Fifteenth Summer (2 page)

“Abbie,” I broke in, “do you really think hauling yourself out of Lake Michigan after swimming two miles is the best way to meet a boy? Who knows what you’ll look like. You could have dune grass or seagull feathers in your hair. Yuck.”

“Plus, there’s the issue of your Speedo,” Hannah pointed out. Like all competitive swimmers, Abbie snapped herself into a high-necked, long-legged black bodysuit for her distance swims. It made her look like a slick-skinned seal. A cute little bikini it was not.

Abbie put on her cocky Supergirl face.

“You know I look hot in my Speedo,” she said.

Hannah and I glanced at each other, silently agreeing. Abbie’s arms and legs were long and lean. She had a perma-tan that made her limbs almost glow. Her waist had been whittled down by eight million strokes of the Australian crawl. And while pool chlorine turned some swimmers’ hair into yellow straw, Abbie’s long, straight hair was dark brown and silky.

Clearly just the thought of swimming made Abbie antsy. She flung her perfect legs over mine and planted her feet in Hannah’s lap.

“Hey!” Hannah and I protested together.

“I can’t help it. I’ve gotta stretch. I’m dying in here!” Abbie groaned. She flopped her arm into the front seat and tapped my dad on the shoulder. “You guys, remind me why we got rid of the minivan again?”

“Other than the fact that it was a giant, ugly egg, you mean?” I asked. I had a dream of someday having a vintage car with giant tail fins, a pastel paint job, and wide, white leather seats.

Mom twisted in her seat to look at us with wistful eyes that she quickly whitewashed with one of her forcefully perky smiles.

“Abbie and Hannah, you’re both driving now, and Chelsea will be next year too,” she said, her voice sounding tinny and cheerful. “You girls don’t need us to carpool you anymore. It was time for a grown-up car.”

“Plus, this little guy gets fifty-one miles to the gallon,” Dad said, giving the putty-colored dashboard a pat.

“ ‘Little’ is the operative word,” I grumbled. “There’s barely room for us, not to mention certain essential items.”

“Are you still pouting that you couldn’t bring that ridiculous box of books?” Abbie sighed.

“No,”
I said defensively.

By which, of course, I meant
yes
. Ever since my e-reader had been tragically destroyed, I’d had to revert to paper books. I’d spent
weeks
collecting enough of them to last me through the long Bluepointe summer, but at the last minute my mom had nixed my entire stash.

“We just don’t have room in the car,” she’d said as we were packing up. “Pick a few to throw into your backpack.”

“A few? A
few
won’t get me through Colorado,” I’d complained.

“Well, maybe next time you try to prop your e-reader on the soap dish while you’re showering,” Mom had responded, “you’ll think twice about it.”

Which had caused Abbie to laugh so hard, she’d dropped a suitcase on her foot.

Hannah had been slightly more sympathetic. Probably because
she
got to bring all her books with her. She was starting her freshman year at the University of Chicago in September and had given herself a huge stack of summer reading to prepare.

Even now, as she gazed out the car window, Hannah was being scholarly.

“Dad, don’t forget,” she warned, “we’ve got to get off at exit forty-eight if we’re going to the Ojibwa history museum.”

“Ooh, arrowheads and pottery bowls,” Abbie said. “Thrilling.”

“Well, if you know how to look at them,” Hannah said haughtily, “they are.”

Now it was Abbie and I who sent each other a silent message in a glance:
Our sister is a super-nerd
. She’d already mapped out her future of a BA in biology and anthropology, followed by an MD-PhD. Then she was going to get the CDC to send her to some third world country where she’d cure malaria. Simple, right?

It didn’t seem fair that, in addition to being ridiculously smart, Hannah was just as pretty as Abbie. She had the same coloring and same long willowy limbs, though her skin was less tan, her figure softer, and her shiny hair chopped into a chin-length bob.

Whenever anybody saw the three of us together, they assumed I was some distant cousin, because my skin was freckled and anything but golden, and my hair was red.
Bright
red. It was also very thick and
very
curly, just like my grandmother’s. Until I was born, she was the only member of the family who had this crazy hair . . . .

As I thought about this now, with endless, flat Iowa skimming by outside the car window, I inhaled sharply. Something had just occurred to me for the first time.

Now
I
was the only one in the family with this crazy red hair.

M
y grandmother had a stroke early one morning in January.

I’d just woken up and had been walking down the hall to the bathroom. My dad had blocked my way to tell me the news.

“Granly’s in a coma, sweetie,” he told me. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face looked pale and clammy beneath his early-morning
scruff. “Her friend, Mrs. Berke, went to the cottage after she didn’t show up for their breakfast date. You know Granly never locks the door. Mrs. Berke found her still in bed and called 911.”

There was no sit-down, no soften-the-blow discussion about the circle of life. Dad just blurted it out.

I stared at him, completely baffled.

Through the open door of my parents’ bedroom, I could see my mom frantically packing a suitcase. Hannah was in the bathroom, issuing updates: “Mom, I’m packing your toothbrush and your moisturizer, okay?”

And Abbie was curled up in my parents’ bed, hugging a pillow.

“But she’s gonna be okay, right?” Abbie cried. “She’ll wake up,
right
?”

So that was why my poor dad had broken the news to me so bluntly. He’d already had to tell Hannah and Abbie.

My brain refused to register what had happened. The only thing I remember thinking at that moment was that I really had to pee.

After that I remember thinking I should call Granly to clear up this ridiculous rumor.

“I’m
fine
, Chelsea,” she’d say with a laugh. “You know Mrs. Berke. She’s an alarmist. She’s the one who always used to wake her husband up in the middle of the night because she was sure that he was dead. And of course, he never
was
. Well, except for that last time . . .”

Then she’d laugh wickedly, and I’d say, “Granly!” and pretend to be shocked.

But of course that phone call never happened.

After Mrs. Berke called the ambulance, Granly was taken from Bluepointe to South Bend, Indiana, which was the closest city with a big hospital. My mom took the first flight out and spent an entire day and night at Granly’s bedside, holding her hand. Then Granly’s doctor told my mom that Granly
wasn’t
going to wake up. My mom had followed Granly’s living will and allowed her to die, which she did “peacefully” two days later.

Through it all, none of it felt real to me. Granly’s number was still in my phone. I still had e-mails from her in my inbox. She was in at least half of the Silver family portraits that hung on our dining room wall. And in all those photos she was surrounded by the still-living. The irony was, she looked more alive than any of us in the pictures. She always seemed to be laughing, while the rest of us merely smiled.

Depending on the year the photo was taken, Granly’s hair was either closely cropped or sproinging out wildly, but it was always the exact same glinting-penny red as mine. That’s because when I was little, Granly snipped a lock of my hair and took it to her hairdresser.

“
Nobody
could get the color right until you came along,” she told me after one of her triumphant trips to her salon. “Now I have the same hair I had when
I
was a girl. You should save some of your hair for you to use when you’re old and gray like me. Red hair is really difficult, Chels.”

“It
is
difficult,” I agreed with a sigh. Of course, I’d meant it in a different way. I hated that my hair was as bright as a stoplight. I cringed when people assumed I had a fiery temper or was as
hilarious as an
I Love Lucy
episode. And I resented Granly’s
Anne of Green Gables
law (that law being that a redhead in pink was an abomination and completely undeserving of gentleman suitors).

So I kept my hair long, the better to pull it back into a tight, low ponytail or bun. And if I fell for a coral shift dress or peppermint-colored circle skirt at one of my favorite vintage shops, I bought it—Anne Shirley be damned.

Before Granly died, my hair had felt simply like an inconvenience, like being short or needing glasses. But now it seemed like this precious legacy, one I wasn’t worthy of.

Thinking about this in the backseat of the car made me feel short of breath—not from carsickness but from panic.

To put it as bluntly as my dad had that morning in January, Granly’s death had freaked me out. I knew that she was gone. I knew she was never again going to call me just to tell me some random, funny three-minute story. I knew that we’d never again pick her and her enormous, bright green suitcase up at the airport.

I
knew
this, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to
believe
it. It just didn’t feel possible that someone could exist and then—poof—not.

That was why I hadn’t wanted to look at Granly in her casket before her graveside funeral service.

And it was why I really didn’t want to spend this summer in Bluepointe.

We’d never stayed at Granly’s cottage without her. The cottage
was
Granly.

When I was little, Granly had also had an apartment in Chicago.
That’s where my mother grew up, spending weekends and summers at the cottage.

Granly’s apartment had been filled with masculine mementos of my grandfather, who’d died before I was born. There’d been a big leather desk chair and serious Persian rugs and a half-empty armoire that had smelled like wood and citrus, like men’s aftershave.

But Granly had decorated the cottage all for herself, and eventually she’d decided to live there full-time. The walls were butter yellow and pale blue, and the floorboards were bleached and pickled, as if they’d been made of driftwood. Every wall was a gallery of picture frames. She’d hung the same family portraits that we had in our house in LA, plus oil paintings, nudes drawn with breathy wisps of red Conté crayon, arty black-and-white photos, and, in the breakfast room, paint-blobbed kindergarten artwork by Hannah, Abbie, and me. She’d picked the fanciest frames of all for our “masterpieces.” It was a gesture that had seemed kind of goofy when Granly was alive. Now that she wasn’t, I cried every time I thought about her framing those sloppy paintings.

But apparently I was the only one who felt that way. My parents spent most of the drive through Nebraska debating whether to keep or sell the cottage, as if the decision should be made purely on the basis of property taxes and the cost of a new roof.

And when we were deep in Iowa, Hannah gazed out at the wall of cornstalks that edged the highway, and laughed suddenly.

“Remember Granly’s garden?” she said.

“You mean the petting zoo?” Abbie replied with a laugh of her own. “Oh my God, it was like Granly sent engraved invitations
to every deer and rabbit within a five-mile radius. ‘Come eat my heirloom radishes!’ They loved it.”

“Well, it was her own fault,” my dad said from the front seat. “She refused to build a fence or use any of those deer deterrents.”

“Coyote pee!” Abbie snorted. “I mean, can you imagine Granly out there in her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, spraying the stepping stones with coyote pee?”

“She wouldn’t admit it, but you know she loved watching those deer walk by her window every morning. They were so pretty,” Hannah said. “She didn’t even
like
radishes. She just liked the idea of pulling them up and putting them in a pretty basket.”

My mom shook her head and laughed a little. “That was
so
Granly.”

“Wait a minute,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know Granly hated radishes. How did I not know that?”

Hannah shrugged lightly, then closed her eyes and flopped her head back. Clearly the subject of Granly’s radishes didn’t make her the slightest bit sad.

Meanwhile I was biting my lip to keep myself from bursting into tears.

I knew this was what we were supposed to do. We were supposed to talk about Granly and “keep her memory alive.” Mrs. Berke had said that to me after Granly’s funeral, before giving me an uncomfortable, hairspray-scented hug.

I didn’t want to forget Granly, but I didn’t really want to think about her either. Every time I did, I felt claustrophobic, the same way I feel every time I get on an elevator.

It’s a well-known fact in my family that I’m a mess on an
elevator. My ears fill with static. I clench my fists, take shallow breaths, and stare intently at the doors until they open. When they do, I’m always the first one off. Then I have to inhale deeply for a few seconds before resuming normal human functioning.

I wondered if this whole summer in Bluepointe would feel like that. Without Granly there, would I ever be able to take that deep breath and move on?

W
e spent most of Illinois in silence because we were so hot. And cranky. And completely sick of each other. Hannah had even consented to skipping the Ojibwa museum in favor of just getting to Bluepointe—and out of the car—as soon as possible.

Just when I started contemplating something seriously drastic—like borrowing my mother’s needlepoint—we began to follow the long, lazy curve around Lake Michigan. We couldn’t see the lake from the expressway, but we could
feel
it there, waiting to welcome us back.

I’d always preferred Lake Michigan to the ocean. I liked that it was a moody, murky green. I liked that it was so big that the moon mistook it for an ocean, which meant it had waves. But not loud, show-offy Pacific Ocean–type waves. Just steady, soothing, unassuming undulations that you could float in for hours without feeling oversalted and beaten. Lake Michigan was like the ocean’s underdog.