Sixteenth Summer (24 page)

“Okay, what have you got for me?” I asked my mom, going over to the bulletin board where she’d tacked her to-do list. She’d been jotting on the long sheet of yellow legal paper for months.

The list was a little crinkled, with a tea stain on the corner and about four different colors of ink. I skimmed through it. I
spotted
sand and stain porch table
and
organize photos, past 2 yrs
. I shuddered.

But if I read one more page of
Deenie
, I was going to throw myself off my bedroom balcony, so I stood my ground.

My mom turned around and leaned back against the sink.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything. I know …”

I watched her face as she paused and searched her parental database for the proper words.

“… I know you’re going through a hard time right now.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I was grateful that neither of my parents had pried into what had happened the other night. They’d gotten the gist—that Will was no longer in the picture. And though I’d spied them exchanging lots of meaningful glances and gestures, they hadn’t interrogated me about it. Even Sophie had been sympathetic in her own way. She’d offered to do my laundry, adding, “I’ll even iron stuff so you don’t have to look all wrinkled, the way you usually do.”

The problem was, all this familial sensitivity hammered home how wretched my situation was. Which only made me feel more pathetic. It had gotten so bad that I had to fight off tears every time my mother even
looked
at me.

I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Will that I wasn’t a crier. I hated crying, especially in front of people. It was humiliating and soul baring and just … messy. So the fact that I was now a blubbering mess was making me
really
cranky.

I guess that was why, in response to my mother’s completely
nice comment, I snarled, “
Mom
, could you please just be
normal
and give me one of the dumb chores already?”

Acting like such a jerk, of course, made me feel even worse. And trust me,
that
was a feat.

I don’t
think
Mom was getting revenge for my smart mouth when she gave me shower curtain duty, but I couldn’t be sure.

In case you’re wondering, shower curtain duty means taking down the vinyl curtains from all three of our claw-foot tubs (and remember, a free-standing bathtub requires
two
shower curtains), laying them out flat, scrubbing off all the black mildew and pink mold that’s accumulated at the seams, then hanging them back up.

It was a yucky, tedious,
hard
job and it suited me perfectly.

I was actually a little hopeful, as I unhooked the curtains from my parents’ tub on the second floor, that the tedium would help me. Sam had once confided to me that he’d done some meditating after his parents’ divorce and that it had really helped him just wash all the churning thoughts from his mind, even if it was only for the twenty minutes a day that he was able to sit still and focus.

What was more meditative, I thought, than scouring a giant sheet of funky plastic, inch by inch?

I got some soapy rags and headed outside, laying the curtains out on the patio.

I knelt before the yucky bottom edge of the curtain, took a deep, cleansing breath, and started to scrub.

Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to go back to my Judy
Blumes. If I’d done any meditating at all it had gone like this:

Okay, breathe in, breathe out. Focus on the task at hand and only the task at hand…
.

Ugh, not only is this mold disgusting, it’s not coming off. Why can’t we just buy new shower curtains when they get all funky like this?

Okay, that’s not very green. Something tells me meditators frown on disposable culture
.

Maybe some bleach will help
.

(Five minutes later.)

Okay, breathe in, breathe out, breathe—agh! Bleach is searing lungs!

(Suddenly, bleach smell reminds me of cleaning Scoop tables with Will.)

Don’t think about Will, think about scrubbing. It’s like a metaphor. I cleanse the curtain, I cleanse my mind of unwanted thoughts. Like thoughts about the last kiss I had with Will. I think I could still sort of taste it—until breathing in this bleach probably killed some of my taste buds!

Whatever, just breathe, darnit. Breathe in, breathe out—

Hey! I wonder if you could put these things in the washing machine!

And that pretty much was the end of my meditation—and my help with the to-do list. (For the record, the washing machine didn’t work so well, either.)

So now on top of feeling tragic about Will and guilty about sassing my mom, I also felt like a failure at both my hideous chore
and
my meditation.

I climbed up to the screened porch and slumped onto the swing. Through the open front door, I could hear my mom rallying Kat and Benji for a bath.

“Hey, where are the shower curtains?!” Kat asked cheerfully, making me feel like even more of a loser. The air on the porch felt like warm, soggy wool on my skin and my hands smelled of bleach. Yet after a few minutes, the cricket chirps and the
creak, creak, creak
of the swing’s chains began to make me feel a little less wretched.

I glanced through the window into the kitchen. The room was quiet, empty, and lit only by the small light over the stove. I’d always loved our kitchen at this time of night, when the cooking smells from dinner still hovered in the air but the counters and appliances were shiny clean, like blank canvases, lying in wait for inspiration.

Of course, tonight I had none. I hadn’t had a vision, or a taste, for any ice cream for days. Which just … sucked. Usually I could
always
find comfort in ice cream. I loved zoning out to the I-could-do-it-in-my-sleep process of making the custard—heating the milk, tempering the egg yolks, whisking the cream. Then coming up with a new flavor always felt a little bit like magic; like having a muse whisper in my ear.

Now the muse was so very absent that I was worried it would never come back. I would live the rest of my days in this radio silence, never again to come up with a Pineapple Ginger Ale or Buttertoe.

Just as an exercise, I consciously tried to think of some new flavor. Something, anything, that I’d never heard of before. I
actually squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my fingertips to my temples, but—nope. Nothing.

I was starting to feel a little panicky when I remembered something. I had a notebook—just a cheap, pocket-size one from the drugstore—in which I’d once jotted ice cream ideas for future reference. I’d started the list last summer, but when I’d gotten better at creating flavors on the fly, I’d forgotten all about it.

Where was it?

I dashed upstairs to my room and searched my dresser drawers, peeked into purses and tote bags, and even looked under the bed. I’d almost lost hope when I thought to look in the dusty old jewelry box on top of my dresser. Since I had almost no jewelry to speak of, I often tossed other random items inside.

I creaked open the wooden box and there, among some Mardi Gras beads and barrettes, was the notebook. I sighed with relief. My present self was clearly hopeless, but the past one just might come through.

I flipped through the pages hungrily; looking for an idea that made me feel zingy inside.

Once again, nothing. I simply felt tired and so lonely that I physically ached. And bitter. Oh, was I bitter.

But that was one reason I’d always loved making ice cream. It was such a sweet, simple antidote—if a temporary one—to all of life’s bitterness. It was a little vacation that lasted until you popped the last bite of your sugar cone into your mouth.

After losing Will, I was finding it hard to care about much of anything, but deep down I knew I still cared about this. I didn’t want to lose this.

So I decided to choose a recipe at random. I closed the notebook and reopened it, landing on a page with the heading
Greek Holiday
. The title, I remembered vaguely, had been inspired by an Audrey Hepburn movie my mom had rented.

I skimmed the ingredients:
honey, orange zest, a little almond oil, maybe some crushed pistachios
.

If I wasn’t exactly moved, I wasn’t repelled either. I might have even been a tiny bit intrigued. It wasn’t a bad idea, if I could pull it off. We had all the ingredients. I could make up the custard now, chill it overnight, and churn it up tomorrow.

With nothing else to do (believe me,
nothing
), I went downstairs to start separating the eggs.

B
y the next day, I’d really settled into my new routine. Open eyes around ten, lie in bed staring through skylight until the sun rises high enough to blind me, then roll reluctantly out of bed for a day of reading and weeping.

The wrench in this day’s plan, though, was Caroline. She arrived at nine, hauled me out of bed, and stuck a slice of toast in my hand. Then she barely gave me a chance to brush my teeth before she brutally kidnapped me.

When I stumbled outside with her, I blinked at the stuff piled in a trailer attached to Caroline’s bike. In addition to a metal tackle box, a plastic cooler, and a bulging backpack, I saw …

“What are those?” I said, my voice full of apprehension.

“Fishing poles,” Caroline said with a grin. “My dad’s and my brother’s.”

“We don’t fish,” I pointed out dully.

“We do now,” Caroline said with a grin. “I hear it’s meditative.”

I shook my head.

“Oh, no,” I protested. “I tried meditating yesterday and almost asphyxiated from all the bleach.”

“Okay, I’m not going to even ask you to explain that one,” Caroline said. She fetched Allison Porchnik from beneath the screened porch and wheeled her over. “Hop on.”

Within a few minutes we were sitting at the very end of the pier that jutted off the North Peninsula. I had to admit, after being such a shut-in, hovering out there over the gently lapping waves was blissful, even in the sweltering August heat.

I closed my eyes to soak in the sun for a moment while Caroline began unloading all her equipment.

“What are we going to use to catch these alleged fish?” I asked. “Did you dig for worms or something?”

“Oh my God, Anna. I don’t even
eat
fish and I know that saltwater fish don’t like worms,” Caroline blustered. “They eat
other
fish.”

She flipped open the cooler to reveal a plastic bag filled with raw fish chunks.

“Ugh,” I said, putting a hand on my stomach. Caroline looked a little green too, but her stubbornness beat out her many food aversions.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re doing this.”

We actually started laughing as we picked up the disgusting
fish chunks and awkwardly threaded them onto the hooks.

“How is it that we’re expert ghost crabbers and clam diggers,” I asked, “but we’ve never been fishing?”

Caroline shrugged and grinned as we got to our feet to clumsily cast our lines into the ocean.

I sat back down and propped my fishing pole on the rail of the pier.

“Okay, what do we do now?” I asked.

“I guess we just sit here and wait for a nibble,” Caroline said. “Pretty lousy excuse for a sport, huh?
That’s
why we’ve never been fishing.”

“Mmm,” I said. Now that we were past the giddy novelty of this expedition, I was quickly swinging back to my previous state—tragic and dreary. I drew my knees up beneath my chin, wrapping my arms around my shins. I sighed a shaky, on-the-verge-of-tears sigh.

“It’s seriously annoying how much I’ve cried in the past few days,” I complained. “I mean, I’m not—”

“—a crier. I know,” Caroline finished for me. “But sometimes you’ve just got to cry until you’re done.”

That did it. I buried my face in my knees and wept. Caroline’s sympathetic hand on my back only made me cry harder.

“If I’d known how awful it would be to say good-bye to him,” I sobbed, “I never would have gone out with him in the first place.”

“No, no,” Caroline insisted softly. “You won’t always feel that way. You know that saying, ‘Tis better to have loved and lost …’”

I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and wailed, “I always thought that saying was a load of crap.”

Caroline gave a quick snort before slapping a hand over her mouth.

“It’s not funny,” I said, looking at her through what felt like a river of tears. “You’re lucky you never have to know what this feels like—”

Suddenly I stopped my soggy rant. I wasn’t the only one with boy troubles, I remembered. I hadn’t even asked Caroline what had been happening with Sam lately.

Between sniffles and hiccups, I said, “So are things still weird with you guys?”

Caroline allowed a small smile.

“Actually, the other night,” she said, “we had our first good, meaty talk in ages. Maybe because we were just sitting on the beach eating huge, sloppy, sno-cones instead of doing the whole Dinner at Eight thing.”

“That’s good,” I said, nodding as I blew my nose in my orange wrap.

Caroline smiled a little wider, then fiddled with the handle of her fishing pole.

“Sam finally came out and told me how much pressure he’s been feeling to make this relationship perfect,” she said. “So I told
him
that perfect is not only an illusion, it’s just no damn fun.”

“Good answer.” I actually laughed a little. “So … what now?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline said. “I guess we just wait and see. I’m hoping this is sort of like growing out a short haircut. You know if you can just stick it out, you’ll be rewarded with long, lustrous locks. Or you could freak out and chop it all off. I’m trying for the long and pretty hair.”

“Somehow I actually understood that metaphor,” I said. I smiled, if wanly, rubbed the last bit of moisture out of my eyes, then grabbed my sports bottle and held it out toward Caroline.

“Here’s to long, lustrous locks,” I said.

She grinned and bumped her sports bottle against mine, making a plastic
thunk
. We both took big swigs of iced tea.