Margot comes in from the beach, and as she is on her way upstairs to change out of her suit, the stack of mail on the front table catches her eye. She moves toward it and she sees the letter and the return address and then she bounds up the stairs and into the bathroom, where she locks the door behind her.
Her fingers are shaking as she peels the seal away and takes out the folded pieces of paper. She opens them and begins to read and a smile comes across her face. She sinks to the floor, with her back against the tiled wall, and reads the three pages rapidly and then reads them again and again.
In the days that follow, Margot takes the pages with her everywhere. She considers making a list of her own, but she is not a writer like Henry is: She wouldn’t even know where to begin. Oh, there are things she could say, about his lack of pretension, how he is different from any boy she has ever known. But she could never capture the particularity of him in the way he has captured the particularity of her, and later, when this all sinks in, she will come to realize that this might be the greatest gift another person can give you. The very idea that they pay enough attention to notice what makes you singular, and Margot has no idea how she can possibly repay him.
But she does. She can commit an act of defiance, and not even a big one. For her entire life she has moved in small orbits, concentric circles of the same people, the same places, and this is what it means to be wealthy in America: You see small slices of life, the same cities, the same islands, the same people. Vast tracts of the country are off-limits to you, and while upstate New York is a fine place to go to college, there is no discernible reason to be there in the summer. Except that for Margot, now there is.
One morning she comes downstairs to find her father in the foyer with his suitcase packed, looking at his watch and then out the window to the driveway.
“Where are you going?” Margot asks.
“Singapore for a few days, if the car ever gets here,” he says. “No rest for the wicked,” he adds, and smiles.
That night, Margot invites her mother for a walk. They head out through the dunes and onto the open beach. It is a beautiful evening and the number of people on the private beach is sparse—a few runners moving along the water, people walking dogs. There is not much wind and the surf is light, but it is open ocean and it still falls heavily against the hard sand, and as Margot wants to be as close to the water as she can, she and her mother have to raise their voices to be heard.
“There’s a boy,” Margot says.
“Your father told me. He thinks highly of him.”
“It’s not Danny.”
“Oh?”
“No, there is another one. His name is Henry.”
Her mother looks at her oddly, and for a moment they stop. Margot glances past her mother to the long length of beach, to how the water laps and recedes, laps and recedes.
“I don’t understand,” her mother says.
“Daddy wouldn’t like him,” Margot says.
“Why, is he black?”
“Mom, no. And that is so racist. It shouldn’t matter.”
“Well, I don’t see what the problem is, then. Is it serious?”
“I love him,” Margot says.
“Where is he?”
“He’s back at school. Working for the summer.”
Margot’s mother looks alarmed. “Back at school? Is he a professor, Margot, is that why? He’s older?”
“No, no. He’s a student.”
Her mother looks relieved. “I can’t imagine what it is with this boy that your father would be upset about. He’s quite reasonable, Margot, you know.”
“You know how Daddy can be,” says Margot.
“Your father always wants the best for you. That is true. And so do I.”
Margot looks away to the ocean then, and far away on the horizon she sees the outline of a container ship. For some reason, she wonders how the big ships from a distance always look like they are standing still, when of course they must be moving. Out there on the curvature of the earth, a large, still form, and she suddenly wishes she had decided against this conversation.
As if sensing this, her mother says, “What is he like, this boy?”
Margot looks back at her mother. “He’s sweet. Kind. He writes poetry. He used to be a baseball player.”
Her mother nods, as if weighing this sparse information. “Where is he from?”
“Providence.”
“Rhode Island?”
Margot sighs. “Yes.”
“Why don’t you invite him to visit? He can stay in the guest room,” her mother says.
“He can’t,” Margot says back. “He has to work.”
Her mother considers this. “Well, nothing wrong with work, I suppose.”
“I need a favor,” Margot says. “I need to go see him. But I don’t want Dad to know.”
“I’m not in the business of hiding things from your father.”
“I need this. I just need to know. Do you remember that feeling? Of first being with someone? And how hard it is to be apart?”
Her mother looks back toward the dunes, which from this angle obscure where the house is, and then back to Margot. She smiles slightly. “Of course,” she says.
“Then help me,” Margot says.
Her mother is silent for a moment and they start walking again. “You have one week,” her mother says.
Margot smiles broadly. She moves to her right and hugs her mother, who is smaller, from behind, her head on her mother’s shoulder like a lover. “What about Daddy?”
“I will take care of that,” her mother says. She smiles back at Margot. “We haven’t lasted this long without my knowing how to handle him. Now go.”
An hour later, Margot is on the ferry. The night is clear and the ocean stars bend in a great arc away from her. Normally when she is leaving the island, she looks back with sadness as that hump of land surrounded by sea gets smaller and smaller in the wake of the boat. The place she most identifies with as home. Tonight, though, she stands on the other side, staring at the horn of mainland in front of her. She faces Henry, part of a continent away.