The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  It’s Josh who finally breaks the silence. ‘How you been?’

  The space between them in the pickup seems vast. A whole canyon there in the seat between them. Katie wants to slide up next to him on the front seat. Wants to wrap her arms around his. Wants to lean her head right there on his shoulder, crown nestled into his neck. Their familiar way. But she does not move. Does not try to breach the space between them. ‘All right.’ Only his profile meets her searching eyes. ‘ ’N’ you?’

  He shrugs. ‘All right too, I reckon.’

  Silence for a beat. Then, ‘You mad at me, Josh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mad ’bout somethin’ else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what is it, then?’

  ‘It ain’t nothin’.’

  Purr of the engine the only sound.

  She turns to him. Voice soft. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  The tyres screech and squeak their halt, the sudden force of the pickup stopping tossing Katie forward slightly, her hands catching the dashboard just barely in time to brace herself.

  ‘Fucking hell, Katie.’ He’s facing her now, and there’s fire in his eyes, and Katie feels her heart skip a beat, but not in the good kind of way like it usually does. ‘What the fuck do you want from me? You want me to sit here ’n’ pretend like everything’s just perfect? You want me to act like I don’t care what’s goin’ on with you? Well, that’s bullshit. I ain’t gonna sit by and smile and just wait for somethin’ bad to happen.’

  ‘Who says somethin’ bad’s gonna happen?’

  ‘Who’s to say it ain’t?’

  She says nothing. Stares out of the window at the utter dark nothingness of the road ahead. Angry, but not fully sure she understands why. She can feel his eyes on her. Who’s to say it ain’t? Bites her lower lip to keep her nerves steady. Silence stretches long between them. The air in the pickup thick, too thick, hard to breathe. She wishes she was home already. No, not home. Just anywhere but here.

  He turns, back straight in his seat, no longer facing her, looking out into the darkness before them. Impenetrable. Slams his hand against the steering-wheel and the horn goes off. The sound startles her, and Katie jumps. Josh’s breath releases in one low, long gush. ‘Fucking hell …’ Tone discouraged. Fire spent.

  She doesn’t look at him. Speaks to the small patch of light illuminated by the high beams on the road before them. ‘I don’t wanna fight.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  She turns to him then, his face still too shadowed to see, the cab itself too dark to show his features.

  He reaches out an arm. ‘Come here, baby.’

  And somehow the space between is suddenly not so far, and she slides across the seat until his arms are around her. And they kiss. And everything’s right again. Everything’s gonna be OK again. She can feel it. The anger boils down and cools.

  They stay like that a moment. Or an hour. Time no longer in existence. No cars or traffic on these back roads. The engine idling. Neither speaks. Neither moves. Time passes or does not pass. His arm around her feels like safety, and she closes her eyes. Imagines for a moment that the moment might last. It’s a nice thought. A thought on lonely nights she will climb back to, seeking refuge.

  It is Katie who breaks their silence. ‘The Saunders’ truck drove by the house yesterday.’ She feels his body stiffen. Regrets her words already.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I dunno. I wasn’t home. Joanne told me ’bout it. Said it just drove by.’

  ‘Eddie’s truck?’

  She shrugs. ‘Who else’s?’

  Josh is silent, but Katie can feel the tension coursing through him, steady as a second pulse. As full of life, as dangerous and as deadly. She raises her chin to search his face. ‘Do you think there’ll be trouble? Have you heard anythin’?’

  He pauses before answering. ‘I ain’t the only one that dislikes him back. You know that, Katie.’

  ‘We don’t want no trouble, Josh.’ Voice a soft, soft whisper.

  He smooths down her hair to soothe her. ‘I know that.’

  ‘ ’N’ other folks?’

  He pauses. ‘They know that, too.’

  ‘If you heard someone was fixin’ to do something, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  His hand is on repeat, smoothing down her hair, petting her, stroking her calm. ‘Course I would.’ But his pause before his answer catches her heart and squeezes and makes it hard to breathe.

  She lifts her chin again, struggling to see his face. Only shadows there. ‘Do you think he’s gonna do somethin’?’

  ‘I would, if I’s her brother.’

  Out across the prairie an owl calls.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I told you, Katie. I know he’s your kin ’n’ all, but it’s just a matter of time till he’s set off again ’n’ folks get hurt, ’n’ I ain’t the only one that ain’t just willin’ to set back waitin’ for it.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  No stars. No streetlights. Only the dark blanket of night around them, and suddenly the darkness seems too thick, too hot, despite the open pickup window. Josh kisses her forehead. ‘Best get you home.’

  Long hours have passed since the evening primroses peeled open. Closer to their closing now than to their bloom. When she was a girl, Lizzie used to marvel at how, just past sunset, they would open. Petal by petal, like tiny yellow mouths. She used to sit right there on the front porch, waiting till the last golden rays turned pink and deepened purple. Used to go down in the flowerbeds right at that final moment of sunset. Careful not to step on the low-lying marigolds. The gentle lilies and daisies bedded there. Used to hold her breath as each night she watched the miracle of the primroses blooming and re-blooming. Like some sort of magic forever on repeat and unexplained. She never could understand what made them close up so tight again. Why their flowers did not stay bloomed.

  Fireflies dart across the dark lawn, zigzagging as they chase each other, their glowing bulbs the only lights on this dark night. Tag, you’re it! as they collide. No stars above. Moon new or else just hidden. A cloudy night, but not cool, day’s heat still a thick blanket spread out across the land. Maybe it will rain tomorrow. Crickets call out their usual summer symphony. From somewhere a July fly briefly joins their song only to fall silent and not be heard again.

  Lizzie’s been sitting there since before the sun set. In Mama’s old rocker. Back and forth, back and forth, unaware of time’s passing even as she’s watched the night slowly fall; the hours stretch longer as the shadows begin to shorten. Joanne came out some time back and kissed her goodnight and went up to bed. Katie’s at the diner still. Her girls. Her heartbeats.

  He was one once, too. Bobby. Her heart’s greatest beat. Now a still void of memories sugar-sweetened by time and retrospect.

  The screen door creaks open, snapping her thoughts back to here. To now.

  ‘May I join you?’

  She nods.

  He sits in the rocker beside her. Gazes out across the lawn into the utter blackness beyond. ‘Dark night tonight, ain’t it?’

  Their rockers creak as both slide back and forth, back and forth. Different rhythms. Same sound. She listens to the crickets. Finds comfort in their call.

  ‘I still miss him,’ she says at last. ‘Somethin’ awful.’

  He does not answer her at first. His rocker slows though not quite still before its rhythm picks back up again. She surprises herself with the words. Hadn’t known she meant to speak them.

  ‘Can’t say as I feel the same.’ Voice thick as syrup, but burned rough round the edges, not sticky smooth.

  Her turn to pause her rocker. ‘That don’t surprise me none.’

  She can feel Jasper’s eyes on her.

  Voice raw, unpractised, he replies, ‘Sometimes I miss the him before. Not the him of when I … left. Like they was different people.’

  She nods. Can understand that. At least partially.

&
nbsp; ‘How long’s it been?’ A bit too loud despite his hushed tone.

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘Them girls of yours remember ’im?’

  She pauses. ‘Reckon Katie must. Don’t know ’bout Joanne. Reckon she remembers somethin’.’

  He nods. Lets the silence between them gain weight before he breaks it. ‘You divorce ’im?’

  A single chuckle escapes her. Not a happy sound. ‘Things ain’t ever so clean cut round here. I’d have thought you’d remember that much.’ Teasing in her tone, though no real laughter.

  He snorts. Waits for her this time to break their silence.

  ‘You know,’ she says at length, ‘I think a part of me always thought he might come back. Even after all that happened.’

  ‘Not any more?’

  ‘Why would he?’

  Neither speaks. Neither breaks that silence. A star fades in and out of sight as dark clouds shift.

  ‘Liz?’ Voice so uncertain.

  ‘Ummmm?’

  ‘Do you blame me?’

  She weighs the question. Holds her pause. She did once. Blame him. When Bobby first left. Couldn’t help but think back then, This wouldn’t have happened if … But what’s the point now in speculating? In second guessing? Aloud, she says, ‘He was never the same after all that happened.’

  Jasper lets out a long, low breath. ‘I’m sorry for that.’

  ‘Well …’ She looks out across the vast blackness of the prairie. At the few shadows visible there. The fireflies scattered in between. ‘Good luck finding many folks round here that’d believe it.’

  That snort again. No amusement in it. Prairie grasses rustle in the breeze. Crickets sing and fall silent and sing again.

  ‘Reckon he left ’cause of me?’ Not one star shining in that clouded sky.

  ‘In part,’ she lies.

  Silence, as both are lost in memory. In thought. After a while, he says, voice scarcely above a whisper, ‘Sometimes I wonder if people ever really heal.’

  The creak of their rockers, back and forth, back and forth. Time passes. Crickets sing. To the darkness, at length, she says, ‘I don’t think they do.’

  And he does not reply.

  She holds the cicada shell carefully. Lifts it to her face and inhales deeply. Breathes in the earthy smell of it. Foreign to her nose. Sour almost. And musty. A bit like old people. Or potatoes dug fresh from the garden, the dirt still clinging to their skins. Or Grandma’s closet back when Grandma was alive, before Mom moved into Grandma’s room and cleared out all Grandma’s clothes. Joanne used to hide in there, back when she was little. In Grandma’s closet. Back when Katie still played hide and seek with her. When they were really small, Mom even joined in, too, sometimes, and Joanne would always shriek with laughter when she was finally found. That’s what the cicada smells like – those long minutes in the closet waiting for that laughter.

  Once, Katie did not come to find her. Joanne heard Katie counting on the stairs … fifty-five, fifty-four, fifty-three … all the way backwards from one hundred. Like they always did, in that same loud voice so the other could be sure to hear them counting. Giggling, Joanne had tiptoed down the hall. Careful not to creak the floorboards with each careful step. She opened up the door to Grandma’s room. Winced when the hinges squeaked. The floral curtains were pulled open so that sunlight spilled across the floor in a thick golden rectangle, wooden crossbeams on the window neatly dividing it into four. The shadowed outline of a cross. She remembers that. Remembers, somehow, that sunlight so clearly, how it was there divided. Careful still, Joanne crossed the room on tiptoe. Opened the door to Grandma’s closet. The hinges squeaked as it pulled open towards her. She had to stand on tiptoe just a little to open it. That’s how small she was. The door clicked shut behind her.

  Still giggling, still trying not to, she slipped into Grandma’s closet behind the shoe rack, Grandma’s long skirts and dresses spilling down over her as they dangled off their hangers. Dark greys and blacks and coloured calicos. Long and dark and musty above her. The smell of old person, of shoes and mothballs thick around her. Katie’s voice still a steady count muffled and drifting from the stairs below.

  Then, ‘Ready or not, here I come!’

  And Joanne waited.

  And waited.

  And it seemed so very long. She watched a spider cross the floor and slip into a crack at the base of the boards. Had to try real hard not to scream or run and go get Mom. But she knew it was OK: Katie would find her soon. At first, it was hard not to giggle. She was proud she had hidden so well. That it took Katie so long to find her. Then Joanne heard Katie’s voice outside. Couldn’t hear the words. Just the call of it. The rise and fall of her older sister’s tone. And a car door slam. And an engine start. And then she didn’t hear Katie any more.

  The realization slapped her, knocked the laughter right out of her. Joanne put her head down between her knees. Breaths short and shallow. She didn’t cry at first. Stared down at her toes. The floor beyond. At the line of light that filtered in through the crack in the door and cut across her ankle. Katie was not going to come and find her. She wondered why her sister’d bothered counting. Why no one else came looking. How no one else realized she was missing. Then she did cry, softly, each sob a tiny hiccup that shook her chest, rocked her body and made it hard to breathe. Mom would find her soon, though. Or Grandma. Surely, she told herself, someone would find her soon. But there were no footsteps on the stairs and no one came.

  That was the last time Joanne played hide and seek.

  Joanne lowers the cicada from her nose and studies it. The off-brown colour of it. A bit like dried bark. Or peanut butter left out too long, and now solidified. Its legs feel prickly in her palm. All five of them. Rough against her skin, though the rest of the July fly is smooth. Carefully, she places it on Katie’s vanity. Positions the bug so its hollow eyes blindly stare out at her. Adjusts it so that it stands between Katie’s perfume and hairbrush. Likes the look of it there. Alien and ugly among the pretty girlie items that scatter her sister’s vanity. Nail polish. And magazine cut-outs. And mascara. And creams. And photographs of Katie and her friends. Joanne wonders where that sixth leg went. Wishes Uncle Jasper hadn’t broken it off, even though she knows he didn’t mean to. She wonders, if she’d looked, if she might have found it. If it might be there still.

  ‘There,’ she says out loud. ‘You can stay right there.’ And she places the July fly on top of last month’s Seventeen.

  No one there to hear. To answer. Just her and the exoskeleton perched before her. Dark and silent in its hollow frame. She imagines Katie’s face, finding it. The way she might shriek. And jump up. And knock the little stool right over. Magazines and nail polish and photographs all knocked over and scattered across the floor. Joanne smiles. But picks the July fly up once again. No, the vanity’s not the spot for it, that won’t do.

  She crosses the room and stands by the window, July fly still cradled in her palm. Looks out into the pitch dark of night. The clouded, starless sky. The flickering porch light at the Greys’ is the only light for miles. She misses the stars. Wishes she could look up and map the constellations. Scarcely any air blows through the slightly cracked window, so Joanne pushes against it till it swings open all the way. Sticks her head out and closes her eyes. Feels the warm air slide up against her skin. Sticky. Even without the sun’s heat. She stays like that a moment. Thinking. Imagining a million what-ifs that take her far away. And bring Daddy home. And make Katie her friend again. And solve all the mysteries of Uncle Jasper’s crime. And keep summers year-long, no such thing as school.

  Far off, across the prairie, a pack of coyotes calls, voices shrill and wild as they howl. Joanne’s eyes pop open. Not ’cause she’s scared. Just as reflex to the sound. She’s lived nearly her whole life in this house. Was only just walking, really, when they left town and moved in with Grandma. She is used to the creaks and groans and moans of the house and to the calls of the prairie that surround
s it. She finds comfort in the sounds.

  Katie should be home before too long. It’s late, and Joanne knows she’s supposed to be in bed, but she likes having the room to herself while Katie’s out. Likes looking at Katie’s things when Katie’s not there. Likes how she can push open the window all the way and stick her head right out without her sister complaining that she’s letting moths and June bugs in. Without complaining that she’s moving, touching, Katie’s stuff.

  Reluctantly, Joanne closes the window till it’s once more only cracked. She’s thirsty. Looks around the room for a glass of water. There is none. Mom didn’t bring one up tonight. She lets her breath out long and slow. Mom always brings up water when she says goodnight. Has as long as Joanne can remember. Leaves it by the bedside table. To drown witches. And end nightmares. And give the sleep fairy a swimming-pool to leave good dreams in. But Mom didn’t come up earlier to say goodnight. It had been Joanne who eventually went downstairs. She’d been scared Mom might tell her off for skipping bedtime if she didn’t. But Mom hadn’t even seemed to notice that Joanne had come down late. ‘Night, hon.’ Didn’t even remind her to brush her teeth. Just sat in Grandma’s old rocker staring out across the open acres as further darkness fell upon them.

  Joanne crosses the room and opens the door. Thirsty. No light escapes from under the other doors, and the hall before her feels ghostly quiet, even though the grandfather clock downstairs ticks loudly as it counts down the hours. She hesitates there in the doorway, throat dry, lips dry. Glances back into Katie’s room, their room, not sure what makes her pause. She faces the darkened hall again. Licks her dry lips, then turns the door knob slow as she is able so it won’t click too loudly into place as she shuts the door. Carefully, she tiptoes along the hall. Down the stairs, wincing as the floorboards squeak. She doesn’t want to wake Mom or Uncle Jasper. Doesn’t want to have to explain why she hasn’t yet gone to bed. Why she didn’t brush her teeth.