Feels Like Summertime(2)

“What has the old bastard done now?” I ask. He’s probably chasing one too many women around the bingo hall. Or he’s finally managed to catch one of them. Usually, they just slap him and he moves on to the next one.

“Your father has had a stroke, Mr. Jacobson. I’m very sorry.”

My gut twists and the pulse in my right eye starts to pound. “Is he dead?” I ask. My father might be a mean old codger, but I don’t want him to die.

“Oh, no,” she rushes to say. “He’ll need therapy, but he’s alive. Right now he’s complaining about the lunch special. And he just threatened to stick a fork in my eye if I didn’t find some chocolate pudding.”

The clench around my heart eases a little. “What do you need from me?”

“Well,” she stops to clear her throat, “here’s the thing. Your father’s insurance won’t cover in-home care, and he doesn’t want to go to a nursing facility.”

I hear grumbling from the other end of the phone and the nurse grunts. “Jake,” I hear. It’s my dad, and his voice is gruff with sleep. In my head, I imagine him lying there attached to monitors with tubes sticking out of him.

“Pop,” I reply. “What’s up?”

“The sky,” he says, deadpan.

“That’s good,” I reply, and I smile. “Better than if it fell down.”

Pop is silent for a moment. Pop is never silent. He always has something to say, and it’s usually not anything nice. “What’s up with you?” he finally asks.

I look down at the beast lying at my feet. “I got a dog.”

“One of those yappy little things?”

“Oh, no.” I tilt my head. The dog’s tongue is lying beside him on the sidewalk where he’s panting. “Definitely not yappy. Or little.”

“Well, bring him with you when you come, will you?” He gets quiet again.

“You…want me to come there?”

“Well, who else is going to come and spring me? This is like jail, son. They won’t let me go home unless I have someone to stay with me.” He clears his throat and I can tell he doesn’t like asking. “It’s not like I need you to wipe my ass or anything. I just need you to pick me up. Stay for a few weeks.”

“Okay, Pop. I’ll pick you up. I’m on my way.”

“How long?” he asks, and I think I hear him sniffle.

Pop’s in North Carolina and I’m in New York. “I can be there tomorrow.” If I drive all night.

“I’ll see you then.” There’s a shuffling of the phone and I can hear him talking to the nurse. “He’s on the way. Now get my chocolate pudding.”

“Put down the fork, Mr. Jacobson,” she scolds. She should be glad he’s not grabbing her ass, because that’s what he usually does. The line goes dead as the call is ended.

I look down at my dog. “Want to go on a road trip?” I ask him. His tail starts to thump against the concrete, but he doesn’t lift his head. “Let’s go, dog.”

He lumbers to his feet, stretches, and then takes his spot in the front seat of my truck. I wonder if I could run him through the car wash…

Probably not.





2





Katie





My eyes are blurry when I finally get to the campground. Well, it’s not really a campground. It’s a bunch of cabins in a park near a lake. My family came here the summer I turned sixteen. It looks smaller than it did when I was a child, and a little more run-down, but to be honest, I’d take just about anything over where I’ve been.

My daughter, my copilot, is in the passenger seat. She’s the same age I was the year my parents and I came here, and I want to share this place with her more than any of the other kids.

“This is it?” she says, looking around at the thimble-sized cabins.

“Yes, this is it.” This is the best place on earth, little girl, and hopefully the safest place.

“You have to be kidding me.”

It’s a good thing God makes children cute, or parents would eat their young. “Will you sit with the kids while I get the keys?”

“Duh,” she says with all the ego of a sixteen-year-old ingrate. Normally, she would have her face stuffed in her cell phone but I didn’t let her bring it with her. I didn’t bring mine, either.

I walk to the camp office, where there’s a metal box with a combination lock on it. That’s where the instructions said I would find the keys. I pull a piece of paper from my pocket where I’ve written the lock numbers and I dial them in. The box opens and I see a set of keys. They’re small copper keys and I pick them up. The key ring has a naked centerfold on it. That’s just like Mr. Jacobson. He’ll never change.

I remember Mr. Jacobson as a surly middle-aged man. He was never very nice, but he was interesting. You wanted to ask him things just so he would bark at you and threaten to beat you over the head with a boat oar, because when you turned your back, he’d be halfway grinning and there was a chance you could catch it if you looked at just the right time.

I wonder where he is now.

I see my children getting out of the car and I lay a hand on my pregnant belly. I’m eight months along, and every move I make causes a counter move from the newbie, as Gabby likes to call him. Gabby is my oldest, and she tends to get stuck with the children when I’m busy. Then there’s Alex. He’s nine. The youngest is Trixie, who is seven. We thought we were done after Alex. Then Trixie surprised us all, who got the nickname when Alex couldn’t say Tracy. Then life went to shit, and now I’m here, trying to escape it all.