“Because it’s my house.”
“Then why is Lillian allowed?”
Ada looked at me shrewdly. “Because she’s not as easily cowed as you are.”
I shook my head. “We’re going to go get the umbrella and chairs. Unless you’d prefer a broom to sit on.”
“A chair will be lovely,” Ada said. She touched Dan’s arm as he turned to leave. “I meant it. You’d be a catch for a nice girl.”
I dragged Dan out the door.
We set Ada and Lillian up with chairs and the umbrella, both of them so covered from any amount of sunshine possibly getting near them that I began to wonder if perhaps they were actually vampires. It would certainly explain how Ada snuck around so easily.
Dan and I spread towels a little way from them so we could actually talk.
“This really is a little slice of heaven, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Avalon? Or the beach?”
“Both. We should come here until we’re as old as they are.” He gestured behind us.
“Are you planning our future again?”
He held up his hands in innocence. “Me? I didn’t say we’d be married or bring our kids. For all I know, we’re leaving our spouses to come here together.”
“How scandalous, Mr. Schwartz.”
He turned on his side to face me. “The rabbi would have a heart attack.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t when we crashed through that stained glass.”
Dan laughed. “Me too, to be honest.”
I leaned up on an elbow. “Do they know you’re here this weekend?”
He hesitated. “They don’t.”
“And why is that?”
He sat up. “Because I figured they’d tell your parents.”
I considered him for a moment as he looked out at the ocean. If he wanted me back in New York, the quickest way to get me there would have been to make sure my parents knew we were talking. Daddy would have yanked me back to New York so fast I would have whiplash.
I opened my mouth to ask why he hadn’t, then, but he stood and offered me his hand. “Come on. Let’s go in the water.”
I took his hand and followed him into the surf, realizing I already knew the answer: he didn’t want to force me into anything.
That night, as I got into bed, well past midnight after our trip to Atlantic City, I thought back to that moment on the beach. I had never met a man whose sole interest in me wasn’t getting his own way. My father and my brother both wanted me to be the perfect reflection of the family, seen but not heard. It was a role I was destined to fail in. I didn’t have my mother’s stoicism or ability to let things roll off her back. And Rabbi Schwartz didn’t care if I wanted to marry his son; he just wanted to save face. Even Freddy cared about what I could do for him—putting off college so he could finish his school and then assuming I would marry him to save him from his mistake.
Not one of them had ever actually asked me what I wanted or respected the fact that I had a brain in my head. Until Dan.
I rolled onto my stomach, hugging my pillow. I still didn’t want to get married anytime soon, but I was happy Dan had come back into my life.
The following morning, we walked into town after breakfast, ducking into Hoy’s and chasing each other up and down the aisle with silly trinkets. He pretended to cry out in pain when I got him with a crab claw pincer toy, then pulled me to him, both of us laughing.
He bought me a bracelet with a starfish on it and a pair of goofy sunglasses for himself. “What will the rabbi think of those?” I asked as we left the store.
“I couldn’t care less,” he said. “If you like them, that’s what matters.”
“What’s going to happen when you tell him you’re not going to rabbinical school?”
Dan bit the inside of his cheek. “I’d imagine they’ll react much the way yours did to”—he gestured to the space between us—“everything. Except I don’t have an Ada.”
I didn’t know Rabbi Schwartz well. He was an imposing figure in my youth, never tolerating childish shenanigans in temple. And Dan had always seemed so well behaved. But his admission that he had put the fish in the fountain at the Catskills . . . “So becoming a rabbi is your version of marrying a rabbi’s son and being a dutiful wife and mother?”
He grinned. “Not sure how dutiful a mother I’d make.”
I elbowed him playfully. “You know what I mean.”
“I do. And yes. As the only son, that was—is—the expectation.”
“Your mother too?”
He hesitated. “I think it’s even more her dream. The only thing better than being a rabbi’s wife is being a rabbi’s mother.”
I looked at him for a long moment, wondering how I hadn’t seen the parallels of our circumstances. He didn’t want to wind up leading services any more than I wanted to be reading at a stove. And neither of us had a way to make our families understand.
“Did you always want to be a photojournalist?”
“No. But I always loved taking pictures. I got a Brownie box camera when I was eight.” He smiled. “Actually—maybe I did and just didn’t know the word for it yet. My father took a group of boys from the synagogue to a Yankees game that year. And I didn’t care at all about the score—I brought that camera, and I still have the pictures I got of Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. I caught DiMaggio just as he connected with the ball. It’s one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken to this day.”
I knew nothing about baseball and would have been more excited about a photograph of Mr. DiMaggio’s ex-wife, but I could have listened to Dan describe the whole game in detail. “You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”
He smiled. “What about you? How long have you wanted to write?”
No one had ever asked me that. And I thought for a while before I answered. “I think—I think it’s the same kind of thing. I used to make up stories. My bedroom was a tower that I was trapped in. But I didn’t want a prince to come rescue me. I wanted to rescue myself. And somewhere along the line, those stories became the way to do just that.”
“Two peas in a pod,” Dan said, taking my hand.
I stiffened slightly at the use of Ada’s expression to describe me and my mother. But he was right. I didn’t know how either of us would manage the dream-shattering disappointments we were about to lob at our families, but there was a sense of comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only one.
We stopped at the bakery for sticky buns and coffee on the way back to the house. Ada and Lillian were out when we returned, and the sky had turned gray and menacing, so we sat on the wicker sofa on the porch with our respective books. Dan was reading Ada’s copy of Hawaii, and I had turned my attention to Exodus, by Leon Uris, at Ada’s suggestion. By the time Ada and Lillian returned, just before the rain started to fall in huge drops that pelted the rocks and flowers, I was stretched out, my head pillowed on Dan’s legs as he read above me, a hand wandering down from time to time to wind itself in a lock of my hair.
“Well, don’t you two look cozy,” Ada said.
“Let them be,” Lillian warned.