The Summer Bed

by Ann Brashares

  He got up and marched around on the carpet. His feet were nearly healed. His feet were less grudging than the rest of him. Yesterday he’d left his nearly new party shoes in the Goodwill box at the church.

  He would rather sleep on the couch in the den than in this horrible room.

  He’d rather sleep in the grass out back.

  He’d probably rather sleep on the gravel in Grandpa Harrison’s old dog run.

  He’d really, really rather sleep in his bed. In Sasha’s bed. In their bed. Their bed. With a view of the moon and their kalanchoe plant.

  They were in the same house! They were in the same place at the same time. At night! That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  Sasha is in my bed and I’m not. It was unbearable.

  He stared out the window at darkness. There were faint solar lights dotting the entrance to the dock. As he looked longer he saw other dots of light, moving sparking light, and of course they were fireflies.

  He crept out of the Holiday Inn and past the big room across the hall where Robert and Evie slept. That room had not been occupied a single night that he’d been in the house. He’d barely ever walked in it; it was a foreign country. It was like the Vatican City inside Rome, the sole part of the house that belonged exclusively to “the other family.” He turned the bend in the hall back into the familiarity of home. He passed Emma’s and Mattie’s rooms. At Quinn’s door he made himself stop and take a breath.

  Let it all in, he told himself. That was what Quinn would do. Feel everything.

  He walked past the door of the bedroom where his parents slept. He hadn’t bothered to wonder before why his parents got the master bedroom and Robert and Evie didn’t. He approached the door of his room. Sasha’s room.

  There was suddenly something captivating about his otherwise ordinary door: it wasn’t shut. It was very slightly open.

  Was she really in there? It seemed fantastical. He wasn’t in there, which did lend credence to the idea.

  Had she left it open a little on purpose? His breathing got very shallow very quickly. He tried to settle down, annoyed at himself. What are you, twelve?

  Could he knock? Should he? No, someone else would hear. Not Robert, unless he had bionic ears, and not Adam, because he was slightly deaf, but very possibly Lila.

  His palms were sweating. His almost-healed feet were sweating. He pushed a little on the door and it opened. He pushed most of his body through, not sure if he meant to or not.

  Now he was this far. Was this a good idea? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t not do it.

  He pushed the door shut behind him. Holding his breath, he turned to look at the bed. The room was dark, but faint moonlight poured through the skylight and onto her, as it had done onto him so many nights. She was there as though he’d dreamed her. She was even wearing the silky nightgown kind of thing he’d smelled an embarrassing number of times.

  He took a step closer. He was so transfixed by the sight of her that he forgot for a moment that he was there. And then her eyes popped open and she was staring at him. So he was there, that meant.

  She sat up.

  How would he explain this? Was it too late to ask if he could come in? He felt so tenderly toward her. He could barely hold himself together. “There’s a girl sleeping in my bed,” he whispered. He lifted his hands in wonder. “How did you get here?”

  She laughed. She didn’t look mad or sorry. She pushed over to the side of the bed.

  “Come,” she said. She made room for him.

  It was only right and fitting that it happen here, in their bed. One bed for two people turned two people into one: breathing, pulsing, folding together, and finally complete. He saw his expressions in her face, felt her desire in his chest, heard his emotions in her voice. All of it mixed up, shared around. He couldn’t distinguish himself from her and didn’t want to.

  It was a very quiet avalanche. It had to be quiet because all their parents were down the hall. Every one of the million moments he’d thought of her over these years, every molecule of her smell that he’d smelled in all that time seemed to amplify the force of it. The sheer momentum allowed for no stumbling.

  He didn’t know a body could undergo these extravagances. He marveled at the strange wonder of the whole enterprise. That he could feel like that. That she could be like that, look like that, move like that. Her body, the shapes, the smells, the taste of her. How could that even be?

  After the roar subsided and the calmer part set in, he felt the weight of her head on his bare chest, her damp body along his. She turned her face up to him and he had to look away for a moment. He didn’t want to leave any glimpse of her, any crumb of sensation, on the table, but he couldn’t take it. Too much pleasure. Too much ache curled alongside it. That was always how it would be, two sides of the same devotion.

  —

  Strange miracles abounded. Mattie and her mother and Evie baked a cake in the kitchen. Mattie’s throat swelled at their good-natured but cautious patter: the deference over sticks of butter, number of eggs, the robust agreement on the virtue of vanilla, the desire under their words to say more than they were saying. Adam was at his desk in the bedroom working on his book. Her dad was fishing on the dock. Emma walked on the beach where the cell service was best, telling Jamie about everything that happened. Ray and Sasha went together into town to get groceries. It was really something. What would Quinn have thought of this?

  You are here, aren’t you? What do you think?

  It all felt dazzlingly fragile, and she was afraid if she breathed too hard it would crumple and fly away like gold leaf. But then Mattie made herself breathe hard. What was there to be afraid of anymore?

  Today was Sunday, and tonight, after a final dinner to honor Quinn, they would all go back to their regular lives. Tomorrow they’d go back to school, back to work, back to the old week-to-week rotation.

  This might be the last time Mattie ever had both her parents in the house again. Amicable and generous as they were being, she didn’t expect they’d make a habit of it. The divisions would return. Of course they would. Grass would grow. Leaves would fall. Bills would fail to be paid.

  With a potent mix of thrill and disquiet she pictured Sasha and Ray walking toward the car together. Some things would be changed forever.

  She went out to keep her dad company.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said. He wore his classic paisley print bathing suit, a peach cabled sweater, his signature Ray-Bans flipped up onto his head. His outfit glowed with tradition and optimism. His face was still a heartbreak.

  “Hi, Dad. Anything biting?” She peered into his hopeful bucket.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  She sat by him on the dock and dangled her feet in the water as she used to do so often when she was small. He leaned over and tousled her hair.

  The air was autumn cool. The trees around the pond pulsed with color.

  “I like having both my parents in this house,” she said. “I admit it. I love both of you. I love both my families. I love this house.” She felt it so strongly and gratefully, even with everything she knew.

  He nodded. His face didn’t forbid anything, so she kept going.

  “Have I ever had this before? Did you and Mom ever stay here together after I was born?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how much she was going for.

  “Not for long. Maybe two months. Just long enough for you to start to smile.”

  “Did I?”

  “Oh, yes. Gloriously. Always.” He smiled quite sincerely at the memory. “It’s what kept us all going.”

  “Really?”

  “On my hardest days, it still does.”

  She saw his tears. She wasn’t scared of them anymore. If anything, she was getting used to them. She put her chin down and cried too. Tears dotted her legs.

  She knew tha
t this was a time of strange enchantment, when mysterious pathways hung open in the air. Soon they would close again. The old boundaries and restrictions would snap back into place. She needed to be brave and push through them while she could.

  “Was my being born enough to finally push you and Mom apart?” she asked.

  He looked at her, aghast. “No. That wasn’t it.”

  And more brave. “I didn’t look like the other babies. I know I didn’t. I still don’t. I know I’m different.” It was hard to say it.

  He took in her words. He realized what she meant. He put down his fishing rod. He regrouped. She saw it as it happened. She could almost hear him pushing into the reeds, getting out the machete, ready to combat the serious undergrowth. He was the brave one. Because of course he knew. He’d always known.

  He turned to her and took her hands, her white-pink hands in his brown ones. His gaze was unflinching. “You know that I was raised and loved by two people to whom I bore no physical resemblance. You know that, right?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve seen pictures of my dear mother, Matilda, for whom you are named.”

  She nodded again.

  “My mother and father gave me everything they had, everything I am.”

  She cried openly. She tried to keep her face from crumbling.

  “They loved me and cared for me, so they are my parents. There are no other parents. It is simply that way.”

  “Is it?”

  He pulled her toward him and hugged her. “I love you and I care for you. I always have and I always will.”

  —

  Jamie came up on the jitney late Sunday morning. Emma wanted him to see Brigadoon before it disappeared. She picked him up at the bus stop and they made a plan on the short drive to the house, which they decided to announce when they got there.

  “Get ready,” she prepared him.

  Because it really was like walking into a dream, seeing them all amicably settled around the kitchen table eating french toast. Jamie had the look of a man hallucinating.

  “Welcome,” Lila said, getting up, pulling more chairs over, as if she’d never been anything other than welcoming.

  Jamie looked from Robert to Lila, from Adam to Evie, from Ray to Sasha in disbelief. To Mattie he shrugged.

  “We’re going to elope in November,” Emma announced to the group without preamble. “You can all come.”

  There was general approval, congratulations, not much surprise. Ray did his taxi whistle.

  “Why not a wedding?” Lila asked. “We’ll behave this time.” She glanced at Robert and her face turned more serious. “I will behave this time.”

  Robert looked at Lila. The look wasn’t affectionate, exactly, but it was without bitterness. “I will too.”

  “I’ll make another bean salad,” Lila offered.

  Emma spun toward her. “No bean salad.”

  “I was kidding.” It was a remarkable feat that Lila had advanced to kidding.

  Emma and Jamie shared a look. “Well, for once, you all aren’t even the problem,” Emma explained.

  Jamie looked pained but unbroken. “We can go to city hall together.”

  Can you see this, Quinn? I really hope you can.

  ANN BRASHARES is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, The Here and Now, 3 Willows, The Last Summer (of You & Me), and My Name Is Memory. She lives in New York City with her family.

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