Summer Hours Read online

  “Did my mom say something?” Eric asked.

  “Hmm.”

  “What? Was she grilling you? It’s nothing, he already had it cleaned. I’ll tell her to stop bugging you—”

  “No. He told me. Cal.”

  I stared at the Vertigo poster on the ceiling, where a body spun into an orange-and-white vortex. I closed my eyes but still saw Jimmy Stewart floating in space, nothing to grab onto.

  Eric had shown me the film in the walk-in closet he’d transformed into a home theater. He’d set up his TV and VCR in there because it was quiet and dark and had offered double protection from his parents when things got bad.

  Not once, in four years, had Eric reached for my hand in that dark closet. Not even last summer, when he’d screened Truly, Madly, Deeply and I’d cried at the end, wiping my face on the mountain of throw pillows he’d constructed for us. He’d only nodded in the dim glow of the credits and said quietly, “Right? Just perfect.”

  “Tell me what you wrote on his boat, E,” I said. “He didn’t seem mad. Only...worried.”

  He wouldn’t answer.

  “I know you can hear me.”

  Nothing.

  “Don’t be like this.”

  He hid from me on the other side of his boom box, behind the low silver wall it made between us. My good, breakable friend.

  The man he’d decided was his enemy hid directly below us, in his own bunker, staring at his happy place—a plastic version of Catalina Island.

  Maybe he and Eric weren’t so different.

  But I couldn’t explain that to Eric. It was easier for him to direct his anger at Mr. California than at his parents.

  And he expected us to hate him, too.

  4

  Pyramus & Thisbe

  2008

  Thursday, 8:00 a.m.

  Newport Beach

  The island is only a speck in my left eye’s peripheral vision, no bigger than a grain of sand.

  Like a piece of sand, I want it out. My foot tenses on the gas pedal, itching to test out the rental’s fancy turbo motor, to go sixty, seventy, faster, until we’re past Catalina.

  But traffic’s heavy with morning commuters, so we’re stuck. Inching along behind a battered gold Datsun with a bumper sticker that says, I Was an Honor Student. I Don’t Know What Happened.

  I stare at the Datsun, willing the former honor student to pick up speed. But there must be a stall ahead.

  I glance to my right: the brown cardboard wall of the gift between us.

  The only other place to look is left.

  I know I shouldn’t. I always face forward on this stretch of PCH.

  But I turn toward the bright blue water, the flotilla of white sails gliding out toward the low mass of the island.

  Catalina. Once the sexiest, most exciting word in the world. My happy place.

  That beautiful hideaway. Its only town, Avalon, population 3,000, named after the mythical island in King Arthur. No cars allowed. Only golf carts, like a movie set. At sunset, the light is an exquisite pinkish gold.

  Look at that color. It’s the magic hour. The Impressionists thought they could only find that light on the Riviera, but it’s not true.

  Someday we’ll go there together so you can see. We’ll go to France, Spain, Italy.

  But now Catalina feels like a foreign country, our time there as far from real life as a long-ago vacation.

  * * *

  Finally, we speed up.

  I check the tripometer, which I set to 0.00 miles before we left.

  We’ve gone a hundred miles without talking.

  I won’t speak again until we hit two hundred.

  Or until we pass another Denny’s. Whichever comes first.

  Scratching comes from the box, as if an animal is trapped inside, trying to claw its way out. He’s trying to get comfortable, rearranging himself against the cardboard.

  Don’t say anything. Let him be the one to break the silence.

  “How are you doing over there?” I immediately call out.

  “What?”

  I shout over the wind: “This is like Pyramus and Thisbe!”

  “Pyramid what?”

  “Pyramus and Thisbe! From Shakespeare? A Midsummer Night’s Dream! That part where they’re talking through the wall!”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  I remember, too late, that Pyramus and Thisbe were lovers.

  The radio blares on and his finger taps through satellite channels. He rejects Nick Drake on Morning Becomes Eclectic, blows past Nina Simone. He loves them both but can’t seem to get away fast enough.

  He lands on Green Day.

  “Is this station okay with you?” he shouts.

  “Sure! I love this song!”

  “Yeah, it’s a classic!”

  I’ve always hated this song. An indecipherable, jumpy tune—an instant headache. He taps the volume to seven before his hand vanishes behind the box.

  He’s silent again, but his Green Day says plenty.

  It says, I could have flown up to the wedding.

  We could’ve gotten them a gift card.

  How many hours until I can get back to life as usual?

  And worst of all—Don’t get any ideas about why I agreed to drive with you.

  I want to tap the radio to Ozzy Osbourne or Weird Al, crank it to level ten. It might blow out the speakers, but it would feel good.

  Like yelling back, Relax, damn it!

  Instead I breathe deep. In for five, out for ten.

  Let him have every silver button and knob on the dash.

  All I want is to make it to the wedding without a fight, without anything distracting from Serra’s day.

  I want to see Serra’s face when we give her her present.

  When we were in college, she had to explain to me what her triptych project was: artwork in three parts. Beginning, middle, and end.

  It’s the perfect gift, or will be once we pick up the last piece.

  The idea for the present was a lark at first, a goof. I woke up at 2:00 a.m. the morning after I got Serra’s invitation and scrolled through her online wedding registry. I could have bought her up to twelve hemp napkins. A pour-over coffee system. A portion of a water buffalo in her name, which would help support a family in Nepal.

  I couldn’t decide, so I clicked over to Artattack.net and started browsing. I hadn’t seen her in more than a year, but I could still know her taste. I looked at block prints, ceramic vases, shadow boxes. All under $200 and compact enough to pack in a carry-on. Nothing seemed like her style.

  I almost gave up and went for the hemp napkins.

  Until bleary-eyed, ready to go back to sleep, I remembered an article I’d read at work that week about a woman in Boston who found the heirloom Steiff teddy bear she’d had as a child by posting a picture of it on a specialized collector site. The article featured a cute picture of her and her two-year-old daughter clutching the one-eyed bear, nuzzling its nearly bald head. A heartwarming reunion!

  I couldn’t get that over-loved bear out of my head.

  If only I could find a gift like that. A lost piece of Serra’s past.

  Curious, I began poking around online and discovered a whole new world of helpful specialty web pages, searchable by artist and title, image and year and show.

  A few hours in, and I was more excited about hunting down the triptych than I’d been about any project that’s come across my desk in years. Size and price considerations went out the window.

  When I found two sections of Serra’s piece—the left and middle panels, inseparable now because the hinges connecting them have rusted—I knew that I had to locate the last third. We’ll pick it up in Fort Bragg on Saturday morning and then head to the hotel for the out-of-towner wedding weekend activities: a crabbing expe
dition, a wine tasting.

  A phone rings. A hippie wind chime, the ringer set loud enough to be heard even over Green Day.

  He leans forward and his left index finger hastily stabs the down-volume button on the dash.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  He answers his phone with “Hey, Ann, you saw the numbers?” and disappears again.

  I can’t make out any more words through the strata of our gift wall—cardboard, Bubble Wrap, present, Bubble Wrap, cardboard. But he sounds smooth and confident. Putting a deal together or putting out a fire.

  I’d love to ask if he picked the soothing chime for its irony factor. Once, I would have been sure that he’d noticed the humor in his ringtone, that he’d turn to me and laugh at how busy and important he is.

  But he’s so serious about his job now. And I don’t know if he chose it as a joke or if his assistant programmed it for him.

  I don’t know who the Ann on the other end is.

  I don’t know if he considered backing out of this weekend.

  Maybe he already wishes he had canceled. I wouldn’t know, and I’m not sure I want to.

  All I know is that the man beside me is a stranger.

  I haven’t seen him in ten years.

  5

  Graduette

  June 17, 1994

  WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Lined up behind Tracy Rasmussen

  WHERE I WAS | The Orange Park High Media Room

  “Do you think they’ll cancel graduation?” shouted a girl over the Green Day blasting from someone’s boom box.

  “No way. Parents would freak.”

  The ceremony was running late. We were supposed to proceed into the gym, resplendent in our rented green gowns, half an hour ago. Instead we were watching TV in the media room, a glorified closet lined with AV equipment, packed wall to wall with other almost graduates. O.J. was so close we could hear the wop-wop of news helicopters heading to the freeway.

  In front of me, Serra was swimming in her gown. It was supposedly an extra small but it pooled around her ankles so much I worried she’d trip onstage. Her honors sash wasn’t pinned on right so it looked like it was choking her neck. “This is so weird,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said.

  Eric stood a few feet apart from us, behind Robin Engles, a sophomore the three of us couldn’t stand. Her brother was graduating so she’d been lurking around all afternoon.

  Eric put his hand on Robin’s shoulder and said into her ear, loud enough for me and Serra to hear, “So many helicopters. It’s like M*A*S*H.”

  Leave it to Eric to find the movie reference.

  Eric hated Robin Engles. When she wasn’t sluttifying a Halloween costume, Robin was daring frosh football players to drink Everclear until they had to get their stomachs pumped.

  I knew exactly what he was doing.

  Serra leaned her head back, whispering up at me so only I could hear, “Nice performance. Are you burning with jealousy yet?”

  She’d warned me many times this year that Eric wanted more than friendship from me, and I’d laughed her off. But Eric had barely spoken to me since the barbecue.

  “Shhh.”

  “Okay, I’ll be good.” She took off her mortarboard and ruffled a hand through her chin-length hair. It had been a month since she’d cut it and she couldn’t stop running her fingers along the black strands, as if surprised every time by where they stopped. She’d had a long ponytail like mine ever since I’d met her in seventh grade chorus, when she’d sung soprano in the spot right in front of me. I’d stood inches from that ponytail for weeks, so close that I’d blown strands of it around with my breath during the loud parts of “Viva Tutte Le Vezzose.”

  The day Serra and I officially met, we were digging in the tub of moth-eaten, unisex green cardigans that served as our performance uniforms. I’d snagged a medium that wouldn’t be too horribly big if my mom tailored it. Serra had rolled up the sleeves on the smallest one she could find, but it was still so huge on her I couldn’t help laughing.

  “My mom could take that in for you,” I’d said. “She sews.” Such a simple, casual offer, but it had decided so much in my life.

  She never did remember to bring the sweater over, but we’d become best friends so fast, it was like all my other friends—perfectly nice, smart, pleasant girls—simply receded.

  Mrs. Featherton, the assistant principal, discovered our hiding place. “You naughty children. You were supposed to line up twenty minutes ago! Come along, graduates and graduettes.” She shooed us out, but not before peeking at the TV, too.

  We pulled ourselves away and followed Mrs. Featherton down the hall to our places in line. Kids were sagging against walls, melting onto the floor in green nylon puddles. Finally, “Pomp and Circumstance” floated down the hall and we stood. First Serra went outside, with the I’s, then Eric, with the L’s. And finally my segment, the R’s.

  I passed Eric’s mom in the front row, chatting with the woman next to her, casually running a hand through her long blond hair. Perfect Orange County–wife hair, the shimmering result of some mysterious and expensive chemistry. Eric’s father sat one row behind her and one person to the left, as if to say they were still connected but no longer paired.

  No sign of Donna’s lover.

  That was good of him, not to intrude on Eric’s day. He was probably off on a sail to Catalina. I imagined him alone on his boat and wondered for the hundredth time what Eric had sprayed on the side.

  I spotted my mom waving from the top gym bleacher, right hand holding her silver Olympus ready, the left wiping away tears.

  She’d been trying not to cry all day. Her eyes had been glassy when she gave me my graduation gift—the perfect present, a refurbished Compaq laptop that she must’ve scrimped for all year—and though I’d said, Mom, it’ll be okay. I’m not going for twelve weeks, the fact that I’d soon leave her now seemed unbearably sad.

  She’d worked so hard to get us to this moment. Not once complaining. I felt her pride and excitement and eighteen years of sacrifice, shock waves of them, from across the overheated gym.

  Fighting back tears myself, I smiled for the camera. Thank you, Mom.

  * * *

  Later, she said some parents were mad they didn’t reschedule the ceremony. A few minor relatives couldn’t make it down the freeway in time because of the chase.

  We threw our caps in the air just as O.J. surrendered in his driveway.

  Three days later

  WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | My Intro to MS Office Class at the community center

  WHERE I WAS | Eric’s room

  Eric and I sat on his bedroom floor with a mountain of clothes between us.

  I’d had to beg him to let me come over. Finally, he’d said, “Whatever,” grudgingly accepting my offer to help him pack and treat him to a movie after.

  I picked up his frayed black Joy Division T-shirt. “This is the softest thing in the world. If you don’t bring it I’m going to steal it and make it my new woobie.”

  “Take it.”

  “Honestly?”

  “It’ll just get thrown out otherwise.”

  I smoothed the T-shirt over my knees, tracing the design on the front with my index finger. The lines looked like a series of seismograph readings or mountain ranges. I toyed with a thread in the ripped collar. “I’m going to miss you. You know that, right?”

  Eric looked down at the hiking socks he was rolling together army-style. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  I stared at him but he wouldn’t look up. “I guess we’ll have to go on our road trip to the Mystery Spot and that gas station made of petrified wood another time.” We’d made grand plans for our summer, before he decided to bolt early.

  “Let’s do that.”

  “Where are all the polo shirts? And the crested blazer
s and deck shoes?”

  He smiled at the floor. “Right, and you’re packing head-to-toe tie-dye?”

  “Of course, George. Berkeley has a compulsory tie-dye seminar for freshmen.”

  “You’re never going to let go of the George Hamilton thing, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your ideas of the East Coast are about fifty years out-of-date, Becc.”

  “So I’ll come visit you. See what it’s really like.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Progress, even if he said it to his socks.

  Eric and I had watched Where the Boys Are on TCM in the closet over spring break, after he got his Brown acceptance. When George Hamilton’s character said he was a Brown man, I’d shrieked in delight and Eric had buried his head under a pillow, knowing I’d never let him live it down. I knew perfectly well that Brown wasn’t the soft, preppy world it used to be, but my private school/public school bit was too good to resist. I’d even invented a servant named Duckworth, who would leave mints on Eric’s pillow during the dorm turndown service.

  He held up a green cord button-down.

  “That’s nice on you. And warm. Bring.”

  Next came the black jeans he’d worn forever. He’d snagged the left knee on a ladder, helping my mother prune a jacaranda tree in the backyard, fall of sophomore year.

  “You should mend those, but bring.”

  His baggy gray drawstring sweatpants. He’d had them since freshman year. Serra and I called them “The Whalers.”

  “Hmm.”

  “These are comfortable! They’re the only warm pants I like besides my jeans.”

  “You need to think more fitted.”

  “I’m not wearing ass-hugger pants.”

  “Did I say ass-huggers? Just avoid the opposite of ass-huggers. Meaning any pants sewn out of enough fabric to make you two pairs of pants.”

  Eric’s mom opened the door, singing, “Knock, knock.” She always managed to appear right when we were saying things like “ass-huggers.”

  “Rebecca, stay for dinner?”

  “Remember I said we’re going to a movie?” Eric dug into the pile of clothes.