The Myth of Perpetual Summer

by Susan Crandall

  I lick my lips and swallow my pain. “I know Mr. Smythe is—”

  Walden’s fists pound the table, the handcuffs clanking like knives against the surface. “Do not say his name!”

  The deputy takes a step closer.

  That Smythe’s name sparks anger gives me hope.

  Then Walden says, “You haven’t earned the right.”

  My heart sinks. “I’m sorry.” I allow a repentant pause. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to refuse legal counsel. He wants what’s best for you.”

  Walden’s eyes are two frosty panes. “You don’t know what he wants. Or what I want. Just go back where you came from.” He stands and starts for the door.

  Gran looks at me in a panic.

  “Wait!” I say. “I don’t know anything, you’re right. But you’re my brother, and I want to understand.”

  He looks over his shoulder. “I am a brother, but not yours. I belong to the Scholars and no one else.”

  “What about Dharma? This will break her heart.”

  His half smile is accompanied by a disbelieving huff. “She’s like Margo. She doesn’t have one.”

  I stand, frantic. “Walden, please! Don’t make a rash decision. Accept the counsel . . . at least for this first hearing. You’ll have time before the trial to fully decide.”

  “A trial is inconsequential to my spirit.” He walks to the door and waits for the deputy to open it, then leaves without looking back.

  Gran’s pale. There’s a fine sheen of perspiration on her upper lip.

  I squat down so I can look her in the eyes. “Gran? Are you all right?”

  She shakes her head. A tear slips from the corner of one eye and her hand covers her mouth. “He wasn’t like this before. I’ve failed him. I’ve failed you all.”

  Wrapping my arms around her, I feel how bony she’s become. “No, Gran. You did your best. It was Margo who failed us all.”

  And for the first time in nine years, I see clearly. I have blamed and cursed and accused Gran, when we were not her children to raise. Even so, she threw herself into the job, doing the best she could, making hard decisions with no good choices available.

  But Margo simply abandoned a sinking ship with all four of her children still aboard.

  * * *

  We return to the lobby, where Ross is waiting with an expectant look on his face. I keep Gran moving toward the car and give him a disappointed shake of my head.

  Amelia took a taxi to the jail, so she rides home with us. I sit in the back next to Gran, alert for the first sign of physical distress.

  Gran says, “Perhaps I should contact Mr. Smythe. Walden respects him. Maybe he’ll have luck changing Walden’s mind.”

  My heart breaks for her naïveté. “Oh, Gran, I’m pretty sure this is exactly what Mr. Smythe wants. The evidence against him destroyed and those three kids taking the full punishment.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Amelia says. “He’s already made a public statement expressing his shock that three of his followers could stray so far from the path.” She pauses, as if to calculate whether to continue. We must look solid enough to take the blow. “I found out something from one of the deputies while I was waiting. Smythe locked them out of the compound and called the police himself. That, along with the eyewitness who puts Walden and the other two at the scene of the fire that killed Mr. Moore . . .”

  “Oh my God! And Walden still acts if this guy is the Dalai Lama!” Angry, bitter tears fill my eyes. But they can’t fall. I have to be strong for Gran.

  “I just don’t understand.” Gran sounds like a lost child. “He was so good for Walden, cared so much about him.”

  Ross’s voice is patient and gentle when he says, “Men like Smythe seek out kids with difficult childhoods.”

  I nearly choke on the gentle term for the carnage of our early years but appreciate his sensitivity to Gran.

  He goes on, “Lost souls. Runaways. Kids looking for a place where they feel like they matter. These guys tailor their bait, figuring out what the person needs the most. Then they give it to them in a way that makes them feel grateful, indebted. Once that confidence is gained, the real brainwashing begins. It’s not Walden’s fault—and it’s not yours. Men like that are clever, charismatic predators.”

  “He did seem brainwashed,” I say. When I glance at Gran, I can’t stand the agony on her face. “Ross is right. Walden’s loving nature made him vulnerable, not anything you did or didn’t do.”

  She wraps her hand over mine and gives a wavering smile that tears at my soul.

  We reach Amelia’s house, not far from Tulane. “We can request a psych evaluation, but it’s going to be difficult in these circumstances—he’s an adult and he’s refused counsel,” she says. “And it won’t postpone the arraignment.”

  “Thank you.” Gran’s voice is tired. “For your help.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Amelia says to me. “I’ll give Walden another try first thing in the morning. But I wouldn’t hold hope that he’ll change his mind.”

  * * *

  After I get Gran settled in a bedroom in Ross’s house, I return to him making coffee in the kitchen.

  “I hope that’s not decaf. I don’t think I can drag myself back up those stairs without some sort of a boost,” I say.

  “Why would anybody drink decaf?”

  I chuckle. “You’re the doctor.”

  I lean against the counter while he gets out cream and a couple of nice big coffee mugs—I do appreciate a person who doesn’t mess around when it comes to coffee. And then I tell him every detail of our meeting with Walden, as if by saying it aloud I’ll be able to make sense of it.

  “Guys like Smythe have endless ways to break a person down and then rebuild him the way that suits them: loyal, obedient, and at least a little scared.”

  “Walden was under this man’s control when he set that fire—he still is.” Every time I blink I see Walden’s cold, gaunt face. Then I get a glimmer of hope. “Maybe he didn’t set it at all! Smythe turned those kids in. Maybe they’re just scapegoats and Walden’s brainwashed enough to accept it.”

  “Possibly. I’m sure that will all be part of the case, if we can get that far.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if’?”

  He freezes. “Walden didn’t tell you?”

  “What?”

  “He’s going to plead guilty. The other two are as well. Amelia told me on the phone, but he asked her not to tell you so he could do it himself.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” I push off from the counter. “I need to go back there, try again. Call Amelia.”

  “They don’t let prisoners have visitors whenever they feel like it. And after what you told me, I doubt Walden would see you anyway.”

  “I have to do something!”

  “You did. You went in there and tried. At this point we’ll work on getting him to accept a lawyer before the sentencing. Then Amelia can get a psych evaluation. We can argue the circumstances and press for leniency.”

  “But he’ll go to prison.”

  “Yes.”

  My voice rises with desperation. “You’re a psychiatrist. Can’t you declare him incompetent?”

  “The court makes that declaration. The doctor just offers an opinion based on his evaluation. And it can’t be me anyway, they’ll attack my bias.”

  “If you could have seen him, you’d know there’s no hope he’ll change his mind by tomorrow.” I pace from the stove to the basement door and back. “If only I could go back in time . . .”

  Ross steps in front of me, takes my hands, and looks into my eyes. “Walden lived his life, just as you lived yours, by making choices in the circumstances that presented themselves. You’re his sister, not his parent. The responsibility is not now, nor should it ever have been, on your shoulders. You were in the same situation he was. None of this was your doing.”

  “You don’t understand. He always counted on me.” My chest is so tight I
have to force in a breath. “He came to me when he was scared. Not Griff. Not our parents. Me. And I left him when everything was at its worst.”

  “You’re punishing yourself for things that you couldn’t control and you can’t change now.” He takes me by the arm and guides me to the table. “Sit down, I want to tell you something.”

  “This had better not be more bad news. I’m not sure I can take anymore today.”

  “It’s not.” He sits down in the chair closest to me. “Remember the first time I went to your grandmother’s? The Mother’s Day after we met.”

  “Of course. My mortification is branded into my memory.”

  “It stuck in my memory, too, but not for the reasons you imagine.” He looks bemused. “Actually, it makes me think of your toppling-domino theory. About a year before that, I’d gone with my dad to a conference—he was always trying to jump-start my faint interest in law. I sat in on a seminar addressing criminal psychology and how it can influence a trial. It was fascinating. Not the trial part, the psychology. And then seeing your dad like that, and when you told me about his hurricane and shadow time—”

  “Oh my gosh, you remember what I called it.”

  He looks directly in my eyes. “I don’t think you have any idea how much I care about you and Griff. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child. Maybe it’s because I admire you so much.” He leans closer. “From that very first day. I mean, you nearly drowned and all you could think about was saving those damned mayhaws—because they would make someone else happy. What teenager is that selfless? And then I saw you with the twins, filling in the empty place left by Margo. You’re an incredible person, Tallulah.”

  As I stare into those blue eyes, time collapses in on itself. I’m fourteen and so infatuated I can barely function. My mouth goes dry. Finally, I mutter, “You’re kind to remember it that way.”

  “I should have told you back then, back when you really needed to hear it.”

  Maybe I need to hear it now. For the blink of an eye, I have the urge to kiss him.

  “When disaster hit your family, you were still a child,” he says. “Sixteen, yes, but not a fully formed adult by any means, no matter how mature you were.

  “Your parents were passionate, volatile people. Who knows what made Margo so detached from motherhood. Maybe something in her own childhood. There’s no way to know. But your dad . . . I think he was probably suffering from an actual illness, what we call manic-depressive disorder. Extreme highs and lows, brimming with unending energy, wild spending, periods of grandiose ideas, paranoia; the mania. Other times utter, bleak despair.”

  “That describes him perfectly. He would obsess, not sleep for days.” I tell Ross about Dad’s crazy theory that all history had been manipulated by a consortium. I sit for a moment, sorting through the snippets and scraps of my memory. “I always blamed his dark moods on Margo.”

  “Their relationship could have been a trigger. But the way he spiraled so low that he was incapacitated was likely the disease.”

  “This feels like a rescue come years too late.”

  “Too late for him. Not too late for you. I want you to try to put your childhood in perspective. You tried to take care of everyone, and you did a great job, but there’s only so much a child can do, especially up against odds like that.”

  There was a reason. It was an illness. “Margo was too self-centered to care. And Gran either made noble-sounding excuses or ignored it altogether. And now you’re telling me Dad could have been fixed?” We let him live in torment until he finally couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “First of all, your grandmother came from a different generation—one where mental illness wasn’t well understood by most people, they covered it up or locked it away. Asylums. Disappointment rooms. Hell, sometimes I think we’ve only taken baby steps from that now. As for fixing him, it couldn’t be done back then. Up until about three years ago, there wasn’t even a good treatment. Electroshock therapy was about it. That could wipe out the symptoms for a time, but often takes a whole lot else with it.”

  I think about Gran covering up Dad’s issues. Then I think of her comments about Uncle George and how his mother didn’t have tolerance for imperfections.

  “Does it run in families?” I ask.

  “There can be a familial component.”

  “Do you think it could have anything to do with Walden’s behavior?”

  “I don’t have enough information to even make a guess, let alone a diagnosis. But people with manic depression aren’t usually good candidates for cult recruiting. Too undisciplined. Too unpredictable.”

  “Do you think Griff . . . ?”

  “I didn’t see any signs of it before he left.”

  “There were always so many whispers about Granddad’s brother and how the James blood carries certain . . . traits. What if he left because he was worried it could be him, he didn’t want to burden anyone?”

  “You’re taking quite a leap. And right now, we need to focus on Walden. Don’t overload yourself.”

  I bury my face in my hands. “Everything is so tangled together.”

  “It always is, Lulie. That’s why you can’t blame yourself for things other people do. And remember, whatever happens”—he pulls my hands from my face and holds them tight—“I’m right here with you. I won’t leave you.”

  For the first time in my life, I let myself believe that could actually be true.

  * * *

  As evening turns to night, Ross and I sit beside a burbling fountain in his back garden. The smell of jasmine is thick and sweet. The moon casts a silver sheen on everything. We turned off the first-floor lights before we came out, to deter bugs. With the heat of the day gone, the humidity is more tolerable to my adopted San Franciscan nature. We gave up coffee some time ago and are now sharing a bottle of pinot noir. My exhausted mind is overcome with the past three days, so the conversation has been spotty, and yet the silence between us is comfortable.

  Sitting here in these pleasant surroundings, I think of Ross saying Griff’s time in this house was purgatory, and of how angry I was as I scrounged my way to California alone, thinking he was living in the lap of luxury with people who loved him. People who meant more to him than I did.

  “Was Griff unhappy the entire time he was here?” I might have been angry, but that doesn’t mean I wanted him miserable.

  Ross is quiet for a long while, then he says, “I think he tried to be happy. As I look back on it, he probably made the effort more for Mom than himself. He played football and baseball because it made her think he was involved and well-adjusted.” He shakes his head. “Man, was he a good athlete. Even if he didn’t want to accept my parents’ help for college, he could easily have gotten a scholarship. He made all the right noises about wanting to go to school—Mom was terrified he’d get drafted and sent to Vietnam if he didn’t have a student deferment—but whenever a college scout came to town, he always had a bad game. A seriously bad game.”

  “Self-sabotage?”

  “Took a while for me to see it, but yeah. And it seemed the more popular he got, the more disconnected he tried to be.”

  “Why would he squander such a great opportunity? For years all he wanted—all either of us wanted—was a normal life.”

  Ross looks over at me, his face an odd color in the moonlight, his eyes shining that vivid blue. “Because he let you down.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel bad?”

  “You asked. And you already know my thoughts on being responsible for someone else’s situation. But a little communication could have made things different for both of you. If he’d known you were running away, he’d have gone with you—or better yet, you both could have come here.” He pauses. “But then, you were teenagers.” Ross smiles. “Your brains weren’t ready to make rational decisions.”

  “Thanks for the out.”

  “All part of my complementary housing package.”

  We’re quiet for a while again. Then h
e says, “It wasn’t all terrible. That first summer, before I left for Harvard and his senior year, my Corvette blew a head gasket. He and I spent a couple of weeks out here in the garage working on it. He taught me a hell of a lot. As you might guess, I didn’t have much experience with mechanical things. But Griff, he could almost become one with the engine; the tools, so clumsy in my hands, were like an extension of his. And man, that kid could drive like a demon.”

  “He and Tommy were always building stuff. I think they were about eleven when they rebuilt a lawn tractor they found at the junkyard and made a wagon out of an old truck bed to pull behind it. To make up for not letting me go scavenging with them—they insisted girls got lockjaw easier than boys, but I’m pretty sure it was because they were stealing half the stuff from Prescott’s Salvage—I was in charge of aesthetics. They weren’t happy when I painted flowers on it, but they stuck to the deal. Hot summer nights, Griff and I would drive it out to the pecan orchard and sleep in the truck bed.”

  “I know your childhood was difficult, but in a way, I’m envious.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The way your crazy childhood bonded the two of you together.”

  “I can’t imagine what it would have been like without him.” After a moment, I say, “Where do you think he is?”

  “He didn’t leave any better trail than you did. Someplace racing and working on cars, I hope.” Then he adds, “If Tommy doesn’t know, then nobody does.”

  “Oh, he and Tommy had drifted apart that last year.” But did it stay that way? I think of how sketchy Tommy looked when I asked if he knew where Griff was, and of his scribbling when he looked at my license.

  Ross says, “Those bonds formed in childhood and adolescence tend to stick, even if you don’t see each other. That’s why people have high school reunions.”

  I nearly spit out the sip of wine I just took. “You can’t be serious. High school reunions are so the ones who were sitting at the top can show that they’re still at the top.”

  “Now how would you know?”

  “Because life has taught me how to assess ulterior motives and judge a person’s true nature—which never changes, by the way.” I don’t look at him, but I feel his gaze on me.