A Month of Summer (2 page)

A round of heartfelt gratitude goes out to the wonderful group of nursing home personnel, who do difficult jobs every day as nurses, therapists, administrators, and home-care workers. Thank you in particular to Candi Adcock for sharing lunch, information, and your incredible coworkers. Thank you also to Janice Boyd for reading the manuscript. All of you are the angels who, like Mary in the story, see not only aging bodies but also the vibrant human beings who need and deserve love and dignity.

A long-distance thank-you goes out to my friend Jennifer Magers for excellent proofreading and help with technical issues regarding nursing home care. Thank you also to my online scrapbooking girlfriend, Teresa Loman, for helping to bring the SCRAPS page of Lisawingate. com alive with the wonderful DSP online scrapbook pages. My gratitude also goes to the Web genius and talented writer Donna McGoldrick for expert maintenance of
Lisawingate.com
and to computer guru, friend, and encourager extraordinaire Ed Stevens for helping with Internet presence and for telling me all about the dream life in the little ski village of Zermatt. Thank you also to my mother and mother-in-law for never-ending encouragement, help with proofreading, and companionship in book travel. Thanks also for being the wonderful grandmas who sweat through hundred-degree baseball games and take part in penguin huddles at subzero football stadiums wherever the Wingate boys are playing. Wonderful grandmas are the glue that holds a family together.

A big thank-you goes to the fantastic people at New American Library, who design the beautiful covers, edit the text, catch the mistakes, and bring these stories to readers. Books, like people, do not develop in a vacuum. Each becomes a combined product of the dedicated efforts of many. My heartfelt gratitude goes in particular to Kara Welsh and Claire Zion; to my editor, Ellen Edwards; and to my agent, Claudia Cross of Sterling Lord Literistic. Here’s to the many roads we’ve traveled on the way to Blue Sky Hill, and the many yet to come.

Last, thank you to readers far and near, because without you I’d just be a slightly off-base Texas girl who still plays with imaginary friends. Thank you for sharing these journeys with me, for recommending the books to friends, for sharing your own news, and views, and e-mails. Your friendships create meaning in these stories and meaning in my life. I hope you’ll find blessings in this trip to Blue Sky Hill.

Peace be the journey, now and always.

CHAPTER 1

During an anniversary trip to San Diego, I stood on a second-story balcony above a Japanese garden and watched the gardener comb a bed of red gravel and gray stone with a long wooden rake. Shaded from the rising sun by a wide straw hat, his body arched against the tidal breeze, he patiently drew intricate curves and swirls, which the tourists walked by without noticing. From their vantage, his work would go largely unappreciated, but he seemed unfettered by this fact. He kept at his task with a certain determination, a resoluteness—as if he knew each stone, knew where it must go, exactly how it must lie to complete the proper picture. A leaf blew into the garden, and he danced across the gravel on the light, silent feet of an acrobat, removed the leaf, then repaired the damage with his rake.

On three separate days, I stopped to observe the gardener. Each time, the pattern of stones was different. One day a running swirl of ocean waves, one day a sunburst of rays originating from a single center, one day a series of concentric circles, as if God had touched down a fingertip, rippling the crimson sea. A leaf drifted from overhead, landed in the center, and the gardener left it.

How did he know?
I wondered.
How did he know that this time the leaf was meant to stay?

Taking up his tools, the gardener strolled away, and disappeared down the boulevard, a small man hidden beneath the shadow of his hat, at peace with what remained.

I had always wished to be like the gardener, to see the larger canvas, to know which leaves should go and which should stay, to be at peace with the stones left behind.

Unfortunately, I was not.

They haunted me.

I combed the gravel of my life again, again, again, creating artificial shapes, patterns that became habitual, yet felt incomplete.

Perhaps I was always waiting for the leaf to fall and complete the picture.

But when it did, I didn’t recognize it.

At first.

It drifted downward in the form of a plane that had been circling Dallas for what seemed like an eternity before dropping through a March thunderstorm to find the runway. By then, the pilot had confessed that we’d been burning off fuel on purpose, due to a malfunction in the plane’s braking flaps. He would still be able to land using wheel brakes and ground spoilers, he assured us, but we should assume the crash position, just in case. The flight attendant demonstrated the procedure, then we began our descent, hugging our knees, the guy beside me praying under his breath and me fumbling for the air sickness bag, thinking,
I hate flying. If I survive this, I’ll never get on a plane again. I’ll drive. Everywhere.

In the back of my mind, I remembered Bree, the law clerk who’d given me a ride to the airport, saying, “You know, Mrs. Macklin, statistically flying is much safer than driving.”

“I don’t care,” I told her. “I’d much rather travel by car, where I can be in the driver’s seat. If they’d let me
pilot
the plane, then I’d like flying.”

Bree giggled, the sound too light and childlike for her tightly French-twisted hair and trying-to-impress dark suit. “Control is an illusion,” she offered. “I’ve been reading
Ninety-Nine Principles of Everyday Zen
, and that’s the first one. You can’t achieve Zen until you relinquish control of the universe to the universe.”

Glancing at the visor mirror, I tucked a few strands of dark hair behind my ear and met the red-rimmed hazel eyes of a woman who was tempted to say something sharp, world-weary, and cynical. Why were young law clerks always seeking the deeper meaning of life in self-help books? “Be careful what you buy into, kid,” I advised, as Bree pulled up to the curb in the airport drop-off zone. “A good lawyer can’t afford to be Zen. You’ll get mugged at the negotiating table.”
By the way, are you sleeping with my husband?

Bree laughed again.

She could be,
I thought.
She’s beautiful. . . .

I closed my eyes as the plane bounced against the runway, then went airborne again, and I saw Bree’s face. Then it faded into the face of the woman lounging at a sidewalk table with a fresh frappe from my favorite Santa Monica coffeehouse. The woman smiled at Kyle, her long blond hair lifting in the saltwater breeze, her eyes sparkling. She slid a hand across the table and into his, while I sat in the right turn lane, not four miles from our home. Hadn’t it occurred to Kyle that I might pass by, driving Macey to school? Didn’t he wonder what would happen if I saw? If Macey saw? Macey would know exactly what was going on. Southern California kids aren’t stupid. Even nine-year -olds understand what it means when a married man is sitting in a sidewalk café with an ocean view, in broad daylight, holding hands with a client.

Fortunately, Macey was looking out the other window, her head jiving to whatever downloaded song was playing on her iPod.

The light turned green, and I drove away, my hands shaking on the steering wheel, the café scene playing over and over in my mind until it seemed like a bad movie rather than reality. One of the hazards of living within proximity of the movie capital of the world. Everything seems like fiction. Even your own life.

Macey reached for the door handle as I pulled to the curb to let her out. I tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned back to me, tugging out her ear buds. “Bye, Mom.” She leaned across the car and hugged me, her long, honey-brown hair, her father’s hair, tickling my shoulder. “Have a good trip.”

“I will.” Closing my eyes, I held on to her until finally she wiggled away. “Be a good girl, Mace. You’ve got your routine down, right? Isha’s going to pick you up from school every day except Wednesday, because that’s her day off.”
Thank God for the new au pair.
“Dad’s supposed to come get you on Wednesday.”
What if he’s sleeping with the au pair, too?
“Kendalyn’s mom will give you a ride to school in the mornings, and to gymnastics Tuesday and Thursday, and—”

“And on Friday—if you’re not back by then—Grandma and Grandpa Macklin pick me up, so I can stay with them at the beach for the weekend, and on Monday afternoon—if you’re still not back— I’m riding to dance class with Pesha, but Pesha doesn’t do dance on Wednesday, and Wednesday’s Isha’s day off, so this Wednesday, Brooke Strayhorn’s mom is gonna stop by for me—Brooke’s annoying, you know. All she talks about is video games—but anyway, after Dad drops me at home, if he has to go back to work, I’m supposed to lock up and stay in the house until they come to get me for dance class. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. Stay inside.” She swiveled her head, blinked at me over her slim shoulder, then smiled. “I’ve got it, Mom. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m not a baby.”

I touched the side of her face, smoothed a hand over her sun-lightened hair. “I know, sweetheart. You’re amazing.”

“Moh-om,” she sighed, rolling her gaze toward the window to make sure no one was watching. When the coast was clear, she leaned over and gave me a quick kiss. She hauled her backpack off the floorboard, then stepped onto the curb, turned around, and hip-butted the door shut in one efficient movement. I sat a moment longer, watching her disappear, thinking how wonderful she was, how confidently she moved, her body tightly muscled from gymnastics and dance, preteen gangly and still filled with girlish confidence.
Why isn’t she enough?
I wondered.
Why aren’t she and I, a beautiful home, a thriving law practice, enough for Kyle? How could he put everything at risk? How could he risk destroying her? If he leaves, she’ll blame herself. No matter what we tell her, no matter how many of her friends’ parents she’s seen get divorced, she’ll think he left because she wasn’t good enough.

That reality sank over me like the salty mists of a cold winter day, ached with the dull familiarity of an old injury newly awakened. A part of me knew how it felt to see your father walk out the door and never look back.

Watching Macey bound up the marble stairs, her steps buoyant and light, I had a dawning awareness that, somewhere in the hidden recesses of my consciousness, I’d been waiting for this to happen. I’d been waiting for the day Kyle would leave, and the world would come crashing down around us, and Macey would walk up the courthouse steps one at a time, suddenly a tiny adult. . . .

The plane bounced against the runway again, and across the aisle a little Hispanic girl screamed, then tried to unbuckle her seat belt and crawl into her mother’s lap
. Macey wouldn’t do that,
I thought.
Macey would have more sense. She’d handle this like a pro.

Hugging my knees, I hung on as the plane careered down the runway as if in slow motion, the moments stretching and twisting as the mother pulled the screaming girl back into her seat, pinned her daughter’s flailing hands, curled her body protectively over the little girl’s.

Outside, the engines roared and the brakes squealed, the plane fishtailing back and forth. Over the noise, the mother sang close to her daughter’s ear—a lullaby in Spanish.

I would do that for Macey,
I thought.
I’d fold myself over her and sing to keep her calm. She would probably think I’d lost my mind.

“Mom,” she’d say. “Chill out. It’s gonna be all right. I saw this on an episode of
CSI
, and they got the plane stopped right before it fell off the runway. It was so cool. . . .”

For a perverse instant, I wished Macey were with me, sitting in the middle seat, where the bald man in the rumpled suit was bent over his knees.

If it weren’t for Macey, I wouldn’t care whether we made the landing or not. . .
.

It was a startling thought, and as soon as it came, I pushed it away, stomped it down and buried it under piles of more practical mental dialogue.
Of course I’d care. Of course I care about my life. It’s just been a strange week. Too many plates spinning off-kilter at once.
Even as I thought it, I wanted to close my eyes and never come in for a landing—just glide, and glide.

Combing back a curtain of tangled hair, I pressed my palms over my ears. Seconds stretched out endlessly, until finally I felt the motion around me slow, the plane lurch up, then down, then turn to the left in what was obviously a controlled maneuver.

I took a deep breath and crawled back into my own skin. A glance out the window told me we were veering toward a taxiway, passing fire trucks and airport emergency vehicles deployed for our landing. The crews waved as we went by. Overhead, the speaker crackled and the pilot came on, his voice calm and self-assured.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our apologies for the bumpy landing. We’ll be taxiing to the gateway, expecting arrival at the gate in about . . . uhhh . . . six minutes. Sorry for the slight delay, but we welcome you to Dallas-Forth Worth.”

A flight attendant began reading off connecting flight numbers and gates, and passengers glanced at each other with bemused expressions, thinking, no doubt, as I was,
Were we huddled, only moments ago, in crash position, or did I dream that?
The frantic thoughts of the past half hour seemed ridiculous now. Beside me, the bald businessman cleared his throat and straightened his suit. He glanced at his watch, as if to say,
What—you thought this was a real emergency?