My mom’s Gatsby night came less naturally to her. It took more work.
So when we made it to the beach and laid out our fancy spread—with the votive candles and the tiny silver forks and everything—I think I appreciated it more than I ever had when Granly was alive.
“Now, Chelsea,” my mom said, arranging food on my plate while I texted Josh with our location, “I know you usually don’t like goat cheese, but just try a little with this pepper jelly. I bet you’ll love it.”
“Looks yummy,” I said.
My mom looked up in surprise.
“Really?” she said, giving me a skeptical smile. “Well, how about some smoked oysters?”
“Eh, let’s not push it,” I said with a laugh.
I didn’t really like the goat cheese either, but I didn’t tell my mom that. It didn’t matter anyway. I loved the olive tapenade and the artichoke torte and lots of the other fancy stuff she and my dad had made.
And Abbie cracked us up with a story about Estelle, the crazy art gallery owner, who’d had another one of her famous tantrums recently.
People we knew from town started claiming spots around us and saying sweet, funny things about our hoity-toity picnic.
Dad passed around a small bowl of the first blueberries of the season. They were tiny and on the sour side, just the way we all liked them. We nibbled them as we watched the sun go down. It was so fun and the sunset was so mesmerizing that I almost forgot to be nervous about my date.
So of course that was just when Josh showed up.
I didn’t realize he was there until I saw him standing at the edge of the picnic blanket, holding a cute little bouquet of daisies and gaping at our fancy china and champagne goblets and candlelight.
“Josh!” I said, quickly swallowing the blueberry in my mouth and hoping desperately that I didn’t have any food in my teeth. “You’re here!”
I jumped to my feet, smoothing down my yellow halter dress with one hand and tucking the frizz away from my hairline with the other.
As I gave him an awkward we’re-in-front-of-my-family hug hello, he whispered, “I didn’t think you meant it about the bow tie!”
“I didn’t!” I said with a laugh.
He was wearing a white T-shirt with a cool, faded American flag on it, rolled up khakis, and had bare feet. He gave our fancy dishes and silverware a glance, then looked back at me with raised eyebrows.
“Oh, this is just something we do,” I scoffed, waving my hand at the Gatsby picnic. “For a laugh. We’re not really fancy.”
“Speak for yourself,” Abbie said. She was leaning on one elbow, popping blueberries into her mouth.
“That’s my sister Abbie,” I told Josh. “And this is Hannah, and, um, my parents.”
“I’m Adam,” my dad said, standing up to say hello.
“And I’m Rachel,” my mother said as she pulled some dessert plates out of our picnic hamper. “We were just about to have dessert if you want to join us.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Josh said. Then he seemed to remember his daisies and thrust them toward my mom.
“For you,” he said bluntly.
My mom and I raised our eyebrows at each other as Josh whispered to me, “I didn’t know what the heck a hyacinth was.”
“Those are perfect,” I said.
Which was true. They were simple and sweet. They were just the kind of not-fancy flowers my mom loved. She smiled as she gave the little bouquet a sniff, then plunked it into her water glass.
It made for an easy, guilt-free exit.
“I’ll be home by ten thirty, I promise,” I told her, crouching down to say good-bye. “Thanks for the Gatsby night. It was . . .”
I couldn’t say it was perfect. Because perfect would have included Granly.
“Well, I really loved it,” I said.
And that was the truth.
I guess since I’d forgotten to feel nervous before Josh arrived, all my nerves hit during our walk down the beach. I couldn’t think of anything to say as we picked our way around shrieking packs of little kids and college students laughing as they popped the caps off bottles.
I wanted to hold Josh’s hand, but the wind was picking up and I needed my hands to hold my skirt down.
Josh was quiet too. He asked a couple polite questions about my parents and my sisters.
Then I asked him how dinner had been with his parents.
“Oh, fine,” he said. “Some of those poets who like to come into Dog Ear set up right next to us, and they started improvising.”
“Ooh,” I groaned. “Improv poetry? That sounds painful.”
“Oh, my dad ate it up,” Josh said. “He likes that kind of thing. He went to Woodstock, but don’t ask him about it unless you want to listen to him go on about it for three hours.”
“Woodstock!” I said. “But how— How old—”
“Sixty-six,” Josh said, answering the question I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask. “He was fifty-one when I was born, and my mom was forty.”
“Wow,” I said. “I mean, I knew they were, you know, on the older side . . .”
“Yeah.” Josh shrugged. “That’s why they only had me. But I think that’s what they wanted anyway. I mean, my parents have never been the romp-around-with-a-bunch-of-little-kids types.”
“Oh,” I said.
I hadn’t really thought before about how different our lives really were. I’d grown up in a suburban house where there had always been us three kids (and usually a few of our friends) hanging out in our TV room, raiding the fridge, or playing in the backyard.
Meanwhile, Josh had never even had a backyard. Before moving to Bluepointe he and his parents had lived in an apartment in Chicago, and Josh had taken the subway everywhere he needed to go. Now they lived in one of the lofts that overlooked Main Street, just a few steps away from Dog Ear.
It seemed very sophisticated and grown-up.
Maybe that was why Josh had proposed a “real” date, when I’d just been content to hang out wherever we landed. And why he felt the kind of responsibility for Dog Ear that never would have occurred to me.
We arrived at a spot where the picnic blankets were sparser and there was an empty patch of sand in front of the dune grass.
“This looks like a good place to see the fireworks,” Josh said.
We sat and stared at the darkening sky for a few long moments. For some reason I was at a loss for words again.
“I wonder when they’re going to start,” was what I finally came up with.
Then I started to feel miserable. Why was I suddenly making small talk? This was Josh, with whom everything had been so easy and fun and right ever since our first kiss.
Josh reached over and took my hand, but just like my small talk, it felt forced. Like what you’re supposed to do on a date, instead of what he wanted to do.
“Well . . . ,” Josh said, staring out at the horizon just as I was, “this is weird.”
“I know!” I said, exhaling with relief and turning to look at him. “Did my family freak you out?”
“No!” Josh said. “I liked them. I mean, from the three minutes or so I spent with them. Your mom seems like such a normal mom.”
“What, like June Cleaver?” I said with a laugh.
“No, she just seems, I don’t know, comfortable in that mom role,” he said. “She seems kind of sad, too.”
“Yeah,” I said, hanging my head. “My grandma.”
“I know,” Josh said. His hand tightened around mine. “Listen, do you want to go back? We could watch the fireworks with them, if you want. Or . . . you could be alone with them.”
I looked up at Josh’s face, searching for what he really meant. I wanted to know what he was thinking just from gazing into the depths of his eyes. I wanted to be back on that road that we’d started on, the one where we just got each other and being together felt completely natural.
But now Josh felt opaque. I couldn’t figure out what he meant by his offer. Was he b
eing selfless? Or was he pushing me away?
“I don’t want to go back there,” I said.
“Okay,” Josh said with a nod.
“No,” I said urgently. “I mean back to how things were when we first met, and I liked you and you liked me, but both of us were too scared to say anything about it. And you sent me all those mixed signals . . .”
Josh frowned.
“What mixed signals?”
“You know!” I said. “When we first met. You were all hot and cold. You were sweet, then you were surly. You told me about the job at Mel and Mel’s, but then when I got it, I swear your face went white.”
“And then I kissed you,” Josh said quietly. He looked like he wanted to kiss me right then, but I wasn’t having it.
“Yeah!” I said. “You can see how I was a little confused. But then, well . . .”
I grabbed Josh’s hand, loving how familiar his long, slim fingers felt and how neatly and automatically they crisscrossed with mine.
“But then I thought we were all figured out. I mean, it’s been amazing. Until tonight.”
Josh cocked his head and said, “Chelsea, you of all people should know nobody gets ‘figured out.’ You never figure it all out—but you keep trying.”
Now I cocked my head at him.
“That’s a funny thing for you to say,” I said.
“Why?”
“Well, I hope this doesn’t sound bad,” I said, “but I think you’ve got some issues with, you know, control.”
Josh smiled a tiny bit, then took his hand back and leaned into the sand, propping himself up on his elbows. He gave me an I’m listening look.
“Well, there’s the way you have a folder or drawer or cubby for every little thing at Dog Ear,” I said.
“That’s true.” Josh nodded.
“And you do this sport that’s all about precision and timing,” I said. “And what about your friends? You skipped that whole lantern-making extravaganza even though I can think of one person—one girl—who would have really liked to see you there.”
Josh snorted.
“And then there’s your hair,” I said.
“My hair?” Josh said, slapping his hand on top of his head.
“No, no, I love your hair!” I said, getting up on my knees so I could reach over and stroke his sleek, spiky hair. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “It’s just that it’s so different from a lot of boys’ hair. It’s so close-cropped, it never gets messy, never gets in your eyes. It’s very . . . practical.”
Josh shook his head slowly as he gazed at me. And in the almost darkness I couldn’t quite tell what was going on in his face. Was he mad?
“But attractive,” I said with an earnest nod. “Did I mention th—”
I didn’t get to finish what I was saying, because Josh was on his knees too, wrapping his arms around me and kissing me hard. He came at me with such force—or maybe just because it was too dark for him to have good depth perception—that we toppled over into the sand. We landed, our arms still tangled up together, on our sides.
This made us burst out laughing. But then, quickly, we were kissing again, our hands buried in each other’s hair and our bodies pressed together. When we finally broke apart, we were breathing hard. We lay on our backs for a moment, staring up into the black sky.
Then Josh rolled over so that he was facing me, and I rolled toward him. He put his hand on my cheek.
“I think you do have me pegged,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said with a coy smile. “I think I’ve got to do some more investigating.”
Josh moved his hand up to my temple. He pulled free a curl that had poofed out of my ponytail and spiraled it around his finger. Automatically I reached up to tuck it back behind my ear, but he stopped me.
“You like your hair under control too,” he said. “But I loved it that day you came into Dog Ear with your sisters. It was all loose and wild.”
“And red,” I said with a long-suffering sigh.
“And red,” Josh said, but from the way he said it, I could tell he thought it was a good thing.
Also because he started kissing me again.
But then abruptly he stopped and pulled back far enough to look me in the eyes. I wished I could see the pretty, velvety brown of his eyes, but it was too dark to see colors. We’d become black and white, like an old movie.
“You make me want to, I don’t know,” Josh said with a little self-conscious laugh, “not lose control so much as release it.”
“That’s the nicest thing-that-I-don’t-completely-understand that anybody’s ever said to me,” I teased.
Josh shrugged happily.
“Like I said, that’s the whole point,” he said. “Not-figuring each other out.”
I touched his hair again.
“I’m enjoying not-figuring you out,” I said.
“I’m enjoying not-figuring you out too,” Josh said. Then he squelched my laugh with another kiss—a kiss so long and deep that it made me feel dizzy, especially in the pitch-dark of our little nest near the dune. I sank into the kissing so deeply that I forgot where we were.
Which is why I was startled when we were interrupted by a huge Pow!
Only when I saw bright red sparks tendrilling down through the sky over the lake did I remember.
“The fireworks!” I said.
Josh’s hand was on his chest.
“I forgot too!” he said breathlessly.
Pow!
The next one was gold and shimmery. It made a sizzling noise after it exploded.
I sighed and leaned against Josh. He swung his arm around my shoulders, and I snuggled in even closer.
Usually, watching fireworks made me feel tiny, almost consumed by the huge starbursts looming above me. But in Josh’s arms I felt different. Safe and not quite as small as before. But way more exhilarated.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said to Josh during one of those breathless pauses between explosions. “I think I like dates after all.”
“Me too,” Josh said. “I think we should go on another one”—he paused for another big Pow—“as soon as possible.”
And that’s why Josh showed up at my house on my very next day off—carrying two giant paddles.
“This one’s yours,” he said, thrusting one of them at me with a big grin.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, stepping off the front steps into the gravel with my arms crossed. I was wearing my favorite bathing suit, the high-waisted black halter with the white polka dots. It wasn’t vintage but looked it. Over that I wore my gauzy, flowy cover-up. “I thought we were going to the lake!”
“We are,” Josh said. “Just not Lake Michigan. We’re going to Wex Pond. Well, to be specific, we’re getting into a boat on Wex Pond. My parents’ landlord has a little rowboat there, and he said we can use it whenever we want.”
Wex Pond is what Bluepointers called the Albert R. Wechsler Reservoir, because that was a pretty fancy name for what was really just a big bowl of water surrounded by farmland, some crooked trees, and a few docks.
I propped the oar on its end next to me and looked at it dubiously.
“I think you’ve got the advantage here,” I said dryly. “Is this thing gonna give me blisters?”
“How about we just try it,” Josh proposed. “I packed us a mayo-free lunch and everything. If you don’t like it, we can go back to the beach. I promise.”
I couldn’t help but smile and nod my consent. It was so easy to be adventurous with Josh. I think I would have even agreed to go fishing with him, even though that would have driven my dad crazy.
“Let me just water the plants,” I said, laying the oars down in the gravel and leading him to the backyard.
“Oh, yeah. How’s the garden?” Josh asked. He walked over to check it out while I unwound the hose from its reel on the back of the house.
“Wow!” he said.
“I know!” I said, proudly pulling a couple weed
s from around the lettuce plants. “I mean, about half of the radishes croaked, and one of my cucumber vines is looking pretty puny, but everything else is getting huge.”
It was a little embarrassing how proud I was of my garden. The tomato plants got visibly bigger and fluffier every day. The pale-green romaine leaves were looking less delicate and translucent. They stood straight up. And most of the other plants had started sprouting trumpet-shaped yellow flowers.
“Hey, look!” Josh said, bending over to peer closely at the biggest tomato plant.
I crouched next to him to squint at the fuzzy branch. Then I gasped.
One cluster of little yellow blossoms had been replaced by tiny tomatoes! They were as green as Granny Smith apples and just as hard, but they were unmistakably tomatoes. Each had a little cap of pointy leaves that made it look like a gift-wrapped present.
“That was so fast!” I exclaimed. I did a quick inspection of the other plants and shrieked again when I found a collection of little cucumbers, curled under the big, flat leaves like shy caterpillars.
I jumped up and down with my garden hose, accidentally spraying Josh a little bit.
“Sorry!” I said. “I just can’t believe I actually grew something. I mean, all I did was stick them in the ground and water them, but still! Pretty cool, huh?”
“Pretty cool,” Josh said with a crooked smile and a hint of a tease in his voice.
“Okay, I know it’s dorky,” I said. “But I don’t care. I’m super-proud of my little vegetables, and I will not be inviting you over for salad when they’re ready.”
“No!” Josh said, rushing over to put his arms around me. “Salad vegetables are the only ones I like. Please?”
“I’ll consider it,” I said. I finished spraying the soil. The July heat was getting so bad that the dirt caked right back up by late afternoon. I put the hose back and grabbed my jar of cayenne pepper from the windowsill. After giving the plants a quick sprinkle, I led Josh inside.
My mom was at the kitchen table, pinning pink and pinker squares together in a complicated pattern.
“Hi, Josh,” she said warmly. Even though I still thought her baby clothes quilt was a little weird, I was happy to hear a normal warmth in her voice again, instead of that forced perkiness that had been there when we’d first arrived in June.
Fifteenth Summer Page 14