Page 2 of Same Time Next Summer

The beach house and every tree and bush on the property are a great source of pride to my dad. He bought the house and eventually paid off the mortgage during a decade when he had epic success as an abstract artist. It started witha painting calledCurrent, which is basically swirls of black and white on a sky-blue background. Galleries all over the country sold versions of this painting as quickly as he could produce them. I was just a kid, but I loved seeing him emerge from his studio with canvas after canvas. I thought it would go on forever. But when the zeitgeist changed and the demand for swirly dried up, he was never able to come up with the next thing. He’s now fifteen years into a dry spell, and this property is what he has left.

To my eye, the hedge is approximately the eight feet tall that it’s always been, but it seems denser from years of branches comingling. Throughout my childhood, Frank thanked my dad for doing the hedges with a nice bottle of scotch at the end of the summer. I assume the scotch stopped coming after Marion and Frank divorced. The real barrier between our houses is now as much psychic as physical anyway.

“Are we here?” Jack asks.

“No, that next one.”

The sound of tires on gravel welcomes us into our driveway. People say it’s hard to tell if our house is a house with a porch or a porch with a house. The porch wraps around the entire ground floor and is comparable in square footage. Wisteria lines the railing, climbing up the posts and running along the gutters like delicately placed lavender frosting. The smell of the wisteria welcomes you in from the street and then lures you around corners to the ocean view.

Jack’s already gotten out of the car, and I take a deep breath. I look out over the steering wheel and feel like I’m about to watch a home movie. I’m not sure I want to pressplay, but I get out of the car anyway. Gracie barrels out the front door, all limbs and dark braids waving in the air. “Sammy!” she calls, racing past Jack to get to me. I bury my nose in the top of her head and am transported back to when the weight of her infant body in my arms felt like the only thing that was keeping me alive. The sweet smell of her hair and the fierce energy of her hug have kept me tethered to the earth for a long time. My twelve-year-old sister is a walking, singing, laughing silver lining.

“Hey, kiddo,” I say. “Did you say hi to Jack?” This is rhetorical, as we both know she did not.

“Hi.” She gives a quick wave.

“You want to fill us in on what we’re walking into?”

“Granny and Gramps are here. They seem older than at Christmas. Travis and Hugh are coming for dinner. There’s lots of talk about where you two are sleeping, like before you’re married.” Gracie blushes and I try to remember what it was like to be twelve.

“Eew,” I say. “In the same room with him?”

“Right? So gross. So I think he’s staying in the garage apartment.”

Jack doesn’t seem to mind. “Water view?”

Gracie gives him ayikesface. “Looks over where we keep the garbage cans. And the garage is where Dad paints so it kind of smells like poison.”

“Is he painting?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. Last week I could smell paint, but he was just opening cans. All his brushes are clean.”

“Well, it sounds like a good spot for me. My own bachelor pad,” Jack says.

“Sam, sweetheart!” It’s my mom. She’s in a lavender caftan to match the wisteria, her dark hair swept back off her face as if she got out of the ocean and just let it dry like that. No makeup, no shoes. She’s painted her toenails silver.

I give her a hug. “Hi, Mom.”

She beams. “Jack! Welcome. We’re thrilled you’re finally here.” She takes his face in her hands as she says this, and I see him wince. Jack has a thing about foreign oils (on my mom I’m guessing Coppertone and canola) mixing with his Serum Hydrée.

“Hello, Laurel,” he says, and kisses her cheek.

Gracie locks her arm in mine and leads me up the stairs to the porch. “Mom put flowers in your room and changed your sheets twice.” I feel briefly guilty that I haven’t been here all summer.

When I have the door halfway open, the smell surrounds me. Old Bay seasoning, sourdough bread. And something fishy I can’t identify. This is what summer smelled like.

Jack steps in beside me. “It’s a lot of stuff,” he says.

I look around. It is, truly, a lot of stuff. This is how our beach house has always looked, sort of like a preschool classroom before they sing the cleanup song. A low table in the entry hall is covered in mason jars filled with shells, sea glass, and self-adhesive googly eyes. A large jar overflows with seaweed, which explains the fishy smell. My dad collects seaweed to use as paintbrushes, which I’m not ready to explain to Jack.

Right past that collection is a wide hallway where thedining room table has been shoved against the wall. On it are piles of sticks and larger pieces of driftwood. There are vats of water and a drying rack. This is my mom’s pet project, making a single sheet of paper and then printing the first copy of a new poem on it. She says it’s a ritual of gratitude. I can’t even describe what a mess it is to make paper.

“What’s all this?” Jack says, almost to himself. It alarms me to see our house through his eyes. Their apartment in the city is packed with papers and books, but it’s small and efficient in a way that Jack appreciates. This place, with its endless collections of what he must consider garbage, is a whole other story.

“Makes her own paper,” is all I can get out.

“Sam!” My dad comes in from the back porch, letting the screen door snap behind him. He’s tan and his silver hair almost touches his shoulders. He looks like an ad for expensive beer. “Well if it isn’t Sam Holloway’s annual visit to the beach! Nothing makes me happier than seeing you out here.” I give him a one-armed hug. There was a time when I would run up to my dad and hug him so fiercely that my feet would lift right off the ground. I love my dad, but I don’t worship him anymore. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that it’s totally possible to love someone from a safe distance.

“Bill. You have a beautiful home,” Jack says with as much conviction as he can muster.

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