Ann fell asleep on the Shaws’ couch and slipped into a dream about Michael and that kiss. His lips were soft but insistent, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. She worked so hard to suppress her feelings for Michael and deny her attraction to him that it felt good to let go in her dreams, where she could indulge all of her pent-up emotions and guilty thoughts.
But then Michael started morphing into Anthony. His features became blunt, his scent musky. He was saying her name: Ann, Ann. She felt the grip grow tighter. It was Anthony’s hand—had it also been his lips on hers, or had she dreamt it? We’re home. Wake up. She opened her eyes and saw him leaning close to her, his hand still there, his face just inches from her own.
“You were out cold,” he said. “I enjoyed watching you.”
“Sorry,” she said, wiping the drool off her cheek. She wondered if she’d fallen asleep with her mouth open—how stupid had she looked? “I can never make it past the music part of Saturday Night Live.”
“Did the boys behave?”
The boys, the boys … it was hard to focus. “They were fine.”
“Now, that was a party!” Maureen said, pulling a big gold bangle off her wrist and tossing it on the kitchen island, where it dinged against the granite.
“A miserable one,” Anthony said.
Ann didn’t think Maureen looked like she’d had fun. She looked sad, worn out, with smudged mascara under her eyes and sweat marks in her shirt under her armpits. Anthony was clearly agitated, his face also grim. Ann could tell they’d been in an argument, and that the argument would have continued if she weren’t there.
Maureen reached into her purse and jiggled her keys. “I need to get you home.”
“I’ll drive her,” Anthony said, snatching the keys from her hands.
“I’m fine,” Maureen said.
She didn’t look fine to Ann. She was wilting in her espadrilles. It was hard for Ann to see Maureen like this. It made her feel guilty for fantasizing about Anthony, but wasn’t it better than how she thought about Michael? Her brother? That was wrong, and dangerous, and look what it had already led to. Imagining an encounter with Anthony was fun and harmless. He was a grown man, married, a dad. She liked to imagine she was married to him—they’d drop the boys off with Maureen so she could be their babysitter, while Anthony took Ann to restaurants and ordered her wine and filet mignon and the waitstaff fawned all over them. In her fantasies Maureen was the competition—the wife who didn’t understand her husband, who didn’t meet his needs.
In reality, and at that moment, it seemed it was Maureen who was misunderstood.
“My wife needs some sleep,” Anthony said to Ann without looking at her. “And some water and aspirin.”
“I need many things,” Maureen said. “Sleep is far down the list. A husband who cares about my personal aspirations? That would be right at the top.”
Anthony walked into the kitchen and poured her a large glass of water. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the shelf and shook a few into his meaty palm. “I do care. Here,” he said. “Take this.”
“Isn’t he putting on a good show for you?” Maureen said to Ann, her words running together. “It’s always a show.”
“You know all about shows,” he said. “This house, the parties, and now I find out you’re a budding actress…”
Maureen winked at Ann. “I let it slip.”
Anthony spoke in a low, frustrated grumble. “I work night and day so you can have this wonderful life, and now you’re paying a sitter to go off to—”
“Ha!” Maureen said. “You married into this wonderful life, Tony. This wonderful life was my wonderful life. My father gave you your job.”
Ann didn’t want to be in the middle of their argument. Her parents hardly ever fought. “I should get going,” she said.
Maureen pushed her hair behind her ears and straightened her dress. “Good night, my dear. I’m sorry you saw me like this. You come from such a sweet family, I’ll bet your parents never fight.”
“We’re normal.”
Maureen smiled a crooked smile and touched the side of Ann’s face with her skinny hand. “Normal. Listen to you. Don’t you know that ‘normal’ is so lovely and so sweet?” She wobbled backward. “We’re so lucky we found you. You’ve saved our summer. You and dear Michael.” Maureen’s expression changed, like she’d just remembered something. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Brooks said he saw something peculiar. You and Mich—”
“Brooks loves to make up stories,” Ann said.
Anthony put his arm across Maureen’s shoulders and tried to lead her to their bedroom. He was so wide and strong and solid, while she was tall and thin. “You need to sleep.” He led her down the hallway and she tipped, knocking a framed photo collage of the boys off kilter. Anthony looked over his shoulder at Ann. “Back in a moment,” he said.
“I’ll wait outside.”
Ann felt the shock of leaving the air-conditioned house. Outside was dark, the heat as pressing as it was in the middle of the day only it seemed even hotter now with the humidity. The moisture held the smell of the ocean in the air.
The security lights by the garage lit up as she walked past, revealing a furious cloud of gnats. She walked into the yard, unaware that Michael had set up a timer on the sprinkler by the garden to go off at night. It startled her when it turned on and the water shot out, sounding like a pack of hissing snakes. She screamed in surprise and ran to the paved driveway as fast as she could.
“Cooling off?” Anthony said. He had seen the whole scene from the deck. His eyes settled on the damp shirt clinging to her chest. The eerie outdoor light sharpened his already-sharp features.
She looked down. She could see the tiny heart print of her bra through the fabric.
“I was going to suggest another way to cool down.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.” He pointed at the green Jeep that sat in the driveway. “My wife won’t ride in it because it’s too rough, but you won’t mind a rough ride, will you?” His question wasn’t a question.
“A ride in the Jeep sounds fun,” Ann said.
He was clearly pleased. “Oh, Ann. You are so uncorrupted, so fresh. I love spending time with you.” He ran his hand down her arm. “After the night I had with Mo’s sorority sisters from Smith and their boring husbands, you’re just what I need.”
Ann smiled. It took so little to please him. She just needed to be who she was. He walked over to the passenger side and put his hand over her hip to help her step in. “Up you go.” He let his hand linger even after she was seated. She liked the warmth, and that electric tingle that shot through her.
When he got into the driver’s seat, Ann said, as if to absolve herself of all her forbidden daydreams, “Is Maureen OK?”
“You’re kind to be concerned.”
“She seemed tired.”
“She can’t hold her liquor. She’s not a hearty Midwesterner like you. I’ll bet you can hold your own.” Anthony sat next to her in the driver’s seat and stared at the windshield. He didn’t put the keys in the ignition right away.
Ann decided to take advantage of the pause and the silence. “Are you happy with her?” She felt emboldened by the warmth she could still feel from his hand, and their previous closeness.
He didn’t seem to mind the bluntness of her question. If anything, he seemed to appreciate her directness, her willingness to take him on. “What does it mean to be happy with another person?”
“My parents are happy with each other.” She regretted mentioning her parents. She thought this made her sound like a little kid. But they were happy together, she knew it.
He turned the key in the ignition and the Jeep roared to life. “Good for them.” Anthony’s voice changed. “I mean really, good for them. That’s great. Marriage can be a tricky business.”
He drove through downtown Wellfleet. During the day, the town was bustling with tourists buying ice cream, visiting galleries, and shopping in the little stores that lined the main street, buying their Wellfleet sweatshirts at Abiyoyo. This late, it settled back into a limp quiet. The flag sagged from the flagpole in front of the town hall. Next to it sat the cannon, immortalized with a plaque and surrounded by stones. “You know that cannon?” Ann said. “It was dug out of our neighbors’ yard.” She loved their neighbors, a nice couple who kept busy entertaining their grandchildren.
“Is that so?” Anthony’s smile was distracted, insincere. This disappointed Ann. Nervous, she told him the story about a rivalry that once existed between Wellfleet and South Wellfleet, and how they’d had their own cannons that they shot from their respective hills on the Fourth of July. One of the cannons was destroyed when, as a prank, some locals filled it with wet sand. After that, the young men used to steal the remaining cannon and shoot it off wherever it ended up. This went on for years, until the final cannon disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to it until 1976, when it was unearthed. “There’s supposedly a curse on it,” she’d said.
“Hmmm…” Anthony said, disinterested. He turned onto Route 6 and picked up speed. They passed all the landmarks she knew so well: the Stop & Shop, Brownies Cabins, J.P.’s, the yarn and quilting store on the hill, and the water tower. Before that night she knew this strip of highway the way a kid would, from looking at it from the backseat of a car, watching it go by in a blur. Now, sitting close to Anthony with the warm breeze rushing over her, everything looked different.
Anthony reached over and yanked the ponytail holder out of her hair and left his hand on the back of her neck on the same spot where Michael had put his hand just before she’d pulled away. He said, “That’s more like it. The whole point of a Jeep ride is to get your hair messed up.” All this attention from forbidden men! Between Michael and Anthony, Ann felt desirable in a way she’d never felt before. It was intoxicating, as if she were at the center of the world.
Anthony took a left turn just past the red Citgo sign onto Old County Road South.
“But I live—” She pointed farther down Route 6, toward the General Store, the post office, and the apothecary.
“I told you I was taking you on a little adventure.”
Ann couldn’t have been more pleased. Time with Anthony all to herself? As far as she was concerned, the evening could go on forever.
Old King’s Highway was winding and hilly. Anthony took the curves so fast she had to hold on to the dash to keep from being thrown out of the side of the doorless car. When he descended a hill she felt the sensation of an elevator dropping down the shaft.
Just past the sleeping RVs and tents in Paine’s Campground, he switched off his lights, slowed down, and turned onto the unmarked dirt road. Ann was surprised Anthony knew about Duck Pond, a pristine kettle pond tucked into the National Seashore property. The pond was technically public but there were no signs—the locals made sure of that, removing them as quickly as the town could put them up. To get there meant following a bumpy dirt road for almost a mile, and crossing the sandy telegraph road before heading back into the woods.
Anthony expertly maneuvered over the potholes in the compacted sand. “I love it back here,” he said.
“Me too. We come here all the time.”
“See, that’s your life, and that’s beautiful. Me, I’ve got two lives. A Jaguar life and a Jeep life. A Chequessett Neck Road life and a dirt road life. Don’t get me wrong, the Jaguar life is nothing to complain about, but this? This is real. You make me feel real, Ann.”
Michael was wrong about Anthony, she thought. Here he was, opening himself up to her, revealing how conflicted he felt. He was mysterious. Interesting. Torn. And he thought enough of Ann to share those thoughts with her.
He accelerated into a dip in the road. He smiled at her. “That’s how I feel when I look at you.” He reached across her for the glove compartment.
He pulled out a silver flask and set it on her bare thigh, just below the tattered hem of her jean shorts. He let his hand rest on the seat next to her, his fingertips grazing her skin, setting something off, a feeling so warm and overwhelmingly good and big that she thought she could die from it. Ann loved not knowing what would come next, loved that Anthony was in control, loved the heat and the way her body felt, lean and alive, loved that he didn’t think of her as a kid but as someone worthy of sharing thoughts with about his marriage and his two lives. His marriage. Maureen!
“I should probably go home,” she said.
“I’ll take you, don’t worry. First just have some fun. You’ve been working all summer. You deserve some fun, don’t you?”
She took a gulp.
“Go ahead. Have another. Enjoy it. The scotch is casked. Only two hundred and forty bottles, twenty-five years old. The good stuff. I grew up drinking moonshine. Life’s too short to get drunk on cheap whiskey.”
Anthony drove over another bump. Half the contents went into her mouth, while the rest spilled down her chin and all over her already-damp shirt. The alcohol burned her throat and shot up her sinuses. She coughed.
Anthony laughed. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh. She liked the mellow sound of his voice, and the way his eye squinted at the corner. The moonlight picked up the stray silver hairs in his beard. He seemed so grown-up. So manly.
“That’s about thirty bucks’ worth you just spilled all over yourself.”
“Sorry,” she said again, still coughing.
“You may as well finish it off.” She did. The liquid landed like a burning torch in her gut.
He stopped the Jeep. “Now, how am I going to take you home to your parents smelling like a distillery?”
Ann didn’t want to think about her parents, didn’t want him to mention them. She wanted to keep Anthony and her parents separate.
“It’s a perfect night to look at the moonlight on the water with a beautiful young woman. Let’s walk down to the pond.”
Ann pulled off her sandals and tucked them under her seat. She always left her sandals in the car when she came here with her family.
The path was sandy, the only danger the tree roots.
He led the way down the long, sandy footpath. His shoulders were broad, his calves firm. There was a butterfly-shaped sweat stain showing through the back of his linen shirt.
It was impossibly strange for her to be in this place with Anthony. Because the pond was walking distance from their house, she’d been there a thousand times, mostly with Poppy. It was their favorite escape when their parents were napping or bird-watching and didn’t want to drive them anywhere. This is where they collected pinecones and ate the wild blueberries and beach plums. She and Poppy looked for tadpoles in the shallows and chased the sounds of the giant bullfrogs. If a childhood could be defined by a place, this was where Ann’s resided.
When they got to the small beach she looked around to see if any campers from the campsite were there, or a hobo, or an insomniac. The shoreline was miraculously empty. There was no wind. The water was as still as a Jell-O mold. Warm yellow lights lit up the windows in the single house on the far shore, like a pair of eyes watching them. That was Ann’s favorite house in the world. She’d always envied the people who owned it. When she and Poppy swam across the pond (it was their ritual to swim across all the Wellfleet ponds each visit, yet this strange summer they’d only made it across Gull and Great Pond), they felt funny getting close to the property. They’d squeal when they touched their wooden raft, and sprint back to the opposite, public shore, feeling as if they’d invaded a foreign territory. The house, tucked into the National Seashore, seemed to have dropped out of the sky. Ann and Poppy had tried without success to find the driveway on the fire roads. She wondered if it was even real, or part of a dream.
Anthony led Ann away from the public beach, walking barefoot through the crystal-clear water to a smaller beach tucked behind scrub pine and oak trees on an inlet a few hundred feet away. He reached down and splashed some on his face. “God, this feels good on a hot night,” he said. “I sweated all through that miserable dinner.”
He seemed more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. She noticed little things about him: the way his hair curled behind his ears in the humidity, the droplets of water that got stuck in his beard, that the skin on his face seemed soft while the rest of him was so solid and hard.
“The water is perfect.” He splashed her and smiled a mischievous smile. She could imagine him as a naughty little boy, full of sneakiness and tricks.
She smiled back and took a step into the water, then another. “Did you know there’s a tile medallion of a mermaid somewhere on the bottom of this pond? My parents said that people from the campground set it on the bottom. My sister and I, we try to find it every time we come here. Poppy swears she’s seen it, but I don’t believe her.”
“What about you? Have you seen it?”
“I feel like I have. Like I can picture it in my mind’s eye.”
“You can only see it on magic nights like this, in the moonlight. Someone put a spell on it, just for people like us, a couple of fools who still want to believe.” Anthony walked closer to her. “Can I kiss you, Ann? Just once, before summer is over?”
Once sounded safe. Fun. Interesting. Just enough. And she’d wanted him to kiss her all summer even though—no. She tried to convince herself that nothing else was real but that moment. “Sure, I guess.”
He grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her head up. He wasn’t much taller than she was. He leaned forward and she felt a strange tickle from the softness of his beard, followed by his lips pressing against hers. She thought of Michael, the perfection of that kiss, how it had sounded like an accusation when she asked if he loved her, when she meant it as a question. If she hadn’t been so surprised, and if he hadn’t run away, she might have told him that she loved him, too. Why was she thinking about Michael when Anthony’s tongue darted into her mouth, thrusting and urgent—too much. She pulled away.
“You have no goddamn idea how beautiful you are.” He shook his head and started unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re ripe.”
Ann soaked up his flattery, every word, even though she’d always known she was pretty. The boys at school asked her out, but they were just boys. She’d fool around with them sometimes when she was drunk. She was curious about sex, but she never went too far.
Anthony began to unbutton his shirt. “Swim with me.”
“I don’t have a suit.”
He shrugged. “You have the one you were born in. Besides, you’re already soaked.”
Ann laughed for no reason. She was nervous, and at the nervous edge of desire.
Anthony stripped his shirt off. His chest was covered in a mat of thick, black hair. His body wasn’t perfect the way she’d imagined it would be. He looked older without his shirt on, more like a middle-aged dad. Even in the dark she could see the dim outline of the farmer’s tan on his thick forearms. His stomach bulged a little over the waist of his shorts.
He smiled as though he was proud of what he had to show her, proud to be in this situation in the first place. He threw his shirt on the sandy area next to a tree a few feet away. Then he unbuckled his belt, his eyes trained on her. She could have sworn that the metallic ripping sound his zipper made when he unzipped it could be heard for miles around, as loud as an airplane crossing in the sky.
“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s my turn to be looked at.”
Ann felt suddenly shy, unable to bring herself to watch him continue to undress. It was strange, how her desire could come and go so quickly. She looked at the water gently lapping the shoreline behind him and thought about home. Were her parents starting to wonder where she was? Did Poppy go out with her new friends again? Her mother had complained she’d hardly seen either of her girls.
“You know, I’ve often thought about that afternoon in our bedroom.” The word “our” unsettled Ann, the way it invoked Maureen. She’d been trying hard not to think about her. “That was so damn erotic. I’d had such a hard day at work and there you were, it was like finding the mermaid medallion. The last thing I expected. Glorious.”
Ann could feel the whiskey kicking in, dulling her nerves. Her thoughts were starting to bump into each other. She tried hard to be clearheaded.
“Besides, you need to rinse the smell of whiskey off your clothes before I take you home,” he said. “Come on.”
“But then I’ll have to explain why my clothes are wet.”
“They were wet when you walked into the sprinklers. What do you think your parents are going to do, hire a detective? I can’t take you home to your father smelling like whiskey.”
Her father. She could just picture him on a public beach right next to where she stood, reading the mystery novels he only read on vacation, his floppy hat on his head, one hairy leg crossed over the other, his Birkenstock hanging off his callused foot.
“Let’s find that medallion,” Anthony said. He dashed into the water. She saw his bare ass in the moonlight. It was round but muscular, a shocking flash of vulnerable white.
Alone on the beach, Ann drunkenly weighed what to do next. She wanted to swim. She loved swimming more than anything, even running, and it was still so hot. She decided that Anthony was right about needing to get the smell out of her clothes. She took off her shirt and dragged it around in the water, then hung it on a branch to dry. She saw Anthony’s head about twenty feet away, far enough to feel he couldn’t see her too clearly. The alcohol mellowed her nerves, and so did his admiration. She liked being watched.
Why not? She slipped off her shorts and rinsed them off, too. When she turned to look for Anthony she saw that he was gone, already halfway across the pond. When Anthony’s head slipped back under the liquid black water, she took off her underwear and ran in, completely naked.
Never had the cool liquid thickness of the kettle pond felt so erotic, like she was swimming through silk scarves. The heat and her nakedness made the water seem thicker, like it embraced her. She went deep and felt the temperature grow colder, then warmer again as she surfaced. Her hair fanned out around her shoulders.
Anthony quickened his crawl and swam toward her. He was a strong swimmer. When he got close enough he went underwater and circled her. She knew his eyes were open. She could feel him watching, the water clean and clear in the moonlight.
He surfaced and moaned. “Good Lord. You’re naked. Oh, Ann. You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
Anthony put his arms around her from behind. His hands were on her breasts. She could feel his beard in the crook of her neck and the soft hair of his chest on her back. The water wasn’t deep. She leaned against him and put her feet down, shocked and grateful for the solidity of his body and the earth. Ann was turned on, but she was also scared and struck by the wrongness of what she was doing, a wrongness that was dulled by the alcohol. Was this even real?
She knew it was when he moved one hand down to her crotch and rubbed it with his fingers, slowly, deftly. Ann could tell this was a part of a woman’s body he knew well. Desire began to erode her fear. This was natural, right? It was what people did all the time. Half of her friends had already lost their virginity, and they lost it to dorks who didn’t know what they were doing. Anthony was a man. He had children. She was almost eighteen, after all. She was old enough.
She turned around and slid against him, pressing her mouth against his, delighting in the sensation of his soft whiskers against her face. Then his tongue darted into her mouth again. He tasted like garlic and wine, while Michael’s kiss—why was she thinking about Michael? He’d tasted sweet and fresh.
She ran her fingers through his hair, because that’s what lovers did in the movies. His hair looked like it would be coarse but it was wonderfully soft. She thought this was a show of tenderness, but she hardly knew him. He pulled her hand away—was she doing something wrong?—and moved it to his penis, thick and hard. She held it and marveled at how solid it was. It turned her on to feel him, but what was she supposed to do? She just held it the way she might hold a softball bat while waiting for the pitcher to toss the ball.
“Like this,” he said, and he put his hand over hers. Then he moaned. The sound was so animalistic, so loud, it broke her out of her spell. She looked at the beach to be sure nobody was there, but then again, she wished someone would show up. She wasn’t turned on anymore. She felt sick, sick! How could she do this in the pond her parents took her to? She imagined Maureen standing on the shore in her pink dress, her hands on her hips, watching …
He grabbed her by the hand and led her to the private nook where their clothes waited. The sight of her shirt hanging in the tree made her want to put it on. The air felt cold against her damp skin. Her legs shook. She looked around in the trees hoping someone would show up and interrupt them, give them a reason to flee.
She stopped, suddenly sober and scared. “I need to go home.”
Home, home. She’d never wanted to be home so badly, never even understood what home meant to her until that moment.
“No, this is where it’s at.” He picked her up like she weighed less than a sack of flour and set her down on the sand. It felt cold, hard and damp. He knelt over her and stared at her breasts. He dragged his fingertip down her breastbone, down her hard stomach, and let his hand rest over the soft patch of pubic hair. She had so much she wanted to say but she didn’t have the words. “We can’t go. It would be like waking up from the best dream ever.”
“But you’re—” He put his hand over her mouth. “I’m—”
He hovered over her with his elbows next to her ears, pinning her down. She could feel the damp warmness of his skin, smell his musk. He reached between her legs and with two fingers he made a part. His finger dashed inside. “Oh Jesus, you’re dripping. See? You want this.”
“I didn’t mean to lead you on. I’m sorry. Please. Maureen wouldn’t want us to—”
“Shhh, don’t worry about her. We haven’t touched each other in months.”
“But I don’t want this.” She thought of what she’d learned in health class. They made it seem easy to make good choices, easy to say no, like declining the green beans when they are passed to you at the dinner table. Her gym teacher never told her about situations like this. His rubbing became more insistent. “No. Please, stop.” She tried to twist away from him, but he was stronger than she was. She should have listened to Michael when he’d warned her about him.
“Why are you acting this way? Don’t deny yourself pleasure.”
“I don’t want it. Let’s go, can we—”
He put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t ruin this.” She bit his fingers. “Stop!”
But it was too late. He pushed himself inside her, so far inside she ceased to exist. She was nothing but that deep feeling of hurt. She cried out in pain but he was oblivious to her discomfort. She swore she was being split apart. He pressed her shoulders down with his hands so she was pinned to the beach.
“Stop! Don’t.”
“Oh, good Lord. Oh man. I … can’t.”
His lips covered hers and his tongue, like a giant sock, filled her mouth. Tears dripped down the side of her face. His movement became more hurried and urgent until suddenly he let her loose and shuddered.
The entire weight of his body came to rest on top of hers. He was heavy, hot, suffocating. She could see beads of sweat on his back. He rolled off to the side and ran his hand over her hip, a gesture that would have seemed erotic a few minutes ago but now she thought he did it to show that he owned her. She’d seen him touch things around the house like that, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” She was surprised to hear her own voice.
“Your skin is like velvet.”
“I asked you to stop,” she whispered.
“Oh come on, you wanted it too.”
“No.”
“This is disappointing. I didn’t take you for a tease, Ann. Do you tease that ‘brother’ of yours the same way you tease me?”
A tease? That brother? She was drunk and sober at the same time, trying to untangle his words from what just went on between them, trying to figure out what she was supposed to think and do, trying not to feel the burning of residual heat, the grit of sand and ache of pain in her crotch, the guilt for being so stupid, for getting in over her head, for betraying Maureen, for betraying Michael.
She thought that when she finally had sex it would open up something, reveal a new world; it did, but she didn’t like this new world she was in. She felt dirty and guilty. Sad in a way she’d never before been sad.
“I was a virgin.”
“Oh, come on.”
Anthony stood up and went back into the pond to rinse off. When he got out, he shook his head like a dog to get the water out of his thick hair. She could see red dots like zits on his ass and a giant mole on his back. She rolled herself into a ball and stared at the roots of the oak tree that stuck up above the soil, wishing Anthony would just go away, and that she could rewind the evening, do everything differently.
“You gave me every reason to believe you wanted the same thing I did. It was fun. It was hot.”
“I didn’t want that.”
“Really? I didn’t undress you.” His tone was warmer. “You kissed me back. Gave me all the signals. That’s what I’ll say if anyone asks.”
Ann thought about other people finding out what had just gone on. No, no. She’d never tell anyone. She couldn’t.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You’re a piece of work, you know that? You don’t know what you want.”
He was right; she was. She didn’t. She dressed in silence, her fingers shaking, a cry or a scream pounding wordlessly inside her.
“Let’s go,” he said. He sounded irritated. This was the impatient voice she’d heard him use with the boys. Just fifteen minutes ago, she’d felt herself a woman. Now she was a child again.
She took one last look at the pond and saw that house, the lights off now, dark. She knew it wasn’t just her virginity she’d lost; the pond would never be the same place for her ever again. She felt like a part of her drowned in that pond.
He led her back to the beach and up the long, sandy path to the parking lot. It was all a blur through her teary eyes. When she walked this trail with her dad he always walked behind her to make sure her footing was safe with all the tree roots and loose branches. Anthony didn’t care that she could trip and that her legs were shaking—her whole body shook. She’d felt this way after her friend’s car had been rear-ended at a stoplight and Ann was the passenger. At first, she was fine. Then she shook and shook.
Anthony walked ahead, twirling the key ring to the Jeep around his finger.
He turned on the engine and looked straight ahead at the forest of pine trees. Ann expected him to back up right away, because he was always moving from one thing to the next. Instead he put his hand over hers. “Let’s forget this ever happened.”
She yanked her hand away. She was sore and tingling and damp and filled with confusion. Forget it ever happened? Easy for him to say. He could forget. She would never forget this.
Anthony returned his hand to the wheel and threw the Jeep into reverse. She thought she might throw up with every bump on the long dirt road. When he got to her house, he didn’t drive up the driveway but stopped right on Route 6. “Good night.” He looked straight ahead.
She wanted to get out of the car and get away from him, but her body had grown stiff. She couldn’t move.
“Look, you say one thing and do another. How am I supposed to know what you want?”
She stepped one foot out of the Jeep, but before she got out, he set his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it—hard.
“Don’t you dare mention this. I mean it. Not to your sister, not that kid Michael, not your best friend, not your parents. Nobody.”
These were so many words, like mosquitoes swarming in her ears. She didn’t want to hear his voice anymore, didn’t care what he had to say.
“You can do that, right? Keep a secret?”
Ann didn’t say anything.
“Because if you tell anyone about this, I’ll deny it. Life is simple for you. But it’s not simple for me. You saw that tonight. One word about this and you have no idea what kind of shit will rain down on you. Besides, just think of what people would say if they knew you seduced me.”
“I seduced you?”
He tapped his wedding ring against the steering wheel with every word. “We wouldn’t want to hurt Maureen. You saw how unstable she is. Her problems are deeper than you know. If she heard about this, it would push her over the edge. You wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”
She couldn’t even think about Maureen.
Anthony opened the wallet he’d left on the dash and pulled out some hundred-dollar bills. “Here.” He pushed the bills under her nose. “Consider it severance. We won’t need your services anymore.”
“I wouldn’t ever come back anyway.”
“Take it. Do whatever the fuck you want with it.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“I know how you work. You say you don’t want what you want. Everyone wants money.”
“No.”
“Take it.”
“No!” The emotion she felt was outsized for her body. “I’m not a … a prostitute.” She moved to step out.
“Remember.” His voice was low, menacing. “Not one single word. You have no idea what I’m capable of, what I could do to you and your family. Where I come from, we take care of business the old-fashioned way. Understand?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Just take it.” He thrust the money at her again.
“You think paying me will make you feel better? I told you, I don’t want your damn money.”
“You’re fucked up.”
“I’m fucked up? I’m your kids’ babysitter.”
She jumped down from the Jeep and fell by the road. She saw him throw the bills out of the window and speed away on Route 6. She thought about picking up the money, but no: that money was dirty.
She ran toward the house. Through the window she could see the unfinished jigsaw puzzle her parents had been working on all summer. She couldn’t go in there, not with a wad of underwear in her pocket and her face blotchy from tears. She walked past the barn, past the hammock that hung between the two big spruce pines, and went down the path to the cove, lit by the blue light of the moon. She wished she could walk out into the quicksand and disappear. It was low tide. She could.
Instead, she turned around and looked back at the old house. There was light coming from Michael’s room in the attic. He was probably reading in order to impress her mother, who took him to the Wellfleet library twice a week and forced all the books on him that she thought would complete his childhood, the same books Poppy and Ann had read years ago—old Edward Eager books like Half Magic and Magic by the Lake; the Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, The Prophet.
She walked inside. The living room was quiet and still. She could hear the whirring of old metal fans in the bedrooms, fans that were so loud they allowed her to arrive home without waking up her parents. She stood there for a minute, staring at the grooves her parents’ bodies had worn into the couch, the age spots on the mirror on the wall by the porch, the ancient needlepoint pillow on the rocking chair. It was a space she knew so well, but now the house seemed small to her, different, the same way her body felt different.
The door to the bedroom she shared with Poppy was open. Poppy wasn’t home, and it was late. Where was she? Ann desperately wanted Poppy to be there. She missed the way they used to play go fish and war, missed fighting with her about things that didn’t matter, missed looking through magazines together and talking with her about their futures—the jobs they’d have, the perfect men they’d marry, the children they’d name Austen, Reed, Rowan, Emily, Nicole. She wanted to confide in Poppy, but even if she’d been home, Ann wasn’t sure she would have been able to tell her about what had happened with Anthony. For the first time in her life, she had a secret that was too big to share.
She couldn’t stand the smell of Anthony on her skin, the taste of his tongue lingering in her mouth. She went to the outdoor shower and made herself vomit. She brushed her teeth and soaped herself, then stood under the stream of water until the heat ran out. She wrapped herself in a towel, still feeling dirty from what she couldn’t wash away. She thought about going back into her bedroom, but she couldn’t stand the idea of being alone. There were two stairwells to the attic, one by the living room and another on the front side of the house behind the big fireplace. If she went up the steps by the fireplace her parents wouldn’t hear, so she lifted the metal thumb latch and crept up the narrow stairs.
Michael was surprised to see her. He sat up in his bed, his chest bare and hairless the way a young man’s chest should be. It was nothing like Anthony’s.
“Ann? What are you doing up here?”
“Can I just lie with you?”
“No way. Your parents.”
“I don’t want to be alone. Please, Michael? You’re the only person I want to see right now. You don’t know how much you mean to me.”
He scooted over to one side of his twin bed. She rolled in next to him, grateful he was there. Maybe this was why she pushed so hard for her parents to adopt him; she knew she’d need him. He put his hand on her bare shoulder and she pulled away.
“You OK? What happened?”
“Can we not talk?” She turned out the light so he wouldn’t see her weep.
“Is this about the other day? I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Just shut up. Please?”
“It isn’t a good idea for you to be up here.”
“I don’t care.”
Ann closed her eyes and listened to Michael’s steady breathing. She longed to go back to a place that no longer existed, to a feeling she could never capture again.
A FEW HOURS LATER SHE WOKE to the sound of the door slamming and Poppy laughing maniacally. “Two hundred dollars! I found two hundred dollars cash right at the base of our driveway! Kurt Cobain left it for me. He’s alive, you know. He’s in Wellfleet!”
“Poppy,” Ann’s mom said, “you’re high. What are you on?”
“I’m on life! Check it out, Mama! Two hundred bucks! I mean, it was just right there. The walls, the walls. Can you see them move? Did you know they did that? They’re talking.”
“Where were you? Who were you with? Where’s your sister?”
The next thing Ann heard was her dad’s feet clomping up the narrow attic steps. “Michael, have you seen Ann? I don’t think she came home and Poppy’s—”
Her father stood at the foot of Michael’s bed looking at Ann’s bare shoulder peeking out from under the sheet.
“No.”
“It’s not how it looks,” Michael said, sitting up abruptly.
“No!” Ann’s father bent over and held his stomach. “What happened?” he asked, his pain visible. “First Poppy, now this. What the hell happened to my family this summer?”
Her mother limped up the stairs and stood behind him, her hair wild from sleep. Ann wanted so badly to collapse into her mother’s arms at that moment.
“Oh, Ann,” she said. Ann was used to hearing the disappointment in her mother’s voice directed at her. Usually she could deflect it, because it was because of something minor. This time it hurt. This time she wanted to push back and tell her mother that she was good. She was. Or at least, she used to be.
“Pack your stuff,” her father said.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear,” Michael said.
“Pack your stuff! All of you!”
Ann saw panic in Michael’s eyes, and she felt sorry for him in a way she hadn’t before. He’d wanted so badly to fit into her family. This was all her fault.
“He’s telling the truth, Dad.”
“I don’t want to know what happened. All I know is we’re going back home.”
“Milwaukee?” Michael said, confused and shocked.
“Good,” Ann said. “I want to go home. I never want to come back to this place again.”