Still Summer

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  “We’ve been there, and they’re doing as well as they can,” Ted told them.

  “But we need to go,” Cammie said, tears suddenly brimming.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?” Jim cried. The taxi driver jumped in his seat, startled.

  “We really need to see Chris and the boys, on the way home from the airport, even if it’s late,” Tracy said.

  “I was thinking that, too. It’s like we’re leaving her,” Cammie explained.

  “There’s time,” Jim tried to reason. “Tracy, you need bed. You need your own bed. Your face is raw. Your arm is in a sling. My daughter looks like a truck ran over her.”

  “But the strange part is, really, we’re not that badly hurt at all,” Tracy said.

  “And even weirder, it wasn’t completely awful,” Cammie said, her sobs diminishing, her voice ragged as she gasped for breath. “An experience like that puts your life in . . . place. If you almost die, you really, you know, you live. I know that sounds like a greeting card. I had some of the most wonderful things . . . I can’t explain. . . .”

  “You had a lifetime’s worth of bad luck,” Jim said. “Honey, don’t try to transform it into something that transcends what it was.”

  “But I learned things,” she objected.

  There was no point trying to explain; her father was simply too pragmatic.

  Cammie tried to codify those lessons, things she couldn’t explain: secrets and what leaks out of secrets, limits and what lies beyond them, death and what might be worse than death, love and what might have been love, wrenched away.

  “I learned I love the sea, and I hate the sea,” she said simply.

  “It’s a bad place to be alone,” Jim said.

  “It is, but it’s a good place to be alone, too,” Cammie told him. “Aunt Janis called, and said Meherio told her that we go into the sea because the sea is in us. It’s what we’re made of.”

  “John Kennedy said that, too. And someone before him. That’s woo-woo crap,” Jim said. “You two nearly died.”

  “Okay,” Cammie said. “You’re probably right.”

  But he wasn’t, she thought. A snapshot of Michel, his lion-colored hair pulled into dreadlocks by salt water, shot across Cammie’s mind; Michel leaning over her, the careless stars and diffuse gray clouds of night framing his bare shoulders. Suddenly, Cammie realized she couldn’t recall the color of Michel’s eyes but could still feel his hands and smell the lavender on his neck. She saw Holly, her rifle cocked, and Ernesto cowering in the leaking boat, and the huge, sparkling sails the first time they filled. She had promised herself to try to hold off thoughts of Michel until she could be alone and take them out of their tightly tied bundle, examine them one at a time. She recommitted herself to that promise now.

  Her father hadn’t been there. She loved him and was glad he hadn’t been there. But she was also, perversely, sorry for him and what he would never know.

  Chris opened the door to them. Tracy thought she must be as shocked by his appearance as he was by theirs. He was easily ten pounds thinner, perhaps more. “Chris,” she said softly, “we won’t stay long. Please let us come in.”

  “Trace, you’re always welcome here,” Chris said formally. His face, like a film in time lapse, worked from a ritual smile through a grimace and then fell, the demeanor of an older man. “Tracy,” he said, “thank God you’re okay. Come and see the family.”

  With a deep breath, all four of the Kyles walked into a room filled with Holly’s relatives. There were perhaps thirty people. Tracy realized with a shock that tonight had been Holly’s . . . oh, dear God . . . tonight had been the wake, and tomorrow was Holly’s funeral. Tracy recognized Holly’s sister, Berit, though she had not met Berit’s husband and children. She was introduced to aunts and cousins, all with solid Norwegian names—working names, as Holly had said, that sounded like the names of tools: Kelsvig, Haaldag, Brotte. The men stood. Berit finally shook herself, as if waking up, and walked over to take Tracy, briefly, into what passed in Holly’s extended family for a hug but would be considered an accidental nudge on a bus.

  “Berit,” said Tracy, “I’m so sorry. Holly was my best friend.”

  “And mine,” Berit said.

  “I know that you don’t expect this, but I apologize for my part in this,” Tracy said to the room at large. “I wouldn’t blame you for hating me. If she hadn’t gone—”

  “No one hates you, Trace,” Chris said, “except the boys. And they don’t, really. Children . . . they see things in such black and white.”

  “Where are they?” Cammie asked, stepping out from behind her father. She heard the simultaneous gasp and the attempt to cover it with the clatter of spoons and cups when people got a good look at her skin and her hair. Food was everywhere, from heavy noodle dishes swimming in meat juices to powdered pastries built on air around a thimbleful of fruit that, Cammie knew, would crumble into a lapful of sugared flakes at the first delicious bite. The collective offerings could have fed this room three meals and the block for another day. Bereavement evidently scooped out a hole that demanded to be filled, but words simply fell into it like so many pebbles. Food, especially Holly’s food, was at least consolation. Cammie’s mouth watered for a moment, but then the sight nauseated her. The nurses had warned her that overeating would be a temptation and a danger in the first days. She was to eat slowly, and good plain food, no spices, no pizza.

  Berit and the others quickly made a plate for Ted and cups of coffee for Tracy and Jim.

  So Cammie went to find Ian and Evan. They were nowhere about. She wandered through the kitchen, out to the back porch.

  The memories and very smells—starch, yarn, detergent, cardamom—combined to tug her back and down into childhood. This house, like her own, had a personal scent, undetectable to those who lived there. But Cammie had read that smell was the most potent of the senses. She expected to see Holly everywhere. In the breakfast nook, she stopped to look out at Holly’s pride—her shining inground swimming pool. She pictured the two of them out there when the pool was only a patio with a plastic picnic set on it—small Cammie with her hair in braids, Holly pointing out that long division was only a trick, once you learned it. A small whimper escaped her lips. Would she ever forget the sight of the sailors carrying the surprisingly little cocooned form over the bridge into the cutter? Aunt Holly, she thought, please be here. A hollow slapping sound caught her attention.

  Evan and Ian were at the back of the yard, alternating shots into their soccer net. Ian would guard the goal, then Evan would guard. Ian’s hair was long now. It looked good on him. He was tan and already taking on the structure of a teen. Evan simply looked pallid and stooped, like a little kid who had done nothing for days except watch TV in dark rooms. How much they had changed since Christmas.

  “Hey,” Cammie called softly through the screen. She pushed open the door and sat on the steps of the porch. Evan gave the ball one vicious last blast and shuffled toward her, head down. Ian turned glacial blue eyes on her. Holly’s eyes.

  “Your hair is all gone,” Ian said.

  “You like it?” Cammie asked.

  “It’s okay. It was pretty before,” said Evan.

  “They couldn’t get the tangles out. You don’t remember, but I would cry when your mom brushed my hair out. She would say, ‘You have to suffer to be beautiful.’”

  “Yeah,” Ian said briefly, cutting her off.

  “Sit down by me,” Cammie said. “Just for a minute.”

  Nervously, conscious as they never had seemed before that Cammie was a girl with breasts and other attributes, the boys complied. Holly had always explained that they were fraternal, not identical, though no one could tell them apart. Now, Cammie could see it. Ian would be fairer, taller. They looked like siblings now, alike but distinguishable.

  “So . . . you guys . . .” What did she want to say? She had wanted to hold them, but they were too old for that now. “Well, I guess all I can say is that this sucks. T
here’s nothing I can tell you that will make it better at all. And even more than it sucks now, I think it’ll get worse for a while. And I can be here for you, and your dad can; but it’ll still suck. There was nobody like my aunt Holly.” Evan put his head down on one hand. Ian stared out into the night, where the yard lights gave way to a dark, thready tangle of lilacs. Cammie paused. Then she asked softly, “Can I tell you one thing?”

  Neither boy said a word. Finally, Ian shrugged.

  “Out there, we were boarded by pirates,” Cammie began. “They were drug smugglers, two South American guys and an American guy around my age. They had heroin in an old boat. They tried to rape us. Not the American boy, because we got the feeling he didn’t have his heart in it. But the other guys were horrible. Like beasts. And right at the end, they decided they were going to take me with them. They were going to take me with them and rape me and kill me.”

  She glanced from one side to the other. The boys were looking at her, not exactly interested, but no longer enclosed in their stupor or numbed by the endless rote of the soccer drill. Cammie hesitated. She didn’t want to make this an adventure story. She did want to convey . . . something. Trust yourself, she thought. You can do this.

  “We had held them off for hours and hours, almost a day, before that. We were giving them a bunch of whiskey to drink, so much that they passed out. But finally, they were holding on to me, and it was the end.” Cammie drew a wavering breath. This seemed so long ago. She could not contact the girl who had witnessed this thing. With every step back into her own life, that girl receded from Cammie with the speed of a kite.

  She went on, “All this time, no one knew where . . . where your mom was. Your mom was already sick. She had blood poisoning, from a bite or a cut. That was something that could have happened to any one of us. But it happened to her. Anyhow, she was sick, and she was lying down in her cabin. We were all praying she wouldn’t come out. But what she was doing, Ian, Ev, she was putting together the rifle the captain had. She knew how to do that. Sick even like she was. She broke the lock on a metal chest with a hammer, and she got out that gun and put it together and loaded it. And just when they were about to pull me over, she crawled out. Before they could do anything, she shot the guy who was holding me; and she shot the other guy . . . and then she shot a hole in the boat. She never missed once.”

  The boys’ faces were unreadable in the dusk.

  But then Ian sat up, squaring his shoulders.

  Cammie, emboldened, pressed on. “Now, I don’t know that I’m worth so much. I’m not telling you it was a trade. She loved you guys more than anything. She never wanted to leave you. But she saved all our lives. She was so brave. And she said, she said I should tell you . . . that luck was bad . . . but . . . life . . .”

  “Is good,” said Evan, and he began to cry, not sobbing, simply making no attempt to wipe the tears from his face or the rivulets from his nose.

  “Ev, Ian, it doesn’t help. I can’t really be your big sister. I’ll try my best, and I’ll be there for you. I promise you that. But I’m going to miss her all my life. You will, too. I just want you to know, she was a hero. She was a total hero. That’s all.”

  Cammie drew up her own knees and let the sobs she had held in, held hard in her like a knot of cloth, unravel. She wept until she gasped and shuddered, crumpling against the screen, panting for her breath. As the darkness grew thicker, first Evan and then Ian awkwardly placed a hand on each of her shoulders. This is all backward, Cammie thought.

  But it didn’t matter.

  Holly wouldn’t have minded.

  August

  Two identical flat white cardboard envelopes arrived together, one for Tracy and one addressed to Camille Kyle in care of the Kyle family. Tracy was alone in the dining room, assembling her list of materials for the new Lifetime Fitness section of her middle-school class, when the postman rang the doorbell.

  “Nice to see you doing so well, Tracy,” he said. He brought the mail to the door every day now, though he never had before.

  “Thanks, Denny,” she told him, as she had every day for six weeks.

  Flipping through catalogs, the telltale glassine of insurance bills, a postcard from Janis at a dental convention in Puerto Rico, she stopped, startled to see the outline of the bougainvillea blossom on what she’d assumed would be an advertisement for shampoo or family photos. After peeling open the tab, she let the contents fall onto the tabletop. Her good eye welling, the other stinging behind its patch, she studied the eight-by-ten in gaudy color. She remembered it now, a shot taken by an Asian man on a bicycle who had patrolled the docks. It was just before they had boarded Opus for the first time.

  She looked away, but not quickly enough.

  She had seen them. There they all were: Holly with her thumbs cocked at her full breasts, her T-shirt with the bright blue legend NURSES MAKE IT FEEL BETTER; Tracy not quite prepared, as usual, her sunglasses half-on, half-off, making her look not so much batty as tipsy—a gangly British spinster on her “hols,” her long white legs stretching away from those wretched plaid Bermuda shorts. Tracy had stuffed them and all of her salvageable clothing from the trip (along with everything else Cammie adjudged “frumplitch”) into a donation bag weeks earlier. So thin now that nothing in her closet fit except her wedding dress, she still—despite the myriad bruises and strains that grabbed her unexpectedly with bites of pain—felt better than she had since she’d worn that wedding dress for the first time. She and Jim made love three, four times a week; they saw movies; they were having an inground pool installed. Poignantly but proudly, they hosted Chris and the boys for barbecue. Together, they visited a therapist—the same one Cammie was seeing—who helped Jim through the task of witnessing Tracy’s account of her terror. The doctor had suggested that they initiate a ritual of “checking in” with each other each day for fifteen minutes—not with problems, necessarily, or compliments, just keeping each other foremost in the business of living. This moment of communion had the effect of refreshing a marriage that was already better than most marriages they knew.

  It was better than any Tracy knew, except the marriage Chris had had with Holly.

  Tracy studied honey dissolving lusciously as she splurged on a second cup of tea. She broke her toast into tiny bites and savored each crumb—something Jim came to realize she might do the rest of her life. Tracy stood, mesmerized—until Jim interrupted—by the smells of vegetables crisping in oil, by the juice from the sliced orange or watermelon, the melting of butter on corn. It took her half an hour to eat a meal.

  And it took everything she could muster not to shout at Ted for letting the tap run while he brushed his teeth. Tracy shook the bottles of milk until every drop collected in the bottom of a glass and washed and reused jam jars until Jim began calling them “our stemware.” Always neat, she rearranged her drawers, stroking her clean T-shirts and bras. She placed every photo album in date order, with labels. For fifteen minutes, she quaked in shame before taking the first step of her first run, and then she ran for a mile, falling down into the grass on Hale Hill, then stopping to swing on the swing set at the playground until her sweat dried, walking home slowly, listening to the human music of voices from every yard. Real music, even old Broadway tunes, brought her to tears. And she played an Emmylou Harris CD again and again until Jim threatened to run over it with the car. Although weeks passed before Tracy could bring herself to drive, much less enter a store, when she finally did, it was to savor with her fingers the differing textures of fabric as if she were blind or newborn.

  And she woke, shuddering, stunned to find herself anchored in a crisp expanse of dry, clean white cotton, as her dreams—damp and dank, stained and smelling of sickness and sweat—rocked away into the night, endlessly rising and falling.

  Even with that, even with the memories that leapt up each time she drove past Holly’s corner or mistakenly began to dial her telephone number, life was unutterably sweet in its every moment.

  Tracy
was almost reluctant to study the photo.

  Finally, she did.

  There was Lenny, making a big production of shading his bald head with a newspaper, and Olivia, a blur of cream-and-black voile and creamy flesh, her huge sunglasses flashing like black ice, turning toward Cammie. Oh, Cammie—smirking and cutting her eyes at Michel, who was feigning a strongman’s bare-chested pose. Cammie’s long dark hair looped through the closure of her Chicago Cubs cap. She wore the aqua bikini top they’d cut away. Here it was, brand-new again, not the filthy and blood-spattered rag they’d given to Jim in a hospital bag, a bag he’d tossed in a waste bin outside, while a photographer from a local newspaper snapped a photo.

  Before she could stop, Tracy caught herself thinking how beautiful Cammie had been when she was . . . and realized she had been about to think “when Cammie was young.”

  What foolishness!

  Cammie was nineteen.

  She was still only nineteen.

  None of them was older than she had been six weeks before. Yet they felt as though they had aged. It was right, what the thinkers said, that there were different kinds of time—for lovers, it rocketed past with cruel speed; for those who waited, it shuffled.

  What manner of time had held them, suspended, for seventeen days and an eternity?

  Nonsense, Tracy thought. Cammie was looking more like herself every day. Her daughter had gained ten pounds. Her eyes no longer stared up haunted at Tracy when Tracy looked in at night, checking on her almost as if Cammie were a child. Cam invariably would still be awake, her fingers clasping the unbroken white sheet, her body barely rumpling the surface, a new mystery novel open and unread on the slight hillock of her belly. She still didn’t like to sleep at night. People who didn’t know—was there anyone who didn’t know?—liked Cammie’s gamine cap of dark feathers, though they rolled their eyes at Tracy and said, “That’s kids for you,” and asked, “How could she have cut that gorgeous hunk of hair?” And therein lay a tale that Tracy tried, usually without success, to avoid telling.