All Adults Here(11)

“Birdie bird, you little snake, you didn’t tell me,” she said, and repeated what Bob had told her.

“You never asked! It was none of my business!” Birdie said. She wasn’t a gossip, Astrid knew. Birdie probably saw all sorts of things at Heron Meadows, the many humiliations of age, and she never said a thing. Astrid was pierced with a sharp pang of desire—she wanted Birdie to come over, right now; she wanted to put her head in Birdie’s lap and cry or laugh or both. Was that romance or codependence, the overwhelming need for another person in order to properly function? Birdie was doing her weekly reorders at the salon and had offered to go with Astrid to the train station and then home, whatever she wanted, but Astrid had refused. They were still careful in public, but truly, not more careful than Astrid would have been with a man. She wasn’t into public displays of anything except irritation at those who didn’t follow rules, like drivers who made rolling stops or those who didn’t pick up their dogs’ mess. It was hard to keep a secret in a small town, but as Astrid had learned, everything was easier when you were a woman over fifty. That’s what made Astrid cry, she realized—Barbara had known that too.





Chapter 7





August in Purgatory



August sat in the back of his parents’ car. Like everything else they owned, it was purposefully old, as if existing for long enough gave things extra value instead of the opposite. They owned a vintage clothing and furniture store, Secondhand News, and so he supposed it was true, that they literally sold things for more money than they’d been worth, but it still seemed sort of like an outlandish idea. The car was special, though, the kind of thing that young people with beards and tinted sunglasses oohed and aahed over when it was parked on the street in Clapham. It was enormous, the size of an ocean liner, and as square as a pretend car made out of a cardboard box. They called it Harold. The air-conditioning was broken, and so August’s window was rolled all the way down, and the wind blew his hair around his face like a washing machine.

“Honey?” his mom said, turning her face toward the back seat. Her voice was barely audible over the wind, a signal through static.

“Mmm,” August said, keeping his eyes on the trees whipping by. They were halfway home, and soon they would stop for lunch in Great Barrington, as they always did on the way home from camp.

There was a week left before school started. The eighth grade. If camp had lasted until five minutes before school started, that’s what August would have wanted. School was full of people August spent every summer forgetting entirely, sometimes so well that he was surprised to see them in the fall, as if they’d died and come back from the dead. Not because they were all terrible people—only some of them were terrible, like the girls who always rode in the annual Harvest Parade, a new crop every year, girls who waved from elbow to wrist like Miss-Americas-in-training—they just weren’t his people, and it was nice not to have to take up space with things you didn’t need.

His parents didn’t see things that way. They were menders by nature, fixers, and thought that anything could be solved by talking it into the ground.

“Honey?” August’s mom said again. She motioned for him to roll up his window, which he reluctantly did, cutting off the noise of the road with a thunk.

“Yeah?” Now he could hear the music they were listening to in the front seat, Paul Simon, official soundtrack of liberal parents everywhere. Sometimes August wondered if there was a handbook that came with being a parent, full of the music and books and movies you were supposed to like (Aretha, Chabon, documentaries), and what kind of food to insist was delicious when clearly it was not (homemade hummus, lentil soup).

“Do you want to talk about it?” His dad swiveled around and cupped his hands around the headrest.

“Talk about what?” August tucked his hair behind his ears.

“You haven’t stopped crying since we picked you up.” His dad’s voice was soft. He meant well—they both did. It wasn’t their fault.

“I hadn’t noticed,” August said, which was true. Adults—even nice ones, like his parents, who understand that their children are autonomous human people and not robots created just to please them—couldn’t remember what it was like. Here is a brief list of what it (being alive) was like: Being a naked person in the middle of Times Square. Being a naked person in the middle of the cafeteria. Being a hermit crab scurrying along the ocean floor in search of a new shell. Being a baby turtle in the middle of a six-lane highway. That didn’t begin to cover all the ways August felt weird and strange and wrong every day.

“Oh,” said his mother. She reached back and put her hand on his knee. “Love you, sweetie.” Then August rolled his window down again and they left him alone until lunch.



* * *



—

If camp was heaven and home was hell, then Great Barrington was purgatory, a good place to stop to go to the bathroom. There were good sandwiches and a spot around the corner with better-than-good ice cream. August reluctantly ordered a waffle cone with mint chocolate chip and rainbow sprinkles, because no amount of sweetness could make him less sad, which was what he wanted, to stay sad for a while longer. They sat inside at a small square table, all six of their knees touching.

“You can still go back next year,” his mom said. There was an internal countdown. August had one more summer before aging out. Like a stuffed animal on a teenager’s bed, his days were numbered. They all tried not to talk about it, and this early mention of the ticking down of the clock from his mother felt like a breach of etiquette—he must have been crying a lot for her to resort to the promise of next summer already, before they were even two hours gone.