The Summer Bed

by Ann Brashares

  Her mother drew closer, put her hand on Mattie’s hand. Lila was skittish, still standing, her legs poised to flee, but at least she was still there.

  “I know about Jonathan Dawes, even though you don’t want me to.”

  Fear, self-protection, mother love battled on her mother’s strained face. Under her pajama top Mattie felt drops of sweat rolling from under her arms down her ribs.

  “He didn’t tell me, because he said it was your decision to tell me, but I know something happened with you and him.” She was crying more now and her mother was hugging her more now, so she couldn’t read her face anymore. And that was a relief. She’d rather talk wetly into her neck for the next thing she needed to say.

  “I know I’m part of this. I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t help it. I can’t help thinking that I look a lot more like him…than I look like Dad.”

  Her mother was holding her almost too tight. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  Mattie pulled forcefully away. “I don’t want you to avoid me or lie to me.” She wiped her eyes and nose with the sleeve of her pajamas. “I just want you to tell me the truth right now. That’s all.”

  The fight on her mother’s face raged on. It didn’t make her pretty. She looked punished, shamed, defiant, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Is Dad my dad?”

  Her mother was crying now too. “Your dad is your dad.” She was still holding back.

  Mattie would have liked to leave it at this, but she couldn’t. She had her mother to herself in a quiet room finally; she had nineteen years of secrets. She wouldn’t just let her out of it. “If I took a DNA test, what would it show?”

  Her mother looked stung. “Mattie, why would you want to do that?”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that. At all. I just want you to tell me the truth.”

  Her mom was crying openly now. “Try not to judge too harshly, Mattie. When we’re unhappy we do stupid things. We make bad choices. We look for reassurance in destructive ways. We hurt people we love.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “I was terribly unhappy then. So was your father. I was confused. Maybe you’ll understand better when you’re older, when you’re a wife and mother.”

  Mattie felt sympathy and judgment growing together. They didn’t cancel each other out. “I hope I don’t.”

  Her mother took it. The defiance was mostly gone. She blew her nose on a piece of paper towel and offered Mattie the other half. She swatted at tiny fruit flies floating around a bunch of brown bananas.

  “The only thing you need to know is that your father adores you and he has since the moment you were born. There’s never been any question that you are his daughter.”

  And here came the hardest question of all, and Mattie hadn’t even known she had it: “But does he know?”

  Big S,

  The thing I didn’t say before, which is also true, is that I dismiss my mother and I also feel protective of her. She’s already got three stepdaughters, and two of them are eager to write her off. I’m the one who has to stand up for her. I try to. She is a sincerely generous person. My worst disloyalty is probably in my thoughts.

  LR

  LR,

  This reminds me of something I haven’t been able to tell anyone. I went to surprise my dad to listen to his lecture last semester at Brooklyn Law, where he teaches. (Used to teach.) It was a hall big enough for a couple hundred students…and there were two. He went on lecturing like every seat was full. I stayed because it seemed even worse to leave, but I felt bad for him. And then there was the awkwardness on the way home, with each of us trying to brush it off, not feel embarrassed for the sake of the other. When I need to go easier on my dad, I think of that. I’m not sure it helps.

  I think I was kind of an afterthought in my family, most likely a mistake. I’m the one final complication that makes people give up trying to keep track. By the time they got around to having me, Lila already had three children and Adam had already left two. Lila had just launched her new career. Adam was forty-five years old. I’m the “yeah, whatever” kid.

  Grandma Hardy is convinced I am no relation of hers. “You are a nice boy. Who is your mother?” I’ve met my half sister Esther fewer than five times. Her husband thinks my name is Roy. When Mattie went to college my parents rented out the ground floor of our house, and I overheard my mom telling the neighbors it was because they were finally “empty-nesters.”

  I’m not complaining. It’s a relief not to deal with all the scrutiny and pressure a lot of my friends get. It’s just the feeling of disbanding, unwinding, downsizing that gets me down sometimes.

  Lila occasionally tries to psychoanalyze me. It’s pure torture. She tells me my attachment to summers at the beach house is my inability to let go of the past. But with her and my dad getting rid of everything else, I think it’s more my inability to let go of the present and future.

  Sorry for the soul-dump. Not sure what’s with me today.

  BS

  BS,

  It’s the opposite with me. I am Evie’s first and only kid, and she doesn’t have much else to do, so they make a big deal about how we are a little family. Special vacations, special dinners. They both take an “active interest” in my education, which is a bummer in every way. When Mattie went to college, my parents got a new, bigger place.

  I know it’s lucky to have your parents care about you. I try to be grateful. But if I’m being totally honest, I’ll admit that every time our sisters packed up to go home to Brooklyn, I wanted nothing more than to go with them. When they were gone, I practically stopped existing. I was like C-3PO: “I’ll be shutting down now.”

  Please dump your soul with me anytime. It is safe here. And as you see, I will dump mine right back.

  LR

  —

  “I don’t want to do this party anymore.” Mattie was on her lunch break, eating a sandwich in the shade of the barn while Dana minded the store.

  Quinn paused at the door, put down the bags of compost she was carrying. She could feel Mattie’s fragility. Mattie was not just back to the old bomb throwing.

  “Why?” Quinn sat down cross-legged on the grass opposite her.

  “Our parents are impossible.”

  “We knew that.”

  “Mom basically told George and Esther not to bother coming all the way across the country for it. She said to wait for the wedding, if it gets that far. If it gets that far. She said that.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Dad is torn between his desires to impress the Hurns and punish Lila. Guess which is winning out?”

  “Punishing Lila.”

  “Right.”

  “So he agreed to match whatever amount of money Mom put in. Guess how much Mom put in?”

  “None.”

  “Right. Her contribution is a bean salad, she said. So Dad said fine, he’d also contribute a salad. Guess what kind?”

  “Lobster.”

  “Right.”

  “We can do the rest of it,” Quinn said. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. And you know Evie will help.”

  “Who’s going to buy the booze?”

  Quinn shrugged. “We’ll use what’s in the house.” Robert kept a fair amount of liquor and wine around, knowing Lila didn’t drink. “And I have some money saved up.”

  “Why should you be paying for it? Why are they always such babies?”

  Quinn looked at her carefully. “Mattie, I know that can’t be the reason. This is exactly what we knew would happen. They’re both brave enough to come and face each other on pretty short notice, and that in itself is some kind of miracle.”

  Mattie sighed. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  Mattie left her sandwich in the grass. “I just…don’t
have the stomach for it anymore.”

  Quinn knew Mattie was struggling with something bigger than this. She had a strong intuition for what it was, but she also knew Mattie didn’t want to tell her yet. “You want to cancel it?”

  “I don’t want to hurt Emma’s feelings, and I’m worried the Hurns already bought the plane tickets. So I feel really bad about it. But I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. How could I possibly have thought it was a good idea?” Mattie put her hands on the top of her head. “So I guess it’s good nobody else is traveling for it. Wouldn’t it just be a relief not to have to do it? The truth is, I think Emma would be relieved too.”

  Quinn felt the sun on the tops of her knees. It would be a relief. But relief was not what she was looking for. Relief was a poor guide if ever there was one.

  You couldn’t deny the pain and you couldn’t avoid it. Embrace it. That was her mantra, and yet look what had been happening in her own family for almost her entire life. You let it have a voice if it needed one. What if it needed one?

  “I think we should go ahead,” Quinn said finally. “I’ll do everything, if you want.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve avoided it too long. We need to move on. All of us.”

  “You sure?” Mattie gave her a look, skeptical, with a lot of history in it. Because Quinn never showed up anywhere when she was supposed to and never dressed properly for any occasion, and could not even sit through the SATs.

  “Yes.”

  “It might be terrible.”

  “It might. But that’s not the reason not to do it.”

  Sasha/Ray,

  My alter-ego, my counterpart, my zero-sum. (I’ll be zero because you are sum.) We are never in the same place at the same time. Do we cancel each other out? Can anyone prove there are two of us? Flip sides, dark and light, girl and boy, yin and yang.

  So how about this for an idea: we are complementary rather than opposing, my friend. As contrary forces, we don’t cancel each other out, we give rise to each other.

  But what if, even once, I just want to be with you?

  Ray/Sasha

  P.S. Somewhat drunk when I wrote that. Please apply 40 oz. discount.

  —

  “Did you drive that black Audi that’s parked out back?”

  Mattie was trying to carry two large buckets full of zinnias. She kept sloshing the cold water down her legs. “Yeah.”

  Matt Reese smiled. “I think old Dana just took a picture of it.”

  Mattie rolled her eyes with extra gusto.

  “Daddy’s car, I’m guessing?”

  “No, my stepmother’s. Some jerk ran over the front wheel of my bike when it was parked in front of Dreesen’s. My dad told me to drive this till it’s fixed.”

  Matthew took one of the buckets from her. “I’m surprised you don’t have your own car.”

  She put the remaining bucket of flowers down on the counter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “ ’Cause you’re a daddy’s girl.”

  “My daddy has four girls,” Mattie said flatly, a challenge in her eyes.

  “None like you. Quinn says you’re the one who can get away with anything.”

  “Quinn said that?”

  Matthew sat down in one of the two lawn chairs they kept behind the counter. It was always slow on Wednesday evenings after the picking and sorting was done. “Sure. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. It’s a lucky thing.” There was a weight behind his words that sounded personal.

  She sat down heavily in the other chair, leaning against the stretchy green tubing that made the backrest. The strange Reeses’ farm talking serum was working again. “I guess it’s because I’m the receiver of most of the divorce guilt. Because I was so little. Because Emma didn’t need it and Quinn didn’t want it. Because Sasha didn’t deserve it.” Because I’m not theirs. She felt her eyes fill up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She was trying to keep her face from looking tragic, but he noticed anyway.

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Don’t listen to me. I’ve got nothing to say about parents. I don’t know anything about them.” He did an admirable job of keeping his voice light. “I do have a thing or two to contribute about grandparents.”

  “And I don’t have much to say about those. Except Grandpa Harrison bankrupted the family and then died and Grandma Hardy stashes silverware in her purse every time she comes to visit.”

  He laughed. “Did you know your grandma Hardy tried to hire my grandma to clean her house when they were both newly married? My grandma has not forgotten it.”

  Mattie opened her eyes wide. “Well, you should tell your grandma that the once-grand Gloria Hardy Harrison is stealing silverware now. The cheap stainless steel kind. That will make her feel better.”

  Matthew considered.

  “Maybe I’ll tell her myself,” Mattie said.

  The conversation dried up, but Matthew didn’t get up to go.

  Mattie took a deep lungful of late-July air. “Quinn’s right, you know. Everybody does go easy on me. It’s true I get away with a lot.” She brushed at her eyes. “But things are not always how they seem. Maybe I was a daddy’s girl. Now I don’t know what I am.”

  He nodded, as though listening for more.

  Suddenly she wondered if everybody knew or at least suspected the whole time. Maybe it was a regular feature of town gossip….And poor Robert Thomas actually thinks the little blond one is his….What if all these years it had been obvious to everyone but her and her dad?

  She dunked her hand in the cold water of the flower bucket, trawling for loose leaves. “Everything I thought I knew about myself, I don’t know anymore,” she said quietly.

  —

  Later that night Mattie sat on a chaise by the swimming pool. The surface of the water was layered with leaves because the pool maintenance company quit when her mother stopped paying her half of the bills. When her father saw the state of it, he would blow a gasket.

  It was the same old thing: Robert hated a dirty pool. Lila didn’t particularly care about a dirty pool. Robert hated bailing Lila out even more than he hated the dirty pool.

  “I like it better like this,” Quinn said when she came out of the house.

  “It’s more hospitable to frogs and dragonflies,” Mattie offered.

  “I like that.”

  “Dad won’t.”

  Quinn nodded. She sat in the chair next to Mattie.

  “He’ll get out there with the net again,” Mattie predicted. “You watch. He’ll clean it up. And at the end of this weekend, he’ll put all the leaves and crap right back in.”

  Quinn laughed.

  “He doesn’t realize Mom doesn’t care.”

  They sat together in silence for a while.

  “Do you know anything about Matthew Reese’s dad?” Mattie asked.

  Quinn shook her head slowly. “I don’t think anyone does.”

  “He doesn’t even know who it is?”

  “If his mom knew, she never said. Matthew asked his grandfather once and he told him, ‘Your father could be any damned man in this country.’ ”

  Mattie let this sink in. “Cameron probably has a different dad,” she mused.

  “Probably.”

  They fell into silence again.

  “I saw their mom once,” Quinn said in a hushed voice.

  “Really? I thought she was gone for good.”

  “Two summers ago I was tending the peaches late at night. She was sitting on the back steps of the farmhouse in the rain, waiting for somebody to let her in, but all the lights were off. She asked me if I had any money.”

  “What did you
do?”

  “I said I had a twenty and I gave it to her and she left. I don’t know if she’s been back since then.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “She and Mom were friends when they were young.”

  Quinn nodded again. “Carly Reese broke her dad’s heart. Poor Mr. Reese can hardly say her name. She broke everyone’s heart, again and again.”

  Holy shit, co-person. This party is actually happening. We will be in the same place at the same time!

  I’ll see your face up close in August. Dress code is flak jackets and hazmat suits.

  Sasha read Ray’s email and read it again. She went downstairs and wandered around until she found her mother in the laundry room.

  “Is the engagement party for Em and Jamie really happening? Did Dad say yes?”

  Even in the laundry room in the company of her one blood relation, her mother was diplomatic. “Seems like it’s a go,” she said brightly.

  “Why?”

  “Because the girls asked him.”

  “It’s that easy? All these years. Why didn’t someone tell me?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Sasha. It’s unbecoming.”

  Unbecoming. Her mother said it a lot. Sasha knew it was bad, but did not know what it actually meant. How exactly did it relate to becoming? Was becoming good to do? She stifled her desire to ask, because sarcasm is unbecoming.

  “And Lila said yes? That’s even harder to imagine.”

  Her mother went back to folding Sasha’s father’s underpants. “At first she said no. From what I understand. But then she changed her mind.”

  Would she really see Ray on the evening of August ninth? She tried to imagine shaking his hand or air-hugging or kissing his cheek. Was that what they would do? Would the world allow for that?

  And what about their parents? Would they stand in the same room? Would they listen to each other’s voices? Would they shake hands? Would the world allow for that?

  “Does Jamie’s family have any idea what they’re getting into?”