Elin Hilderbrand

The Surfing Lesson

© 2013

If anything was going to change Margot’s mind about divorcing her husband, Drum, it was the presence of Hadley Axelram ahead of them in line at the Juice Bar on the third night of their Nantucket vacation. The day had been hot and sunny, with a high of 89 degrees, the second hottest August 18 on record. There were forty-five or fifty people packed into the front of the shop and snaking down Broad Street, creating a traffic hazard for the Jeeps and SUVs streaming off the late ferry. Margot’s attention was consumed with making sure her three children didn’t get hit by an overly excited driver, and so it was surprising that she even noticed Hadley Axelram, although for the past ten years Margot had experienced a personal barometric drop whenever the woman was nearby.

Storm approaching.

Hadley Axelram had dated Drum off and on for the three years before Margot met him. Hadley Axelram had a certain look-to Margot, it was the look of a twelve-year-old Thai boy-which Drum and certain other men found themselves powerless to resist. Hadley was five foot two and weighed ninety pounds. She had no chest and no ass; back in the days when Margot used to see her in a bikini, she had been startled by the sharp protruding bones of Hadley’s hips and rib cage. Hadley wore her dark hair in a pixie cut, which made her brown eyes look enormous and sad, like the eyes of an extraterrestrial stranded billions of miles from home. Hadley always wore a choker. Years ago it had been a black suede cord wrapped around a jade green stone that nestled in the hollow of Hadley’s neck. But now, the choker was caramel-colored leather embellished with recognizable gold hardware-Hermès. When Hadley reached up to idly finger her choker, Margot noticed that her nails-longer than anyone would expect on a person so obviously striving for androgyny-were painted the purplish-blue of Concord grapes.

Drum had spent much of those three on-again, off-again years competing for Hadley’s affection with his best friend, Colin O’Mara, who had been the second finest surfer on Nantucket, after Drum. Drum was as graceful and elegant as a person could be on a board. “Like watching fucking Baryshnikov,” Margot had once overheard a spectator on the beach say. Colin’s surfing, on the other hand, was all about brute strength and the relentless desire to outdo Drum.

The same dynamic had been true in their pursuit of Hadley Axelram.

“Look,” Margot said, nudging Drum and pointing ahead in the line with her chin. “There’s Hadley.”

Drum nodded once but said nothing, which meant he had already seen her.

Over the past ten years, Margot had pieced together the following facts: Hadley, who was not Thai but, rather, Indonesian-her grandparents were some kind of royalty in Jakarta-had spent the summer of 1999 drinking nightly at the Lobster Trap, where Drum worked as a bartender, until Drum asked her out. They fell in love-Hadley first, but Drum harder. That September, Hadley left Nantucket for graduate art-history studies in Florence. Her departure had stunned Drum and everyone else who assumed that Hadley was little more than a Lobster Trap brat and a surfing groupie. Drum felt like he had been shot in the chest (his words), but he put up an unaffected front. Ciao, he said to Hadley when he dropped her at the airport with her steamer trunk. Arrivederci. When Hadley returned to Nantucket the following summer and appeared at Drum’s cottage unannounced, Drum administered what he called a “hate fuck” and then showed her the door. And this was when Colin O’Mara stepped in. Supposedly with Drum’s “blessing,” Colin dated Hadley all summer, going so far as to let Hadley drive his beloved CJ5 all over the island and letting her live with him rent-free in his parents’ enormous summer home on Shawkemo Hills Road.

The line moved forward a bit. Margot and Drum and the kids crossed the threshold off the sidewalk into the actual ice cream shop, which smelled powerfully of vanilla and just-pressed waffle cones. The kids knew the rules: Once they were “in,” they were allowed to talk about what flavors, what sauces, what toppings, what kind of cone. Drum Jr. and Carson became absorbed by this, as did Drum Sr., who read the names of the flavors out loud to Ellie. Margot was free to scrutinize Hadley Axelram, who was four people over and two people ahead, one spot away from ordering.

Hadley had two children in her custody. One was a boy Drum Jr.’s age, ten, who had inherited Colin O’Mara’s Irish coloring-the strawberry hair, the freckles. The other child was twoish, younger than Ellie, young enough to be carried, and this child, also a boy, had dark hair and olive skin like Hadley. Margot wondered how Hadley could stand having the child straddling her hip in the close, crowded heat of the shop. She was a good mother, Margot supposed.

The first son was Colin’s, born only five months after Drum Jr., as though getting accidentally pregnant outside of wedlock had been a fad that year. Unlike Drum and Margot, Hadley and Colin had never married-her parents, who were apparently quite strict or religious, had forbidden it. They had stayed together for a couple of years and then split. Colin lived in Kauai now; he sent Drum and Margot cards at Christmas, pictures of himself on far-flung beaches or on the lips of volcanoes. In the last picture, there had been a Polynesian woman in a grass skirt at his side; it looked like he had snagged her from the luau at the Hilton.

These cards made Margot sad.

The second son, Margot knew, had been sired by an up-and-coming painter named Jan Jaap. In a victory of biology over history, his pale Dutch coloring had been colonized by Hadley’s Indonesian genes. Margot and Drum had unwittingly walked into one of Jan Jaap’s art openings in SoHo and, finding Hadley there, were treated to the love story. At that time, Hadley had been pregnant. She was one of those women who looked as though she had tucked a cantaloupe into her camisole.

That night had ended in a vile fight between Margot and Drum, as so often happened on nights where Hadley was involved. Drum had climbed into a cab and screeched back to the apartment alone, and Margot had stumbled into a Burmese restaurant and cried over her momos.

The painter, Jan Jaap, had never quite fulfilled his potential, Margot didn’t think. She wondered about the Hermès choker.

Drum Jr. declared that he wanted vanilla ice cream in a cake cone; he was overly cautious with his taste buds, afraid to try anything new, no matter how alluring his father made other choices sound.

“How about chocolate fudge caramel ripple, buddy?”

No. Drum Jr. would not be budged. Margot sighed. A twenty-two-minute wait for vanilla in a cake cone?

Carson went the opposite route. He asked for a waffle cup filled with a scoop of raspberry sherbet and a scoop of maple walnut, doused with hot fudge and topped with gummy worms. Margot admired his creativity even as she knew this would end in a stomachache, and possibly a cavity.

Ellie wanted a cup of mint chip with chocolate sauce and a squiggle of whipped cream. She would eat three bites, and Margot would be left with the rest, which meant Margot shouldn’t order.

Drum Sr. turned to Margot. “I’m going to have the pistachio.”

He was as predictable as their eldest child. Margot said, “Note the look of surprise on my face.”

That decided, there was nothing to do but wait. Margot eyed Hadley Axelram. The woman had inspired jealousy more insidious than Margot ever could have imagined. How many times had Margot told Drum that she knew he was still in love with Hadley? How many times had Margot ransacked Drum’s underwear drawer, where he kept photos from the summers of 1999 and 2000? These photos were mostly of Drum and Colin and Dred Richardson and the other guys who had surfed Cisco back then, but some of the group photos featured Hadley. Margot would stare at Hadley’s waifish, sexless figure and wonder what it was that had been so attractive. Then Margot admitted that there were certain women who possessed magic powers, they bewitched and captivated, they got in a man’s bloodstream like a virus that never died-and Hadley Axelram was one. Every time they had happened across Hadley in the past ten years, Drum got a look on his face like a kid who wanted a puppy.

But now that Margot’s reservoir of romantic feelings for Drum had run dry-and when she said dry, she meant DRY-she found herself excited, happy even, to have an unexpected encounter with Hadley Axelram. This might be just what Margot needed. Hadley Axelram’s presence at the Juice Bar might be seen as a miracle, a last lifeline. Jealousy as defibrillator.

From her spot a chess move away, Margot listened to Hadley Axelram order. Double scoop of butter pecan in a waffle cup with caramel sauce and crushed Heath bars for the older son, a kiddie cup of cookie dough for the younger son, and… pistachio in a waffle cone for Hadley.

Margot almost couldn’t believe it. But then she recalled that in the periods of their dating-not only the summer of 1999 on Nantucket, but also part of the summer of 2001 on Nantucket and briefly in the winter of 2002 in Aspen-Hadley had exerted enormous influence over Drum. She was the reason he got the tattoo of the god Ganesh on his hip, she was the reason he listened to Better Than Ezra, and apparently she was also the reason he always ordered pistachio ice cream. For all Margot knew, Drum and Hadley had come to the Juice Bar together times too numerous to count and had ordered pistachio ice cream together.

Margot wanted to care. She yearned to care.

Once Hadley had received her cones and cup, Margot beamed in her direction, her smile as bright as a searchlight.

Hadley turned, saw Margot and Drum, and her expression appeared to be one of genuine delight. Not to see Margot, of course, but to see Drum.

“Hey!” Hadley said. She had her hands full with her ice cream and the child’s ice cream and the child, and she had to twist and maneuver through the crowd toward Margot and Drum, which was not a path anyone else waiting in line wanted to clear for her.

Margot heard Drum mutter. “Oh, Jesus.”

Normally, it was Margot who would have said this. Years before they had bumped into Hadley at the art gallery, they had seen her at the Matterhorn, in Stowe, Vermont. She had been wearing a white cashmere sweater and jeans and long feather earrings. She had been drinking a beer at the bar, surrounded by men ten years her junior. Margot had spotted her first and said, “Oh, shit.” She and Drum had had both boys in tow, Carson was pitching a fit after having spent all day in the Kinderhut, and all Margot had wanted was a glass of wine. She was the one who had insisted they stop at the Matterhorn, but once Drum saw Hadley, Margot’s dream of a fun, relaxing après ski was ruined. Hadley had shrieked with joy upon seeing Drum, causing her other suitors to scatter. Margot had been left to deal with her recalcitrant and exhausted children while Hadley and Drum “caught up,” Drum with that insipid look on his face. Margot had been bitterly jealous then, her stomach roiling with concealed rage.

She wanted rage now. She wanted to feel something.

“Hey, Hadley!” Margot said. She bent in and kissed the woman’s tanned cheek. Soft as suede.

“Hey, guys!” Hadley said. “Hey, Drum!”

“Hey,” Drum said. He gave her half a wave.

Suddenly, it was their turn to order. No time for a reunion. Margot said to Hadley, “Why don’t you wait for us outside? We’d love to catch up!”

Hadley said, “Yes, of course!”

She scooted past Margot and Drum and the kids and Margot caught the scent of Hadley’s intoxicating perfume, a scent that had nearly caused her to vomit at the Matterhorn, and again at the art gallery. Did Drum smell it? She looked at him. His mouth was a grim line.

“What’s wrong?” Margot said.

Drum didn’t answer her. He was placing their order with the adorable fifteen-year-old server, who wore her hair in two Alpine braids like Heidi. When he was done, he said, “I don’t feel like dealing with Hadley Axelram tonight.”

“We aren’t ‘dealing’ with her,” Margot said. “We’re just going to say hello.”

“It always ends in disaster,” Drum said. He looked at her. He had gotten some nice sun on his face the past three days, and his eyes seemed very blue; he was getting the golden streak back in his hair that Margot had so loved when she first met him. He was such a great-looking guy. He was kind and sweet and a fabulous father and a doting husband. He was the best surfer she had ever seen, and maybe an even better skier. But she didn’t love him; that knowledge pierced her like a Chinese star in her gut. “You have to admit, it always ends in disaster when we see her.”

“Well, guess what?” Margot said. “It won’t tonight. I promise.”

Margot met Drum in the summer of 2001, eight days after his second breakup with Hadley. Hadley and Colin O’Mara had been “taking a break” that summer, and one late night at the Chicken Box, Hadley and Drum found themselves on the dance floor, stuck together like magnets. But by the end of July, Hadley had become frustrated with Drum, saying he didn’t make enough time for her, and she returned to Colin. Margot had been on Nantucket for just one week-the first week of August-whereas in the previous twenty-five-odd years of her life she had spent the entire summer on the island, at her family’s home on Orange Street. But that summer Margot had an internship at the executive search firm of Miller, Sawtooth, and a week was all she could finagle. She was lucky to get a week.

Margot had been lying on her towel at Cisco Beach, intent on finally getting some sun on her office-worker-white body, and she had whiled away the hot hours by watching Drum surf. Margot’s brother Nick said he knew Drum casually from “around,”-which meant, Margot assumed, that Nick and Drum drank at the same bars and hit on the same women-and Nick introduced them when Drum came in off the water. Margot had been surprised at how tall and solid Drum was up close; on his board, he crouched and bent and twisted like a jockey riding a temperamental horse. Up close, Margot could see his eyes were silvery blue, the color of water, and he had sunbleached streaks in his hair. He was as handsome as Apollo the sun god, but Margot refused to let herself worship. She was twenty-five years old, halfway through her MBA at Columbia. She was a serious person, beyond gushing over a surfer.

Who wanted to be treated to their love story? Drum had asked Margot out pretty much on the spot. “Do you have plans tonight?” And because Margot did not have plans and because the other girls on the beach were looking at Drum covetously, Margot said no. She had always had a competitive streak.

Margot and Drum had gone out every remaining night of her vacation-drives up the beach in his Jeep to see the sunset, dinner at the Blue Bistro and the Galley and Le Languedoc (where Drum always paid with a wad of tens and fives, his tips from bartending). They went to one movie (Ocean’s Eleven) and had lots of very exciting sex in the down-at-the-heels cottage Drum rented on Hooper Farm Road. When Margot left at the end of the week, Drum had taken her number and her address in the city, and she thought, I will never see this guy again.

A part of her had also thought-admit it!-I won’t go back to New York. I’ll quit my internship. I’ll stay here the rest of the month and watch Drum surf. She had taken this a step further, thinking, I won’t go back to business school. I’ll go to Aspen with Drum. I’ll get a ski pass. I’ll work as a barista.

But she had gone back to New York. Drum had stopped to see her on his way to Aspen. He had showed up wearing jeans and a wrinkled white linen shirt and flip-flops; when they made love, Margot noted he still had sand in the crevices of his ears. But during that twenty-four-hour visit, Margot learned other things about him: Drum’s father was an executive with Sony, and Drum had grown up jetting back and forth between New York and Tokyo. He had attended the American International School in Japan until tenth grade, and then he finished high school at Dalton. He could negotiate the subway better than Margot could. He took her to a sushi place in the East Village where the chef came out from the back and conversed with Drum in Japanese. Margot was stunned. Drum had instantly become a different person; he had become a wonder. But no sooner did Margot have this revelation than he was gone to the mountains.

There had been phone calls that winter, drunk, late-night phone calls, most often initiated by Margot, who would sometimes cry. Sometimes she called and Drum didn’t answer. He was asleep. Or he wasn’t home.

The following summer, Margot had a bona fide job offer from Miller, Sawtooth, but in a brilliant bit of negotiating, she didn’t start working until September 15. She would have all summer free to spend on Nantucket. She would have all summer with Drum.

By Labor Day weekend, she was pregnant.

Hadley was standing right outside the door when they exited. Her child’s face was smeared with ice cream and the older son grimaced at his mother and rolled his eyes. He looked so much like Colin O’Mara at that moment that Margot wanted to hug him.

There were repeat greetings. Margot kissed Hadley again, Drum kissed Hadley, the children were introduced.

Hadley said, “Wow, I can’t believe I bumped into you. I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

This was obviously a statement directed at Drum. Hadley would never be thinking of Margot all day, or even for a second.

“We always come the last two weeks of August,” Margot said. “We like to save it for the very end.”

“I’ve been here all summer,” Hadley said. She set the child down, which caused him to whimper, but she ignored this. “I left Jan eighteen months ago. I was dating a private equity guy, and that has sort of ended as well, although he’s letting us use his house all summer. It’s on the water in Monomoy.”

Margot nodded. It wasn’t surprising that Hadley had left Jan Jaap, nor was it surprising that she had traded up from Starving Artist to Private Equity Guy. What set Margot’s mind reeling was that Private Equity Guy would allow Hadley and her children to stay in his waterfront house despite the fact that their relationship had “sort of ended.” This was the kind of thing that only happened to Hadley Axelram.

“Nice!” Margot said. She took quick stock of her children-all consumed with the business of eating ice cream. “So, you were thinking about Drum today?”

Drum made a noise of exasperation, which Margot ignored.

Hadley raised her big brown eyes to Drum. Here it was, Margot thought, the Kill. Drum had never been able to resist that look from Hadley. It turned him to vapor. He could deny it, but Margot knew better.

But not today. Today, Drum was staring at Hadley like she was a skunked beer, or an invoice for back taxes from the IRS.

“Curtis really wants to take surfing lessons,” Hadley said. She nudged her older son, Curtis, who was staring at his untied Osiris sneakers. “And I found myself wishing that you were around, because who better to learn from than Drummond Bain?”

“No,” Drum said.

And at the same time, Margot said, “Of course!”

There was a look of confusion from Hadley, then an awkward silence, which was broken when the little guy started to really wail and Hadley bent to pick him up.

“I don’t give surfing lessons,” Drum said.

“Sure you do!” Margot said. For the past three days, Drum Sr. had tried to coax Drum Jr. out to the waves. Drum Jr. had no interest in surfing. He would fool around in the water with his brother, and then when he tired of that, he would get his lacrosse stick and go in search of other kids to play catch with.

“I really don’t,” Drum said.

“All right,” Hadley said. “Okay.”

“You could, though,” Margot said. “You could give Curtis a surfing lesson. We don’t have anything going on the rest of the week. You could meet him anytime. You could meet him tomorrow morning.”

Drum hadn’t touched his pistachio ice cream. It was starting to drip. He smiled at Curtis. “There’s a guy who hangs out down at Cisco Beach named Elvis. He gives lessons.”

Hadley shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not going to work.”

“Oh,” Drum said. “Right.”

Margot looked between Hadley and Drum. She had never heard of anyone named Elvis, although he was clearly a holdover from their surfing days. Maybe he was one of the people in the group photos in Drum’s underwear drawer. Maybe Hadley had slept with Elvis. Margot would have to ask Drum later.

Curtis kicked a pebble and it ricocheted off the side of the building. “That’s okay,” he said. “My dad said he’d teach me when I go to Hawaii in February.”

Drum smiled at the kid. “Your dad is a great surfer.”

Hadley made a face. She said, “February is fine, but it’s six months away. I thought it would be nice if Curtis could learn the basics now. He’s ready.”

“I can wait,” Curtis said.

Drum coughed and stared at the melting ice cream in his hand as though he couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. To Margot he said, “We have nothing tomorrow morning?”

“My dad is taking the kids out for breakfast,” Margot said. “And I’m going running. But you are as free as a bird.”

“I’ll meet you at seven o’clock,” Drum said to Curtis. “At the antenna. You have a board, or I should bring one of mine for you?”

“I have a board,” Curtis said.

“Oh, thank you!” Hadley said. “This is so great!”

“Great!” Margot said.

When she told Drum about the pregnancy, Margot had been certain he would insist on terminating. Despite their luminous summer together, their lives were about to go in different directions. Drum was heading back to Aspen to ski, and then in late March he was flying to Sri Lanka to surf. Margot had her job waiting in the city. She was going to wear a suit every day and get an expense account. The managing partner of Miller, Sawtooth, Harry Fry, loved Margot. He saw something in her-a tenaciousness, a natural instinct-that made him believe she would succeed. His faith in her would be shattered if he knew she had allowed herself to become accidentally pregnant at the age of twenty-five. Go home, he would say. Spend your days drinking wine out of sippy cups with the other mommies at the Bleecker Street playground. Or hire a nanny and do charity work. Harry Fry would never have hired Margot if he’d known this was going to happen.

But instead of giving Margot the money for an abortion, Drum had taken Margot to dinner at the Blue Bistro, where the waiter served her a diamond ring embedded in an Island Creek oyster. When Margot saw the ring, she ran to the ladies’ room to vomit. Once she returned to the table, Drum had cleaned off the ring; it was perched in its velvet box where it belonged.

He said, “I want you to marry me.”

She said, “Aren’t you supposed to ask?”

He said, “Margot Carmichael, will you marry me?”

Margot knew the sane answer was no. It would never work. Neither a baby nor a husband figured into her plans-not now, possibly not ever. But there was the specter of those drunken, late-night phone calls, a loneliness so profound that Margot had cried, despite living in a city of eight million people. She thought, Drummond Bain, King of the South Shore, wants to marry me. As it turned out, her heart was only steel-plated on three sides. As it turned out, her body was holding on to the cluster of cells growing inside her.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” Drum said. “Aren’t you supposed to say yes or no?”

“Yes,” Margot said.

When Margot was a junior in college, she had “fallen in love” with a graduate teaching assistant in her philosophy course, a Canadian named Reese.

Reese had not reciprocated Margot’s love. Reese had also, thankfully, not seen fit to use Margot for sex and walk away. Reese had been a good guy. When Margot made her feelings known to him one night in the reserve reading room over a confusing passage of Hume, Reese had held her chin and told her the following words about love.

“Nobody knows where it comes from,” he said. “And nobody knows where it goes.”

Where does it go? Margot wondered.

That night, after the kids were in bed and Margot and Drum were sharing the bathroom, washing the stickiness from their hands, Margot said, “Who’s Elvis?”

Drum said, “This guy.”

Margot waited him out. He knew that answer wasn’t close to sufficient.

Drum said, “He was always cool with me. He developed a little bit of an obsession with Hadley, I guess. Called her all the time, sometimes didn’t say anything, just breathed into the phone. Drove his pickup back and forth in front of her rental house, showed up at the gallery where she worked, that kind of thing.”

“And this was…? Before you? After you? During Colin?”

“Oh, God,” Drum said. “Who can remember?”

The winter of the drunken late-night phone calls-which was the winter after the summer that Margot and Drum had first dated, which was also the summer that Hadley had taken a break from Colin, reunited with Drum, then left Drum and returned to Colin-Hadley traveled out to Aspen on the sly. She showed up at the Aspen Club Lodge, where Drum was working the night desk in exchange for a season’s ski pass, and they shacked up together for a week, until Colin appeared, banging on the door, claiming to have a gun. Drum said he knew Colin didn’t have a gun, he knew Colin was just sad, and desperate at the thought of losing Hadley, and so Drum opened the door and let Colin in. Margot imagined some kind of hairy scene where Drum and Colin battled over Hadley, but Drum said it was low drama. Drum explained to Colin that he and Hadley had had some unfinished emotional business, but that it had been brought to a close. Hadley was free to go with Colin if that was what she wanted. Drum was going to pursue this other girl he’d met, a girl who lived in New York.

Drum and Hadley, Hadley and Colin, Drum and Margot, Drum and Hadley, Hadley and Colin, Hadley and Jan Jaap, Colin in Hawaii hiking the ridges of active volcanoes and drinking mai tais with the descendants of Princess Kaiulani, Hadley and the Private Equity Guy who shopped for her at Hermès, Margot who had spent the past eighteen months wondering where love went when it left, where could she find it, how could she get it back?

In bed, she said, “I’m glad you’re giving Curtis a surfing lesson tomorrow.”

Drum said, “I’m not.”

Their life in New York had been enviable from the outside, she supposed. Drum’s parents had bought them an apartment on East Seventy-Third Street, a spacious three-bedroom in a prewar building with good water pressure and crown molding and a responsive superintendent. Margot worked at Miller, Sawtooth, and Drum cared for the kids practically the same day she popped them out. Margot expressed milk in her office between meetings, and Drum would wait in the lobby of her building for Margot’s assistant to run the bottles down to him. Drum changed the diapers, he hand-puréed baby food, he took the boys to the playground and to their baby classes in Spanish and classical music. He did the shopping and all of the cooking and the laundry. On his downtime, he smoked weed and watched Warren Miller films. Once the kids were in school, he took up running; he dropped fifteen pounds. He spent time on the Internet planning their vacations to Costa Rica and Park City to surf and ski. On these vacations, Margot cared for the kids while Drum did his thing-eight to ten hours a day on the water or the slopes. Margot wanted to complain, but she knew that, for Drum, this was working. It was professional fulfillment.

Meanwhile, Margot toiled and strove and accomplished at Miller, Sawtooth. She appreciated the foot rubs and the glass of chardonnay when she got home, and the hot mushroom strudel with arugula salad at her place at the dinner table, but sometimes she looked at Drum and thought, Why are you slaving over me this way? Why don’t you get something for yourself?

They became friends with a couple named Teresa and Avery Benedict, the parents of Maurice, who was Drum Jr.’s best buddy at preschool. Teresa and Drum Sr. had forged the friendship; they started going for coffee after dropping off the kids. Sometimes they hung out together all morning-shopping, going for lunch. Teresa bought Drum Sr. a gift subscription to Bon Appétit; the two of them shared recipes. The two of them-Margot was sure-complained about their spouses and the obscene hours they worked and how grouchy they were when they came home. Margot wondered if Teresa and Drum Sr. were having an affair. And then one day she realized she wanted them to have an affair-she wanted them to drop the kids off at school and go back to one apartment or the other and fuck until they were sweaty and seeing stars.

Margot once said, “So, what do you think of Teresa?”

Drum said, “What do you mean, what do I think?”

“You like her, right?”

“Yes, I like her. Of course I like her. She’s cool.”

“Do you ever…”

“Do I ever what, Margot?”

“Do you ever…”

“No,” Drum said. “I don’t.”

There were other tense conversations, whispered late at night, after the boys were asleep.

Margot said: It’s exhausting, you know, being the only one who brings home a paycheck.

Drum said: You don’t have to work as hard as you do, Margot. The apartment is paid for. You could make half of what you do and we’d be fine.

This infuriated Margot, mostly because he was correct.

Margot said: I like working hard. I love my job. I want to make partner.

Drum said: Okay, so then why are you complaining?

Why was she complaining? Drum was taking care of the home front so she didn’t have to. He was a classic 1950s housewife, but better because he was handsome and sexy and everyone loved him. He wore flip-flops and Ron Jon T-shirts, even in December. Margot wasn’t sure what the problem was. If pressed, she might say it was Drum’s lack of ambition. He seemed to expect nothing from his days but smiles on his kids’ faces and a good dinner. Wasn’t a grown man, a man thirty-five and then forty, supposed to want more?

She said to him one night, “It’s like you don’t have dreams.”

“Dreams?” he said.

Then Margot’s mother, Beth Carmichael, was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, and Margot’s world was thrown into a tailspin.

In one of the last conversations with her mother, Beth had grasped Margot’s hand and said, “All a mother wants, Margot, is for her children to be happy. And that may take different forms at different times.”

“I am happy, Mom,” Margot said.

Beth had seemed unconvinced. But that could have been the morphine at work. Margot said, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Beth said, “Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve been too hard on yourself. It’s the curse of the firstborn. You need to cut yourself some slack, allow for your imperfect moments. You need to be your own best friend.”

Margot had squeezed her mother’s hand. “I have a best friend,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Oh honey, I know,” Beth said, and her eyes fluttered closed. “Just listen to me.”

When her mother died, Margot cleaved to Drum. She couldn’t get him close enough; she wanted to inhabit his body. She wanted him to absorb her pain, to sop it up like a spill on the counter.

During this period of grief and renewed closeness, Margot got pregnant again-with Ellie. To have a daughter and not have her mother to share it with? God, the pain! When the doctor placed Ellie in Margot’s arms, Margot gazed up at Drum and burst into tears. And he had wept right along with her and said, “I know, babe. I know. She should be here.”

A week after Ellie’s first birthday, Margot made partner at Miller, Sawtooth. There was a party and, of course, a large pay raise. This was when things drastically slid downhill. Margot had had her tubes tied after her C-section with Ellie, and at first she thought the shift was hormonal. She was impatient, bitchy, entitled; she said things she regretted. She was mean to Drum; she accused him of wasting his life. Instead of growing angry at her, instead of telling her to go jump in a big pool of fuck you, which was what he should have done, he kowtowed to her even more. He texted her forty or fifty times a day, he told her he loved her, he filled their apartment with fresh flowers, he threw her a surprise birthday party at Bill’s Bar and Burger, he planned a family trip to Japan. No skiing, no surfing, he said. We can do whatever you want to do-the cities, the gardens, the pagodas. You’ve always said you wanted to go to Japan.

Margot made him cancel the trip immediately. She had told him she wanted to see Japan because that was where he had grown up. She had wanted to see it for Drum’s sake. But that desire had faded as well.

She started going to a therapist, even though she didn’t really have time. She admitted to the therapist that she didn’t think she loved Drum anymore.

If you could change five things about him, the therapist asked, would that make a difference?

Would it? Margot wondered. What if he landed a job as a TV anchorperson and he was on the news every night at six o’clock? What if he became a Japanese professor at NYU? What if he invented something, started a company, made millions? What if he wore Robert Graham shirts and Ferragamo loafers? What if he took up golf and followed the stock market? What if he read Tolstoy, Dashiell Hammett, Norman Mailer? What if he listened to opera, subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, smoked a pipe?

But Drum didn’t need to change; Drum was happy the way he was. Drum was, in fact, the happiest person Margot knew. Margot wanted to change one thing about herself. She wanted to be a woman who loved the way Drum was.

What do you do when the love is gone? Margot asked the therapist. She was in tears. She wanted it back. She wanted to feel.

Where does it go?

In the morning, Margot’s father, Doug Carmichael, piled her three children into the backseat of his Jaguar. He was taking them to the Downyflake for doughnuts and pancakes and hot chocolate. Doug Carmichael was a prominent divorce attorney in Manhattan, but Margot hadn’t told her father how close she was to jumping off the cliff of marriage into the churning sea of divorce. She didn’t want to be work to him. When the time came, she knew, he would give her a colleague’s name; she would be in the very best hands.

Margot said, “Okay, I’m going for a run. Enjoy the sugar!”

Drum had left a few minutes before, with his surfboard strapped to their Land Rover. Margot had kissed him good-bye as though for the last time. He was going to meet Hadley Axelram and her son at the beach. Hadley Axelram, Hadley Axelram, Hadley Axelram. Nothing, Margot felt nothing. How was this possible?

On her run, Margot imagined a scene between Drum and Hadley Axelram. Hadley would be in her bikini, her bones jutting out. She would give Drum the big-brown-eye stare because she was so grateful he had showed up to teach Curtis to surf. Curtis needed a father figure; everyone else had failed her, but not Drum, never Drum, he was the one she still thought about, he was the one she had wanted all along. If Curtis hadn’t shown up in Aspen threatening a gun, she and Drum would be married by now; Drum hadn’t ever been serious about pursuing the other girl in New York. How could he, when he was permanently under Hadley’s spell? They would have given birth to a whole passel of little surfers. Hadley still thought about him every time she had an orgasm. Did he know that?

What would he say? Margot wondered. How would he respond? He would buckle, right? He would kiss Hadley, the kiss would ignite a spark, he would see the whole world differently, he would see it the way he used to see it when he was in love with Hadley. He would remember what it had felt like when he dropped her off at Terminal E at Logan, when she was flying to Florence for an entire year of studying Giotto. She had taken his heart along for the ride, nestled among her cashmere sweaters inside her steamer trunk. But now she had been returned to him. He had finally, finally gotten her back.

Margot thought about all of this, but felt nothing. How was this possible?

She decided to run to the beach to see for herself. If she saw Drum and Hadley together with her own eyes, if she spied on their private moments, she would feel something, she would be jealous, she would be heartsick, and the marriage would be saved.

Nobody wanted to be divorced-this was something Margot’s father had always said. People needed to get divorced.

Margot ran up Main Street to the monument, past the lovely historic homes on Milk Street. Hydrangea bushes, weathered fences, brick sidewalks, leafy trees. She was moving and she felt great, healthy, she loved being out of the city, she loved being on Nantucket. She had thought that maybe being on Nantucket would do the trick with her and Drum, maybe they needed a change of scenery. This was where they’d met, fallen in love, conceived their first child. Help me, Nantucket!

Margot hadn’t run in months, there was absolutely no time. She spent all her time at the office, and then when she got home, she wanted to be with her children. They had grown masterful at the guilt trip. We never see you, you’re never home, and when you’re home you’re always on your phone. We want you. We can’t stop wanting you. Margot was running hard, she was in the sun now, headed up the hill by the Maria Mitchell Observatory. She didn’t feel winded at all, because that was the kind of person she was, when she said she was going to do something, she did it and she did it well. She didn’t quit things. Was getting a divorce quitting? Her therapist said no, but Margot felt the answer was yes. Yes, getting a divorce was quitting, she should do what countless others before her had done and stay for the sake of the children, stay until Ellie graduated from Fieldston, only fifteen years from now. Could she stay for fifteen more years?

Nope, no way. She needed to follow her mother’s advice and allow for her imperfect moments. The past year and a half had been a study in imperfection. But now, maybe, Hadley Axelram could help. Help me, Hadley!

Margot was sweating buckets by the time she got to the dirt road that led to the antenna beach. This was the newly popular beach for serious surfers-Cisco had been overrun by college kids with cases of Budweiser. Margot saw their Land Rover parked at the beach entrance, and next to it, a turquoise blue Mini. Of course that would be what Hadley drove.

Margot stopped to stretch behind the cars. Some water would be nice; she was hot now and she still had to run all the way back. She surreptitiously opened the passenger door of the Land Rover, hoping that Drum had brought cold water-of course he had, he was a Boy Scout that way, always prepared-and she lifted it out of the console. Nice and cold.

She walked around the dune so that she could see the action on the beach without being seen herself. Drum was in the water waist deep and Curtis was on the board next to him. Hadley was standing at the shoreline, watching. She wore a long sheer white cover-up over her bathing suit. When a wave came in, Drum positioned Curtis’s board and yelled, “GO!” and Curtis paddled like crazy, then got into his crouch, then he stood. He stood! He rode the wave to shore, and Hadley cheered madly. Drum said, “Let’s do it again!”

Margot watched as a few more sets rolled in. She marveled at how Curtis’s body moved just like his father’s. He gritted his teeth in determination; his eyes bulged. He stood time after time after time; he had it down. Drum had taught him, or had been able to coax out Curtis’s natural ability. Hadley clapped and danced; she got the hem of her cover-up wet in the froth of the waves.

Drum came in, and Hadley handed him a towel. He wiped at his face and pointed at Curtis. Curtis was going to try it by himself. This was good, this was great. Margot focused on Drum and Hadley, standing side-by-side on the beach. If Drum turned and saw her, he would realize she was spying on him, but he would think it was for a different reason. He would think she wanted to catch him at something; he would think she had come out here to confirm her worst fears. He would never guess that she was wishing for something to happen; he would never predict her hunger to feel jealous.

Curtis paddled out. Hadley turned to Drum, she raised her face to him, she touched his bare chest with one Concord grape-painted finger. She was thanking him, telling him how miraculous he was, telling him how he had saved the say, telling him how amazing it had been watching Drum out in the water with her son. She drew a line from his heart down his chest then down to his stomach, then down to his…

Drum grabbed Hadley’s hand. This was it! Margot thought. They were going to kiss!

Drum dropped Hadley’s hand, he didn’t exactly shove it away, but it was definitely a gesture of dismissal. He was giving her her hand back, saying, please don’t touch me like that, I’m a married man.

Hadley tried again. Maybe her luck with men was based on pure persistence. She took a step closer to Drum and upturned her face, pursing her lips. One of the straps of her cover-up slipped off her shoulder. There could be no mistaking her intentions. Margot thought, Take the bait, Drum! This is the woman who taught you to love pistachio ice cream, who encouraged you to make “In the Blood” your own personal anthem. But Drum stepped away, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe her gall; he walked a few yards away, spread out his towel, and sat down. He pulled his cell phone out of his backpack.

Hadley called something out to him, but he didn’t even bother looking up.

Margot’s heart plummeted. Her eyes filled with tears. And at that second, her phone buzzed. She had a text message from Drum. I love you, it said. I wish you were here.

Margot looked up in alarm, thinking he must have seen her and that was why he hadn’t kissed Hadley, that was why he’d walked away. But when she checked, Hadley was staring at Drum, and Drum was resting his forearms on his knees, watching Curtis surf. He hadn’t seen Margot. If he had seen her, he would have beckoned her down. He didn’t play games like this.

Suddenly a man came up behind Margot and she nearly jumped out of her shoes. He was a couple years older than she was, and he wore only a pair of orange swim trunks; he was carrying a long board. His bare torso was tanned the deep brown of a tobacco leaf; his hair was black and wavy, with a few strands of gray in the front. He stopped next to Margot when he saw the scene transpiring down on the beach.

He said, “Holy Mother of God, look who we have here.”

Margot didn’t respond. The man sounded like a carnival barker who smoked a hundred cigarettes a day.

He turned to her. He said, “That there is the girl of my dreams.”

Margot nodded. The girl of everyone’s dreams.

She said, “You’re Elvis?”

His eyes lifted in surprise. He held out his hand, fingers stained with nicotine. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Margot said. “No, I don’t think we’ve met. I just… well, I’ve heard about you. You teach surfing?”

“At Cisco,” he said. “To the punks with rich mothers.”

“Oh,” Margot said. She crunched her water bottle, which was now empty. “Do you know who the guy is?”

“That guy there?” Elvis asked. “Yeah, I know who that is. Everyone knows who that is.”

“Who is he?” Margot asked. Thinking: Boy Scout, good guy, doting father, amazing cook. He speaks Japanese and gives great foot rubs. Thinking: Nobody knows where it comes from and nobody knows where it goes.

“It’s Drum… Drum… shit, I forget his last name. But I’ll tell you what…” Elvis leaned closer to Margot as if to let her in on a secret.

“What?” Margot said.

“He’s the greatest surfer this island has ever seen,” Elvis said. “Watching him is like watching fucking Baryshnikov.”

Margot nodded, wishing Elvis had been able to tell her something she didn’t already know.

At that moment, Drum stood up and grabbed his board, which was sticking straight up out of the sand. He ran with it to the water line, and then began to paddle out.

“Lucky you,” Elvis said. “You’re going to witness.”

Margot took a deep breath. Curtis had come in off the water, and he was now standing next to his mother, both of them watching Drum.

Drum let a few waves go. He had always been picky. Because of her vantage point up on the dune, Margot saw the one he would take even before he did. She watched him sense its approach, she saw his muscles tense. She knew the man so well. If they separated and divorced this year and he moved to the west coast, and she next saw him on a surfboard twenty years from now, she would still know which wave he would take. You need to be your own best friend, her mother had told her. But Drum was her best friend, Margot couldn’t deny it, and she was going to lose him.

“There he goes!” Elvis said.

Drum was moving, he was up, he was riding the wave low and sweet all the way across the break, going for maximum speed rather than flair. He made the board act like a razor, cutting the wave cleanly across the middle. Margot was sure Hadley was swooning on the beach the way Margot used to swoon and wanted to swoon now. Elvis let out a whoop, and the sound attracted Drum’s attention. He looked up at the dune and saw Elvis-and Margot-and something in his face changed. He lost his balance, and tumbled headfirst into the crashing foam.

Elvis turned to Margot. “You don’t know him, but he sure seems to know you.”

Margot didn’t have a reply to that, but none was needed. Elvis rushed down onto the beach to greet Hadley.

Margot waited until Drum surfaced. His head popped up and his eyes sought hers out. She thought, Yes, I’m here. I’m still here.

He waved to her. She gave him a thumbs-up and called out, “Good ride!” Later, when she talked to him, she might use those very words, she might say, We had a good ride, Drum. We had a good ride. Or she might come up with better words. She had plenty of time to think about it on the hot, lonely run for home.

About the author

Elin Hilderbrand has lived on Nantucket for twenty years. She runs every morning, delivers her children to their sporting events, and occasionally frequents the front row at the Chicken Box. Beautiful Day is her twelfth novel.

facebook.com/ElinHilderbrand

twitter.com/elinhilderbrand

pinterest.com/elinhilderbrand

***

Content

Elin Hilderbrand
The Surfing Lesson

About the author