I’ll meet ten more at my first job. I’ll be rolling in true loves. Just wait and see. I’m not, I repeat, not settling for the first boy who kissed me. The world is full of opportunities, Amy. Throwing them away is the real crime. ” Then, she gestured at Zooey. “Come on, Zo, Pam. Enough staring at the mirror. Let’s go have some fun.” She started out the bedroom door, and then paused, looking back. “Are you coming or not, Amy?”
Amy, glanced at Pam and then Zooey and shrugging, followed.
From the minute they got to the party, it was clear that Keeley was on a mission. She drank two shots of tequila as soon as she got there, befriending Shannon immediately, who was also braless and bouncing around the party in a jean miniskirt and pink halter top. Shannon and Keeley started dancing seductively to every song playing on the boom box in the living room and laughed secretly together while taking more shots of tequila straight from the bottle that they continually passed between them.
Pam and Amy and Zooey watched the whole thing and looked at each other with worried expressions, each of them attempting to talk to Keeley and ending up rebuffed with laughter. “Stop talking like old ladies. Come on, dance with us! Want a shot?” The girls shook their heads, retreating to the wall where the three of them stood together and tried to smile and look like they were having fun.
They also watched as Michael arrived and was ignored and avoided by Keeley. He kept reaching for her, and she kept dancing out of arm’s length. Zooey wondered if she should intervene, wanting to wipe the look of bewildered hurt off of his face and realizing it wasn’t her place. This was between Keeley and Michael. Zooey found herself damning Amy for saying anything, aggravating Keeley who’d been like a firecracker waiting to go off all summer. Stupid Amy had lit the match, and the new girl, sixteen-year-old Shannon, seemed to be the fuse.
About an hour into the party Rose arrived with her two sycophant friends-of-the-moment: Cara and Janice. Cara was squat and resembled a mutant gnome, complete with a slight dark mustache on her upper lip and a long bulbous nose. Janice was as fat and round as a beach ball with a mop of frizzy carrot-colored hair. Rose always selected unattractive girls as her friends, apparently setting the bar low so she would shine all the more beside them.
At twenty, Rose was in full-blossom. Slim and athletic, whatever she wore looked great on her and her long thick chestnut-brown hair was like a carpet of waves that fluffed out around her beautiful doll-like face. She was wearing a navy sundress that flattered her creamy skin and espadrilles on her tiny perfect feet.
She glided into the party like a queen, clearly expecting attention, but stopped short at the door in shock, because, at that very moment, Shannon and Keeley’s dirty dancing was at a fever pitch in the center of the living room, both of them shimmying up and down with their backs pressed together, laughing with delight at the roar of appreciation coming from the crowd of boys who’d gathered around them. Michael was nowhere to be seen.
Zooey saw Rose’s arrival first and nudged Pam and Amy.
“Hoo, boy,” Amy whispered.
“Oh, no,” Pam whimpered.
Only temporarily frozen, Rose swung into action, striding across the room and leaving her two friends still standing uncertainly at the door. She clamped on hand onto Clay’s arm and yanked it hard, pulling him away from where he’d been admiring Keeley’s moves and unencumbered breasts that moved so enticingly under the black silk of her camisole top. Zooey, noticing his participation earlier, imagined that he must have been trying hard to block out his sister, and heard his especially loud cheer when Keeley did a butt-wiggle and a particularly athletic head flip at one point in their “show”.
Clay stumbled back, caught unaware. Then he saw who it was.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rose’s voice started out low and ended in a shriek. She yanked at his arm again.
“Uh, nothing! I was waiting for you.” He reached for her, but she backed away quickly, releasing his arm.
“Don’t touch me. I can’t believe it. After all I told you about her,” Rose said, raising her chin towards the crowd surrounding the two gyrating girls.
Zooey couldn’t imagine she meant Clay’s sister. It had to be Keeley. What was Rose saying? Why was she always making things up about them? And now, to make matters worse, Keeley was actually doing something worthy of gossip.
Clay glanced over his shoulder and then back at Rose. “I didn’t do anything.”
Rose snorted. “I think I just saw you ‘not doing anything’.”
A shout went up from Shannon as a new song coming on the radio: “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns n’ Roses. Zooey heard her squeal, “Oh, my Gawd! I love this song! This is my song!”
Rose, briefly distracted, turned back to Clay. “You know? You can have her. And, by the way? Your sister is a slut.”
Clay’s face drained of color. Then, as Rose turned on her heel, his arm shot out and he grabbed her arm. “Take that back. You can’t talk like that about my sister.”
Rose sneered at him, unflinching. “My sister,” she mimicked. “You should keep an eye on her, Clay. She’s going to be in big trouble someday. Now let me go, or swear to God, I’ll sic my dad on you.”
Zooey gasped, amazed to hear it out in the open. How many times had Mr. Griffin, a defense lawyer from Mamaroneck, sued various islanders on trumped-up charges and won? There was at least eight lawsuits that she could remember. The Griffin’s were quietly despised as a result and almost never invited to island parties, the exception being their beautiful daughter. The family seemed unaffected by it, though. They still enjoying their summers on Captain’s every year, sailing and clamming and entertaining friends at their house up-island.
Clay released her arm and put his hands up. Evidently, he’d heard all about Rose’s father.
Rose looked down at her arm and brushed it off. “Good. Now leave me alone. I’ve wasted enough time on you.” She raised her nose up in the air and turned away, heading for her friends.
At that moment, Michael appeared in the door, unsteady on his feet. It only took a moment for Zooey to realize he’d been drinking heavily. He stood between Rose’s two friends, teetering as if on a rolling ship’s deck, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack. Then his eyes narrowed, focusing on the crowd around Keeley and Shannon.
Rose, seeing him in the doorway, threw her shoulders back and smiled brightly. “Michael! Oh, I’m so happy to see you!” She crossed the floor in three steps and stood in front of him, hands clasped together as if in prayer. Then, seeing the state he was in, she faltered. “Michael? Are you okay?”
“Scuse, me, Rose. Sweetheart. I gotta see about something.” Barely glancing at her, he stepped around her. As he did, he tried to pat her arm in passing and missed, patting the air. He didn’t notice his lack of connection, purely focused on getting across the room to his girlfriend. He paused outside the wall of guys, stretching his neck to see what was going on. Then he started his removal process, pushing every boy out of the way until he was in the center and standing next to Keeley, who was squatting on the floor, the two girls wiggling and bumping their rear ends together to the music on the radio, now “Wishing Well” by Terence Trent D’Arby.
Giving a bellow that made the air seem to shake, he reached for Keeley, grabbed her by her arm and dragged her to her feet. Then he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, so that her head dangled down near his waist, her long hair dragging on the floor. She shrieked, and then, perhaps due to the vast amount of tequila she’d consumed combined with being flipped upside down, she vomited, a huge yellow splatter hitting the back of Michael’s khaki’s and feet as well as the wooden floor below.
“Ew!” Shannon screamed, scuttling backward like a crab from the mess, her skirt riding up so far Zooey could see her pink thong underwear. All the boys stepped back as well, some putting their hands over their mouths in revulsion.
Keeley started crying and screaming hysterically, but Michael either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He carried her out of the room, all of the kids parting quickly to get out of the way. Rose was watching the whole thing with an upside-down smile of disgust, and she covered her mouth with both hands when the two passed, smelling of tequila and vomit.
“Holy crap!” Amy said.
“We’ve got to make sure she’s all right!” Pam said.
“It’s Michael,” Zooey said. “Of course she’s all right. He’ll take care of her.”
“But…“ Pam said, spinning around to look out the window nearby that faced the front yard which was crowded with reveling teenagers and young adults.
Amy patted Pam’s shoulder. “Zo’s right. Michael will take care of her. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t tell me what to worry about,” Pam said, shrugging off Amy’s hand.
But Zooey wasn’t so sure, now that she thought about it. Michael looked as drunk as Keeley, if not more so. The blind leading the blind: that was what was really going on. What if something happened to them? But she wanted to check on her own. She was tired of dealing with Amy and Pam, who’d been bickering constantly lately.
“Hey, you guys?” Zooey said. The two girls looked over at her. “I don’t feel so good. Maybe it’s the smell in here. Anyway, I think I’m going to go home. I’m tired.” She said a little prayer of thanks for all of the other parties and late nights when she’d left early over the last two weeks, desperate to get home and be alone with her father’s photo and her grief, tired of smiling and pretending everything was the same.
As expected, they nodded complacently. “Sure,” Pam said. “See you early? I want to go over to Jones and watch the surfers.”
Zooey knew exactly which surfer she was referring to: Clay. Now it was open-season and Pam wanted to be first in line, ignoring the fact that he had never shown an interest in her. This was her pattern: ignore the interested boys who were typically thick beefy guys who appreciated her fuller figure and warm-hearted ways and go after the lean handsome too-cool surfers who were interested in girls like Rose.
Not wanting to get in an argument that might slow her down, she nodded. “Okay. See you guys tomorrow. Meet at your place?”
Clay and Shannon were standing in the middle of the living room having a loud argument about who was going to clean up the mess and the smell was starting to become overwhelming. Continuing their conversation and following the rest of the exiting crowd that wanted to get away from the mess and the arguing siblings, the girls drifted out of the house and onto the front yard where the majority of the kids were hanging out around a small bonfire that had been built in the sand. Beyond the boardwalk on the small beach beside the dock some boys were roughhousing while a few girls huddled together nearby and looked on, holding their plastic cups of quickly warming beer. Michael and Keeley were nowhere to be seen.
Zooey said goodbye and headed off toward her house, hoping to run into them. She walked slowly up the boardwalk, listening. The loud chorus of crickets made it hard to hear anything, especially as she entered what everyone called “the tunnel” – a section of the boardwalk enclosed on all sides by overarching trees. All she heard was the occasional shout behind her from the party at Clay’s, which weakened to ghostly echoes in the distance as she got farther away.
She paused when she reached Pam’s house, which was dark. Should she sneak in and check to see if Keeley was there? Was it really Keeley she was checking on? She continued walking, the light from the causeway’s streetlights barely touching the darkness, only lightly outlining shapes, glinting off the small waves in the bay that lapped on the shore beside the boardwalk. She wouldn’t find them. She could feel it. They were inside somewhere, making up, arms wrapped around each other.
Then she turned her head and Michael was sitting a few feet away on a dock, feet dangling in the water, rubbing his head with one hand. She stopped.
“Michael?”
He turned, looked into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
She stepped closer. “It’s Zooey. Zo.” She still felt strange calling herself that, this nickname that Keeley had given her years before and that everyone on Captain’s had adopted. She didn’t see herself as a nickname sort of person.
“Hey. What are you doing?” Michael asked, his voice dull.
“Going home. Are you okay? Where’s Keeley?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just smarting. My ear feels funny, like it’s loose or something. Keeley’s fine. She went home.”
“Home-home?”
“I mean, Pam’s house.”
Zooey walked over and stood next to him. He was still rubbing his head in a dazed way. “What’s wrong with your ear?”
Michael sighed and shook his head a little. “I shouldn’t have picked her up like that. Scared the crap out of her.”
“And the barf.”
“Don’t remind me. Look at my khakis. Had to wade around in the water for a while to get rid of it. It was making me sick.”
“But, what about your ear?”
“Keeley. When I got here and put her down, she hauled off and decked me. Man, I didn’t know she had it in her. She really whaled on my ear. I just wanted to get her away from all that back there. That’s all I wanted.” He shrugged and shook his head. Zooey wanted to hug him, he sounded so young, so confused.
She reached down and touched his shoulder. “She was just scared. You know about her.”
He shook his head, more slowly this time. “No, it’s more. We’re done. She told me she hates me. That she never loved me. It was all an act.”
Zooey gasped, and then said, “No. No, she didn’t mean that. She’s drunk, that’s all. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Michael finally looked at her straight-on and Zooey saw something black on the other side of his head, a line, like dripping ink, running down his neck. He said, “I’m drunk and I didn’t say anything like that. No, she meant it.”
“What is that? Is that blood?”
He sluggishly reached up and rubbed his neck, smearing the dark line. “Just a little.”
“Oh!” She involuntarily reached toward him before pulling her hand back. “You’ve got to have that looked at. Do you want to come to my house? I’ve got a first aid kit. At least we can clean it up?”
“No, I’ll be fine. She just got my ear at a weird angle.”
“No, really. I insist. It could get infected.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“I’m serious!” she shouted and then covered her mouth with surprise.
He looked up at her, blinking. “Okay, okay. Damn.”
He’d seemed almost sober sitting on the dock, but once he stood up and they were walking toward Zooey’s house, it became apparent that he was very drunk. He leaned on her heavily as they walked, causing her to stumble over and over, both of them nearly falling several times before making it to the safety of her house. She had him lay down on the couch with his head on a rolled up beach towel while she ran upstairs to get the first aid kit, her flashlight’s beam jumping around the storage closet for five minutes before she found it.
When she got back downstairs, he was asleep and didn’t rouse, even when her flashlight’s beam shined on his face. Using a washcloth she’d wetted at the kitchen sink, she gently washed his bloody neck, now drying and crusted, and then patted his ear with it. Whatever cut was there, it had closed up.
She sat for a while with the first aid kit in her lap and the flashlight’s beam making a pale circle on the far wall, and just looked at Michael sleeping. How many times she had wanted to just stare at him like this. He was beautiful, really: his strong jaw, his perfectly shaped mouth, his high cheekbones and thick eyebrows.
She wanted to kiss him. Just once. He’d never know, he was so drunk. Just wanted to feel those lips on hers for a second. Keeley could have him back tomorrow, would have him with only a soft apology, appealing tip-tilted eyes gazing up at his with sorrow. This was all that Zooey would have, a stolen kiss she didn’t deserve but wanted, needed, so terribly.
She leaned down and her lips touched his and they were soft warm velvet. Then, they were moving, responding to her, kissing her back. She wanted to pull away, but couldn’t bring herself to stop; it was so delicious, so good. His mouth opened, his tongue touched hers, searching. His arms came up from behind her and he was pulling her to him.
Then they were rolling on the couch and it was like a tidal wave, massive, this craving for him. She let her hands go everywhere and felt his responding in kind. Did he know it was her? Did she care? He was on top of her now, his kisses deep, feeding on her. When he started pulling up her skirt, she didn’t stop him, wouldn’t. Then, he was on top of her, pounding, and she was gasping in his ear. This closeness, there was nothing like it. He was part of her, and the pain, it was part of that rawness, realness between them.
It went on forever, but when it ended, him shuddering and crying out, it felt too soon. She wasn’t ready to let go. But he was pulling away, his face at first happy and rosy like a baby’s, before shock bleached it white in the dark living room as he looked down at her.
Zo forced herself to look up from the cold sugar-filled cup of coffee she’d been staring into where it was propped in her hands, and into Hannah’s eyes, waiting for the accusation there.
Hannah’s eyes were only gentle, sad.
Zo said, “It wasn’t until I got to Pam’s the next morning when I found out what had happened. Some time that night, after he ran out of my living room, Michael had taken his family’s boat, crossed the lead, and gotten behind the wheel of his family’s station wagon. The car was on fire when they found it, flipped over, five miles down the road. There were no witnesses. He died in the fire, pinned behind the wheel.”