Page 89 of 28 Summers
“I promise.” Leland says this in good faith, but, come on, they’re forty-four years old, so by now they realize that no secret in the history of the world has ever been successfully kept. The truth always comes out. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there are millions, indeed trillions, of secrets that get buried in dark, rectangular holes like the ones Kitty’s and Senior’s coffins were lowered into.
“I have a Same Time Next Year,” Mallory says.
Leland repeats the sentence in her brain, hoping it will make some sense. Nope. “Excuse me?”
“I have a person in my life,” Mallory says. “A man whom I see one weekend per year. Like in the movieSame Time, Next Year.”
Same Time, Next Year;Leland vaguely recalls it. Maybe Geri had it on one long-ago Sunday afternoon; maybe it was rainy and there was a chicken roasting in the oven for supper. Maybe Geri asked Leland to come watch with her for a minute and maybe Leland was young enough that she obliged her mother rather than running upstairs to listen to the weekly countdown on 98 Rock as she finished her homework or write notes to pass to her friends the next morning in the hallway. Maybe she came in a third of the way through—the man, Hawkeye fromM*A*S*H,was wearing a wide-collared jacket and a string of beads to indicate that he was a new-age enlightened man of the 1970s. Maybe Geri had explained the premise—this seemingly normal, suburban-looking couple meet for a fling one weekend per year over the course of decades, and as the times change, so do they.
Maybe Geri had said,It sounds like a heavenly arrangement, actually.
“Wait a minute,” Leland says. “You do?”
“I do. And I’m in love with him. I’ve always been in love with him. But it’s contained, like in a hermetically sealed box. It has never leaked out into real life. It’s come close. But yeah, me and him, one weekend a year, for a long time now. And nobody knows but me and him. And now you.”
“Why are you telling me?” Leland says. She’s not sure there’s such a thing as a relationship that exists in a hermetically sealed box. “Was he at the funeral?”
“No.”
“Does he know about your parents?”
“He must.”
“He must?”
“I’m telling you because I need to confess,” Mallory says. “I know it’s stupid, but a part of me believes…” She scrunches her eyes up and emits a couple of throaty sobs. Poor Mal. They’re sitting in the library with their drinks in Senior and Kitty’s house but Senior and Kitty are in coffins in the ground. Leland leans over and puts an arm around Mallory’s back.
“It’s okay, Mal,” she says.
Mallory shakes her head. She’s all clogged up. Leland hurries to the powder room for tissues. She’s been a half-hearted friend to Mallory since the beginning, always believing for some reason that she was superior and therefore didn’t have to try as hard, but now she wants to make up for it. If Mallory feels like she has to confess about her Same Time Next Year, then fine. Leland will accept the information without judgment.
Mallory mops her face with a tissue, gets in a couple clear breaths, composes herself somewhat. “Part of me believes that what happened to Kitty and Senior is my fault. Because of this thing I’ve been doing.” She pauses. “The other person, the man…he’s married.”
“Well, yeah,” Leland says. “I figured. Otherwise…I mean, if he weren’t married, you two would just be together all the time. Or more frequently. But whatever, Mal. What happened to your parents was a random, stupid, senseless accident. It doesn’t have anything to do with this other thing. I can assure you of that.”
“But youcan’tassure me.”
Leland takes her friend’s hand. “Tell me about him. If no one else knows about him, then you must have a bunch of pent-up stuff you’ve been waiting to share.”
“Not really,” Mallory says. “In some ways, there isn’t enough to share. He comes every year, we do the same things, we have a sort of routine—the things we eat, the songs we listen to—and then he leaves.”
“You don’t call him?” Leland says. “You don’ttexthim?”
Mallory shakes her head.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s even harder to do than to believe,” Mallory says.
“And you see himeveryyear? What about Link?”
“He’s always with Fray when this person comes,” Mallory says. “It’s at the end of the summer.”
Leland is starting to picture it: A sun-soaked weekend, just Mallory and her mystery dream man in that romantic cottage on the beach. They make love and feed each other fresh figs and sing along to the Carpenters and then he leaves; Mallory stands in the doorway, blowing him kisses. They flip the hourglass over again.
It sounds like a heavenly arrangement, actually.
“Still, it’s amazing, right, that you’ve never missed a year? Does his wifeknow?”
