A Month of Summer (47 page)

Did she realize what she was doing, or was she only trying to protect me from the marital collapse she considered inevitable?

Were her choices acts of misguided love, or of selfishness?

I would never know for sure. There was no one to ask. There was nothing to do but go on from here, to stop listening to her voice and listen to my own. My heart wanted Kyle, still loved him. In the end, that was truth. It was my truth. Kyle loved me. He always had. All these years, he’d remained patiently on the outside, waiting for me to break free from the damage done the summer I left Blue Sky Hill, to leave the past behind, to stop living my mother’s life and live my own, throw open the door and let him in.

Why would he have done that? Why would he be here now if he didn’t love me?

Outside the window, my father laughed. Squinting through the wavy glass, I watched him strolling across the lawn, hand in hand with Hanna Beth as Teddy pushed the chair. How had they come back together, all those years ago? Who had been the first to believe, to bridge the gap between them, to open up and become vulnerable? How many years would they have missed if they hadn’t mustered the courage to turn away from the past and step into the present?

A lifetime. A long and wonderful lifetime that began with an instant of trust.

Outside, Hanna Beth smiled at my father, placed her free hand over their intertwined fingers. He gazed down at her, his eyes filled with adoration, with need, with happiness, even now, when the road ahead seemed so difficult.

“I want our marriage,” I whispered, turning back to my husband. “I want our family. I want us to spend more time together—do things. Being here, watching my father and Hanna Beth . . . I realize how fast a life goes by, Kyle. In the end, the only thing that matters is the people you love, the time you spend together. When we look back someday, I don’t want it all to be a blur of meaningless activity. I want our life back. I want
us
back.”

Kyle sighed, as if he’d been holding the breath inside of himself, waiting. “I was never gone. I’ve always been here. I love you, Rebecca. I love you, and I love Macey. I may not always show it as much as I should, but there was never a time I was looking for anything else. We have everything we need.”

We have everything we need.
We had more than he knew. I scraped together my courage, tried to find the right words to tell him about the baby. What would he think? What would he say? Would he wonder? Would he question?

“I’m . . . I’m pregnant.” The truth shivered into the air and hovered there. Kyle blinked hard, as if he were trying to focus.

“Wha . . . how?”

“The anniversary trip.”

“But . . .”

“Vasectomies fail, Kyle. Your father’s did.”

He gaped at me in stunned silence, his body rounding forward, his arms hanging limp. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, staggered backward a step and sank into a chair. “I don’t know . . . a baby?” I searched for intonation in the words, some indication. Happiness? Anger? Fear? Disappointment? Doubt? Something.

“I took a test yesterday. For obvious reasons, pregnancy was the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, swaying sideways, his gaze sweeping the floor. “Are you . . . well . . . sure?”

“The tests are pretty accurate,” I answered, still trying to read his reaction. “I’ve been having symptoms.”

He lifted his hands, let them fall to his lap, stared at the floor. I waited for him to take in the idea. Finally, he squinted up at me, his eyebrows knotted in his forehead. “How do you think Mace’s going to feel about this?”

The tension in my chest began to dissipate, growing lighter. “We could wait a while to tell her. I don’t even know how I feel about it yet.”

“Yeah,” Kyle muttered, nodding, his gaze unfocused.

The door to the garden opened, and both of us jerked upright. “We’re ready for the cake,” Mary called.

“Coming,” I answered, wiping the tear trails from my cheeks. I picked up Hanna Beth’s birthday cake and balanced it between my hands, stared down at the icing words, but couldn’t comprehend them. “We’d better go out there.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll get . . . the door,” Kyle muttered. He stood and followed me, his steps slow and wooden. “I’ll be in my sixties when the baby graduates from high school,” he muttered as he reached for the doorknob.

“I know,” I said, and in spite of everything, his bemused look made me smile as we went out the door.

On the patio, the celebration was proceeding, the partygoers oblivious to the moment of truth in the kitchen. I placed the cake on a white iron table in front of Hanna Beth. Ifeoma lit the candles and Teddy helped my father into a chair. Together we sang “Happy Birthday,” our voices blending together, young and old. When the song was over, my father leaned across, cupped Hanna Beth’s face in his hand and kissed her, then sang, “May I call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you,” as he handed her one of Macey’s roses.

Hanna Beth smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. Together, they watched the birthday flames sway in the wind.

“Blow da candle, Mama,” Teddy cheered, waving his hands over the cake.

“Let the children,” my father suggested, and laid his cheek atop Hanna Beth’s silver hair.

“Yes, let the children,” Ouita Mae echoed, maneuvering her walker toward the table as she motioned the children in. “Gather round, now. There’s a hungry old man waiting for some cake.” She winked over her shoulder at Claude, and he blushed, then grinned tenderly in reply. “Phillip.” She motioned to her grandson as Brady clasped the edge of the table, tipping it to one side. “Lift up the little guy so he can help.”

Dr. Barnhill awkwardly picked up Mary’s younger son, and, together with Macey, the boys blew out the candles.

“Happy birf-day to Hanna Bet!” Brady cheered, and everyone laughed.

Pastor Al suggested we say a prayer over the food, and we bowed our heads. As his voice resonated in the damp, still air, blessing the food and our gathering, I felt Kyle’s arms slip around me—tentatively at first, then tighter, circling my stomach, cupping the tiny life we’d created and would nurture together as the years went by. He pulled me into him and held me close. I leaned against his chest, turned in his arms and rested my head there, heard his heartbeat beneath my ear, slow and familiar. After weeks of fighting for air, I felt as if I could finally breathe.

My senses filled with the earthy scents of Teddy’s garden, the faint traces of smoke from Hanna Beth’s birthday candles, the radiant glow of light, the slight stirrings of people all around me. A family. As the prayer ended, I listened to the voices—my father presenting the first slice of cake to his birthday girl. Hanna Beth laughing. Macey struggling to lift Brady to the table again so he could watch the cake being cut. The old house yawning and crackling, radiating warmth as the afternoon sun pressed through the canopy of slumbering branches.

The breath of summer stirred the trees overhead, and I opened my eyes, looked up. A leaf pulled free, sailed on invisible currents, swirling and diving, dancing and spinning like the dragonfly lights in my bedroom upstairs. I felt the spirit of the girl who once lived there, now standing close, watching the leaf drift toward earth.

It floated downward.

Circling . . .

Circling . . .

Until it touched the ground and rested silent among the grass-green waves of my father’s lawn.

I thought of the Japanese gardener, far away on the waterfront in San Diego, shaded beneath his wide straw hat, carefully combing seas of gravel to reflect the invisible tides that swell from hidden places deep within the soul.

The tides swirled around me, whispered with a completeness that spilled warmth into all the spaces that had been empty, that had searched and wondered, waited and struggled to find peace.

The little-girl spirit left the patio, dashed over the grass on light, silent feet, paused to smile at what had fallen there. And suddenly I understood how the gardener knew that the leaf was meant to stay.

CONVERSATION GUIDE

A
MONTH
of
SUMMER

LISA WINGATE

This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the
individual reading experience, as well as encourage us
to explore these topics together-because books,
and life, are meant for sharing.

Q.
A Month of Summer
is your ninth novel. Has your writing process changed over the years?

A. For me, the writing process has remained much the same. I still begin with characters and an initial situation. From there, the process of writing the novel becomes a journey of discovering the characters from the outside in. Each story is a quest to understand the hearts and minds of several individuals—the ways in which each is a product of a specific set of experiences. As the story develops, the needs of the characters begin to mesh, and the potential for connection becomes more evident. While I’m working on the first part of the novel, the threads seem to be traveling in a dozen different directions. About halfway through, the threads develop a weave, and the larger picture becomes clear. The story grows in a sense of plan and purpose, gaining a personality of its own.

If anything has changed about my writing process over the years it is that it’s easier not to panic when the threads seem to be scattered all over the loom. These days, I can (usually) be more patient in allowing the process to work, in letting the story move at its own pace until the larger canvas takes shape.

A. Living within proximity of Dallas, I’ve been aware for quite some time of the revitalization of historic areas near downtown. While it is wonderful to see once-abandoned neighborhoods undergoing reclamation and again becoming vital living spaces for families, these changes sometimes take place at the expense of historic structures and longtime residents, who are often priced out of their own neighborhoods by rising property values and higher taxes. Such situations also provide fertile ground for the victimization of disadvantaged families and elderly home owners, such as Edward and Hanna Beth. Often these home owners have few resources available. As neighborhoods change, family members and old friends have sold out and moved away, and the remaining original residents become islands unto themselves as new and old struggle to cohabitate. Such a situation seemed like an ideal location in which to mesh the stories of several characters who need one another to survive.

A. In every story there are some bits of real life, some nibblets of sheer invention, and a sprinkle of serendipity. Writers are always the people slyly turning an ear to the tiny human dramas in restaurants, department store checkout lines, cell phone conversations in the next bathroom stall. The past trauma in Edward and Hanna Beth’s family is largely a combination of eavesdropping and fiction, but I do feel that the story could apply to any family, particularly in a world where so many families are separated by distance and various types of emotional and physical estrangement.

The issue of Alzheimer’s care is one to which I was able to contribute personally. Having experienced the ravages of this disease within my own family, I understand the difficulty of caring for a loved one who is physically able but facing slow mental decline. While these changes are very individual, the continuum of emotions and the challenges of caretaking are, in some ways, constant. Caretaking is very often a lonely occupation. Even friends and family members who would like to help frequently don’t know how to contribute. My hope is that Rebecca and Hanna Beth’s story will help to build bridges and create dialogue between primary caretakers and surrounding friends and family members. Sometimes just a few hours out of the house, while a friend or family member takes over the duties, can be an incredible gift.

A. I believe that within each of us there is the potential to transcend ordinary fears and inhibitions. Many of us may never encounter the situation that would require a heroic act. We go through life watching the heroic acts of others and wondering if, faced with the same set of circumstances, we would be compelled to take action, to do the right thing.

True heroism doesn’t manifest itself only in those who run into burning buildings or cross battlefields to save the wounded. Heroism exists in those who spend weekends building Habitat homes, who care for children in need of parents or mentors, who provide for parents who have become dependent themselves. To my mind, each character in the novel is heroic in some way, whether that heroism manifests itself in something as complex as traveling across the country to see to an estranged relative, or as simple as stretching upward from a wheelchair to raise a window blind and let in the sunlight. By each doing what is possible, we should be ultimately achieve the impossible.

A. Certainly as a mom, writer, daughter, and member of a busy community of friends and readers, I can relate to the push and pull of Rebecca’s situation. Our days are often filled with activities and the family calendar sometimes looks like the Scrabble board after a long game—everything intertwined and not a space empty. Fortunately, I am not the type who needs a quiet space to work. I can write anywhere, anytime, and no matter what’s going on. Over the years, I’ve packed my laptop along and sat typing on the sidelines of soccer practices, between baseball games, in the car on family trips, in the living room while the guys are hollering at football games on TV.