Foreign Exposure

by Lauren Mechling

  When a bus appeared in the rearview, my stomach fluttered nervously. The vehicle came to a stop a few feet behind us and disgorged a handful of passengers. Sam was the last to emerge, and at first I was taken aback by the change in his appearance. He had a large army backpack slung over his shoulder, and looked almost preppy in chinos and a plain navy T-shirt. But, more remarkably, the boy who once lived in fear of the sun and spent his summers hiding under baseball hats had darkened to a handsome bronze, a color that complemented his freckles and reddish hair unexpectedly well. He’d also grown a few inches, and his once bony shoulders looked strong and boxy.

  Ed honked three times, while Harriet turned and, as if reading my expression, commented, “Zowie, he sure looks hale and hearty, doesn’t he?”

  “He looks like Sam,” I said impassively as my own cheeks darkened a few shades. Then, rousing myself, I jumped out of the car to greet him.

  “Hey there,” he said when I reached him, dropping his backpack to hug me. I could feel his nose jut into the side of my head. I drew away quickly and stammered out, “Come—c’mon out to the car. I can’t wait for you to see Casa Ed and Harriet!”

  Sam followed me to the Land Rover and tossed his backpack on the car floor. As we slid in next to each other, he said hello to our hosts in a voice that now struck me as deeper than I’d remembered. On our ride back to the cottage, I kept my eyes focused on the seat backs in front of me as Sam regaled our hosts with an account of the crazy ex-Marine who had ridden next to him from Port Authority. “He kept asking me if I’d ever considered enlisting,- and told me I shouldn’t, because the government would try to steal my internal organs—”

  Then suddenly Sam broke off and looked out the window for the first time. “Wow,” he said, “it’s so—quiet here.”

  “Quiet?” Harriet hooted. “I love you city boys. This is the main drag. You wouldn’t know quiet if it walked up to you on the street and tapped you on the nose.”

  By the time we got back to the house, the sky had grown dim over the mountains, and the first stars twinkled above us. While Harriet showed Sam his room and Ed fired up the grill, I set the picnic table with mismatched plates and tea lights.

  Over dinner, Sam entertained Ed and Harriet with anecdotes about his summer program, while they detailed the home-improvement projects that lay ahead.

  “Tomorrow’s a fun day,” Harriet said. “We can take Sam swimming at the sinkhole, and then there’s an estate sale in Ticonderoga, so I thought we’d load up on picture frames, and some furniture if they have it. If we get some nice wood pieces, Mimi can teach you how to refinish them.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sam said with a laugh. “Mimi Schulman refinishing furniture—in your dreams! Whenever she came to our country house when we were little, she spent all day lying in the hammock reading Betty and Veronica comics.”

  “Well, I haven’t read anything but power drill instructions since I got off the bus,” I said proudly.

  “It’s true,” Ed said. “She’s a very talented Miss Fix-It. You should see her wielding that drill.”

  Over dessert—store-bought carrot cake with cream cheese frosting—the four of us gossiped about the people we knew in common. “Isaac’s been trying to learn how to play the piano all summer long,” Sam said of Pia’s math wiz boyfriend. “He wants to be more well rounded for his college applications. I guess we’re all going to have to start soon. Think of the fun that awaits us next year.” He rolled his eyes. “Next stop: stress city.”

  “Tell me about it,” I groaned, though in truth I wasn’t too worried about any of that just yet. For the time being, Sam’s news about my dad held much more interest. The night they’d run into each other at P.S. 1, my father had stood before a painting talking to the same woman for more than an hour. “A woman who isn’t Fenella von Dix?” I asked skeptically.

  “Not unless Lady von D’s had a lot of operations. This woman was sort of short and squat with curly blond hair. And she was seriously into your Dad, too—staring at him, as if, like, hypnotized.”

  “Ew, don’t be gross! I’m sure you’re making the whole thing up.”

  “Why would he be making it up?” Harriet asked. “Your dad’s an extraordinary guy—why wouldn’t a woman be hypnotized by him?”

  “Ew,” I said again, but I did see her point. Dad was pretty special, and I should probably get used to sharing him with others. For the past year, despite all my issues with Mom, I’d secretly hoped she’d reconcile with him. But I now understood that both of my parents had moved past that possibility and that resenting it was a waste of everyone’s time.

  When I’d called Mom the week before, the day I left London, she had told me to take care of my dad: “That’s what you’re there for, after all,” she’d said in an unrecognizably gentle voice.

  “I will,” I promised her. And then, before we hung up, I told her I loved her. I hadn’t said “I love you” to her in years, or not without prompting, and the sentence came out sounding funny. But Mom, uncharacteristically, made no awkward follow-up comment complimenting my emotional growth. “I love you, too,” Was her only reply.

  That night, sitting around the picnic table, I turned to Sam and asked, “Speaking of running around P.S. 1 with an unknown female companion”—I coughed—“Dad mentioned you weren’t exactly alone there yourself.”

  “It’s true,” Sam admitted, and looked at me like he was trying to figure something out. “I went with Rashida, my buddy from Bennington, but she promptly ditched me for a group of art students who invited her to play strip Scrabble.”

  “Strip Scrabble?” Harriet repeated. “God, when I was younger, we just stripped!” When Ed, next to her, cleared his throat, Harriet patted his hand consolingly and added, “Not that I remember any of those days, of course.”

  “Were you bummed she didn’t invite you?” I asked.

  “She did,” Sam said, “but I wasn’t into it.”

  “What are you, a saint?” This from Harriet again.

  “Hardly.” Sam shook his head. “I guess I’m just not as impulsive as Rashida. Following a van of rowdy sculptors to Corona, Queens, isn’t exactly my idea of a fun night on the town. Been there, done that. Know what I mean?”

  We all laughed, and by the end of the meal, I no longer felt shy around Sam. After we cleared the table, Ed and Harriet settled in the living room to watch the second half of The Sweet Smell of Success, which was playing on the one channel to which they had reception. The movie, about a gossip columnist, didn’t appeal to me for obvious reasons. Besides, it was too beautiful a night to spend watching TV. I grabbed a couple of flashlights and asked Sam if he’d like to see the lily pond Harriet and I had cleaned.

  “If you’re quiet,” I whispered when we got there, “you can hear the geese. And there’s an owl, too. Sometimes he goes crazy.”

  We stood stock still, the smell of Sam’s Ivory soap lacing the fresh country air. “Hey, I think I heard something,” he said. “Shh, don’t move.” He placed his hand on my back, his fingers pressing lightly against my shirt.

  “Yeah,” I said in a near-whisper. “I think I heard it, too.”

  That warm August night, Sam and I seemed to be precisely where we’d left off. Or no, that wasn’t exactly right. Because where Sam and I left off was a bad place—riddled with hurt feelings and deceptions about Boris and complications with Viv. And now, here we were. He was still my oldest friend in the world, but I was only just getting to know him.

  About the Authors

  LAUREN MECHLING grew up in Brooklyn and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Seventeen.

  LAURA MOSER grew up in Houston, Texas. She is the author of a biography of Bette Davis and has written for various publications, including Newsday, Slate, and the Guardian.

  Both Laura and Lauren are crazy about London—where Laura lived for three years and Lauren spent a winter as a cat sitter. Though they still pine for London’s trashy nighttime soaps, fry-up breakfast
s, and advanced text-messaging technology, they now call New York home.