The Book of Summer

He slammed both hands onto the table and stood.

“Hey, buddy,” said a voice. “You should…”

Calm down?

Excuse yourself?

Shut the hell up before I punch you in the face?

Bess didn’t hear what the guy said. The blood whooshing through her ears was too loud.

“Brandon!” she hissed. “Sit down.”

“If you have this fucking baby…”

“Shut. Up.”

“I want you to remember that thing was made when I was fucking a different whore every goddamned night.”

“You’re despicable,” Bess wheezed.

She took a sip of coffee, thinking it was water.

“The same dick that was inside of you,” Brandon raged on. “The very same dick that made that creature had been in a hundred other cunts before yours.”

Bess reached under the table for her bag, accidentally knocking over her coffee along the way. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

“The sperm that fertilized your pathetic egg,” he said, “is the very sperm I squirted over some bitch’s tits that same night. Your baby will have syphilis or gonorrhea. It will be half whore. Three-quarters whore, with you in the mix.”

By then, Bess was up on her feet, heading toward the exit. Brandon kept shouting. It would be the last time she saw the man she had promised to love forever. The last time she went into that Starbucks, too. Good thing Brandon wasn’t as well known in Silicon Valley as he imagined.

The next day Bess made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. What Brandon said didn’t make any biological sense. She didn’t even need her medical degree for that. But Bess knew she’d never be able to stop hearing his words once she saw the baby’s face. Not ever having been a mom, Bess didn’t understand that the opposite would be true. A new child had a way of making the bad disappear, for a time.

“Do you still think it was the right thing to do?” Evan says now, all the way in Nantucket, on the other side of the country. “Telling him?”

Bess laughs sourly.

“Well, he called me a bunch of names,” she says, the furthest into the story she’ll go with Evan, or anyone else.

Not even Palmer knows the details of the coffee exchange. Maybe her cousin is onto something with the accusation of verbal abuse. Bess doesn’t know which is more reprehensible: that she can’t admit it, or that part of her believes verbal isn’t abuse enough to count. They should revoke her medical license for the very notion. She could give it to Palmer. Her cousin has limitless compassion and could figure out how to poke around in people eventually. That’s the easy part.

“After the name-calling,” Bess says, mind spinning with all she’s said, and even more so with what she hasn’t, “I felt pretty crappy. So the answer is no, I shouldn’t have said a thing.”

“You know what I think?” Evan leans back onto both elbows, his face turned toward the ocean. “You weren’t sure. I think that’s why you told Brandon.”

“Could be,” Bess says. Her body softens as her brain winds down. “But seeing him solidified my decision to end the pregnancy.”

“Your decision is anything but solidified. I think it’s the opposite.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, squinting at him. “How’s that?”

“You won’t drink my beer.” Evan gives a wink. “And you’re never one to turn down beer.”

“Good Lord,” Bess says, and rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Dr. Mayhew in session. So, if that’s true, then why didn’t I cancel today’s appointment? Especially after I knew I was headed to Nantucket? Travel is the perfect excuse.”

“You’re trying to kid yourself into being undecided, even though you know exactly what you want.”

“Yeah, well, whenever I’ve known ‘exactly what I want’ it turns out I’m dead wrong.”

“Just do it,” Evan says with a smile. “Have that baby.”

“Oh, sure. It’s so simple.” Bess snaps. “New person! Appear!”

“I didn’t say it’s simple. But, hell, you have a life, a career. You’re solid as hell.”

“I’m not the least bit solid,” she says. “I can’t even control Cissy!”

“Pretty sure you’re not expected to mother your own mom. What are you afraid of, Bess? Why can’t you raise a child on your own?”

“Oh, I certainly could,” Bess says with a sigh. “In theory. There are far more scandalous circumstances than a thirty-four-year-old professional, well-educated single mom. Like being a forty-year-old professional, well-educated non-mom.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t…” Bess sighs again. “I don’t know if I have it in me.”

“Of course you have it in you!”

Evan’s voice has always been so persuasive. Deep, powerful, as if coming from his lungs, or his heart. And those earnest brown eyes, like precious heirlooms she left behind. Bless it, Bess is falling for his old shtick. God, she hates when he does this. It’s so much easier to remember Evan Mayhew as the smug jerk from high school.

“I appreciate your faith in me,” Bess says, a little primly. “But this isn’t some novel where a major debacle turns out for the best and they all live happily ever after.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to fantasize about,” she says. “If this was a novel, and you know people love books set in Nantucket, but if my life were a novel, I’d chuck my ED job in San Francisco, move on-island, and become a general practitioner dealing with jellyfish stings and wacky boating mishaps.”

“Cobblestone burn,” Evan adds.

“Fishhook removal.”

“You’d have a hard time competing with Tim, though. I can’t see you doing house calls for destitute drug addicts who pay in stolen guns. Or for John Kerry.”

“Dr. Lepore can have his house calls. Last time my mom went in for a tick check he was complaining that he’s perennially short-staffed because no one can stand this island for long. It takes a certain kind of weirdo to be cut off from civilization year-round.”

“Yes it does,” Evan says, brows peaked. “The kind only found in books.”

“Exactly. Anyhow, I could do the easy, in-office problems, and save the zany, contrarian cases for Lepore. Together we’d solve Nantucketers’ health woes and I’d raise my baby with Cissy at Cliff House. She’d watch him, or her, while I worked. My child would write her first words in Sarah Young’s Book of Summer.”

“Don’t forget … you’d also fall in love with your high school beau.”

“Oh, God!” Bess says, and laughs. Her eyes at once well up. “What an idea. However, I don’t think my French teacher from Choate lives around here.”

“That’s harsh, Codfish.”

“That’s harsh? Um, what was that personal philosophy of yours? Never make the same mistake twice?”

“Touché,” he says, and shakes his head. “It’s my only rule.”

“Swell.” Bess finds herself frowning. “Yet another reason this proposed novel could never materialize. Not to mention, Cliff House is now more cliff than house. So there’s a big old hole in the middle of my plot. Literally.”

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