“Scrapper?” Forrest asked.
“A fighter,” said Jule. “Not for fun, but—you know. Self-defense. Battling evil. Protecting Gotham City.”
“I can’t believe I never heard about you sending a girl to the hospital,” said Imogen.
“They kept it quiet. Tina didn’t want to talk about it because of what she did to me before I made her stop, you know? And it made Greenbriar look bad. Girls fighting. It was right before winter concert,” said Jule. “When all the parents come. They let me sing in it before they kicked me out. Remember? That Caraway girl had the solo.”
“Oh, yeah. Peyton Caraway.”
“We sang a Gershwin song.”
“And ‘Rudolph,’?” said Imogen. “We were way too old to sing ‘Rudolph.’ It was ridiculous.”
“You wore a blue velvet dress with darts down the front.”
Imogen put her hands over her eyes. “I can’t believe you remember that dress! My mother always made me wear stuff like that at the holidays, and we don’t even celebrate Christmas. Like she was dressing up an American Girl doll.”
Forrest poked Jule’s shoulder. “You must be starting college in the fall.”
“I finished high school early, actually. So I’ve been a year already.”
“Where?”
“Stanford.”
“Do you know Ellie Thornberry?” Imogen asked. “She goes there.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Walker D’Angelo?” Forrest said. “He’s in graduate art history.”
“Forrest is done with college,” said Imogen. “But for me it was like the halls of effing hell, so I’m not going anymore.”
“You didn’t really try,” said Forrest.
“You sound like my dad.”
“Oh, pout pout.”
Immie put on her sunglasses. “Forrest’s writing a novel.”
“What kind of novel?” asked Jule.
“A little Samuel Beckett meets Hunter S. Thompson,” said Forrest. “And I’m a big fan of Pynchon, so he’s an influence.”
“Good luck with that,” said Jule.
“Ooh, you are a scrapper,” said Forrest. “I kind of like her, you know, Imogen?”
“He likes ornery women,” said Imogen. “It’s one of his few endearing qualities.”
“Do we like him?” Jule asked her.
“We tolerate him for his good looks,” said Immie.
They declared themselves hungry and walked to the Aquinnah shops. The area had a cluster of snack stands. Forrest ordered three paper packets of french fries for them to share.
Immie smiled big at the guy behind the counter and said, “You’re going to laugh at me, but I need like four slices of lemon for the Snapple. I’m crazy for lemon. Can you do that for me?”
He said, “Lemon?”
“Four slices,” said Immie. She put her arms and elbows on the takeout counter and leaned forward, turning her face up to him.
“Of course,” he said.
“You’re laughing at my lemon,” she told him.
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re laughing on the inside.”
“No.” He had sliced the lemon by now and pushed it across the counter to her in a red-and-white paper cup.
“Thank you, then, for taking my lemon so seriously,” Imogen said. She picked up one of the pieces and stuck it in her mouth, biting to squeeze out some of the juice. She said through her lemon-rind mouth: “It is very important for lemons to get respect. It makes them feel valued.”
They sat at a picnic table with a view of the parking lot on one side and the sea on the other. People were flying kites on the other side of the parking lot. It was very windy. The picnic table was weathered gray and bumpy. Imogen ate one or two fries, and then took a banana out of her bag and ate it with a spoon.
“You’re here alone?” asked Immie. “On the Vineyard?”
Forrest had opened his copy of the New Yorker. His body was turned slightly away from them.
Jule nodded. “Yes. I left Stanford.” She told the story about the pervy coach and the loss of the scholarship. “I don’t want to go home. I don’t get along with my aunt.”
Immie leaned forward. “Is that who you live with?”
“No, I’m not dealing with family anymore.”
Forrest chuckled. “Neither is Imogen.”
“Yes, I am,” said Imogen.
“No, she’s not,” he said.
Jule looked Imogen in the eye. “We have that in common, then.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.” Immie tossed her banana peel in the trash. “Listen, come with us to the house. We can swim in the pool and you can stay for dinner. Some temporary people are coming over, new friends who are just on the island for a couple weeks. We’re going to grill steaks. It’s just in Menemsha. You won’t believe the house. It’s gargantuan.”
The answer was yes, but Jule hesitated.
Imogen sat down close to Jule and lined their feet up together. “Come on. It’ll be fun,” she coaxed. “I haven’t had any girl talk in ages.”
The Menemsha house had ceilings so high and windows so wide that everyday activities seemed to have extra room and light. Drinks seemed fizzier and colder than any drinks ever had before.
Jule, Forrest, and Immie swam in the pool and then used the outdoor shower. The temporary people came for dinner, but Jule could already tell she wasn’t one of them, from the way Imogen called her over to the grill to look at the steaks, and from the way she sat on the deck, curled up at Jule’s feet. Imogen told her she should stay overnight in one of the guest rooms, just as the other friends were piling into their car. They offered to drive Jule back to her hotel, down the now-dark island roads.
She declined.
Immie showed Jule to a room on the second floor. It had a huge bed and flowing white curtains—and, oddly, a small antique rocking horse and a collection of old weather vanes arranged on a large wooden desk. Jule slept the deep sleep that comes of long days in the sun.
—
The next morning, Forrest sulkily drove her to the hotel to collect her things. When Jule walked in again with her suitcase, she saw that Immie had put four vases of flowers in the room. Four. She also left books on the bedside table: Vanity Fair by Thackeray and Great Expectations by Dickens, plus The Insider’s Guide to Martha’s Vineyard.
Thus began a series of days that blurred one into the other. Immie’s people, temporary and literary friends of the week, acquired on the beach or at the flea market, cycled through the house. They swam in the pool and helped with cookouts and laughed hysterically, clutching their chests. They were uniformly young: good-looking, effete boys and equally good-looking, loud girls. Most of them were funny and nonathletic, chatty and rather alcoholic, college kids or art students. Beyond that, they were of many backgrounds and sexual orientations. Imogen was a New York City child: open-minded in a way Jule had seen only on television, apparently utterly confident in her own desirability as a friend and hostess.
Jule took a day or two to adjust but soon found herself comfortable. She charmed the temporary people with stories of Greenbriar, Stanford, and, to a lesser extent, Chicago. She argued with them cheerfully when they wanted to argue. She flirted with them and forgot their names and let them know that she’d forgotten their names, because the forgetting made them admire her and want her to remember. At first, she texted Patti Sokoloff pictures and wrote chatty, hopeful emails, but it wasn’t long before Jule ignored Patti just as Imogen did.
Immie made her feel wanted. The novel joy of it filled Jule’s days.
One day, when she’d been living there two weeks, Jule found herself alone for the first time. Forrest and Immie had gone on a lunch date. There was a new restaurant Immie wanted to try.
Jule ate leftovers in front of the television and then went upstairs. She stood at the door of Immie’s bedroom for a moment, looking in.
The bed was made. The table held books, a jar of hand cream, Forrest’s eyeglass case, and an empty charger. Jule stepped in and opened a perfume bottle, put some on, and rubbed her wrists together.