“You said you had something to show me,” he said.
“Did I?” she said. Her hair was wild around her face, and she tried to secure it in a bun held together by what looked like a chopstick, but strands sprang free. She plucked the T-shirt away from her chest and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Do I? Maybe I do. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Sure,” he said, afraid to move. He watched her take two crystal glasses out of the cabinet and a bottle from the fridge. “Is that chardonnay?”
“It is,” she said. “Do you like chardonnay?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, good.” She nodded at the sofa. “Let’s sit down.”
Theo moved to the sofa. He tried to breathe, to relax. “I liked your dance.”
“Did you?” she said, in a way that made it sound like she couldn’t have cared less. He wished he had a word to describe how it made him feel. Well, aroused, it aroused him, but he couldn’t tell her that.
Antoinette handed him a glass of wine and he took a long swill. He looked at her books. Could she really have read them all? “I’m reading The Scarlet Letter,” he said. Then he remembered Hester Prynne and the A for adultery and he closed his eyes. Why had he said that?
“Let’s have a toast,” Antoinette said. “To your return.”
They clinked glasses. Theo took another swallow.
“Now, what was it I wanted to show you?” Antoinette said. “Oh, yes, it was something in the bathroom. Come with me.” She pulled him up by the hand.
The bathroom was huge and fancy with a green floor. Theo saw her toothbrush, her baking soda toothpaste, a pink disposable razor. One of her dark hairs curled on the rim of the sink. Theo tried not to look any further. Being in the bathroom with her embarrassed him.
Antoinette lifted a seashell off the back of the toilet and handed it to him. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s a shell,” Theo said. “A whelk shell.” It was white as a bone with a perfect crown, and the faintest hint of peach inside.
“You gave it to me,” she said.
“I did?”
“A million years ago. I took you and your mother to Tuckernuck Island, and you found that shell on the beach. Your mother asked you what you wanted to do with it, and without hesitating you marched through the sand and gave it to me. You were only three years old.”
“And you kept it?” he said.
“I hadn’t gotten a gift like that in a long time. Nor have I gotten one since.” She touched his lips and then she kissed him. She tasted smoky and sweet, and the word persimmon came to his mind, though he had never eaten a persimmon, or even seen one, for that matter.
They made love again, and Theo thought of his little boy self on the beach at Tuckernuck, handing the thing most precious to him at that moment to Antoinette, and in thinking about that he felt even more like a man.
He returned again the next day, and the next. At first it was as if his hour with Antoinette were pure fantasy, a visit to another planet where there were no rules, where nothing mattered except their attraction to each other. But then, as more days passed, the opposite became true, and Theo’s life at school and at home turned into the fantasy-a false life, a lie he was living until six o’clock came and he was driving along Polpis Road toward Antoinette’s house.
Baseball season ended. At the awards banquet, held upstairs at Arno’s, Theo was named “Outstanding Infielder.” His parents glowed with pride, and Theo walked to the front of the room as everyone applauded. He took the trophy from Coach Buford and saluted the crowd with two fingers, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was like he was watching himself, or wondering what Antoinette would be thinking if she were watching. He’d won an award at a stupid high school sports banquet where they’d eaten stuffed chicken breasts and ice cream sundaes. So what? He left his trophy on the table on purpose-it was too childish to take home-but his father noticed it and carried it out to the truck for him.
Theo took Gillian Bergey to the junior prom. Her parents belonged to Faraway Island Club, so that was where they ate-in the club dining room that smelled as damp and mildewy as the hull of a ship. They double-dated with Gillian’s friend Sara Poncheau and Sara’s date, a kid named Felipe from Marstons Mills. The rest of the people eating at Faraway Island were older, the age of Theo’s grandparents, and they smiled kindly at the prom couples. Theo sweated in the white dinner jacket he’d rented from Murray’s. Two months earlier, going to the prom with Gillian and eating at the Faraway Island Club had seemed like a good idea. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over.
During the shrimp cocktail, he asked, “Do you think this club has any black members?”
Felipe, who was Hispanic, said, “Shit, no, man! Don’t you see all these granddaddies looking at me like I’m the busboy?”
Theo nudged Gillian with one of the black plastic shoes that came with his rented tux. “What do you think?”
Gillian was a pale blonde whose skin looked translucent next to the electric blue satin of her dress. Two red circles surfaced on her cheeks. “I have no idea, Theo. I’m sure everyone is welcome.”
“I’m not sure,” Theo said. “I mean, look around. Everyone is white.”
“Everyone on Nantucket is white,” Gillian whispered. “Please don’t make an issue of it. I’ll be embarrassed.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” Theo said. He wondered how he had ever found Gillian attractive enough to have sex with. She was so pale you could see her veins. Theo pointed the tail of a shrimp at her. “And FYI, baby doll, not everyone on Nantucket is white.”
Theo danced with Gillian three times at the prom; then he drove her out to the post-party at Jetties Beach. She changed her clothes in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and that would have been the time to make his move-when she was out of her dress but not yet into her shorts and T-shirt-but Theo waited politely outside the Jeep, standing guard, wishing he smoked cigarettes, wishing that he was not at his prom at all, but with Antoinette instead. He took Gillian home without kissing her or feeling her up or anything. Gillian seemed disappointed by that and on Monday she told her girlfriends that he was a jerk, but Theo didn’t care. All he cared about were his afternoons with Antoinette.
In June, after school ended, Theo started his job at Island Airlines, and he fell into the habit of stopping by Antoinette’s on his way home. The only conceivable danger was his mother showing up unannounced. But at that time of day, she was busy with other things: chauffeuring one of the kids, making dinner. She did ask him once, “You’re not still hanging out at the Islander, are you, Theo? After work? You know I don’t like it.”
“Not the Islander,” Theo said. He had a foolproof answer all prepared. “I’ve been exploring the island. Looking at the architecture. I want to study architecture when I go to college, and I thought I might as well get a head start.” He pulled a book out of his backpack titled 300 Years of Nantucket Architecture’, he’d checked it out of the Atheneum with his sister Cassidy’s library card. “So I’ve been driving around, studying.”
His mother thought he was a wonder. She told his father about the book over dinner.
His father perked up when he heard the word architecture, but otherwise seemed distracted. He was busy, especially after he got Ting in June, and Theo understood his father would never notice if he disappeared for an hour each day.