Ann Brashares - The Last Summer (of You and Me) (26 page)

She was dull-headed and hungry. She wished she could get an egg sandwich, but the store wouldn't open until Memorial Day. She made stale oatmeal and spooned it in, staring at nothing. She wondered how long she could go without focusing her eyes.

She took a book and a towel to the beach. The sun was power ful, and though she'd been longing for it for months, it was almost too much.

The surf was spirited, and the water a crisp and pretty blue. It wasn't a wimpy beach, and yet the effect of it was pleasingly calm.

She saw a dark head a long way out. She realized there was a second head not far behind. They bobbed like seals, stopping to look around before they continued on toward the lighthouse. Alice watched them for a long time with a sense of longing but also a sense of relief. She didn't want to be all the way out there.

It occurred to her that she hadn't seen Riley since she'd got ten out of bed, nor had she seen Paul. They were probably together, she thought. They were probably fishing or finding a boat to take out. Alice wondered, how honest had Riley been about her heart?

Paul knew something, at least. Riley had told him, but what had she said? Alice wondered if she could look Paul in the eye and talk to him now. Could they repair any of their friendship? Would he understand? Or was it too late?

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The swimming faces came closer to shore, and Alice kept watching them. She had an uneasy feeling that blossomed into a suspicion and then a worry. She stood and began to walk. She picked up her pace, almost jogging. The lighthouse was half a mile away, but the atmosphere was so clean, it looked as if it was right in front of her. There was the thud of her querulous heart.

What are you doing? she thought. Why?

She couldn't see the swimmers' faces, but as she hurried along, she felt certain she knew whose they were.

Alice walked slowly back to her towel and sat down on it. What could Alice do? What could she say? It wasn't her heart. Not offi cially, anyway.

u

Paul appeared in Alice 's kitchen door late that afternoon, laden with bags and boxes. He was clearing out, he said. It was finally good-bye to the big house.

Riley had come home exhilarated from her swim two hours before but so tired she could barely move. She'd dragged herself up the stairs and immediately fallen asleep. Alice faced Paul alone and with extreme awkwardness.

"I've got to catch the ferry," he said into their clumsy silence.

"Okay," she said. The wound-up and reckless look he'd worn at Megan Cooley's wedding was gone. His dark eyes were uncer tain. He looked either older or younger, but she wasn't sure which.

"All right."

"Well. Bye."

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He put his things down, and to her astonishment, he came toward her, stiff as a zombie, and put his two arms around her. Together they shared the most excruciatingly inept hug that ever was hugged. Alice thought, fleetingly, of the graceful way their bodies had fit together once.

"I'm sorry, Alice."

Everything was different now, but his body still communicated with hers. He meant to say, she knew, that he did understand.

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I Loved You First

T he day before the start of the Memorial Day weekend, Paul

received a check for exactly three million dollars, represent ing the sale price of the beach house. On the same day, he received a check for two hundred and seventy-one dollars, representing the sale price of his father's record collection. His father had prized the second thing so much more than the first.

Without quite deciding what he was doing, Paul stuck both checks in his wallet and put his wallet in his back pocket. He put on his shoes and walked north. When he got to 27th Street, he walked east, nearly to the river. He walked into Bellevue Hospital through the front doors. In the course of twenty-odd blocks, he had stopped being angry at the money in his pocket and started to like it.

"Can I talk to somebody in the business office?" he asked. In the business office, he explained his intentions to a fairly patient woman

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behind a desk. She, in turn, sent him to a woman in the administra tive office in the Substance Abuse Division. When he presented her with the two checks and tried to sign them over, she got nervous.

"Are you serious?" she asked when she saw the amount, break ing her professional demeanor for a moment. She was a middle- aged woman with an open face and a lovely West Indian accent.

"Yes. My father died here. Can you accept it for me?"

She considered. She looked at him, from his scuffed shoes to his poorly groomed hair. She was trying to make sense of him. "Well. I can't see why not. You leave me your telephone number in case we have a problem, will you?"

"Of course," he said. He gratefully accepted her business card when she gave it to him.

She squinted, studying the checks for another moment. "You are sure this is what you want to do?"

"I am sure. . . ." He checked the name on her card. "Jasmine." I've thought about it a lot, he was going to say, but that would be a lie. His shoes brought him here, and they tended to be more trust worthy than the rest of him.

"These are not going to bounce?" she asked. She waited a few beats to smile at him, and when she did, he was quick to smile back.

"I hope not."

She was not overimpressed by his money, he perceived. She remained somewhat suspicious of him, and he liked her better for it. "Do you want to talk to the divisional director?" she asked. "I think you might qualify for an audience."

"No, thanks. I am happy to meet with you." He felt himself in the presence of a real mother. He always had his sensors out for them.

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"You're a good man, Mr. . . ."

"Paul. I'm Paul."

She reached out and shook his hand. "You're a good man, Paul."

"Will you see it goes to the people who need it? You'll know better than I do who they are."

"I will certainly do that." She smiled again. "If your checks clear."

When he left, he walked along the East River and saw the exul tant sun sending its red and orange beams down the perpendicular streets. He suddenly had an idea that made him feel happier than he had in a long time.

He had lots more money, and his grandparents had more than that. He would find out about heart transplants. He would figure out who was doing the best research. He would start working on it tonight. He couldn't buy Riley a new heart, but he would give everything he had if it would help her.

He walked fast, bouncing along, the way Riley used to walk. Maybe he was finally getting somewhere.

u

In early June, Alice lay on the couch across from Riley in the living room of their apartment on West 98th Street. She noticed that Riley hadn't gone out at all that day. She'd read one of her novels and slept and eaten little. Alice shared a worried glance with her mother in the kitchen, but they didn't say anything.

"I had an idea today," Alice told her.

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Riley rested her book on her chest. "What's that?"

"I think I might have an idea for what I want to do."

Riley propped herself up a little better. "So tell me."

Alice had talked Riley into letting her paint Riley's toenails a pretty shell color, and now Alice could see it through the hole in Riley's sock.

"I walk by this building downtown sometimes. Do you know the NYU School of Social Work on Washington Square? A few weeks ago I went in and walked around. This morning I passed it again, and I decided to go in and get an application. I started filling it out this afternoon."

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm meeting with somebody in the admissions office next week. I was thinking I should look into it at least. Maybe I could work with kids and teenagers. I could do counseling. As you've pointed out, I seem to be good at worrying about people."

Riley looked at her thoughtfully. "You are good at taking care of people, Al. You always were."

"Half the time I think I'm trying to give people things they don't want," Alice said.

"They do want it, Al. We all do. You are generous enough to let us act like we don't."

Alice was struck by Riley's perception, one she'd never even thought of. That is what children want, Alice thought, from their mothers.

"Anyway, the money's a lot worse than being a lawyer, but I think I'd like it better."

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Riley nodded. She hugged Alice's feet. "I think you would, too."

"Even if I could get in, I probably couldn't start until January at the earliest, but I guess it's worth trying."

"I know you'll get in," Riley said.

"The trouble, though," Alice said, "is that I'm afraid I'd have to give up my job at Duane Reade."

Riley laughed, and Alice had the feeling it took an effort. "Everything good requires sacrifices."

u

Riley wanted to walk on the second Saturday in June, and though she looked fragile, Alice didn't want to say no. It was an extraordi nary morning in the park, and Alice was grateful to be there in ordinary civilian clothes. It was a day, in fact, for the beach. Alice and her parents kept thinking Riley would want to go to Fire Island, but she didn't say anything about it.

They strayed through Strawberry Fields and spent a moment standing together in the circle of tiles on top of the black and white fragments that spelled "Imagine."

From a cart by the road, Riley bought them bomb pops that turned their lips purple.

"Alice, how come you don't have a boyfriend?" Riley asked as they walked downhill toward the road.

"What?" They stopped at the terrace overlooking Bethesda Fountain and the lake just beyond it.

"You are beautiful. You could easily get one if you wanted."

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Alice tried not to look as astonished as she felt. She smiled with her purple teeth. "Riley, what are you talking about? Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

Alice was trying to be light, but Riley looked at her a little more seriously than she liked. "I don't think I have the heart for it," she said.

Riley could usually be counted on to participate in any version of joking around, but today her mood was different. This answer made Alice sad. "So then maybe I don't, either."

"I think you do," Riley said. She leaned her weight on the railing.

"Oh, do you."

"Is it because of Paul?"

Alice kept her thoughts ahead of her, not letting them stray to the sides or behind. It took a while to get some words out, even obvious ones. "What do you mean?"

"I saw you together last summer."

For one frantic moment, Alice thought to try to play innocent or at least stupid, but it seemed wrong. She thought to try to figure out what Riley saw, to know the extent of the damage before she confessed to the whole thing, but the mood between them was too honest for those kinds of tricks. That was for people on opposite sides of the truth, and Alice knew they were not. "I'm sorry for that," Alice finally said.

"Why sorry?" Riley asked.

"I am sorry that it happened. I'm sorry for everything. I wish I had told you instead of you finding out in that way."

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Riley tossed her Popsicle stick into the garbage. "You don't have to tell me everything," she said.

"But I should have told you that." A brown muttish dog stopped to sniff Alice's ankle. Alice absently patted it around its ears and Riley did, too.

"You thought I'd be hurt," Riley said.

Alice turned and looked at her sister's face. There was so much willingness there, it was hopeless to try to stay away. "Were you?"

Riley set her elbows on the ledge and rested her chin in her hand. She didn't have an answer ready. Alice respected the fact that Riley trusted her enough to think it through in her presence. Riley trusted her, even after what she'd done.

"I was, maybe, but it was more that I was scared."

Alice nodded. She wondered if she'd ever heard Riley say she was scared of anything before. "What were you scared of?"

Riley chewed the inside of her cheek. She put her chin in her other hand. "I was scared that I'd lose the two of you. That you'd move on together without me."

Alice nodded again. She touched a piece of Riley's dark hair, grown all the way down to her shoulder. "That's what I was scared of, too. That's what I am sorry for."

u

Honesty was a tough customer. That's what Alice decided as she sat down on her bed that night with her knitting needles and her bag of yarn. She had started a new scarf for Riley, but she couldn't say so, because Riley would think Alice was fussing over her and get mad.

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Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight it to keep it from taking over.

Honesty was requiring Alice to love Riley in a way that felt perilous, considering how tentative Riley's place on the earth was.

"Sometimes, I try to feel mad at her," her mother had con fessed to Alice a few weeks before. "I think of the things she does that drive me crazy. But I know that's just to make it easier on me."

Alice had thought about that so many times since. It was tempt ing to maintain the wall with Riley. Alice thought of reasons not to love her. Because the sweeter their closeness, the deeper the misery waiting for her just beyond the light.

There was another spot where the honesty had settled in and begun making its demands. When she was being honest with her self, she couldn't maintain the feeling of distance from Paul. Though she didn't see or speak to him in the weeks after Fire Island, his presence had made its way back. He was sharing her thoughts again. She was missing him.

You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you couldn't decide exactly what to feel. That was the trouble with letting them in at all. They made such a mess of the place.