Page 66 of Same Time Next Summer

He pulls me close. “Great. This is actually just the closure I needed.”

62

The weekend of my wedding that is not to be, my parents and Gracie come out to Long Island. My dad wants to check to see if the boiler is leaking the way it does almost every October. Or at least that’s his cover; I think they want to spy on us. Granny and Gramps show up too, because they already wrote “Long Island” on their calendar in ink. Also, the spying.

“Hey-ho!” my dad booms on Friday evening when he comes through the door. “Are there squatters in my house?”

Wyatt’s pulling glasses out of the dishwasher and, for a split second, looks like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He seems to remember himself and walks over to hug my dad. It’s an actual hug, not a quickie, and when my dad pulls away he is a little misty.

“I’m just so happy,” he says, putting his duffel bag on the table.

“Tell me about it,” says Wyatt.

My mom comes in with a plastic bag full of usedMetroCards. I give her a hug and ask what they’re for. “I’m not sure,” she says. “God, you look beautiful.” She touches my face the way she likes to, with both hands so she can take it in with multiple senses.

“Thanks. I’m just— It’s so—” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.

“Oh, I know, sweetie,” she says.

Gracie lugs a suitcase through the front door and is not the person I remember. It’s only been two months but she’s maybe grown an inch, and her hair is in a loose single braid. Soon it will be completely down and she’ll be using it to gesture. Maybe even toss. She’s rounding that corner, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m sorry for what she’s leaving behind, that completely unselfconscious free-form reality of childhood. I have a strong urge to protect her, to shuttle her through these years quickly so she can be thirty. Or, better, forty. But that’s not how caterpillars get there. It’s not how any of us do.

“My friends are like freaking out about ‘Summer Still,’ ” she tells Wyatt. “I mean it’s so perfect for right now, like when it’s getting colder?” She’s picked up “like” and the up-talk at the end of a sentence. I want to know who’s responsible for this.

“Thanks,” says Wyatt. “Sam and I are hoping to have a whole album ready by the end of the winter.” He puts his arm around me, and I notice they’ve all paused to observe this.

“Sam’s helping?” my dad asks.

“Well, she helps by leaving for a lot of the day so I can work.”

I give him a smile and nudge. “That’s not true. He works all the time. I think he sleeps while I’m at the library.”

“This is so weird,” says Gracie. “I guess I’m the only one in the family that never saw you two madly in love.”

“Gracie,” my mom says. Though I don’t know what she’s admonishing her for. Apparently, neither does she, because she smiles. “Granny and Gramps will be here in a bit. We’ve got stuff to grill, if it’s not too cold out there. Travis and Hugh are right behind us.”

“Tonight was supposedto be your rehearsal dinner,” Travis says because he’s such a troublemaker. “Where was that going to be again?”

“That washed-up tennis player’s park,” I say.

“Weather would have been nice for it,” says Granny, and my mom nods. Wyatt gives my shoulder a squeeze, as if I need to be reminded of how great it is that we are not currently at my rehearsal dinner.

“Well, let’s consider this a rehearsal dinner,” my dad says. “Because I’m still paying for dinner for fifty at the Old Sloop Inn tomorrow night. Never got our deposit back, so I just held the reservation to piss them off.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say.

“It’s no big deal,” he says, and smiles at my mom.

“Just tell them,” my mom says.

My dad puts his hands on the table and considers us for a few seconds before he speaks. “There’s a lot of interest in my new series. I have a show at the Nufriti-Greene Gallery in December. It’s calledLifeline.”

“Oh, Dad!” Travis and I are on our feet to hug him. “This must feel so good.”

“It’s about damn time,” says Gramps to his glass.

“It feels like if you were starving to death and found out you could create a cheeseburger with your own hands,” my dad says, his eyes a little misty.

“What’s the new series? Can we see it?” I ask.

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