The Summer We Got Free

by McKenzie, Mia

  “Now who’s studying who?” Helena asked.

  Regina chuckled. “I was just gone ask where you got them eyes from.”

  “My father. Where he got them from, I couldn’t say.”

  “Things like that can skip generations. He probably got it from his mother’s uncle’s granddaddy’s sister.”

  The both laughed.

  “Your husband has interesting eyes,” Helena said.

  “George? You think so?”

  “Yes. You don’t?”

  “Well, I guess so,” she said, considering it. “I aint really thought about it in a while, but, yeah, he do.”

  “He must have been a handsome young man.”

  “He wasn’t bad.”

  “How did you first meet?”

  “We didn’t. Not that I can remember. Town we grew up in was so small, everybody just knew everybody else from the time they was kids.”

  “It must have been a huge change, moving to a big city like this.”

  George was right about one thing—this girl sure did ask a lot of questions. Regina didn’t mind it, though. In fact, she liked it, even if she suspected the questions were leading somewhere. She didn’t know where, but she was content to go along and find out.

  “Oh, it was a change alright. I hadn’t never even visited nowhere big as this. To move here seemed crazy to me. I couldn’t get my head around this city for years. I wanted to go home to Hayden so many times. But George said we could have a better life up here.”

  “Was he right?”

  Regina thought about it, then said, “Depend on what you think a ‘better life’ is. Yeah, I guess we did alright for ourselves for a while there. Before our son died.” She wondered if this was where it was going, if Helena wanted to know more about George Jr. and how he died. But Helena didn’t ask about it, she just continued to sketch and said nothing for a while.

  Regina thought about Hayden. She still missed her home. She had never wanted to leave and had been sure she would be instantly miserable in Philadelphia, so far from her family and everything she knew. The first few years here had been good, though. It was only after they had moved onto this street, when George had begun to change, that everything started to go downhill. He had grown distant in the space of a couple of years and the man she had married had become like a stranger to her. He wasn’t lying or sneaking around back then, but what he was doing was just as bad. He was shutting himself off from her and from their children, closing himself up, while at the same time opening himself up to someone else. Chuck Ellis. Regina had sat there and watched as Chuck had become the person George talked to and went out of his way to spend time with. She had resented it. She had left her home and everyone she knew because George had told her their lives would be better, but he had not told her that she would be living that better life without him. She was glad when Chuck stopped coming around, although she had dreaded knowing the reason why. She never asked. Instead, she had tried to get close to George again, thinking that with Chuck gone there might be space for her again. But he had only become more distant. And when Geo died, Regina had lost the strength to try anymore.

  When she came out of her head again, Helena was watching her with intense eyes, her drawing hand moving rapidly on the page.

  Half an hour later, Helena’s hand stopped and she smiled over at Regina. “Done.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Helena shook her head. “Not just yet. I have to put some finishing touches on it first. I’ll show you when I’m all finished.”

  “Alright, then,” Regina said, getting up. “I better get myself to bed.”

  “Thank you,” Helena said, “for sitting. And for talking.”

  “Well, it’s nice to be talked to, instead of talked around, for a change,” Regina said, and she went off to bed.

  Late that night, Paul lay awake in his bed, staring at the wall that separated his bedroom from Sarah’s, where he knew Helena was still up, because he could hear her moving around on the creaky floors, which, he noticed, were a lot less creaky than usual. She had always been a night person. When they were children and shared the same room, Paul often awoke in the middle of the night to find his sister sitting at the end of her bed, reading in the little light that came in through the window from a nearby streetlamp. Usually, it was one of the adventure books their father brought when he showed up once every couple of years, which were full of stories of sinking boats and dark, wave-washed caves, and jeweled treasure. Or sometimes she would just be sitting there at the window, looking up at a heavy moon, her green eyes alight with imagining. “What you thinking ‘bout?” Paul would often ask, from across the small room. “How to get free,” she would sometimes say.

  Lying there in bed now, staring at the wall that separated them, he missed those long-ago nights, missed under-the-covers giggling and the warmth of a sister, which was unlike any other kind, a warmth that seeped into the fibers of blankets and held there all through even the coldest nights. He had always felt lucky to have a sister, especially in February.

  He turned away from the wall and lay on his back instead. He was tired and he wanted to sleep. Every time he tried, the past pushed in. He didn’t like it. It wasn’t the real past, anyway, it was a sweeter, happier version, a half-lie, with all the pleasures and none of the pains. It was a trick, a falsehood that omitted its own ugliest parts and pretended to be something it wasn’t, the way the past liked to do. Paul wasn’t fooled.

  He turned his body again, this time over onto his other side, his back to the wall, and it was only then that he realized Ava was also awake and was lying there staring at him. He saw something in her eyes, a flash of excitement, something carnal, like he had never seen in her before. She had never, not once, initiated sex with him. But now she reached out and touched his face and moved her body close to his on the bed. He kissed her, meeting her excitement with his own, pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her. They kissed feverishly, for many seconds, and then Ava pushed his head down between her legs. Paul pushed up her nightgown and pulled off her panties and gave her, gladly, eagerly, the pleasure she was asking for. They made love in a fever of heat and sweat and it was like it had never been before. Ava took complete control, straddling him, then lying on her back with her legs around his waist, and when they were done, when she was satisfied, which took a while, they lay there in the dark, breathing heavily, the sheets soaking wet and sticking to their skin.

  “That was…” He shook his head. “I don’t even know a word for it.”

  She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, and she didn’t say anything.

  “You thirsty?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I am.” He got up, grabbed the empty cup he kept on the nightstand for water late at night. He opened the door, and peeked out to make sure the coast was clear before hurrying naked down the hall to the bathroom. He let the cold tap run for a little while, then filled the cup. When he got back to the bedroom, Ava was lying on her side, turned away from him. He took a long drink of water, then placed the cup on the nightstand as he got back into the bed. He moved close to her, put his arms around her.

  She pushed him away. “I’m tired,” she said.

  He blinked in the dark, feeling rejected and confused.

  Ava pulled the sheet up to her chin, even though the room was stiflingly hot.

  Paul lay down on his back, frowning into the heavy darkness. “I killed somebody,” he said, so quietly that he was sure she had not heard him and, worried that he might not have the guts to say it again if she hadn’t, he made himself say it again, louder. “I killed somebody, Ava.”

  She turned over, squinted at him in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to do it. But somehow that don’t make it even a little bit better, even though you’d think it would.”

  “Who did you kill?”

  “A woman. No, a girl. She wasn’t
but sixteen. She was hurting my sister. I was just trying to stop her.”

  Ava’s eyes were wide in the dark.

  “That’s why I got sent to juvie. I was in until I was eighteen.”

  Ava sat up in the bed, reached over and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. In the light, her face was heavy with shock, her brow drawn tight, her mouth slightly open. “I can’t believe you never told me this,” she said.

  “I couldn’t. Knowing what happened to your brother, I didn’t think you could love me if you knew.”

  He reached over to take her hand, but she moved away from him, getting up out of the bed. She was trembling.

  Paul wished to God he had told her before now. Anytime before now, before the last few days. This trembling woman was so different from the wife he had known for four years. A few days ago, she would have been shocked, she might even have thrown him out, but she would not have stood there as she stood there now, looking at him with devastation in her eyes, shaking from head to foot with what he knew was disgust, and fear, and anger.

  He got out of the bed and stood on the other side of it, stark naked. He wanted to reach for his pants, but he was afraid that if he looked away from her she would be gone when he looked again.

  “Baby,” he said. “Ava. It was an accident. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t mean to.”

  “You meant to lie about it all this time.”

  “What would have happened if I told you? Way back, in the beginning? You wouldn’t have had nothing to do with me. I didn’t want you to walk away from me over something I did when I was fifteen, something I never meant to do, something I suffered over every day since it happened.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then asked, “Who was the girl? What was she doing to your sister?”

  “She lived in our building,” he said. “Our mothers was friends and she would come over with her. She used to tease Helena all the time about being so black, make her cry all the time. When I came in that time, she was holding her down. I grabbed her, and pushed her. She fell against a glass table, right against the corner of it, and it snapped off and cut her.”

  Ava grabbed the arm of the chair by the bed and sank down into it. She closed her eyes and took a long breath. When she opened her eyes, she frowned and said, “Put something on, please.”

  He reached for his boxer shorts and pulled them on, then his undershirt. Then he sat down on the bed and watched her, waiting.

  After a little while, she said, “I feel like I don’t know you, Paul.”

  He didn’t mean to laugh, but he couldn’t help it.

  “That’s funny?” she asked.

  “No. But I been feeling the same thing about you for days. And you aint been rushing to tell me what’s going on with you.”

  “I can tell you for sure I aint killed anybody.”

  Paul got up, grabbed his pants. He pulled them on, and then his shirt, and moved to the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asked him.

  “Somewhere else.”

  “You’re walking out? You got some nerve.”

  He ignored her, ran down the stairs, and out the front door.

  ***

  Ava awoke craving coffee. It was just after dawn and the bluish light coming in through the window cast long, thin shadows along the walls, shadows that reached up onto the ceiling and stretched across the bed. From one dark corner of the room she felt a presence, a hum that was different from that of the box fan, the low hum of another soul, and she sat up in the bed and looked around the room, peering into the shadows. At first, the hum felt vague and unfamiliar, but as she sat there it grew stronger, and clearer, and she recognized it. It was Geo. All around her, heavy in the dark of the room, was the spirit of her brother. It was so palpable, and so close, that she expected him to emerge from the shadows any second, and she climbed out of the bed and stood in the center of the room, and waited. The dark seemed to breathe around her. Outside the window, the sky continued to lighten, and the shadows shifted and crept, and reached out for her.

  “Geo,” she whispered. “Are you here?”

  No answer came. Daylight spilled into the room, erasing the shadows, and with them the murmur of his presence.

  She went downstairs to the kitchen, where Sarah and George were already up, finishing their breakfast before leaving for work. She went straight to the coffee pot and poured herself some, then stood there with her nose inside the cup, thinking that the coffee smelled much richer than usual. “What kind of coffee is this?” she asked.

  “It’s Maxwell House. Like it always is,” Sarah said. “You the one bought it.”

  Helena came in and said good morning to all of them. Her hands were dirty and she went and washed them in the sink. She was wearing a thin-strapped top and her shoulders were bare and Ava noticed the delicate bones that went from her shoulders to the base of her throat, where little beads of sweat had gathered, looking like tiny drops of coffee against her black skin, and Ava wondered for a moment what they might taste like. Helena seemed to feel her staring and glanced at her. Ava held the cup of coffee out to her. “Smell that.”

  Helena sniffed the coffee.

  “It smells different?”

  “It smells like coffee,” Helena said.

  Ava put her nose back in the cup and breathed in the dark aroma, loving it.

  “You’re up early,” Sarah said.

  “I was doing some work in the front yard,” Helena told her.

  George frowned. “What kind of work?”

  “Turning over the soil. I’m going to plant some flowers there. Your wife told me last night how much her flower gardens used to mean to her and I thought I’d do it as a thank-you for your hospitality.”

  George wanted to object, but he couldn’t think of a reason.

  “Paul and I are driving up to French Creek today,” Helena told Ava.

  “Where’s that?” Sarah asked.

  “In the Poconos. We used to go up there with our father when we were kids.”

  “How y’all getting there?”

  “A friend of Paul’s is loaning us his car. Whitey, or somebody.”

  “Milky?” Sarah asked.

  “That’s it.” She looked at Ava. “Is Paul still asleep?”

  Ava shook her head. “He aint here.”

  “Oh. He left already to get the car?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where is he?” Sarah asked.

  “He walked out,” Ava said, “in the middle of the night. I don’t know where he is.”

  George looked up from his cereal. “What you talking about? Walked out?”

  “You had a fight?” Helena asked.

  “They don’t never fight,” Sarah said.

  Ava laughed. “We do now.”

  The phone rang.

  “That got to be Paul,” George said, getting up to answer it.

  Ava stared down into her coffee cup.

  “Paul, where the hell you at?” George said into the phone. Then, “Yeah, she right here. Hold on.”

  He held the phone out to Helena. She glanced at Ava, then took it.

  Ava turned back to the counter and added sugar to her coffee. She was not thinking about Paul. She was thinking about her brother, about what she had felt in her bedroom that morning. She wondered if he had really been there. With all the ghosts that had appeared to them in the last few days, it seemed likely that he would show up at some point. But he had not showed himself, as the others had, and Ava wondered why. And, too, she wondered what seeing him would do to her, what memories it would unlock, what emotions. Perhaps seeing him would bring it all back.

  “Alright, I’ll meet you over there,” Helena was saying into the phone.

  Ava sipped her coffee and wondered what would happen if Paul did not come home, and whether, in that case, Helena would leave, too.

  The temperature reached ninety-seven degrees by eleven o’clock and through the front window of the bank, Sarah watched people mov
ing slower up and down Chestnut Street, their feet almost dragging on the concrete sidewalks, their images blurred by the wavy lines of heat rising in the air. Around noon, thunder rumbled, and the sky opened, and sheets of rain slid down the bank’s large windows, obscuring Sarah’s view, so she could see only watery, distorted, umbrella-shaped images hurrying by. The storm moved through quickly and the city steamed for hours afterward, the air moist and heavy, but cooler than it had been that morning.

  Sarah took the bus to Penn’s Landing at one, hoping to catch the fire-eating man at the end of his performance, so that she could talk to him when no one else was around. When she got there, though, she found him just starting, lighting fire at the tip of each baton while the small crowd watched. The rain, Sarah thought. It had forced him to start later. She stood there watching the performance, the juggling and flipping, enjoying it as much as she had the last time, but still seeing no opportunity to talk to him. She checked her watch. There was no way she would be able to stay until the end. She felt frustrated. At this rate, she would never be able to make her lie the truth, and Helena would never see her again.

  “For this next part,” the fire-eating man was saying, “I’m gone need a brave soul. Any brave souls in the crowd today?”

  Sarah had never, ever, not once in her whole life, thought of herself as brave. But she needed to get closer to him. So, she stepped forward. When he smiled at her, she was sure he remembered her from years ago. Positive. But a second later, she told herself she was crazy, that he couldn’t, because no one ever remembered her.

  He bowed and offered her his hand, saying, “Come and stand right here beside me, young lady.”