Deacon stands up and heads down the aluminum bleachers, his hands crammed into his pockets. He doesn’t want to talk about it. His sister, Stephanie, goes to the school psychologist, but Deacon has refused to do this because he really just doesn’t want to talk about it.
Deacon walks to the parking lot, leaving the lights and the noise of the game behind him. He misses Laurel already. They are together every second after school until curfew. She’s a friend like he’s never known. His mother’s departure made sense: she left them for a man. But Jack Thorpe left because… because why? Because watching Deacon and Stephanie grow up wasn’t worth sticking around for?
Deacon sits on the concrete steps that lead up to the road. He could walk home, but it’s far, and Auntie Ro will be here to pick him up after the game. He hopes that Laurel will come looking for him, although why would she? He’s a weirdo and a loser, unable to answer a simple question. He is worth nothing, as his father so deftly proved. The thing is, Deacon knew. He sensed a requiem in his father’s manner, in his father’s reminiscing. He saw good-bye written on his father’s face as he walked toward Deacon down the beach.
One perfect day with my son. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
All that Deacon is left with is the memory. And the clamshell.
He spies the shine of blond hair from a hundred yards away, and out of the mist, her form becomes clearer. When she gets closer, he sees she’s crying. He’s made her cry. He is an awful, terrible person. When she sees him shivering on the steps, a look of immense relief crosses her face.
She loves me, he thinks.
She holds out her arms to him. “You don’t have to tell me,” she says.
“I’ll tell you,” Deacon says. They’ve been separated all of seven or eight minutes, but he can’t describe how relieved he is to have her back. “I’ll tell you everything.”
She sits in his lap on the steps.
He’s not sure where to start. “Have you ever been to Nantucket?” he asks.
It’s Christmas break of their senior year when Laurel gets her early acceptance to Vassar. She has straight As and could have gone anywhere—Duke, Stanford, Yale—but she chose Vassar because she wants to stay close to Deacon. He will be only miles away, in Hyde Park, at the Culinary Institute of America.
Deacon gets Laurel a necklace for Christmas, a silver chain with a heart pendant made from leaded crystal. Laurel gets Deacon three albums—London Calling, Back in Black, and The River—and a sweater. They exchange presents on the morning of the twenty-sixth, but as soon as they finish opening them, Laurel announces that she doesn’t feel well. Two seconds later, she pukes in his lap.
They decide it must be the excitement of Christmas, the rich food, or some bug that’s going around.
Laurel gets sick on the morning of the twenty-seventh and then again on the twenty-eighth. On the twenty-ninth, they drive Laurel’s mother’s station wagon to the next town over, Irvington, to buy a pregnancy test.
Positive.
Laurel cries while Deacon sits in wonder, staring out the windshield at the white sky. It’s almost 1981. Since the day Laurel sat next to him at lunch, Deacon has been a boy in love. Love has saved him. And now, it appears, he’s going to be a father.
Or maybe not. Laurel can’t stop crying. A baby will ruin her future, she says. She won’t be able to go to Vassar, as she planned.
She says, “I want to get an abortion.”
“Okay,” Deacon says. His heart is soft now, like a flat tire, but he’s afraid to voice his feelings. In history class, they held debates, and one of the topics was Roe v. Wade. Deacon was only tangentially involved, but he did gather that choice was a privilege granted a woman, not a man.
Late that night, however, Laurel calls Deacon’s house, crying. She can’t go through with it, she says. She is going to have the baby.
“Okay,” Deacon says. He can’t believe the joy that envelops him. “Let’s get married.”
In 1986, everything is good. In fact, everything is great. Deacon has two jobs. He is the chef de cuisine at Solo, on Twenty-Third and Fifth, and he is the star of a late-night TV show called Day to Night to Day with Deacon, which has garnered what studio execs call “surprisingly respectable ratings.” Because he is now “on TV,” he gets recognized on the street, and every afternoon, a small cluster of fans gathers on the sidewalk outside the employee entrance of Solo, waiting for Deacon so that they can get his autograph. Some of these fans are women, hot women, and some of them hand Deacon their numbers. Call me, baby. Deacon takes all the numbers home to Laurel. She is making a scrapbook of Deacon’s successes—his review by Ruth Reichl in the Times (two and a half stars), his review in New York magazine, an ad for the show in TV Guide—and she pastes the women’s phone numbers in. She isn’t jealous at all; she thinks it’s funny and cute and sexy that he’s wanted by every woman in America.
“Not every woman,” Deacon says. “Besides, I only love you.”
Laurel knows this. She is the one who saved him. His first and only love, the mother of his beautiful son.
The show becomes so popular that Deacon is offered two more seasons, with a substantial pay raise. The advance comes in one lump sum, and when Deacon and Laurel open the envelope, they stare at the check together. It’s more money than either of them had expected to make in a lifetime.
They don’t know what to do with it. They have just bought the apartment on West 119th Street; it’s filled with light and is well suited for the three of them, and the rest of their existence is frugal: the subway instead of cabs, staff meal nearly every night at the restaurant. They should save this money, they know, invest it with Kidder or Drexel. But the check demands to be spent in some kind of large, lavish, life-changing way. They both feel it.
“You pick,” Laurel says. “You earned it.”
Deacon picks Nantucket. He calls the local newspaper, the Inquirer and Mirror, and asks for the real estate section to be mailed to him. All the houses pictured, however, are too big and too expensive. They’re meant for men who wear pinstripe suits and trade junk bonds, men who carry briefcases and play squash. But then Deacon sees a listing that catches his attention: YOUR “AMERICAN PARADISE” AWAITS ON HOICKS HOLLOW ROAD.
The hair on the back of Deacon’s neck stands up.
Good old Hoicks Hollow Road. Used to be my home away from home.
The description reads: Classic, well-loved summer cottage on exclusive Hoicks Hollow Road. Steps away from the private idyll of the Sankaty Head Beach Club, this cottage, which has remained in the same family for five generations, is in need of a thoughtful, caring owner who will appreciate its many charms. Back deck offers sweeping views over the golf course, lighthouse, and moors. Enjoy distant ocean views from the front farmer’s porch. Offered fully furnished.
The price is more than he and Laurel had wanted to pay, but it’s doable. He is struck by the way the description in the paper makes the house sound like an orphan. Like Deacon himself.
His hands are shaking as he shows the listing to Laurel. “Hoicks Hollow Road,” he says. “It’s like magic!”
They buy the house in July and move in right away. Solo closes for six weeks over the summer, and Deacon doesn’t start filming the new season of the show until September. It’s meant to be.
He thinks he understands how his father felt bringing Deacon to Nantucket, because Deacon is filled with a thrilling elation. I can’t wait for you to see it, he tells Laurel and little Hayes. It’s the best place on earth. It is, he says, an American paradise.
When they pull into the driveway, Deacon has second thoughts. The front porch of the house sags in the middle; the white trim badly needs paint, and the yard is a patchwork of dirt and crabgrass. They walk up the rickety front steps and pull open the screen door. The house smells like cleaning products, with undertones of something salty and marshy, although not unpleasant. Sunlight streams through the windows, catching dust motes. The furnishings are at-the-beach shabby. Deacon figures the cushions of the sofa have been sat upon by hundreds of wet bathing suits, and a once-prized collection of hermit crabs has probably decomposed under the front porch, where some wise child placed them to protect them from the sun.