The Summer We Got Free

by McKenzie, Mia

“You just said yourself it’s not bad,” Ava reminded Paul.

  “But when you saw me come in you aint know how bad I was hurt.”

  “If your sister brought you here, and not to the hospital, you can’t have been very hurt,” she said.

  He frowned. His ankle throbbed.

  “You want some aspirin?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, out of spite, even though he did want some.

  On the drive home, he had been sure that whatever anger she felt over what he had told her would give way to love and nurturing when she saw that he was hurt. She had never doted on him, not in all the time they had been together, which never bothered him because he knew it wasn’t her nature, but whenever he was sick or hurt she would tend to him, bringing him medicine and food and checking to see if he was feverish by pressing her lips against his forehead, a thing he loved and always responded to, no matter how sick he was, by putting his arms around her. He knew she had no reason now to check him for fever, but he wished she would, wished she would at least touch him, would at least come near him, instead of standing on the other side of the coffee table looking indifferent. “I guess you don’t even want me here,” he said.

  “I never said that. I didn’t throw you out, Paul. You left.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t remember you trying to stop me.”

  “After what you told me, I didn’t mind seeing you go,” she said.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was tired of this. Tired of saying he was sorry for this thing he’d done half his lifetime ago. Tired of feeling like shit for it. “I’m sorry for what I did,” he said again, looking up at her. “I been sorry for it for eighteen years. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it. But it aint nothing I can do to change it now. I can’t go back.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “Can’t you forgive me?” he asked her. “Aint I done enough for you, Ava, been enough for you, taken care of you enough, loved you enough, that you can forgive me for this thing?”

  She thought about his love and about the kind of husband he had been. In all the time they had been together, he had never once treated her badly, never abused her, never neglected her, never left her. He had been attentive and loving, and he had also given her time and space to herself, almost never crowding her or demanding her attention. He was the only man she had ever been with, so she had no one to compare him to, but she believed he had been a good husband and that he was a good man. Still, looking down at him now, lying there with his ankle bandaged and a look of sincere regret on his face, she felt unable to move past it.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “I need some time, Paul. It’s only been a day.”

  He nodded. “Okay. You’re right. I can go back to Tyrone’s, if you want me to.”

  She wondered what Helena would do if Paul went back to their cousin’s. “I don’t mind if you’re here,” she told him. “I just don’t want any pressure.”

  “Alright,” he said. Then, “You tell your folks about what I told you?”

  “No.”

  “Then, I wish you wouldn’t. I mean, I got to tell them sometime. But I’d rather wait and see if you and me can patch things up, first. I don’t want everybody hating me at all at once.”

  She knew he wanted her to say that she did not hate him, but instead, she said, “I’ll let you tell them, then. But don’t wait too long. They deserve to know.”

  ***

  On the second floor of the museum, several rooms back from the Great Stair Hall, in a tucked-away room into which few visitors seemed to find their way, Ava stood before a small etching of two little girls. They were peasants, it seemed to her, dressed in modest clothing and, according to the plaque on the wall beside the drawing, they were from the Netherlands. One girl was older than the other, who was very small, just a toddler. The older girl held out a toy to the younger, a doll, and the smaller girl reached for it. Ava studied the details of the etching, its shades and lines, a broom leaning against a wall in one corner of the room, a jug and basket of laundry in another. She considered the posture of the two girls, the older one holding the doll on some kind of circular hook and the smaller one reaching with one hand. The longer she looked at it, the more she thought that the older girl was not, in fact, holding out the doll for her sister to take, but was only holding it in place, unconcerned with the younger child’s desire for the toy. Or perhaps even holding it back, Ava thought, away from the little child’s grasp. Ava tilted her head to one side, squinted at the scene, wondered.

  After a few minutes, she got up and walked through that room and into another, then out into a larger room, where the painting of the woman in front of the mirror was hung. There were a few people in this room, but not many, and there was a muffled quality to the sounds of the museum, the footsteps and whispers all far-away-sounding. Ava sat down on a bench and stared up at the painting, not thinking, not trying to remember anything, just sitting and viewing. After a while, she felt someone watching her, and when she turned, Helena was standing a few feet away. She blinked, at first thinking she must be imagining her.

  “I didn’t mean to lurk,” Helena said, coming closer, her voice echoing softly in the high-ceilinged, wood-floored room. “You looked like you were thinking about something, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Ava patted the empty bench beside her and Helena came and sat down. There was a little dirt under her fingers and Ava knew she’d been planting flowers for Regina.

  She had not decided whether or not to tell Helena about the things that were happening to her. She did not know if she could explain it right, if it would even make sense, or if she would seem like even more of a crazy person to Helena. Seeing her there, though, she wanted to. She thought it might help to know what Helena thought about it, and, too, she felt a desire to confide in her.

  “My mother told me that I used to be different than I am now,” Ava said. “That I used to be wild. And happy. When I was a child. I don’t think I’m that person anymore.”

  Helena nodded, thoughtfully. “Most people aren’t the same as they were as children, Ava.”

  “I guess. But just in the last few days I’ve been feeling a lot of things I haven’t felt in a long time. Remembering things I’d forgotten.”

  Helena looked at her, and Ava knew what she was thinking.

  “Since you came,” Ava said.

  Helena peered at her and the look in here eyes was cautious. “Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

  The question surprised Ava. She shook her head, vehemently. “No.”

  “But why? Why would my being here cause you to remember?”

  “I don’t know,” Ava said, sighing, feeling suddenly very tired again. Her head hurt. She rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers and looked at Helena curiously. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked.

  “Oh. Well, I hadn’t been here in such a long time. I felt like being around art today, so I came.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  “A couple of hours. I timed my visit so I could leave with you.”

  That pleased Ava and she smiled, and the pain in her head got worse, a sharp stabbing in her right temple. She closed her eyes.

  “Ava, are you alright?” Helena asked, and Ava felt her hand on her shoulder.

  The pain subsided quickly and Ava nodded, opening her eyes. “I have a headache, but I’ll be alright. Are you ready to go?”

  “Before we do, I’d like to show you something.”

  Ava followed her out of that room and into another, and through several more, until they reached a small room with dark yellow walls. In one corner there was an expressionist painting of a train station, with people rushing along the platform towards a waiting locomotive. The scene was painted in rich colors, dark reds and browns and blacks, and everything in it seemed to be in motion.

  “It’s lovely,” Ava said.

  “I was nine,” Helena told her, �
�when I first saw this painting. I was on a school field trip. I remember wondering where the train was going. I hoped it was somewhere very far away.” She looked far away herself for a moment, then she smiled at Ava. “It was the first time I was ever moved by art. It made me want to go places, and see things.”

  “Well, you’ve done that,” Ava said. “And you’ll be on a train again very soon.” Ava wondered if, when she left, the memories she had sparked would leave with her.

  “Should we go?” Helena asked.

  Ava shook her head. “Not yet. Let’s stay a little longer.”

  They sat there on the bench, in the emptying gallery, close together with their shoulders touching, and the weight of Helena against her made Ava feel warm all through her body, and steadier than she had all day.

  That evening, when George got to the back entrance of Blessed Chapel, Chuck was already holding the door open and peering around for him. When he saw him he smiled and said, “Wait there while I grab my things,” and started to shut the door, but George pushed it open and entered.

  He hadn’t been inside Blessed Chapel even once since Pastor Goode had thrown his family out of the congregation. He looked around the small room they were standing in, a room where Sunday School classes met, and thought how everything looked the same.

  “My car’s right outside,” Chuck said. “I thought we could drive up to Fairmount Park.”

  George walked past him, further into the church. From the small back room, he entered the larger basement area, where a small stage and a baptismal pool were located. The sound of his shoes against the tile floor was familiar and he remembered all the Easter breakfasts and Mother’s Day luncheons he had attended here. He stepped up onto the stage and looked down into the empty pool where the twins had been baptized. He went up the back steps to the main floor of the church and into the main chapel. The familiar smell of bibles, and air perfumed by so many years of ladies in their Sunday bests, made his nostrils tingle in the dark. He found his way behind the pulpit by touch, remembering every square inch of the place, where each pew began and ended, which steps led where, and with the flick of several switches he raised the lights. Not much had changed in all those years. The colors, the dark wood of the pews and the lush red of the carpet, had lost some luster, but not much. The stained glass windows, through which no light shined at this hour of the evening, depicted the same new-testament bible stories as they always had. The annunciation. The sermon on the mount. The crucifixion. The ascension. The resurrection. The black, hard-back bibles, and the red, hard-back hymnals, sat neatly in the racks on the back sides of the pews. He ran his finger along the top edge of a hymnal and stared up at the choir box, remembering the music. The drums and cymbals, the piano and the tambourines, whose sounds had coursed through his veins like blood every Sunday for so many years.

  George sat down on the cushioned deacon’s pew, in the same spot where he had sat when he was the youngest deacon in the church, and stared up at the empty pulpit, over which hung the statue of Christ on the cross. He stared at the place where Pastor Goode always stood. He was not one of those preachers who moved around during the sermon, pacing the pulpit like a lion in a den. He stood behind a podium, like a lecturer, a teacher, commanding all eyes to one spot. George had loved Pastor Goode’s sermons, he had been riveted by the rising and falling cadence of his voice and comforted by the way the word of God filled the chapel like a warm breeze, and even envious of the Pastor because God had chosen him to spread his gospel. Even when the sermon mentioned things that made George cringe inside, full of shame and secret pain, especially then, he had felt safe in the blanket of his voice and the shelter of this holy place.

  He wanted to feel that again and he closed his eyes and asked the Lord to reach out and touch him, to help him feel connected. But no feeling of safety came. He opened his eyes. Staring up at the empty pulpit, he felt empty, too. Lost. Abandoned.

  George got angry and was filled with the need to strike out, to smash something, to break every window and crush every tambourine. But he knew he could not. So he sat there and waited for Chuck.

  When Chuck came and sat down beside him on the deacon’s pew, he asked. “George, are you alright?”

  He wasn’t. But he didn’t know how to begin to say all the ways he wasn’t. And anyway it seemed pointless to try. Because he did not believe there was anything he could say, or anything that could be said to him, that would make him alright. He believed he would always be this way, always tortured, always afraid, always lonely and ashamed. And he believed, too, that he deserved to be.

  “I haven’t prayed once since I was made to leave this church,” he said.

  “Why?” Chuck asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Chuck said, taking George’s hand.

  “No,” he said. “Let’s stay.”

  “Stay?”

  He nodded. “Whatever we gone do, let’s do right here.”

  Chuck shook his head. “No. I can’t.”

  George folded his arms, and sat back on the pew. “It’s here or nowhere.”

  ***

  Sarah had made great progress turning her lie into the truth, but she still needed the fire-eating man to ask her to come back again. She returned to Penn’s Landing, this time later in the day, right after his performance ended, thinking she would catch him packing up, but instead she found him on a nearby bench, eating his lunch.

  He smiled when he saw her approaching and said, “Sarah the Brave! You missed the whole show!” He stood and gestured towards the seat beside him. “Join me,” he said, then waited until she was seated before he sat down again.

  She had no idea what to say. She had spent the whole day at work trying to come up with something, some topic of conversation that might interest him, but she had no clue what a fire-eater might be interested in besides eating fire. He was sitting there staring at her, though, smiling and looking like he was waiting for her to say something.

  She swallowed hard and said, “Hello.”

  He seemed to like that. His smile turned into a grin. “Hello, yourself.” He held out his sandwich to her. “You hungry? It’s not anything but peanut butter, but you welcome to share it.”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “To peanut butter?”

  She nodded. “To peanuts altogether.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” he said. “A real shame. I love peanut butter myself. What if we was to get married? Would I have to give it up? I mean, I like my ladies dying for my kisses, but not literally.”

  She figured he was trying to be funny, but she did not believe in laughing at people’s jokes just to make them feel good, so she didn’t.

  He laughed to himself a little, and sighed, and took a bite of his sandwich. He looked out over the water and didn’t say anything else.

  She wanted to run away. She was embarrassing herself and she knew it. Still, she was determined to turn her lie into the truth, determined to fix what she had broken so that Helena would see her again.

  “How long have you been doing this?” she asked him.

  He looked at her, blankly. “What? Eating lunch? About ten minutes.” He grinned.

  He was corny. Silly. But suddenly she felt the corners of her mouth pull the other way around and she smiled, too, surprising herself.

  “I been eating fire for dimes and quarters for twelve years,” he told her.

  “Do you have a real job?” she asked.

  He laughed. “A real job, huh?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  He waved a forgiving hand. “Aw, it’s okay. I’m used to it. I aint met a woman yet who thought juggling fire on the sidewalk was a real job. Considering how much I like doing it, it probably aint. But, yeah, I got a real job. Working security down in south Philly. What about you? Where you work? Close by?”

  “I’m a teller,” she said, “at the Bell Savings on Chestnut.”

  “You like it th
ere?”

  She nodded.

  “You live in West Philly?”

  “Yes,” she said. “How did you know that?”

  “’Cause South Philly’s full of Italians, and North Philly makes ‘em a lot rougher than you. West Philly ladies are always the nicest. You grow up there?”

  She nodded. “We lived in southwest when I was real small, then we moved when I was six.”

  “Oh, yeah? I live in southwest. Over on Kingsessing.” He raised his arm and pointed southwest. “I grew up in Boston. I guess you can hear my accent. I’ve lived here a dozen years, though. You ever been to Boston?”

  She shook her head. “I never really been anywhere.”

  “Well, when we’re married, I’ll take you there,” he said, and grinned again.

  She looked at him, searched his face for the disconnect, the distracted glance out at the water, or at some passersby, that would confirm for her that he was just going through the motions, humoring her. She searched for it, but she could not see it. All she saw was his crooked grin and a warm glint in his eyes.

  “You a pretty girl,” he said.

  She looked away from him, down at her hands.

  “I guess men tell you that all the time, huh?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “But I don’t believe them, and I sure don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe me?” He sounded taken aback. “Why not? You don’t think you pretty?”

  “I do think I’m pretty,” she said. “I just don’t believe you can see it.”

  “Why not?” he asked, sounding half amused and half put off. “I got eyes, don’t I?”

  “Everybody got eyes. That don’t mean everybody sees.”

  He shrugged. “Well, why would I say it, then, if I didn’t see it?”

  “Habit,” she said. “To be nice. Because you think that’s what I want to hear.”

  “Oh,” he said, scratching his beard. “So, you got me all figured out, huh?”

  She nodded.

  He stared at her, his brow squeezed into a tight frown. “Lord, girl. What in the world happened to you to make you think like that?”