Summerlong: A Novel Part 3

Among the things mothers don't do: they don't leave the house first in the morning, without explanation. Fathers can do this. They can blame work or a need to hit the gym or an early meeting or a doctor's appointment and be gone before the family wakes up; but mothers need to be seen in the morning, present, directing the day's traffic.

But when she wakes up on the back deck, still before dawn, Claire can think of no good reason to stay home. What kind of life is this? When you cannot leave the house if you want to leave the house. She's awake again, alone in the early morning, four thirty, and the kids will sleep almost four more hours. Her husband's still asleep too, it seems, in the bas.e.m.e.nt, in front of the television.

She goes to the kitchen in her robe and flips on the coffeemaker. She hesitates to do this, because she worries the simple smell of coffee might wake her husband, and she wants solitude, but she wants coffee too. Isn't that her life though, now, at thirty-eight? A storm of competing desires, one threatening to ruin the other?

She waits for the coffee to brew, just enough for one large mug of it, and she surveys the kitchen, a disaster. The dishes from last night's supper stacked in the sink, the b.u.t.ter dish left out, rancid and liquid now on the kitchen island. Four empty beer bottles (Don's) and a mostly empty bottle of Tempranillo (hers) near the sink. Fruit flies flit around the remnants of the wine. The trash can in the corner full, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with a dozen gnawed-on ears of corn and bare bones.

She sets her coffee mug in the disgusting sink, goes into the downstairs bathroom, puts on a hint of makeup, brushes her teeth, drops her robe, and slides on a navy blue sundress, which she finds in a pile of clean laundry she dumped, two days ago, on the family room couch. She has no clean underwear. It is all upstairs in the three baskets of laundry she has yet to put away. If she goes upstairs, she might wake one of the kids, and then slipping out would be out of the question.

Fine, she thinks. It's hot.

She walks out the front door and leaves.

Her husband will wake up later and find her gone. He'll look around at the kitchen and then panic. The chaos of his life will seem insurmountable. How to give the children breakfast in such a filthy kitchen? And how will he get them all ready for the day, while he arranges showings of his newest listings? How will he s.h.i.+t, shave, and shower, his morning rituals, if he's alone with the kids?

How many times, Claire thinks, in the past twelve years, has she forgone those three simple dignities of the mornings to care for the children, or how often has she done those things with a child in the bathroom watching her, crying, whining, or asking a million cheerful and relentless questions as she tried to take a s.h.i.+t.

She would come home and find him fuming, though he would say, "No, no, it's okay."

She goes to the house where she expects to see his van and she sees it. She sees the light on in an upstairs window, and she goes into the front yard and stands on the flagstone path, and then when she sees him, the man she had expected to see, the guy she'd talked to outside the k.u.m & Go, pa.s.s by the window in jeans and no s.h.i.+rt, holding a mug of coffee, she goes to the door and knocks.

Charlie f.u.c.king Gulliver.

Behind her, she sees the glowing promise of a sunrise and the trees filling with it too, a spreading flame in the sky, and she remembers how much that once mattered to her, those brief moments of the new morning, when she had first moved back to the Midwest and was still in love with its light.

When Don Lowry wakes, just before dawn, he is dry-mouthed and fully erect, and his head buzzes with the strangeness of half sleep, but he knows exactly where he is. He's in a hammock on the Manettis' sleeping porch, hungover, maybe still stoned, hungry, and next to him is ABC. Her hand is under his s.h.i.+rt and on his bare stomach somehow.

How does one exit a hammock without waking a second sleeper, also in the hammock?

This is a question he's never considered before!

ABC s.h.i.+fts her hand as she stirs, moves it off his stomach, grazing it against the front of his pants, unintentionally, yes, but a pleasurable wince seems to rush up to Don's forehead from the bottom of his spine. He rolls from the hammock and stands, straightening his clothes and watching ABC, still sleeping, as the hammock sways slowly back and forth.

She's probably pretending to sleep. She just wants him gone.

He smooths his hands over his body, adjusting himself. Trying to make himself something like presentable in the waxing daylight. Her pants came off at some point in the night. Don Lowry, who considers himself a light sleeper, almost a nonsleeper, has slept the sleep of the dead.

He has to pee, finds the bathroom, and then, holding his shoes, walks down the steps. His mouth is so dry and his head thumps and he makes his way into the s.p.a.cious kitchen and seeks a gla.s.s of water, two Advil if he is lucky. He looks at a gleaming fridge-it's a new kitchen, a significantly sleek set of appliances, butcher-block countertops, and custom-made cabinets that he had not imagined such an old home having: it would push this home over the $300,000 mark. Inside the fridge, he finds a whole shelf of bottled water, juices, beers, and cans of seltzer. He grabs one of these cans, pops the top, and then smells, in the distance, burning leaves.

Shutting the fridge, turning around, he sees the white-haired Mrs. Manetti, Ruth, in her bathrobe, lighting up a joint.

"Don Lowry!" she says. "You wanna burn?"

"Um, sure," Don says.

He sits down at the kitchen table across from her, his sparkling water in hand. She hands him the joint. He takes it, and holds in the smoke, less smooth than what he was smoking upstairs. He thinks he remembers a morning hit is good for a hangover and he is hungover and will be all day.

"Not easy to roll a joint with arthritis," Ruth says.

"I guess, what, it's supposed to help with that?" Don asks.

"At my age," Ruth says, winking, "it helps with every G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. Do you have any big plans for the summer, Don?"

"Um," Don says, stuttering a bit. He has known Ruth Manetti most of his life, but he's not made small talk with her in years. She had faded into the scenery of the town for him, another old lady he knew and whose house he would someday sell in order to settle an estate. "I guess we'll probably go up to Minnesota again. Lake Superior."

"You still use the Merrick place every August?"

"Good memory!" Don says. He remembers, now that he sees her face light up, Ruth had grown up along the North Sh.o.r.e of Minnesota. "Have you been back there?"

"Almost a decade since I've seen that lake," she says. "That's a shame, isn't it?"

ABC walks into the kitchen in her underwear and T-s.h.i.+rt, gets a gla.s.s pitcher of orange juice from the fridge, and pours two gla.s.ses.

"The fireflies came back last night," Ruth says.

"Fireflies?" Don says. "I didn't see them yet."

"I did!" ABC says. "I thought I saw a few just before Don showed up!"

Ruth is silent for a moment, the smoke coming out of her mouth seeming more powerful than the frail lips that exhale it. Don feels as if she herself, in her thin robe, might dissipate into smoke. Her face is blank, as if she is staring toward something beyond the kitchen, beyond the house, beyond Grinnell. ABC is watching her too.

Christ, don't have a stroke, Don thinks. Not now.

But then her thoughts return to the kitchen and she looks at them and says, "The night they return is a night of upheaval. Always. It brings profound change."

ABC takes Ruth an OJ, sits at the vacant chair at the small table, and takes a long drink of her own juice. She reaches over, takes Don's can of sparkling water, and splashes some if it into her own gla.s.s.

"A spritzer," she says. "Want one?"

"No, no. I need to go. It's almost dawn."

"Do you turn into a pumpkin at dawn?" ABC asks.

"I never sleep," Don says. "I don't know how I fell asleep so soundly."

"Isn't it obvious?" Ruth says. "That's why I started smoking weed again. Ten years of insomnia, aches and pains, and a spinning sad mind and I had had it. Purely medicinal, of course. A balm for a suffering old lady, nothing more."

"Me too," ABC says.

"I gotta go," Don says to both of the women. "Thanks for everything."

"Tonight," Ruth says, "keep an eye out."

"For what?" ABC and Don both say at once.

"Fireflies," Ruth says. "Upheaval!"

After Don leaves the house, Ruth turns to ABC.

"He's married," Ruth says.

"It's not like that," ABC says.

"It's okay. I'm not judging. Loneliness is a justification for a lot of behavior. Loneliness is a kind of suffering you can alleviate. It's not something you have to endure, like grief."

"I'm not lonely."

"You are," Ruth says. "It's the core of your condition. You practically stink of it."

"Thanks," ABC says.

"What I mean is this, ABC. You, and by that I mean everyone, take comfort sometimes in life where you shouldn't. People get hurt in life-there's no way around that. And people will do anything to find grace."

ABC drinks her juice and feels Ruth looking at her expectantly.

"You're rather philosophical this morning."

"Fireflies," Ruth says.

ABC waits for her to elaborate and when she doesn't, ABC fills the silence, which always feels more meaningful than awkward with Ruth.

"When Philly and I were dating-I mean, when she was still alive-there was this one morning when we were just joking around. You know, in bed," ABC says. "The way couples sometimes do, right? Just talking nonsense, exhausted and satisfied."

"One of the great pleasures in life," Ruth says. "Postcoital contentment."

"Yes," ABC says. "Anyway!"

"Are you blus.h.i.+ng?" Ruth says. "I thought you were so modern!"

"Well, one of those mornings, I got this wave of panic in my heart and I asked Philly, 'What'll I do if you die?'"

"You had a feeling?" Ruth asks.

"I had a feeling that such bliss was not sustainable."

"I think every good relations.h.i.+p has that fear. You should feel that happy. So happy, you worry."

"I guess," ABC says.

"And? What did she say?"

"She looked at me and said that she'd send Don Lowry."

"Oh my," Ruth says.

Ruth stands up then, which takes some doing, and goes to the window. ABC thinks she looks worried, or maybe she is making sure Don is not still on the porch, listening.

"Did you tell him this?" Ruth asks.

"No. But that's why, when he showed up yesterday-I'd just been sitting in the park, crying, missing Philly worse than I ever had missed her and who is standing there when I open my eyes? Don Lowry!"

"Oh my," Ruth says again.

"Coincidence, right? A crazy coincidence."

"You get to be my age, ABC, you don't believe in coincidences much."

Ruth closes her eyes and then opens them wide, smiling, a wave of energy coming into her cheeks and flooding them with pink light.

"So what are you saying?"

Ruth thinks a long moment, staring into her almost-empty juice gla.s.s. She comes back to the kitchen table and sits down with a great, slow effort. Eyes closed, she exhales.

"I think you should follow him. I think Philly was right. Don Lowry is here for a reason."

"Oh my G.o.d, Ruth. I dunno about that, I mean, how crazy . . ."

"Why would she have said it then?"

"Coincidence," ABC says. "We thought he was funny. We thought his billboards and advertis.e.m.e.nts were very funny."

Ruth asks to be led to her bed. She tells ABC she is suddenly very tired and wants more sleep. When ABC has helped her get into the bed, has covered her in a warm quilt and dimmed the lights of her room, Ruth, closing her eyes, finally speaks again.

"It's not a coincidence," Ruth says.

Ruth begins to fall asleep and ABC shakes her arm, gently.

"Wait! Before you fall asleep! What are you saying?"

"It's no coincidence, ABC. Don Lowry is going to lead you to a magical place, a place where you'll find Philly."

"What? Ruth?"

"That explains the fireflies," Ruth says, and then she's off into Nod, and ABC is left with a racing heart whispering to the walls the word Philly.