“We’ll tell her together.”
I step into Dad’s bedroom doorway, the phone still clutched to my ear. He’s sitting exactly like I imagined, with his index finger and thumb pressed against the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. “You’re going to tell me what?” I ask.
“Carrie!” Mom gasps.
Dad jumps to his feet. “How long have you been listening?”
I let the cordless phone drop down to my side. “Long enough.”
I can hear my mother calling my name from down by my knee.
“We didn’t want you to find out this way,” Dad says, rushing toward me.
“Find out what?” I grit out, punctuating the words with clenches of my jaw.
Dad speaks to the phone and not to me. “You should come over, Patty. Now.”
He nods and mumbles, turning away from me to talk quietly with her for a minute. Then he turns back. “She’s on her way.” He tosses the phone onto his bed.
“What’s going on, Dad?” I ask. My heart is thumping like a crazy woodpecker lives inside my chest.
“She’s on her way, and she should be the one to tell you.”
“Tell me
what?
” I finally yell. He stops and looks at me. His eyes are kind. They’re always kind. Dad wears glasses and has sandy blond hair. He has a bit of a potbelly that he can’t get rid of, no matter his diet, so he doesn’t worry about it. Right now, his face is bright red and he looks like he just ran a mile.
“Your mom has cancer, Carrie,” he says, and he winces as the words come out of his mouth. He opens his arms and I fall into them. He catches me, just like he always does. All I can think as I sob into his shoulder is that I’m glad he told me before she gets here, because if she knew I cared if she lives or dies, she would have power over me again.
Dad holds me close and lets me get it all out. When I’m done, I stand back and wipe my eyes.
“Is she dying?” I ask. I bite the inside of my cheek, calmed by the metallic taste of blood when I bite too hard.
He nods. “Yes, this will be her last summer.”
“Are you sure?” I wait. The clock on the wall ticks.
One. Two. Three. Four.
He nods. “I’m sure.”
“Good,” I bite out.
“You don’t mean that,” he scolds.
“Yes, I do.”
I go into my room to compose myself. My mother is on her way over to tell me she’s dying and I have to spend her last summer with her. But my mother died in my heart three years ago when she left. I refuse to mourn her twice.
I have almost enough time to fix my hair and my makeup before she arrives. I hear the knock on the front door, but I refuse to go out until they make me. Mom and Dad talk softly in the kitchen and I can smell coffee brewing. My mom is a coffee fanatic, but my dad hates it.
A knock sounds on my door. “Hey, Carrie,” Dad calls. I don’t answer, so he cracks open the door and sticks his head inside. “Your mom wants to see you,” he says. He shoots me a glare when he sees that I’m in my jammies, under the covers.
“What?” I ask, throwing my hands up.
“Get up,” he says. He’s suddenly
that
dad. He’s the one that has a sharp tone and a never-say-die attitude. When he’s
that
dad, I have to listen. I throw my book down and toss the covers back. I stomp past him, just because I can. “Carrie,” he says softly.
“What?” I ask when he grabs my arm to stop me.
He shakes his head. “Never mind.” He motions for me to proceed. “You don’t have to make this difficult, you know?” he tells my back as he follows me down the hallway.
“I’m not the one who made it difficult,” I hiss back over my shoulder.
Then I see her.
I stop.
She’s sitting at the table with a mug of coffee cupped in her hands. She looks up at me, and there are already tears in her eyes.
“Hi, Carrie,” she says quietly. She doesn’t get up or move toward me or reach out for me in any way.
“Hi, Patty,” I toss back. I go to the fridge and get a bottle of water.
Dad winces, but Mom chuckles. I didn’t expect that.
The last time I saw my mom, she was pleasantly plump. She wore Spanx and loose-fitting shirts and pants with elastic waistbands.
Now she’s not her.
She’s someone else.
She’s someone skinny with short, patchy blond hair that sticks out at odd angles. She raises her hand and absently strokes across the top of her head when she sees me staring at it. I step closer to Dad. I want him to touch me. I want him to ground me. I want him to make it all right. But he just hitches his hip on the counter.
Mom clears her throat. “So, about the summer,” she says. She swallows so loudly that I can hear it.
“About the summer,” I parrot. I don’t know what else to do or say. I lift my water bottle to my lips and take a drink.
“So, you don’t want to go with me, do you?” she asks. She looks hopefully up at me.
“No.”
“You’re eighteen. I can’t force you.” She shrugs.
“I can,” Dad murmurs. I look up at him and he glares back at me. I want to stick my tongue out at him, but he’s
that
dad right now.
“We can go sailing,” she sings. “We can fly kites. You always did like to fly kites.”
“When I was eight.”
“We can take long walks on the beach. You used to love to look for seashells.”
“When I was five.”
“Some of your friends still live there.”
“Which ones?” I ask, before I remember that I’m supposed to remain aloof.
“Amber and Rose.” She looks up at me from lash-less eyelids. “And that boy you used to like.”
“When I was fourteen.”
“We could leave right after graduation. I’ll pick you up, and we can all go to dinner to celebrate, and then we can go to the beach.”
I look up at Dad. “Are you going, too?”
He shakes his head and pretends to sort through the mail. “Not this time.”
But isn’t this supposed to be the last time?
“So, it’s settled,” Mom sings again. She swipes a hand beneath her nose and sniffles. “We’re going to the beach.”
“Yay,” I say, deadpan.
“Carrie,” Dad growls.
I force the corners of my lips to turn up. “Yay,” I sing, pumping my fist in the air. “We’re going to the beach!” I look up at Dad. “Can I go back to my room now?”
He glances toward my mother and she just shrugs. He leans over and kisses my forehead. He smells like wood chips and aftershave.
I start toward the hallway, and my mom’s voice calls to me.
“Carrie,” she says. I look back toward her. “I think I’m supposed to tell you that I’m dying and that this will be my last hurrah and that I want you to share it with me. But I’m just going to tell you that I want to spend the summer with you, even if you act like this the whole time, because I’ll take what I can get.”
Tears start to burn my eyes and I blink them back furiously. “I’ll go,” I whisper.
Dad puts his hands on my shoulders from behind and squeezes. “But she vows not to enjoy a single minute of it.”
Mom laughs. But it’s a sound with no joy in it at all. “I’ll take it.”
I nod and run toward my room. I go inside it and lean heavily against the wall. I leave my door cracked so I can hear what they’re talking about. But they’re so quiet that I can’t hear a thing. I do know, however, that my mom doesn’t leave until the early hours of the morning.
Nick
I let myself into the Michaels’ beach house and look around. It hasn’t been opened in a while, years probably. At least three. I don’t remember seeing Mrs. Michaels here even after the separation. I am pretty sure that she got the house in the divorce, because she’s the one who sends the checks.
I’d love to know what happened to cause the separation. And I’d like even more to know what caused Carrie to ditch me completely. A letter every now and then would have been nice. Or an e-mail. There are so many ways to communicate now that I can’t even think of all the ways she could have contacted me.
I nose around in their house and pull the dust covers off the furniture. It makes me sneeze and my eyes water, but someone has to do it. I rummage around under their counter until I find some furniture polish, and I go around and get rid of the dust that’s left and I vacuum. I’ve done worse things for money, and Mrs. Michaels is more than generous. She’s paid me way too much to take care of her lawn for a long time. I step outside when I hear a car door, thinking it’s the air conditioner repairman here to do the service. But as I go down the steps, I just see the neighbor’s son as he gets something out of his trunk.
I have never hated anyone quite as much as I hate this guy. His family rented the house next to Carrie’s all last summer, and I got to know him fairly well during that time. I even invited him to hang out with me and Malone a few times. Until he met Jackie. Then I spent all my time keeping him away from her, until I finally gave up and let her get her heart broken. He’s part of the reason why she is the way she is now. She doesn’t trust herself to make good choices around men anymore.
He raises his hand in a weak wave. “Nick,” he says. He gestures toward the Michaels house. “Somebody moving in?” he asks. I already removed the hurricane shutters and opened the house up.
“Nobody you need to know,” I toss back. I want to say “mind your own freaking business” but I keep that part to myself.
“Hey,” he calls, and he follows me around the corner of the house. “Do you know where I can find Jackie?” He grins lazily at me as he leans against the house, while I tip the cover off the air conditioner.
“Why do you want her?” I ask without looking up.
“She’s a fun lay, man. You know that.”
His nose is crooked from the last time I hit him. And that was over Jack, too. “She’s off-limits,” I say, grunting as I move the heavy metal.
He rubs the bridge of his nose, his lazy grin turning into a scowl. “You doing her again?”
“None of your business,” I say.
“Then you won’t care if I go looking for her.”
I get to my feet and advance quickly, so quickly that he stumbles back to lean against the house. I prop his chin up with my forearm, and he squirms until he realizes that he’s not going to get free. He just balances there on his tiptoes, trying to take in a breath. “Stay away from Jack,” I say. “And from Amber and Rose and particularly the girl who lives here.” I let him down and point toward the house. “She’s off-limits, too.”
“Who is she?” he asks, and I curse myself for even bringing her up because I just drew a great big target on her back.
“Go into town and take your pick of women. But leave my friends alone.” Leave mine alone. I consider Jack and Amber and Rose and the rest of the summer regulars to be off-limits. And Carrie—she’s mine. All mine. Until she tells me she’s not.
“We’ll see,” he says over his shoulder as he walks away.
Carrie
Dad glares at me from across the table, and I wince when he digs the toe of his dress shoe into my shin. He nods toward my mother like he wants me to pay attention to her. She’s sitting beside him across from me in the booth and I don’t know what to say to her. My feelings toward her haven’t changed. She left us. I want nothing to do with her.
“So, Carrie,” she says, “I arranged for someone to set up the beach house.”
I nod, and chew my Eggplant Parmesan slowly. “That’s good,” I mumble after I swallow.
She laughs. “The poor guy got stuck with all the hard work.” She looks at my dad. “John, do you remember how hard it was that first day at the beach? Taking the shutters down and getting it ready for the season?”
Dad gets a faraway look in his eye, but he nods.
I fill my mouth up so I won’t have to talk.
“No one has been there since the last time we went as a family.”
I was fifteen the last time we used the beach house. “Why?” I blurt out.
“Why what?” she asks, looking confused.
“Why haven’t you used it?” She loved the beach house.
“It just wasn’t the same…” She lets her voice trail off.
“You never took
him
there?” I ask. I refuse to say his name. The man she left us for doesn’t deserve a name or a face.
Her face reddens and she looks down at her food. “No.” That’s all she says. Just that.
That surprises me. She really loved the beach. I would have thought she’d want to share it with him.
“So, how’d you find someone to open it?” Dad asks. He’s trying. I don’t know why he wants to, but apparently he does.
“I used one of the local boys,” she says. She smiles at him. “I wish you were going with us.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.” He doesn’t look at her. He just looks down at his plate.
Mom lays her fork down and says, “Well, I guess we should get going. We have a long drive.”
I let my fork drop to the plate with a loud clatter. “Fine,” I say. I throw my napkin in my plate and get up.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” Mom asks.
“Patty, I’m eighteen years old. I think I know when I need to go to the bathroom.” She holds up her hands like she’s surrendering.
Dad transfers my suitcase to the back of Mom’s jeep. Then he walks over to me. I fall against him and rub my cheek against his chest. “I’m going to miss you,” I whisper.
“I’ll miss you too.” He rubs my back in gentle, soft sweeps. “Be kind to your mother,” he urges.
“Why?” I mumble.
He sets me back and tips my face up. “This is her last summer. Make some memories.”
“Okay,” I breathe. But I know I won’t.
We get into the jeep and I realize that the roof is missing and the windows are down. She’s not planning to drive from Charlotte to the Carolina coast like this, is she? “Can we put the top up?” I ask.
She puts her sunglasses on, grins at me, and shakes her head. “Nope.”
Then she jerks out of the parking lot so fast that I have to reach for the oh-crap handles. As she pulls out onto the road, my long blond hair starts to fly around my face. She looks at me, grins again, and opens the glove box. She roots around until she finds an elastic hair band. She holds it out to me between her thumb and forefinger. I take it and pull my hair back.
She runs a hand through her short cropped hair. “That’s the beauty of chemo,” she says with a shrug.