The Summer We Came to Life (4 page)

WHILE THE OPENING CEREMONY STRETCHED into the night, Kendra nestled in Michael's arm, savoring the familiarity. They always lay the same way, on their same respective sides. Kendra loved all things that had that kind of automatic comfort—cutting her banana over her bran cereal, the concierge hailing her daily cab, the TiVo
bloop
when she sat down on Sunday to watch all her favorite shows Michael wouldn't watch.

After the previous night's fight, Kendra and Michael hadn't discussed the issue further. Both had said what they had to say for the moment, and neither one was the type to repeat themselves for the sake of drama. Michael came over late with Chinese takeout. They'd watched ESPN and gotten into bed. They hadn't had sex, but that wasn't unusual on a weeknight.

The problem was that Michael thought he had won, and figured Kendra didn't want to discuss the details of abortion. Kendra figured Michael just needed time to adjust and might
even propose soon. But this was just a fleeting whisper at the edge of her mind, because really she was happiest ignoring the whole situation.

Then Michael furrowed his eyebrows, and Kendra's world was just about to explode.

Kendra didn't see it, of course, in their usual pose, so she was stroking his arm contentedly when Michael said, “I'll go with you, baby.”

Kendra knew exactly what he meant before he even finished saying it. Words are often superfluous between lovers. Skin speaks its desires; moods hang in the air; intention travels faster than words. Kendra's face crumpled halfway through “I'll go,” and Michael said nothing more after that sentence because he could feel her disappointment seep into his skin.

So, with both of them finally on the same page, minus the words to confirm it, their usual pose turned into something entirely different, as Michael hugged Kendra so tight it squeezed out the sobs Kendra took immeasurable pains to contain, at which point she sprang away as if from a branding iron, and curled up on the far edge of the mattress.

Michael wanted to comfort her, but he knew that they were back on the battlefield. He would lose his last five years of youth if he went soft on this one.

Kendra was crying because she knew exactly what he was thinking.

 

Later, after she was sure Michael was asleep, Kendra picked up her phone to reread my text from that afternoon. She read the words several times, pushing the star key every time the phone darkened to sleep mode.

Kendra touched her hairline, which had broken out in a fine sweat. She hadn't gotten her hair redone, a fact that set off alarm bells in the secretary when Kendra came in late that morning with a hat squashed atop a tangled mass of hair.

Kendra hid in her office all day, but hardly accomplished a thing besides staring at her in-box and managing not to cry.

Remembering, Kendra got out of bed. She tiptoed into the living room and picked up the picture of the four girls. Their very first summer trip. Kendra stroked a finger over Mina's beaming face. She sat down on the couch, studying the picture like an Italian
Vogue
. Four girls and two mothers in Paris. Kendra's mother and Isabel's mom, Jesse, were already best buddies by then, soldiers in the battle against suburbia. They'd started the vacation club to
get the girls out of Conformia
every summer. Kendra smiled. She was old enough to understand that both mothers secretly loved the celebrity status afforded them by the
Conformia
of the conservative little burb outside of Washington, D.C. Jesse got to brag about being a supermodel, and flaunt her taste for leopard print. But her mother? Kendra hadn't quite figured out what made Lynette Jones so wary of the picture-perfect neighborhood, though she was sure it had to do with her father, a civil rights lawyer in D.C.

Kendra set down the picture. It wasn't fair to worry them. She grabbed her BlackBerry and sent a group text:

One lie and one truth.
Kendra looked back at the photo, but this time she saw her reflection in the glass of the frame, her frizzy hair and sallow skin illuminated by the streetlight seeping through the window. Kendra stood up slowly and shuffled over to a full-length mirror. She stood stiller than a sentry, a judging scowl on her face. What was she guarding?

All my sacred plans,
she answered the reflection wryly. Career. Wedding. Family. In that order.

Guarding them against whom?

“Against you,” she whispered at the unkempt woman in the mirror.

She stared down the imposter, eyes narrowed and chin up as though she could reshape the image by force of will. But she couldn't. The frazzled, disheveled lady continued to glare back at her. Kendra let her nightgown slip to the floor. She saw a woman that was no longer the youngest, prettiest girl in every business meeting.

Stretch marks scurried around her nipples. Her stomach was soft and fleshy. Her waist was narrow but flared into wide dimply hips. The woman's face was a Picasso of curves and shadows, but with lips as full as marshmallows.

“Kendra?” Michael called gruffly from the bedroom.

The woman's eyes filled with tears. She put her hand out to Kendra, until their fingers touched on the surface of the glass.

“ROAD TRIP! GET UP! COME ON, UP.
UP!
” JESSE stood over me, completely dressed. I sat up on the air mattress next to Isabel. She opened one eye when I poked her. Jesse kissed my forehead and then Isabel's. “Get your little butts up. We gotta hit the road, girls.”

We were driving to the beach house I'd rented in Tela. It was an all-day affair and Jesse was right—if we didn't get a move on it, we'd end up driving in the dark, which was a very bad idea on a Honduran highway.

I got ready in a hurry, nudging Isabel along every step of the way. Lynette and Cornell had almost everything packed and ready. I'd never seen anything like those two. Lynette had always been our organizer, but to see her and Cornell work in tandem was a lesson in harmony.

“Arshan, you're with us.” Lynette was doling out seating arrangements. “Jesse, you drive the girls.”

I caught Jesse give Lynette a look.
Why wouldn't she want to drive with us? Well, fine, then.
“Jesse, you can go with Lynette,
I can drive.” I picked up the last bag of groceries. “Actually, I would prefer to drive.”

Jesse caught herself and smiled. “Samantha, darling, good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” Isabel asked.

“It means I'm drivin'. Let's go.”

 

So, twenty minutes later, a canary-yellow Honda and a tan Ford climbed the mountainous snake-shaped highway above the congested city, en route to Tela on the eastern coast.

In the Honda, Isabel was in the back and I was up front in the passenger seat. I gave Jesse a crash course on Honduran highway driving, best summarized as follows: throw out every rule you've ever learned and drive like a madwoman in a high-speed chase.

There were two speeds on any Honduran highway: chicken truck creep along may break down any minute and speed demon passing uphill on hairpin turn. There was no in-between. In-between was deadly. In-between would get you rear-ended into a pickup truck carrying five relatives, a dog and a chicken. At all times, you watched for stray dogs, small children carrying water jugs, old men with canes or cows, sudden rains that made the edge of the mountain invisible, and potholes big enough to swallow the front end of your car.

Isabel had the best seat. It was best not to look.

I had the worst seat. A complete view with a complete lack of control.

 

The road climbed and twisted, each new curve revealing a cluster of fresh sights. Cement-block shacks opened to supersize hammocks strung in the main room. Vegetable stands sported men in cowboy hats with crossed arms, posing
against a bull. Rickety roadside stands sold dark watery honey in dusty reused bottles with dirty screw tops.

Jesse pulled over at a produce stand to add to our cache of groceries. Our place in Tela was outside town—better to stock up in advance. We parked in the ditches and haggled over bananas and mangos. Jesse made us buy one of every fruit or vegetable we'd never seen before, which amounted to a lot of strange-looking potato-ish and pear-ish items among the plantains. And of course, we bought mango verde as a snack. Unripe mango, doused in lime, salt and chili, was a seasonal treat sold by women alongside men brandishing puppies for sale. I sucked on the sour pieces of fruit and watched the scenery.

 

“There it is! Stop, Jesse! Pull over, quick,” I yelled when we came upon a roadside shack with a line of cars out front.

Jesse whipped the car into a dirt patch out front, nearly getting clipped by a tailgating utility truck.

“My God, Sammy,
what?
” Jesse looked unimpressed by the one-room store.

“Queso petacon!”
Lucky I saw the sign. “Cheese! No trip to Honduras would be complete without it,” I proclaimed like an expert, quoting Ana Maria. I hopped out of the car and spotted an outhouse around back. “If you
have
to pee, looks like there's a…
bathroom
around back. I think I'll wait for the next Texaco.”

Isabel groaned and headed for the outhouse, as Jesse turned toward the road, leaning against the dusty car to smoke a cigarette.

 

When I came out with the cheese, I saw Jesse hadn't moved a hair, still perched against the car with three inches of ash hovering precariously at the end of her cigarette. “You didn't see the others?”

Jesse jumped like a lizard had slithered into her jeans. She
took a look at her cigarette and laughed. “Did you get a closer look at that outhouse, kiddo? Nah, don't tell me. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Better to approach life without knowing what's comin'.”

“Jesse?” Something about her face bothered me.

Jesse dropped the cigarette on the ground. She fiddled with her purse and then her belt. Then she stood up straight to face me. “Oh, sugar, it's just that ever since I found out about that marriage proposal of yours, I keep remembering things that ain't worth remembering.”

I knew from experience that Jesse wouldn't answer probing questions about Isabel's father. But she was still looking at me expectantly, so I gave it a go. “You mean remembering things about
your
marriage?”

Jesse didn't move or say anything. Then she nodded, just once, slow as refrigerated honey. I looked behind me to see if Isabel was coming. She would want to hear this, I knew.

By the time I turned back to Jesse, the look was gone. She clapped her hands together and clasped them. “Oh, now everybody knows how I feel about the institution of marriage, Sammy girl.” She looked up as we heard the door slam and Isabel curse. “About the same as that outhouse.” Jesse wrinkled her nose. “I know better.”

 

Arshan drove with both hands in perfect safety position, eyes straight ahead, back erect. He checked his three mirrors in clockwise order—rearview, right side, left side, straight ahead, and repeat. The sun paraded its late-afternoon glare, so Arshan pulled down the visor and adjusted his posture.

Lynette watched him and thought about how much Arshan had grown on her. He was still morose and dry, but he'd loosened up as their bridge nights had piled up over the years, and now Lynette realized that he provided the perfect balance to their little group.

She also knew that Jesse had fallen for him, even more
than she'd hinted at. Lynette studied Arshan's severe profile and his slim frame. He was a handsome man, regal somehow, and safe. He just wasn't someone she would have ever imagined Jesse with. Jesse dated businessmen from the salon, or firemen, or attractive divorcés she met on the internet.

They had no proof that moody, serious Arshan felt the same way about Jesse, which Lynette knew must be infuriating her best friend, not to mention shaking her ample confidence. No one had been hurt more in love than Jesse, and Lynette wasn't about to push.

She peered so long that Arshan whipped sideways and caught her. Lynette was embarrassed and pretended to be looking out the window past him.

 

Arshan appreciated Lynette's silence. He had underestimated the feelings this trip would bring back. Ghosts swirled around him in the car and rushed past the windows, interlacing with the scenery. Mina was everywhere in this group. He caught echoes of all her favorite catch phrases. Samantha's laugh sounded strange by itself. He'd always heard it aligned with his daughter's, the mixture spilling into the hallway outside her bedroom. The way Isabel talked with her hands, the private jokes she shared with Samantha—everything was an excruciating reminder of Mina's absence.

And then he kept envisioning his wife, Maliheh. Her laughing eyes. The jasmine scent she wore. Arshan had learned to accept these fleeting glimpses of his wife, but still they startled him, like the richness of gourmet chocolate. He slipped into the past like an egg sliding into water to be poached. Arshan regularly boiled himself alive for his mistakes as a husband and a father.

He remembered every second of the day before Mina was born.

Maliheh lay on the bed, with her puffy eyes and swollen belly. They'd moved to the U.S. in a haze after losing their
son in Iran. Maliheh had hardly spoken to him in the months since. Betrayal by God. That was the only way to describe the pain of losing a child. But on that day, when Maliheh had taken his hand and put it on top of the baby, they had stopped discussing.

Maliheh was always the stronger one. She told Arshan that their child could not be born into such sorrow, that he must promise her to be kind, to be open, to laugh. Arshan's heart was reborn, looking into the eyes of the only woman he'd ever loved. He promised her then and there that the three of them would be happy and safe.

But he'd failed. He'd failed them all.

Suddenly, he felt Lynette staring at him. He glanced over and she looked past him, embarrassed.

Arshan smiled, even though his skin was still scalding. He broke his driving rules to look at Cornell asleep in the back-seat, drooling on a pillow.

Lynette looked at her husband and smiled, too.

 

I was thinking about Remy. I sipped a Coca-Cola and slipped into my new favorite fantasy: being married to Remy Badeau. I pictured an art opening with flashing paparazzi. I pictured us on the covers of French magazines. I pictured a home chef serving us dinner under a chandelier. I started to picture us in bed. Suddenly I felt a little carsick. This had happened a few times recently, as a matter of fact. I was attracted to Remy. He was ruggedly handsome. Other women obviously thought so, too. And the man certainly had skills between the sheets. So what did the spin-cycle stomach mean?

I tried thinking about him again, starting with his smile—the smile that melted me like butter on a skillet every time. Remy must've gotten away with a lot packing that smile. It was disarmingly boyish and more contagious than chicken pox.

I remembered the day he threw out my collection of
trinkets. I'd been collecting them since I arrived in Paris—matchbooks, scraps of advertisements, discarded ticket stubs. The plan was to incorporate them into a new series I'd begun, have them morph into photos or get mired in paint. Yes, they looked like junk, but weren't they obviously collected in a pretty box for a reason?

Remy tossed them out along with my fashion magazines. Man, was I furious. Livid. I'd barged in on him when he was working, with my chin thrust out for a fight. When he understood what he had done, he chuckled. I checked my earlobes—yep, hotter than a newly murdered lobster. A sure sign I was as angry as I could get. He dismissed his assistant and held out his hand. I shook my head, so he laughed again, and swept his arm wide to suggest a place to sit. Dizziness was fast replacing my rage, so I sat and watched him, fuming.

Remy scratched his head for comic effect, then turned his pockets inside out. From the floor, he retrieved a match-book and a few coins and a mint wrapper. He crawled on the carpet to the wastebasket, sniffing and wagging his butt like a puppy, and took out a magazine, scripts, and a newspaper. He shredded them with his teeth, growling, then got on his knees at my feet. When he looked up at me, presenting his peace offering of garbage, he smiled that smile of his.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, naked under crisp white sheets. Remy reclined on fluffy pillows and I curled around him, my head on his chest until he said it was too hot. He twirled my curls around his fingers and teased that my skin betrayed my every emotion—from anger to desire. He kissed the top of my head and told me stories about his life, his travels, his work. Entranced, I lifted my head to kiss him and he moved smoothly to meet me halfway. We kissed slowly, Remy brushing his petal-smooth lips side to side across my mouth, flicking his tongue ever so softly to part my lips. I loved the way he touched me,
knowing every muscle, every sensitive spot, as if he were reciting a manual on female pleasure. I slid my body atop his lean torso and muscled stomach, easing myself down onto him, him inside of me. We both exhaled and moaned into each other's mouths, lips hovering centimeters apart.

Isabel bumped my seat. I yelped when the ice-cold soda hit my broiling thighs.

“Shit!” I sprung my legs apart and caught myself panting.

“Sorry!” Isabel yelled overly loudly, on account of rocking out to her headphones.

Jesse looked at me closely. “Well, I have a purty good idea what
you
were thinkin' about.”

 

Jesse kept thinking about Kendra's last-minute bailout. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something wasn't right. She remembered what Lynette had told her about the conversation. Kendra blaming her crazy boss and her incompetent assistant. Normal. Kendra letting it drop about a fancy client dinner. Normal. Kendra stressed-out and overworked and feeling guilty about spending too much on shoes. Totally normal. Worrying about missing work was Kendra since her first job. But that girl cared about this group and about her family.

Maybe Kendra and Lynette had some latent issues. Lynette had confessed only a handful of times that she wasn't sure she'd done a good job raising a mixed-race daughter. Jesse had to smile. She didn't think the problem had to do with Kendra being half-black so much as it had to do with Kendra being Kendra.

Lynette came from a conservative Southern family, but turned out a hippie actress. Jesse knew Lynette had envisioned being the understanding mom to a wild artistic daughter. But kids don't care much about a parent's plans. Kendra used to infuriate Lynette by playing businesswoman and asking her why she didn't own any pantsuits. It was during Lynette's
latest incarnation of the red phase—when she was directing community theater and into wearing scarlet felt clogs and burgundy tunic sweaters over leggings.

Jesse smiled. At least Lynette and Cornell had each other. It had been hard sometimes—raising Isabel by herself and running the salon—to constantly be reminded what it would've been like to have a partner. Cornell and Lynette were sickeningly meant for each other. That might not have been so bad.