The Summer House by Jean Stone Page A

head, as if he were really concentrating on the op-ed page he held in his hand.
    BeBe noticed that Roger, too, was more silent than usual. Roger wasn’t any happier than the rest of them that Daniel was leaving. Roger was—had always been—curiously content with position number two and perhaps even fearful to have the spotlight turned on him.
    Lizzie was the only one who unashamedly showed her feelings, crying a little each time Daniel said something meant to make her laugh. At least she seemed to have forgotten about Josh Miller, thank God.
    As for Daniel, well, he’d sat and stood so many times now that BeBe wanted to tell him to knock it off, but it didn’t seem appropriate this morning, even for her.
    She wondered if all families whose sons and brothers were going off to war were as off-centered as hers, poised in teeter-totter motion, waiting for one another to react.
    “What time are you leaving?” she asked.
    “On the two-fifteen out of Oak Bluffs.” Daniel stoodup. “Hey, Lizzie, grab the Polaroid. I want to go out on the lawn.”
    “Why?” Mother asked.
    “Just a little memorabilia.” He kissed Mother on the top of her head and smiled that smile that always helped him get away with everything, the lucky shit. He was, no doubt, wanting to find one last skunk, for the record.
    BeBe decided it was a good time to exit, maybe go down to the beach or into town, to be anywhere but here. She knew Daniel would understand. They had already said their good-byes last night.
    BeBe didn’t go to the beach. Instead, she decided it wasn’t every day her older brother deserted her, and it wasn’t as if Oak Bluffs was that far away. If the traffic was steady, she shouldn’t have to wait too long.
    Standing by the roadside, she stuck out her thumb, glad she’d worn her cutoff jeans this morning and the halter top that Father hated because he said it made her look like a whore.
    Liz stood by the window of her upstairs bedroom where the dormer met the eaves, where the tiny-flowered wallpaper went up the walls and across the slanted ceiling—a trick that Mother thought made the room seem larger. It did not seem larger now, but instead felt stuffy and confining.
    She held back the ball-fringed white Cape Cod curtain and watched Father steer the Buick from the driveway, onto the dirt road and toward the street, toward the ferry, toward Vietnam.
    She had tucked one of the Polaroids inside Daniel’sduffel bag for good luck: she’d told him that any man strong enough to tangle with Vineyard skunks should have no problem with the North Vietnamese.
    Then she had taken Father’s keys and slipped the other photo into the locked drawer of his desk, next to the pistol that Evelyn had given Daniel—where it couldn’t be damaged or lost.
    “Be good,” Liz had said into Daniel’s ear at the front door. What she’d really wanted to say was, “Be careful.”
    When the Buick was out of sight. Liz pulled her eyes from the driveway and turned, looking around her room. A queer, lonely scent hung in the air, as if the house knew that something, someone, was missing, that Daniel had gone and things would never be the same.
    The first to stop had been a decent guy in a pickup who was headed into Vineyard Haven. BeBe had him drop her off at the “Cross Island Parkway” as Daniel had always jokingly called the narrow road that cut across the Vineyard to Edgartown.
    Waiting for her next ride, BeBe realized she was already thinking of her brother in the past tense, as if he had already been shot at, blown up, or bombed, and was a statistic on the NBC Nightly News .
    Body count , she remembered hearing it called, just as another vehicle stopped—this time a station wagon driven by a small-eyed man who looked in want of something more than a passenger, and might be willing to pay if BeBe were so inclined, if she were that hard up.
    She was not. She waved him away and started walking again, wishing she had worn something other than