Page 42 of Summer After Summer

Sometimes, Charlotte helps me, spending an hour or two sorting through generations of knickknacks and the glass figurines in the dining room cupboards. Sometimes, my father stands in the doorway, peering at me over the edge of his reading glasses without comment. One disastrous day, Sophie brings the boys. They have a glorious hour going through our leftover toys that I’d pulled out of the attic, and then they thunder away, leaving a worse mess in their wake. William retires to his room with a massive headache, and for once I can’t blame him.

But mostly I’m on my own. Alone with the memories—and the mementos I find despite myself. A picture drawn in kindergarten that my mother pressed between the leaves of a book. Her copy of The Amber Spyglass, filled with her highlights and notes like she was studying it to write an essay on its Christian symbolism. Old letters, old photos, a life that was never sorted through when she died because we were too young, and my father never bothered.

I try to get William to engage with what furniture he wants to bring to his new house, wherever that will be. I print up listings, but he just takes them without looking. I don’t know how we’re ever going to get him to commit to a new place, but Charlotte tells me she’s handling it, and so I decide to leave it alone. If he’s still here when Fred’s moving trucks arrive, that will be his problem, not mine.

At night, I sweat in my room and turn over the mistakes in my life. My tennis career, Fred, Wes. I haven’t heard from him since that first text, though I check each day. I’m surprised at the silence but grateful for it too. I don’t know what I want to say to Wes yet, and anytime I think about it, the rage boils up to the surface. I hate its bitter taste.

I push him away and switch to trying to decide what I’m going to do in the fall, if I love teaching enough to continue when I have the financial independence to stop. I don’t arrive at any answers, and finally I sleep.

After a particularly hot night on the crest of July, I go on a fruitless search to the Home Depot for an air conditioner, where I run into Colin’s sister, Lucy. We chat casually, and I wait for her to bring up Fred. When she doesn’t, I find myself saying that I might need her services for an estate sale. She’s more than happy to run it once we get the personal items out of the way, and this seems like the perfect solution to at least one of my problems.

I return to the house and work till four, then take a shower to clean off the dust that covers me like a film. Afterward, I change into a veranda-appropriate outfit and join the daily shifting crowd for cocktails.

Today my father’s lawyer, Barry, is here, along with his daughter, Ann, the woman whose mention made Charlotte blush. I stand on the edge of the crowd and watch my sister as she flits from one person to the next, making sure their drinks are fresh. She’s taken extra care with her appearance, wearing a peach dress that makes her skin look rosy. Her hair is glossy and just blown out, her makeup flawless.

She has a date, I think, or she’s on one. The object of this grooming is thirty, Asian, petite, and very pretty. She’s wearing a black linen pantsuit cinched at the waist by a large leather belt with an intricate design on it, and high, high heels that bring her up to Charlotte’s height. She’s elegant, the swift movements of a dancer evident in the way she holds her cocktail glass.

“This is Ann Clay,” Charlotte says proudly as she makes the introduction. I smile at Ann and wonder if this is how my sister is finally coming out to me. Not in some private confessional, but here, on the veranda, without any pretense or air about it after years of saying nothing. Good for you, I want to say, but instead, I hold out my hand to Ann.

“Nice to meet you.” Her handshake is firm, and I like her already. “I hear we have you to thank for all this.” I gesture to the property.

“I was only doing my job.”

“Don’t be silly, Ann,” Charlotte says. “Did you know she got Fred to up his initial offer by nearly fifty percent? And she negotiated the closing to the end of the summer. He wanted immediate possession.”

I kick myself for the thousandth time that I didn’t press Fred for more details when he drove me home a week ago. I see him most mornings at the club, watching the tennis from his window or eating his breakfast on the porch. We don’t speak, rarely make eye contact, and he’s often on his laptop or his phone. But there he is, without fail.

It has to mean something because he could avoid me easily if he wanted to. I haven’t worked up the courage yet to ask him what.

“Well, thank you for talking him out of that. Cleaning out this place is a major task.”

“Charlotte has been telling me.”

“Has she?”

Charlotte shows zero traces of guilt. “Olivia’s been such a help. Giving up her whole summer to come here to do this. I’d be lost without her.”

“I’m not sure I’m staying the whole summer.”

“Because of your husband?” Ann says. “Or should I say ex?”

“Charlotte tell you about that?”

“Yes—sorry. Is it a secret?”

“No … I … it’s fine.” I take a sip of my drink, letting a beat go by to collect myself. “I have to find somewhere to live when I go back to the city. I can’t leave that till the last minute.”

“Me too,” Charlotte says. “It’s such a chore.”

“Are you staying out here?” I almost want to laugh. It’s taken this conversation with Ann to attack the big subjects in our lives. But Charlotte and I have never been as close as we appear when there’s a stranger with us.

“I’m not sure.” Charlotte gives Ann a shy look. “But I need to make up my mind soon.”

“Do you live out here full-time, Ann?”

She sips at her lemon drop martini. “I split my time between here and the city. Dad’s here all year-round, but we have a small office in Manhattan, which I manage.”

“I don’t think I could work with Father,” Charlotte says.

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