That Summer(20)

“We just caught up for a while. He asked about you.”

“Did he.” Her voice was flat. “Well. That’s nice.”

“He’s working over at Vengo,” I went on. “And some other job, too.”

“What’s he doing back in town? I thought he was in college.”

“He’s thinking about taking some time off.”

“Dropping out?” she said.

“No.” I spoke slowly. “Just time off. And anyway he hasn’t decided yet.” I was beginning to regret I’d even mentioned it. Ashley had a way of taking anything good and ruining it.

“Well, that sounds like Sumner,” she said dismissively. “He never was very ambitious.”

“He told me to congratulate you,” I answered, suddenly wanting to keep talking. She didn’t have to be so nasty. “He wishes you the best.”

“That’s nice.” She was bored with it already. She walked to the door, reaching for the knob. “If Lewis calls, tell him I’m sleeping. I don’t feel like talking to anyone right now.”

“Ashley.”

She turned, having already opened the door. “What?”

“He was really happy for you.” She had that look on her face, like I was wasting her time so late at night. “I thought ... I thought you’d have more of a reaction.”

She shook her head, moving inside. “Haven, I’m getting married in less than a month. I don’t have time to think about old boyfriends. I don’t even have time to think about myself.”

“I was happy to see him,” I said.

“You didn’t know him the way I did.” She rubbed one foot with the other, that classic Ashley gesture. “Just tell Lewis I’m asleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

I’d let it go now, just like I’d learned to let all things go that brought out that tired voice and impatient gesture in my sister. Being in her good graces was still important to me. I sat out on the porch for a long time, not sure what I was waiting for. Not for the Town Car, which didn’t come home with my mother tucked safely inside until much later, when I was in bed half-asleep, making myself stay lucid until I heard her key in the lock. Not for Lewis’s call, which came and I let ring, on and on, long after Ashley had pretended to be sleeping or was asleep. There was time for waiting, even if I wasn’t sure what to wait for. It was still summer, at least for a while.





Chapter Six




There were two homecomings in the first week of August for our neighborhood. One was little, not mattering much to anyone but me. And one was big news.

The little one was the return of my best friend, Casey Melvin, from 4-H camp, where she’d spent most of the summer letting boys go up her shirt and writing me long, dramatic letters in pink magic marker sealed with a lipstick kiss. She came back plumper, cuter, and wearing a green T-shirt that belonged to her new long-distance boyfriend, a seventeen-year-old from Hershey, Pennsylvania, named Rick. She had a lot to tell me.

“God, Haven, you would just die if you met him. He is so much better looking than any of the guys around here.” We were in her room drinking Cokes and going through what seemed like eighteen packs of pictures, double prints, all of smiling people posing in front of log cabins, bodies of water, and the occasional flag. They had to salute the flag three times a day, apparently. That seemed to be the only 4-H activity involved, at least for Casey. In the mere month and a half that she’d been gone, she had become what my mother would politely call “fast.”

There were at least twenty pictures of Rick in the small stack I’d already gone through, half of which featured Casey hanging off of some part of him. He was good looking, but not stunning. Casey was lying on her stomach beside me, naming all the people.

“Oh, that’s Lucy in the red shirt. She was so crazy, I swear. She was sneaking around with one of the counselors-this college guy? And she got sent home the third week. It was too bad because she was loads of fun. She’d do anything if you double dog dared her.”

“Double dog dared?” I said.

“Yeah.” She sat up, plunking another stack of pictures into my hands. “And Rick called me last night, can you believe it? Long distance. He said he misses me so much he wanted to go back to camp for the first time in his life. But I’m going up there for Thanksgiving; we already asked his parents and everything. But that’s four months. I think I’ll die if I don’t see him for four months.”

I watched my best friend, boy crazed, as she rolled on the bed clutching the stack of Rick pictures to her chest. Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

“So what did I miss here?”

I shrugged, taking another sip of my Coke. “Nothing. Dad got married. But that’s about it.”

“How was the wedding? Was it awful?”

“No,” I said, but I was glad that she asked. Only your very best friend knows when to ask that kind of question. “It was weird. And Ashley’s practically psychotic with her wedding so close. And my mother is going to Europe in the fall with Lydia.”

“Lydia? For how long?”

“Months, I think. A long time.”

“God.” She pushed her hair out of her face. Casey was a redhead, actually an orange-head, with that brassy kind of pumpkin, colored hair. She’d had masses of freck, les when we were little, which thankfully faded as she got older; but her hair stayed basically unmanageable, a mop of wild orange curls. “Hey, who are you gonna stay with while she’s gone?”