The Summer Bed

by Ann Brashares

  Sasha went into the bathroom. Sometimes a shower made her thoughts go straight. Sometimes a shower gave her a new look at the day.

  She turned on the faucets and let the water get hot. She was stepping into the shower when she saw the words magically appear out of steam on the mirror:

  I WISH I COULD SEE YOU

  —

  “How does Jamie seem?” Emma asked not long after she arrived in Wainscott late in the week. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. She couldn’t help it.

  Her father was sitting by the pool dangling his feet in the cold water, his pants rolled up. He didn’t seem to notice anymore that it was full of leaves and frogs. He cocked his head at her. “Why do you ask me?”

  So he wasn’t going to make it easy. “Because I know you went to the office for a few hours on Wednesday. Evie told me.”

  He patted the space next to him for her to sit, and she sat. “I did go to the office, but I didn’t see him, because he doesn’t work there anymore. I thought you would know that.”

  She turned to him, eyes wide. “I didn’t know that. I haven’t talked to him in a few weeks. We’re taking a break…because…after everything…” Her simple goal of the day was to get through without crying and she’d only made it to four p.m.

  Her dad put his arm around her. “Oh, my dear. I understand. Of course I do.”

  She wiped her nose flagrantly on her sleeve. “When did he leave? Did he say why?”

  “He gave notice last Friday. He gave a respectable explanation to the partners. To me personally he called and explained it would be easier for the two of you. He never wanted you to think his job compromised his commitment to you.”

  “He said that? We’re not even together.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I was surprised before.”

  She nodded and sighed. “I don’t think he’s thinking of our break as a breakup.”

  “Are you?”

  She shook her head. “No. He’s in my mind all day. I miss him terribly. I just don’t think I can be with anybody right now.”

  “I understand,” he said again, and his voice was heavy with emotion. He took a few breaths. He kicked up the water and watched the drops fall. “I have a feeling he’ll be patient.”

  “He says so.”

  “He was absolutely decent about it, as you would expect.”

  She smiled. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Sometimes she and her father had their best conversations when they were sideways.

  “I said I hoped he knew I didn’t hold him responsible in any way for the unpleasantness at that party. You know I had already apologized personally to him and to his parents.”

  Emma was reminded that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to open the thick cream-colored envelope that held the letter of condolence from Jamie’s parents.

  The way her dad spoke, it occurred to Emma that they were jointly rewriting that day. In light of the real tragedy that had followed, the engagement party had begun to feel like farce to them.

  Emma nodded again. “What did he say?”

  “He said he understood and accepted my words in their most generous spirit. He said he bore no ill will, only compassion, and he wasn’t leaving the firm because of the past, but because he wanted a clean slate for his future with you.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “And what did you say?”

  He shrugged. “What could I say? I said to him, and I quote: ‘You are a good man, James Hurn, and you are right to love my daughter more than this job, because she is infinitely more important than it will ever be.’ ”

  —

  Ray decided he had to talk to his mother.

  He found her sitting at the table of the small cluttered Brooklyn kitchen in front of a mug of tea. Out the back window she watched Hank, the downstairs tenant, watering the garden.

  When he sat down across from her Lila gave him a wan and distracted smile.

  “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah, sweetie.” Her face was white these days.

  “You know how you were saying to Adam that the memorial is happening on our weekend and should we offer Robert to stay in the house Friday night and we’ll stay Saturday?” He needed to say it pretty fast to get it out.

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” He took a breath. “I think that’s the wrong way to think about it.”

  She put her hands around her mug. She tipped her head. “What do you mean?”

  He bounced his heels. He was always fidgety at this table. “The house belongs to all of us. I think we should share it.”

  She nodded slowly. “I know. I agree. That’s what I was saying.”

  “No, but not the regular way, like you take Friday, we’ll take Saturday, but like actually share it.”

  His mother stared at him. Her expression wasn’t so much defensive or disagreeable, but more like a computer that didn’t quite understand her programming.

  “Like we could all stay there together for the weekend,” he explained.

  Lila’s computer was still not computing.

  “You know, like all of us staying in the house at the same time.”

  Suddenly her circuits came to life, pinging and zapping. “Stay in the house together? At the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “But—”

  “What?”

  Her eyes were getting a little frantic. “I don’t—”

  “Mom, there’s plenty of space. It’s not like you don’t all have the privacy of your own bedrooms and bathrooms. It’s a big house. And I’m not suggesting a permanent change or anything. Just for this one time.” He let Quinn’s image come to him, but only in flashes. “I think it would befit the occasion. I really do.”

  Lila raised both hands on her face. She still couldn’t make full sense of it. But he could see she was trying. She was beginning to grasp the idea underlying it. She looked out the window. Hank had finished with the hose.

  Her eyes were full when she turned back to him. “But do you think—” Her voice came out a little shaky. “Robert and Evie—”

  “I think you should call Robert and suggest the idea.”

  Lila considered this, her wet eyes large and unfocused. Her circuit board emitted one last fizzle. “Where would Sasha sleep?”

  —

  Ray finally wrote to Sasha.

  I don’t know what to say. It’s too hard a world.

  I just want to make sure you are still in it.

  I am still here. I’m pretty sure.

  I bought us a new kalanchoe plant. You don’t have to water it or anything. I got it because it has the exact same little orange flowers our old one had.

  Sasha thought for a long time about what to say.

  I wish I could see you too.

  —

  Same bikini. Same blond hair. Same big feet. Same Ditch Plains. But nonetheless, Mattie knew it was all different this time.

  Jonathan Dawes was surprised to see her. He dropped his board instantly, excused himself from his conversation with another grizzled surfer. He came over and hugged her.

  “I am so sorry, Mattie.”

  “I know. Thank you. Thank you for the note you sent.”

  He’d written her three lovely pages of his old memories of Quinn, wild little sprite, and she’d wept over each of them.

  He nodded. “How are you doing?”

  After everything that had passed between them, she wanted to answer honestly and not just say fine. “At first it was pure sadness. Now it’s more like I’m…uncomfortable…a lot of the time. But that’s not always a bad thing.”

  He touched her hand. “Wise girl you are. How is your mom?”

  Mattie let out her breath. “I think she’s starting to come back to life. A little.”

 
His face twisted with empathy. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “She was in her room for a long time. Yesterday morning she made us breakfast.”

  “Green shoots,” he said.

  “I hope so,” she replied. “None of us will ever be how we were.”

  “I know.”

  “I miss her all the time.” Her eyes began their daily quotient of leaking. She realized she trusted him. He’d told her the truth. She would keep telling him the truth.

  He looked like he was going to cry too. He was quiet for a while, but his face was moving, trying to formulate thoughts. “I’ve worried so many times I did the wrong thing, telling you about what happened back then…and then when Quinn…If I’ve added to your burden I am sorry for it.”

  She kicked the sand around with her large foot. “No.” She felt the warmth of the sun on top of her head. “Don’t be sorry for it.”

  She’d asked herself: Was it wrong? Was she angry at him for it? It wasn’t. She wasn’t.

  “It wasn’t wrong,” she said. She looked at him carefully. “I’m grateful to you for taking me seriously enough to tell me the truth and for…waking me up, I guess. It’s made me rethink some ways I am—some ways we are—that weren’t doing me or any of us much good….” She took a breath. “It’s hard to explain.”

  He nodded.

  She took another big breath. “I also wanted to say that in spite of everything I know now, and for all his faults, I already have a father.”

  He nodded again. He sort of tipped his head. “I already have a daughter.”

  She glanced up. “You do?”

  “Yes, her name is Julia. From my first marriage. She’s twenty-seven and she lives in LA. I think you’d like her.”

  “Wow.” Another potential sister, partial sister. How very strange. And strangely liberating. She’d imagined emptiness and regret for him, but Jonathan Dawes had that base covered before she was even born. “I’d like to meet her sometime.”

  “I’d like that too.”

  They fell to silence for a few moments, a companionable silence.

  Why was it there were some things you could have multiples of, like daughters and sisters, and other things you didn’t, like fathers and husbands?

  “Hey, Mattie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I respect that you are not looking for another father. And I am not looking for a daughter. But I am open to friendship if you are. Now that we’ve gotten everything on the table. I’d perfectly understand if not. But I’d like to know you if you’d like to be known, if you’d like to know me. No pressure. No obligations, no labels.”

  She studied him. She wasn’t mad at him anymore. She liked him. He did have large feet. “I think that sounds good,” she said.

  —

  When Ray saw the orange kalanchoe plant he wanted to hug it. He felt kind of fatherly toward it. He could see it from where he lay down on the bed and he found himself worrying for its well-being.

  When he couldn’t sleep he wrote to Sasha:

  I’ve sort of got the hang of waking up in the morning, but it’s not easy. I fight with falling asleep at night. Some nights it feels impossible.

  If I could hold you again, I think I could do it.

  Awake in her room in New York, Sasha wanted to say something clever, to add something important. But mostly she just wanted to cry.

  If I could hold you again, I think I could sleep too.

  —

  “Where are you?” Emma asked into her phone.

  “I’m on Carroll Street. Right outside your house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have ice cream. Only Chubby Hubby and chocolate chip cookie dough, though.”

  “Jamie.”

  “I know. But I have here a person who loves you and some ice cream. So why should I stay away?”

  “Because I told you to.”

  “Well, that’s true. But you need me a little, at least. And ice cream.”

  She missed him so much her ribs ached. What could she do? “Oh, fine.”

  Once inside, they sat on the floor of the living room with two spoons and ate ice cream directly out of the cartons. She got him to tell the story of his departure from Califax Capital.

  “Some of the partners were pretty pissed,” he explained. “At my exit meeting, they threatened to claw back money and enforce a noncompete so I couldn’t work in the industry for the next three years.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s what you get for being indispensable. That sucks. If you’d done a worse job they would have packed you off no problem.”

  “But wait. The story gets better. Because then your dad heard about it from my direct boss, Gary. Gary was not happy either. Your dad called a meeting of the partners. He came in for it on Monday. According to Gary he roared like a lion. He said you always stay loyal to the hard workers. If you’re good to them when they leave, they may come back. If you retaliate, they’ll only want to crush you. He told them to lay off me—no claw backs, no noncompetes—and he himself would pen a stellar letter of recommendation.”

  Emma laughed. “I am sure he will. I’d like to get a look at that letter.”

  “He didn’t tell you about all that?”

  “No.”

  Jamie breathed out. “Your dad is an amazing person.”

  “I know. He is.” She laughed. “If it doesn’t work out with us, I think you and my dad should get married.”

  It seemed to Sasha they had all entered the afterlife. They had somehow snuck through in disguise, in altered versions of themselves, searching for her. Trying to be worthy of her.

  We would do anything to find you, Quinn.

  Her father would not only countenance Lila, Quinn’s mother, but embrace her. He would stand next to her, waist-deep in the cold autumn pond, as the eight of them scattered Quinn’s ashes. Who else understood the love and the pain of it?

  Of course Sasha’s eyes had gone to Ray. Who else understood? It was good, it was miraculous, that someone did.

  They would all stand in the water, holding hands in a circle, as though they’d never done things any other way. Evie holding Lila’s hand, Robert between Lila and Adam. Robert, her father, would wear the kurta Quinn had bought him years ago, looking like a proper Bengali gentleman. Mattie would tuck a sprig of sweet jasmine above her ear, just like Quinn had worn on her last day. They would cry.

  We are with you, a little bit, Quinn, aren’t we?

  Quinn would have loved it. That was the best and the worst part. The best, that it had happened. The worst, that it had happened without her.

  But you are here, aren’t you? I know you are. This is because of you.

  Quinn’s magic was at its high mark. Strange and undeniable. Their tanks had gone empty, but she’d left them the means to help each other fill up.

  Did you do this? Is this what you wanted to happen?

  No one loved harmony and wholeness as Quinn did. No one suffered more from the discord. But she didn’t turn away from it. She embraced it and endured it. That was her particular courage.

  Sasha’s heart was as full as it had ever been as she lay in her bed replaying all the pictures of the day, watching for the moon to cross the exact center of the skylight.

  How could you even think the thought of Lila and Robert, Adam and Evie, sleeping under the roof of this house together? Up until August 9 it would have been purely unimaginable, as so many things these last few weeks had been, and mostly for the horror of them. But this was something different. She imagined all eight of them wide-eyed in their beds at the strangeness of this night.

  And then she imagined they were all still suspended in the pond together, reaching slowly through strange valences of feeling, like p
ockets of warm and cold water. It was a quiet and rapturous suspense. But eventually you had to climb out.

  Could they stay in it for a while longer, though? Could they make breakfast together as they had dinner last night—all careful and overpolite but agreeable? Would her dad put on an apron again and find something to put on the grill? Would he and Lila reminisce again, haltingly at first but not discordantly, about the snowy night Quinn was born in their bed?

  Would Lila squeeze Sasha’s hand out of the blue again and say, “You remind me so much of my girls I feel like I know you.”

  Would her dad and Ray take another look at the faulty air compressor together, nodding their heads in a manly way, her father standing up a little straighter again?

  Would she and Ray continue their glazed looks across the table, trying to make it appear that they were lightest of acquaintances, while she yearned to grab him and touch him and feel how all his parts felt against hers?

  Would Emma say, clueless, to the two of them, “You know, I actually think you guys might get along”?

  It was strange water they were spinning in.

  The only problem was Ray sleeping in an unfamiliar room at the other end of the hallway. She felt half of her was missing, wandering around the house like a zombie.

  She’d offered to take the guest room, but he’d insisted as a gentleman that he’d do it. She hated that on such a night she got to be here and he didn’t. She didn’t want to be zero-sum anymore. She wanted to be together.

  —

  There would be no sleep on this bed tonight. It was hard enough to surrender to sleep as it was, but now there was Sasha less than fifty feet away.

  There was the invincible strangeness and sweetness of the day. And in honor of Quinn he tried to welcome it all in: the bad and the good, the puzzling, the weird.

  Still. This was the opposite of where he wanted to be. This generic, unlived-in room with its scratchy carpet smelled like Union Street Cleaners. The bedspread was stiff and covered with stupid blue flowers. It didn’t smell at all like Sasha. He hated that about it.

  He might as well have been at a Holiday Inn while miracles were taking place under the roof of his own house.