It's Not Summer Without You

by Jenny Han

  “Oh, man,” Jeremiah whispered. “He loves that briefcase.”

  And he did. It had his initials engraved on the brass clasp. He truly loved it, maybe even more than his blender.

  I felt terrible. Tears pricked my eyelids. It was all my fault. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Jeremiah was on the floor, on his hands and knees wiping. He looked up at me, grape Kool-Aid dripping down his forehead. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said, rubbing at the leather. My T-shirt was starting to turn brown from rubbing at the briefcase so hard.

  “Well, yeah, it kinda is,” Jeremiah agreed. Then he reached out and touched his finger to my cheek and licked off some of the sugar. “Tastes good, though.”

  We were giggling and sliding our feet along the floor with paper towels when everyone came back home. They walked in with long paper bags, the kind the lobsters come in, and Steven and Conrad had ice-cream cones.

  Mr. Fisher said, “What the hell?”

  Jeremiah scrambled up. “We were just—”

  I handed the briefcase over to Mr. Fisher, my hand shaking. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It was an accident.”

  He took it from me and looked at it, at the smeared leather. “Why were you using my blender?” Mr. Fisher demanded, but he was asking Jeremiah. His neck was bright red. “You know you’re not to use my blender.”

  Jeremiah nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It was my fault,” I said in a small voice.

  “Oh, Belly,” my mother said, shaking her head at me. She knelt on the ground and picked up the soaked paper towels. Susannah had gone to get the mop.

  Mr. Fisher exhaled loudly. “Why don’t you ever listen when I tell you something? For God’s sake. Did I or did I not tell you to never use this blender?”

  Jeremiah bit his lip, and from the way his chin was quivering, I could tell he was really close to crying.

  “Answer me when I’m talking to you.”

  Susannah came back in then with her mop and bucket. “Adam, it was an accident. Let it go.” She put her arms around Jeremiah.

  “Suze, if you baby him, he’ll never learn. He’ll just stay a little baby,” Mr. Fisher said. “Jere, did I or did I not tell you kids never to use the blender?”

  Jeremiah’s eyes filled up and he blinked quickly, but a few tears escaped. And then a few more. It was awful. I felt so embarrassed for Jeremiah and also I felt guilty that it was me who had brought all this upon him. But I also felt relieved that it wasn’t me who was the one getting in trouble, crying in front of everyone.

  And then Conrad said, “But Dad, you never did.” He had chocolate ice cream on his cheek.

  Mr. Fisher turned and looked at him. “What?”

  “You never said it. We knew we weren’t supposed to, but you never technically said it.” Conrad looked scared, but his voice was matter-of-fact.

  Mr. Fisher shook his head and looked back at Jeremiah. “Go get cleaned up,” he said roughly. He was embarrassed, I could tell.

  Susannah glared at him and swept Jeremiah into the bathroom. My mother was wiping down the counters, her shoulders straight and stiff. “Steven, take your sister to the bathroom,” she said. Her voice left no room for argument, and Steven grabbed my arm and took me upstairs.

  “Do you think I’m in trouble?” I asked Steven.

  He wiped my cheeks roughly with a wet piece of toilet paper. “Yes. But not as much trouble as Mr. Fisher. Mom’s gonna rip him a new one.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Steven shrugged. “Just something I heard. It means he’s the one in trouble.”

  After my face was clean, Steven and I crept back into the hallway. My mother and Mr. Fisher were arguing. We looked at each other, our eyes huge when we heard our mother snap, “You can be such an ass-hat, Adam.”

  I opened my mouth, about to exclaim, when Steven clapped his hand over my mouth and dragged me to the boys’ room. He shut the door behind us. His eyes were glittery from all the excitement. Our mother had cussed at Mr. Fisher.

  I said, “Mom called Mr. Fisher an ass-hat.” I didn’t even know what an ass-hat was, but it sure sounded funny. I pictured a hat that looked like a butt sitting on top of Mr. Fisher’s big head. And then I giggled.

  It was all very exciting and terrible. None of us had ever really gotten in trouble at the summer house. Not big trouble anyway. It was pretty much a big trouble-free zone.

  The mothers were relaxed at the summer house. Where at home, Steven would Get It if he talked back, here, my mother didn’t seem to mind as much. Probably because at the Cousins house, us kids weren’t the center of the world. My mother was busy doing other things, like potting plants and going to art galleries with Susannah and sketching and reading books. She was too busy to get angry or bothered. We did not have her full attention.

  This was both a good and bad thing. Good, because we got away with stuff. If we played out on the beach past bedtime, if we had double dessert, no one really cared. Bad, because I had the vague sense that Steven and I weren’t as important here, that there were other things that occupied my mother’s mind—memories we had no part of, a life before we existed. And also, the secret life inside herself, where Steven and I didn’t exist. It was like when she went on her trips without us—I knew that she did not miss us or think about us very much.

  I hated that thought, but it was the truth. The mothers had a whole life separate from us. I guess us kids did too.

  chapter twenty-five

  When Jeremiah and Conrad walked up the beach with their boards under their arms, I had this crazy thought that I should try to warn them somehow. Whistle or something. But I didn’t know how to whistle, and it was too late anyway.

  They put the boards under the house, and then they walked up the steps and saw us sitting there. Conrad’s whole body tightened up, and I saw Jeremiah mutter “shit” under his breath. Then Jeremiah said, “Hey, Dad.” Conrad brushed right past us and into the house.

  Mr. Fisher followed him in, and Jeremiah and I looked at each other for a moment. He leaned close to me and said, “How about you pull the car around while I get our stuff, and then we make a run for it?”

  I giggled, and then I clapped my hand over my mouth. I doubted Mr. Fisher would appreciate me giggling when all this serious stuff was going on. I stood up and pulled my towel closer around me, under my armpits. Then we went inside too.

  Conrad and Mr. Fisher were in the kitchen. Conrad was opening up a beer, not even looking at his dad. “What the hell are you kids playing at here?” Mr. Fisher said. His voice sounded really loud and unnatural in the house. He was looking around the kitchen, the living room.

  Jeremiah began, “Dad—”

  Mr. Fisher looked right at Jeremiah and said, “Sandy Donatti called me this morning and told me what happened. You were supposed to get Conrad back to school, not stay and—and party and interfere with the sale.”

  Jeremiah blinked. “Who’s Sandy Donatti?”

  “She’s our real estate agent,” Conrad said.

  I realized my mouth was open, and I snapped it shut. I wrapped my arms around myself tight, trying to turn invisible. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Jeremiah to make a run for it. Maybe that way he’d never find out that I’d known about the house too. Would it make a difference that I’d only known about it since this afternoon? I doubted it.

  Jeremiah looked over at Conrad, and then back at his dad. “I didn’t know we had a real estate agent. You never told me you were selling the house.”

  “I told you it was a possibility.”

  “You never told me you were actually doing it.”

  Conrad broke in, speaking only to Jeremiah. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not selling the house.” He drank his beer calmly, and we all waited to hear what he’d say next. “It’s not his to sell.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mr. Fisher said, breathing heavily. “I’m not doing this for me. The money will be for you boys.�
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  “You think I care about the money?” Conrad finally looked at him, his eyes cold. His voice was toneless. “I’m not like you. I could give a shit about the money. I care about the house. Mom’s house.”

  “Conrad—”

  “You have no right to be here. You should leave.”

  Mr. Fisher swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “No, I won’t leave.”

  “Tell Sandy not to bother coming back.” Conrad said the word “Sandy” like it was an insult. Which I guess it was meant to be.

  “I’m your father,” Mr. Fisher said hoarsely. “And your mother left it to me to decide. This is what she would have wanted.”

  Conrad’s smooth, hard shell cracked, and his voice was shaking when he said, “Don’t talk about what she would have wanted.”

  “She was my wife, goddamn it. I lost her too.”

  That might have been true, but it was the exact wrong thing to say to Conrad at that moment. It set him off. He punched the wall closest to him, and I flinched. I was shocked he didn’t leave a hole.

  He said, “You didn’t lose her. You left her. You don’t know the first thing about what she would have wanted. You were never there. You were a shitty dad and an even shittier husband. So don’t bother trying to do the right thing now. You just fuck it all up.”

  Jeremiah said, “Con, shut up. Just shut up.”

  Conrad swung around and shouted, “You’re still defending him? That’s exactly why we didn’t tell you!”

  “We?” Jeremiah repeated. He looked at me then, and the stricken look on his face cut right through me.

  I started to speak, to try to explain, but I only got as far as saying, “I just found out today, I swear,” when Mr. Fisher interrupted me.

  He said, “You are not the only one hurting, Conrad. You don’t get to talk to me that way.”

  “I think I do.”

  The room was deadly quiet and Mr. Fisher looked like he might hit Conrad, he was so mad. They stared at each other, and I knew Conrad wouldn’t be the one to back down.

  It was Mr. Fisher who looked away. “The movers are coming back, Conrad. This is happening. You throwing a tantrum can’t stop it.”

  He left soon after. He said he’d be back in the morning, and the words were ominous. He said that he was staying at the inn in town. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to get out of that house.

  The three of us stood around in the kitchen after he was gone, none of us saying anything. Least of all me. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. For once, I wished I was at home with my mother and Steven and Taylor, away from all of this.

  Jeremiah was the first to speak. “I can’t believe he’s really selling the house,” he said, almost to himself.

  “Believe it,” Conrad said harshly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Jeremiah demanded.

  Conrad glanced at me before saying, “I didn’t think you needed to know.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell, Conrad? It’s my house too.”

  “Jere, I only just found out myself.” Conrad propped himself up on the kitchen counter, his head down. “I was at home picking up some clothes. That real estate agent, Sandy, called and left a message on the machine, saying movers were coming to get the stuff they packed. I went back to school and got my stuff and I came straight here.”

  Conrad had dropped school and everything else to come to the summer house, and here we’d just thought he was a screwup in need of saving. When in actuality, he was the one doing the saving.

  I felt guilty for not giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I knew Jeremiah did too. We exchanged a quick look and I knew we were thinking exactly the same thing. Then I guess he remembered he was pissed at me, too, and he looked away.

  “So that’s it, then?” Jeremiah said.

  Conrad didn’t answer him right away. Then he looked up and said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Well, great job taking care of all this, Con.”

  “I’ve been handling this on my own,” Conrad snapped. “It’s not like I had any help from you.”

  “Well, maybe if you’d told me about it—”

  Conrad cut him off. “You’d have done what?”

  “I would have talked to Dad.”

  “Yeah, exactly.” Conrad could not have sounded more disdainful.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re so busy being up his ass, you can’t see him for who he is.”

  Jeremiah didn’t say anything right away, and I was really afraid of where this was heading. Conrad was looking for a fight and the last thing we needed was for the two of them to start wrestling on the kitchen floor, breaking things and each other. This time, my mother wasn’t here to stop them. There was just me, and that was hardly anything.

  And then Jeremiah said, “He’s our father.” His voice was measured, even, and I let out a tiny breath of relief. There wouldn’t be any fight, because Jeremiah wouldn’t let it happen. I admired him for that.

  But Conrad just shook his head in disgust. “He’s a dirtbag.”

  “Don’t call him that.”

  “What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer? What kind of man does that? I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me sick, playing the martyr now, the grieving widower. But where was he when Mom needed him, huh, Jere?”

  “I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”

  The room went silent, and it felt to me like the air was almost crackling. The way Conrad flinched, the way Jeremiah sucked in his breath right after he said it. He wanted to take it back, I could tell, and he was about to, when Conrad said, conversationally, “That’s a low blow.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said.

  Conrad shrugged, brushing him off like it didn’t matter either way.

  And then Jeremiah said, “Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to hold on to all the shitty stuff that’s ever happened to you?”

  “Because I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they really are.” He said it in a way that made me wonder who he was really talking about.

  Jeremiah bristled. He looked at me and then back at Conrad and said, “You’re just jealous. Admit it.”

  “Jealous?”

  “You’re jealous that Dad and I have an actual relationship now. It’s not just all about you anymore, and that kills you.”

  Conrad actually laughed. It was a bitter, terrible sound. “That’s such BS.” He turned to me. “Belly, are you hearing this? Jeremiah thinks I’m jealous.”

  Jeremiah looked at me, like, Be on my side , and I knew that if I did, he’d forgive me for not telling him about the house. I hated Conrad for putting me in the middle, for making me choose. I didn’t know whose side I was on. They were both right and they were both wrong.

  I guess I took too long to answer, because Jeremiah stopped looking at me and said, “You’re an asshole, Conrad. You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are.” And then he walked out. The front door slammed behind him.

  I felt like I should go after him. I felt like I had just let him down when he needed me most.

  Then Conrad said to me, “Am I an asshole, Belly?” He popped open another beer and he was trying to sound so indifferent, but his hand was shaking.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You really are.”

  I walked over to the window and I watched Jeremiah getting into his car. It was too late to follow him; he was already pulling out of the driveway. Even though he was pissed, he had his seat belt on.

  “He’ll be back,” Conrad said.

  I hesitated and then I said, “You shouldn’t have said that stuff.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You shouldn’t have asked me to keep it a secret from him.”

  Conrad shrugged like he was already over it, but then he looked back toward the window and I knew he was worried. He threw me a beer and I
caught it. I popped the top off and took a long drink. It hardly even tasted bad. Maybe I was getting used to it. I smacked my lips loudly.

  He watched me, and there was a funny look on his face. “So you like beer now, huh?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all right,” I said, and I felt very grown-up. But then I added, “I still like Cherry Coke better though.”

  He almost smiled when he said, “Same old Belly. I bet if we cut your body open, white sugar would come pouring out of you.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Sugar and spice and everything nice.”

  Conrad said, “I don’t know about that.”

  And then we were both quiet. I took another sip of beer and set it down next to Conrad. “I think you really hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”

  He shrugged. “He needed a reality check.”

  “You didn’t have to do it like that.”

  “I think you’re the one who hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. If I asked him what he meant by that, he’d tell me. And I didn’t want him to. So I drank my beer and said, “What now?”

  Conrad didn’t let me off the hook that easy. He said, “What now with you and Jeremiah or with you and me?”

  He was teasing me and I hated him for it. I could feel my cheeks burning as I said, “What now with this house, was what I meant.”

  He leaned back against the counter. “There’s nothing to do, really. I mean, I could get a lawyer. I’m eighteen now. I could try and stall. But I doubt it would do anything. My dad’s stubborn. And he’s greedy.”

  Hesitantly, I said, “I don’t know that he’s doing it out of—out of greed, Conrad.”

  Conrad’s face sort of closed off. “Trust me. He is.”

  I couldn’t help but ask, “What about summer school?”

  “I couldn’t care less about school right now.”

  “But—”

  “Just leave it, Belly.” Then he walked out of the kitchen, opened the sliding door, and went outside.

  Conversation over.

  chapter twenty-six

  jeremiah