Slater's Beach, Massachusetts 2018

I am wearing aviator sunglasses. We are on the beach at your parents' house. You aren't looking at me There is tension. There is always an atmosphere of cool denial and now adding to your parents' multitude of secretes, taboos, and pretenses Jack and his wife have brought their own baggage. We have too. It makes me wonder if this is how family "trauma" - as you say- is passed on from on: one generation an apprentice as a children amateur during adolescence, and an expert at the family legacy by adulthood. People say Life is Simple in childhood. When it comes to your family, it's not. It's a resistance to a strong current. Jack relented, you didn't - at least not completely. There's an undertow though, we can't deny it. To relent as Jack has—as perhaps we are too with your affair—it's very easy to exist under these conditions.

The salty ocean air, cool breeze, private beach and the scent of lunch being prepared in the cottage, makes everything palatable, indeed desirable. It's always a conscious choice in this family. All this, as long was we endure your parents we get all of this. And, now I admit it, I want it for my children the indelible happy memories playing in the sand with cousins. The clam bakes, later bonfires. Just like us. I tell myself I will watch out and protect them. That you will too.

What is the evidence of this invisible malignancy? When I look up and you and your brother sitting on the deck, the perfect July weather. July 4th weekend festivities in the works, I think he is your father. At first glance I mistake jacks square jaw, casual yet imposing posture. The way he holds his gin and tonic, periodically looking across the bay through his ray bans. It's no mistake. In some ways that sweet teenager, optimistic and charming, has become a conservative traditionalist like your father. His hair cut short, cocktails on the deck, scotch before dinner. Slightly loose but a hint of the rigid masculine defensiveness of his paternal DNA. He's still your younger brother and you will always cast a shadow, something he will always resent. He scans the family dynamic the same way he does the blue grey water just beyond the shore. He looks at the horizon assesses the chance of a storm. I remember him as a teenager, growing into this vigilance yet succumbing to the pleasures of adolescence. Only half an eye on the changing atmosphere.

You are always the same around your family: suspicious, always keeping a chip in the game. As if to keep everyone on their toes. When will Edward call the bluffs? When will he expose this whole damn lie? This includes your controlling mother's saccharine laden insults directed almost evenly between us. Obvious in her vacillating affection: the contrast between her treatment of Jack and Jane and us. Why the hell did we start coming back here to Slater' s Beach? I know why. The kids. We cannot deny them the cherished memories of childhood on this beach. As I've said, Edward I believe I am strong enough to protect them. They won't be pulled out by the current, they won't end up bloated and scarred. They won't end up in the ocean, as I did, without any recollection of my violation.

You and Jack are drinking, seem to be enjoying conversation. I stare at you hidden by my sunglasses, pretending I'm not watching you. I rest my chin on my hand. I am laying on my stomach, a copy of His Favorites, Kate Walbert. I suppose it's no coincidence that I'm reading about trauma. All my beach reads this summer are. [add books]

I watch you. Just you Edward. I am so spellbound by you always and honestly I feel safe with you here to protect me from your family. I feel validated and in communion with you. We both are scapegoated and you are the guard, they all know it. You don't have to exercise any power at all. You physically overpowered and beat your father. That secret is buried too. If they really hated you-or at least for any legitimate reason- they would excommunicate you. They can't though can they? Because if they admit what you did to your father that night, yes to protect me but maybe also to finally take your own power, then they would have to admit all of it. So instead, the contempt seethes but I think now, looking at your cotton shirt flapping in the wind when the gusts pick up and the waves rise before crashing. I think...they are afraid of you Edward. I smile in your direction, you don't see me but I like the buoyancy of this power.

Still, the weight of the problems are obvious in your marriages. This has offered a temporary bridge between the two of you I think. A connection. Jack is leaving Jane -the fact that Jack and I have privately discussed this over lunches, texts, and calls -it would be obvious—your mother has been a mother hen, Jane nearly always in hushed conversation, then the spontaneous hug as she breaks down in tears.

Certainly there is sympathy to be had for Jane. It's devastating when your husband leaves you—especially with 2 children. Most especially when your ivy league fairy tale and all the wealth and privilege that comes with it has crumbled. It doesn't matter that he hasn't had sex with Jane in a year. It doesn't matter that he can't stand Jane and that she was a rebound lapses in judgement. Jack had been madly in love with an artist and model from California. When he proposed she abruptly left him. Then there was Jane.

There is pity to be had, but I have no sympathy - - I find them both so annoying and their display for all of our benefit. She hardly speaks to me—Jane that is—teary eyes as she looks in flickering glances across the dinner table, as we pass int he hallway, and God as we pose for the annual family photograph and we are forced to stand beside each other in front of our husbands, where the wives stand, a hand on our shoulder or waist, property. Your mother calls it the annual "portrait" of the gang" when she speaks with her friends on the phone or at one of her cocktail parties. She laughs throwing her head back "herding cats." But, really it' not herding cats at all. It is a psychological test, one where you place the blocks int he right order. Visual spacial. psychological. It's easiest to be with your family when the rules are rigid. It's the nights when there is too much scotch or when your mother is crying behind her closed bedroom door -those rare genuine moments- on the phone with your father, returning to the main house blinking the Visene and dabbing the side of her eye with her finger. It's on those rare moments that I think there may be some hope that she will rise up and become a mother. But, she doesn't. She never does. I let out a breath open my book but didn't look down, I keep my eyes on you. What I am trying to understand, Edward is whether your infidelity is the expression of this DNA.

I stretch my arms up over my head and let out a long breath. It's hard to breath. There you are, the sun is hot and your face is shaded by the visor of your baseball cap. We have been making progress , trusting each other again. But here with your parents, you are a stranger to me Edward.

Jack gets up, stands, and stretches. He start down the wood walk way the short distance to the house. He stops and looks in my direction, down below on the beach. What a scene. Me laying on the blanket, your mom playing with Maddy while staying intensely engaged in intimate conversation with Jane—over Jack, I'm sure. In this way she's warning your brother. Don't leave Jane. Don't leave Jane or maybe he will be rejected, emotionally estranged just like us. But, Jack will leave Jane. She's an elitist bitch. Jane with her short brown hair, still a barrette on either side, never a shade of lipstick darker than the lightest coral. Thin as a rail and sporting JCrew outfits out here on the beach. Otherwise her wardrobe is limited to boutique and designer quality purchased on her "shopping excursions" with your mother. Your brother happily obliging them day trips in his Cessna for a day in New York City.

Jack gives me a slight wave which causes your mother and Jane to pause and look up. I notice Maddy imitates their gesture. I wonder if this is a dose of poison. Your mother can't believe her eyes. Jane looks down. It's all a sick projection and I hate it. I literally have done nothing wrong but now there is the suggestion that I have. Jack makes it worse.

"Hey Annie, you want to go to the store with me?"

You normalize things. You turn and look at him then me. "do you need something Annie? I can ride with Jack and get it for you?"

"Yes. I asked Jack to get some more wine. I wanted to pick it out." I have no idea why I lied like this, maybe I was starting to savor the unease Jack's overt affection for me is causing. Maybe he is too.

"Well, I know what you like."

His mother's unspoken admonishment was too much for him. "Come with me older, sage brother—educate me on the nuances of being a writer."

"Don't be an asshole." You are half affectionate.
I lift my glasses so Jack can see my eyes—so he can read me. "You are being kind of mean, Jack."

"hmmm." He says and smiled. What a show. Now the three of us are in on it. I think showing our hand. We see you, Carol. We see your performance. Jane's self pity. We see this broken family.

I slip my sun glasses back down over my eyes, sliding back down into the beach blanket. The sun warming my legs, a tan appearing. I feel all right - I don't' feel depressed-

After you leave, I close my eyes in a dreamy-almost hallucinatory state- not my mental illness, but the sun in the summer. It's always been this way, maybe it's dehydration but after a couple of hours laying in the head, so little breeze unless you are right on the shore where the waves crash—In this lucid dream maddy and your mother in the background making up songs and stories and digging in the sand. I can hear Jack babbling contentedly and I know he's shaded by the expensive baby beach crib your mother had bouht. I think back to the one time you really noticed me whenI was your brother's teenage girlfrind. I like this partiular memory because it is so curious and has never found a place in the rational sequence of our love affari.

I see Carol's face—your mother. How it turned. She loved me with Jack. Three years. The beach, a pretty girl with sandy blonde hair that grew lighter in the sun. The deck, Carol and me Hats, sunglasses, trading novels. Do you know what I read that last summer? The Hours. Weak margaritas, salted... turning pages, finally reading passages to one another. That started the momentum. All of Wolf's writing...then poetry—why did we choose Edna Vincent Millay? She wanted a daughter. Carol. She got me but not that same girl.

You watched, but I don't think it was with envy or desire. You watched me to watch me. You were -are-a stranger in your family. To your mother - decider of reality- Jack was the prince. Jack was the charming kind person—He still is.

You—your mother had confided in me when I was with Jack. When you came and left, books—never a girl. But we found out later there were girls, there were lovers-Yes. I would see you were a completely different person at the university.

Our paths crossed at the beach house, at your family home on "the farm" Outside of Boston. The farm. Why do you all call it that? I guess I know why. All the acreage. But the house, it's anything but a farm house. It's an estate and your mother says every time we're there—ten years now—"it's not the largest house in Weston but I think the land is the loveliest. It's not like it's not one of the largest is the obvious irony. One of the remodels —early in my relationship with Jack—I'd followed your mom around, so enamored and adoring of her and her taste. She was re-designing and decorating the family room with the wood-burning fireplace. She'd had a bluestone patio put in and replay the glass doors out to the view of the rustic stone walls and forest outdoors. I have to admit this experience with your mom left an impression on me. It's very likely the reason I'd studied architecture and design.

Back then, you'd entered rooms with Jack and I playing scrabble, my hair dangling down over the board, I was in deep concentration. You'd visit not as infrequently as your father—but infrequently none the less. It was a big show with Mr. Clark was there but you were less attended to. So often I'd pass the library or one of the bedrooms and you'd be there, binder or laptop in front of you, never looking up. Writing. At the beach, back before we knew each other, you were a little more casual-perhaps because school was out for summer. You were more casual and less intense-not less focused but less singularly engaged with your writing. You were also involved with the girls who worked at the house. Or at least you were on two occasions that I can

remember.

When the dog was hit—that one time. When the dog —poor beautiful retriever. Sweet dog, Karl. Karl Marx the black lab. Karl was Jack's really—the car, down the country road, not speeding or anything at all. And Karl never ventured that far down the gravel driveway and past the cow grates, You did it that day. Everyone left for the vet but for some reason Jack wanted me to wait for you, stay back and then join up with them at the vet.

You entered surprised. No so much the quiet but me sitting at the dining room table, drinking a tea. You entered and looked around.

"What happened?"

You asked. I didn't know you'd be my husband. I didn't know the years would unravel so quickly, that we'd construct an entirely new reality, obliterate that one—

I remember the spot where Karl died. I want to clear my mind. I am looking at the sun cast beautiful light on the trees and each farm I pass sends longing into my heart. I want to see Jack. That's all I want.

"Karl died." I uttered without realizing I didn't know if Karl had died or not—I corrected myself "I mean He's at the vet. He-Karl- was hit—"

"Jack's dog?" You were dressed the way you always did and do. kakis, a button down shirt. Loafers, a wool sweater. Your light brown hair off to one side. Your eyes locked on mine and I felt off balance. "where are they?"

"the vet—didn't I?"
"oh."

"Jack wanted me to wait for you—then we could go to the vet."
"He wants me to go?"
"He wanted me to tell you, then He thought you could drive me there."
"It's an hour away isn't it?"
I shrugged. "I don't know."

"are you ok?"

"Yes."
"did you see it?"
"the accident?"
"No. Jack did. He was crying. Karl died and Jack carried him to the truck. He had blood on his shirt."
"Karl died?"
"No. I don't know why I said that—"
"Why don't you call the vet? See if Jack still wants us to go?"

"Yes, that's a good idea."
"Here" you say. You're holding the phone out for me. There's something about you that's setting me off balance. I don't know if you know it but this was the first time I felt an intimacy with you. I could see our lives together in that moment.

I found the number and dialed. When the nurse finally got Jack to the phone, his voice was hoarse.

"They just put him down Annie."

I couldn't help but cry for him. For Karl.

"we're on our way." I whisper.
"No." Jack said. "no need sweetie. You just stay -I'll be home soon."
"are you all right?"

"I'll be all right. I love you."
"Love you" I whispered.

By the time I hung up you'd taken off your sweater. You stood looking at me. You'd been looking at me. "Hw died," I said.

You put your arms around me and desire rose up. I leaned in closer, cried for Jack, for Karl. You moved closer , held me, rubbed my hair. When I looked up at you, you kissed my forehead. "You'll be ok Annie."

I nodded and then recognized the intimacy. You did too but you didn't pull away. I hesitated and you touched my cheek. "you will" you smiled. I waited and you did too. Finally, as if it were entirely natural you leaned closer to me and kissed me. I kissed you back Edward. I don't know why we did that. A slight tear in the fabric of this life here with your family.

"Wow" I'd whispered and you laughed. Then we kissed again. You gently smoothed my hair back over my shoulder. "pretty, pretty girl." You whispered. It was a flash to "you" that I wouldn't see again until after the attack. I laughed then we drank a bottle of wine and played rummy. Gin rummy. You would have thought we'd be crazy with desire after that. You would have thought the card game would have been torture wanting to jump into bed together, rip our clothes off, have sex. But, it wasn't that way at all. Your family -the men- had no boundaries. I'm sure I wasn't the only object of attraction, but for those summers as a teenager I was. I never thought you were always attracted to me or secretly desiring me. It was just the circumstance. Being that close and the context of Karl's death. We were already in an embrace and so that was logical—according to your family rules.