“Hello? Hello?”
Laurel heard clomping footsteps in the house, and an instant later, a woman in a giant straw hat and cat-eye sunglasses popped out onto the deck.
Belinda.
Laurel had known she was on her way, but still, she felt woefully unprepared for the shock of seeing her.
Buck stood up and turned around. “Hello, Belinda,” he said.
Belinda took a deep, dramatic breath, and then she started to sob. Here she was, then: the woman who had stolen Laurel’s husband, and this house, and her summers, and her happiness. Laurel had spent years and years hating Belinda, until eventually the hate faded into contempt and then distaste and then, finally, indifference.
I don’t care about her, Laurel told herself. She has lost the power to hurt me. She is no longer able to make me feel worthless and unloved and ugly and clumsy. But, watching Belinda cry, Laurel felt a surge of the old rage. She was older and wiser now, though. She had been to college and graduate school; she had built a worthwhile career in which she made real differences in people’s lives. She could control her emotions. She could be the bigger person.
Grace, she thought. What she needed here was grace.
“Hello, Belinda,” she said.
Intermezzo: Deacon and Laurel, Part I
Jack Thorpe leaves for work on August 21, 1976—it will end up being the hottest, most unpleasant day of the summer, not only for the Thorpe family but for everyone in the city—and he never comes home. The manager at Sardi’s, a man named Fitzy, says Jack’s work duds are hanging in his locker, as usual. Fitzy says, He probably just went on a bender. Give him a few days.
Deacon’s mother, Priscilla, goes on a rampage through every one of Jack’s known haunts: the White Horse Tavern, Milano’s, 169, Blarney Stone. Nobody has seen him. After twenty-four hours, Priscilla calls the police to report a missing person. An officer named Murphy comes to the apartment and asks Priscilla a lot of questions about Jack’s routine and habits. He asks about drug and alcohol use, and Priscilla says, “He’s a beer and whiskey man, always has been,” and Officer Murphy nods as if he approves. Officer Murphy asks if Jack had been acting strangely. Any changes of behavior? Deacon watches the lightbulb come on over his mother’s head.
“He took a trip with my son last week,” Priscilla says. She narrows her red, watery eyes at Deacon; she’s been doing a lot of crying, more crying than Deacon would have expected. “Where did you go, again?”
“Nantucket Island,” Deacon says.
“What did you do on Nantucket Island?” the officer asks.
Deacon shrugs. He’s afraid that if he describes it, it will sound regular and nothing like the unforgettable day it was. “Had lunch,” he says. “Went swimming.”
“Do you think that your father had plans to return to… Nantucket Island?” Officer Murphy asks.
“No,” Deacon says. He’s pretty sure Deacon is anywhere but Nantucket. He’s pretty sure the purpose of the trip was to see it one last time before… well, before what, Deacon doesn’t know.
A second day passes, then a third. By the end of the week, Priscilla has procured a prescription bottle filled with Valium. Deacon steals eight pills, then three more. He takes the first pill before bedtime and falls into a dreamless sleep. He takes the second pill a few mornings later, after his mother leaves for her waitressing shift at the South Street Seaport. The pill slows everything down. It gives Deacon a relaxed but powerful feeling, almost as if he’s levitating.
Wow, he thinks. With Valium, every hour is the golden hour.
He steals five more.
The following year, 1977, Priscilla meets a man named Kirk Inglehart and announces that she’s moving with him to Bermuda and that Deacon and Stephanie are being shipped up to Dobbs Ferry to live with Auntie Ro. The Valium pills, of course, are long-gone, but Deacon has picked up three shifts a week working as the trash boy at Sardi’s—Fitzy, the manager, felt sorry for him once it was evident that Jack wasn’t coming back—and in the dregs of the kitchen, there are all kinds of drugs: pot, angel dust, whip-its, as well as dented cans of warm Schlitz. Deacon says yes to everything.
His first day of school in Dobbs Ferry is the Tuesday after Labor Day; he is a freshman. He wears jeans and a ratty Black Sabbath T-shirt that he bought down on Canal Street for fifty cents. He loves Black Sabbath, although he’s never come close to seeing them or anyone else in concert. His auntie Ro takes umbrage at the shirt. She went shopping and bought him a nice blue Izod, but Deacon refuses to put it on.
He says, “I will never wear a shirt with a collar.” He doesn’t mention the yellow shirt with a collar that his father wore to Nantucket. The thought of it pains him and makes him long for the big, fat joint that Bub and Marcos, the dishwashers at Sardi’s, gave him as a parting gift.
Auntie Ro must sense something, because she capitulates quickly. “Suit yourself,” she says.
Having a big, fat joint tucked away in his top dresser drawer makes going to a brand-new school, where he knows no one, bearable. He is able to ignore the dirty looks; the raised eyebrows because his hair is too long and nobody has taught him to shave, so he has a shadowy mustache; the shoulder bump from a guy so huge, he must be the entire offensive line for the football team. Deacon’s new teachers talk, they pass out something called a syllabus (what a stupid word!): English, world history, algebra. Deacon hates school. He dreams about finding a secluded spot along the Hudson and toking up.
He figures the worst part will be lunch, and he’s pretty much correct about that. He goes through the line and takes a sad-looking burger, some limp, greasy fries, a chocolate milk. Then he faces a sea of kids, yipping and yapping like so many Chihuahuas. He has no choice but to sit alone at an empty table in the far corner. The good thing is that the table is next to the exit. If things get really bad, he can just run.
He has neglected to get ketchup, and when he turns around to figure out where a person might procure some, he sees a girl headed toward him. Long blond hair, no makeup, white blouse and jean skirt, normal-looking and actually kind of pretty. She smiles at him and says, “You’re new, right? Okay if I sit with you?”
He is so stunned, he can’t answer. She sits down and says, “I would love to see Black Sabbath in concert, but my mother is strict. She would never, ever let me.”
“Oh, I haven’t seen them,” Deacon admits. He figures he has probably just blown away this girl’s sole point of interest in him. “I bought the T-shirt because I love their music. I got it down in the city.”
“You moved here from the city, right?” she says. “I heard that.”
He nods. “I lived in Stuy Town. East side.”
“That’s cool,” she says. “I love the city, but I’m only allowed to go in with my parents, which sucks.”
He notices that her tray is loaded with food—a cup of vegetable-barley soup, a turkey club sandwich that she has slathered with mayonnaise, tater tots, a dish of some cabbage salad called chow-chow, two cartons of chocolate milk, and red Jell-O with whipped cream. She takes a big bite of her sandwich. “Everyone complains about the cafeteria food,” she says, “but I like it.”
Deacon lifts his burger. He’s afraid if he gets up to find ketchup, she will disappear.
She says, “Is your tattoo real?”
He nods. He got the tattoo in Chinatown from a man who didn’t bother asking Deacon’s age. “It’s a seal.”
“Yes, I can see that,” she says. She spoons in some soup, then takes a bite of chow-chow. She pops in a tater tot. “I’m Laurel Simmons,” she says. “What’s your name?”
“Deacon,” he says. “Deacon Thorpe.”
They’re at the homecoming game, Dobbs Ferry verses Irvington, and the senior players and cheerleaders are being announced on the field, along with their parents. Deacon and Laurel are in the stands, huddled together under a plaid car blanket. Laurel asks the question Deacon has been dreading. They’ve been dating for two months; he supposes he should be grateful it has taken her this long.
“I know you said your mother moved to Bermuda,” Laurel said. “But what about your father?”