Second Chance Summer (16 page)

When we’d arrived at the hospital, my dad led the way up to the oncology wing, and as he headed into his appointment, he promised
me it wouldn’t be too long. But it had been twenty minutes now, and I was starting to get restless.

I bypassed the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby, feeling the need to move. The lobby didn’t offer all that much distraction—just oil paintings of the founders and plaques commemorating big donations. There were also a surprisingly large number of people smoking outside the building’s entrance, considering that this was a hospital. I ended up in the gift shop, walking around the aisles, taking in the bouquets of flowers for purchase, the cheerful, bright-colored teddy bears emblazoned with
GET WELL SOON
! across their stomachs. I wandered into the card aisle, looking through the racks of Thinking of You and Get Well Soon options. I moved past the sympathy section, not even wanting to know what was inside the somber-looking cards that mostly seemed to feature a single flower, a bird in flight, or a sunset.

Since there was nothing I wanted, I just bought a pack of gum, tossing it onto the counter as I dug in my purse for change. As I did, I noticed a large flower arrangement on the counter, made up of summer flowers, all bright purples and oranges. It looked vibrant and healthy, and seemed to smell like sunshine even in the sterile, fluorescently lit gift shop. Looking at it, I got, for the first time, why people would bring flowers to sick people, stuck inside the hospital with no way to get outside. It was like bringing them a little bit of the world that was going on without them.

“That it?” the woman behind the counter asked.

I started to reply, but my eye was caught by the preprinted card in the arrangement, displayed on a long plastic holder that poked out of the flowers.
JUST TO SAY I LOVE YOU
, it read.

“Did you want something else?” she asked.

I looked away from the card, embarrassed, and handed her a dollar. “That’s it,” I said, as I pocketed the gum and then dropped my few cents change into the penny cup.

“Have a good day,” she said, then cleared her throat. “I hope everything… turns out all right.”

I looked up at her then, and saw that she was older, closer to my grandmother’s age, wearing a name tag and a sympathetic expression. It was different from the expressions of pity and premature sympathy that I’d hated so much in Connecticut, and I realized I didn’t mind. It struck me that she must see, all day long, people coming through the shop who also didn’t want to be in the hospital, who were looking for something they could buy, some cheap teddy bear or arrangement of flowers, that would seem to make things better.

“Thanks,” I said. I let my eyes linger on the card for a moment longer before I headed out to the lobby. I skipped the stairs and took the elevator to the oncology wing. The card had made me uncomfortably aware of something—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told my father I loved him. I searched my memory as the elevator rose silently through the floors. I knew I’d said it a lot when I was younger,
as our home-movie collection attested to. And I’d sign his birthday and Father’s Day card every year with a scrawled
love, Taylor
. But had I ever said it to him? Out loud, and in recent memory?

I couldn’t remember, which made me pretty sure that the answer was no. This fact weighed heavy in my thoughts, to the point where once I got back to the waiting room, I didn’t even bother picking up one of the outdated magazines. And when my father finally appeared, and asked me if I was ready to go home, I agreed without a second’s hesitation.

In contrast to the trip there, our ride home was pretty silent. My dad looked so worn-out after his appointment, he hadn’t even tried to drive; instead he just tossed me the keys once we made it to the parking lot. We had kept up a conversation for the first few miles, but then I noticed the pauses in my dad’s responses getting longer and longer. I’d look over and see that his head was resting against the seat, his eyelids fluttering closed before opening once again. By the time we got on the highway that would take us back to Lake Phoenix, I glanced over to change lanes and noticed that my dad was fully asleep, his eyes closed and head tipped back, mouth slightly open. This was unusual to the point of being shocking, because my father wasn’t a napper. Though I knew he’d been sleeping more than normal lately, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him nap—especially not like this, not in the afternoon. It made me feel panicky,
somehow, even though I couldn’t have said why, and I wanted more than anything to put on some music, drown this feeling out a little. But, not wanting to wake my dad, I hadn’t turned on the radio, and had just driven in silence, punctuated only by my father’s low, even breathing.

As we crossed into Lake Phoenix, my dad’s cell phone rang, startling both of us, the sound of his ringtone suddenly very loud in the quiet car. My dad jerked awake, his head snapping forward. “What?” he asked, and I hated to hear the confusion in his voice, the vulnerability in it. “What’s that?”

I reached down for the phone in the cupholder, but he got there first, answering the call and smoothing his hand over his always-neat hair, as though trying to make sure he hadn’t gotten too unkempt while he’d been sleeping. I could tell in a second that it was my mother, and after their brief conversation, my dad seemed more composed, and much more himself, his voice no longer thick with sleep when he hung up and turned to me.

“Your mother requested we pick up a few things for dinner tonight,” he said, “and I just realized that we haven’t been to Jane’s this year. I for one feel like we’ve been skimping on the dessert this summer.” There were still eleven oatmeal cookies in the fridge, but I didn’t mention those. The one chocolate chip had been divided into five equal pieces among us, and the rest had sat untouched.

I glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost four, definitely
verging into what my mother would consider the dinner-spoiling hour. But my dad and I had a tradition of getting ice cream and keeping it a secret—like when I was younger and he would pick me up from wherever I’d tried to run away to. “Really?” I asked, and my dad nodded.

“Just don’t tell your mom,” he said. “Otherwise, I’ll be facing a
rocky road
.”

I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I don’t know,” I replied, as I pulled into a spot along Main Street. “She might be in a
good humor
about it.”

My dad smiled in appreciation. “Nice,” he said.

We parted ways as he headed to PocoMart and Henson’s Produce, and I walked toward Sweet Baby Jane’s. It was a tiny shop with a sky-blue awning, the name printed across it in curly white type. There were two benches on either side of the entrance, a necessity because the space had only room for the counter and a single table. Maybe because of the in-betweenness of the hour, Jane’s didn’t look very busy. There were just two boys who appeared to be around Gelsey’s age, eating cones on one of the benches, their bikes tossed in a heap to the left of them. It was rare to see Jane’s this deserted—at night, after dinner, the benches would be packed, the crowd spilling out along Main Street.

As I pulled open the door and stepped inside, a blast of air-conditioning and nostalgia hit me. The store hadn’t changed much
from what I remembered; same single table, same painted signs listing the flavors and toppings. But apparently time hadn’t totally passed Jane’s by, as there was now a list of frozen yogurts, and many more sugar-free options than I had remembered before.

I didn’t need to ask what my father wanted. His ice cream order had never changed—a cup with one scoop of pralines & cream and one scoop of rum raisin. I got one scoop coconut and one scoop raspberry in a waffle cone, which had been my ice cream of choice the last time I’d been there. I paid and, finding my hands full with the cup and cone, was pushing open the door with my back. I was about to take my first bite when I heard someone say, “Hold on, I’ve got it.” The door was held open for me, and I turned and suddenly found myself looking right into the green eyes of Henry Crosby.

By this point, I should have just been expecting it. It probably would have been more surprising if I
hadn’t
bumped into him. I smiled and, before I could stop myself, I was quoting something I’d heard my father say, a line from his favorite movie. “Of all the gin joints, in the all the world,” I said. “You walk into mine.” Henry frowned, and I realized in that moment that of course he didn’t know what I was talking about. I barely knew what I was talking about. “Sorry,” I explained hurriedly. “It’s a quote. From a movie. And I guess I should have said ice-cream parlors….” I heard my voice trail off. I wasn’t entirely sure what a gin joint even was. Why had I felt the need to say anything at all?

“It’s okay,” Henry said. “I got what you were going for.” His dark hair was sticking up in the back, and he was wearing a faded blue T-shirt that looked so soft I had a sudden impulse to reach out and rub the cotton between my fingers. I didn’t do this, of course, and took a small step back, just to remove the temptation.

“So,” I said, grasping for something to say, but not coming up with much. “Ice cream, huh?” I felt my cheeks get hot as soon as I said it, and I glanced toward the car, wondering if my dad was finished at Henson’s and I’d be able to use this as an excuse to leave.

“Don’t tell me,” Henry said, nodding at my rapidly melting cone. “Raspberry and coconut? Still?”

I stared at him. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Elephant,” he said. “I told you.”

“Ah,” I said. I felt the first cold drip hit my fingers clutching the cone. My ice cream was melting fast, and since I was holding my dad’s ice cream in my other hand, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. But somehow, I felt weird about licking my cone in front of Henry, especially since he didn’t have any ice cream himself. “So,” I said, trying to ignore the second, then third drips, “how did that even start? Who first thought that elephants would be good at remembering things?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said with a shrug and a small smile. “Who decided owls were wise?”

“My brother could probably tell you that,” I said. “I’ll ask him.”

“Great,” Henry said with a small laugh. “Sounds like a plan.” He
stuck his hands in his pockets, and I felt my eyes drawn to his arm, and sure enough, I could see it—the faint white scar by his wrist. I knew it well—he’d scraped it against the daggerboard when he’d swum under my boat, in the boys vs. girls tipping war that had raged the summer we were eleven. I’d touched it the first time he held my hand, in the darkness of the Outpost’s movie theater.

With this memory flooding through me, I looked at him, and took a breath to say what I should have said right away. That I was sorry, that I had never meant to hurt him, that I shouldn’t have left with no explanation. “So,” I said, as my heart started to beat a little harder and my sticky hand gripped my cone, “Henry. I—”

“Sorry about that! Parking took forever.” A very pretty blond girl, about my age, was walking up to Henry. Her hair was up in one of those perfectly messy knots, and she was already deeply tan. I suddenly realized that this must have been the blond girl my mother was talking about. Henry’s girlfriend. I knew that there was absolutely no logic in me feeling proprietary toward someone who I had dated when I was twelve. But even so, I felt a hot stab of jealousy in my chest as I watched her hand the car keys to him, their fingers brushing briefly.

“I want moose tracks!” Davy Crosby was running up, wearing the same moccasins I’d noticed in the woods. He spotted me and his exuberant expression turned sullen. Clearly, he was still holding a grudge about the bird-scaring.

The girl smiled at Davy and rested her hand on his shoulder
before he wriggled away. I watched this interaction, trying to keep my expression neutral. So she was close with Henry’s brother, too. Not that I cared. Why should I?

“Did you know your ice cream’s melting?” Davy asked me. I looked down at my cone and saw that, in fact, things were getting a little dire, and melted raspberry—of course, it really
couldn’t
have been the coconut—was covering my hand.

“Right,” I said, lifting up the cone, which actually just let the ice cream run down my wrist. “I caught that, actually.”

“Sorry, Taylor—were you saying something?” Henry asked.

I looked at him and just thought about doing it now, saying I was sorry and getting it over with. Since we’d come back, I was feeling guilty about that summer in a way I’d never really had to face when we were in Connecticut. I’d even had to turn the stuffed penguin around in my closet, since it always seemed to be looking at me accusingly. “I was just going to say that… that I was really…” I trailed off, well aware that I had two extra audience members. I tried to go on, but found that I’d lost my nerve. “Nothing,” I finally said. “Never mind.” I felt the girl’s eyes on me, and I saw her gaze travel to my arm, where the drips had gotten even worse, forming a small puddle next to my feet where they were landing on the ground. “I should go,” I said, not waiting—or wanting—to be introduced to this girl who was clearly with Henry, and who was probably wondering why I was intruding on their time.

Henry took a breath, like he was about to say something, but then just glanced at the girl and remained silent.

“I’ll see you,” I said quickly, and to nobody in particular. I walked away from Jane’s fast, not meeting Henry’s eye, and headed down the street toward the car. I hadn’t made it very far when my dad came out of Henson’s and started down the street toward me, a paper sack under one arm.

“Hey,” he said when we got within earshot of each other. “I thought I was meeting you there.”

“No,” I said quickly, since the last thing I wanted to do was eat ice cream on the Jane’s benches next to Henry and his girlfriend and his brother, especially after I’d so thoroughly embarrassed myself. “Why don’t we eat it in the car? Jane’s is pretty busy right now.”

My dad glanced over at Jane’s—which couldn’t have been more obviously empty—and then at me, where I saw him taking in the dripping mess I had turned into. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said.