Page 14 of Songs of Summer

“I didn’t.”

“Too bad. You missed a great opportunity.”

It was clearly time to leave, but he needed a better look at that invitation.

“On second thought, I’ll write a note,” Jason blurted out, reaching for a pen before purposefully flinging the whole cup of them off the desk. “Sorry, sorry.”

Startled, the man bent to collect the scattered pens. With one quick swoop of the hand, while the professor was playingPick-Up Sticks, Jason swiped the invitation from the bulletin board and shoved it in his pocket. He was amazed by how quickly he went from liar to thief.

“I’ll just email her,” he flip-flopped.

And back to liar.

Maybe they would hold up a bank on the way home, profit from his crooked turn.

“As you wish,” the man responded, adding, “Have a good summer.”

“You too,” Jason called back to him, halfway out the door.

Track 6

In My Life

Beatrix

Beatrix looked inawe at her husband, Paul, sitting in the next airline seat. Not because, after a year of marital bliss, they were still in the honeymoon phase, or that she found him adorable, or that she was excited to finally be showing him her favorite place in the world, the town she had grown up in on Fire Island. And not because she had basically given up on finding true love or even tethering herself to anything more substantial than an African violet when this sweet man had walked into her office in a panic looking for directions.

“I’m trying to find Hayes Hall. I have my first lecture there at ten.”

It was 10:05. Apparently, a couple of students had recognized that he was a newbie and hazed him by sending him the wrong way across campus.

“I’d better show you the way,” she had suggested, taking pity on him.

The next day Bea found a note taped to her office door inviting her to dinner as a thank-you for saving him. She had sworn off dating colleagues after a stint with an Americanhistory professor who had written a book about twentieth-century spies had soured years before. She left that relationship with a broken heart and an abundance of knowledge she had little use for, though when she faced a lull in conversation at cocktail parties, she often played, “Guess what Harry Houdini, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, and Julia Child have in common?” (The answer: they were all spies.)

Outside the faculty, pickings were slim in Gambier, so she agreed to dinner.

Who would have thought that a mathematics professor and an English professor would have such chemistry? It was instantaneous, and six months later, they were married right on campus. As romantic as that sounded, her awe on the airplane was not inspired by finding true love at fifty. That was unusual, yes, but they were heading to a wedding where both the bride and the groom were of the same generation.

The reason Beatrix looked at Paul in such wonder, as they sat buckled into their coach seats on the Delta Airbus, was his unfailing ability to nap anytime, anywhere. Chances were her husband (she still pinched herself when saying that) would sleep the entire two-hour flight from John Glenn Airport to JFK, leaving her alone with her thoughts and his complimentary bag of Chex Mix.

Even if Bea had been a napper, she was far too excited to sleep. Her childhood best friend, her summer sister, was getting married to the local ferry captain, and she was the matron of honor. They had all grown up together, in the summers at least, in a tiny beach town as part of the same friend group. There, most experienced their first loves, or first times, or at least their first kisses. She remembered thenight her best friend Renee, the beauty queen, had kissed the shy boy who worked the ferry boats. (His first kiss, not hers.)

Bea had yet to really hook up with anyone at the time, and when she finally did, with a lifeguard named Chase Logan, it would have a very different ending. Renee was now set to marry that shy boy from the ferry boats, a second marriage for them both, while Beatrix and Chase’s brief romance had devastated her life at the time.

And there lay the problem with her beautiful Fire Island memories: she always landed on the Big Bad Thing.

Growing up, Beatrix probably heard the refrain “Take your sister with you” more than any other parental request. As the ’80s rolled into the ’90s, Bea’s sister, Veronica, though nearly four years her junior, was fully integrated into the older kids’ friend group. Long milky-white legs, long auburn hair, Julia Roberts smile—by the time she was a sophomore in high school, Veronica was getting much more attention from the boys than her collegiate sister. Shorter than V, and the sole recipient of their Russian ancestors’ ample bosoms and strong thighs, Beatrix, with her warm smile and beachy brown curls, was often labeled cute. Soon Bea’s directive changed from dragging her sister along to being called by her friends to come and collect her. Add in Veronica’s practically nonexistent tolerance for alcohol, and Beatrix found herself in the guardian role more than she wished.

She remembered one such occasion, Bea was rubbing Veronica’s back while Renee held her hair as Veronica threw up into the upstairs toilet as a random house party raged below. Veronica had slouched back against the bathroom wall and wiped the vomit from her lips with the back of her hand.

“Can I tell you guys a secret? I did it with Danny Zuko tonight.”

That wasn’t his real name—obviously—but a nickname all the girls gave to a dark-haired lothario with a cleft chin like John Travolta’s, who was also particularly fond of summer loving. It bugged the other girls the way Veronica tore through “their” guys. And even though Bea, more sidekick than siren, never stood a chance with someone like Danny Zuko, it bothered her just the same.

“You should really think about how you will feel the next morning, before you do stuff like that, V,” Beatrix said crossly.

“I’ll feel fine in the morning,” Veronica insisted. “Same as Danny Zuko.”

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