The Days of Summer

“It’s not candy,” she said sharply.

“I saw Red Hots, Mama.”

“No. It’s medicine. See?” Kathryn opened her hand, then put the pills back inside the bottle. “It’s just medicine to help me sleep.”

“I want some medicine.”

Kathryn knelt down. “Come here.” Laurel would have found her. Laurel would have found her. Shaking and numb, she rested her chin on her daughter’s head, surrounded by the scent of baby shampoo and Ivory soap, a familiar, clean smell. It took a long time for Kathryn to let go.

“I can’t sleep.”

Jimmy’s face in miniature stared up at her. Every day she would look at that face and see the man she loved, and Kathryn didn’t know if that would be a gift or a curse. “Let me wash your face. You can see tear tracks.” She used a warm wash rag to clean Laurel’s red face. “There. All done.” Kathryn straightened and automatically shut the mirrored medicine cabinet. In her reflection she caught a flicker of a pale, shadowed life and had to brace her hands on the cold sink. It was achingly painful to realize she was here and Jimmy wasn’t.

Eventually she would clear out the medicine chest; she would put things in the trash without panicking, wash the sheets, and do something with his clothes. They weren’t him, she told herself; they were only his things.

“Does the medicine taste like candy?” Laurel pointed to the prescription bottle.

“No.” Kathryn made a face. “It’s awful.” She dumped the pills into the toilet and flushed it. “We don’t need medicine.”

It was amazing how skeptical a four-year-old could look.

“It’s late,” Kathryn told her. “You can sleep in our—in my bed.”

Laurel jumped up, all excited and so easily distracted. “Because Daddy’s gone?”

“Yes. Because Daddy’s gone.”

The last time Laurel Peyton waved good-bye to her father was from the backseat of a long black Cadillac that belonged to the Magnolia Funeral Home. Waving goodbye was normal when your father was on the road all the time, but the camera flashbulbs and reporters alongside the car were anything but normal.

The three women inside the car—Kathryn, her sister, Evie, and Julia, Jimmy’s mother—tried to shield Laurel from the faces at the car windows, until the press, dressed in their amphigoric darks, were left behind and stood crowlike at the edge of the grave site while the Cadillac continued down the hill.

Behind them Kathryn saw only a monochrome Seattle sky, and scattered all over the lush green lawn were absurdly bright clumps of fresh flowers, bits of life scattered over a place that was only about death. The tires crunched on the gravel drive and sounded as if something were breaking, while rain pattered impatiently on the roof of the car and the electronic turn signal ticked like a heartbeat.

Jimmy’s mother tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Young man. Young man! Can’t you hear that? Turn off that turn signal!” Julia Laurelhurst Peyton looked as if she were carved from granite. Only Jimmy could ever seem to crack through her veneer.

Laurel began to sing one of Jim’s hit songs in a slightly off-key young voice. Feeling sickened, Kathryn glanced at Julia, who was looking out the car window, her face away from everyone else in the car.

Evie took her hand. “She doesn’t understand, Kay.”

“She will soon enough,” Julia said without turning, her voice serrated and burned from too many cigarettes. She opened her purse and pulled out her cigarette case. “You must make her understand, Kathryn. It’s your job as her mother.”

Her job as a mother was not to swallow a handful of Seconal. Her job as a mother was to go on hour by hour and day by day. Her job as a mother was to do what was best for Laurel, at the expense of anything else, because Jimmy wasn’t there.

Julia tapped a cigarette against the back of her hand, then slid it between her red lips and lit it. Smoke drifted around them. “My son was a star.” She looked at Kathryn, at Evie. “You saw the reporters there.” Julia took short drags off her cigarette. “Tomorrow, they’ll play his songs on the radio.”

Kathryn wondered if she would constantly search the radio for his songs. She began to silently cry.

“Don’t, Kathryn.” Julia held up her hand. “Don’t.”

Evie handed her a tissue. “She can cry if she wants to.”

Julia crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Laurel? Come see Grandmama.” She patted the seat next to her, but Laurel climbed in her lap instead. Julia began to hum the same song, holding her granddaughter tightly, and soon tears streamed down her slack and chalkish powdered cheeks.

Six long hours later, it was Kathryn who hung on tightly to Laurel as she ran through the waiting reporters at the front doors of their apartment building.

“Kay, I’m sorry,” Evie said. “We should have hired some security.” She blocked the closing elevator doors as a couple of persistent newsmen shouted questions at them.

Thankfully no one was on the tenth floor while Kathryn waited for Evie to unlock the apartment door. “Look, Evie. Laurel’s sound asleep. I want to be a child, oblivious to that chaos downstairs. I want to wake up and have it be a bad dream.”

Evie quietly closed the door behind them. “Go on. Put her to bed.”

A few minutes later Kathryn walked into the living room.

Evie stood in the corner over a bar cart with an ice bucket and crystal bottles of decanted liquor. “I’m getting us drinks. Strong drinks. God knows I need one.” She studied Kathryn for a second. “What am I saying? I should probably just give you a straw and the whole bottle.”

Kathryn unpinned her hat and tossed it on the coffee table. “Today was bad.”

“Your mother-in-law didn’t make it any easier. Look at me, Kay.” Evie patted her cheeks. “Am I pale? Do you think I have any blood left since leaving Julia’s, or did she suck it all out of me?”

“You’re awful.”

“No, she’s awful. I’m truthful.”

Kathryn unbuttoned her suit jacket, sank into the sofa, and let her head fall back on the pillows. Above her was the hole in the acoustical ceiling left over from a swag lamp. One of those things they’d meant to fix. The iron poker near the wood box was bent from when the movers ran over it. The mirror over the fireplace hung a little crooked. Everything was the same, yet nothing would ever be the same again.

“You’re a sweetheart for putting up with that woman. She’s so critical.” Evie dropped ice cubes into a couple of highball glasses. “What do you want to drink?”

“Anything.”

“I don’t know where you get your patience. Pop used to check his watch every two seconds if anyone kept him waiting, and Mother was just like I am: intolerant of anyone who disagrees with us. You are the saint of the family, Kay.”

“No, I’m no saint. I just loved her son.”

Evie paused, ice tongs in her hand. “It broke my heart when Laurel started to sing.”

“My first urge was to put my hand over her mouth.”

“I can’t think of anyone better to sing a Jimmy Peyton song than his daughter. The only reason you didn’t know what to do was because Julia makes everything so uncomfortable.”

“It’s not Julia. I don’t understand the world anymore. It seems so wrong, Evie, so unfair. I want to shout and shake my fist at God and tell him he made a huge mistake. Jimmy had so much left to give the world. He was going to make it big. I knew it. You saw it.”

“Everyone saw it, Kay.”

“We had such big dreams. The sheer waste of his life makes me want to scream.”

“You can holler the walls down if you want. It is unfair. Do whatever you have to do to get through this horrible thing.”

It was a horrible thing. Everything was changing and out of her control. Her skin hurt; it felt too small for her body, like the changes to her were happening in a matter of days. She glanced at the crooked mirror above the fireplace to see the ravages of sudden widowhood right there on her face.