The Summer House Read online

  Once, Danny had asked why they did not know Josh Miller. After all, the Millers and the Adamses had been summer neighbors on the island since long before Danny had even been born. He had never received a straight answer—something vague about the fact the Millers were from New York; something about the Millers being Jewish. “Not that your grandfather dislikes Jews,” Michael had said. “He just doesn’t trust them.”

  Danny thought it was stupid and had told his grandfather so.

  “Good,” Will Adams had answered. “When you’re my age your grandchildren can think differently from you, too. And you can tell them to go to hell.” He had then walked away.

  On the screen now came a map of the country, with states that were Barton territory colored in red, those for Josh Miller in blue. The fact that Miller’s states were bigger in size made it appear as if he were way out in front instead of eight points behind.

  Danny thought about his mother, and wondered if Uncle Roger was right, if Liz should be back on the campaign trail. Did she no longer care about being First Lady? And what about Dad—shouldn’t they be fighting harder?

  Ten, five, even only a couple of years ago no one would have believed a Jew would even be a candidate, let alone win the race. But now here was Josh Miller, closing the ethnic gap with his grassroots charm and his tireless campaigning. The fact that he was a widower whose wife died last year of cancer leaving him with two young daughters only seemed to have increased his chances.

  “Sympathy vote,” Roger had said. “It can kill us if we’re not careful.”

  Danny wondered if, now that Will was dead, perhaps they couldn’t capitalize more strongly on the sympathy vote, too, more than the quick six-point jump that had since fallen by four. Then he wondered why he was doing all these ridiculous mathematical gymnastics and acting as if he cared.

  Suddenly his father’s face flashed on the screen, captured in the balance between air and air time, smiling in the balance between truth and the polls.

  “My wife is taking a few days off from the campaign,” he was saying into the camera, with just enough hint of gravity in his voice to let the folks know Liz was grieving, that Liz, after all, was one of them, the all-American girl. “As I’m sure everyone understands, this has been a difficult time for her. But she’s with our son Danny, and I’m certain they will rejoin the campaign soon.”

  Danny scratched his leg again, unsure how “soon” would be soon enough to “rejoin the campaign.” All he knew now was that his mother was clattering around in the kitchen, that for some reason she would not discuss the campaign, and that she was not even interested in the person named Josh Miller who could alter the well-charted course of their life if she didn’t do something about it. And maybe do something fast.

  Evelyn double-checked her carry-on bag to be certain she had everything to make the long trip from Illinois to San Antonio productive: profiles on the organizations to which Michael would be speaking; head sheets and bios on the key players so he would be able to recognize them and act as if he knew them. It had worked at today’s luncheon: no one would have guessed that only yesterday Michael had buried his influential father-in-law. No one who might have missed the news or the papers or the very trail of sympathy laid by well-meaning voters.

  But Michael was a pro: Will Adams had taught him well. Still, Evelyn thought as she snapped her bag shut, she wondered why she cared when Liz no longer seemed to. Liz, the princess, who might just screw everything up because she was selfish and spoiled and always had been. Then Evelyn wondered if everything, from day one, was going to have been a big waste.

  All these years she had kept quiet. All these years she had been the unimportant wife of the unimportant son, just because Daniel had gotten himself killed.

  Even after Roger’s “confession” about being gay, which she’d suspected for years, Evelyn had stayed Roger’s wife because she had known that someday it was going to pay off. That someday Michael Barton would make Roger his attorney general (it had worked for Bobby Kennedy) or something equally impressive. Then she would become a grand Washington hostess, the one everyone would want to get close to because she was the sister-in-law of the president.

  It had almost been worth it to funnel so many of her grandfather’s millions into the campaign, no matter how many back doors she’d had to sneak it through, no matter how many favors she’d had to call in.

  And all this time she had kept quiet about the young lovers whom she’d seen on that warm summer night long ago. And now the young lovers were on opposite sides, and perhaps only Roger and Evelyn knew. Roger had made her promise to keep the secret. It had been difficult, but she had done it for Daniel and for the family; she’d done it, of course, for her future.

  But now Will Adams was dead and Liz had run off to the Vineyard, and suddenly the media was reporting that Josh was going there, too.

  More than anyone, Evelyn knew that Liz was going to ruin everything if she didn’t get away from her old boyfriend and back on the road, working for Michael. And she’d better move fast because time was running out. Eight points was a long way from victory.

  As she walked down the jetway between Liz’s husband and two of the children, Evelyn wondered what would have happened if she’d told what she’d seen that night at the cove so long ago. She wondered what would happen if she told about it now.

  Chapter 16

  She supposed he was a boy toy, but BeBe decided that wasn’t a bad thing. In addition to doing those wonderfully erotic, make-you-feel-young-again things for which boy toys were created, Ruiz was actually a decent designer who put together packages that appealed to romantic emotions and turned even the thriftiest consumer into a French Country customer. It did not matter that the products were ridiculously overpriced. The cozy tins and oval boxes lined with fine parchment and tied with raffia made French Country the perfect gift for the trés bon vivant, or at least that was the perception they had succeeded in conveying.

  In short, Ruiz Arroyo was worth nearly every dime she’d spent on the silver Mercedes convertible, the condo on the water a half mile from her house, and the frequent, substantial donations to his black market business of bringing long-lost relatives from Cuba by boat.

  Of all his attributes, however, she preferred what he was doing right now: massaging her bare feet with a thick, sumptuous lotion he’d brought back from Paris. Slowly, he applied the lotion as if it were whipped cream, then lathered her arches, circled her heels, and fondled each toe, caressing with the gentle touch of a woman, and the sensuous strength of a man.

  It made her trip home from Boston last night—in fact, the entire funeral process itself—seem like a dream—a hazy, unsettling dream that was at least a million lifetimes away from where she lounged now—on the chaise on the deck off her ocean-view bedroom.

  “You’re making me feel awfully good,” she said, “You must want money. You want me to sell.”

  He examined her toes, one at a time. “The Loudets are nice people. They want to open new markets for their toiletries. French Country can do that.”

  She laced her fingers through his hair. “And part of my sixty million could bring a lot more boat people across the stream. Right?”

  He stopped lathering, stood up, and walked to the railing that overlooked the Atlantic. “I try not to ask much of you, BeBe. I try and accept that some people have more than others do. I know I am lucky. I have my talent, which has, thanks to you, given me a good job and a wonderful life. But not a day goes by that I do not think of the others …” He looked out across the sea as if he were envisioning them now, those still in Cuba, doomed to smoke cigars, wear old, shapeless clothes, and left to drive cars from the fifties when cars were last brought by Americans. It conjured black-and-white images of old Life magazines; bleary photos of those left behind in time.

  She listened to his words but kept her eyes glued to his great Cuban ass. It occurred to her that men, in their vanity, thought that women enjoyed ogling their crotches. Ruiz,
however, somehow had learned that most women preferred looking at a tight, curvy butt. She suspected that was why now, when he was asking for money, he stood with his back, and his backside, in her view. “How much?” she asked. She knew there was more involved than financing a boat: the refugees must have papers, places to live, and food to eat until they could secure jobs.

  He shrugged. “A couple hundred thousand should do it.”

  She closed her eyes against the hot summer sun. Now that Father was gone, there was no reason to keep her business in Florida, where the summer months smoldered. She could be in the Northeast, closer to Liz, closer to those she could call family. Whether or not she sold out to the Loudets or how often she supplemented Ruiz’s twice-removed relatives, it wasn’t as if BeBe couldn’t afford to have someone shovel her snow.

  But she was used to it here in the heat, with her hot Cuban boy toy who was asking for more money. She tried to focus on his butt, and on the lingering feel-good sensation in her toes. Life wasn’t so bad here. “I’ll have Claire take care of it tomorrow,” she said. “Now get over here and take care of me.”

  “He’s using you,” Claire said the next morning after BeBe had requested the check for Ruiz.

  “Save the editorializing for someone who will listen.”

  Claire moved closer to BeBe’s long, glass-topped desk. “He’s trying to get you to sell so he can have plenty of money and not have to work. Then he can spend all his time with those boat people, whoever they are. Have you ever even seen one of them? Has anyone ever come to thank you for your generosity?”

  BeBe looked up from the stacks of paper in front of her. “I do not do it to be thanked. There’s such a thing as helping humanity.”

  “Bullshit,” Claire said. “You do it for the sex.”

  Swallowing a laugh and returning to her paperwork, BeBe replied, “There are worse things in the world, my dear. Now write out the check like a good girl.”

  “Stop treating me like I’m a child. If anyone’s immature around here, BeBe, it’s you.”

  BeBe stopped what she was doing and peered over the tops of her half-glasses. “Would you have talked to your last boss like that?”

  Claire scowled. “My last boss was an idiot. You’re smarter than this.” She thrust a piece of paper at BeBe. On it were several notations preceded by dollar signs. “I went back and dug out all your cancelled checks. In the past eight months alone, you’ve given Ruiz almost one and a half million dollars for his charity.”

  BeBe’s amusement turned to a simmer. “This is the last time I’m going to remind you that this is my business.”

  Claire took back the paper. “It’s just not right. You work so hard …”

  “So does Ruiz. His designs have made us hugely successful. Don’t forget that.”

  “He’s an artist, that’s all. Artists are a dime a dozen. And there are about a thousand out there who would do as good a job, if not better, for a hell of a lot less money.”

  “Just because you’ve had a couple of bad relationships doesn’t mean all men are out to get us.”

  Claire stared at BeBe. “I’m only trying to help. You are more than my boss. You are my friend. And I think he’s using the hell out of you.” She turned and stomped out of the office.

  BeBe watched Claire go and wondered who had hurt her so badly that the young woman could trust no one. She wondered if Claire hated Ruiz because he was Cuban like her long-lost ex-husband, because he was so much younger than BeBe, or just because he was a man.

  Then she thought about Father and figured if anyone should hate men, it should be her. But like a fool, she loved men all too well.

  Just then her office door opened again and Claire marched in carrying the oversized checkbook. She dropped it on BeBe’s desk. “Fire me if you want, but I will not write out one more check for that man. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

  “Now that my father is dead, there’s no reason why I can’t move the business up north,” BeBe said later that afternoon to Ruiz when he’d stopped by her office for the money. He accepted the check casually—too casually, BeBe thought, then disregarded it as paranoia brought on by Claire.

  He folded the check and slipped it into his pocket. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Get rid of you? Why would I do that?”

  “You tell me. Why do you want to move up north?”

  “Because my family is there.”

  “Well, my family is here.”

  BeBe had never considered a group of refugees to be his “family.” She sighed. “I’ve always hated the summers here, Ruiz. Now I’m free to suffer no more.”

  “If you sell the business you could travel all over the world to the best climates you want, whenever you want.”

  He meant, most probably, that he would go with her, travel on her money, live off her means. She ignored the tightness that had crept into her shoulders and reminded herself to forget about Claire. “Yes, well,” she said, “it was just a thought.”

  “Think about this instead.” He leaned down, kissed her, and took her breasts in his hands. “Tomorrow night I am going to drizzle sweet honey between your luscious legs. Then I am slowly going to lick it, until it is gone.”

  Ruiz might be a lot of things, BeBe knew, but he knew how to please her. She placed her hands on the cheeks of his butt. “Tomorrow night? Why not tonight?”

  He smiled. “Because I still have such incredible jet lag I would be no good to you.”

  BeBe had made the trip from Paris to Miami often enough to know what he meant. “Tomorrow night, then,” she said, giving his ass a firm squeeze. “You bring the honey. And you’d better bring a lot.”

  BeBe was surprised, therefore, when, around eight o’clock there was a loud knock on her door. Few people but Ruiz ever came to the house.

  But it wasn’t Ruiz, it was Claire. There were tears in her eyes and a large envelope in her hands.

  “These are pictures,” she said, “in case you don’t believe me.”

  BeBe wanted to ask what on earth she meant, but the words did not form. Perhaps she already knew what was coming next. “Ruiz Arroyo does have a black market connection with Cuban boat refugees,” Claire said. “But he does not give them money. He takes it from them. That, along with the money he sucks off you, is apparently how he is able to own a mansion in Boca Raton …” She paused and looked away from BeBe. “… where his wife and four children live in great style.”

  Chapter 17

  Out on the porch, he ate two pieces of peach pie, not because his mother wanted him to, but because if he couldn’t have sex he might as well have peach pie. Warm. With vanilla ice cream positioned just so to melt around the edges the way Gramps had taught him. It had been one of the few things on which Danny and Gramps had agreed.

  Tossing his napkin down on his plate, Danny smiled across the table at his nurse, who had devoured two pieces as well. “What do you say, Clayman?” he asked. “How ’bout a little surfing the Net?” It had been a waste of a day; Danny had taken two naps, but his depressed mother hadn’t noticed.

  Clay leaned back and rubbed his flat belly. “Got me a better idea, Danny. Let’s go for a drive.”

  Danny knew what Clay meant. He wanted him to drive the van. He wanted him to learn how to use the push-button brakes and the hand-squeezed gas pedal. The tranquilizing high of the peach pie slowly dissolved into leave-me-alone melancholia.

  “No.” He put the chair in reverse and maneuvered it across the gray-painted floorboards and into the house.

  Clay was right behind him. “Come on, Danny. Just once. You’ve got to deal with this …”

  The nerves that inched up Danny’s back—the ones he could feel—tingled. He wanted to shout, “You’re my nurse, not my goddamn shrink.” He wanted to tell Clay to get out of his life, and preferably take the van with him. He did not want to tell him that he was afraid. Afraid that once he gave in to such a proof of his condition that it would all be over, it would all be
too real. He wheeled toward the computer. “Maybe Phaedra is online tonight.”

  “Phaedra’s not real, Danny,” the yellow-haired man on his tail retorted. “You’ve got to get out. You’ve got to get a life.”

  Danny laughed and snapped on the computer. “Doing what? Playing wheelchair basketball? Besides, you’re no one to talk. You spend every day hanging out with a cripple.” He double-clicked on the icon for the World Wide Web. “When was the last time you got laid, anyway?”

  Clay sat in the chair beside Danny, stretched out his legs, and grinned. “None of your fucking business, mon.”

  Danny shifted his eyes from the screen to his nurse. “Are you queer?”

  “If you mean am I gay, that’s none of your business, either.”

  Danny shook his head and looked back at the screen. “My luck. My mother finds a queer to wash my dick.”

  You’ve got mail, the computer announced.

  He moved the mouse to the mailbox. The message was from rogerdodger.com. He started to open it, then stopped. Just because Clay washed his dick and probably liked it didn’t mean he should know everything about him. Or everything about the family, though Danny doubted that Clay would ever accept a million-dollar advance for a tell-all about the thrills and chills of the Adams/Barton family. What did Clay know, anyway, except maybe that Danny refused to drive the handicapped-equipped van? Any book of Clay’s would definitely not be a best-seller. Hell, it probably wouldn’t even get him a slot on Jerry Springer.

  He clicked on his Buddy List. Phaedra was there. He created an Instant Message and typed: I’ve just learned that my best friend is queer. What should I do?