That Summer(37)

I went to the kitchen and got a trash can, which I put by her head in case things got nasty later, and just as I was leaving to go upstairs she mumbled something, then said louder, “Hey.”

“What?” She was just a blob on the couch now, in the dark. On the coffee table, by the swizzle sticks, I could see a pile of my mother’s lists, all on yellow sticky paper, lying in the one slant of light that was coming in through the curtains.

“Come talk to me,” she said, and I heard the couch creak as she slowly rolled over. “Haven.”

I sat down on the chair beside the couch, pulling my legs up to my chest. I could remember when I’d fit in it perfectly, sinking into its deep cushions, when my feet didn’t even touch the ground. Now I contorted myself, linking an elbow around a knee, just to fit in its small space. I didn’t say anything.

“I’m gonna miss you, you know,” she said suddenly, her voice clearer than before. “I know you don’t believe that.”

“I figured you couldn’t wait to leave,” I said.

She laughed, a long, lazy laugh. “Oh, yeah, I can’t. I mean, I love Lewis. I love him, Haven. He’s the only one who ever really cared about me.”

This was old news. I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see me in the dark.

“It’s all gonna be okay, Haven. You know that, right? You know it.” She was rambling now, her voice softer, then louder, falling off into sleep. “Mom and Dad and everything, it’s all gonna be okay. And Lorna. And me and Lewis. We can’t be sad about it forever, you know? We’ve got to think back to the good times, Haven, and just remember them; that’s all we can do. We can’t worry about the past or what happened at the end, anymore. I can’t and you can’t.”

“I don’t,” I said softly, hoping she’d fall asleep.

“You do, though,” she said quietly, her voice muffled by the blanket. “I can see it in your face, in your eyes. You gotta grow up, you know? It’s nobody’s fault. We had good times, don’t you understand? Some people don’t even have that.”

I saw a shadow passing on the street outside, suddenly, and thought of Gwendolyn. Of going wild. I said, “Go to sleep, Ashley. It’s late.”

“We had good times,” she murmured, more to herself now than to me, if she’d ever been talking to me, really. “Like that summer, at the beach. It was perfect.”

“What summer?” I sat up now, listening closely. “Which one?”

“At the beach... you know. With Mom and Daddy, and the hotel, and playing Frisbee every night, all night. Remember, Haven? You have to remember that, and try to forget the rest....” Her voice faded off, muffled.

“Sumner was there,” I said to her, “remember, Ashley? Sumner was there the whole time and you guys were so great together, remember? He was the greatest.”

“The greatest,” she repeated in that same sleepy, soft voice. “It was the greatest.”

“I didn’t think you remembered,” I said to her, leaning closer. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

I waited, listening for her response, but she was out, her breathing steady and soft. “I thought you’d forgotten,” I said again, quietly, before pulling the blanket tighter around her, smoothing my hand across her hair and sitting for a while in the dark, watching my sister dream.





The next morning Ashley spent three hours in the bathroom, moaning and flushing the toilet, while my mother and I stood outside the door wondering if we should intervene. Finally, in early afternoon, she emerged after a shower, looking kind of pasty but alive. Lewis showed up a half hour later, with Pepto-Bismol, ginger ale, and oyster crackers. He was quite a guy, that Lewis.

“I can’t believe they just left me on the porch,” Ashley was saying as I came into the kitchen later that afternoon. She and Lewis were at the table going over wedding details. She had her legs across his lap and he was rubbing her feet. “Some friends.”

“They must have thought it would be funny,” Lewis said in his soothing, even voice. He was wearing a pastel oxford shirt and madras shorts, a veritable explosion of color next to Ashley in her gray sweatpants and white T-shirt. She was nibbling on an oyster cracker, eating the edges.

“Well, it wasn’t.” She took another sip of ginger ale. “If it wasn’t for Haven, I would have died, probably.”

“No, you just would have woken up on the porch,” I said.

“I’d rather die. Can you imagine what the neighbors would think?” Overnight, my sister had grown old again, worried about consequences. I missed the loopy silliness of her the night before, hanging off my arm with her hair in her face.

“Well, if you hadn’t gone out drinking, and done what I did . . . ,” Lewis said in a tsk-tsk voice, checking something off the list.

“Shut up,” Ashley said, rearranging her feet in his lap.

“What did you do?” I asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down beside them.

“We went to a dinner, and then a baseball game, ” Lewis said smugly, “where I had two beers, and made it to my own bed without incident.”

“And without underwear around your neck,” I chimed in, reaching for an oyster cracker.

Suddenly I knew, without even looking up, that I’d said something wrong. Very wrong. I had the sensation of eyes boring into my neck, hard. As I lifted my head Ashley was staring at me, her mouth twisted in that tight line that meant I was in trouble.