Summertime Nights

by Katie Winters

  “I really didn’t mean for any of that to happen,” Carmella said softly. Her voice broke. The tears threatened to fall.

  “It was a long time ago. But you know, just as well as I do, that they blamed you for all that,” Karen continued.

  Carmella couldn’t contain her tears. They fell and rolled down her cheeks as she stared at Karen in disbelief. She finally reached for a napkin as a sob escaped her throat.

  “Carmella, please. Calm down. It was all a long time ago.” Karen searched the tables around them to make sure that nobody looked at them too strangely.

  But Carmella full-on wept, then. She couldn’t keep the tears in. The emotion of seeing Karen again had brought so many memories to the surface. There was no way she could keep it together, no way on earth. She continued to cry as her shoulders shook. “I can’t do it. I can’t,” she said over and over again.

  “At least take yourself to the bathroom, Carmella,” Karen said pointedly.

  Carmella leaped from the table and rushed toward the back of the restaurant. Once inside a stall, she cried louder and harder than she’d cried in years. With Karen there, she again felt the immensity of Elsa and Neal’s anger toward her. She could now see her own mother’s eyes during those years before the accident. They’d never been allowed any moments of reprieve. They’d never been allowed to come together as a family again.

  And Neal had picked Karen to try to bring love and companionship back into his life.

  Now, as a forty-two-year-old woman, Carmella fully understood the horror that Karen had put upon her and Elsa’s relationship. She hadn’t had any respect for Carmella or for her age or where she was headed or where she’d been. She had been only a pawn — something to link her to Neal’s family. She’d wanted their money and not a whole lot else.

  What an idiot Carmella had been so long ago. She’d actually gone to the school Karen had gone to. She had actually hoped to become somewhat like her. Now, more than twenty years later, she felt the heaviness of her mistake. “I really messed up,” Carmella breathed.

  Carmella was grateful that she’d brought her purse from the table. She stepped out from the bathroom and then eased through the tables. Karen was bent down over her phone. She wouldn’t notice. Carmella swept out into the evening night, then immediately jumped into a taxi. She prayed she would never see that horrible woman again.

  Chapter Six

  In the back of the cab, Carmella’s soul threatened to burst from her chest. She placed a hand over her throat and focused on her breath. The taxi driver played an old Pink Floyd song and it reminded her of her father, long ago, when he’d sat on the back porch alone and gazed out across the waves. It was magical and unnerving, the way music could transport you to places you didn’t necessarily want to go. In any case, the idea of returning to her hotel room and staring at the wall alone, still hungry and out of her mind, did not please her. She found herself asking the taxi driver about a good dive bar in the area. She needed a drink.

  The cab dropped her off at the far end of a busy street and instructed her to walk one block down, then turn left into a side street, where a place called “The Alley Cat” was located under a black overhang. Carmella pressed open the dirty glass door and found herself in a dank, shadowy place. The jukebox played David Bowie, and the bartender had a handlebar mustache and more of that turquoise jewelry. He told her to sit at the bar if she wanted to, and she found a stool toward the side. There, she ordered herself a double whiskey. This, too, had been her father’s drink — and Neal was clearly heavy on her mind.

  Carmella lifted her phone and considered texting Elsa about what she’d just experienced. But she half-imagined that Elsa wouldn’t be pleased at all with Carmella’s decision to go out to dinner with Karen, especially since Elsa and Carmella were in the middle of repairing their relationship. Carmella didn’t want to start another fight. She slid her phone back into her purse and stared up at the television, which showed a pool tournament.

  Carmella wasn’t fully aware that she was crying. Her eyes welled up, but she tried to focus all her attention on the pool game that played out on the screen in the corner. It was oddly meditative. The balls scattered every which way across the green field and rolled into the little pockets. The players sauntered around the pool table with a sense of confidence and ownership, the likes of which Carmella was sure she’d never had in her life.

  “I’ve never seen anyone cry over a pool game before.” The voice came from her left.

  Carmella turned her head slowly. A man had sat two stools away from her — a handsome man, maybe late thirties or early forties. He drank a dark beer and wore a leather jacket with a white t-shirt beneath it. His hair was tousled and his cerulean eyes glittered from the soft light of the various beer advertisement neon lights. He looked at her as no one had looked at her in ages — as though she was an interesting stranger. She knew in her heart she was not.

  “Oh. Yeah.” Carmella lifted her napkin and dotted it across her cheek, even as another round of tears fell. “I guess it’s just been a hard night.”

  The man glanced up at the TV and said, “Should we call them and tell them how upset you are with them?”

  Carmella’s lips quivered into a smile. “Do you think they’d take it well?”

  “No. I don’t think these guys take anything well,” the man said. “But it’s worth a shot. Aren’t you supposed to tell people how you’re feeling in this life? Waste of time to live in your own misery.”

  Carmella couldn’t help it; this man was endlessly charming. He lifted two fingers and ordered her another whiskey, as she’d apparently already drank hers, and then asked if he could sit at the stool directly beside her. Loneliness made her nod her head yes.

  He lifted his beer, and she clinked her new whiskey with his glass. Again, her eyes found his hungrily.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” the man asked.

  Carmella shook her head. “I came here for school about twenty years ago, but this is my first time back.”

  “Wow. What was it like to live here?”

  Carmella forced her mind back to those beautiful, sunny memories. “Hot, I guess, but calming. I had gone through a lot the decade before, and I needed an escape, so this was the place.”

  “You ran to the desert to get away from it all,” he said.

  “Something like that.”

  He stuck a hand out between them and introduced himself. “I’m Cal.”

  “Cal. What’s that short for?”

  “Calvin. But isn’t that awful? My mother had a vendetta against me.”

  Carmella, who’d always sensed that her mother actually had had a vendetta against her, struggled to laugh at the joke. Still, her smile remained.

  “I’m Carmella,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “I’m not from around here either, you know,” Cal said. “I’m here on a work trip.”

  “Oh? What do you do?”

  “I’m a journalist,” he explained. “But kind of a trashy one, sometimes. You have to go where the work takes you. But I’ll head out of here in a few weeks, I guess. I’m so ready to be back by the water.”

  Carmella nodded. “I thought I would be here a few weeks, but something just happened. And I think I might get on the first flight back to Martha’s Vineyard.”

  “Martha’s Vineyard! Now, that’s a place I’ve never been,” Cal said. “Tell me about it. You grew up there?”

  Carmella nodded. She recited the everyday rhetoric about the sand and the water and the sailing and the woods and watched his eyes light up.

  “It sounds like heaven,” Cal said.

  Carmella had to admit, from an outside perspective, it really did sound like heaven.

  “But why are you headed back so soon? And what are you here for?” Cal asked.

  Carmella buzzed her lips. She wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of laying out her dirty laundry in front of a stranger, but she rationalized that she’d never se
e this guy again.

  “I came here for an acupuncture clinic. My ex-stepmother happened to be one of the guest speakers, and we decided to go out to dinner. But a lot of stuff happened between us back in the day and she started dragging up these old memories. I got so upset. She really made me and my sister turn on one another. We’re in the middle of fixing all that damage, so seeing her wasn’t exactly good timing.”

  “Is there such a thing as good timing?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” Carmella agreed.

  “But this sounds fascinating. I’m so used to writing silly celebrity gossip. But this is real family drama. The height of what keeps us together also tears us apart,” Cal said.

  Carmella nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Carmella sipped her whiskey again and began to tell him more: more about the Katama Lodge, about her father, about her mother, about her brother’s death. She told him that her mother never really forgave her for Colton’s accident. “And then, before I knew it, she was dead, too.”

  Cal’s eyes were soft with sadness. As she explained a tiny bit about what had happened with Karen and how busted up she’d been when Karen had left her behind, he reached a hand across the bar and splayed it over hers. “That sounds tremendously difficult. No wonder you wanted to get away.”

  “All these years, I’ve half thought, that what if Karen had stuck around? She was the only mother figure I loved once my real mother had passed away. I don’t think I really realized how much I felt abandoned by her. And now, all she told me is how good she’s been over the past few decades. She’s been absolutely great, and I’ve felt like a dried-up piece of trash.”

  Cal chuckled. “You’re funny. You don’t have to be funny about this, but — you’re funny.”

  Carmella shrugged and grinned wider. “I guess it’s true what they say. Humor is the universal band-aide.”

  Cal allowed a moment of silence to pass. On the TV screen, a large man performed an insane pool trick, one that sent three balls to their deaths. Carmella imagined she would never be half as good as that at anything.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? As teenagers, we really believe that adults know everything. But then when we get older, we discover that nobody knows anything,” Cal said.

  “Yeah. This was exactly the emotion I had at the restaurant tonight with Karen,” Carmella affirmed. “Like all these years, I’ve imagined she would be able to say the exact thing I needed to hear for me to get over all that pain. But instead, she’s just a person, living her own life and hardly thinking about me at all.”

  Cal nodded. He ordered them another round and then blinked those beautiful eyes toward her. “Tell me more about this Lodge, though. I’ve heard of it before. It’s kind of famous with celebrities?”

  “Yeah, a little bit. We have a whole range of women coming from all walks of life. They come for healing, wellness and relaxation, and then they blog about it on their various social media channels. To be honest, I can poke fun at them all day, but I actually do believe in what the Lodge does. There’s a reason I’ve worked there for so many years and a reason why so many return year after year.”

  “I can imagine. It must be really special, knowing you’re helping people,” Cal said, leaning into the bar.

  “It really is. Especially when I really felt that I couldn’t help myself,” Carmella offered.

  The conversation continued on deep into the night. Carmella occasionally questioned it — why it was so easy to speak with this man, but she soon laid those fears to rest and fell into the soft beauty of his eyes. When was the last time she’d flirted? It wasn’t like this was any kind of date. It was just two people at the bar getting to know one another. It was harmless and she’d never see him again anyway.

  Still. How beautiful? How wonderful? How right?

  Carmella and Cal stumbled out into the dark night. Carmella could sense it in his eyes that he wanted to invite her back to wherever he was staying. But Carmella felt hesitation. She wasn’t exactly keen on one-night stands, especially because she felt so inexperienced and she didn’t want anything to happen after the bar to taint the beautiful evening they’d had.

  “I’ll grab a taxi back to my hotel,” she said, her words slurred.

  He looked palpably disappointed. But he nodded and just said, “It’s been such a pleasure to meet you, Carmella.” He then leaned down and kissed her gently on her right cheek. “I wish you well.”

  “You too.” Carmella ducked into the back of the cab and focused her eyes ahead. She felt that if she looked back and watched him as he departed from her life forever, her heart might break.

  People came into your life for a reason — even for only a few hours. She genuinely felt that Cal had entered her life to save her night. Somehow, it had given her purpose. Somehow, it had made her strong.

  Chapter Seven

  Carmella stayed at the hotel the following day in a state of hangover gloominess. She received a call from one of the acupuncturist teachers at the clinic, asking if she planned to show up for any of the classes. She didn’t answer and just let the call go to her voicemail. After she listened to it, she promptly deleted it. She couldn’t very well show her face there and see Karen again. She felt defeated.

  Around three in the afternoon, she booked a flight back to Boston for the following day. She texted Elsa with her plans without context.

  ELSA: Are you sure? Did something happen?

  CARMELLA: I just want to get back to my clients. I’m already getting so many requests for the next few weeks. I don’t want to let anyone down.

  ELSA: Mallory and I have decided to pick you up. See you tomorrow? Four?

  CARMELLA: It’s a date.

  Carmella couldn’t sleep that night. She wasn’t sure if this was what failure felt like or if this was what it meant to take charge of your life. She rose early, before the first heat of the day, and jogged around the city. She expected to feel something as she passed all these familiar sights. Instead, her heart ached to see her home again.

  By some grace of God, Carmella managed to sleep on the plane. The wheels touched down on the runway at three-thirty, and her eyes burst open. The older woman beside her chuckled and said, “I wondered if you’d ever get up! I thought I might have to wake you like the dead.”

  Carmella gathered her suitcase and watched for Elsa’s car outside. Elsa was forever prompt, and she pulled up right at four, just as she’d said. Mallory slipped into the back seat alongside her son, Zachery, who slept somberly, with his brows furrowed. Carmella’s heart leaped at the sight of the three of them. This was real love, and she wanted to be a part of it— forever.

  “How was the Southwest?” Mallory asked as Elsa drove the car away from the airport.

  “Hot,” Carmella answered. “And I just wanted to be back by the water.”

  “I can imagine,” Mallory affirmed. “We would have missed you too much, anyway.”

  When they arrived back to Nancy and Elsa’s house, the house in which Carmella had been raised, Nancy stepped out onto the porch and waved a hand in welcome.

  “I forgot to tell you. We’re having a barbecue tonight,” Elsa said as she shut the engine off. “I hope that’s okay?”

  “More than okay,” Carmella replied. In truth, she was starving. Food hadn’t been an essential part of the past few days. “What can I help with?”

  Soon after, Carmella found herself carving into the belly of a watermelon. Janine and her daughters stepped in and out of the kitchen in a flurry of conversation and gossip. The eldest, Maggie, would be married soon. An autumn wedding and it seemed there was always a new thing to say about it. As Carmella loaded a platter of sliced watermelon, Janine’s new boyfriend, Henry, appeared in the kitchen with a bottle of natural wine. He greeted everyone sheepishly and then dotted a kiss on Janine’s cheek. She blushed and grinned at once, like a teenager.

  “Who else can we expect?” Nancy asked as she prepared a platter of vegetables. “Elsa, is
Bruce stopping by?”

  “He is!” she called from the back porch. “He should be here any minute.”

  “Wonderful,” Nancy beamed. She then side-eyed Carmella and added, “I have to admit. I like that Bruce character.”

  “Me too,” Carmella said, although she hadn’t spoken to him much. He was an attorney at the Law Offices of Sheridan and Sheridan, the place Susan Sheridan had started up earlier in the spring. He was incredibly handsome and responsible and caring — all the things Carmella wanted in a partner for her sister. Even still, it was strange for Carmella to see Elsa with anyone who wasn’t Aiden. Despite her frequent annoyance at their happiness, Carmella had always honored them as perfect. When Aiden had died, Carmella had cried privately for days, as she hadn’t wanted Elsa to know the depths of her sorrow for a man Elsa had loved so dearly.

  In essence, Carmella had always felt that Aiden understood her in a way that Elsa never could.

  For dinner, Nancy made Caesar salad, barbecue chicken and homemade French fries. Carmella sat at the far end of the long porch table with her glass of chardonnay and dipped her head back as the conversation rolled around her.

  “Mom, the city is just so hot right now,” Alyssa said to Janine. “I was telling Maggie that we should just stay here and swim until autumn comes.”

  “You know that everyone is welcome in this big house,” Nancy affirmed. “We like the chaos. Don’t we, Janine? It was only us for so many years, and now we have a community.”

  “It’s more like our own little clan, isn’t it?” Janine teased.

  Maggie and Alyssa whooped with laughter. At that moment, baby Zachery scrunched his face up and started wailing. Mallory leaped up to go care for him, saying that he needed a changing. Bruce lifted a hand over Elsa’s on the table and caught her eye while Henry began to talk about the documentary he’d continued to film that summer, all about the history of Martha’s Vineyard.