That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

She put her clothes in the wooden dresser, hearing the creaks as she worked its water-swollen drawers open and shut. She put cans of tuna fish and bags of dried beans on the empty shelves in the kitchen, and put eggs and milk and half-and-half into the small refrigerator, noting, with approval, the coffee maker and the knives. That night, she fell asleep easily and didn’t wake up until almost eight o’clock in the morning. It was the longest and the latest she’d slept in years. She lay in bed with the windows open, listening to the sound of the wind, the surf, the kids on the beach. It was the third weekend in September, the water still warm enough for swimming, families still squeezing out the last drops of summer with beach trips and picnics and ice-cream cones. She imagined she could even hear the foghorn blast of the Lewis Brothers ice-cream truck. Maybe I’ll stay, she thought.

But she’d need a job.

On Monday morning, she got up early and walked on the beach, then took an outdoor shower, and combed her hair before pulling it back into a ponytail. She pulled on loose-fitting cargo pants and a bulky T-shirt, slipped her Birkenstocks on her feet, and drove to Provincetown. She parked all the way out at the West End, where the houses and shops and restaurants yielded to the National Seashore, and walked down Commercial Street, past the restaurants and nightclubs, the art galleries and performance spaces, the sex shops and the fudge shops and bed-and-breakfasts and the bike shops and the bookstores.

At the end of the street she turned around, retracing her two-mile route, stopping in at every business where she’d seen a HELP WANTED sign in the window. In some cases, the signs had been put up to ensure a ready supply of employees during the summer months, and left up by mistake. “Come back in June,” the woman behind the counter at Angel Foods told her, and the man at Cabot’s Candy gestured at the crowded aisles and said, “Busy as it is in here right now, that’s how empty it’s going to be on Monday.” The Portuguese Bakery actually was hiring, but they needed an experienced line cook. The sex shop, with its assortment of leather harnesses to hold strap-on dildos in the window, was hiring, but Diana knew she couldn’t work there.

At the Alden Gallery, the older woman with cat-eye glasses and pink hair had looked her up and down, then asked, “Do you know anything about art?”

“Um,” Diana said. “I know it when I see it?”

The woman had smiled, not unkindly. “That’s pornography, hon,” she’d said.

Finally, Diana had worked her way down to the Abbey, an upscale restaurant with a small but lush courtyard that featured a tinkling fountain, a pair of wooden benches, flowering bushes and stands of tall grasses, and a statue resembling Rodin’s The Thinker (one of the few things she did remember from the art history class she’d taken). She’d never eaten there, but she remembered Dr. Levy mentioning it as one of the places she and her husband visited for date night at least once every summer. She sat on the bench for a minute to rest her feet and peruse the menu. Tuna sushi tempura (eighteen dollars for an appetizer). Almond-crusted cod with a mandarin-citrus beurre blanc (twenty-eight dollars) and butter-poached lobster (market price). The list of cocktails and special martinis ran two pages, and when she walked up the curved stone steps and stepped into the dining room, the views of the bay were gorgeous.

“Help you?” asked the young man behind the host stand. He had pale blue eyes, and a willowy, long-limbed body. He wore white chinos and a blue linen shirt the same shade as his eyes. A red bandana was tied jauntily around his neck, setting off the translucence of his pale white skin. Beside him, Diana felt large, and drab, and clumsy.

“The sign in the window says you’re hiring?”

“I’ll get Reese.” The boy turned on his heel and went gliding through the dining room. A moment later, he was back with one of the first nonwhite people Diana had seen on the Cape. This man had medium-brown skin, a bald head, and a bushy white beard, gold-rimmed glasses, and a friendly smile.

“Hello, my dear. I’m Reese Jenkins. I run this asylum.” He offered her his hand, which was warm and so large it made her own hand disappear. “And yes, because I can feel you wondering, I do play Santa at the Police Athletic League party every year. In Provincetown, Santa’s a black man.” He beamed at her, and the beautiful, willowy boy and turned his eyes toward the heavens with an expression suggesting he’d heard the line many times before.

“Now!” said Reese. “What brings you here?” When he cocked his head, gold glasses twinkling, she was tempted to tell him what she wanted for Christmas, and then, when she opened her mouth, she realized that he’d already given her a gift. She could choose a different name, any name she’d ever wanted, and that’s what he would call her. That girl who’d been hurt, who’d been left on the beach like trash, whose life had been derailed—she didn’t have to be her anymore. Or, at least, she didn’t have to answer to her name.

So Diana smiled and gave him her hand. “My name is Dee Scalzi.” If she got the job, she’d have to give her real first name and social security number on the paperwork, but she could always say that Dee was a nickname.

Reese shook her hand. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

She was. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, or stopped for a snack during her trek along Commercial Street. She was ravenous, and footsore, too, but she had just ten dollars in her pocket. The only thing she would have been able to purchase at the Abbey were the oysters, at two dollars apiece.

“Could I have a glass of water?”

“Don’t