Fifteenth Summer (17 page)

But I just . . . wasn’t.

Because as long as we kept things just as they’d always been, we were in limbo. We were always in the process of saying good-bye to Granly . . . but never finished.

I heaved a deep sigh, then idly bent over the garden to pull a big clump of clover. My mom had done all that work turning over the soil in this garden, and then she’d abandoned that, too. Weeds were quickly creeping back in, and the dirt looked dry and cakey.

I pulled another few weeds, then cocked my head to give the garden a hard look. I went over to the shed and pulled open the squeaky screen door. I found a stiff rake, carried it back to the garden, and slammed it down into the dirt with a satisfying
whumpf
. Dragging the rake through the dirt broke it up, unearthed the baby weeds, and made a nice, straight, flat track of earth.

I could picture a row of tomatoes there.

I dropped the rake and headed back inside.

“Going to town,” I called to whomever cared. I dug my phone
and a wad of tip money out of my dresser drawer, then slammed purposefully out the front door.

An hour later I returned with a rusty Radio Flyer wagon full of little plastic pots. Each held a feathery seedling. I’d gotten the plants at the fruit and vegetable stand where we always bought our corn and tomatoes. Mr. Jackson had given me a 75 percent discount because the planting season had pretty much ended.

“I don’t know if they’ll make it,” Mr. Jackson had said to me as he’d helped arrange the seedlings neatly in the wagon. The plants looked even more spindly in his big, meaty hands. “They’re pretty leggy—the ones everybody else passed over.”

“And I know nothing about gardening,” I’d said, biting my lip.

“Well, the good news is these are easy plants,” Mr. Jackson had said. “Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, lettuce . . . I mean, all they want to do is grow.”

“Oh!” I’d said. “I forgot one more thing I wanted. Radishes. Do you have any of those?”

By dinnertime my pathetic little plants were in the ground. I’d followed exactly the instructions Mr. Jackson had written for me on a sheet torn off a yellow legal pad, spacing the tomatoes eighteen inches apart and tucking the radishes into two neat rows.

I grinned at my baby garden as I gave it a gentle spray with the hose. Then I pulled off Granly’s pink gardening gloves, went inside, and opened the spice cabinet in the kitchen.

“Cayenne pepper,” I whispered, finding a big bottle of the orange-red stuff near the back.

Mr. Jackson had sworn by it.

“Just sprinkle it all over the garden after you water each
morning,” he’d told me. “Oh, that’ll keep all the critters away.”

As I dusted my garden with the red hot pepper, I pictured the beautiful basket of plum tomatoes, romaine lettuce, and crunchy pickling cucumbers I’d be pulling out of this garden in August. Not to mention the egg-shaped heirloom radishes.

I thought Granly would be proud of what I’d made of her little garden.

I couldn’t help but think about what would be different by the time these little sprouts were ready to harvest (if they made it past the first week).

The summer would be almost over.

I’d be saying more good-byes—to Granly’s cottage, to Bluepointe, to Josh.

But at the moment that seemed as distant and unreal as the idea that these little sprouts could grow into big, succulent vegetables.

So I just shrugged my shoulders, gave the garden one last shake of cayenne, and went inside.

I
waited until the morning of the DFJ to tell my family about my date.

Mostly because it took me that long to be able to whisper the words “I have a date” without covering my mouth and giggling like an idiot.

The day of the fireworks started off feeling like any other, except for the fact that my dad was making us banana pecan pancakes instead of working.

When he plopped a trio of them onto my plate, they each had two round ears.

“Dad!” I complained. “I don’t eat Mickey Mouse pancakes anymore!”

“Oh, lighten up,” Hannah said. “He made them for all of us.”

“Even me!” my mom said, coming to sit at the table with her own plate of Mickeys. “I don’t know. Somehow they taste better with those little ears.”

“Well . . . okay,” I grumbled. I poured a puddle of syrup into the space between my mouse ears, and said, “So . . . what are you guys doing tonight?”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other with raised eyebrows.

“What are
we
doing tonight?” Mom said. “Um, watching the fireworks with our three daughters, of course. Why, did you have other plans?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I—I have a date.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other again, and their eyebrows went even higher.

“With this boy, Josh?” my mom said.

“Of course with Josh,” I said. “We’ve been together for, like, weeks now.”

“Together when?” Dad said. His fork was poised over his own plate, but it wasn’t moving.

“Well, that’s the thing,” I said. “We’ve only seen each other before and after work. And during, sometimes. So he asked me out for the DFJ. You know, fireworks, picnic, marching band music?”

“Marching band music?” Abbie snorted.

“It’s a figure of speech,” I growled. I sliced an ear off one of
my Mickey Mouse pancakes and shoved it into my mouth.

“How old is Josh?” Dad asked. “If he’s your boyfriend now, we need to meet him.”

“That’s the whole plan!” I said. “He’s fifteen, and he’s picking me up at seven. You can meet him then.”

“Honey,” Mom said gently, “we were really looking forward to spending the evening with you girls. I mean, you’ve been working so much, and Hannah—well, who knows if she’ll be with us on the Fourth next year. Right after breakfast your dad and I are going shopping for a really nice dinner on the beach.”

“It’s not even the real Fourth of July,” I complained. “It’s just the
Deferred
Fourth of July. Anyway, when did this holiday—whatever it is—suddenly become as important as Thanksgiving? I don’t remember you ever caring that much about us being together for it before.”

“Well, that was before,” Mom said. Her lips went thin, and she dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter. “I’m not going to
order
you to have dinner with us. I’m going to ask you to do the right thing. You could always ask your friend to join us for dessert and the fireworks.”

“How about I have dinner with you, and then Josh can come meet you when we’re done?” I negotiated. “And then he and I can watch the fireworks by ourselves?”

Once again I watched my parents’ eyeballs do their silent summit.

“All right,” my mom said after a long moment. “Home by ten thirty.”

“You let me stay out until midnight when I go out with Hannah and Abbie,” I complained.

“
Because
you are with Hannah and Abbie,” my dad said pleasantly. “Don’t push it, Chels.”

I brooded through the rest of my pancakes, wondering how I was going to tell Josh that my parents were being ridiculously clingy.

I was just putting my syrupy plate in the sink when my phone rang.

“Hi!” I said to Josh, rushing out onto the screened porch and shutting the front door behind me.

“Hi,” he said. “Listen, I have something really awkward to tell you.”

“O-kay,” I said, feeling nervous heat prickle along my hairline.

“My parents have somehow decided that the DFJ might as well be Christmas,” Josh said. “And you know, my dad’s been in Chicago a lot for work, teaching that seminar at Loyola, but he has four days off in Bluepointe—”

“And they’re not letting you ditch dinner?” I interjected gleefully.

Josh cleared his throat.

“Okay, that’s not the reaction I was expecting,” he said.

“No, it’s just that mine got all weird about the DFJ too,” I said. “We’re in the same boat. I’m free for fireworks, though.”

“Fireworks,” Josh said. “I’ll make it happen.”

“Oh, but first you have to meet my parents,” I said. “I can text you to let you know where to find us on the beach.”

“Okay,” Josh said, sounding less assured this time. “I can make that happen too.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’re not too scary. And remember I have two older sisters. By the time they get around to doing all the parental requirements on me—you know, making me eat my broccoli, scheduling extra teacher conferences, meeting boyfriends—they’ve kind of lost their steam.”

“Ha,” Josh said. “Wonder what my parents’ excuse is, then.”

I bit my lip.

Josh and I hadn’t talked much about his parents. All I knew was that his dad was a philosophy professor, which pretty much meant he thought of life as a series of hypotheticals.

“It’s when it gets real,” Josh had told me one day during a slow walk home after we’d both gotten off work, “as in a clogged toilet or remembering to go to the Bluepointe Business Association meetings, that he kind of loses interest. I don’t think any of his ancient philosophers ever had do stuff like stock bookshelves and break down the boxes.”

“Well, what about your mom?” I’d asked him. “I mean, Dog Ear is more her thing, right?”

“Yeah, but you know my mom,” Josh said. “She thinks if she makes things charming enough, people will forgive anything, even lack of electricity.”

“Maybe she’s right,” I said. “Dog Ear is the most amazing bookstore I’ve ever been in. You should feel good that you’re helping her make it happen.”

“You’re right, I should,” Josh said. “I wish I were super-passionate about Dog Ear. But like you said, it’s my mom’s thing.
It’s not mine, really. Except now it has to be because it’s the family business.”

“And you
are
really good at doing all that organizing,” I told him.

Josh rolled his eyes.

“Glad I could impress you with my file labels,” he said. “I know they’re really sexy.”

I laughed before I pressed on.

“What about your posters?” I asked. “Josh, they’re
really
good. I can’t wait to see what you do with the Allison Katzinger.”

Josh had smiled in thanks but changed the subject.

Now he did it again.

“So, should I wear a tie or something to meet your folks tonight?” he asked.

“Oh, definitely,” I joked. “Bow tie, shined shoes, the works. And bring my mother flowers. Her favorite is the hothouse hyacinth.”

“Oh, Nicole,” Josh said, the way he always did when we quoted
Coconut Dreams
.

“Oh, Kai.” I gave him my standard reply with a giggle in my voice. “See you tonight.”

I
nstead of going to our usual beach that night, we went to the public stretch closest to town, where they’d be setting off the fireworks. My mom insisted we go early so we could stake out enough space for this elaborate picnic she and my dad had planned.

“Can’t I meet you there?” I said. “If we go early, it’ll still be all hot and muggy out. I don’t want to get all sweaty and gross for . . . for later.”

Which was kind of ridiculous. Most of the time Josh saw me, I was coming off six hours of hustling around Mel & Mel’s. Even though I took time to wash my face, redo my hair, and put on lip gloss before I saw him, I knew it could only help so much. I probably smelled like a combination of dishwasher steam and deviled eggs.

But on a date (okay, half a date) you were supposed to look different. You opened your door, and your guy did a double take because you’d done something different to your hair and put on jewelry. Your heels made you two inches taller. You were supposed to smell like shampoo and perfume, not like the fishy end-of-day wind that comes off Lake Michigan in the heat of the summer.

“Chelsea,” Mom said, putting her hands on her hips. I noticed a couple of Band-Aids on her fingers—she kept stabbing herself with pins as she pieced together the baby clothes quilt. “I’m asking for one thing—that we be together for the Deferred Fourth of July. Please? For me?”

“All right,” I grumbled.

It wasn’t until we set out for the beach late that afternoon that I realized why Mom wanted this family moment so badly. It wasn’t because of the (non) holiday.

It was because she’d decided that this would be Gatsby night.

Granly had always insisted that we do Gatsby night at least once every time we visited her. That was just her name for a
fancy picnic where the adults drank champagne and the kids had sparkling grape juice in bowl-shaped goblets.

The food was always very fussy: crustless cucumber sandwiches, slivered carrots and celery with spinach dip, tiny pickles and expensive olives, hearts of palm salad, and baked oysters. It was something we’d always done—like the stack-of-sisters photo on the beach—that I hadn’t thought about too much. I’d assumed my mom had kind of taken it for granted too.

But obviously I’d been wrong.

As we all headed toward town that afternoon with a heavy picnic basket, blankets, and another basket full of clinking dishes and champagne glasses, I whispered to Hannah, “Why didn’t she just say it was Gatsby night?”

Hannah shrugged.

“It was always kind of spontaneous when Granly did it,” she whispered back. “Y’know, like one morning she’d just snap her fingers and announce it, and we’d all spend the day pitting olives and peeling shrimp. Remember?”

I did. I remembered my sisters and me getting giggly and excited about Gatsby nights. We’d put on satiny “dress-up” clothes and steal Granly’s pink lipstick and say things like “Ooh la
la
!”

My mom was really different from Granly. Granly had always had a bright manicure, and she wore big rings with chunks of turquoise or lapis lazuli in them. When she talked with her hands, they made a
clickety-clack
sound.

My mother’s nails were always short and unpainted. The only ring she ever wore was her narrow platinum wedding bad. Her
wavy, chin-length hair was as different from Granly’s wild red curls as hair could be.

When Granly threw a Gatsby picnic, it was fun, a little dramatic, and most of all effortless.

My mom’s Gatsby night came less naturally to her. It took more work.

So when we made it to the beach and laid out our fancy spread—with the votive candles and the tiny silver forks and everything—I think I appreciated it more than I ever had when Granly was alive.