Ann Brashares - The Last Summer (of You and Me) (25 page)

� 237 � Ann Brashares

The seventies were over by that point. Even the hangover was ending. There were a few pictures of a small Paul after 1982, but the exuberance of Robbie's drawings, drug-addled poetry, and song lyrics had stopped. There were no more political pamphlets or clip pings from lefty newspapers. From what Paul could tell, his father had bought almost no music after that. Maybe a jazz album or two.

Paul wasn't sure of the timing, but he knew his father turned to God for a time. He 'd rediscovered his Godspell album during Paul's early childhood. Paul didn't realize how many of the songs he knew until he put it on. It made him sad, especially the sweet- voiced Jesus actor begging God to save the people. Sad, in part, because it didn't seem like God had helped Robbie so much.

He couldn't say why exactly, but Paul had the sense that Lia had been impatient with that phase.

His father's hair was short in the few pictures that remained. He looked thin and confused, sort of squinting in most of them. There was one nice one with Paul on his shoulders at the Central Park Zoo. Posed, Paul guessed, but it was still nice.

They'd gotten this house at the beach around then. Robbie had known a couple of Village Voice commie types who'd gotten a place near the bay, and Lia picked the big house with the views. Paul found a picture of himself and Riley with Robbie, and even one with the three of them proudly holding the tiny, squealing Alice. Sometimes he forgot that his father's life had overlapped with Alice's, but of course it had.

His parents had gotten the house in Brooklyn Heights a couple of years after. Lia had picked that one for the views, too. She'd had all the furniture specially upholstered in coordinated fabrics and

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made a big deal about getting a gourmet stove. Paul had thought that had happened after his father's death, but he studied the pic ture of his father in the kitchen and there was the stove.

Ethan said his dad had mostly kicked the drug habit before he died. He said it often happened like that.

"Robbie really loved the counterculture," Ethan had told him and Riley one night after a few too many beers. "It's hard for you kids to understand because it's all different now. People used to talk about the war, and music and politics. Now they talk about stocks and real estate."

When Paul thought of that, when he looked around even as far as this house and this town, he felt for people like his dad and like Riley, who weren't good at changing. Was it admiration he felt for them for staying true, or was it pity for getting left behind?

He was glad in a way that his dad hadn't stuck around to see what had become of his wife, this place, the world.

u

Though it was still early in May, the weather was warm and good. Riley wanted to go--in fact, she insisted on going--and the ma jority of Alice wanted to go, too. The minority of Alice was afraid of the reason Riley wanted to go. The minority did not want Riley to get the chance to say good-bye to anything.

On the ferry, they sat on the upper deck. Alice found herself making prints in her memory.

"Spring comes so much later here," Riley observed as they came into the dock. The tree branches were fuzzy with yellow

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green buds, not yet paper leaves. As soon as they disembarked, Alice went for the wagon. She put the bags onto it, and was relieved when Riley didn't try to do it, too. "I'm saving my strength," Riley mentioned primly. Alice laughed, but she didn't ask Riley what she was saving it for.

Alice figured they'd make do without water for the day. They could pee in the bushes or in the Village Hall if it was open. But an hour after they had arrived, she found herself under the house in Riley's waders with a wrench in her hand, staring up at a web of pipes. Riley shouted instructions, and Alice tried to follow them. She didn't want to learn this skill. She felt superstitious about it, but Riley gave her no choice. Don't think you are off the hook, she felt like saying to Riley.

After, when Alice flushed the toilet and it worked, she felt quite proud. She flushed it again.

They walked on the beach. Riley gave the finger to each of the SUVs that passed. "It's not a highway," she shouted after them and cursed. It was one of the troubles of the off-season.

By Fair Harbor, Alice heard Riley's breaths getting shal low. There was a moist sound in her lungs, and that made Alice nervous. "I'm hungry," Alice declared. "I'm starving. We have to go back."

At home, Alice opened the freezer to begin the annual defrost ing. She realized the electricity must have gone off at some point. She pulled out the orange juice. It was already melted.

"So, guess what?" Riley said, appearing in the kitchen when Alice was cooking sauce for spaghetti. "There's a light on in Paul's house."

"Really? Did the new family move in already?"

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"I don't think it could be them. Paul told me he still hadn't closed on the house. He keeps putting it off. He said he had to fin ish cleaning it out."

"Do you think it could be Paul?" Alice felt nervous and slightly sick to her stomach when she pictured him. We ruined everything, she felt like saying to Riley. You were right all along.

"Either that or he left a light on whenever he was out last."

"He probably left a light on."

"We'll know in a minute," Riley said.

"We will?"

"Yeah. Because you are cooking."

Sure enough, a knock came on the kitchen door and it swung open just as they were sitting down with a lit candle and a large bowl of spaghetti between them. It was so familiar a sight, and also so strange. "I didn't know you would be here," Paul said.

He looked calm in some way, Alice thought. He looked different than he had the last two times she had seen him.

Riley slapped another place setting on the table before Paul made it to the chair. "Are you sure you have enough?" he asked.

"Don't be polite, Paul. You'll confuse us."

He laughed. He did look polite. Polite and tentative and careful and rather grown up, Alice observed.

Alice felt herself shutting down. She couldn't think all the things there were to think. She'd spent the last months overpro cessing a very small number of things. Worrying, fretting, consid ering, wishing, dreading on the basis of little stimuli. She'd gotten accustomed to a low volume. Now it was all in front of her, and her circuits immediately sizzled and failed.

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She couldn't open her mouth, because if she did, she would somehow give everything away. She would give away that Riley was sick. She would give away that she 'd made love to Paul repeat edly and wantonly, and that their old friendship was ruined. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't look at Riley. She couldn't even look at her own hands. She looked at her fork. She could barely keep track of all the things she shouldn't say. She hated secrets. Hers and everyone's.

Yet, when she looked up from her fork and her misery, she noticed that Riley and Paul were laughing about something. They were both wolfing down noodles, while she couldn't touch hers. Why was she the only miserable one? It was not fair now, and it never was. She could never keep up with them. She was always left out. As soon as she caught on to the game, they moved to the next one.

"Let's play poker," Riley suggested after dinner. When they were teenagers, they'd played poker almost every summer night. The other kids were taking Ecstasy, getting drunk, and having sex with each other, and they were playing Red Dog, Night Baseball, and Five-Card Stud. Riley was an ace at poker, and Alice stunk. Alice suspected they had taught her imperfectly so she would lose her money to them.

"I'll do the dishes," Alice offered.

"You have to play," Paul said.

Alice looked at him. She tilted her head. As far as she knew, these were the first words he had addressed directly to her all evening. "Why?" she said. Her voice was airy and strange, she knew.

"Because you have to," he said.

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"Because you want to take my money," she guessed.

"Because two is not enough to play."

"Maybe it is," she said.

She ended up going along with them, of course. Paul and Riley made a fire in the fireplace, and Alice finished cleaning up. After ward, Paul laid out the cards. Alice sat cross-legged on the couch and burned two times in Red Dog. Riley took the pot, quite pleased with herself as usual.

As terrible as it all was, as ruined, sick, tortured, betrayed, and hopeless, Alice looked at the faces of her sister and Paul. The wind blew outside the windows, the ocean sucked and crashed, and Alice handed over her money. She couldn't help thinking how strangely comfortable it felt to be with them, how in spite of the ravages under the skin, so little on the surface had changed.

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Riley went up to bed and Alice walked Paul to the door, a formality they had never bothered with before. They could barely look at each other as they said good-bye, their bodies remained yards apart. He had a thousand things he wanted to tell her, but they were so jammed up that not one of them came out. What could he say to Alice? Which words could express the things he felt? He ached for her. He was sorry for her. He understood her finally. His anger was gone, his feeling of shame its only residue.

Over the years, he had undermined her so relentlessly. He had purposely hammered away at her security, her identity, her faith. And all this, perversely, in the name of love. He 'd undermined her

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ambitions, her love life, all of her possibilities. He'd acknowledged this before but conceptually. Now he felt crushed by it. How could he have done that to her?

He was so accustomed to resenting her security, her family, how much and easily she was loved, how difficult those same things were for him. And God knew he made it harder. She had everything he didn't have, including his love. He thought her so effortlessly pow erful in relation to him that nothing he could do or say would ever take her down. But what was she left with now? In a sick way, he'd gotten what he tried for. So often you wanted to want things but you did not want to get them. You wanted the deficiency but not the cure.

At the end of last summer, he had not been able to come up with a reason for her to vanish like she did. In large part, that was because he was an asshole. He was forever focused on his own troubles, which made him unable to see anyone else's. It disgusted him about himself, but it was better to know. He thought of his petty attempts to make Alice jealous and felt like an idiot. He had easily imagined all manner of cruelty, coldness, and betrayal, but never that her withdrawal had nothing to do with him.

He had no faith. That was a magnificent failure, bigger perhaps than all his others. The author, perhaps, of all the others. He was luxurious in doubt and incapable of faith. Alice had faith.

I understand now, he wanted to say to Alice. I love her, too. I feel the way you do. I would have done the same thing.

What he and Alice had done together constituted a betrayal of Riley. Right or wrong, that was true. He'd tried to ignore that at the time, but he saw it clearly now. They had tried to elude her, to slip away from her with no explanation. It might have been justifiable

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in the regular world, according to the regular rules, but the three of them had agreed to live by different rules. You had to acknowledge them at least. You couldn't just forget them. No kind of love or amount of love warranted it.

But what were he and Alice supposed to do? What was the alter native? Could they have stayed how they were for the rest of their lives? It seemed impossible.

He could have remained in California. That was an option. He could have lived in California forever and built a different kind of life. When he went back to Fire Island last summer, he told himself he could just swing through, say hi, and be gone. But on a deeper level, he knew that by coming back he had chosen Riley and Alice, past and future. The trouble was that the two did not coexist.

Oh, Riley. He thought of her eagerly looking over her cards ear lier that night, winning hand after hand. Her singleness of mind, her peculiar innocence was unchanged, even in spite of everything. We can't take you with us, and we can't leave you. He realized this was true before they knew there was anything wrong with her heart.

u

Alice was trying to turn down her noisy, irritating brain and get some sleep when Riley appeared in her doorway. "I'm freezing," she said. She looked a little bluish, and that made Alice worry.

Alice pulled her covers to the side. "Climb in," she said.

Riley and Paul were such a pair. They were always pushing her around and taking her stuff and then trying to find warmth in her bed.

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"We shouldn't have stayed tonight," Alice said in a regrettably motherish tone.

"Yes, we should've."

"It's cold, I mean."

"Not in here."

"Oh, fine." Alice let Riley stick her ice-cube toes against Alice's warm calves. She balled up Riley's cold fingers and put them in the crook of her arm. She tried to be mad, but she cherished the close ness. She couldn't help it. She printed some more pictures.

"Hey, Al."

"Yes."

"I told Paul."

"You told Paul what?" Alice wriggled closer to the wall to give Riley more room.

"About my heart."

"You did?" Alice's circuits fizzled once again and shut down entirely.

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"No. Almost a month ago."

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Alice figured she would never fall asleep. She was too angry, con fused, and tired to fall asleep. Paul knew about Riley. He'd known for a month. Why hadn't Riley told Alice that right away?

Why is it your business? Alice had to ask herself. What right have you to know?

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Alice would never sleep again. But when she opened her eyes the next morning, the sun was blasting so fully into her window that she found herself sweating in her bed. She pulled on a pair of jeans and checked the clock. It was almost eleven and Riley was gone.