Summer Nights (4 page)

And it was gone.

Molly had had lots of boyfriends in her four years of high school, from simpletons like Roddy who were good for filling in the dull hours to breathtaking college guys like Christopher with fast cars and extra money.

They were gone, too. Nobody called, nobody remembered her. It was as if not only high school had ended—Molly also had ended.

I’m seventeen, she thought, and I’m over.

She felt like a dusty black-and-white photograph, trapped on a back page in the fat yearbook. Years later somebody might flip the pages, saying, “Who’s that? I don’t remember her.”

After graduation, summer came hot and heavy, like thunderclouds that do not burst. It weighed Molly down. Even though her house, car, and job were air-conditioned, Molly seemed to gasp for breath all day long.

She spent her summer alone.

Over and over she thought about girls—she who had never had any use for the female sex. She who felt boys were the single answer, the only answer, the always answer.

Girls were all leaving. So what did that make Molly? A reject?

Anne came back, said nothing, and lay this time in the shade.

They all despise me, Molly thought. So big deal, I committed a few little social errors along the way. Anne committed the biggie and people gathered round in a conspiracy to pretend she was perfect anyhow. But why do I care about Anne? It’s too late to be friends with her, she’s leaving in less than twenty-four hours.

And I’m not interested in Kip. How could you want to spend time with the Most Academic, Most Impressive, Best Leader, and Finest Socialite all rolled into one perfect New York-bound package?

Certainly not Beth. I don’t even know what Beth is doing. Beth is one of those bland people you never remember once she leaves the room, anyway.

And Emily?…

Molly’s eyes went back to the pool.

Perhaps a last swim was called for. It would be rather nice to acquire a free diamond ring.

F
OUR GIRLS WERE LEFT.

The sun was changing colors, and collecting clouds. Purple and scarlet and gold flamed through the darkening sky. It was still hot. The breeze lifted the dusty green leaves of the trees around the pool and the evening was filled with a whispering sound.

Anne thought of her trunk, her suitcases, her flight bag, and camera. She thought of the top of her bureau, where her plane tickets and brand-new navy-blue American passport lay. Her passport photograph made her look more like a mangy little terrier than a cover girl. Her mind walked for the hundredth time over the next day’s schedule. She had to get from LaGuardia Airport to the Manhattan hotel by herself and meet Ivory Glynn there. She didn’t want to mess up her first solo flight. That would be terrible.

She thought of her parents and Con, indulging her little whim to go overseas, thinking she was cute. Until she pulled it off.

She thought of Ivory Glynn and film festivals, of famous stars and crowds of fans.

The sound of Molly diving into the pool startled Anne, and the lapping of water sounded like drowning. But I, too, am almost drowning, she thought. Drowning in emotion and memory and excitement.

Let me say a sweet good-bye to Con!

Let me hug all my friends without crying.

Let me not yell at my family.

Let my last summer night be perfect.

Emily’s hand was hidden beneath her huge beach towel, but it felt naked, exposed, horrible. The thought of the thrown ring filled her whole head. She could hardly even remember who Anne was, or why they had to say good-bye.

Yet the anger was still there. She could not make herself go back for the ring.

Wherever it was. She had not looked. Grass, garden, pool.

It’s gone, she thought miserably. Like Matt.

Oh, Matt, Matt, how could you leave me? How could you turn this into our last Saturday night together?

Kip yanked on her jeans and white shirt. I have to get rid of Molly for Anne, she thought. I can pretend we’re going somewhere, give Molly the wrong directions, and then we’ll rush like mad toward the river and vanish.

Not very nice, but then, Molly is not very nice. You reap what you sow. She wants to be nasty her whole seventeen years, she gets a nasty harvest, that’s all.

It was Kip who had done most of the work for the party. Oh, Con paid the bills, but he kept calling Kip up and wheedling her into making the arrangements for him. First it was rent the boat for him, and then it was find a little band for him, and then arrange fireworks for him. Finally get a caterer for him. “You’re so clever at this,” he would tell Kip. “You know the ins and outs, everything you touch turns out perfectly.”

“Get lost, Con.”

“But it’s for Anne, not me. Please, Kippie?”

Her little brother called her Kippie. She hated it. When she went to college she would dump that stupid nickname forever and be Katharine. She imagined a slew of handsome boys calling Katharine, Katharine! She would turn gracefully on those crowded New York streets and smile back at them. Hi, Tod. Hi, Bob. Hi, Kenny.

Con was so handsome. Every time he begged, Kip gave in. Those intense eyes and flickering smiles had been winning the girls since grammar school.

Molly’s brittle, demanding whine broke into her thoughts. “Come on, guys let’s go someplace air-conditioned and have a great time.”

“There’s a new juice bar on Michigan Avenue,” Kip suggested teasingly.

“Oh, Kip, don’t be weird. A juice bar? Get a life. Why would we want to go to a juice bar? How about the movies?”

“That’s a thought,” Kip said. She found her purse and car keys. “I’ll give you a ride home, Molly. Anne has to finish packing. Emily, you need a ride home?”

Anne got misty. “Oh, Kip, this is
it.
This is good
-bye.
I’m actually
leaving.
So are
you.
”

“You sound like a drum roll,” Kip teased her.

They flung their arms around each other.

“Oh, Kippie, do you think it’ll all work out?” cried Anne, as if her parents’ lack of faith had suddenly penetrated. How cruel parents can be, Kip thought. Raise a child for eighteen years and then tell her she isn’t ready.

“You’ll be perfect,” Kip said softly. They hugged fiercely. “Don’t send me postcards,” Kip said. “I want you to be so busy and having so much fun you never get to a post office.”

They hugged again. The tears that came were real, and painful. It was not a sham good-bye, a false good-bye that had worried Kip, since they would do it all over again in a few hours. It was real and it hurt.

Anne kept standing by Kip’s car, crying, “Oh, we should have planned something special!”

Emily said, weeping, “Yes, this is terrible.”

Molly added, “It’s not too late; let’s all do something later on.”

I’ll have to drive over her foot to shut her up, Kip thought. This was so attractive she almost did it. Exercising control, she said, “Just get in the car, will you, Molly?”

Kip drove away, one hand on the wheel, one hand waving to Anne, and Emily passed her a Kleenex for her tears.

Kip began to get excited. There was nothing like a party. Especially a party on the
Duet
—a river cruise—dancing by the moonlight out on the water!

Oh, what a Saturday night!

Molly just stood there during the sickening little good-byes Emily and Kip said to Anne, with little cries of pain and loss, as if they would sob every night missing old Anne.

She got in the backseat of Kip’s huge station wagon, among the debris of four little brothers.

They’ll all go somewhere, Molly Nelmes thought. I’ll be here doing nothing. Dwindling away.

She was afraid.

The days stretched out in front, empty and useless. School was bad, but filled the days with boys and action. Even long summers came to an end. Not this year. Now there were neither endings nor beginnings.

Molly looked down at the little object she had rescued from the bottom of the pool.

Action, she thought. Either I find it…or I make it.

A
LL OF ANNE STEPHENS’
house was lovely, but the staircase was superb. It turned twice inside the large, open hall, each landing carpeted with a small Oriental rug in vivid reds and blues. Pale wooden bannisters gleamed under the sunshine pouring in through the skylights.

From the time she was a toddler, Anne had been taught to make an “entrance” on those stairs. Her parents were camera addicts. They had pictures of Anne posing on the higher landing in her new Snoopy pajamas—age three—Christmas Eve. Pictures of Anne in her princess costume—age seven—Halloween. Pictures of Anne dressed for tennis or dances or the movies—age thirteen to eighteen—going out with Con Winter.

There was no sun tonight, only the soft dimmed lights recessed in the vaulted ceilings. Anne made her last grand entrance and her parents, as always, stood at the bottom of the stairs, cameras ready.

Who looks at all those photographs? Anne thought. Not me. I’ve never opened a single album. She wondered if while she was gone her parents would sit together on the sofa and turn the pages of the albums, staring at the daughter who was grown and gone. It was a sad, rainy day thought.

Con stood where he always stood, a few feet inside the front door, ready for a quick exit, head cocked to the side, eyes fastened on the spot where she would first appear.

Anne knew her own beauty. But she often forgot Con’s. He had a fluid, dark handsomeness, unexpressive as a statue. He was simply there, resting, for you to admire. His eyes were heavy-lidded, sleepy, and his hair thick and softly falling, so that Anne’s continual impulse was to sweep it from his eyes. She remembered in Ancient History staring at the photograph of the sculpture “Apollo Belvedere” and thinking—
it’s Con.

She paused on the landing from long habit. Her thin, gauzy Indian dress hung like a blue cloud, its narrow fringe of embroidery like jewels below her throat. She had left her hair down, and the golden silk of it slid over her shoulders.

Anne never saw Con without falling in love with him all over again. Don’t let it happen tonight! she thought, trying not to see how he needed a haircut again, how he looked tired, how he must want comfort.

“You look beautiful,” Con said, in that husky voice of his, as if he were filled with emotion. Experience told Anne that it was not emotion, it was just that Con had a husky voice. But she could not resist him and went straight to him, sliding the hair off his forehead and leaving her fingers momentarily caught in his hair. Her mother snapped a picture. Anne swallowed and looked away from him. “Where are we going?” she asked.

He linked his arm through hers. “Dinner.” He smiled at her. They were exactly the same height, and their eyes always met. For years, Anne had thought this meant they were on the same emotional and mental wavelength.

Con wrapped a lock of her hair around his own finger and drew it in a golden mustache above his lips. “I love your hair down,” he said.

Con was good at compliments. Anne’s mother and his own mother had been teaching him. It did not come naturally. Anne was very touched. She knew he had rehearsed what to say. Because I matter to him, she thought.
Oh, I am going to miss Con so much!

They walked out of the house. Con had been allowed to borrow his father’s new convertible. Anne clapped her hands with delight. She ran back in to get a scarf to tie over her hair to keep it from getting too tangled, and they drove off, Con going fast, the breeze pulling at them, and the blaring radio audible only when they stopped at corners. He tossed her a grin, grabbed her hand, and kissed it quick before putting his hand back on the wheel.

Her heart was tossed back in his lap.

For the first time she wondered what she was doing—abandoning everything that was love, that was friendship?

I am traveling to strange cities with an old lady when Con loves me and wants me here, she thought. Maybe—maybe—

She wrenched her mind off it. She had to look away from Con in order to think of other things. It was going to be a long dinner, if she had to keep from looking his way throughout the meal.

Molly had slowly gotten out of Kip’s car. It was not air-conditioned and she was hot and sticky from the plastic upholstery. Kip was aflame with her own thoughts, bright and eager for something. College, probably, thought Molly sourly, hating Kip for having something to look forward to.

Kip had a hard time pulling back into traffic. The car windows were all down for air. Molly was only a few feet away on her own front yard when Emily said clearly, “So what time are we all supposed to get there?”

Kip ripped out into the street, motor roaring, taking chances with an oncoming truck, but sick of waiting. That was Kip for you.

So there
is
action, Molly thought. And
all
of them are part of it.

She flew inside, yelled to her stepfather, “I have to borrow the car!” and grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter where they were always tossed. She glanced down at what she had on. A very short, bright red skirt, a man’s shirt that was longer than the skirt, made flouncy in the middle by a huge metal glittering belt. Only a few weeks before Molly had gotten a very short geometric haircut, so fixing her hair was a thing of the past. Nothing could change it. She had makeup in her handbag.

Molly ran right out of the house and drove even faster than Kip, catching her two traffic lights down. They both sat at the red. Molly slid her newest piece of jewelry on one finger. Maybe I should flash it at Emily, she thought. Even better, flash it at Matt. Wonder if they’ll recognize it? That would add to the fun all around, wouldn’t it?

Molly laughed.

A
QUARTER MILE DOWNRIVER
from the
Duet
’s dock was a hill and a tourist overlook. It was one of Emily’s favorite views and Matt routinely pulled in so they could look across the blue water at the bluff, the trees, and the white houses on the far shore. Tonight he almost skipped it because he was so upset with her, but decided that this night of all nights, he had better pause at the tourist overlook. Whatever few traditions he and Emily had, Matt knew he should try to celebrate right up to the moment of departure.