Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

  She split the stack in half and handed him a pad of ruled Post-Its. The frown was ever-present as she skimmed through the first few pages. Andrew ran his thumb across his own page, unfocused, seeking names or locations instead of her long-form analysis of Eddie’s writing style. At his side, her pen scratched on the Post-Its. He forced himself not to look.

  Four pages in he happened upon a paragraph: Rob and Lisa McCormick are an elderly couple who are located close to the boundaries of the Fulton estate and Edward expressed excitement at their agreement to speak with him soon. The majority of his subjects have been in their mid-thirties and are transplants to the area; the McCormicks are older, from a family long established in the region, and are familiar in passing with the Fulton line. He snagged the pen and wrote their names under Troth’s brief notation of Eric Middleton, a name snagged from her own stack of papers.

  She checked his note and murmured, “I’m not certain he managed to arrange that meeting, with the couple. You might have better luck.”

  Each of them wrote two additional names, six total, before Troth flipped her final page facedown. Light slanted lower through the casement-style windows. Andrew cracked his knuckles. Troth returned to her chair, where she sat heavily and propped her chin on one hand. It was a less manicured gesture than he was growing used to from her. His phone kicked up an incessant vibration in his pocket, ringing, but he ignored it. He stuck the Post-It note to the outside of the file folder.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re sure the notes weren’t in his carrel?” she asked.

  “Positive.”

  “Those locks aren’t particularly secure. I can’t imagine someone breaking in to steal from him, though,” she said.

  Andrew balanced the file on one knee. “You said his research was good. And he’d have been talking about it to everyone, probably.”

  “An opportunistic researcher…” Her thumb pressed to her thin lips in thought.

  Like you, he thought to himself.

  “It must be frustrating, and insulting, to be forced to retrace his steps,” she said. “I apologize. I’m hoping there’s an explanation that doesn’t implicate one of our students stooping to theft.”

  Troth didn’t rise from behind the desk as Andrew stood. She continued absently tapping her thumbnail on the seam of her frown. He and Troth were both, he justified to himself, using each other for different ends.

  “If I’m continuing the work, I’m going to have to piece it together to catch up to where he left things,” he said, aware of the doubling of his words, the implications hiding underneath.

  “Indeed you will, or so it seems.” Troth glanced over at him, straightening her posture. “Edward started with a broad approach to local folklore, but he had begun to focus more on stories surrounding the Fultons before our meetings paused for the summer. The last time we spoke was at the dinner party, the day he left his ring behind. I remember his excitement about some recent discovery he’d made, but I never had a chance to find out what that entailed.”

  “Maybe I’ll be able to unearth that, whatever it was,” Andrew said.

  “One hopes,” she said. “Please come to me, as you continue. I’d like to avoid unduly influencing the dissertation you’d create, but I’m familiar with Edward’s intentions and approach.”

  “And you’d like to guide us toward something usable,” he acknowledged. For your own sake went unsaid.

  The ghost of a smile returned to her mouth. A dramatic flick of the wrist that seemed to encompass yes and don’t mention it was all he received in response. Instead, she said, “This land and the stories people tell about it are fascinating. Hauntings, massacres, dark magic—all that bloody business lingers underneath the surface of respectability. It’s a grim, delicious contradiction. I appreciate those contradictions and what they reveal about us as humans.”

  Andrew hated that whole business, but he offered her the only agreement he could: “Eddie appreciated it, too.”

  “I know,” she said. “He was an interesting young man.”

  Andrew let himself out and closed the door behind him, his nerves doing uncomfortable flips. He checked his phone. Two missed calls and a text, all from Riley. The text just said call me asap.

  He headed for the parking garage absorbed in his thoughts, cognizant of the tightrope he had put his feet on. Eddie must’ve found something, stumbled on it like the eager stupid boy he was, but Andrew had no idea what that thing could even be. He was one step ahead of Troth at least, in knowing that Eddie wasn’t so much interested in folklore as in explaining his own secrets to himself.

  He texted Sam, if I had a list of names could you tell me if they’re people you know

  No response.

  The lights were on at Capitol. He parked on the street in front and took the porch steps two at a time, Troth’s folder pinched shut in his grip to keep the papers in. Holding it had started to make his palm twinge. He jiggled the knob to unlatch the door and shouldered his way inside. Riley jolted an inch in his seat on the couch, slopping water from a pint glass over his lap.

  “Andrew,” said Del from the other sofa.

  “I’m going to go,” his roommate said as he stood.

  Del had her hair knotted up in a loose bun, like the one girl he’d seen at Sam’s party. She held a full glass of water in both hands, elbows on her bare knees. Riley grabbed his shoes from next to the door, made frantic eyes at Andrew, and slipped outside. The soft click of the latch shut him in with her. He slapped the folder onto the side table and shrugged his bag off. She took a sip from the glass, staring at a point past his left ear.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I needed to see for myself—this place, how you were living. If you were all right,” she said.

  Crossing the room to sit on the other couch was like swimming through syrup. Andrew picked up Riley’s glass for a fortifying swallow of tepid water. The tendon that ran from Del’s shoulder into her neck was taut as a whipcord. He stretched his legs, knees apart, and dropped his head back. The chastised feeling didn’t dissipate as he waited in silence for her to speak.

  “Remember why we broke up?” she asked.

  “Because of the tattoo,” he said.

  She snorted and set the glass down with a click. He glanced at her as she rubbed her arms, then her legs, her familiar nervous tic. “No, that wasn’t the reason. It was a symbol of the reason. The reason was Eddie and you, you and Eddie. And here we are with that again.”

  His thumb pressed to the ink on his wrist bone. Del flicked his hand and he let go. She took his wrist in her fingers, long and thin, to trace the band of faded dots. The touch was clinical. She edged closer and sighed a stranger’s sigh, the briefest exhalation. The lamplight on her face cast her cheekbones in hard relief. In high school, people had treated her as one of the guys because of her butch face, because of her preferred companions, because of her oft-contested spot on the baseball team, a hundred other petty reasons. He’d been one of those people, and so had Eddie, until the three of them figured out another, more intimate option.

  “The funny thing is I haven’t missed you since you left, and I’m sad as fuck he’s dead, but until then I hadn’t missed him either,” she said.

  She dropped his wrist and he crossed his arms over his lap.

  “Then why come?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Because I already lost you to him once, when it might have mattered more,” she said. “And I guess because I needed closure. This time I’m here for me, not for either of you.”

  Andrew’s phone buzzed in his pocket, twice. His hand twitched to check if Sam had responded before he made himself relax, forced himself to keep considering her face. The separation had made them alien to one another, or maybe that had been happening for years and he’d ignored it. He’d kissed that mouth more times than he could count. He’d watched Eddie do the same.

  “I wasn’t the one who ended things,” he said.

/>   “I saw those fucking tattoos and all I could think was that he’d marked you. The three of us were supposed to be … working on something together, but neither of you would’ve ever thought to give me a goddamn tattoo. Neither of you really gave a shit about me except as a conduit for the feelings you weren’t going to talk about.” She heaved a breath and let it out. “You still don’t, Andrew. So I guess I came to say goodbye.”

  19

  Andrew rested his forehead on the edge of the refrigerator. In the other room, Del waited. The pit of guilty loathing in his gut was enough to swallow him whole. He hadn’t missed her, either, but he wanted to argue all the same. He grabbed them each a beer from the case Riley had mercifully picked up. One tab cracked and then the next; he carried his can at his side and passed hers over with a sense of communion. He’d expected tears, recriminations, but her eyes were dry and she was calm.

  She took a swallow before continuing, “Tell me the truth, for once: did you really never love me, or did you only love him more?”

  “Fucking Jesus, it wasn’t like that and you know it,” he said—except everyone in Nashville had been speaking the same language to him since he arrived. This time, he let the dart strike a bullseye even if he denied it.

  He was yours.

  “Andrew, yes it was like that,” she said.

  He scrounged for something to say, and found a meager offering: “I did love you.”

  But I loved him more.

  He couldn’t bring that to life, not aloud, not with his own mouth.

  “You know, I came to the dorm one night and let myself in, back when we were together, and he was in bed with you. You were asleep. He was running his hand through your hair and he had his mouth on your neck. He made some pretty serious eye contact. It wasn’t friendly. I left. I don’t know why I never brought it up until now.”

  “We never—” Andrew started, heart pounding in his chest. The phantom image of Eddie kissing him in his sleep was doing something to his insides he didn’t appreciate.

  “Nah, you never touched his dick, I know.” Her laugh was harsh. She smacked the can onto the coffee table hard enough to foam it and put her face in her hands. “Instead you fucked me, and then he fucked me, and then both of you fucked me together, and it was great until I realized you were using me like a goddamn sex doll. You two used me because he wouldn’t admit what you were, and neither would you. He used me to be with you. I deserve better than that. I deserved better then, and I deserve better now. I’m a person, Andrew.”

  Did we do that? he thought. Out loud he asked, “How long have you been saving this up?”

  “Years, probably. You fucked me up good.”

  He tipped the beer into his mouth, throat working as he chugged it. The words she’d slapped him with stung. The world was tilted off its axis, crooked from what he’d known before. He wanted to argue, but hard as he tried, he found nothing to say in defense of himself, and less in defense of Eddie.

  “I’m not a bottomless well for you to throw your stress and your misery and your repression into,” she said when he didn’t respond.

  “I thought it was good, with us,” he said. “For a little while.”

  “If it was good, I would’ve stayed with you and made it work, Eddie or no Eddie. But ‘no Eddie’ never even crossed your mind. You’re a selfish, entitled disaster of a person. And I’m sorry…” For the briefest second, her voice wavered. She lifted her beer for another sip and took a breath, staring up at the ceiling. He waited. “I’m sorry he died before you figured it out. For what it’s worth, I think you might’ve eventually, without me there to displace your bullshit onto. He was head over heels for you, and everyone knew but you, and maybe him. No, I think he knew. I think he hated seeing you with me, so he got himself involved.”

  That wasn’t how Andrew remembered it, the first time in the dorm: Eddie’s arm around both of their shoulders as they sat against the wall. Eddie’s mouth on Del’s cheek. Her smiling and saying yeah, okay. He remembered their hands glancing on her hips and her ribs, one of them latched onto each nipple, the thrill of that, of touching her together while she yanked on their hair. Read through her lens, though, through the shock of her obvious hurt and his compounding horror of himself, that old scene was less of a beautiful coming-together and more an opportunity they’d taken advantage of. Andrew let himself study the narrow cut of her chest and hips, her rock-solid calves, her pale pink sandals and calloused heels, and at the present moment, he felt nothing.

  He hadn’t realized, and that was her whole point.

  “So, yeah,” she said. “I guess that was a lot. I’ve been in therapy, just as an FYI. It’s helping. She thought it would be good for me to say all this in person. I thought it wouldn’t be fair, as fucked up as you are right now, but she said it hadn’t been fair before. So it wasn’t my job to make it fair now.”

  “And I deserve that,” he said finally.

  “You do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He meant that.

  Del shook her head, dusted her hands on her shorts and offered one to him. He took it and stood. The drowning sensation continued unabated. He walked her to the door with endless things to say, but none of them enough to fix what he’d broken. At the threshold she said, “Goodbye, Andrew. Get some help. He was a piece of work, and so are you, but I don’t hate you. I just can’t help you anymore.”

  The sandals slapped softly as she descended the stairs and set off across the sidewalk toward campus. Andrew sat on the porch until she was long gone. Eddie had whispered into his hair once, half-asleep, fuck you for being so good. He’d laughed and let it tie him into a giddy knot for days. That same week he’d watched Eddie punch a frat kid at a kegger, heard him snarling who are you calling a faggot, saw him leave with a girl whose name he didn’t know. Andrew had found his own companion for the night, pomegranate lip gloss his sole memory of the experience.

  He’d always been with girls; he’d always fucked girls, and so had Eddie. Eddie was his best friend and then some, and maybe they’d been closer than the norm, but no one else could have understood what it meant to live with the ghosts and the haunt-dreams, the danger that lurked in cellars and attics of friends’ homes, the endless throat-closing, loitering horrors that held off sleep for whole weeks during the most uncontrolled period of it. No one else had been there with him in the cavern for hours spread across days, freezing, terrified of encroaching death. No one else was Eddie, and no one else held him the same as Eddie had.

  He gnawed on the sore patch of skin over his wrist bone and tried to pack it all into the box where he kept the things they didn’t talk about, didn’t even fucking think about, but it wouldn’t go back neat.

  He swiped the text alerts waiting for him away without looking and messaged Del, I didn’t mean to.

  She didn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to.

  * * *

  hey dude can I come home yet

  she’s gone

  cool thanks

  you okay?

  Andrew rolled off of the couch. The two texts he’d received while Del was in the house weren’t from Sam, who hadn’t responded at all, but from West attempting to follow up on the meeting with Troth. He ignored them and texted Sam one more time, I have a list to run down. He wasn’t going to ask for help more directly than that. After a moment’s hesitation he picked the phone up one more time for another message: going out tonight?

  The front door opened. He arranged his expression into the closest approximation of blandness he was able to manage. Riley still winced, a performative grimace. “That bad, huh?”

  “Troth didn’t have the field journal either,” he said.

  “Nah, I meant—” Riley started. Andrew glowered, a bitter flashback to his first nights in the house, and Riley smoothly shifted course. “Moving right along, then. What did Troth have on hand?”

  “Her own mentor notes and some basic shit he had written about his family history. She said he�
�d gotten on that track, which makes sense, since he was really looking for…”

  “Stuff about himself,” Riley finished helpfully.

  “I told her the interviews were missing and she implied the carrels weren’t exactly secure. She was irritated, I figure from losing access herself,” he said.

  Riley considered that, then echoed his sentiment: “Doesn’t seem coincidental, his phone and his interview notes both going missing.”

  “Looks like someone’s hiding something, doesn’t it?” Andrew tossed him the Challenger’s key fob. Riley smacked it out of the air in his attempted catch, launching it clattering into the foyer. “A while ago, like when we first met, she gave me a bunch of books she’d gotten for Eddie. She’s been waiting for me to come to her, I guess. I told her I’d re-create the shit we were missing, and she said she’d help.”

  “Why’s she been after you so much?” Riley asked as he chased down the lost fob.

  “Wants her name on a published version of Eddie’s work, sounds like,” Andrew said.

  Riley snorted. “Fuckin’ faculty. You’d think she’d have her hands full with West right now, and it’s not like she’s hurting for acclaim. She’s got tenure already.”

  “What do you mean about West?” Andrew asked, perking up.

  “You hadn’t heard?” Riley asked. He spun the fob around his index finger. “His revised draft got rejected, for the fourth time. He can’t get his dissertation off the ground, and he’s running out of time before the seven-year cap.”

  “He hadn’t said—” Andrew’s phone buzzed, one-two-three, Halse’s number on the screen. Andrew answered. “Hey.”

  “I was at work, calm your thirst.” Andrew removed his phone from his ear and stared at it. Sam’s voice kept going, words indistinguishable but tone jocular. Riley raised his eyebrows. Andrew put the receiver to his ear again in time to hear, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “The fuck?” he asked.

  “Get that list ready,” he said and hung up.