The Summer We Came to Life

I picked up my phone, pressed the call button and listened to it ring.

“Tuesday will be just fine.”

CHAPTER

5

SO, TWO DAYS LATER, MONDAY EVENING, AFTER I’d done all the shopping and arranged the rental cars, and talked to my sole Honduran friend, Ana Maria, about renting her uncle’s beach house, the vacation club, freshly reorganized, was packing bags in Virginia. Minus Isabel. She was already en route.

Jesse Brighton, Isabel’s mother, picked up the gift—a deck of cards with a little red bow—from her nightstand. A glitter of a tear appeared at the corner of her eye. Jesse wiped it with the back of her hand, not worried about smearing her black eyeliner. It was tattooed on—a service Jesse offered at her beauty salons. She set the cards back down and clasped her hands together, her scarlet acrylic nails pressing into her tan skin. After all this time, she might actually be falling for someone. The Cranky Professor, no less, Jesse thought and chuckled at the frowning visage of her neighbor and bridge partner, Arshan Bahrami. Jesse put a hand to her throat and felt her fluttery pulse. It wasn’t the world’s most romantic gift—the new cards commemorated their winning streak in bridge. But he’d said yes to coming on the trip, just as soon as she’d asked him.

Jesse clapped her hands together and shook her butt in her leopard pajamas. She looked back to the bed, where her red suitcase perched like a treasure chest longing for booty. Jesse pumped up the stereo and Michael sang his heart out about Billie Jean. She reset herself to “packing,” by which Jesse meant dancing around the bed, picking up an item—lace panties, a beach cover-up, a container of Texas RedEye Bloody Mary Mix—and tossing it into the suitcase. She paused and looked around the room for anything else she might be forgetting.

An itemization of Jesse Brighton’s bedroom would produce a most befuddling mix of clues about a woman’s life. A picture of her daughter, Isabel, hung next to the Don’t Mess with Texas sign and an original Dali, next to a framed poster of an eighteen-year-old Jesse on a 1975 cover of Vogue. Jesse leaped up and kissed the photo of Isabel and then of herself, before plopping down on the bed. She pulled a gold lamé stiletto out from under her as she dialed Lynette’s number. Lynette could decide which swimsuits Jesse should bring now that you know who was coming. Jesse sighed. How to hide the ravages of time?

Jesse was about to hang up when Lynette picked up on the fourth ring.

“The Chanel one-piece or the Christian Dior bikini? Which one do you think makes my ass look less like a wrinkled elephant?”

“Jesse, I can’t talk. I’ll call you in a bit.”

“Why? Ooohhh—”

“I’m hanging up.”

Jesse looked at the clock. “Nookie Night! Are you doing that thing? From Cosmo? That lucky dog—”

A man’s voice from the background bellowed, “She’ll call you later, Jesse!”

“’Bye, Jess,” Lynette said, and laughed her throaty Kathleen Turner laugh.

Lynette Jones set down the phone and looked at herself in the mirror. She smoothed down the nurse’s costume that had arrived in the mail in an unmarked brown envelope. Who would’ve thought a size large would ever be too small on Lynette Jones? That’s why you married a black man, honey, her husband always said when she cursed the scale. We appreciate extra curves. Lynette wouldn’t be sorry to have a few less curves to haul around, but make no mistake, Kendra’s mother would always be beautiful. Lynette smoothed her shaggy blond bob and made her mirror face—that puckered Pamela Anderson look all women make at themselves in the mirror. Then she spun around to face her husband.

“Are you ready for your exam, Mr. Jones?”

Cornell was lying on the bed in his boxer shorts and favorite argyle socks. He was tied to the bed frame with some of Lynette’s pantyhose. It was number three on Cosmo’s most recent “Spice up Your Sex Life” list. She bought it at the grocery store when they had the Saturday special on scallops. Of course, Cosmo mentioned black lace thigh-highs, not the control-top hose Lynette used to hide her varicose veins. And the socks were a modification, as well. But Cornell had insisted: “You know my feet get cold, baby. Bad circulation.”

Cornell answered, in an overdone baritone, “Yes, Nurse Jones,” making his big belly jiggle like chocolate pudding in an earthquake. Lynette pursed her lips to stifle a giggle, and sauntered over to her husband as best a lady could manage in white patent leather.

Lynette stepped around the suitcases and perched herself on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. She decided to use the stethoscope and creaked onto all fours atop Cornell. As she bent over, a boob flopped out of the costume. Lynette harrumphed as if gravely offended. Once upon a time, she’d had great boobs. She stuffed the breast gruffly back into the dress before she remembered Cosmo’s number three. Cornell confined himself to a small chuckle. She straightened up to avoid another costume malfunction.

“Ow!” Lynette yelped.

“What, honey? Your back?” Cornell moved to comfort his wife and remembered the panty hose. At the same instant, he realized his hands and feet had fallen asleep. Lordy, that was it. Cornell’s laughter filled every inch of the bedroom.

Lynette took one look at her husband tied up and shaking with laughter and added her own husky laugh. Once they started, they couldn’t stop. She pointed and laughed. He couldn’t wipe the tears from his eyes, and his frantic blinking made her roll over and clutch her side. Something like this always happened. Lynette and Cornell spent a lot of time deepening their laugh lines together.

“My feet are aslee—” Cornell struggled to say in between snorting fits of hiccupping.

“Bad circulation!” Lynette guffawed.

She crawled over to undo Cornell’s hands and feet. After Lynette finally managed to untie him, Cornell wrapped his wife up in his arms and hugged her tight.

Lynette skinny-dipped in her husband’s embrace. “Well, I hope you can see how much I love you.” She snuggled into his arms and planted a soft, wet kiss on Cornell’s chest. “Can I make love to you now, Mr. Jones?”

“Proceed, m’dear. Proceed.”

The widowed professor looked up at the silver lamp he’d carried from Tehran so his wife would have light from the home she’d never wanted to leave. His fingers moved to their position above the piano keys, but stopped to hover like an ominous cloud. With a frown, he smoothed his cardigan and trousers. Arshan believed pajamas were only appropriate in the bedroom, even now, years since Maliheh or children filled the house. Arshan felt how thin his legs were. He’d always been trim, but after sixty, trim starts to look gaunt, he thought. He pushed his glasses back into place over the pronounced crook of his nose. Arshan Bahrami, no matter where he was, ever looked the part of the respectable professor.

Arshan’s eyes lingered on two identically framed photographs illuminated by the lamp. One showed a woman hugging a laughing teenage boy. The woman’s expressive eyes, as big and dark as Brazil nuts, included the photographer in the joke. The other photo was of a teenage girl with teasing eyes not unlike the adjacent woman’s.

Arshan began to play Beethoven’s Ninth, his eyes still fixed on the photographs. Ghosts had been Arshan’s only audi ence for many years. Besides bridge nights at Lynette and Cornell’s, Arshan’s entire outward life consisted of astrophysics—teaching and research trips to distant telescopes. Arshan slammed his fingers discordantly on the keys. He’d heard a girlish chuckle above the music. Why had he chosen that song? His daughter’s favorite. He pried his eyes away from the photos.

Arshan took a breath a yogi would envy and forced himself to go upstairs. Ten minutes later, the piano watched him sneak back into the room. He plucked up the photograph of the young girl and transported it across the room to a zippered suitcase. He tucked the gold frame between two halves of perfectly folded clothing. Then, his eyes resolutely averted from the remaining picture, Arshan turned off the lamp.

Isabel was at the airport, the only one taking a red-eye flight through Miami. She was certifiably in a state of shock.

She hadn’t told anyone yet, but she’d been fired. Laid off was more accurate, but it stung like “fired.” She’d gone in to work instead of preparing for her trip—a testament to her job dedication—and they let her go, saying the vacation only sped up the process, budget concerns meant they’d have had to do it sooner or later, as much as they hated to see her go. She’d packed her career life into a cardboard box, come home and deposited it on the side of the couch opposite her packed suitcases. Isabel sat down between her old life and her carry-on, her cat making the only sound in the room. But Isabel wasn’t experiencing silence—she was awash in a deafening waterfall of thought. It was only after her Pavlovian response to the horn of the cab and the blur of arriving at the airport that she felt the desperate need to tell someone.

She almost called me, but was understandably wary after our last conversation. Isabel tapped her perfectly manicured fingers—from her latest biweekly appointment at her mother’s salon—on her BlackBerry. She knew she should call Jesse, but her mother was liable to dispense some cloying phrase like “Lemons have a way of becoming martini decorations, sweetie.”

She would’ve called Kendra straight away, but it was after midnight. No way Kendra would be awake. She’d be all packed and organized, asleep in her white silk nightgown, next to her perfect boyfriend, Michael, in their meticulous SoHo apartment.

Screw it. Kendra it would have to be. She couldn’t imagine boarding a sleeping plane with a head full of “what the hell do I do now?” She dialed Kendra’s number and listened to it ring through to voicemail. When she hung up, deflated, she couldn’t repress a curse word or two, prompting a shh from a nearby mother cradling a little girl in her lap. She dialed again. Then again. What was the deal with her friends lately? When did they become so self-absorbed? Mina would’ve answered on a floating ice cap in Antarctica.

Kendra pressed “ignore” on her phone, for the third time, without taking her eyes off Michael. He was still pacing like an agitated tiger. He was having the exact same effect as that of an angry tiger on Kendra Jones.

Kendra was sitting very still and straight on her lavender loveseat. Work papers—million-dollar orders for dresses in five shades and sizes—had fallen to the floor, and were shocked that Kendra hadn’t noticed. If the papers weren’t really shocked by the negligence, they were certainly appalled by the mess. As Michael paced and ranted and lectured, he navigated a very uncharacteristic rug of chaos—slippers, discarded work clothes, a full coffee cup, and a half-empty bottle of vodka. His. Not hers.

Kendra put a nervous hand to her hair. While waiting for Michael to arrive, she’d started to scratch between the tightly plaited rows of braids. Impulsively, she’d undone them, one by one, each careful braid untwisting into a frizzy poof of caramelized curls.

Kendra was having trouble concentrating on Michael’s surreal barrage of words. She held tight to the phone in her hand, bearing Isabel’s name, and looked to the ground. A picture lay where it had landed. The very first trip with the vacation club. Kendra longed to pick it up. A little raven-haired girl farthest to the left was smiling at her. She’d looked at Mina’s face at least a hundred times that day. Suddenly, Michael’s last words registered.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she spit out.

Michael stopped, surprised. He ran his fingers through his sandy-blond hair, like he did when he was about to reprimand an office assistant at his firm. “I’m not saying that you did, I’m just saying if you did—”

“But I didn’t. And if you think I would, then how well do you know me, Michael? Or vice versa.”

Michael rolled his eyes. He resumed pacing, nudging the framed photograph out of his path with his shoe.

Kendra watched him with widening eyes, and felt the black hole in her sternum swell, too. Kendra planned her days and future like most people would only plan Thanksgiving dinner. Down to the last detail, in full consideration of timing, with an obsessive flair for perfect presentation—that was the way of Kendra since childhood. If Michael could suddenly mistake her for the girl that tries to trap a man with—

“It’s a baby, Michael. Not a death sentence.”

This time Michael didn’t look up, the coward. “No, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be. A baby. Yet.” The yet was meant to be a loving concession. He looked at the picture of the four little girls. No, he needed to be firm on this. “I don’t want it to be. A baby.”

Now he looked at Kendra, really looked at her for the first time since the news, and felt some of the anger drain away. But as he took note of her disheveled hair and clothes, the soothing visage of his girlfriend became a stranger that filled him with fear.