We were next to each other, but not looking at each other. The several inches of space I’d left between us felt like a particularly treacherous obstacle course.
But Eliza’s voice was soft when she spoke. “I’m not the best at this. I’m good at the part where I’m holding back. But I don’t know what else to do, so I’ll just say it.” She ran a hand through the sand, her fingers leaving four little curved trails behind. “I’m still completely and utterly fucked up over Mom.”
“I know,” I said, playing with the hem of my dress, which had ripped at some point. “I’ve always known. I never thought you were okay. I just never knew why you couldn’t trust the rest of us to let us know.”
She faced me, and grimaced. “Because you all have your own problems and had to go through plenty yourselves. And Dad was a mess and he needed me, so I thought I could just be the one you all needed.”
Eliza moved closer to me on the sand. I didn’t move away.
“Dad’s selling the house. The beach house.” She hurled the words into the air for me to catch.
“What? When did he decide this?” Moments ago, I had sworn I’d never come back here and now I felt like everything I loved was being taken away. How could we sell the house? We’d just learned how to be in it again. It was supposed to be ours forever. No one else could live in it the way we did.
“Ages ago. I knew it at the start of the summer. I knew it a year ago, really. It sort of prompted my whole idea to get married. Devin was ready, so we got engaged right after I told him about the house, and how I wanted to have the wedding here. Like it would be a healing event, or something. . . .” she said, trailing off. “Ha. Healing. He was so supportive, too. I really screwed up.”
Eliza looked pale beneath her tan. She slumped into her knees, defeated. A great sense of guilt settled on my chest as I thought of all she had gone through to try to bring us together again as a family, to try to give us one last summer as a family. I resisted the urge to hug her; I didn’t know if we were ready for that yet. Instead I asked, “Did you really want to get married? Did you want all this for yourself, at all?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did. I thought Devin and I made sense, and we’d been together for a while and why wait? And I guess I’ve felt like a grown-up for so long that I just thought marriage was the next step.” She had tears in her eyes. “It was easy to get caught up in it.”
Seeing her like this, I regretted all the times I wished things wouldn’t go her way. I dug my foot in the sand and lifted it out, letting the grains funnel through my toes. “Isn’t getting married in a big rush kind of the not grown-up thing to do?”
Eliza laughed. “Yeah, well, I’ve always been able to get so wrapped up in a plan that the plan itself becomes more important than anything else.” She sighed, long and loud. “I made such a mess. I knew, deep down, it wasn’t right. Not me and Devin so much. I think we are right. Or, we were. But we could have moved into a place in the city together and eased into our lives, instead of hurtling ourselves into marriage.”
She looked up at me. “Deep down, I was scared. And then I saw you and Ryan, and I remembered how much fun things used to be, for me, before Mom, and suddenly I realized I’m not a grown-up and I don’t want to be yet.”
I sniffed the air: the telltale smell of a hard night was coming off Eliza in waves. “You don’t smell like one. Except for maybe Grandpa George.” I’d made the joke to avoid asking her about the powder room, and about Ryan. I didn’t want to hear that Ryan had lied, that he didn’t love me. I didn’t want to know that it just took Eliza being available again for him to change his mind.
“Ha-ha,” Eliza said. “But I should explain. Explain last night, I mean. I was drunk, and I told Ryan I needed to talk to him about something important—he probably thought it was you—and I threw myself at him. He didn’t even kiss me back. He really loves you, Katie. He wanted to come with us, and I think he’s been looking for you all night, too. It’s just I know this spot and he doesn’t.”
I shrugged. I felt a little better, though I wasn’t sure I believed her. Ryan was Ryan; he’d look for a missing me, just like he’d fixed my bike when we were kids. It was his nature. Another aspect of our situation had become clear last night, after I’d left the rehearsal dinner. “Even if he does, it doesn’t matter anyway. Not really. We leave in a few days. I love him, too, but it’s not like we’re going to be a Cape Cod–California long-distance romance. He’s not a souvenir.”
“What does that even mean? A souvenir?” Eliza said. “Look, you never know what’s going to happen. I didn’t think I was going to screw up my own wedding,” she said, looking out to sea. “So, aren’t you glad you didn’t waste time writing my vows?”
I clicked open my clutch and pulled out the folded sheets. “Actually, I was going to show you these last night.”
I handed her the papers. The truth was, when I’d sat down to write, most of what I’d come up with wasn’t quite about Eliza and Devin together. “I’ve only just started to get to know Devin, and he’s a great guy, so I was going to show you these at dinner and then revise them with you,” I said, giving her the notebook paper. “When I wrote these, I kept thinking of you and all you do for this family. I think a lot of these are really about you.”
Eliza scanned the paper and started to read some of my sentences aloud, her voice catching.
“I vow to be strong for us, and strong for you, because when you become my family, you become my dearest treasure and I will protect you for life.
“What matters is family, and having the spirit and the will to keep it together no matter what.
“I vow to celebrate the great times with you and to make the hard times easier.
“When I look at you, the world makes sense.”
I pointed to Grace’s line. “That one, Grace helped with,” I said, quietly. “And she said it in terms of a romantic relationship but, in all honesty, even though I never show it, I don’t think I really make sense without you.”
Eliza was letting tears pour down her face, giving in in a way I’d never seen her cry before. It was as though the years of holding back had finally converged into one endless stream of weeping. “You wrote all this about me and then I tried to kiss your boyfriend?” She coughed out the words through a fresh sob. “And I took your mermaid shoes?”
“I guess.” By now, I was crying, too. For my mom, my dad, Ryan, the summer’s end, and the way that it meant I’d be leaving my old life behind. For all the ways I’d been looking forward to it, deep down I was scared, too.
“Kate, I’m so sorry. I don’t know if you can ever forgive me.”
I looked out over the bluff and wondered if my mom was out there, if she could see us. I took Eliza’s hand. It was nice to hold her hand in mine, just like I’d held my mom’s before.
“That’s a good start.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE TEXT MESSAGES from Ryan had stopped yesterday. Now, he was on to phone calls and voice mails. He’d sent enough to fill my whole mailbox.
I wasn’t mad at him anymore. Eliza had made it clear that he hadn’t cheated and kept encouraging me to call him back. I believed her about him. Things still weren’t perfect between my older sister and me, but I’d meant what I’d written in the vows. She’d protect me no matter what and I knew she wouldn’t push me toward someone she thought would hurt me.
Ryan’s nonstop texts, e-mails, and calls didn’t seem to come from a place of guilt, so much as hope. He was a good guy and I knew it.
Still, what would be the point of calling him back? I was leaving soon. All we’d have would be a few awkward moments where we tried to fix us, only to say good-bye again. It’d be more confusing than if we just cut things off now. I wasn’t coming back. Or if I did, it wouldn’t be for years—without the house, and without Ryan as my neighbor, much less my boyfriend.
As much as I felt like I was losing everything, I tried to tell myself that maybe I needed to lose it all so the slate was clean for the next stage of my life.
Now, I put all my focus toward the last of Grace’s notes. I liked spending my last days in our house, working at the kitchen table, trying to remember every last detail. The leftover smells of breakfast floated in from the kitchen, where Becca had made pancakes before taking off for a beach day with Garrett. The familiarity of the house and the hope that we could go away for three years—maybe even longer—and it would still be the same place. That Harborville wouldn’t change enough to make it foreign. That time moved more slowly here, and your memories all seemed to coexist with the present. Couldn’t I have a clean slate for a new life, and still feel connected to my old one?
My dad emerged from the master bedroom, a lumpy duffel bag in his hand. He came over and glanced at my notes spread out across the table.
“Some wedding, huh?” I said.
“Katie,” he chided. “There are worse things.” Dad had given Eliza a lot of money for the wedding, but it didn’t seem to bother him. One thing about losing someone you love is that it tended to make perspective easier to gain on the things that really were smaller. Money was one of them.
“I know,” I said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he said, sitting down and looking at my computer. “Finishing your work for Grace?”
I looked at the Excel document, riddled as it was with nonsense. I didn’t know what Grace could possibly do with it. I felt like I’d failed because, while there were funny lines and odd little nuggets, none of these ideas seemed right for a new novel.
“Yup. It was definitely an experience. I’m delivering these in a bit,” I said. I shut the laptop. “I just wanted to say, I did a lot of thinking after the . . . well, whatever that was. I know I’m going west and I know I haven’t really been part of everything this summer . . . but this place is still our summer.”
My dad must have known what I was getting at, because he shifted away from me in his chair, waiting for whatever I would say next.
“Eliza told me you want to sell the house,” I said, getting right to it. “But I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“The Realtor is already at work on the listing. She’s coming to take pictures once we leave,” my dad said, resigned but firm. He looked around the kitchen and the living room, as if sizing up what the Realtor would see.
“I don’t think Mom would want that,” I said. I felt bad for invoking my mom, but I knew that it was the truth—she’d never want to sell this place. “Eliza said to let you do what you need to do, but I don’t think she’s right in this case. Mom is.”
My dad sighed and put his hand over mine, squeezing my palm in his. His eyes welled up and he gave me a sad smile, like he couldn’t let himself agree with me.
“Kate, your mom will always be part of me. She’s more than part of me,” he began. “This summer, I tried to just enjoy the memories we made here, but it’s too much. Anywhere else, I can pretend to be a normal guy: house, job, kids. But here, I just feel like I’m walking around with a huge hole in my chest. I don’t think living in the past is good for me, or for any of you girls. I just want us all to get a fresh start.”
I knew he hadn’t been happy this summer, but hearing him say all this out loud made me hurt for him.
“But don’t you think it will hurt just as badly to leave behind all those memories? And to give this place up before we can make lots of new ones? Someday, we’ll all have families, and you’ll be a grandfather and this will be where we come. If we sell it, we’re not just losing a house. We’re losing our summers,” I said, my eyes welling now as I imagined some blurry future full of my sisters and husbands and nieces and nephews and my own kids. I’d always imagined that it would be here.
“Maybe someday we’ll find another place on the Cape, or another way to spend our summers,” my dad said, looking at me like he expected this to appease me. “It’s just this place is so much your mother that I come here and I feel like a ghost. And you say that now about you and your sisters, but you’re all growing up and headed off to new things. This house was empty so much of the summer because you have your own lives. It’s not the way it used to be.”
I thought of how checked-out he’d been all summer, how much he was even less himself than he could be at home in New Jersey. And I knew, in a way, he was right about all of us being busier and off to our own lives. I still thought we should have a place to come back to, a place that felt like home, but better. I didn’t agree with his decision, but I understood.
“So that’s it?” I said softly. “We just move on?”
He nodded. “We just move on.”
I could say one thing for my summer job: Grace’s plants, at least, looked better than when I’d started working for her. I’d weeded out the truly dead and resuscitated the partially dead. Even in late August, the flowers were vibrant and the leaves shiny and healthy. It wouldn’t be going on my resume, but I was proud.
Grace didn’t answer when I knocked, but by now I was used to just walking inside. She would either be in the kitchen, making tea she left in half-drunk cups around the house, or she’d be seated at her desk, scowling at TMZ.
I’d printed the Excel doc containing all her notes. It was in a not-too-small font (her pet peeve) with the entries ordered by theme (things about love, things about family, things about work) and by type (dialogue, character, plot). I’d highlighted the rows that contained the possibly more interesting pieces.
“Grace?” I called.
She was not in the kitchen. She was not at her desk. “Grace?” I hoped she remembered I was coming. I was leaving the next day and I wanted to say good-bye. I also worried that if I left the document containing my summer’s work anywhere in her house, she’d fail to see it, and next year, some other would-be intern would have to come redo all the work I’d just finished.
“Grace?” There was a still-warm teapot on the stove, so I knew she must have been here at some point.
“I’m up here,” she said. She was calling from the second story of the house. I’d never been up there. Tentatively, I climbed the stairs, looking at the scattered artwork over the banister. Grace was nothing if not eclectic. Psychedelic-looking posters from long-ago concerts shared space with various nudes and modern, abstract pieces that were just lines of colors. None of the pieces were much bigger than a sheet of paper, and they were all placed close together so the effect was of traveling alongside a bizarre collage of Grace’s thoughts.
Her bedroom was at the top of the stairs and took up the whole floor. Her king-sized bed was dead center against a huge floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the water. “Wow,” I said. I had had no idea the house was this impressive. Against the vast backdrop of the ocean, though, Grace looked smaller and older than I’d ever seen her.
She had a deep purple duvet pulled up to her chin and her curly hair was wilder than usual. She looked tired.
“Welcome to me at the end of summer,” she said. “A whole season and I’ve got nothing.”
I approached the side of the bed. This was an oddly intimate way to spend my last day of work. It wasn’t like I was expecting a formal review, but Grace seemed to be having some kind of breakdown.
“Well, not nothing,” I said, handing her the ream of papers.
She peered down at the neat rows containing her translated words. “This is scary. What is this?”
I could have been mad. She was basically questioning my whole summer’s worth of work. Now that I knew Grace, though, I’d been expecting this reaction. I thought I might have even been hoping for it, mostly because I had something to tell her. Something I thought would help.
“This is a document of all your notes,” I said. “And I think you should put it in a drawer and ignore it
forever.”
She flipped through the pages, chuckling to herself at some of the lines. “And why would I do that?”
“Because I think you needed this, to see that those piles of randomness came to something. But the truth is, if those things had been really great, you would have used them already. And now the table is wide open and you can start fresh.” I gave it some more thought. “In fact, maybe you should write at that table, just for a change of pace. The old is gone to make way for the new.”
“Look at your metaphors!” Grace cried, sitting up in her bed. “This is the student-becomes-the-teacher moment in our saga; that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I just want you to write a new book,” I said.
“Well, open that drawer.” She gestured to her bedside table. I pulled open a drawer that was cluttered with notebooks and pens. I panicked for a second, thinking she was going to add these to my workload before I could be done. But then I saw the tattered pages of my cartographer story, with Grace’s notes scattered in the margins.
I pulled it out, feeling excitement when I saw happy exclamation points and circles with bubbles proclaiming, “more of this!” “You read it,” I said.
“Of course I read it,” she said. “You’re good. You need to get better, but we all do. If you remember that half of writing is self-loathing, you’ll be just fine. And I like your cartographer. She reminds me of you, accepting that sometimes what doesn’t make sense makes the most sense of all.”
I laughed, though I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. It sounded like a Smokey-ism. “Thank you.”
“Get the notebook, too,” she said, pointing to a spiral-bound notebook at the top of the drawer. “I’m not letting you teach me without teaching you.”
I opened the notebook, which was filled top to bottom with Grace’s handwriting. A slightly neater version of Grace’s handwriting.
“I started writing that when I couldn’t write anything else. It’s my rules for writing, or tips on the writing life, or something like that. Really, it’s a lot of self-indulgent memoir kind of crap but there might be something useful in there. Or at least something to remember me by,” she said. “It’s yours.”
The Summers Page 20
