Summer of Love (15 page)

I slice the s’more bars into squares, place the on platters and add them to the items for sale in the confectioner’s corner when it hits me: I feel happiest when I’m writing. Not just in my journal — but anywhere. Give me a pen and a piece of paper, a keyboard and a screen, chalk and pavement — and I’m golden. Singing is great — I like that, too — but the songwriting part is what hooked me. The words. Connecting phrases and idea and turning them into one whole story. I’m hit with a movie reel of images from my past — jotting entries in my journals, sitting with Poppy Massa-Tonclair in her office and the incredible feelings I had then, of writing a twenty-five page essay for Brit Lit and getting an A because I worked hard and because it meant something to me, and how I avoided writing a big creative project this spring because part of me couldn’t accept being so invested in something. But I am. I look around for someone to tell — someone with whom I can share my good news of self-revelation — but there’s no one here except a few customers.

The café phone rings.

“Slavetothegrindtwo,” I say as all one word. Note to self: must get new name for this place. It’s a mouthful and then some.

“It’s just me.”

“Hey, Chris,” I say and then remember he might have news to share. “So what happened? Was it a love connection with Haverford?”

“Not exactly…” he says.

“Where are you? There’s so much noise in the background.”

“I’m…listen, I’m heading back early to Hadley.”

“But what about the Fourth of July? Not to guilt trip you into staying, but what could possibly be enticing about being back on campus?”

“The ferry’s leaving in ten minutes. Just keep my stuff and I’ll get in a few weeks. I just need to get back on track.”

“Why, were you derailed?” I ask.

“Let’s just say that Haverford threw me for a loop.”

I bite my lip in sympathy. “Why — did you ask the
huh
question and get a negative response?”

“Not exactly. I have to go, though. You can reach me at the dorm — sucks for me, but I’ll be living there while planning the all new gay-straight-lesbian-transgender alliance. Par-ty!”

“You’ll make it great, I’m sure — but don’t you dare leaving me in the lurch about Haverford. Is he gay or what?”

The ferry’s horn blows in the background so Chris shouts. “Yup — he’s gay. But the crappy part? He’s already seeing someone.”

“So it’s a summer fling, right? It’ll be over by the time school starts…” I say it about Haverford and whoever his male hottie is, but maybe I’m also thinking about Charlie and me. The trouble with summer things or summer flings is that you’re supposed to relish them while they’re in season and then let them fade like a tan. But what if you like the person too much?

“No, Love, you’re not getting it. Haverford’s been seeing Ben Weiss this whole time.”

“Ben Weiss as in — in our class at Hadley? As in jocky Ben Weiss who did that lunchroom thing last year?”

“The one and only. I thought the worst reaction from Haverford would shock in my assuming he could be gay — or bi. But you know what? It’s so much worse to find out that he is — um, in my league — but yet — totally out of it. Straight means he rejected a whole population. Gay means he just rejected me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say and flip the brew switch to off on the decaf. “I know how much you liked him.”

“Like him,” Chris corrects. “Not liked. It’s still in the present.”

“Talk soon?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe my pride’ll be mended enough by August to come back for Illumination Night.”

“That’s a month from now,” I whine.

“I know — later.”

I hand up and walk around to each table refilling sugar canisters, plumping pillows and wondering about love. How one person can be so alluring it’s hard to imagine they don’t feel the same way towards you. This makes me think of Jacob, who is probably off somewhere wooing the women of Europe. No — wait — he’s doing college tours — so he could be…wait. Why do I care?

I can see the throngs of coffee consumers casually winding their way up the street and back, browsing the shops of Edgartown and inevitably heading my way, but since I’ve swept, prepared the baked goods, and topped off the water pitchers, I go ahead and call home.

“Dad — guess what?” I ask.

“You’re in Spain,” he says and I can’t see his face to know what fraction is a joke and what’s genuine concern.

“Do you really think I’d head out of the country without telling you first?” I ask and then silently debate the merit of my question.

“I hope not,” Dad says which tells me he wouldn’t put it past me. This of course makes me think he doesn’t entirely trust me, which pisses me off, dampening my excitement a little.

“Well, I’m still on the Vineyard. But I have news…” I want to tell him about my writing revelations.

“I’ll be right there!” he shouts and then adds, “Louisa and I are climbing a mountain today…”

“How Von Trapp. Isn’t it a little late in the day for hiking?” I ask and go on automatic as I steam milk and ring up sales.

“It’s only at Blue Hills. She’s planned a special picnic.”

I raise my eyebrows like my dad can see this across the phone wires. “You guys are all about the picnics these days, huh?”

“I guess…so, what’s your big announcement?” Dad taps his pen against the phone, one of his habits.

I take a breath and want to tell him — but then I feel dumb, like it’s one of those announcements a little girl might say to her imaginary friends at a tea party I’m going to be a Princess or something. “Nothing,” I say. “Really. I just wanted to say hi.”

That’s the thing about life goals — if you talk about them too much and then change your mind, you just look foolish. And I don’t want to do that, to be a punch line.

“Oh,” Dad answers. “I thought maybe you were calling to ask for money.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you haven’t so far and I ran into Dorothy Dandy-Patinko and of course she shared the news about your Stanford interview…”

My hopes climbs up as Dad talks — he’ll just get the plane ticket for me. No big deal. “It would be really great if you could help with that, I mean, it’s a college expense, right?”

Dad coughs and is quiet. A customer looks annoyed at me that I have yet to produce a shot of vanilla espresso. “The truth of it is, Love, that I’m less than keen for you to go to California.”

“For the interview?” I ask and hand the espresso to the man who skulks off.

“For anything — it’s too far for college. How would I visit with the Hadley terms and…?”

“So you’re saying I can’t eve apply to schools out there?”

“What does the west coast have that Boston, Providence or New York, DC or Vermont can’t offer you?”

I want to shout palm trees or something equally inane but I’m so surprised I don’t know what to say except, “You never told me I was limited geographically.”

“You never asked.”

“I just assumed —”

“Right. You assumed, but incorrectly. I told you this spring that I had hesitations and now, after talking it over with Louisa…”

“Louisa? She has no knowledge of my academic interests,” I say even though it’s not exactly true. She does have some idea but the thought of her influencing my father about where I can or cannot spend four years of my life makes me so pissed off. “Even if I go to school in Connecticut or someplace, it doesn’t mean I’ll be running home every two seconds.”

“But you could,” Dad says. “And that’s the difference.”

I think for a second, the anger and frustration building in me until I have heartburn. “You’re so contradictory, Dad. You’re making me board at school when I could be living at home with you for the last time and yet you won’t let me really go off on my own! California or Connecticut makes no difference — you have to let go at some point.”

I want him to say that I’m correct, that of course he has to let go and that maybe he’ll reconsider the dorm issue for the fall, but he doesn’t. “Love, I want you to be happy. But I want you to spread your wings with the knowledge that being part of a small, untraditional family has its own constraints.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I slick the marble counter with a damp rag, wiping it free of crumbs and coffee rings.

“It means…I give you permission to go to California, but I don’t like the idea. And I’m realizing that despite our fairly good dynamic, I need to put some limitations. I let you go to the Vineyard by yourself at age seventeen with no supervision. Don’t think for a second I don’t understand what that entails…but in terms of funding a cross-country trip that could very well lead to hardly seeing you? Forget it.”

“So I’m on my own,” I say, my voice flat.

“I’m more than happy to pay for a regional tour and any expenses therein.” Dad’s words have started to sound like catalogue copy for a prep school — which I guess he basically is.

“You know what?” I stack steaming coffee mugs straight form the dish dryer, not wincing even though they’re hot. “Don’t pay for anything.” I think of Charlie and how he allowed himself to be cut off from his family’s money so he could do what he wanted. “I’ll pay for it all — I don’t know how — but I will. And that way, since I’m responsible for it all, I can say what I do. Sound fair?”

Dad swallows and sighs. “It sounds reasonable.” Then, like we weren’t just disagreeing he switches to cheerful mode. “Well, we’re off for an evening hike. And remember, I’m out of town from the sixth onward.”

“Right. How could I forget your culinary tour through Sardinia…?”

Something I have to get used to is my “emergency contact person”. It used to be if Dad went out of town I always could rely on Mable if I needed anything. Of course I’m older, I can drive, and I have a semi-decent idea of how the world works (most of the time) but what if I needed someone? Who would I call? I never really thought about this that much, having been part of a strong twosome (Dad and me) and a triangle of support (me, Dad, Mable). This thought leads me directly to thoughts of Gala — who exists somewhere — not that she’d be my emergency contact person necessarily, but she could feature in my life, right? I say her name in my head as I work, counting out my hours with coffees served, like TS Eliot talked about in his poetry. So much for feeling elated about writing — it’s not as though words are going to magically whisk me to California, to my interview, to the infamous Eisenstein party in Malibu on July 3
^rd
, to anywhere, really. So I suck it up and keep working, my mind — and my coffee — brewing.

I always hated those movie scenes where the main character — usually the heroine (save for the Risky Business antics of
that
male lead) decides to dance around in either a) her underwear b) her bedroom c) the school cafeteria d) a public place like a mall or e) her place of employment. She just sheds her inhibitions and quite possibly her clothing and suddenly bursts into song. It’s the movie way of either showing how cool the star is underneath that drab exterior or showcasing her hidden talent for song or — and this is what I despise the most — setting her up for some big embarrassing moment whereby her crush or prom date or supercool employer catches her in the act and she’s all open-mouthed and blushing.

But despite the fact that I loathe these scenes, I manage to create one just for myself. Eleven at night pre-Fourth of July and no one seems to desire a cup of anything remotely related to coffee, unless it’s coffee-flavored vodka shots and since Slave to the Grind II doesn’t have a liquor license, that’s not on offer. Suffice to say I am without customers and without motivation to do anything else but close up early. So I do my usual counter clean-up, switching off all the machines, setting up for the morning shift, and place the upturned chairs on the café tables so I can mop. Of course my mop turns into a microphone and then morphs into a dance partner as I glide effortlessly around the café, swashing tepid water along the checkered floor as I belt out the lamest possible songs from the series of cds Mable gave me a couple years ago.

At the top of my vocal range I croon Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” (even though I’m not — thankfully!) and Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For”. I’m midway through the musical tribute to being a good buddy when I hear a tell-tale flop n’ flip from Arabella’s shoes and sure enough she’s standing there watching me perform my act with the mop.

“Yes, folks, I do need a life,” I say and add, “This is just like those terrible scenes in movies…”

Arabella smiles at me enough so I’m pretty sure she’s walked off her pissy mood from before. In fact, rather than walking off her mood I’d say she ballroom danced her way to uplifted spirits: clad in a beige silk camisole and matching tulip-shaped skirt, and adorned with several strands of long beads she looks dressed for an elegant evening, not a romp around town with Chris as she’d stated before. But I don’t want to bug her by probing about her outfit’s appropriateness so instead I offer her the mop as both an apology for our earlier interactions and a chance not to be alone in my silly songstress mode.

Arabella accepts the microphone and slides her arm over my shoulder. I can smell wine or some other alcohol on her breath and she sways like she’s both into the music and a little drunk, or maybe both. “
That’s why friends are for
…” she sings.

“
Keep smiling, keep
…” I sing and then ask her “Is it shining? I never know what she says after that…”

Arabella laughs which makes me laugh and it dawns on me how long it’s been since we’ve been just the two of us, no guys, just having a ridiculous time together. “It might be shimmying. Not that wouldn’t fit…” She looks around and says, “I’m glad you’re closing up — it’ll give a chance to have a conference upstairs.”

Her arm is still around me and I don’t want to break the mood by telling her I expect Charlie any second. “You look really nice, by the way.” I don’t ask her why; I just wait to see if she offers up any info.

“Thanks,” Arabella says and looks down at her silky outfit half-surprised to find she’s wearing it. “I had a dinner.”

I give her my spill it look but she doesn’t take the cue. And right now it feels more important to get back on the friendship track than it does to pry. “Keep singing, Dionne.”