Summerlong

by Dean Bakopoulos

  Charlie opens the ninth draft to the first page and reads:

  In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

  Charlie begins flipping through the pages frantically, reading more and more, not wanting to believe that the names of the characters in this book, upon further perusal, are undeniably familiar: Nick. Tom. Daisy. Jordan.

  Gatsby.

  JULY 9,

  87 DEGREES

  This is the day during which Don Lowry sends Tom Merrick a lengthy pleading e-mail from his office and begs him, really, truly begs him: Could we—Claire and the kids and I—stay there for the whole winter? We need somewhere to be, away from everything, and I have nowhere else to turn.

  After Don hits Send, he finds himself almost choking on a sob.

  When Don hears from Merrick a simple, Okay with me. You’ll pay utilities? Don goes over to see Claire. She is poolside typing on her laptop, wearing her tiniest black bikini, a stringed affair she had bought almost seven years ago, when they had gone away to Jamaica for a week, without the kids. Don finds it absurdly sexy. He tells her so, and says, “Is that the bikini?”

  Claire says, “It’s hot, Don. Do you want me to wear a sweater?”

  “It’s not so bad today. Not even ninety. Where are the kids?” he says.

  “At the city pool. Charlie took them over so I could write.”

  “What a hero.”

  “If it’s unclear to you that Charlie’s generosity has saved us a great deal of heartache, it’s not unclear to me.”

  “Can I go swimming?” Don says.

  “Go for it,” she says.

  “God, I remember that,” Don says. “By the way, I have good news. Merrick says we can stay all winter. At his lodge. It has heat and I can plow us out with the snowblower; there’s one in the garage. All four of us, together round the fireplace.”

  She blinks at him. He is undressing. Stripping down to his black BVDs. His body is tan and looks good, though he is gaining some weight. She can see it in his sides and his chest.

  “Will you spend the winter in Minnesota? Will you do it? Say yes?”

  He says it with the earnestness he had years ago. She closes her laptop. She tells him to leave.

  “It’s a great plan!”

  “It’s not, Don. For one, school. Our kids are in school.”

  “We can homeschool.”

  “Oh, they’d love that.”

  “They might. We could snowshoe and ice-fish and ski! It’s not like they like school all that much here. The school’s not even that great, you always say that yourself.”

  “A valid point,” Claire says.

  “I’d chop wood all winter. I’d get buff again. I’d grow a beard.”

  She likes him with a beard but he thinks it’s bad for business.

  “I want you to start living in reality,” Claire says.

  “Before I do that,” he says. “When I see you in your bikini, I can remember every detail of that trip.”

  “I was younger then,” she says. “Good-bye, Don.”

  She tries to go back to her writing then, but Don hurls himself into the pool, swimming across it, getting out, jogging back over to her side, and hurling himself in again. He whoops and hollers as he does this, which at first sounds exuberantly joyful, and then quickly sounds painful, like an unwanted compulsion has seized control of his body.

  Claire finds herself smiling though—she knows this Don, this Don she loves—and she resists the impulse to hurl herself into the water alongside him. He is still, on some level, irresistible to her, but resist him she does.

  But when Charlie comes home, she finds herself sunning on the pool deck, in that tiniest of tiny bikinis. She’s given up writing for the day by then. For him, she almost goes to the small diving platform and dives in the water, a show, a seductive show, but then she sees that Wendy is with him, sobbing.

  Charlie shrugs as he comes near Claire. “Sorry,” he says.

  “She puked!” Bryan says, appearing suddenly in the yard as well. “In the pool, Mama. She puked in the pool! Will I get sick now? I don’t want to puke.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Wendy sobs. “I swallowed so much water!”

  Claire wraps herself in a towel and says, as soothingly as her shaky voice can say it, “Okay, okay, everyone. Let’s all fucking settle down.”

  This is not the word she means to say, but it is what she says.

  “Mom!” Bryan says. “Mom!”

  JULY 10,

  84 DEGREES

  ABC is bereft of dreams—such vivid dreams, all of June, and now they are gone. Now that Don Lowry has moved in, for some reason, lying next to him no longer makes her dream.

  She is in the hammock on the sleeping porch—where she spends almost all of her down time now—and hears Don Lowry coming up the steps. It is late afternoon. Maybe he is drunk; his footsteps seem heavy and unsure, the clomping plod of a drunk man trying to walk soberly.

  ABC stands up and smooths down her sundress and is surprised to find Ruth standing there.

  “How did you get up the stairs?” she says.

  “I walked!”

  “You did?” ABC says.

  “I feel good. It’s four twenty, ABC. It’s after four twenty. Do you want to smoke?”

  “Okay,” she says. “Is Don home?”

  “No. No, he is going to go tell Claire some idea he has, then take the kids out for tacos.”

  “I see,” ABC says. “Are they getting back together?”

  “Would you care?” Ruth says, with a sideways glance and a smile.

  Ruth sits in the large armchair next to the hammock. ABC reaches into her pocket, pulls out an Altoids tin, and lights a pre-rolled joint, and they smoke there, together.

  “I wouldn’t care at all,” ABC says.

  “Close your eyes,” Ruth says, and ABC does.

  “Think of her,” she says. “Think of Philly.”

  ABC shuts her eyes and feels the hammock gently swaying as Ruth says, “Do you see anything?”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “My mother’s mother, my Finnish grandmother, used to say that if you closed your eyes and saw fireflies, you know you’re entering the spirit world.”

  “Do you see them?” ABC asks. “Because I don’t see one firefly!”

  “Oh,” Ruth says, closing her eyes just as ABC opens her own. “Oh, yes, they are here! Happy to be here, aren’t they?”

  ABC closes her eyes again. “Seriously?” she says. “You just shut your eyes and boom—just like that? Spirit world?”

  Ruth falls asleep marveling at whatever it is she sees, whatever show that’s playing out on the back of her eyelids.

  Looking out the window, ABC sees real fireflies all over the backyard, just floating around under the canopy of the trees. She goes out to the yard with a mason jar, catches, easily, twenty or thirty fireflies, and then begins walking. She wanders across campus, and strolls into Charlie’s backyard.

  She finds the study unlocked and goes inside, where she finds Charlie in a robe. He looks as if he’s been swimming and has now dozed off on his cot while reading. A copy of The Stranger is on the floor next to him. ABC clears her throat. Charlie sits up with a start.

  “Jesus, come on in, why don’t you?” he says.

  She locks the door behind her.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” he says. “I found something weird in my dad’s things.”

  ABC slips her sundress over her head and hangs it on a hook near the door. He takes off his robe. He looks good, his body tan, his shoulders muscled and his waist lean. He is already aroused. She likes how easy it is to tell with a man.

  She kneels down on the rug in front of him. She will make him forget all about Don Lowry’s wife.

  “First this,” she says. And then, as Ruth Manetti might say: Reader, she blows him.

  JULY 11,

  90 DEGREES


  “You know what, Charlie,” Kathy Gulliver chirps, literally fucking chirps, “I’d forgotten how awfully hot Iowa can be!”

  His mother has come back to town with Lyle Canon. They have been to a wedding in St. Louis and are swinging through Grinnell one last time before heading out to northern California for the fall, where Lyle has a friend who is not using a cabin, or something along those lines.

  “It’s a record-breaking summer, Ma,” Charlie says. “It doesn’t reflect reality.”

  “Maybe it’s a new reality. No rain, no snow. A dust bowl!”

  “Don’t be so excited.”

  “Oh, Charlie, you’ve inherited your father’s relentless gloom. It doesn’t suit you though. You have my kind eyes.”

  Charlie and his mother walk down Broad Street in the heat on their way to see Gill. His mother is wearing a huge sunhat and a kind of hot pink tank top that ties in the back and a white skirt. She seems to skip a bit as she strolls. She’s lost fifteen pounds from all the hiking and camping and canoeing and her hair is longer than it has been in years, dyed a saucy auburn. She had not given him advance warning. She had simply shown up that morning, rapping on the front door. Of course, Claire had answered, and had to point Kathy to the study out back, where she had been greeted by ABC, emerging from Charlie’s chosen bedroom with wet hair and a sheepish smile.

  As she watched ABC walk out of the yard, Kathy had said, “You’ve got quite the little harem going here, don’t you? Like father, like son?”

  Charlie had to explain, as best he could, exactly why Claire and her two kids were in the main house, and Charlie was sleeping like some squatter in a cot out by the pool.

  “It’s cleaner that way,” Charlie had said, which wasn’t much of an explanation.

  “And who was leaving your little love shack when I arrived?”

  “Mom. Jesus.”

  “What. I’m teasing. Life is for the living! God knows I would have fucked around a lot more when I was your age, if I could do it all over again.”

  “Mom!” Charlie had said.

  “She looks familiar though, that one,” Kathy had said. “I think she was one of your dad’s groupies.”

  Now, only a few hours later, they are heading to the Mayflower to see Gill, and Charlie is still feeling stung by the whole operation, as if he has been ambushed by his mother’s appearance, her newly tanned self, and her snark.

  “That’s quite a summery outfit,” Charlie says. He is in jeans and a white T-shirt and canvas sneakers.

  “I don’t know how you can wear jeans in the summer,” she says. “You know one thing I learned from Lyle: if you dress for the weather, if you have the right equipment, you don’t ever want to be indoors!”

  It is late afternoon and they find Gill sitting in a wheelchair near his window. The vertical blinds are drawn and he squints into the stripes of fuzzy sunlight that manage to get through to his room. Gill’s able to stand, for they both watch him for a long moment before making themselves known to him, and Charlie sees that his father will stand periodically and look out the slats in the blinds, as if he is waiting for someone to come and get him. Charlie walks over to him and says, “Dad? Mom’s here.”

  His mother’s eyes are drowning. Her flush face suddenly goes pale.

  Gill looks like he’s about to stand again but then he sits back in his chair.

  “Oh?” he says. “My mother?”

  He doesn’t say Charlie’s name but Charlie senses something different in his face this time, he senses that this man does recognize him, if not as his son, then as somebody who has some import in his life. As somebody he has known for a long time but whose name he cannot recall.

  “How’s it going?” Charlie says.

  “Are you here with a car for me? To the airport? It’s so much effort to get to the airport from this goddamn town, isn’t it? That’s what makes people go crazy.”

  “No. No. Sorry. That’s not me, Dad.”

  Charlie motions for his mother to come closer and she does, but she seems hesitant to walk into Gill’s field of vision.

  “Well, what do you want?” Gill says. “How’s ABC?”

  “Dad, I have been in your study. I’ve been looking through your papers.”

  “My papers! My office on campus?”

  “Well, it’s all at the house now. All of your things.”

  “Kathy took them all there? Did she come home?”

  “Dad.”

  “She left me, you know,” Gill says. “Don’t blame her really.”

  “Kathy is here, Dad. My mother. Your wife.”

  The word dad seems to surprise him, though he says nothing. He makes a small O with his mouth and whistles vaguely through it. Charlie decides not to use the word dad again.

  Kathy, meanwhile, is trying to turn her crying face into something resembling a smiling one.

  “Do you know me, Gill?”

  He shakes his head no.

  She bends down and kisses him gently on the mouth.

  “It’s me,” she says.

  “Claire?” Gill asks. “Jordanna? Amy? Meredith?”

  Kathy walks out into the hallway.

  “I’ll be right back,” Charlie says. Gill says nothing. Charlie finds his mother—this stoic, optimistic, bizarrely carefree lover of Lyle Canon sobbing in a stained orange chair.

  “Mom,” Charlie says. “It’s not personal. It’s the disease, he can’t help it.”

  His mother looks up at him and laughs through tears. She blows her nose in a tissue and then sets the tissue down on a copy of Better Homes and Gardens.

  “I know that,” she says.

  “Mom,” Charlie says. “Come back inside. It might be the last time . . .”

  “All I ever wanted, Charlie, was not to be an afterthought in some man’s life.”

  Charlie understands. He was also an afterthought, but he has a task ahead of him and he goes back inside with the word afterthought like a staccato beat in his head, a million voices, stomping on bleachers, chanting: af-ter-thought!

  Af-ter-thought!

  Af-ter-thought!

  Af-ter-thought!

  Charlie stands near Gill and kneels down so he can be at eye level with him.

  “I want to finish your book for you, Professor Gulliver.”

  “My book?”

  “Yes.” Then, “Dad, it’s me. Your son.”

  “What book?” Gill says, his voice breaking with sorrow or confused exasperation. It is hard to tell which, though Charlie wants it to be the former.

  “The one on Gatsby. And Reagan.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that one. Only I can’t find the manuscript anywhere. Not on your computer, not on your CDs, not in your files.”

  “You can’t?”

  “No. Do you have any idea? Is it in a safe or file cabinet or—”

  “It’s not easy to find,” Gill says.

  “I know. Tell me, Dad. Where is it?”

  “In fact, it’s impossible to find it. Tell me who you are again?”

  “Charlie. Charlie Gulliver. Your son.”

  Gill looks back to the window, as if he is now sure that someone is waiting for him on the other side of those blinds.

  “There is no book,” Gill says.

  “What?”

  “There is no book,” Gill says again. “There never has been.”

  Charlie watches as his father’s chapped lips begin to tremble, and his hands, shaking, begin to clutch his forehead as if he is suddenly in the grip of a blinding headache. Softly now, he says, “Son, there is no book. There never was. Tell your mother. Tell her I am so sorry for all of the things.”

  JULY 12,

  90 DEGREES

  A sale! Don Lowry makes a sale, a small fixer-upper ranch on the southwest side of town. After the closing, he has a check and he deposits the check just before the bank closes at five. Not a big commission, but a commission, his first in months. It’s a check for four thousand dollars. He de
posits three and takes out twenty fifties for his wallet. He drives out to the Hy-Vee and buys a bottle of champagne and some flowers, and he’s not sure, even as he is buying the champagne, whom it’s for, and the flowers, he has no idea, but he decides, for some reason, that he wants the flowers, and then he drives to the Gulliver place, and he rings the doorbell. Claire answers and invites him inside. He follows her and sees she’s been in the kitchen cooking dinner with Charlie. The kids are outside in the pool.

  “Are they out there alone?” Don asks. “Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” Claire says. “What are you implying?”

  “They’re excellent swimmers,” Charlie says.

  Don ignores this and gives Claire a stack of bills, counting them out onto the counter where Charlie is chopping an onion.

  “Thanks,” Claire says. “What did you do, rob a bank?”

  “Yep,” Don says.

  Next, Don goes to the yard and strips down to his BVDs and throws himself into the pool to the delighted cries of his kids and he comes up splashing, roaring like a monster, the volume meant to thrill them like he did when they were toddlers and they run from him, giddily shrieking, and they do not know how real are his roars.

  Later, the champagne is warm, but he sticks it in Ruth’s freezer and he finds ABC in the yard. His khakis are wet from the rushed way he dressed after swimming, his hair still dripping onto his dress shirt. ABC is watering flowers in her cutoffs and a black swimsuit.