Summer Romance

“Because now I feel fifteen percent better. I’m going to make a real break from Pete. I’m going to figure out how to make my own money. I know exactly how many boxes of cornstarch I have now. ‘Fancy keeps sending me signs. We’re going to have a champagne summer.’”

Telling Pete that she’s ready to pursue divorce proceedings helps Ali remember that she’s in control of her life. She has been separated from Pete for one year, but the couple has done nothing to formalize the end of their marriage. Once Ali agrees to see a mediator, she feels lighter and more capable of exercising her agency. She’s channeling Fancy’s memory in this moment as a way to be more present and embrace this new era of her life.

“I pull my ring off and spin it on its side. When it lands, I open my spice cabinet and place it on top of the cinnamon. I take a deep breath as the smell of coffee fills the quiet kitchen. I run my unjeweled, un-spoken-for fingers through my hair. Outside my window, the geraniums are going strong. It’s Wednesday and I don’t have to see Pete on Wednesdays. I have the sense that I am a limb that went numb, and I am starting to tingle again.”

Thematically, removing her wedding band is one of the first steps Ali takes toward Embracing Balance, Happiness, and Change. She has worn the ring throughout the year since Pete moved out. Taking it off liberates her to life’s possibilities and helps her begin remembering that she’s her own person outside the context of her former marriage.

“As I drive to the rec center to get my kids, the sky is a rich early-July blue and the leaves on the elm trees along Main Street flutter almost imperceptibly. My senses are on high alert, and I feel good. ‘Ethan,’ I say out loud. I like the way the word vibrates around the inside of my car. ‘Mom, I think he was flirting with me. Did you see it?’ I wait for a response but just get a bubbly feeling in my chest. ‘Ethan,’ I say again.”

Ali’s conversations with her late mother highlight her ongoing struggle to confront her loss and heal from her grief. Fancy’s death left Ali feeling unmoored and alone. She therefore continues to talk with Fancy in the two years following her passing as a way to keep her memory alive and to feel some semblance of emotional balance. Furthermore, Ali’s decision to tell Fancy about Ethan in this scene conveys her excitement over embracing new relationships and experiences.

“I listen to the sound of the water lapping up against the boat. I watch our bare feet next to each other on the console. I watch a cloud pass over the moon above us. I try to memorize this fun night with this fun man. A night like this could easily never happen again, and I want to be able to look back and remember it—the sound of the water hitting the boat, the stripe of moonlight, the press of his shoulder against mine.”

The descriptive and sensory details of Ali’s reflections in this passage illustrate her newfound ability to engage with her life in the present moment. Since losing her mom and separating from Pete, Ali has felt numb and disembodied. While out on the water with Ethan, however, she’s grounded in her body and her environment—experiential dynamics that prove her desire to embrace happiness, peace, and joy.

“He takes a step toward me, as if he’s going to take my hand. He’s Ethan again, confident and in command, and I am struck by the fact that time is a powerful thing. It’s made him so strong and sure, and it’s made me unsteady. This must be what they mean by the law of conservation of matter: maybe he found everything I lost.”

Getting to know Ethan as himself in the present inspires Ali to reflect on her past and her personal evolution. She understands that Ethan had a difficult adolescence but can also see how time and experience have molded him into a courageous, assured, and loving person. In this moment, she begins to wonder if such an evolution is possible for her too.

“‘I had those too.’ He turns to me as if he wants to hear my escape fantasies. ‘I just wanted to go and become my own person.’ I needed to go out and see who I was separate from my mom. I wanted to know I could take care of myself.”

Spending time with Ethan gradually helps Ali remember the person she used to be. Ethan not only asks her questions about her life, but constantly reminds her of her former confidence and assuredness. This moment marks a shift in Ali’s self-regard as she begins to reflect on how her relationship with her mom dictated her decisions.

“I myself am a ball of unfocused longing. When I’m quiet I can hear my heart yearning for impossible things. I want a perfectly pared-down home, and I want to hang on to every scrap of the past. I want a break from my kids without missing a single minute of their lives. I long for a partnership, and I long for freedom. I long to be enmeshed with someone without losing myself. I want all of it.”

Ali gains perspective and renewal whenever she spends time out on the water alone. The water symbolizes healing and redemption and thus helps Ali reconsider who she has been and what she wants for the future. Listing all the things she wants for herself in turn grants Ali a new sense of possibility. This scene marks an important moment in her thematic journey toward Reclaiming Personal Autonomy and Identity.

“I turn around in one step and don’t topple the skateboard. This is mostly because Ethan catches me around the back as I turn. He says, ‘So, in that way, it’s about mindfulness and progression. Just tiny steps forward.’ We are eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose, and finally his chest is pressed against mine. I have stepped into something completely unfamiliar and unexpected. And I want to take another step forward.”

Ali and Ethan’s outing at the skate park reawakens dormant facets of her character. For years, she quieted her true nature to appease her mother and husband. Skating with Ethan reminds her that she’s capable of taking risks, believing in herself, and engaging with others in an intimate, authentic way. Furthermore, this passage underscores the symbolic nature of skateboarding throughout the novel.

“It’s my favorite kind of quiet, satisfying work where you see your progress as you go and you know when you’re done. My boss used to tell me that I was the only person he ever knew who saw beauty in accounting, but I loved it for both the process and the moment that everything balanced. The thing about motherhood is that day to day there’s no measurable outcome. The mark of a successful day is just getting everyone back in bed.”

Ali’s identity as a mother complicates her concurrent thematic journeys toward Reclaiming Personal Autonomy and Identity and Embracing Balance, Happiness, and Change. Ali loves her children but has also allowed her domestic and maternal spheres to quash her true self over the years. In this moment, she’s therefore trying to balance the seemingly competing facets of her life to create a more realized reality and identity.

“The first time I saw my mom notice how bad things were in my marriage, there was actual fear on her face. My life with this man and these children was her dream come true. The opposite of this dream was her worst fear—me being alone. She was always hung up on my being an only child, but it never bothered me.”

Ali’s revelations about her fraught relationship with her mom mark an important turning point in her character arc and self-reclamation. She still misses and loves her mom, but dating Ethan and divorcing Pete have made her realize that she also compromised her identity to satisfy her mom’s expectations for her life and Fancy’s personal dreams. Confronting and owning this facet of her experience reflects Ali’s growth progress.

“It really resonated with me. I was a sophomore and was hanging out with total screwups because I didn’t know what else to do. And my parents had pretty low expectations of me after the basement fire and, of course, my failure as a football star. Those words sort of made me realize I didn’t have to keep being who everyone thought I was forever.”

Ali learns that she was a source of change, growth, and inspiration in Ethan’s life long before they start dating in the novel’s present. Ethan reminds Ali of her valedictorian speech and explains how revelatory her words were for him. In doing so, he reminds her of who she has always been and the power she has always had to stand up for herself, exercise her agency, help and love others, and embrace life.

“It’s time for me to exert my forward-moving energy. I have an arsenal of questions that will unstick this stuck homeowner: Do you plan to use these items in the future? Would it be enough to photograph them and put the photos in a book to honor the memory? But I know exactly how he feels, every time I try to sort through our basement to clear space around the washing machine. Little-boy corduroy pants that crawled in the sandbox. Tiny Mary Janes that sashayed in the kindergarten play. I can’t let any of it go.”

Helping Ethan sort through and clean out his parents’ house helps Ali remember her true capacities. When she’s assisting someone else in this process, she can engage her focused, orderly sensibilities. At the same time, this passage captures Ali’s empathetic nature as she relates to Ethan’s physical circumstances and emotional state. Like Ethan, she’s still learning how to confront, make peace with, and move beyond the past.

“There’s something terrifying underneath all of this anger. I can feel how Pete acting like a jerk makes me miss my mom. And I picture her, with her big smile, saying, ‘Oh, that’s fine. Let him do his bike ride. You know what would be fun?’ I’d let it go. My chest is tight with anger at Pete but also with the unfamiliar discomfort of being angry with my mom. She should have let me speak up. It’s like she trained me to be mute around Pete.”

Finalizing her divorce with Pete helps Ali engage with her authentic emotions. During mediation, she begins to realize what she has always felt in her relationship with Pete. This is one of the first times that she’s able to own her anger. In turn, she seeks out its source and discovers important emotional lessons.

“There’s Beechwood. Where most of my life took place. It looks different while standing on another piece of dry land. The inn, the clearing of the dog park, the Litchfields’ house. Hidden beyond the canopy of trees is the high school where I was the valedictorian, the church where I was married, the house where I tried to be a wife. From a distance, it’s just green. I relax not having to look at all the details. The mess.”

Ali gains perspective on her life in the present when she and Ethan visit Pelican Island together one afternoon. Being on the island physically separates her from Beechwood, the place that contains all her troubles and worries. Beechwood looks small from the island, and the setting thus gives Ali perspective, helping her think about her life and herself in a new and unhindered way.

“‘Well, it’s my ship for the next fourteen years,’ I say. ‘So please ring the bell when you come.’ I haven’t raised my voice; I just said the words. These words are true and right and perfectly reflect my reaction to him in this moment. I should have been doing this all along, and that makes me angrier.”

Standing up to Pete for the first time helps Ali reclaim her voice, own her experience and emotions, and fight for what she needs. For years, she has quieted her feelings and longings to appease Pete. In this scene, she refuses to dismiss herself for the sake of Pete’s comfort any longer. This moment therefore marks a crucial turning point in Ali’s character arc and journey toward healing, empowerment, and change.

“And I feel it again, that certainty that this wouldn’t have made any difference. And if it would have, that’s not love anyway. Love is not If you clean up, I’ll help you through your grief. I’m not sure what love is, but I think it’s something different than that.”

Ali cleans up her house and discovers a new perspective on her life in the present and in her past relationship with Pete. During the organizational process, she momentarily wonders whether Pete would have stayed with her if she’d been more orderly and clean after her mom died. However, this passage captures Ali’s awakened state of mind. Her relationship with Ethan particularly has opened her to new possibilities of what love and companionship might mean.

“Ever since I met him he has been calling me back to myself, reminding me that I matter. He’s that way now, but with his body, listening, responding, following up. I wind my arms and legs around him, and I have this feeling as we make love that I am being discovered. Maybe more than discovered—I am unearthed. I am no longer weighed down; I am no longer on this earth.”

Falling in love with Ethan ushers Ali toward healing and self-realization. She doesn’t negotiate her identity to satisfy him. Instead, being with him has helped her rediscover her true self. Furthermore, their love has encouraged her to confront her sorrow and embrace newness and possibility. Their physical and sexual intimacy is one part of this transformative dynamic.

“I see him ahead of me at low tide, looking over his shoulder to check that I’m okay. Ethan shows up, every time, in the best possible way. And there it is, right in front of me—I am in love with him. The realization makes me catch my breath. I am at once surprised and not surprised; he’s impossible not to love. Of course I’m in love with him. And of course there’s a world of pain waiting on the other side of these feelings.”

In realizing that she’s in love with Ethan, Ali embraces happiness and pain at the same time. This moment marks a turning point in her storyline and in her relationship with him. She and Ethan want to be together, but commitment foreshadows complications for their individual and shared futures. However, the novel makes it clear that they’re ready to face the challenges.

“I don’t sleep. I try to bend my mind to see how I could keep Ethan without compromising who he is and the happy life he’s built. I cannot ask him to leave it. I cannot move to Devon. My kids need to be near Pete and in their schools and with their friends. I could go see him one day a week for the next twelve years until Cliffy goes to college. It’s an eight-hour drive round trip. None of it makes sense. I close my eyes and tell my mom, ‘I am in a knot.’”

When complex emotions overwhelm her, Ali talks to her late mother. In this scene, she talks to Fancy about her future with Ethan. She wants to be able to create a life with him but also fears asking him to compromise his happiness. These relationship complications augment the novel’s tension and stakes in anticipation of the climax.

“There’s more, and the words keep pouring out. They confirm every suspicion I’ve had about how she’s been hurting and how deeply I’ve let her down—including my never setting Pete straight and allowing him to be so absent all these years. I was so worried about what Ethan might think seeing the way Pete treated me. He wasn’t the one I should have been worried about.”

Ali and Greer’s heart-to-heart conversation inspires Ali to reconsider who she has been and who she wants to be in the future. She loves Ethan but doesn’t want their relationship to hurt her children the way her relationship with Pete has hurt them. She thus begins to see how all her actions, big and small, affect those around her. In part, this passage catalyzes Ali’s decision to break up with Ethan.

“I don’t want to look up at the widow’s walk where I might as well be confined to pacing for the rest of my life, a newly tragic figure gazing at the horizon. All the times I looked up there and felt my own longing, I really had no idea what love could be. And now I can never unknow the truest thing—the intensity of the love you feel will match the intensity of the loss.”

Breaking up with Ethan causes Ali to experience more loss, pain, and sorrow. She’s out on the water with her kids in this scene, a setting that always grants her perspective on her life. To Ali, the image of the widow’s walk metaphorically represents the loneliness she fears she’ll live with in the wake of giving Ethan up.

“And still I can feel how just a look from him could make me happy and excited about my life. It’s unfathomable that I walked away from that. I let my fantasy about a life in Beechwood with him keep me from having any kind of life with him at all. I catch his eye and think, Any Ethan is better than no Ethan. I need to tell him.”

Phyllis’s death and funeral help Ali understand how ephemeral life is and therefore how important it is to embrace love and joy while she can. While giving Phyllis’s eulogy, Ali experiences a revelation about herself and her relationship with Ethan. The simultaneity of these internal and external experiences reflects how Phyllis’s friendship has influenced Ali’s outlook.

“I was wandering around Devon trying to get it to feel like home again, trying to get back to being the person I was before you. And it just felt empty. I moved there because it felt good. I realized that what felt good there was that it was a place where I could belong. But that’s not enough anymore. I belong with you.”

Ali and Ethan’s love for one another heals, empowers, and transforms them both. In the same way that Ali never imagined starting a new relationship, Ethan never imagined leaving Devon. However, his and Ali’s connection has given him a new sense of home and belonging. In moving to Beechwood, he’s making a sacrifice for Ali, following his dreams, and reinforcing his commitment to her.