The Summers

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  My sisters were gathered around the counter, with Becca at the stove. The Blueberry Man, a foot-high round man whose hat opened up to hold all our spoons and cooking instruments, gave a jolly smile from his usual spot. He’d been a tacky gag gift from my dad to my mom. She’d kept him and named him Alonzo.

  “Check this out.” Becca was moving a skillet over the flame, shrimp skittering across butter. With a flick of her wrist, she got the shrimp to hop out of the pan, the pieces leapfrogging over one another.

  “Mr. Landry’s shrimp jump!” Tea exclaimed, practically jumping up and down herself.

  Becca put the shrimp on the sunny yellow plates Mom had found at a flea market her last summer here. We helped ourselves to homemade coleslaw, corn on the cob, and grilled chicken from the grocer’s.

  “How’d your first day at the Landrys’ restaurant go?” I asked Becca. She’d already taken over most of the cooking at home, and I knew she was looking forward to learning some new skills in the kitchen.

  “Mr. Landry said he’ll teach me all his tricks. And Mrs. Landry said no one else is getting the lobster roll recipe.” Becca smiled proudly. “Ryan didn’t mention it?”

  Eliza cocked her head at me. “Ryan? When did you see him?”

  I can’t seem to NOT see him, I wanted to say, but I swallowed my food instead. “My bike got a flat, at Smokey’s. Ryan was on his way home and we walked together.” I tried to sound as blasé as possible.

  Eliza arched an eyebrow. “Okay, as long as we’re not breaking the sisters-before-misters clause,” she said with a laugh.

  I rolled my eyes. “Like I want your sloppy seconds, anyway.” The very idea of Ryan as second-grade anything made me feel terrible, even as my temper flared toward Eliza. She was getting married. Why would it matter if something did happen between me and Ryan?

  “What were you doing at Smokey’s?” Becca teased. “Smoking with Smokey?” She made a gesture like she was inhaling, half closing her eyes in a blissed-out state.

  “Actually, I’ll be working there this summer.” I tried to sound upbeat. “Grace Campbell got called to New York suddenly, so that job won’t work out.”

  Eliza made a sad cooing sound and rubbed my shoulder. “Well, it’ll be better for you to have a low-key summer before Berkeley.”

  Why? I wanted to ask. Eliza, who’d finished college ahead of schedule—even after mom’s death—who got engaged and decided to plan her wedding over the course of a few short months, who already had an offer from a great PR firm to start in the fall—definitely did not think it was good enough to do something low-key the summer before college, or ever. Coming from her, it felt more like an insult.

  I turned back to my food, and the conversation wound down. Dinner was much quieter than the laughing, boisterous nights we used to have with Mom. In a way I was glad Dad wasn’t here to see it. I didn’t want him to feel he’d made the wrong decision, giving in to Eliza and bringing us all back here. I didn’t want this summer to be a mistake.

  “Let’s finish eating and go to the attic,” Tea said finally, and I was grateful for the suggestion. “There’s a bunch of Mom’s stuff up there. I think you guys should see it.”

  The attic was Mom’s museum. My dad had never been a big saver of things—he trusted Mom to maintain the archives. And she did, in a scattered way that made sense only to her. Walking into the attic was like stepping inside a living treasure chest.

  “Oh my God, look at this,” Becca said, pulling piles of photos of our parents from an old shoebox. They were all from the early ’90s. Mom had poufy hair and Dad’s shirts glowed. In one, Mom was pregnant with what must have been Eliza, and even though she was peering out from a thick layer of hair-sprayed bangs, she still looked pretty and timeless in a loose, fairylike lace dress.

  I opened another box, which contained birthday and Fourth of July party invitations from other Cape families who’d invited my sisters and me to their gatherings over the years. “Look at this, guys.”

  “The reason you girls are invited to everything is because we are part of this town. This is our home. We’re not just summer people,” Eliza said, in a near-perfect imitation of Mom.

  We all laughed—Mom always wanted us to be part of the town, not just the tourists that filled it up each summer—and Eliza’s dead-on impression made it feel like, just for a moment, she was back with us again.

  And then there were her paintings, everywhere. When I thought about how much of her work she gave away, like what was hanging in Clark’s Coffee and at the Landrys’ restaurant, it hit me just how much my mom painted. I hadn’t reached a place like that with my writing, where I felt constantly inspired. I wanted to be that way, but it hadn’t happened yet. I wondered if the words would ever pour out of me like the colors spun out of her.

  “Can you believe these?” Tea said as she blew dust off an oil painting of swirling octopuses. It was an ethereal underwater scene, and I remembered my mom working on it a few summers before her last one.

  “And her clothes,” Eliza said, from a far corner of the attic. “Come here, guys. This still smells like her.”

  Mom left her summer wardrobe at the beach house. Eliza had pulled out a rolling rack of sundresses and the oversized button-downs she wore while she painted.

  Eliza was right—everything still smelled like her. There was a hint of her lilies-of-the-valley perfume, and the scent of her that was always beneath the perfume, like some delicious baked good from a recipe you’d never find in real life.

  “God, there’s so much stuff we’ll have to pack up,” Eliza said.

  Tea pulled a crisp J. Crew shirt away from her face and asked, wide-eyed, “Why would we pack it up?”

  Eliza shook her head, waving off the question. “I just mean, we should have some of this stuff at home, instead of letting it sit here forever.”

  I pulled one of my mom’s old sundresses on over my clothes, and Becca helped me tie the halter at the back. I looked in the mirror and laughed. My mom was curvier, like Eliza. I was more athletically built. “I will never have Mom’s boobs,” I said to my reflection. I looked for hints of my mom’s face in my own, but I had fairer skin, from my dad’s side, and dark brown hair that really did nothing in the sun. Eliza’s locks always grew blond in the sun. At five seven, I was taller than all my sisters, though Tea probably would come close in a couple years. What I did have were my eyes. They were a faint blue, like my father’s, but flecked and rimmed with my mother’s dark brown. I’d hated their oddness when I was younger, but now they felt special, and like the perfect hybrid of my parents.

  “Well, you got the artistic talent,” Eliza said, picking up a clothespin and pinning the dress so it would stay up on me.

  “Becca got her laugh,” I continued, and saw Becca beam from under one of my mom’s old sunhats.

  “And Tea got her spirit,” Becca added, wrapping a starfish-print scarf around Tea’s neck.

  “But you got her boobs,” I reminded Eliza with a laugh. “And Mom had nice boobs.”

  “And feet,” Eliza said, pulling a pair of sandals off a shelf. I immediately recognized, with a pang, the mermaid shoes—as I always called them. Their t-straps were embellished with tiny white shells and pieces of blue sea glass. In the sun, they sparkled like the water.

  Seeing them immediately brought me back to the memory of the first time I’d seen them, years ago at the Harborville Arts Fair. It was always one of my favorite parts of the summer. The town would close off Main Street and vendors from all over the Cape would rent little tents and tables to showcase and sell their work. But what I liked most about it was that it was something my mom and I did together. My other sisters always said it was boring, but I loved to go. My mom would talk to other artists about what they were working on and sometimes they’d trade tips.

  That year, though, Eliza wanted to go, too. A model in the back-to-school iss
ue of Seventeen was wearing a pressed-heart pendant and when she’d shown it to us, Mom had told her they might have something like it at the fair.

  “Bleh, more shell necklaces. I’m never going to find a pendant,” Eliza complained. She grew more impatient each time Mom stopped to talk to someone she knew. “And I’m starving.”

  “We might not find one here,” Mom said. “But give it a chance.”

  I offered her a bite of my Dutch soft pretzel. It was better than anything you could find on the boardwalk and I got one every time we came to the fair.

  “No way,” she said. “That’s kids’ food.”

  Something in a stall down the way caught Mom’s eye and she dashed ahead, gesturing for us to follow.

  When we caught up with her, she was holding a pressed-heart pendant out to Eliza, who smiled enough to show all her braces—something she never did. “This is perfect,” she said.

  “We need something for Katie, too.” My mom petted my hair quickly, something she did all the time without thinking.

  Right away, my eyes landed on a pair of sandals that twinkled in the sun. They looked like the ocean, with tiny shells and sea glass woven onto the straps. I looked down at my beat-up gray Keds. I didn’t normally like things that were so feminine, but there was something magical about the sandals. They made me think of mermaids.

  “Those are beautiful, Katie,” Mom said. She asked the woman if they had the sandals in my size.

  “I’m sorry, those are the last pair.”

  My mom slipped them on her feet. “What if we share them?” she said, looking at me. “I’ll wear them for a while and I bet a few summers from now, they’ll be just the right size for you. I’ll take good care of them, promise.”

  Eliza looked at them and rolled her eyes. “Those are the fashion equivalent of a shell necklace.”

  But Mom squeezed my hand as we waited to pay. “Nope. They’re special, just like Katie.” As the clerk put the shoes in a bag, my mom smiled at me. “Ours?”

  “Ours.”

  Now, I couldn’t take my eyes off the shoes. I’d forgotten about them until this moment.

  Eliza slipped the sandals on. “These are perfect for the wedding. Something old and something blue,” she sighed as she admired them on each of her pedicured, perfect feet. No bent toes there.

  I felt the words, “They’re mine,” on the tip of my tongue, but I knew Eliza wouldn’t even remember the day we bought them, or that they were supposed to be mine. She had already appropriated mom’s engagement ring, and now she was taking my sandals.

  Why did she assume she got first dibs at everything?

  Almost instinctually, my eyes drifted out the attic window, alighting first on the roof of my mom’s studio and next on the roof of the carriage house in the Landrys’ yard.

  Just once, I wanted something that was all mine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SUNLIGHT FELL OVER me as I forced my eyes open. I pulled on my swimsuit and my hoodie and slipped on my Vans as I jogged down the stairs of Mom’s studio.

  Over the last few days, I’d staked my claim on the garage room without a word. Little by little, I’d been moving things from my old bedroom there, where I slept on a surprisingly comfortable futon Mom had kept beneath the window. I’d justified it all by forcing myself to get up earlier than my sisters; this way, I wouldn’t wake them up as I got ready in the mornings. No one said anything, but none of them had come up here to see the room, either.

  I made my way to Pleasant Street Beach, loving the quiet. The “summer people” were starting to move in, and the streets were packed with cars, but hardly anyone was up and moving yet. Here and there, neighbors sipped coffee on their porches and smiled as I passed.

  In the cool dawn air, the smells of the Cape enveloped me. I caught bursts of hydrangea and damp grass and, as I got closer to the beach, the briny air. The ice-cream shops and stands devoted to games weren’t open yet and the quiet was its own presence. Across the beach, the pier looked silent, the only motion coming from birds flying overhead and a few fishermen at the very end. Later in the day it would be filled with people watching taffy-making demonstrations, riding the old wooden carousel or visiting the Harborville Maritime Museum.

  Without stopping to think, I dove into the water and began to swim. The cold, salt, and current woke me up in a way coffee never could. People on the Cape called the water “invigorating,” but that was just a way of saying that it chilled you to the bone.

  I swam just far enough to warm my muscles up, then turned back and swam to shore, body-gliding through the wave break. After this, I’d write for an hour before starting my shift at Smokey’s. He didn’t get in until noon most days, so I handled the morning rush by myself.

  The swimming and my new job were going better than the writing. I’d thought maybe being surrounded by Mom’s work and canvases and her little collections of sea glass and shells and vintage postcards would inspire me, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to say. I was working on the story about the cartographer who’d mapped everything there was to map, and it was lonely to think about. What did you do when you had reached the very end?

  The morning shift at Smokey’s was a tidal wave of rentals from beachgoers who were visiting the Cape but staying in motels or at bed-and-breakfasts. People who didn’t have summer houses stocked with gear always wanted to make the most of their beach days and needed to rent bikes, boogie boards, and kayaks, sometimes all at once. Today was no exception.

  “Can you put this on my back?” A hairy dad handed me a tube of sunscreen, turning around and leaning into the counter. I winced.

  “I’m sorry, it’s really busy right now.” I handed him back his SPF 30.

  “If I get burned, it’s on you,” he said flatly as he turned to leave.

  A woman in a wide-brimmed hat held up a pair of water wings. “Will these help my son swim?”

  “The lifeguards don’t like kids wearing those in the ocean, actually,” I explained. “You could get pulled by the current.” The lifeguards were in a constant battle over floatation devices that could do more harm than good.

  “Someone could have told me that.”

  I just did, I thought, but smiled instead. Customer service had its low points, to be sure. My phone buzzed with a text and I looked down, eager for a distraction, but it was just from my ex, Matt Garrity. We had dated for two years of high school, and he was also headed to California, to Stanford, in the fall. We were still friends and had broken up in a friendly way. We’d even talked about him being my date for Eliza’s wedding, if I decided to bring anyone.

  He was hinting at coming out to visit for a day or so. I knew he wanted to get back together with me, and I’d even occasionally thought about it—what it might be like to be with him out in California, starting our new lives together. But now that I had a little distance, I wasn’t so sure. Part of me liked the idea of starting college with a totally blank slate.

  I wrote back to him, trying to avoid flirtation, and slipped my phone back into my pocket. I turned on the radio that Smokey kept behind the counter, and a Justin Timberlake song poured out.

  “Oh, I love this song.”

  I turned to see Eliza, leaning against the rental counter in her turquoise two-piece. She was already tan. Every summer, she was always the one with the deepest tan, and she never burned. “How’s work?”

  “Busy,” I said, even though the rush seemed to have died down just as Eliza showed up. “What’s up?”

  “Remember Jessica Ambrose?”

  “Of course.” Jessica was more my friend than Eliza’s. She was my age, and we’d known each other since elementary school. Though Jessica had reached out when Mom died, after my family stopped coming to Harborville for the summer, she and I had lost touch. As time went on, we e-mailed less and less and now we really only wished each other a happy birthday on
Facebook. I realized guiltily that I hadn’t even let her know we were going to be back this summer.

  “She’s having her clambake tonight.” The party was usually thrown by Jessica’s older brother, Todd, but he was living in Oregon now I’d heard. Jessica must have taken over the tradition. It wasn’t really summer until the Ambrose clambake.

  “Oh, really?” I tried to smile but it didn’t reach my eyes. It was my fault for not calling Jessica since I’d gotten to town, but the idea that she’d spoken to Eliza before me hurt.

  “Yes, and we’re going,” Eliza said firmly. “Devin is coming in from the city and I want to introduce him to everyone.”

  “Are we even invited?”

  “Ryan told me about it,” Eliza said, and I felt worse. When had Ryan talked to her? Did they run into each other, like we had, or did he call or text? I suddenly felt foolish for thinking that one walk with him might have meant something. “We can’t stay hidden away forever,” Eliza continued. “Becca and Tea are going; it will be weird if you don’t. Jessica’s really your friend.” She said this like she was gifting me a particularly rare gem.

  I gave in with a shrug. She had a point, and it would be nice to see Jessica. “A party is a party, I suppose.”

  You could smell the party before you could see it.

  My sisters and I had tried and failed to replicate a clambake in our backyard the last few summers, but nothing came close to actually having one on the beach. When it was time to cook, you layered in seaweed over the hot coals, then added corn on the cob and lobsters, clams in their shells and foil packets of potatoes and onions. The savory aroma of the seafood and veggies washed over me familiarly.

  “Oh, I’ve missed this,” Becca said as we approached the designated section of beach. Now party noise mingled with the tantalizing smells. “I wish Dad had come.” It was a Friday, and he wasn’t arriving until Sunday. He needed to finish the workweek and get some things squared away at our house in New Jersey before he headed up.