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

word he could think of—Croissant! Escargot!—in an exaggerated French accent and demanding to know what was wrong with American food. Now her mom just called it chicken, or chicken stew, or, sometimes, that chicken you like.

“I’ll take a Scotch,” Pop-Pop said, before her mom had even asked what he wanted to drink. Her mom looked to her father for help, but Beatrice’s dad was already talking to his father about the baseball game the night before.

Beatrice saw Diana, standing by the staircase, watching the other guests. Diana’s expression was thoughtful, her dark eyes following her mom on her way to the coat closet. Beatrice wondered what Diana made of it all: their small suburban lives. She couldn’t imagine Diana carrying coats and fetching drinks. Probably, she had people who did that for her. An assistant. Maybe more than one.

Another knock on the door came. Lester bayed his basset-hound howl, alerting them to the presence of newcomers, and Beatrice went to welcome Uncle Danny and Uncle Jesse. Uncle Jesse was handsome as ever, with his white teeth and his glossy curls, but his smile looked strained. Uncle Danny, meanwhile, looked terrible. He’d always been round-faced and cheerful, like a Jewish Santa with a brown beard instead of a white one. Now his face looked baggy and droopy. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and gray in his beard. Beatrice gave him an extra-long hug, her heart already fluttering in her chest as she wondered if he was sick, and if the adults would tell her the truth. Already, she could hear Grandma Judy’s voice, high and nasal and anxious. “Danneleh, you look terrible! Are you eating? What’s going on?” and Uncle Jesse’s voice, lower and soothing, saying they’d been taking care of a baby, that the baby hadn’t slept, and neither had they.

Beatrice knew how the evening would go. First, the guests would spend a half hour or so in the living room, where her dad had laid a fire, nibbling nuts and olives and crackers. Evelyn and Grandma Judy would ask about her grades and her field hockey team (that was back in middle school, when she’d been forced to take a sport); her uncles would ask about her crafts. Pop-Pop would ask if she’d met any nice young men. All the adults would sneak sideways glances at her clothes and her hair, and Uncle Jesse’s would be the only look that was approving.

Then it would be time for dinner. At the table, Pop-Pop would talk about sports with—or, really, at—whoever would listen. Grandma Judy and Arnold would describe the latest trip they’d taken, and the next one they’d planned, while Evelyn would look envious, and Uncle Danny and Uncle Jesse, who’d also been all over the world, would offer tips, or stories of their own. Pop-Pop would look at Uncle Danny and Uncle Jesse with his lip curled when he thought no one was watching. A few years ago, Beatrice had noticed that he wouldn’t take food that either of them had passed or served him. When she’d asked her dad why, he’d looked startled, then said, “Older people have a lot of weird superstitions.” Then he’d pretended he had to make a phone call, and it wasn’t until she’d asked her cousin Scott, who’d said, “He thinks they’ll give him AIDS, probably,” and turned back to his video game, that she’d understood.

When everyone was finished, her mom, who’d probably barely even sat down and might not have eaten more than a few bites, would clear the table, with Evelyn and Grandma Judy’s help, and make coffee, and get the dishes started as whatever she’d made for dessert came to room temperature or warmed up in the oven. Uncle Danny and Uncle Jesse would help wash dishes, and Grandma Judy would keep them company in the kitchen while her dad and his father and Arnold adjourned to the den to watch TV. Coffee and dessert would be taken back in the living room. Her grandfather would tell them the same handful of jokes, her dad would look at his watch and say, “It’s getting late,” and everyone would get their coats and leave.

But this dinner party was different.

26 Diana

What do you do, dear?” Evelyn asked Diana, as they all took their seats in the living room.

Diana smiled the smile she’d practiced in the mirror as she’d gotten dressed that afternoon, in all that black. The cashmere sweater was lovely, one of the nicest things she owned, one of the few pieces that could successfully be worn by the woman she was and the one she was pretending to be, but everything else was Rent the Runway–provided, or a drag queen loaner, including the gold cuff. She’d applied her makeup carefully, coating her face with concealer and foundation, wishing she had an actual mask to wear, one that would keep her real feelings hidden when she saw, for the first time since that summer, the man who’d raped her, and the man who’d watched.

Hal Shoemaker looked much the same as he had on the Cape. Older now, with lines on his face and gray at the temples of his dark hair, but essentially unchanged, with a confidence that was almost cockiness, an attitude suggesting that it was the world’s job to lay its riches at his feet, and that the world had, for the most part, complied. He addressed his wife with the same hearty, almost condescending good humor with which he spoke to his daughter. When he’d kissed her cheek, Diana struggled to keep her hands loose at her sides when they wanted to curl into fists. She’d had to excuse herself to go to the powder room and run cold water over her wrists. She’d wanted to rinse her face, but knew she couldn’t risk ruining her makeup.

Daniel Rosen looked terrible. Stricken, almost ill, his face pale and jowly, his eyes haunted. She wondered what was behind that, if