Page 12 of Seven Summer Weekends

Even though she was basically out of time, Margot carefully untied the bakery string that held the brown paper wrapping in place to see what her friend had made her.

It was a painting of her and Gicky at around age twelve, seated on the living room floor of the old apartment on the Grand Concourse. Margot was holding an autograph book with the page open to Gicky’s salutation. She leaned in to read what it said, smiling and crying simultaneously.

Make new friends. But keep the old; those are silver, these are gold.

She wiped her tears and wrapped it back up.

“Let’s go,” she said, adding, “Keep an eye out for Shep’s painting. His wasn’t in there.”

By the time they arrived at the ferry, a line had already formed down the block to board it. Addison helped Margot with her things, and they embraced for longer than either of them expected. Her affection for her aunt’s best friend had grown substantially over the weekend.

“I hope you’ll come back next summer,” Addison gushed, adding more reasonably, “if I don’t sell the place.”

“If you don’t, I would love to,” Margot responded, happy the time with Addison had been valuable for them both.

The line began to move, and before moving with it, Margot patted Addison’s cheek lovingly.

Addison said a final goodbye and then took a few steps back to take it all in. The atmosphere at the dock reminded her of her childhood summers at the lake. Although there were no ferryboats there, Sunday nights meant an early dinner before her dad drove back to the city for the week. His goodbye would leave her mother softer for the hour after he left—slightly vulnerable and a bit melancholy. Now, as an adult, she realized it was love.Addison had never felt that longing for someone. When she was engaged to her college boyfriend, they were always together. And even when they broke it off—whenshebroke it off—she waited to feel that ache that her mother had clearly felt when her husband had only left for the week. But she never did. Nor did she feel free and unburdened, as she thought she would. She felt little of anything, and that’s when she began wondering if she had ever been in love with him to begin with. Years later, she still wondered.

She watched a woman say goodbye to her husband and kids, who were clearly staying out for the week. The youngest held on to her mom’s leg as if she were going off to war.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Harper. I’ll see you in four days,” the mom promised, wavering between guilt and amusement. Her husband held his wife’s face in his hands and placed a somewhat comical smooch on her lips. The woman released her laughter, and a feeling Addison could only describe as envy sank in. She turned her head, embarrassed that she had taken in their private moment. When she did, she noticed You Again standing on the dock.

Ooh!

It had been a while since Addison had felt the heart-stoppingooh, he’s cutefeeling, and she had forgotten how good it felt. Ever since she had met him on the boat, she found herself looking for him at every turn.

She controlled the width of her smile and reached her hand up to wave hello. As she did, a woman exited the ferry and met him in a warm embrace that he returned tenfold. Addison quickly retracted her wave and turned her now crimson-cheeked face away from them.

The sun was setting as Addison walked home from the ferry, and though there was no denying that she was bummed to see that the cute guy had a girl, she was now relieved. To begin with, he was way too much to be her type. She valued modest over cocky. Add in the fact that he had clearly been flirting with her when he had a girlfriend, and she felt spared.

The streets were quiet, and the competing smells of Sunday night barbecues made her stomach rumble. The deer were already gathered on the grass-covered ball field for their evening buffet. After only a few days, Addison had grown accustomed to cohabiting with the herd, who were clearly quite used to cohabiting with the locals. Both were unfazed by the other’s existence.

Once back at the house, she stripped Margot’s bed, threw in a wash, took out the garbage in advance of Monday’s pickup, had nothing more than a big bowl of cereal for dinner, and crawled into bed with a book.

I couldn’t do this with a husband and kids, she thought with a smile.

Affirmation of her “anchorless” existence.

Still, she tossed and turned all night.

WeekTwo

Chapter Eight

For the sixteen hours that Paresh Singh was in the air, he dreamed of Gicky.

Short spurts of sleep, short spurts of dreams. He began at the beginning, some sixty years earlier, with a young woman standing barefoot in the kitchen of the house in Delhi, trying to work the percolator.Can I help you?he had asked, in Hindi, startling her and causing her to drop the carafe of water in her hands. It shattered on the cold clay floor, and she bent to gather the broken pieces. When she stood up again, there were tears in her eyes. He gently wiped an errant droplet on her freckled cheek with the back of his hand. It wasn’t a conscious decision to do so—to touch the face of the American woman standing in the kitchen of the house where he worked—but it was as if his hand were no longer controlled by his brain, but by his heart.

Now, on the airplane, in between babies’ cries and bites of inferior airline dosas, Paresh dreamed of the first time Gicky painted him on the roof of the sprawling haveli he helped manage. The job, which had been sold to him by his father as aninternship with India’s greatest modern architect, was in truth a gig as a glorified groundskeeper. It was fine by him. He was happiest among nature—until he met Gicky, that is. After that he was happiest with her. He remembered how she coaxed him, a shy young man at the time, to pose for her. How after just a few strokes on her canvas, they were in each other’s arms, making love in the morning light to a chorus of birds singing and peacocks meowing, as they do.

He remembered the year they tried to make a go of it back in the States. How cold it was in New York City. The chill had stayed with him for months after they had given up and parted ways, temporarily at first, but if neither were lying to themself, more permanently. And how it truly became permanent when his father had a heart attack and Paresh was called on to return to the family real estate business. After that it was just stolen weekends, a layover in Mumbai, a week here or there in Goa, and, more consistently as they got older, a couple of weeks in July on Fire Island.

By the time the pilot announced their descent into JFK airport, Paresh had completed their journey together in his mind. He remembered her last words to him, a call in the middle of the night from her hospice bed.

“Your love has meant more to me than anything else in my life. I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Anything,” he had responded.

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