Page 4 of Same Time Next Summer

I shrug. It is planned, of course. Jack picked B. It’s not the beach wedding I imagined as a kid or the Central Park wedding I imagined the day Jack proposed to me, but it’s easy, and I’m sure it will be beautiful.

A few guitar notes come from the treehouse. Everyone’s quiet, and I wonder if they can hear my heart beat. I notice I am holding my breath. The same notes come again, then again with a few more added on. He’s writing a song in there and I can picture him doing it, his legs dangling over the edge, his brow furrowed. It’s like I went out into the world and grew up, and he’s still right here. Right where I left him.

2

I wake in my childhood bedroom to the early morning light coming through the window and briefly don’t know where I am. The sound of the waves crashing outside isn’t so different from the rush of cars down Lexington Avenue. My double bed is pushed up against the pale yellow wall on which is painted my terrible version of the tree of life. I got the idea for this project the summer that Wyatt and Michael were building their treehouse. I wanted one of my own, but there was no tree for it on our property, so I decided I would turn my bedroom into a treehouse by painting a gigantic tree on the wall. My dad was working in his studio when I asked him for a can of brown paint. He pointed to a stack of cans in the corner, not looking up from his work. We were all artists then, no questions asked.

I spent a week working on it and wouldn’t let any of the boys in my room until I was done. Wyatt was the only one who wanted to see it anyway. Looking at the big brown trunk and its leafless branches now, I understand fully why I don’t like working with paint. Paint drips and bleeds andresponds to gravity. Of course this is why my dad loves it; he’s practically reckless. At the time, he was thrilled with my wall, probably by the effort more than the outcome. He put his arm around me as he ran his eyes over every branch. “I love it,” he said. “Needs texture.”

I check my phone and it’s only six. I lie back down and pull the covers up over my head to see if I can go back to sleep, and also to avoid taking in the rest of the time capsule that sits on my open rolltop desk. A jar full of sea glass. Three swimming trophies. A red ribbon from the Summer Muffin-a-thon. Stacks of self-indulgent journals that I decide I will throw out today.

In the drawer of the desk is a sketch pad that contains early versions of the drawing I did of Wyatt. I don’t need to take it out; I see them perfectly in my mind. It was a super-alive summer, when all of my senses were on a delicious high alert. It was the summer I noticed everything—the way the salt dried on my skin, the way sand settled between my toes. The way Wyatt smiled at me while he was composing a song. We hung the final version of my drawing on a rusty nail on the treehouse wall, back before we knew how easily precious things could disintegrate in the salt air.

As I get out of bed, I think about how memories are just fine the way nature made them. We are forward-moving people, so as we go through life our unnecessary memories fade until we finally shed them. The ones we need—the time you touched the hot oven, the time you slipped on black ice—those memories burrow into our psyches to keep us safe. But there’s no reason to walk into the museum of your childhood just for old times’ sake. It’s confusing to befaced with all the things you used to think were important once you’ve grown up. If I were my parents, I would have changed this room into a gym.

I find Gramps on the back porch, waiting for someone to make him coffee. “Oh, thank God,” he says when he sees me. “You know Annie’s going to sleep till ten and I don’t know how the hell that contraption in there works.”

I brew the coffee and make raisin toast, buttered and with marmalade, the way he likes it. I head back out and place the tray on the table between our chairs.

“Ah, lovely,” he says. “What a wife you’ll be.”

“Gramps.”

“Antiquated?”

“Definitely.” I sip my coffee and notice it tastes different here. There’s something about the beach that changes the chemical components of everything around it. Wood feels damp, sheets right out of the dryer still smell of salt. And the coffee, it’s just better.

“Sounds to me like you’re making your own money now anyway. Maybe he should be making you breakfast.” He gives me a sideways glance to let me know he’s just trying to get me going.

“I do make plenty of money, Gramps.”

“Good for you,” he says. “Cracks me up that people pay you to boss them around.”

“It’s not bossing them around so much as setting standards,” I say. “We take a fact-based approach to human capital and create measurable outcomes.”

“Sounds like nonsense,” he says, and I guess it does. I say that sentence so often I don’t even hear it anymore. I’vebeen working for Eleanor Schultz for eight years and her approach to human resources consulting is like her religion, and mine too. The beauty is that there’s never any kind of misunderstanding between people; you never have to wonder. If we tell you that you need to score eight on some scale and you score seven, you’re fired. We can literally point to the chart that made the decision, so no hard feelings.

I met Eleanor during my senior year at NYU at a recruiting event. She was wearing her signature black wool suit and seemed completely in control of herself and her surroundings, even as she sat at a folding table in a hard metal chair. The banner behind her saidhuman corps: productive people, predictable outcomes.And I just loved that. I wanted to wrap myself in that banner and enjoy a lifetime of predictable outcomes. No more surprises, no more broken promises. Just people doing what they say they’re going to do. Eleanor may have mistaken my enthusiasm for the concept with enthusiasm for the job, but a few weeks later, I was hired.

“The thing I like about Human Corps is that we help people succeed by making rules that they can live by. Then they just get to decide if they want to do what it takes to keep their jobs.”

“Human Core? Like an apple?”

“No, like ‘Peace Corps.’ ”

“So if you write it down it looks like ‘human corpse’?” Gramps laughs. He puts down his coffee and says it again, “Human corpse.” Soon he is laughing so hard that he has to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes. He takes a giant handkerchief out of his pocket and blows his nose.

His laughing makes me smile, and I don’t remember the last time my body gave itself over to a laugh that way. Human Corpse. I’ll never be able to unsee that.

“Kind of a lifeless job you’ve got there, sweetie,” he says, still laughing.

“It can be rigid,” I say.

“A bunch of stiffs in suits.” He’s wiping his eyes again.

It baffles me that I ever did anything to compromise this job. I like the people, I like the processes, and I like how I know exactly how things are going to turn out. It’s the perfect job for me. My mistake was suggesting something new to a client. Looking back now, I see it was ridiculous. When Eleanor called me into her office, she blamed my engagement. According to her, in the past year I’ve been less predictable, which is a pretty big insult coming from her. It’s been a week since this all went down, and it feels like temporary insanity more than anything else.

Granny appears on the porch, in a nightgown and a cardigan sweater. “You two had better thank God you made enough coffee for me. It sounds like there’s a hyena out here.” She takes a long sip from her mug and looks out at the water. “What’s so funny anyway?”

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