That Summer(32)

“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.