Someone Like Summer

by M. E. Kerr

  “No! No!” Larkin cried out, her voice so shrill, Dalí jumped down from the couch and went toward her.

  When she closed her cell, she said, “Get your brother, Annabel. Kenny’s in Seaview Hospital. He’s had a heart attack.”

  The plan was for Larkin to drive to the hospital immediately with Kenyon and Maxine. Esteban and I would meet them there, after I let Dalí out a last time, turned off the lights, the stove, the TV—made sure the house wouldn’t go up in flames and Dalí wouldn’t get cramps from holding it. One of Mom’s rules had always been never to leave a house in a hurry; be sure it would be there when you headed home again.

  We were still in the driveway when Esteban turned off the motor and shook his head.

  “Coño! Anna, I can’t go there.”

  “Yes, you can. Why can’t you?”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Charlie Annan won’t be there, if that’s the reason. And even if he is, I have to be there! You can just go on! It’s my dad, E.E.! It’s—”

  He cut me off. “I can’t drive! I can’t see right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The wine. I now see two roads and four trees.”

  “Oh my God, are you seeing double?”

  “Sí. Sí. You will have to drive.”

  “I can’t drive, E.E.! I never learned!”

  “If policía arrest me drunk, that would be big trouble for me. I have no residence, and my driver’s license is the Ridge Road address. There would be questions.”

  “Esteban, you don’t sound drunk. I didn’t see you stagger!”

  “There is no argument here. I cannot walk the straight line. I cannot drive. I did not know the wine would make my eyes go loco.”

  “Then I have to call a taxi!” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Anna.”

  “So am I! How could you get drunk?”

  We got out of the Pontiac, and he said, “I can go there with you in the taxi. I am not that drunk.”

  But inside the screening room, while he waited for me to telephone Seaview Ride, he fell asleep on the couch, the nails coming through the roof above him. Sticking out of his back pocket was a small envelope with a blue ribbon on it.

  On the outside he had written: “For Anna to see because she wanted to. xxEE.”

  I left him sleeping there.

  I opened the envelope in the backseat of the taxi. There were four photographs. I knew they were the pictures of his family that he had promised me he’d send for. I couldn’t deal with that then. All I could do was put them in my bag and ask the driver to hurry.

  “Please stop saying that, lady,” he finally said. “I’m going too fast as it is.”

  So am I, I thought. What if something happened to my father? With everything else he was handling, he had to come home that night and discover I’d gone against his rules, gone behind his back to date someone he didn’t know, and didn’t know anything about. He’d probably guessed Esteban was an illegal. Then he must have known I had fallen hard for him too, because never in my life had I disobeyed him in such a major way. Who could blame him for worrying about what I was capable of under those circumstances? He’d already had a major loss he was just beginning to recover from with Larkin. Now there was me to worry about, when I’d never given him any big problem. I was always his good girl.

  They were operating on Dad when I got to the hospital—emergency bypass. We walked and waited and drank coffee and waited. While everyone was down in the cafeteria getting something to eat, I looked at the photographs Esteban had gotten for me.

  One was of a large woman, taller than Esteban, with her arm around him while he looked up at her, smiling. He seemed very young, but there was no mistaking Esteban. On the back he had written, “Mi madre and me.”

  There was a photo of a young woman carrying a baby, seated with twin women holding a set of twins on their laps, “My sister Pilar and her daughter with my twin sisters Nadia and Nilce, and Nadia’s twin boys.”

  The third photograph showed his brothers Jorge and Alejandro, seven or eight years old, playing catch with his stepfather.

  At first I thought the last picture was Esteban again. Then I noticed the clothes were old, and this man had a tiny mustache. He wore one gold hoop earring. On the back, Esteban had written “Hugolino Santiago, last seen in Providencia July 8, 1991.”

  I thought of my own father, of the chance I would never see him again, and I wished I could pray, or believe in anything.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  MY DAD WAS RECOVERING from his bypass at Larkin’s. The very next day after he went to Seaview Hospital, I’d left a message on Esteban’s voice mail that I wanted to see him. I asked him to please forgive me for making him go through such an evening.

  I didn’t know how Esteban got wherever he was going from our house. His old Pontiac was still in our driveway. As long as it was there, I had the hope of seeing him. I was beginning to lose hope of getting through to him.

  If I had been thinking of Esteban instead of myself, I would have known my father would never accept him, for exactly the reason both Larkin and Kenyon had told me. Dad was terrified of losing me. Losing my mother had been hard enough.

  All right. I would not be the first daughter who’d disappointed her father by falling in love with the wrong fellow. I was certainly not the first girl to have a boyfriend who’d never measure up in a parent’s eyes. And as much as Esteban was bent on measuring up, he’d just have to go without Dad’s okay. What I should have done from the beginning was level with Dad: tell him if he really did want me to be part of the family, he had to accept Esteban and me as a couple. We’d follow his rules about curfews and other dating behavior, but he mustn’t forbid us to see each other. If he did that, we’d only see each other behind his back. Nobody would be happy that way.

  I had gone to Seaview Jewelry and bought a pair of gold hoop earrings. I would wear one hoop and one would be Esteban’s. There went my school clothes budget I’d begun saving for that summer.

  It was about time I was the gift giver, and about time I understood Esteban better. He hadn’t told me so much of what he’d blurted out after some sangria, and whose fault was that? I could still remember when he’d first mentioned that his father had disappeared one day (he’d snapped his fingers and said, “Like that”). I hadn’t asked him anything about it. I’d actually said something sarcastic about Dad, about sometimes wishing he’d disappear, because I wasn’t really hearing Esteban—any more than I was thinking of why he’d muttered at dinner that night something about believing there should be a casket and a burial. Those were two things his father had never had.

  At the library I looked for him every time the door opened, and trashed myself for being angry with him because he’d gotten wasted. When I ran through the conversation while eating paella (did anyone compliment him on how good it was?), I could see the whole evening through Esteban’s eyes. I could remember him unpacking the paella and complaining “Don’t you even listen?” Who wouldn’t get soused?

  Wednesday evening he wasn’t at the soccer field, which was major! Since I’d known him, he’d never missed a game. None of his old Ridge Road vatos played in that game. There was no one I could ask about him. But that night as I bicycled up my driveway, I saw Dario and Virgil standing by Esteban’s Pontiac.

  They waved at me, Dario with a big smile, Virgil frowning, probably imagining someone with an STD, herpes, or HIV waving back. Like so many two-faced characters, he had his hand out to shake mine and a look of innocence in his brown eyes.

  Just Tuesday night Mitzi had called to tell me all was well. She had told her mother everything. They had gone to the family doctor and she was okay. As for Virgil? She said she’d get over him. She’d help me get over Esteban when I needed her. She said, “And you will, Annabel.”

  “I don’t want to get over Esteban,” I told her.

  “Not now,” she said.

  Esteban’s vatos were leaning against his car.
<
br />   “We didn’t want to just drive off in Teban’s car,” Dario said, “or you would think it was being stolen.”

  “How are you guys?”

  “Fine! Great!” they both chorused.

  “How did Esteban get home Saturday night?”

  “I drove here to get him,” Dario said.

  “And where is Esteban?”

  “Away,” Dario said.

  “He didn’t tell me he was going away. Where did he go?”

  Dario took a letter from his back pocket. “He has written to you all about where he goes.”

  Virgil said, “He gave us the key to the car.”

  “He gave us the car,” said Dario.

  “To use while he’s away?”

  “Yes,” Dario said. “To use. We have a new place to live far from Dr. Annan.”

  “Very far,” Virgil said. “Far and high. We are in an attic. I like that because the train whistle sounds late at night.”

  “Is Esteban okay?”

  “He is okay,” Virgil said.

  “Where is he?” I looked him right in the eyes, but if he knew Mitzi and Esteban had told me all about his suspicious ways, he was a good con man. He only smiled, sounding cheerful as he said, “His letter will say where he is.”

  “Tell your father we are sorry for his health,” Dario said. “Tell him we work extra hard so he won’t lose money.”

  They got into the Pontiac, and I waited until they were gone before I opened the letter.

  My dear Anna,

  I am so glad to be told by Mitzi your father goes home from the hospital and is okay. I asked her to call you and report back, for I am so ashamed I cannot even go to the library.

  If things had gone in a bad way for your father, I would not have wished it. In the sober light I see that he is right. Maybe I am no hood rat, but I am no son-in-law material as well. I do not blame him for not wanting me around you.

  When I come to your house, I had an envelope with me where inside were photographs of my family. If you have not found it, look for it please (there is a blue ribbon around it) because I want you to have those. You told me once you would like to see my familia. Maybe you were just being polite, but I still want you to see them even if you will probably never meet them at all.

  Anna, in our house in Providencia there are photographs so there is no wall space. They are all of familia, and if you think your father is strict on who dates his daughter, you should meet my stepfather and my mother, for they are so particular about who joins the familia.

  I have thought so much about them since this is happening. We were never one of money. None of us growing up expected yes we would go to university or college as yours does and your friends. I think it is the cause we are poor, and some come to America to send back money. If no one breaks away from that habit, then we are in for the shame like I now face being a hotbedder, being not fit to date some man’s daughter. I see life on the other side of that and I wish it not just for me, but for my own familia.

  I have thought and thought about Ramón’s offer to sell me a green card, and I believe it would be another bad, for what if I got caught? I would go from bad to the worst, jail perhaps. Perhaps I would be shipped back and then of no good to anyone.

  But Chino has given me a new idea. When we found him at last, he said a policeman almost arrested him for sleeping on the beach but instead sat down and talked to him about how to become legal, how to be a man who matters in this world.

  Anna, amante, Chino and I will become soldiers in the United States Army. Anna, by doing that, I can not only get a green card eventually, but this would be my chance for money and for myself to attend college.

  There is a saying we have: “Do not be like them, be better than them. Then you will get someplace.” I have never paid mind to that because how could I be better? Now I see a way.

  Joining the United States Army would give me the tools. Money. College. The rest would be up to me. I want to be like others and better than others, too, and this is now my goal.

  I go with Chino to join up tomorrow, Anna, the very day you read this. I am told I will learn everything, even how to work a computer. So maybe I can send an e-mail to you one day and find out what you are doing, if you choose to answer. Not right away, dear Anna, but sometimes off in the future.

  I cannot take the chance to see you before I go. I cannot face your disapproval if that is your feeling since I was too drunk to be there for an emergency. Neither could I face your forgiveness. It would only remind me of all the times you would have to forgive me until I became educated and mature.

  I love you, Anna, but I do not love you more than my pride, my manhood, my wish to be a responsible person. I cannot ask you to be mine, and even as I am changing, I would not ask you to promise me anything meanwhile.

  I knew when I met you that you would change my life. The hard part is I did not think of that life without you. Losing my lucky medal began my down the hill. God was telling me something maybe that I was not enough for someone like you. “Dare to Forget Me”? Please do forget me, Anna. Let me think of you deciding which college would be best and getting back with your Seaview girl friends, going on with what you would have done anyway if you had never met Esteban Santiago.

  P.S. Dear Anna, please play Shakira. I wish we could listen together to all of them, but please listen to “Whenever, Wherever.” Not to read any message from me in that song, but some of it will have memories of us. I do not think it is a bad to have sweet memories when you have nothing more of each other. Memories are better than nothing, and memories of you, my love, are my gold. Good-bye, God bless even if you don’t want Him to bless you, I pray He will do it.

  E.E.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MY DEAREST, loco, lovely, amor, my Esteban,

  This is the sixth letter I’ve written you, then ripped up because I cannot seem to find the right words to say don’t do this, good-bye, stay safe, don’t go, I love you so!

  I am so sorry about that embarrassing, humiliating dinner party I inflicted on you. I should have known better. We have a saying that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and neither can you make a gracious, kind father out of Dad, who sees you as this threat to our boring life here in Seaview. Esteban, my father never saw you as a hood rat. He never saw you as someone inferior. He would not have been so frightened of you if that was all he saw. You are from another land and another culture, and the idea of my going there with you was what he feared. I wonder now if he wasn’t right about that, for I was always aware that you wanted to go home and live with your family close.

  Now that Larkin has come into my father’s life, I don’t think of him as a lonely man anymore. Kenyon has his girlfriend, and Kenyon will probably always live near Seaview. I would be the one willing to try a change. Dad knows that.

  But this doesn’t make any sense now, does it? There is no point now to my saying I’m sorry for what I’ve done, or to my saying I suspect I would have gone with you to Providencia one day, if you had asked me to.

  Now all I can say that does make sense is please, please watch out. Take care of yourself the best that you can.

  There is no point either in my telling you I hate this war, for no one going to it really wants to put him- or herself in such terrible danger! But whenever I hear or see anything about Iraq, I remember Dad helping this veteran a little younger than my brother. He came home blind, minus a leg. That was the first time I ever thought about war at all. After that I wouldn’t watch when Iraq came on the TV news. I always remembered Dad talking of this vet’s “courage,” and I’d ask myself which would you rather have—courage or your right leg? Oh sweet, sweet Swan Man, please try not to prove you are as good as or better than anyone. Try not to be a hero!

  Esteban, my e-mail address is AnnaB@ aol.com. You know my snail mail address. One day I hope you will use either one to tell me yours, to tell me you’re all right, to tell me whatever you feel I should know, or whatever you feel like
saying.

  I will never, ever forget you, Swan Man. We do have many good memories and many are view memories. Remember when you told me that we should visit places with wonderful scenery so when we looked back we would have it there to enjoy?

  I am enclosing here a gold earring. I hope you won’t think it’s nervy of me to send you something like the earring I saw your father wore in the photograph. I remembered, too, you mentioning that once to me, that he wore one in his ear. You will have to get your ear pierced, as both of mine are. (It will not hurt you, Swan Man. It will only look that way.) And I am right now wearing the match to the one enclosed for you.

  Oh, Esteban, watch your every step. Don’t take chances or volunteer for dangerous missions. Write me someday, please? I love you. I will never forget you, even if you forget me, because you are the first one who ever made me feel like a woman. I love you so, mi amor, I can’t say good-bye.

  Anna

  TWENTY-SIX

  CHARLIE ANNAN’S WHITE Saab convertible was parked outside of Feelfree when Kenyon and I arrived. Feelfree was the name of Larkin’s house overlooking Accabonac Bay. She had decided to have Dad recuperate there. On a Sunday noon in late August Kenyon drove me to see them, after he went to church.

  I groaned when I saw Charlie’s car, and Kenyon said, “Remember, Anna B., I work for the guy.”