Be True to Me Page 13

  “Okay,” he said. He was going to do it now; he was going to say the thing I didn’t want to hear.

  “I brought us a bite,” I said quickly. “Homemade.”

  “You did?”

  “We can eat on the roof, how about?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  We wound our way up the stairs, and as usual Gil stuck his head into the guestrooms, decorated in soft pastels of celery, peach, and cantaloupe. His fingertips touched the silk wallpaper the same way I’d seen him brush the forehead of a frustrated Minnow.

  At the end of the third-floor hall, Gil jumped and caught the string on the ceiling hatch that took us up to the rooftop deck. He climbed the folding ladder first, so that he could hoist me up and out to the view of the harbor.

  We put up the umbrella, and then I unpacked a Thermos of iced tea, tomato sandwiches, macaroni salad, two perfect pears, and two slices of shortcake.

  “You were right about Chad Tingley getting suspended from tennis for the rest of the year,” said Gil. “I never realized what a big deal line calls are.”

  “Cheating is awfully frowned upon,” I said. “Not one single infraction—lateness or swearing or uniform violation—comes close to cheating. Sportsmanship is so important, because it’s about character.”

  I served the cake and poured out the last of the tea. “My compliments to the chef,” said Gil. “That lunch took some doing.”

  “Oh, none at all.”

  “Not you. Mrs. Otis.” He popped a bite of cake into his mouth.

  My face reddened. Here I’d just talked about character, and he’d caught me trying to pass off that I’d made this lunch when I hadn’t. “How can you be so sure it wasn’t me?”

  “Just the way it was packed so neat. My mom cleans houses and babysits other people’s kids, and there’s just a worried way you do things for rich folks.”

  I reddened. “I was in a rush to meet you on such short notice. Anyway, Mrs. Otis was happy to do it.”

  “You sure you know how happy she is?” Finished with his slice, Gil cut a bite of cake off my plate. “Coupla summers ago, I worked Red Cap service at Amtrak,” he said. “Three months of hauling luggage for quarter tips. Hardest thing I ever did. A hundred times harder than prelaw.”

  “Carp wants better for your future than ticket taker!” My voice was raised. “Plus I’ve never forgotten to tip Amtrak,” I added. “It would be a terrible thing, not to be tipped.” The longer Gil was quiet, the more mortified I felt. “You think I’ve said these princessy things,” I blurted.

  “Aw, don’t sweat it.” Gil leaned forward. “That first night, I remember watching you trying to fit in with those Upper East Side people. Anyone could see how having that crowd in your home made you feel prickly. Not like Daphne, who floated through. It was so easy for her. But it was harder for you. That’s how you stood out from everyone, in my eyes. In a funny way, I guess it relaxed me a little.”

  I flushed hot. Gil meant it as a compliment, but it was embarrassing to take it as one. I’d always thought Gil had seen me so differently, as a New York swan—as a Daphne. Had he only been teasing me about that? Had he fallen for me because he thought I seemed like a misfit in my own home?

  “What I mean to say, Jean, and why I wanted to meet up today, is to thank you. As different as we are, I reckon I might have seen something of myself in you.”

  “But you fit in so well here,” I said. “I mean, not that I don’t. But you’re a natural. Everyone adores you. It’s like you’ve been coming here all your life.”

  “Nah, I’m an impostor.” Gil looked thoughtful. “Red Cap manners are different from the manners of some guy you might meet at a boarding-school dance. Even if they look exactly the same.”

  “I think all the parts of you are wonderful.” I leaned forward, reaching my hand out to squeeze the tips of Gil’s fingers. I felt such a strong urge to touch him, to show him that I was right here, in touching distance. “Everyone does,” I added quickly. “Everyone talks about you all the time. You heard my mother on the phone—and she hardly notices any of the teenagers around here. It’s a joke how quick the Burkes would trade Junior for you tomorrow, if they could. Oh my gosh, Gil, if you were mine, I’d never ever let you go!” I’d said too much.

  My words were like claws, digging into him with my yearning.

  But then Gil stood and pulled me up, folding me into a hug that rescued me from more blundering. With my ear pressed to his chest, I could hear his heartbeat.

  Gil had never hugged me, not once, since that night.

  “It’s hot as soup on this roof. Let’s pack up,” he said. “We can go downstairs and wind a tune.”

  “Yes.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to pack up. I wanted our afternoon to last forever. If there was a reason Gil had telephoned and had needed to meet me specifically today, he still hadn’t said anything. Maybe because everything was all right? And he’d only missed me?

  Downstairs was one last room where Gil liked to stop—Mrs. von Cott’s dressing room, because of her windup Victrola and records. Gil had never seen a Victrola before, and it fascinated him—both as a gadget and as a piece of history.

  “Don’t put on a war record this time,” I told him, as he absorbed himself, flipping through the paper sleeves. He seemed so calm. Was I out of hot water? Had Gil only wished for a nice lunch and my company today?

  He slipped on a disc, setting the needle to the tinny crackle.

  But as soon as it started playing, I shook my head. “This song feels sad.”

  “Don’t be sad, Jean.” His words sounded ominous.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him. Are we all right?

  “Dance with me?” Gil sounded formal. Our eyes held.

  I took a breath and stepped into his arms. First, our hug—and now it was so achingly strange to dance with Gil again, all these weeks after Hollander’s. It was as if he’d made a pact with himself not to touch me—a pact that now, for some reason, he was deliberately breaking.

  Because he’s ending it . . .

  “Goodness, if you want, I can teach you to foxtrot. You don’t need my mother for that!” I adjusted our positions. “It’s a basic box step rhythm; slow slow, quick quick . . .”

  “Aw, I’m a clodhopper, I’m two left feet.”

  “You’re not.” I smiled my best Dalton uptilt.

  I was waiting for it. I was preparing for whatever he was about to say. But I felt so fragile, like I might shatter from it, too.

  “What?” I made myself ask. “What’s wrong?”

  Gil’s whole body was poised for the plunge. “I’m sure you can tell how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with you, Jean.” His voice was so gentle. “If I’d grown up knowing you, if we’d been New York City kids and Sunken Haven kids together . . . if I’d had, say, Junior’s life—why, I bet you’d have been exactly the right girl for me.”

  “What? What do you mean?” My pulse was a blood beat in my head. I had to remember to breathe, not to trip over my feet. “I could still be that girl.”

  “That night, when you came to see me at Snappy Boy, we got too close too quick. I’m not that kinda guy, and I reckon you’re not that kinda girl. I feel lucky that, these past days, I got another chance to learn you slower. You’re such an outta-sight person, you know you are.” He paused again. “But the main thing is . . . see . . .”

  “You can tell me anything . . . ,” I prompted, faintly.

  Gil’s fingers had anchored push points into the small of my back. He was learning the dance steps better with every turn; he didn’t want to break the rhythm he’d set. Gil always liked learning something new and different. “The thing is, I’m really with Fritz. We’ve got a lot in common, Fritz and me. For us, Sunken Haven is kinda like landing in a foreign country, where everyone speaks this private language, while Fritz and I are like a coupla tourists, sharing the phrase book back and forth, you know?”

  “That won’t be you always. Fritz is like a tourist, but
you belong here.”

  “Well, you might be right. But, for now, I feel a little left of center here, and I’m not ready to pretend to be more—even if it pleases Carp and Weeze to see you on my arm. It’d be like I was using you. And that’s not what I want for either of us.”

  Anger surged in my chest. “I don’t feel used by these lunches! Not in the least!”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Gil nodded. “It’s been a special time for me, too. But we shouldn’t keep it up. For one, I don’t think Fritz would dig this scene at all—you and me meeting on the sly, hanging on to each other like we are. I never told her about us. I’m guessing you never told anyone, either. But I don’t want it to keep going like this all summer. Sure it’s innocent now, but there’s times I’m sorely tempted by you, Jean. And I don’t want you and me to get any more complicated than we are already.”

  My face felt almost contorted in my effort to seem relaxed. I swallowed past the stick in my throat. “But we can keep it simple! What’s ever happened here? Nothing. Sandwiches and conversation. Us being us.”

  “Right, I know. And I know how we clicked right from that first minute. But I couldn’t explain it to Fritz any more than I could explain . . . the other thing we did. I want to be as true to her as I can, you know? And I want to be true to myself.”

  Didn’t Gil see how these hours were my favorite of the whole week? How could he not sense that? But now the record had ended and the needle was hissing and bumping, over and over. Gil broke from me to reset it. As the tune began again, he returned and held me. The warmth of his body against mine made me feel unsteady with desire; I could have clung to him forever. We listened one more time to a long-dead man singing for his Daisy Bell. It wasn’t a sad song, but I could feel tears smarting in the corners of my eyes.

  “You’re not too regretful about that night we spent together, are you? I suppose you feel like it doesn’t fit at all with who you are.”

  “If I did it,” said Gil slowly, “then it does fit with who I am.”

  “But you probably see that whole entire night with me as a mistake,” I pressed.

  He paused. “No. I don’t. But now I think we gotta move on from it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “C’mon. I really want us to be cool about this.”

  But how? I felt so intense about it. Cool was Fritz—all Fritz had was her cool.

  Maybe that was the whole point. The point I was missing. A guy who was in love with Fritz couldn’t be in love with me.

  “But you were mine first!” I wanted to shout at him. That should count for something! How could Gil be slipping away from me for good? I couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t in any way fair. Even now, he was releasing me from the hug, chucking me under the chin.

  “I mean it one hundred percent, Jean, when I say getting to know you has been one of the best things about my summer.”

  “Me, too,” I managed.

  But of course, Gil didn’t know me, not really—or he’d know that his decision to break off our afternoons had left me heartbroken.

  FRITZ

  Gil’s kiss on the tennis court had sealed something. Until that moment, we’d been playing tonight kind of shyly, with a whole string of qualifications—like if I wasn’t feeling it, or if he wasn’t feeling it, or if we got cold feet, or if we wanted to stick around and party with Julia and Oliver. “No pressure,” we’d kept saying to each other.

  On the court, when Gil had picked me up and kissed me and held me like that, with everyone watching, a surge of electric connection had looped our bodies together, and we both knew.

  Yes. Tonight. It was happening. No doubt.

  As the day lightened up and dried out, Gil went home to check in with the Burkes, who always had him doing one thing or another for them—and apparently Fourth of July was no exception—while the rest of us headed to South Beach for the barbecue and an afternoon of diving in and out of the ocean, either with surfboards or for a simple swim. The sun was out and the ocean was perfect. When Gil finally came back, he was with Chip Knightley. They’d both picked up their guitars, and so we all got to mellow out to their Gordon Lightfoot and Grateful Dead covers.

  “Play a classic, play ‘Little Wing,’ ” someone called, from over where Junior and his crew were sitting.

  “Aw, man, that’s too hard,” said Chip. “What do you think, that I’m going pro?”

  But Gil’s long fingers were already exploring the silky, bluesy opening chords, and we went silent, letting him work into it, figure it out and deliver it to us in the loose, fun way we’d all come to expect from him. I watched his expression, deliberately calm, knowing what the others didn’t, that underneath his ease, Gil was dead serious and obsessively focused. I’d watched him teach swim class, rig a sail, and manage a crushing lunch shift at the yacht club in basically the same way. Making it look easy was all part of the work.

  The afternoon sun sank into its ripe pinks and reds. The crowd thinned as kids began to move bayside for the fireworks show. I rode with Gil back to Snappy Boy so that he could drop his guitar. I waited outside—for a moment, watching the door, my body went taut with apprehension. Were Carp and Weeze in the house? Would they give him permission to go?

  When Gil appeared again, his windbreaker on, his smile untroubled, relief flowed through me. Why’d I been so worried?

  I was paranoid, that was all.

  We booked, speeding through the gate, and we left Sunken Haven behind.

  Seaview, Saltaire, Robbins Rest.

  George, the guy who ran the place we’d found the other day, was a cool, low-key hippie type, the kind of dude that Sunken Haven parents and all Fort Polk parents were united against because he was easygoing about being gay.

  Tonight, George and his boyfriend, Eric, who looked like a Swedish action hero but was actually a math teacher from Michigan, were out on the porch enjoying a couple of Strohs.

  “Hey! I hoped I’d see you two cats again.” George tossed me a beer. “How’s things on the Haven?”

  “Totally perfect and boring,” I answered. “Same as always.”

  “Eric and I’ve got a running bet that there’s snipers behind that locked fence of yours. Armed and ready to pick off queers.”

  “You’re not too wrong,” I said. “Sunken Haven’s kinda like East Berlin, but with more tennis.”

  Which made George and Eric laugh, and earned us another beer toss, this one for Gil. I knew Gil felt disloyal when I joked about Sunken Haven, so I was glad that tonight he was laughing, too. Maybe Gil was feeling relaxed not to be playing the part of Weeze and Carpie Burke’s perfect nephew.

  We took the porch stairs and settled in. I hoped I seemed like a girl who talked to gay guys all the time—George didn’t need to know he was the first person I’d ever met who was openly queer. But the army didn’t let in any gay people, not even for the civilian-type jobs, so they were rare as hen’s teeth on base. And if you did have the bad luck to be homosexual, you hid it as much as you could—or else. My friend Stephanie’s kid brother, Davey, got smacked around school all day long for having a lispy voice. And my biology teacher, Mr. Sambuca, had not benefitted from rumors. Even freshmen picked on him.

  George had been righteous to Gil and me from the very first time we’d stopped by and met him the other week. I’d had an instant, comforting feeling he knew exactly what we were planning, and that he didn’t care at all. He didn’t even make us put down a deposit on the room, just told us it would be here if we wanted it. So in return, I tried to act cool right back, not to seem shocked when he casually mentioned his “boyfriend,” and to treat him and Eric both like I thought they were totally ordinary, which so far seemed to be the case.

  “George and I were wondering if you two know a girl named Phoenix?” Eric asked us now. “She works at the Tilt-and-Whirl, over at Atlantique?”

  I shook my head and popped my beer tab. “Never been. That’s the badlands for Sunkies.”

  “Atlantique’s not far. T
here’s a big party there tonight. A whole bunch of young people.”

  “Are you going?” Gil asked.

  “Nah, we’re heading out to see some friends,” George answered. “That bar’s not the right scene for us old fogies. But last time we stopped in for lunch—they do great loaded potato skins—we met Phoenix, and she told us she used to spend summers in Sunken Haven.”

  “If there’s one thing I can promise,” I answered, “it’s that nobody from Sunken Haven is named Phoenix.”

  “You sure? She’s a pistol. Bright red hair, Clark Kent glasses, big smile?”

  I shook my head. “I think I’d remember anyone who looked like that.”

  “It’d be fun to hit Atlantique,” said Gil. “I’ve never been. It already feels good to be somewhere else.” We exchanged a smile, clinked cans.

  “We call crossing that ferry coming to America,” said Eric. “It’s a real, true freedom, to be on Fire Island.” He winked. “Some parts of it, anyhow.”

  “Toast to that, too,” I said, and then we did a four-way clink.

  When George and Eric eventually decided to take off for their friends’, Gil and I stood up and went with them, so they could direct us to Atlantique. I was curious about this girl Phoenix, and Gil wanted to get a deeper look at how non-Sunkies were celebrating the day.

  The energy on the packed boardwalk was contagious. It felt like most of New York had decided to jump on ferries and party on Fire Island for the Bicentennial madness. Nobody was playing it down, either; every single person we saw had gone all out in glitter and Danskins and body paint. There were twisting conga lines of kids dressed in red, white, and blue, there were daredevils doing stunts on stilts and daredevils doing stunts on roller skates. There were party people in full Uncle Sam suits and toppers and pasted-on beards, and there were faces made up like Indians or Old Glory. There were slinky girls in flag-themed short-shorts and tube tops, and there were drag queens everywhere.