When August Ends

by Penelope Ward

  Looking down at my shoes, I noticed they were pretty dirty. It had rained earlier, and I’d stepped in some mud. I couldn’t walk through the house like that.

  “You mind if I kick these off?” I asked. “They’re all muddy. I don’t want to dirty your floor.”

  “Go for it.” Heather said. She watched me remove my shoes. “Your feet are huge.”

  “Thanks for the notification.”

  “In case you didn’t know.” She laughed.

  I changed the subject. “So, who was that guy?” I asked, taking a few steps into the living room, still overly conscious of my damn feet.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, we don’t have anything else to talk about at the moment.”

  She let out a deep breath. “He’s my ex. I wasn’t expecting him to show up tonight. I didn’t even know he was in town for the summer.”

  “He doesn’t live here?”

  “No. He moved to Boston. We broke up shortly after he left for Boston University a couple of years ago. We were supposed to go to BU together, actually. And then things got really bad with my mother, so I never went. He went without me. We thought we could make it work long-distance, but he decided he didn’t want to be tied down.”

  Shit.

  “You were supposed to go away to school?”

  “Yeah. I was enrolled in their nursing program.”

  I shook my head. This girl had given up the most important time in her life to be a full-time caretaker at twenty years old. I thought about where I’d been at her age: away at college with all of the freedom in the world. I’d taken it all for granted.

  “I’m sorry to hear that—that you couldn’t go.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve gotten used to the idea. Anyway, I really wasn’t prepared for him to show up here tonight.”

  “Listen, I know you’re too polite to suggest this, but we can do this another time if your mom isn’t feeling well. I can jus—”

  “No! I invited you over. This is my night off. I don’t want to waste it. Besides…” She looked down at my hands. “You brought…bread.”

  I’d practically forgotten. “Yeah. Ugh…I didn’t have much time to decide what to bring. I had a bottle of wine but then remembered you can’t drink.”

  “Well, legally I can’t, but I can certainly drink if I—”

  “No, you can’t. Not with me giving you the alcohol.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, then.” Waving her hand, she said, “Please, come into my kitchen, grumpy.” She took the bread. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  I stuck my thumbs in the loops of my jeans, feeling uneasy about this so-called dinner for two. “Sure. Anything is fine.”

  “Seltzer okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  She popped open a can of cranberry-lime sparkling water from the fridge and handed it to me.

  She stood across from me and watched me take my first sip. “Thank you for the bread.” Her face looked flushed. “God, you make me nervous, Noah,” she added. “And the fact that this night has turned into a clusterfuck is really not helping. On top of that, you won’t even let me have a drink to calm down.”

  No one could ever accuse this girl of not saying what was on her mind. She was honest to a fault.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t have a drink. I said I wasn’t going to be the one to give it to you.”

  “Okay.” She smiled. “I was half-joking anyway. But I could use one right about now.”

  Ironic that she claimed I made her nervous, because she made me downright uncomfortable. She stood across from me in a tight black shirt with her tits squeezed together. Her long, blond hair, which she typically wore up, was loose and cascading down her back, and her legs were on full display in a tiny denim skirt. I most definitely wasn’t supposed to be noticing those things—thus, the discomfort.

  “Why do I make you nervous?” I asked. “You shouldn’t let anyone have power over you like that. There’s no reason I should be making you nervous. I’m just standing here.”

  “It’s not what you’re doing. It’s who you are. From the moment we met, you’ve intimidated me. This dinner was supposed to be an attempt to get over that, but so far no luck.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like that I made her nervous, but maybe it was better this way. The alternative—me being overly nice to her and leading her on—wouldn’t be good, either.

  “You know….” I said. “You shouldn’t let people see you sweat. It doesn’t matter what I think about you. My opinion is meaningless in the scope of your life.”

  “Oh, I know that. But I want to get to know you, and it would be nice to do that without constantly fucking things up.” She looked back toward the bedroom. “I’m gonna go in and ask my mother to come out one more time, okay?”

  “You don’t need to do that. Let her be.”

  She wouldn’t listen to me. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

  After Heather disappeared upstairs, I wandered around the living room, expecting to find some photos to look at. There weren’t any, not a single one. Fathead—that was the name I’d made up for the dog—stared at me.

  There was a large collection of figurines on a shelf, mostly children.

  Her voice startled me. “I see you’ve found my Hummels.”

  “Is that what they’re called?”

  “Yes. I collect them.”

  “I was wrong about you,” I teased. “You’re not a teenager. You’re eighty.”

  She chuckled. “Don’t make fun of my Hummels.”

  “I’m joking.”

  She moved closer to me. “There’s a cool story behind them, actually.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was this nun…Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel. That’s where they get their name. Anyway, she studied the arts before she gave up her life to join the convent. But even amidst that sacrifice, she never lost her identity. She continued her art, and she’d draw these little people. Someone discovered her and made an agreement with her to make them into figurines. After World War Two, US soldiers stationed in Germany sent these to their families. I loved hearing that. To me, they represent nostalgia and innocence—hope. They make me happy. Or, at least, at one time they did.”

  Interesting. But not anymore? “How long have you been collecting them?”

  “Since I was about eight. I’d ask for them for birthdays and stuff. I stopped collecting them some years back, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.” She didn’t elaborate. “Anyway…I’m really sorry, but my mother doesn’t want to join us. She’s having a bad day. This is very embarrassing.”

  “There’s no reason to be embarrassed about things that aren’t your fault.” It hit me that this entire invitation was likely bullshit. “She didn’t really want to meet me, did she? You said that was the reason you invited me over.”

  Once again, it didn’t take much to get her to tell the truth.

  “No,” she admitted. “I just wanted to have dinner with you.”

  I sighed. I couldn’t even be mad at her. “So, let’s have dinner, then.”

  A look of panic flashed over her face. “Dinner…shit!”

  She raced to the kitchen and opened the oven to remove a burned lasagna.

  “I meant to take this out before Eric came by. He totally screwed me up, and until you said the word dinner, I didn’t even remember I was baking it.” She threw the potholder down in frustration. “I don’t do the cooking thing all that often, but I normally know how to make lasagna.” She muttered, “Shit.”

  “It’s okay. It’s just lasagna.”

  “No. It was supposed be a nice dinner. And I messed it up. Eric showing up really fucked with me.”

  She almost looked ready to cry. Suddenly, all I cared about was making it better.

  “Hey…fuck the lasagna, okay? It’s a beautiful night. And we have bread. We can eat it outside.”

  She ma
naged a smile. “And salad. At least I couldn’t burn the salad.”

  Stepping into action, I headed for her cabinets.

  Heather followed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m seeing what else you have that we can make real quick.” I turned to her. “Do you have canned tomatoes and pasta?”

  “Um…yeah…in the pantry.”

  “Perfect. I’ll make pasta and a quick sauce to go with the bread.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s fine. I actually like to cook. It’s therapeutic after a long day.”

  “You should do it more often then, because you’re kind of wound up half the time.”

  As nervous as she claimed I made her, that didn’t stop her from being a little ball buster.

  “Well, that’s why I came to the lake, isn’t it? To unwind? I can’t help it if a certain someone keeps intercepting.”

  She fetched me a large can of tomatoes. “Do you really think I’m a pain in the ass?”

  I looked back at her as I filled a pot with water. “You want to know the truth?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  I shut off the water and placed the pot on the stove. She leaned against the wall, smiling and waiting for my answer.

  “I’m tough on you, but I don’t think you’re a pain in the ass. I actually admire you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “You’ve made some pretty big sacrifices for your mother. Not just that—I see how hard you work, even saw you getting groceries for the old lady down the road, too. You’re a good person, and you find time for others even though you have a lot on your plate.”

  “You’ve been stalking me?” she teased.

  “No. I was driving by when you were unloading your car and helping Mrs. Benson bring the stuff in. You didn’t notice me.”

  “I still think you were stalking me.” She winked and popped open a can of seltzer for herself. “Hey, how did you know her name? You’ve met Mrs. Benson?”

  “Oh, I’ve met Mrs. Benson.”

  “Uh-oh. What did she do?”

  “I was driving by her house one day and noticed some wind had taken her mailbox down. I knocked on her door to give her the mail that had fallen out and let her know I’d fixed it.”

  “And?”

  “Before I had the chance to tell her why I’d knocked, she informed me that I was much better looking than the guys they normally sent her.”

  Heather laughed out some of her seltzer. “Oh no.”

  “You know where I’m going with this, then.”

  “Yes. I accidentally found out one day when I went to check on her. Definitely not something I’ll ever forget—learning first hand that Mrs. B spends her Social Security check on male escorts.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Ninety.”

  “Damn. Well, she knows what she wants, I guess.”

  “She must have been pissed when she realized you weren’t on the menu.”

  As I stirred the pasta into the pot, I changed the subject. “So, what did Eric want? He told you to think about what he said…”

  Heather crossed her arms and blew a breath up into her hair. “He wants me to agree to go out with him one night while he’s home. He says he wants to talk about what happened between us. I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice…you know that saying.”

  “He hurt you pretty badly, huh?”

  “Well, we were together for a long time, throughout high school. I always knew there was a risk in him going away to college without me. I just didn’t think he’d call me drunk and in tears, confessing that he’d messed up and slept with some girl at a campus party.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head as if to dismiss my sympathy. “You know what, though? He did me a favor. At least I didn’t waste more time with him.”

  “You should never settle for someone like that. I don’t care what he has to say to convince you otherwise.”

  She continued to watch me cook until I plated two dishes of angel hair pasta and poured the red sauce over them.

  “You okay with eating outside?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a nice night.”

  We took the food out to the back patio. The sun was halfway down.

  Scooting her chair in, she said, “This is a real treat. I should be ashamed at the way this dinner turned out, but I have to say, it’s kind of nice being served by you. It might even be worth burning the lasagna.”

  She grinned, and it took everything in me not to smile back.

  I pointed to her plate. “Stop smiling and eat.”

  Heather twirled her noodles around her fork. “Can’t stop smiling, but okay.”

  I needed a lock for my jaw, because I was smiling now, too. It was contagious.

  We ate in silence for a while.

  Wiping my mouth with a napkin, I said, “What would you want to be doing if this situation weren’t holding you back?”

  Heather put her fork down and pondered my question. “Well, I would be in college, probably halfway through. I think later I’d want to get my masters to become a psychiatric nurse. But then I’d also want to find some other things I’m passionate about—like you have with your photography. Your photos are amazing, Noah. Truly. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”

  I’d never shown her my work. “You Googled me, I take it.”

  “Yeah. Hope you don’t mind. Your photos from Havana were breathtaking. I’ve visited that page on your site several times. How did those pictures come about? What made you choose Cuba?”

  It impressed me that out of everything on the site, she’d taken notice of that piece. The photos weren’t easy to look at, but they were real with a powerful message. Those particular shots were all in black and white.

  “It was an assignment for a newspaper five years ago. You could say it chose me. I was working freelance at the time and traveled there with a reporter for a feature on the current state of Cuba and its people. It was one of my longest times away from home, actually. Only the photos are on my site, not the accompanying story.”

  “Well, that’s the beauty of it. The photos tell the story even without the full explanation, which proves your talent. I’m not just saying that. Believe me, I’m a terrible liar. Your work is really amazing.”

  I was never good at accepting compliments, especially about my work. But I tried.

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you tell me more about it?”

  “The Cuba trip specifically?”

  She leaned in, her eyes full of wonder. “Yeah.”

  For some reason, I felt like obliging.

  “I don’t know if you noticed the shots of the teenagers with tattoos. There’s this underground punk culture of young people there. Many of them were high on amphetamines when we were taking those photos.”

  “Have you ever heard of Los Frikis?” she asked.

  I nodded, surprised. “Yeah. Actually, I learned about them when I was there.”

  “Those kids reminded me of a modern-day version of that. Hopefully things are better for the people you photographed than they were for their predecessors. I remember reading about Los Frikis and being totally blown away that some of them intentionally injected themselves with HIV to escape their own government. Imagine being forced to do manual labor or imprisoned just because you look different? So you make yourself sick to escape danger by being put in a quarantined sanitarium? That tells you how bad things had to be. It breaks my heart.”

  I knew my eyes were wide. “Where did you learn about that?”

  “I read an article about it some time ago. Some things you just never forget.”

  “You’re right.”

  “What about the photos of the little kids?”

  “That was an orphanage.”

  “Oh, that’s sad.”

  I stared down into my plate, thinking back to one kid in particular who still had
a little piece of my heart.

  “There was this one little boy. His name was Daniel. He was only five. He had mitochondrial disease.”

  “I’ve heard of that. What is it exactly?”

  “It’s an inherited condition that affects various parts of the body, like the cells of the brain, nerves, muscles, kidneys, heart. His speech was impaired, and he was confined to a wheelchair. For some reason, he really took to me, kept reaching for me during the week we were there. The first time I met him, I was snacking on a clementine. He grabbed it from me and started eating it. The woman at the orphanage said he never did stuff like that, never interacted so easily with someone. My connection to him was strange but profound. I ended up bringing him clementines every day. I really wished I could have done something more for him.”

  “Like taken him home?”

  “It crossed my mind, believe it or not. I never stopped thinking about him—to the point that I contacted the orphanage a year later.”

  “What happened?”

  It was hard to talk about. “They had closed down. I have no idea where any of those kids are now. It haunts me to this day.”

  “Oh no. What were you planning to do…when you called them?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly can’t tell you. I just wanted to make sure he was okay—maybe find out how I could help him financially. I made some calls, but no one could tell me what happened to the kids who were there.”

  “That’s scary, but you know, the fact that you were still thinking about him after you left and wanted to help speaks to your character.”

  It had been a long time since anyone looked at me with admiration in their eyes. If only I deserved it.

  Over the next half-hour, Heather listened as I told her more stories from my travels. She was more interested in the people I’d met along the way than the places I’d visited, which I found to be telling about the kind of person she was.

  As a cool summer breeze came in from the lake, Heather’s mother appeared at the sliding door.

  Heather took notice and said, “Mom, come join us.”

  “No. I just came out to take my pill. I’m going back to my room.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Chadwick,” I said.

  “Call me Alice.”

  I got up and extended my hand. “Noah Cavallari.”