The Fourth Summer

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  “Your grandfather was athletic, very fit. I enjoyed that.”

  Dear Lord in heaven. Was MeeMaw saying what Caitlin thought MeeMaw was saying? It didn’t matter how progressive a thinker you were, how strong your claim to being a hipster was, you didn’t want to hear your grandmother talking about your grandfather in bed. That took a bit of doing to get out of her head.

  The jury coordinator was surprised to see her. “But you didn’t need to come for the informational session. You’ve already heard it. You could have waited until eight thirty. We must have told you that yesterday.”

  Caitlin glanced around the room. There were a lot of familiar faces, people from the Monday group. The coordinator’s “must have” obviously meant “we were supposed to.” That was no way to run a zoo.

  Seth wasn’t there. She put her laptop bag on the chair next to her, saving it for him. But when the lights dimmed for the video, he hadn’t shown up.

  This was what happened after one-night stands, wasn’t it? The guy made all kind of promises and then didn’t show up the next day. Of course she had leverage that most women didn’t. If Seth didn’t appear, the court could issue a summons and throw him in jail. Too bad women everywhere didn’t have that option.

  The video was exactly the same as it had been on Monday. There was still a “the” in front of “Magna Carta,” and the Clerk of the Court repeated the same parts of it that he had repeated on Monday.

  At 8:26 Seth strolled in. “Hey,” he said.

  MeeMaw was correct, at least about Seth. Caitlin supposed she was also correct about PopPop, but Caitlin did not want to think about that.

  Seth was indeed a very good-looking young man. He still had the puckish air he had had as a kid. He was clean shaven today, but in most of his pictures his chin and jaw were slightly scruffy, giving him the air of an engaging rascal. Despite his WASPy name, he had a lot of Scandinavian blood. His hair bleached quickly in the sun. His eyes were light, green with a touch of blue. His cheekbones were open, and his skull long. She had used the shape of his head in a lot of the games she animated, varying his features so that it never looked like him.

  But it was a little hard to get overly giddy about seeing him when she had just wasted half an hour, and he hadn’t. “How did you know to come in late?” she whispered.

  “My mom told me.”

  He could have shared that information, couldn’t he? She watched as he plugged his extension cord into the wall socket.

  In terms of technical activity, last night had pretty much been parking-lot sex, not that Caitlin had much experience with that given the hourly rates at garages in San Francisco. But there had been something so—could she use the word “sweet” to describe a professional snowboarder?—about him remembering their past.

  He sat down and then leaned close to her, his forearm brushing hers. “I hope you need a ride when we’re done here. I threw some skateboards in the car. We could go to the park like we used to.”

  “That sounds like fun.” It really did. “I’ll have to go home and change.” It was one thing to climb a tree in skirt, but skateboard in a park where the thirteen-year-old boys hung out? Ah, no. “But only if this doesn’t last all day. We’re going to have dinner at my grandmother’s.”

  “It better not last all day. I will hang myself. I Googled you last night. There’s nothing about your work.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You do work, don’t you?”

  Did she work? She did nothing but work. “Of course I do.”

  She must have snapped because he immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. Was I wrong to look you up?”

  “No, it was fine. Really.” Didn’t she do online searches on people she met? She hadn’t searched on him last night because she did it a couple of times a year. “I have two sets of clients, and they don’t need to know about each other. So I use pseudonyms for both.”

  “That sounds interesting.”

  “It’s not.” But she explained. There was enough resentment and distrust of women in the video-game community that she identified herself to clients as “Tlin” and never spoke to them on the phone or met them in person.

  The games she worked on were violent and aggressive. It was draining. So she went to the other extreme and designed covers for romance novels. It required less sophisticated computer skills and didn’t pay as well, but the covers were luxuriantly rich. Lovers embraced on green paths in front of covered footbridges. Silken dresses slid off ivory shoulders; cravats were unloosened; kilts were unbuckled. To those clients she was “Aurora.”

  “Aurora?” Seth asked. “That’s so...so—”

  “So lovely? Yes, it’s supposed to be. I can be lovely when I try.”

  “I’m eager to see that...but aren’t you concerned that by using a male pseudonym for the video games, you aren’t doing anything to help other women get into the field?”

  Was she having her feminist creds questioned by a snowboarder? Seriously? “I wanted a way out of a corporate job.” She forced herself to speak mildly. “This didn’t seem like a huge compromise.”

  The Clerk of the Court was speaking again. Today there was only one criminal trial, and he said that it could be lengthy. People could be excused, the Clerk continued, if they had long-scheduled vacations or medical procedures.

  “What do you think ‘lengthy’ means?” someone else at the table whispered.

  Caitlin shook her head, and Seth shrugged. They didn’t know. But it didn’t sound good.

  The Court would need documentation for excuses, the Clerk said. And being busy at work was not an excuse. And no, a letter from one’s boss would make no difference.

  “I’m supposed to go to New Zealand on Monday.” Seth leaned toward her. “It’s work, but shall I lie and say I am going on vacation?”

  “That’s on your conscience.”

  “I don’t have one of those. My moral code is based on what is good for Street Boards. If it won’t hurt the company, I do it.”

  Within minutes people were at front table showing the jury coordinator images from their phone and tablet screens. They were pleading, trying to be excused. About a third were allowed to pack up and leave. The rest had to sit back down.

  Forty-five minutes later all the remaining people who were holdovers from Monday were called to line up. They followed a deputy to the courtroom, stopping to hand over their phones and computers.

  Caitlin only knew about courtrooms from TV, but the layout was what she expected. The judge’s bench and the witness stand faced the lawyers’ tables, behind which, separated by a railing, were the benches for the observers. The jury box was perpendicular to everything else. It had two rows of chairs, and the second row was elevated. Caitlin noticed that there were eight chairs in each row, sixteen in all. They must be planning on picking four alternates.

  The potential jurors filed in to sit on the observers’ bench. The judge repeated some of what had been in the video, making it now the fifth time Caitlin had heard it, although he solved the whole Magna Carta issue by not mentioning it. He then explained the procedure for the day. Sixteen people would be selected at random and questioned. Some would be accepted, some excused. This would continue until twelve jurors and four alternates had been selected.

  Names were being called. “Darrell Truckee, Nancy Kingsley, Susanne Nugent, Cameron Edwards, Caitlin McGraw, Richard...”

  Oh, that was her. Caitlin stood up. Apparently she had been the tenth juror called. Her seat was in the back row second closest to the front wall. From his place on the observers’ bench, Seth gave her a fake Cheshire-cat grin.

  That keeps you in the parking lot, boy-o. Bedroom sex requires more.

  One of the lawyers stood up and introduced himself as the prosecutor and explained what a prosecutor and a defense lawyer did. None of it was new information to anyone who had ever watched
one minute of television.

  They were first asked if they knew personally the defendants or the lawyers. Could they disregard any media accounts that they had read? That was easy for Caitlin. She had no idea what the case was about. Did they know anyone in law enforcement? Caitlin raised her hand and said that her father was a retired navy judge. Would that influence her decision? No, she answered honestly.

  The lawyers gathered to talk among themselves. A man and a woman remained seated at the defendants’ table. They must be the defendants. They were both middle aged, well preserved, and well groomed. The man had thick silver hair and looked like a successful executive. The woman looked equally successful in a nicely cut black suit with a feminine white blouse. Her necklace was a twisted rope of silver and pearls.

  Caitlin didn’t want to have to judge these people. Or anyone. She didn’t belong on a jury. Why hadn’t she lied and said that her father had always said that all defendants were always guilty? Why hadn’t one of the lawyers asked her something that would reveal that she really had no right to claim North Carolina residency, that she was defrauding the state of California, and that she should be the one to need a jury of her peers?

  Eventually the lawyers were finished, and the judge began calling names, “Darrell Truckee, Susanne Nugent....” Was it good or bad to have your name called? None of them knew. He droned on and then finally said, “If I have called your name, you have been excused. Thank you for your service.”

  Her name hadn’t been called. She and the man in the first seat in the front row were the only ones left. Did this mean she was on the jury? Yes, it must. She had been selected, empaneled. Sixteen down to two, and she had been one of the two. How had this happened? Last night she and Seth were so sure that they wouldn’t be chosen.

  Why had they thought that? Because they were too young? They weren’t. She had started voting at eighteen and legally drinking at twenty-one. Wait, what about renting a car? If she was too young to rent a car without a premium, surely she shouldn’t be on a jury.

  She looked at Seth. He grimaced in sympathy.

  He’s twenty-five. He can rent a car. Pick him.

  Except there was no way they would ever select him. Forget the age thing. Who would want a snowboarder deciding their innocence or guilt? And even more important he was part-owner of the town’s biggest employer. Street Boards had taken over the furniture factory when it closed. Wouldn’t having a Street on the jury throw off the negotiations?

  Fourteen more names were called. They were questioned, and then twelve of them dismissed.

  The woman to Caitlin’s right was still seated at the end of that round. “They didn’t call my name,” she whispered to Caitlin. “What does that mean?”

  Caitlin turned to look at her. She was younger than Caitlin, and the slant of her thin chin gave her face a weak backwoods quality. “It means you have been selected.”

  “But that can’t be.” The girl was shaking her head. “I have a terrible time making up my mind about anything...why would they take me?”

  Caitlin couldn’t answer that.

  Seth was going to be able to go home pretty soon, and she would be stuck here. No skateboarding today. And what about the rest of the week? Was he going to stick around and fly to New Zealand from here, or go back to Oregon?

  It didn’t really matter, did it? Not really. She would miss out on some fun, but “friends with benefits”—when did that ever work? She’d seen people try it. Sometimes your “friend” was suddenly picking out china patterns with someone, leaving you feeling like a loser. Or neither one of you tried very hard to find someone else, and then whenever you were together, you both felt like failures.

  Why would she want to put herself through that? A one-night stand might be a better choice.

  * * * *

  They only had two weeks together during their second summer.

  By the time Caitlin got home from the first summer, her family knew that Trina was going to have a boy. Caitlin expected that Trina and Mom would have gone crazy decorating the fourth bedroom with rocket ships or little blue ducks. The two of them had always done all those things together, choosing paint color, sewing new throw pillows. The family’s furniture was very neutral, and each time they moved, her mom would pick out a bold color for the walls so each place felt exciting and not at all like a place you were only going to be in for three years. Caitlin was always dragooned into helping with the actual painting, but she never went to the paint store or the fabric store. Trina and Mom took forever to make up their minds, and they clearly had a good time taking forever, whereas Caitlin spoiled all the fun because she knew immediately that that white had too much yellow in it and that that wallpaper would make everyone dizzy if the ceilings and walls weren’t perfectly plumb.

  But when she got back from MeeMaw’s at the end of the summer, instead of the back bedroom being an explosion of baby froufrou, it still had her father’s desk and the pullout sleep sofa. The baby—his name was going to be Dylan—would sleep in Trina’s room.

  Except he didn’t sleep. He had to be jiggled. He needed motion to calm him down. One time, out of frustration, their dad had put him in his car seat and went on a drive, but Trina didn’t have her driver’s license. At night she had to jiggle him. Sometimes she would come into Caitlin’s room and wake her up. “Please, I can’t do this anymore, but don’t tell Mom and Dad.” Caitlin was stronger and so jiggling a baby didn’t tire her out, and honestly—although it made her feel pretty heartless—she could block out Dylan’s crying even when it was right in her ear.

  Trina was being homeschooled. The county sent a tutor a couple of days a week, but mostly it was on Mom, and so she had to nag Trina both to do her schoolwork and to get Dylan on a firmer schedule. Trevor, Dylan’s father, came over twice a week even though he clearly didn’t want to. His mother had to drive him, and she always came in. Before her visits there was a frantic forty-five minutes of tidying up, the sort of thing that they had never had to do in the past because before Dylan had been born, Caitlin’s mom had never been one to leave dishes in the sink or the newspaper on the kitchen table.

  Caitlin felt ignored by everyone in the family. If she hadn’t had the skateboard Seth’s father had made, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything or go anywhere. She started wearing black to school, hanging out in the art room, eating lunch alone. Finally one day about a month into school, her mother was handing her a load of laundry to put away when suddenly Mom stopped. “Caitlin, how are things with you?”

  “Fine,” Caitlin snapped and reached for the laundry basket.

  Mom wouldn’t let her have it. She put it back on top of the washer. “But this is your first year of high school, and we haven’t signed you up for any activities. Do you want to take ballet again? I could call the studio.”

  “No, I do not want to take ballet.”

  “What about that skateboarding that you’re doing? Would you like to see if I can find lessons?”

  “I already looked into it. The closest decent place is sixty miles away. Everything around here is all little kid shit.”

  “Caitlin!” Mom’s voice was stern. “I know that this is hard on everyone, but there’s no call for that kind of language.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Her sister had gotten pregnant, and Caitlin was being scolded for saying “shit”?

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Mom apologized instantly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “But you did.” Caitlin grabbed the laundry basket and stormed out of the room.

  She and Seth usually just kept in touch by trying to be on computers at the same time, but that night she took the family’s phone into the front hall closet and called him on the cell phone he and his mother shared.

  “I’m not having kids, not ever.” Dylan had a cold, and his nose was almost as disgusting as his butt.

  “Okay,” he said. “But
you should get something out of this. Your mom feels guilty. If you want something, ask. She’s going to be a soft touch.”

  “I want everything to go back to normal, to how it was. That’s what I want.”

  “Well, good luck with that one. You want your own phone, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want anything from them,” she grumbled.

  “What about some other kind of dancing? Did you want to do that?”

  She did. She wasn’t trying to get herself to a competitive level at skateboarding. Even if her parents would have been willing to drive sixty miles—and there was no way they felt that guilty—she was starting too late and, in truth, she didn’t have the competitive fire, the drive to win that Seth did. What she wanted from skateboarding was to practice and get better and to be awesome, scarily awesome. She remembered how Seth had looked at her the first time she stopped trying to skateboard like him. She wanted people to watch her and be blown away, even if it were only the moms at the birthday parties.

  Ballet had made her graceful, but she wanted to develop style, something like those sexy Latin dancers she’d seen on TV. She knew that Jazzercise was aerobics for people her mother’s age, but it seemed like her best option to learn something different. The classes weren’t as expensive as ballet, but they were in the evening and on the other side of town. Her parents would never let her cruise over on her skateboard.

  She waited until Trina was putting Dylan to bed. Her parents had already gone into their room, but the door was open. Her mother had her back to the full-length mirror, twisting her head over her shoulder to look at what she called her fanny.

  Her pants were too tight. Even Caitlin could see that. It was strange. Mom was gaining weight. Here she was, this superdisciplined navy wife, and she couldn’t fit into her pants.

  She must hate that. She must really, really hate that.

  Caitlin was the weird art student who wore black. She was the one who was supposed to be depressed, except she was—she knew perfectly well—playing at being depressed in order to punish her parents. But her parents didn’t seem to be noticing...probably because her mother actually was depressed.