The last night together before summer, neither of them wants to sleep. Margot is aware of the imbalance between them, the fact that Henry scrapes for a few dollars to buy himself a whiskey and ginger ale a few nights a week at the bar, while thousands flow directly into her bank account every month without her saying so much as a thing about it. But on this night, she says to him that she doesn’t want to hear any objections, that this one is on her, and they walk down to the lake on an evening that is summer-hot, to a place Henry has never been, this five-star hotel over the lake that is most famous for being the setting in a scene from the film version of Nabokov’s Lolita.
They walk into the massive inn with their arms linked, and at the front desk Margot asks for the honeymoon suite, saying it theatrically, and the clerk, a young man barely older than they are, takes her American Express Gold Card and says to both of them, “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Fuller.”
“You can call me Henry,” Henry says. “Henry Fuller.”
And it is the shared joke of the evening, his taking her name, and all night he calls her Mrs. Fuller, and upstairs they check into a room that is built within the turret of the castle that is the hotel, and from its windows they look down on the lake below them and can see all the way across to where the land rises again and to where Henry will spend his summer.
It is Henry’s eyes that Margot loves the most. Dark eyes that are instantly friendly, eyes that literally twinkle when he is amused, as he is now, looking around at this room and the massive bed with its canopy hanging over it.
“That’s not a bed, Mrs. Fuller,” Henry says. “It’s a goddamn playground.”
Margot laughs. “I confess I am very nervous, Mr. Fuller. After all, it is our wedding night.”
“I will be patient with you, Mrs. Fuller.”
“Not too patient, I hope,” Margot says.
Henry picks her up then, and she shrieks when he does. He carries her in his arms in an imitation of a groom taking a bride over a threshold, and on the bed he lays her down and then he lies next to her. Margot loves his hands on her, how capable and intuitive they are, and she loves the feel of his weight on her and she loves when she can feel his breath start to become ragged and she knows he is close, that she has done this to him, that they have done this to each other.
Downstairs after, they are seated in the formal dining room at a table that replicates the same view they had upstairs. There is one other couple here, old enough to be her grandparents, but otherwise, it is just the two of them. Henry’s eyes are wide and he says to her, “I have a confession.”
“What is it?”
He smiles. “I’ve never been in a restaurant with tablecloths before.”
“No,” she says. “Really? How is that possible?”
Henry shrugs. “My mother cooked. We never went out. Ever. And if we did, we weren’t in places like this.”
And Margot loves this about Henry: She has never met anyone like him before. There is no carefully constructed facade to him like all the other boys have, most of them practicing to become their fathers, down to the talk of Republican politics and money and the market and already choosing their drink, scotch often, or the gin and tonics of summer. It is as if he is without guile; born somehow into this moment as white and clean as the tablecloths he is eating on for the first time.
That night they make love in the huge bed and afterward they lie facing each other, their arms around each other, mouths only inches away, their noses almost close enough to touch. Henry’s breath is hot on her face, and when they talk, they whisper, but mostly they just look into each other’s eyes. She has never felt so close to anyone before, didn’t know it was possible to feel so close to someone, and the very idea of it threatens to overwhelm her for a moment, and before she starts to cry, Henry takes her face in his strong hands and holds it.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“You have no idea how much I love you,” he says.
“I think I do,” she says.
“You cannot,” he says.
“I don’t want to fight,” she says, smiling in the dark at him.
“Never,” Henry says.
In the morning, Henry helps her load up her Saab until it is full to the brim and the only space that is open is the driver’s seat. All around them the school is emptying out for the summer. A steady rain falls, but they don’t care. Margot opens her arms and Henry takes her in his. The rain is soaking both of them. She doesn’t want him to stop holding her, but after a while Henry pulls back and looks at her. He pushes her wet hair off her forehead. He says, “You should go.”
And then they step away from each other. For what seems like a long time, Margot stands with her hand on the door of her car, and she knows her lower lip is quivering, and there is the rain falling, and it is like they have been sucked apart, a vacuum releasing, and now they are on their own.
Driving away down South Main Street toward the highway, Margot stares in the side mirrors—she can’t see out the back—until he fades, growing smaller and smaller, and then disappears completely.
Henry, Henry, Henry, she thinks.
Eight hours later, the rain has stopped and the skies have cleared and Margot drives her car onto the ferry at Woods Hole. She parks and climbs up to the top deck, where people sit on blue benches, watching the ocean. The sun has just gone down, and the moon has already risen in the east, a crescent sliver. This is normally a trip she relishes, that feeling of leaving the mainland, of getting to the island, of knowing summer is in front of her, but tonight she stares out at the rolling chop as the ferry moves across the sound and she feels an emptiness as vast as the water to her starboard side sweep over her.
Margot drives off the ferry at Oak Bluffs and now it is completely dark, and on those familiar roads heading up-island with the windows down, she can smell the ocean breeze, and the uniformly planted trees are lined like sentinels at the roadside.
She passes through a few small villages with little more than a general store, and soon she is in Chilmark and turning off on the sandy road that leads to the house her father built ten years ago by tearing down a farmhouse on the beach and replacing it with a six-thousand-square-foot home. At the time, it was controversial, the idea that in this section of the island, where things changed slowly, someone would take down one of those great old weathered-shingled homes and replace it with something four times the size.
But as in many things, Margot’s father was in fact ahead of his time, a pioneer, he might tell you, and before long it was happening all over the island and six thousand square feet seemed like an appropriately scaled summer shack in comparison to some of the houses that went up after he built his.
The house is lit like the sun. Light streams from every window. Margot comes into the broad foyer with the chandelier hanging down like an ornament, a nod to her mother, and then through the hall and into the kitchen.
Her mother sees her first. “Look who is here!” she exclaims, and comes to her. Her father is standing against the granite island, rows of tumbler glasses in front of him filled with ice, a bottle of gin in his hand. He looks up and smiles. They have company, of course.
“Honey,” her mother says, and hugs her. Her mother is all perfume and hair, and underneath Margot smells the slightly dank smell of the cigarette she recently sneaked in the composed but wild-crafted landscape between the dunes and the ocean.
Her father gives her a broad smile across the counter. “Come here,” he says, not stopping making the gin and tonics.
Margot goes to him and leans into him and her father puts his arm around her. He has on his summer uniform, shorts and a polo shirt.
“How’s Danny?” her father says.
“He’s great,” says Margot, lying. She has no idea how Danny is.
“Well, I hope he comes down this summer. Good kid.”
“We’ll see,” Margot says.
“Help me with these drinks. The Baldwins are here.”
Outside on the fieldstone patio, there is a fire in the large stone pit that is built in the middle of it, and on either side of it sit her parents’ friends, who rise and each give her a hug. Beyond them in the dark Margot can hear the incessant slap of the ocean.
“Sit down with us,” her mother says. “Have a drink.”
“Chad will be down on Monday,” Mrs. Baldwin says. “I know he’ll look forward to seeing you.” Chad is their son, who goes to Colby, in Maine. Margot kissed him once in high school. He is handsome in a toothy kind of way. Ever since they were little kids, there has been an effort to put the two of them together.
“I think I’m going to lie down,” Margot says. “Long drive.”
“Of course, honey,” her mother says.
“Good to see you all,” Margot says.
“Welcome home,” they say in return.
Upstairs, Margot lies on her bed fully clothed in the dark. With the window open, their empty conversations float up to her, just voices on the air, the gin-soaked laughter of a crude joke landing, and in the distance she can hear the surf.
Margot is pleased with the solitude. In a few days, her sister and her fiancé will join them on the island. The summer will kick into gear. There will be sun-drenched days on the beach. Clambakes. Afternoons punctuated by cocktail hours that arrive earlier and earlier.
But tonight she can be deliciously alone in her bed with Henry. She can replay that moment when they said good-bye. She can see his black eyes pleading with her not to go. She can feel his hands on her in the hotel bed from the night before. And this is the part of love no one tells you about: that you can be far apart and if you close your eyes and push your face into the pillow, you can reach across time and space and for a few moments before you fall asleep you can be together for as long as you like.