The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  ‘What’s my problem then?’ Snarled more than he’d meant to, but no true malice in his words. Just anger. Just hurt.

  Their eyes had met, faces barely visible through the shadowed darkness. Expressions lost. That pleading was in her voice again. No doubt, he thought, it must also be in her eyes.

  ‘How the hell do I know, Jasper? And how do I tell a child when I don’t know myself?’ She had turned then, disappearing into the darkness of the house, the screen door shutting behind her.

  He hadn’t moved for quite a while after that, staring at the dark horizon till pink and deep purple streaked the pre-dawn sky. Katie came home just short of sunrise, the smell of the diner still thick and stale upon her as she passed him. He nodded to her but did not say hello. There was something timid in her smile as she hurried through the door. As she pulled it tightly shut behind her.

  He sat there and watched in silence as the sun rose. It had been ten years since he’d seen that. And when the pinks turned black to gentle blue, his face had relaxed as though some long-drawn-out pain had finally eased. He rose only once, right before dawn broke, and strode down the garden path and opened up the picket-fence gate and stood there. Stared down the road a good while. Out across the open grasses. No cars. Nobody. Then he had turned and shut the gate again. Latched it. Unlatched it. Latched again. Slowly, he walked back up to the porch. He opened the screen door and peered inside the still sleeping darkness within. Listened to the silence. Shut the screen. Because he could. Sat down again. Because he could. To watch the sun rise.

  The thrift store Lizzie guides him into is not a shop Jasper remembers. It was a café before. The C-A-F-É block-letter outline still just barely visible as it arches from one side of the picture window up across the other. A frosted-glass ghost of what used to be. A bell chimes as they enter and rattles silent. No a/c, just a ceiling fan half caked in dust that spins in slow rotation, barely moving the stuffy air. The shop smells mildly of cat piss and mothballs, a smell that slaps the nostrils and jerks back the head, but passes as the senses adapt to the musty odour of the old café and the second-hand merchandise that now fills it. Water-stains peel browning wallpaper at the top corner of the back wall, little flowers on the print faded paler than pastel. Jasper can remember when those flowers still had colour. When the now threadbare carpet once lightened the once different room.

  The shop seems dark after the brightly lit truck drive, and Jasper has to pause a moment to let his eyes adjust. Dust fills his lungs. Chest. It used to smell like coffee beans and baking pecan pie …

  Three mannequins stand in the window. All female. And Jasper can’t help but let his eyes wash over them, their porcelain curves. His eyes unstitch the seams of their blouses, slowly unzip their skirts. Their long legs go up and up … flesh too white, too perfect, unmarred.

  ‘Jasper.’

  He turns. It’s Lizzie. A searching in her eyes he doesn’t quite recognize.

  ‘Pick out what you need.’ She gestures to a rack of men’s clothing, that funny look still clouding her eyes. ‘Just the basics, mind you, I ain’t made of money.’ She turns and walks briskly across the shop to where her girls, Katie giggling, browse through summer dresses.

  Jasper blinks again, adjusting. Shakes his head to clear it of the mannequins. Their long, slender legs. The store is mostly women’s clothes. Some children’s hung on racks against the walls. Undergarments and T-shirts lie half folded on tables below the racks. Second-hand books are scattered across a table in the centre of the room, piled in uneven stacks, disorderly, mostly paperbacks, covers bent and stained. A cookbook is visibly ripped. An old Webster’s Dictionary’s pages are tarnished dark with watermark. Jasper runs his fingers up a weathered romance novel’s spine. Lets the pages fall open. He raises the open book up to his face, buries his nose deep in it. Inhales. Holds the scent in his lungs. Exhales. He can feel Lizzie’s eyes upon him, watching. Reluctantly, he shuts the book. Returns it to its pile.

  Some ladies’ undergarments lie on a small round table, spread out on top of a stained white tablecloth. Silky. Lacy. Flirty stuff. Eyes never leaving Lizzie, Jasper steps closer and lets his fingers run over the soft fabrics. It’s been a long while since he’s seen a woman’s underthings. Even longer since he’s touched them. There’s this silky lavender panty laid out on top of the other sexy drawers, and his fingers pause on it. Separate to smooth out its wrinkles. He wants to pick it up and hold it to his face. Wants to breathe that scent deep again. He wonders if the panty smells of woman. The sweet juice between a woman’s thighs. He likes that colour, that shade. Lavender. Different. Hearing a whisper, he glances up to see Lizzie lean down to speak softly to Doe Eyes. Doe Eyes nods slowly, scratching behind her ear. A hanger clicks as it fits back onto a rack. He turns. Disgust sours Katie’s usual smile, judgement thick in her eyes as they bore into him. Startled, Jasper’s hand jerks up off the panty. He looks down at the silky lavender fabric, hand, palm flat, suspended above it. But he’s not embarrassed. Not really. His cheeks have never been fast to colour and he does not feel himself blush now. His fingers curl in slowly, palm closing. He looks back up to Katie in time to catch her gaze before she turns away. Something about her beauty bothers him more than her disgust. Hard to believe she’s the same baby he once bounced on his knee. The world has been kind to her. He can see that now. More than a few men in prison would have sold their souls to look upon her pretty face. He wonders how she’d react to a hand laid rough upon her.

  Behind the cash register, at the back of the room, a large woman sits perched, her fat spilling off her stool to float around her in unnatural orbit. Long hot-pink nails stick off stubby fingers, matching hot-pink lipstick that’s smeared across pursed lips. Hair short and curly, dyed blonde with the grey roots growing through. Blue eye-shadow. Almost electric. Almost the colour of the sky on this clear day. Too much rouge on her cheeks stains them several shades darker than ‘blush’. A part of Jasper wants to walk right up to that woman and poke her. Right there in that fat. Wants to see if his touch pushes her off the stool or if his finger merely would get lost in all those rolls of fat. He wonders what it would feel like to touch them.

  She glances up as Jasper steps to cross the room. Does not glance down. A smile breaks and parts her hot-pink lips, front teeth lightly smudged the same hue. Eyes wide. Too wide. Unnatural. Smile, clearly forced. ‘Well, I’ll be …’ Let out in one single breath. Like a prayer might be. Or a curse.

  ‘Morning, Esther.’ Lizzie’s voice calm, even. In control.

  ‘Morning, Lizzie. Girls.’ Voice forced, sugar-coated.

  ‘Mornin’, Esther,’ the girls chime.

  Her beady eyes never leave Jasper. ‘Anything I can do to help y’all today?’

  It is Lizzie still who answers her. ‘Well, Esther,’ she glances at Jasper, ‘I reckon my brother here could use a few things. Nothin’ too fancy, mind you, but a few things all the same. You got much in for men?’

  Jasper already stands by the shop’s single rack of men’s clothing. A few flannel shirts, faded T-shirts, a long tweed jacket, a shorter denim one. A few well-worn suits hang in a row, all dark save one that’s ruffled down the lapels and dyed light blue. A few folded-up jeans lie on a shelf nearby. ‘Not much to choose from, really.’ His words surprise him. He had not meant to speak. Lizzie and Esther both start. He can feel their eyes on him. Without meaning to, Jasper looks up across the room and into the electric smears that overshadow Esther’s stare. And he knows her. He can’t believe he knows her. But it’s Esther, Esther Reynolds. He kissed her once when they were small. Just children, really. He kissed her on the lips back before a kiss had meaning. A church picnic. Hiding under the table, the chequered red and white cloth falling all around them, colouring the filtered light that fell upon them. Faces sticky from eating watermelon. Fingers sticky, too.

  Time had not been kind to her. He can’t help but wonder how he must look to her.

  ‘Esther?’ A smile cracks his face. Softe
ns it. Involuntarily, smile spreading, growing, he steps forward. ‘How you been? This shop here yours? Is Roy still round?’ But he stops mid-stride, as her forced smile fades. His extended hand falls down to his side before he’s even fully reached for hers. They giggled all those years ago, sticky noses brushing as they’d kissed …

  She is not smiling any more. Her already too-bright cheeks are now coloured an even brighter rosy hue. She reaches for a paper fan laid on the counter. ‘Roy’s still here all righ’. Works the oil rig just south of town.’

  Roy. Roy Reynolds. His childhood best friend. ‘It’d be awfully good to see him,’ Jasper muses aloud.

  Her fat face hardens. All the sugar sweet flushed from it. ‘My brother’s a busy man, these days. Ain’t got much time for reminiscin’.’ She flashes a smile that does not stick. That does not reach her eyes. Or return her face from shadow.

  ‘He doin’ well?’

  ‘He married Sarah Parker a few years back.’ Lizzie smiles at Esther. ‘They have a fine baby boy now, ain’t that right?’

  Esther falters, plasters her smile back on, unfurls her fan. Leans back. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well …’ Jasper folds his arms across his chest, not sure what to do with them. They suddenly feel too long. Awkward in the stuffy room. There was a time when he’d have been at that wedding. Was a time when he would already have held that baby boy. He doesn’t want to meet Esther’s eyes again. She’s not the same girl he kissed. Innocent and teasing. Full of wonder. He can see that now. He can see fear cloud her eyes when she looks at him, and a part of him wants to squeeze her hand and tell her not to worry, wants to hold her still till the fear leaves her eyes. A different part of him wants to terrify.

  Esther keeps her smile unnaturally bright. She fans herself. Hot-pink lipstick stretches to the contours of her grin. ‘I got some nice new dresses in the other day now, Lizzie. You see that red one with the white flowers? Thought that might look lovely on Miss Katie there,’ she says. Katie smiles, nose wrinkling as she glances across the room to where the dress is hung. Esther continues, smile still there but fading slightly, ‘Ain’t sure we have much that would suit you, though.’ Her voice goes cold as she meets Jasper’s stare. ‘Chances are you’d do better shopping elsewhere.’ There is ice to her tone beneath the sweet. An unwelcome in her smile not quite there before. Jasper feels rage swell inside him, filling him with hate. A familiar feeling, seldom truly gone.

  Jasper grabs a collared shirt, two T-shirts and a pair of jeans and flops them onto the counter. He glances that the sizes are near enough right. Doesn’t really mind the style, cut or colour. Fashion was something Jasper’d seldom given thought to. He turns to Lizzie. Hates doing so. Hates asking her permission. Like he’s less of a man in front of Esther, with Lizzie buying his things. In his gut, the anger boils, bubbles. ‘This all righ’?’

  ‘Course it is.’ Lizzie reaches into her handbag and pulls out a handful of crumpled notes. Fives. A ten. A few singles. He feels like a little boy again whose mama’s buying him his trousers, and a part of him thinks back on school shops of years long gone when sometimes Mama used to bring him here to this very café back when it was that, and they’d share pecan pie while she drank coffee. Except that was different then. Back before the anger.

  Esther fingers the clothes he’d laid down uncertainly. She glances up and out across the shop, through the window beyond. As though judging something. As though gauging. Then that phoney smile plasters back across her lips, and even before she’s spoken, Jasper wants to wipe it from her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘these items ain’t for sale.’

  ‘What do you mean they ain’t for sale?’ A quietness to Lizzie’s voice. A sound kin to danger.

  Across the room, Doe Eyes glances at her mother uncertainly. Katie places a shirt back on the rack and takes her sister’s hand. ‘Come on, Lady,’ she whispers softly. ‘Let’s go wait outside.’

  Lizzie’s voice again, even more dangerously quiet: ‘What do you mean these ain’t for sale?’

  Esther swallows. Glances out towards the shop front, past the frosted C-A-F-É silhouette letters. She shuts her paper fan and lays it down. ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie, these items just ain’t for sale.’ A pause as her hot-pink nails fidget with one of the shirt collars. Electric blue lids flick down to lift back up. ‘I meant to take them off the shelf myself.’

  ‘Bullshit you did,’ Lizzie says.

  A moment passes as the women’s eyes meet.

  ‘Now, Lizzie.’ Esther glances at Jasper, the fear in her eyes slightly rising. He likes the way her jaw trembles when she looks at him. ‘There ain’t no need for trouble. I told y’all you might do better shopping elsewhere.’ She picks the fan up again, closed tightly in her fist. Unfurls it. The nervousness in her eyes appeals to Jasper. Just a little. It stirs something long lain dormant inside him. A bead of sweat runs down her plump chest to disappear in folds of fat and cleavage. Jasper’s eyes follow it. He studies the moisture on her skin, her brow. The anger in him turning in his gut.

  ‘You won’t take my money?’ Cold, cold, hardened voice.

  Until just days ago Jasper would have never guessed that his sister could use that tone. He never would have pictured her grown up to be so hardened.

  The whir of the ceiling fan is the only sound in the muggy shop. As if all breath is held. Katie’s whispered voice cuts through the silence: ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Doe Eyes hesitates. Katie steps back, tugging her sister’s hand.

  Esther locks her eyes on Lizzie. Glances to where the two girls mutely struggle. Katie pulls her sister towards the door while Doe Eyes’ feet stubbornly trail behind her. Quietly, as though talking to a child, Esther’s voice softens. She reaches across the counter and gently places her hand on Lizzie’s wrist. ‘It ain’t you I’m refusing, hon.’

  ‘Course it ain’t,’ Jasper sneers, words a snarled whisper.

  The colour leaves Lizzie’s face. She nods, as though understanding is just now dawning. Repeats, ‘It ain’t me.’ No question in her words.

  Esther retracts her hand. Looks at the floor. ‘That’s what I said.’ Then, braver, she looks back up, jaw quivering, her voice held newly loud and strong. ‘We got no men’s things for sale today, I’m afraid.’

  Jasper feels the rage inside him sour to laughter, boiling in his insides, ready to explode. Holding down the anger, the laughter, he cuts in, ‘Now look here, Esther,’ tone forced civil, forced what he thinks might sound sweet, ‘I ain’t here for no trouble. I ain’t back for no trouble neither. I just need a few things is all. Now your brother and I, you know we go way back. Roy was always good to me ’n’ I got no hard feelin’s towards your lot.’ He watches as another bead of sweat escapes the sweaty folds of her neck to run down her bosom. Watches as the drop disappears into the dark crease of her cleavage.

  She forces her eyes to meet his. Holds his gaze with a determination that surprises him. That almost turns him on. Her words snarl now, the sugar all gone: ‘We don’ serve your kind here.’

  ‘My kind?’ He leans forward slightly, the anger in him swelling like poison under his skin, mixing with his bloodstream, turning his insides black.

  Her lip quivers, but her eyes and voice stay strong: ‘You know what you are.’

  There is silence, the only sound the whir of the ceiling fan. Then Jasper’s laughter explodes. He can’t help it. The deep dark laugh that boiled up in his insides forces its way out. An evil sound. Even he recognizes that. ‘You stupid cunt,’ he laughs, ‘you stupid, stupid cunt.’

  Lizzie throws a handful of crumpled notes onto the counter. More than is owed. She swoops up the clothes in one swift motion, leaving the counter clear. ‘If you don’t want my money,’ she says, ‘I reckon you know where you can return it. Come on, girls. Jasper.’ She turns, quickly crossing the room in four large strides. The bell chimes as the door swings open. Lizzie freezes in its frame. Face drained of all emotion. Jaw hardened. Katie and Doe Eyes are quickly a
t their mother’s heels. The three of them pause there all looking back at Jasper, like they’re waiting for him, and they are, Jasper supposes, but he can’t control the laughter in him, can’t stop it spilling out.

  Jasper does not watch them leave, still doubled over, laughing. He does not hear the bell chime again as the door reopens. Nor does he know how long he’s been in the shop alone, bent double, laughing in Esther Reynolds’s face. It’s a small hand in his that snaps him out of it. Tanned browner than prairie grass. The shock of the touch silences him completely. It’s been a long time since a hand held his with any care. Calluses round the first knuckle of her palm. And yet, somehow, her skin feels smooth, too. One finger, the index, is sticky. Big blue eyes meet his. For a moment he thinks it’s Lizzie. But that can’t be: the age is all wrong. And then there’s that doe look he’s growing used to. Bobby round the eyes.

  Joanne smiles. Nothing uncertain, nothing afraid in how she regards him. Just a curling of her lips that’s not quite happy, but comforts all the same. ‘You OK, Uncle Jasper?’

  He looks back across the counter to where Esther cowers. The silence left by his laughter hollows the room, like a newly forged canyon. Fan spread open but unwaving, Esther watches him, face like a blow-up doll, expression locked with permanent horror and surprise, mouth gaping open. He wonders how that girl with sticky watermelon lips grew into the whale before him. Wonders briefly what her lips would taste like now.