That Summer (14 page)

“I’m not a baby,” he protested.

“Yes you are,” Casey said.

“Well, you’re in trouble,” Ronald said indignantly, slapping a piece of baloney on the table and marching a Klingon across it.

“And you’re stupid,” Casey said. “So stuff it.”

“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said in a tired voice, “please.”

I turned my attention back to the TV, where I could see the entire Action News Team paired off at their two sets of desks. Charlie Baker and Tess Phillips on one side, grimly shuffling papers as we came back from a commercial; and off to the other, my father and Lorna, smiling and whispering to each other. My father had even more hair than the last time I’d seen him. He’d never had that much, even when I was little. Lorna was beside him, hands crossed on the desk in front of her.

“And now for the weather, let’s check in with Lorna Queen’s Weather Scene,” Charlie Baker boomed in his big voice while the camera panned across to Lorna’s smiling face. She stood up, today in a hot-pink miniskirt and jacket, and strolled over to the weather map.

“Thanks, Charlie. Today was gorgeous, right, folks? I wish I could tell you there was more of the same coming, but we haven’t quite gotten over the heat yet. Let’s take a look at the national map. You’ll see that a front is moving over the mid-Atlantic states, producing some heavy showers....”

I tuned Lorna out, instead watching her gesture her way across the fifty states, sweeping her arm over the map as if she could create showers or drought on a whim. I wondered if anyone ever really listened to her at all.

Now she was standing in front of the Five Day Forecast. “... right up until Tuesday, but I’ve got to say I can’t promise much for Wednesday through Friday. Look for some high cloud cover, the normal afternoon thunderstorm, and of course high temperatures and Charlie’s favorite, lots of humidity. Right, Charlie?”

The camera panned back to Charlie, who was caught playing with his pencil and mumbled something quickly before it zoomed back to Lorna. Now she was standing in front of a video of a bunch of children chasing bunny rabbits across the grass. “And finally, I just wanted to thank all the kids at the Little Ones day-care center, where I went today to do a Weather Scene Class. We talked about rain and snow and had some fun with the bunnies they have there, as you can see. Great kids.” She waved at the camera. “A special hello to all of them. Thanks for having me!”

“Good God,” Casey said dramatically, rolling her eyes.

“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said, throwing the peeler in the sink.

“I’m just saying.”

Lorna was done waving now and took her seat next to my father again. Charlie Baker shuffled his papers around, looking official, and then said, “Thanks, Lorna. I’m looking forward to that humidity you promised me.”

“A little late to get in on that joke,” Casey said. “He’s such a cheeseball.”

Tess Phillips leaned across Charlie Baker, smiling her newswoman smile. “And I understand you have a special report of your own over there, Lorna.”

Lorna blushed, pinkly, and I got that sinking feeling in my stomach again. “Well, yes, both Mac and I do. Right, honey?”

“That’s right,” my father said. He seemed bigger with all that hair.

“We’re expecting!” Lorna squealed. “I’m due in March!”

On the television, in the Action News newsroom, there was an explosion of congratulations, slapping of backs, and general good spirits. In the Melvins’ kitchen it was too quiet and everyone was suddenly looking at me.

“Expecting?” Casey said. “How is that possible? The wedding was less than a month ago; there’s no way she could already be pregnant. Unless it happened before, but . . .”

“Casey,” Mrs. Melvin said in a low voice. “Hush.”

I stared at my father on the screen, watching him smile proudly at the viewing public before they cut to a commercial. Suddenly I wanted to go home.

“God, Haven. Why didn’t you tell me?” Casey was standing behind me now, her hand on the back of my chair.

“Look, I better get going.” I kept my eyes on the commercial for satellite dishes. Baby Ronald stomped his figures across the table, staging a war by the sugar bowl.

“I’ll walk you,” Casey said.

“No,” I said quickly. “That’s all right. I’ll call you later.”

“You okay?”

I could feel Mrs. Melvin, mouth of the neighborhood, watching me and taking notes for the next neighborhood gossip session. “Fine. I just forgot I had to be home.”

“Okay, well, call me.” She walked me to the door, holding it open as I stepped out onto the patio. “Seriously. I’m like a prisoner here.” Mrs. Melvin still had her eyes on me, eggplant in her hand.

“I’ll call.” I started down the driveway, sucking in the thick, humid air of late summer, heavy in my lungs. It was late afternoon and all the kids were out, bike punks and Big Wheels, and mothers with strollers grouped on the corner, no doubt passing the latest about nervous breakdowns and tuna casseroles and failing marriages, the goods on the neighborhood. I made it to the end of the driveway and hit the sidewalk, feeling each step in my shins as if by the sheer force of pounding my feet on the ground I could force the world out from under me.

As I walked I kept seeing my father in my mind, with his hair and that smile, proud and bursting, father-to-be. Lorna Queen with her little ears and blond hair. A baby with my father’s round face and my last name. My father’s new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me—selling the house, Ashley’s tantrums, now the baby—that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.

I stopped suddenly, breathless, unsure of where I was. The houses in my neighborhood all looked the same, one floor plan reversed and then back again. More kids on bikes, more mothers on corners, flags with watermelon and sunshine designs hanging from front porches. I could have lived in any of these houses. Any of these families could have been mine, once.

The tight, throbbing feeling in my throat made me want to start sobbing, to break down, right there on an unfamiliar corner in front of a house just like my own. Everything seemed so out of control, as if even running the streets wouldn’t save me. I wondered if this was how Gwendolyn felt running wild at night, this lost, loose feeling that no consequence could be so harmful as the sense of staying where you were, or of being who you are. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of the range of my mother’s voice and ears, of Ashley’s pouty looks, of the News Channel 5 viewing area. Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.

I was going to let it happen, let the tears come and the sobs rise up from my chest. I imagined crying until I was exhausted, dry, finally letting it all go.

And then I heard that
blub-blub-blub
puttering around the corner where I stood. Sumner was behind the wheel, so busy adjusting the stereo that he didn’t even see me at first. Just as I thought to call his name he glanced over his shoulder.

He backed up beside me, smoothly aligning with the curb. The passenger seat was filled with books, heavy black volumes with gold monograms. “Hey, Haven. What’s going on?”

Even as he spoke I was doing it, breathing in and clearing my head, swallowing until the lump in my throat disappeared. Digging my heels in again, regulating myself. “Nothing,” I said.

“Need a ride?” He started pushing books into the back.

“Sure.” I climbed in and we were off, puttering along the short distance to my house, passing the Rogerses’, familiar territory. Sumner pulled off his tie and reached across me to stuff it in the glove compartment.

“So,” he said after a while. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just . . . my father and his new wife are going to have a baby.”

“A baby?”

“Yeah. They just got married.”

He smiled. “Wow. They didn’t waste any time, huh?”

“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, it’s like this just makes it official. My father has completely begun his life over.” We passed the Melvins’, where baby Ronald was playing on the steps.

“Well, maybe he is. And that sucks. But it doesn’t mean he’s forgetting you or anything,” he said, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. “It’ll work out, Haven. This is the worst of it.”

I knew he was probably right. It seemed like every time I saw Sumner lately I was reacting to a crisis. And every time, he said the one thing, the
right
thing, that no one else could say.

“So,” I asked him, “what are you doing around these parts?”

“Selling encyclopedias. It’s a new job. My first day, actually.”

“Did you sell any?”

“No, but three people invited me in for soda. One of them was really old, too old for encyclopedias, but we looked at all her photo albums and talked about the war.”

“I didn’t think you could ever be too old for encyclopedias,” I said.

“Maybe not,” he said, “but according to my marketing manual eighty-five-year-old widows with ten cats and a houseful of dusty antiques are not writing a lot of term papers. Heard some great war stories, though. There’s nothing like a good war story.”

He slowed down; we were coming to my house. Ashley was walking up the front steps, still in her work clothes. She wore that damn lab coat everywhere.

We pulled up to the curb just as she got to the door, but she was digging for her keys and didn’t notice us. She didn’t remember the sound of the car the way I did. I wondered how she could ever have forgotten, but Ashley was always good at that.

We watched her fumbling in her purse, which was balanced against her knee. She brushed her hair impatiently out of her face, then tucked it behind her ear. Under her lab coat she had on a red dress that showed off her tan and wore black sandals over her tiny little feet. I thought again of her Barbie adolescence and how I’d envied her, and I looked at Sumner, at the expression I couldn’t read on his face. I wondered how she looked to him, if she was older or fatter or just the same as that last time he saw her on the porch, when she put a door between him and herself. Finally she found her keys, opened the door, and kicked it shut behind her, rattling the glass. I still hadn’t gotten out of the car.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked him.

“Oh no,” he said. “I have to get to work.”

“At the mall?”

“No.” He shifted in his seat, reaching behind to pull out a stack of records: Lawrence Welk, Jimmy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters. “I’m getting fifty bucks to dance with old women at the senior center. They’re having a nostalgia dance but they’re short on men. I’m not supposed to tell them I’m getting paid, though. It would ruin the spirit of it all.”

“You dance?”

He sighed. “Sure. My mother thought she was Ginger Rogers. Didn’t Ashley tell you? I taught her every dance she knows.”

“I didn’t even know Ashley could dance.”

“You should see her waltz,” he said, putting the records back behind the seat. “She’s incredible. Of course, she always wanted to lead. She’s not much of a follower, you know.”

“I know.” I wondered if Ashley was looking out at us. “You sure you don’t want to come in? My mom would love to see you.”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Not now. I gotta go.”

I got out of the car, shutting the door behind me. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Well, you didn’t have far to go.”

“No. But it was nice anyway.”

“ ’Bye, Haven. Hang in there.” He started the engine and the blubbing built to a noisy peak before leveling off steady. I stood on the curb, watching him drive away, and just as he turned the corner I thought of my father and Lorna again, and the baby with its tiny ears. Even Sumner and his jobs and jokes couldn’t make some things go away.

Chapter Nine

That
weekend
was the official premiere of the Lakeview Models in the annual Back to School Fall Preview Fashion Show. The name had been changed, however, to the Back to School Fall Preview Fashion Show Featuring a Special Appearance by Former Lakeview Model Gwendolyn Rogers; someone had gone around with a magic marker and added on to all the signs. I wondered how Gwendolyn was feeling, if she was still out staring in her backyard or pacing the neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, or if she even cared about the Lakeview Models at all, in the midst of her rumored nervous breakdown. I’d been thinking about Gwendolyn Rogers a lot lately as I sat awake in my own bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what could happen next. Sometimes I even listened for the sound of her feet on the pavement outside, the rustle of her passing, the shallow breaths I imagined of someone gone wild. I was sure I’d heard her, at least once.

The whole town turned out for the Fall Fashion Preview that Saturday; but since most people were not interested in buying children’s shoes, Marlene and I took turns walking down to the main stage and reporting back on the activity. In the early part of the morning, there was a great racket of chairs being set up and people shouting to each other. Around noon, the models arrived and began to get ready in the store that had been Holland Farms Cheeses and Gifts until it had just recently gone out of business. Now it had a sign in the front window that read Model Prep Area, with the words Authorized Persons Only, Please written in firm little letters beneath it. They were in there, cooing and giggling. You could hear them from outside, where all the younger girls and those who hadn’t made it were grouped, trying to catch a glimpse of Gwendolyn or the models or anyone even slightly related to the whole process. And of course Sumner was there in his uniform, carrying a clipboard and looking official.