The Lifeguards(57)

Annette watched his eyes narrow, calculating, but then his face went slack. He was out of ideas. He was out of bravado. He was scared.

“Speak to me,” said Annette.

“She was my girlfriend,” said Robert, so quietly Annette could scarcely hear. “At least I wanted her to be.” He looked straight at her, imploring. “Mom,” said Robert. “What am I going to do, Mom?”

“Robert,” said Annette, “did you hurt her?”

“No, Mom,” said Robert. “I promise, Mom! I wouldn’t ever hurt her!” He closed his eyes and curled into a ball, turning away. He began to sob, his shoulders shaking. He said something that sounded like “I can’t go to Midland.”

“What happened?” said Annette.

Robert didn’t answer.

Annette lay next to him and held him, remembering the evening his flag football team lost the championship in a brutal game. “I worked so hard,” he’d said then, curled away from her in this very same bed. “I worked so hard and we lost anyway.” Annette couldn’t read his emotions, couldn’t tell if he was grieving or guilty. What was wrong with her that she didn’t understand her son?

“It’s time, Mrs. Fontenot,” said Revello.

Louis, ashen faced, joined the detective at the doorway to Robert’s room. “Toby will meet us at the station,” he said.

Detective Revello read Robert his rights. Annette watched as her son was handcuffed and led to the staircase.

“Let me go with him!” she cried, but Louis held her back.





-9-


    Liza


ONE OF THE REASONS I’m good at being a ghostwriter is that I’ve been a chameleon for as long as I can remember. I become whatever people want me to be. It’s almost effortless now—sussing out what others want or need and then transforming. Who am I, truly? I have no idea.

As a girl in a resort town, I watched the summer tourists. I saw how the teenagers wore their hair long, tucked behind an ear. They wore sweatshirts from boarding schools, Birkenstock sandals. Their teeth were perfect and white, even though they all smoked American Spirit cigarettes.

I saw how my crooked teeth marked me as a townie; I learned to smile with my lips shut. I found a Pomfret boarding school sweatshirt at the restaurant lost and found, waited a few weeks, then wore it constantly. I practiced the heavy-lidded stare that made the girls look stoned even when they weren’t stoned, the way they stood with their chests caved in, à la Kate Moss and her “heroin chic.” They were wispy, ethereal, whereas my classmates at Falmouth High were loud and brash. The summer girls didn’t need anything, they didn’t strive, they didn’t shriek or laugh loudly.

I wanted to be one of them.

During the summer after my senior year at Falmouth High School, Patrick noticed me for the first time at a Jetty Beach bonfire, one of the parties where the locals mixed with the rich kids from Boston and New York City. He looked like a teenage John F. Kennedy with his jet-black hair. He drove an old BMW and lived (I knew because I’d followed him home once) in his parents’ enormous home on Juniper Point Road.

The first time we made love felt magical to me. Patrick was so calm, truly kind, and his home was everything I’d dreamed of. From his wide front porch, you could see the entire ocean. Inside, the home was cluttered with antique furniture made bright by sun streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows. The kitchen had been renovated—every appliance was top of the line, gleaming steel—but the layout was the same as when a whaler’s wife probably stood at the window waiting for her husband to return. Every room was carpeted with thick rugs, and I loved the furniture, reupholstered in expensive fabrics the color of the sea: pale green, deep blue.

Patrick’s mother was an amateur art dealer, so the paintings were rotated in and out of the house: sometimes, there would be a Jasper Johns above the low-slung velvet couch in the living room; sometimes, a more classic Cassatt. I knew little about art, but Patrick’s mother walked me through new acquisitions every time I came over, educating me. At the time, I thought she was grooming me to be Patrick’s bride. Looking back, I think she was just bored.

I was in love, with both Patrick and his lifestyle. I felt for the first time that there might be a safe place in the world for me.

But Patrick’s languor, I learned after I’d been sleeping with him for a few weeks, was due to heroin. In late July, Patrick overdosed at a party I wasn’t invited to and was sent to a fancy rehab in Vermont. He ran away from the rehab and showed up at our trailer, saying he wanted to marry me. My mother was thrilled, but I could see the writing on the wall: Patrick was high when he arrived, and I knew a future with him would not be the secure life I craved. But what were my options? I said yes.

We were engaged, Patrick living in my trailer with me, my mother, and Darla when I realized I was pregnant. Although (as I’ve said) many of my memories are absent or blurry, I can still remember with absolute clarity the night I woke next to Patrick and stared at a starless sky. All I’d known was that I needed to escape.





-10-


    Salvatore


AS SALVATORE DROVE ROBERT Fontenot to the station, he tried to meet the kid’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but Robert stared down at his lap and was silent.