Notes When Summer Ends by Beverly Lauderdale

Author:Beverly Lauderdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58571-516-9
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2006-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ann

3:00 a.m., Sunday

Even though it’s another hot night, I periodically shiver. Even though the house is still—eerily still, actually—I sense that Savannah and Chris are also awake and probably adding comments to their journals. Will they, as I intend to do, recount the evening from their perspectives?

For clarity, in my own mind at least, I’ll pick up from where I think I last quit writing, where Cammy had eavesdropped on the Richard-Em account before requesting Richard’s picture. With an answer that disappointed her, I left the kitchen for a nap in “my” bed and awoke to the smell of frying onions.

Thick-headed, mouth dry, I was grateful for a vacant bathroom and a quick shower. Next, I was grateful that Chris and Savannah (she in the farthest corner of the porch) called out as I passed behind the screen door in the hallway.

“Cammy likes to fix a meal by herself.” Savannah flicked ashes from a cigarette that dangled over the railing away from me. But to be sure that I didn’t come in contact with second-hand smoke, I stayed out of range, sitting in a far-distant wicker settee.

Maybe my recitation of Em’s marriage was positive, because they talked readily. Chris told of a time when Em (I refuse to call her Emily Jane) replaced her at a baby sitting job so Chris could go on a date with Todd. Savannah laughed about a movie they wanted to see. Pooling their change, they had enough for one ticket. Em paid, went into the theater, and held the exit door open so Savannah could sneak inside.

“She enrolled us in an auto mechanics course at adult ed,” I said, “because she insisted, ‘If we drive cars, we should know about them. Shouldn’t be dependent on men.’ We lasted until break time of that first class.”

Our humorous stories grew—Em at the wrong funeral, inexplicably losing a shoe during an airplane flight and limping into the terminal, and spending a summer as a mystery shopper in which she evaluated various fast food restaurants and gained ten pounds.

As we laughed, I was again reminded of music. Savannah’s laugh, a smoky baritone; Chris’s, a second soprano; mine, an alto. Our concert must have pleased Cammy, for when she stepped onto the porch with “Supper’s ready,” she smiled.

On a table best characterized as a study in minimalism, Cammy lit twin white candles set equidistant in glass holders. The four china dinner plates had a simple silver band. The equally stark silver needed polishing. Fold lines marred the tablecloth, which made me suspect that at the last minute she’d decided on dinner in the dining room and had pulled the cloth from a sideboard drawer, that she was indeed inventing this weekend as it/we progressed.

As we drew back our chairs, I think we simultaneously noticed that a snapshot of Em lay just north of each salad fork.

“I selected some pictures and randomly placed them, hoping they’d spark some questions, some reminiscences,” she explained.

The one by my place setting, a studio pose, must have been taken when Em was about three, but I didn’t see her.

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