Perfect Summer (31 page)

“Anything.” Summer yawned and snuggled closer.

“Don’t break my heart.” It was an impossible task because she already had.

“Ditto.”

Ditto? What kind of answer was ditto?

Lilly smoothed down her red tee shirt, with its Woodstock bird sitting on a guitar neck, and knocked on Summer’s classroom door. The shirt had belonged to her father and was an original. It was Monday morning, and Lilly was ready to start her yes campaign. Summer wore tee shirts and jeans, so Lilly would wear them. Yesterday, she’d spent the better part of the afternoon trying on jeans, but nothing fit over her baby bump until she’d found a pair of super low-rise. They fit under her bump, but barely covered her bottom. She touched the belt holding them up and prayed they didn’t end up around her ankles. Maternity clothes...she wasn’t ready for that step.

Summer looked through the door’s window and frowned. Lilly breathed deeply. No one had said this was going to be easy. Slowly, the door opened.

Lilly smiled and held up the plastic bag in her left hand. “I brought Round Rock Donuts.”

She stepped around Summer. Lilly was not taking no for an answer. She’d walked right over the school secretary and the vice principal who’d told her that it was a closed campus and she couldn’t be here. All it’d taken was one phone call to the AISD superintendent and the promise of a less-than-modest donation to the Performing Arts Center Fund and she was in. Money made the world go around and, more importantly, it moved people out of her way.

“Donuts?” Summer stared at Lilly like she’d suddenly started speaking Chinese. “I don’t understand.”

“Donuts—fried rings of dough covered in sugar. I ate six on the way here.” Lilly plopped the two large boxes containing three and a half dozen donuts on the closest desk, which happened to be a wooden teacher’s desk. “Who’s hungry?”

Her daughter held the door open. “You can’t be here. This is a closed—”

“Campus, I know. Superintendent Dahl was kind enough to open it to me. I’m your new teacher’s aide.”

Summer’s mouth fell open in horror, and she turned to look at someone at the back of the class. Lilly’s hope sank to the pit of her stomach like a rock to the bottom of a river. Grayson stood, walked to Summer, and put his arm around her.

“Guys.” He nodded to the class. “Why don’t you help yourselves to the food while Ms. Ames and I step out into the hallway.”

His hand slid down to the small of Summer’s back as he led her out the door. He called over his shoulder. “Mrs. Ames, won’t you join us?”

Lilly stepped into the hall. She knew this was going to be a tough sell, but it was worth it.

“Why are you doing this?” Summer hissed through gritted teeth. “School is my world, and I won’t have you belittling me in front of them.”

Lilly was at a loss. Anger. She hadn’t expected anger from her docile little girl.

“I want to...I mean...I would like to get to know you.” Lilly chewed on her bottom lip.

“This is ridiculous. Go away.” Summer turned her back on Lilly and grabbed the doorknob.

Lilly looked at Grayson for support, but he looked down at his feet.

Lilly touched her daughter’s shoulder. “Wait. I want to make things right between us. I want us to be friends. I want to know you, for you. I was...am”—her voice shook—“a terrible mother. I want to fix it. I want to help. Your students are your life, and I want to be a part of it.”

Summer shook her head.

“Test me. I’ll do anything. I’ll clean the chalkboards, wipe down the desks, take out the trash...anything.” Lilly learned that she was never too old to beg.

“Damn it, potential will always be my Achilles Heel.” Summer looked over her shoulder and speared Lilly with a look. “If you disrespect me or anyone in my classroom, I will take great pleasure in tossing you out on your butt.”

Lilly would have jumped up and down in celebration but she was too worried that her pants would fall down. “I’ll be good.”

Summer leaned into Grayson. “Can you pinch me? My mother is high on sugar, and she wants to be my friend. I’m having the nightmare from hell.”

“Ma’am.” His hand slid down to her butt, and he gently pinched her. “I’m at your service.”

Lilly watched as he dropped a kiss on her cheek, and a look passed between them, the kind often shared by long-married couples that telegraphed love, sympathy, and support all in a split second of eye contact. Her parents had done it and now her daughter. Had Lilly ever had that with Davis?

For the first time, she needed to tell someone about him. She needed to share her life with her daughter.

“Clint, can you give us a minute?” Lilly smoothed her hair back and then went to work smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles of her shirt.

“You mess with her, you mess with me.” He stepped between Lilly and Summer, using himself to shield Summer from her mother.

“Then stay.” Lilly smoothed her hair one more time. “I’ve been seeing a man named Davis who is thirteen years younger than me. I love him, but he doesn’t feel the same about me.”

“Okay.” Summer looked like she couldn’t quite connect the dots.

“Let’s get back to class, before all the donuts are gone.” Grayson opened the door and stepped aside to let the ladies go first.

Lilly smiled and added as a casual footnote, “Also, I’m four months pregnant and will be raising my baby alone.”

***

It was a full minute before Summer could get her brain to send the correct signals to her mouth to form a word. “Um.”

It wasn’t an intelligent word, but it was all she was capable of creating.

“You’re going to be a sister. I’m having a boy. His name is Henry, after my father.”

Summer looked at Clint for a translation.

He shrugged, took a deep breath, and stepped into the classroom. “Ms. A needs five. Finish up your donuts and give me a drum roll. Our word of the day is...astonished.”

He fidgeted with the button on his jacket, but that was the only sign of his distress. He was tackling his worst demon...for her. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.

“Where’s the phone? You can’t do the word of the day without the phone.” It was Mario, always sharp as a tack.

“Today, I don’t need the phone. The only word to describe the vibe right now is astonished.” He winked at Summer and closed the door.

“I’m pregnant.” Lilly chewed on her bottom lip and stared at Summer with huge, pleading eyes. “Tell me it’s okay. Tell me everything’s going to be fine.”

Clearly her mother was toeing the line between insanity and unhinged. Summer hunched her shoulders. “I love babies.”

Her mother’s arms went around her in a tight hug. “Thanks.”

Summer did her best to pat her mother, but the older woman was hugging so tightly that Summer’s arms were plastered to her sides and she was having a little trouble filling her lungs with air. “Okay. I need to get back. Clint isn’t that comfortable with public speaking.”

Lilly released her. “Well, then...where do I start? Do you need me to clap the erasers?”

“Actually, we don’t use chalk anymore. We have whiteboards. The erasers get washed every so often. No clapping necessary.”

“I can do something else. I need a job.” Her mother was eager and more than a little desperate.

“We’ll figure something out.” Summer opened the door for her mother and then followed the older woman through.

“Everyone, this is our new teacher’s aide. Mrs. Ames.” Summer swallowed. “My mother.”

She stepped back and gave her mother the floor. Lilly stepped forward.

“Hello, I’m Lilly Ames, Summer’s mother, but you already know that. Um...”

“Are those Miss Me jeans?” La Shay analyzed the jeans.

“Yes, I just got them. Aren’t they cute?” Lilly spun around. Fashion, her mother could do. “My tee shirt is an original from Woodstock. My parents took me when I was six.”

Surely her mother meant another Woodstock because the famous rock festival seemed a little too messy for Lillian.

“What’s Woodstock?” Mario didn’t care about the jeans, but he was sure interested in the tee shirt that pulled tight across her mother’s breasts.

Summer made a mental note to tell her mother not to wear anything tight to school. Summer blew out a deep breath. She was advising her mother on clothes. It was surreal.

“Woodstock was the 1969 music festival. The Who, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Santana, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane—wait, Starship, Janis Joplin—”

“Isn’t she that chick that died?” Mario asked.

“Not at Woodstock, but yes, Janis Joplin did die of a drug overdose a little over a year later. I actually knew her. She was born in Port Arthur and lived down the street from my great uncle. Janis and my father grew up together. In fact, she introduced my father to my mother. My dad was a roadie and toured with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Full Tilt Boogie Band.” Lilly grinned, lost in memory. “When Janis died, her will stipulated that twenty-five hundred dollars be used to throw a huge party. My parents were invited, so we went and had one last round on The Pearl. That was her nickname.”

Her mother knew Janis Joplin?

“Damn, you’re hot and cool.” Mario eyed her mother’s breasts.

“Mario, respect.” Summer’s tone meant business.

Her mother was kind of cool, but Lillian Ames at Woodstock was a little hard to believe. She wanted to know more, and by the looks on her students’ faces, so did they. An idea was forming. She glanced at the clock above the door. They had an hour until the lunch break. “Put your books away, we’re going to skip ahead and hear some living history.”

“Yes.” Kesha’s spikes bobbed.

“All right,” Mario agreed.

“I want everyone to listen, don’t worry about taking notes, but there will be a quiz on Friday. This week, we’re going back to the sixties and hear about it firsthand.”

Summer leaned against the front of her desk and motioned for her mother to do the same. “Mother, tell us about the sixties.”

“I only remember bits and pieces because I was born in 1963, about a month before Kennedy was shot.” Her mother leaned against the front of the desk six inches from Summer. “My parents were hippies. They believed in free love, rock and roll, and were very ‘anti-establishment.’”

“What does that mean?” Kesha shifted in her seat and rubbed her baby belly.

“The”—Summer’s mother made quotes—“
Establishment
meant a lot of things back then. Government, organized religion, and, well...pretty much anything organized or commercial.” She crossed one Prada boot over the other. “You have to remember, this was a very turbulent time in our country’s history. Kennedy had been assassinated, there was a lotto to send men to the Vietnam War, segregation, desegregation, and the space program. Not to mention the cold war with Russia and…drugs?”

Lilly stopped and looked at Summer. “Can I talk about drugs? Talking about the sixties, it’s kind of hard to leave them out.”

Her mother knew about illegal drugs. Did she really know this woman at all?

“They’re not idiots. They deal with drugs every day.” Her mother lived in a very different world...then and now.

“And there were lots of drugs. The music scene was filled with them, soldiers were bringing them back from overseas. In my world, they were everywhere.” Her mother’s hand inched over until it covered Summer’s. “Know how I learned to drive a stick shift?”

Most of the class shook their heads.

“When I was about seven or maybe eight, Janis and my father were sharing a smoke, and she decided that I needed to learn to drive. I’m sorry to say that this was way before DUI or seat belts. She put me between the bucket seats of her psychedelic Porsche, and I shifted while she drove through the streets of LA.”

Summer couldn’t believe this was her mother talking. She was actually cool and interesting and open—all things she would not have said about the woman a month ago. When had Lillian gone from Satan to a Santana fan?

“That’s how my father taught Summer to drive a stick too. Hopefully, he wasn’t under the influence of anything stronger than breath mints at the time, but it was hard to tell.” She squeezed Summer’s hand. “We should pull down your grandparents’ things from my attic. I’m pretty sure there are love beads, lots of fringed leather clothing, and possibly a lava lamp. We could bring the sixties here.” She nodded. “How does that sound?”

“Sure.” Summer nodded too. Her mother really was trying, and Summer had agreed to give her a chance. Her mother at Woodstock—that was an altered, psychedelic reality.

“I have some stuff from Woodstock too…somewhere. A guitar pick from Jimi Hendrix, a poster, and some sunglasses that might have belonged to Joan Baez. Here’s a coincidental and somewhat ironic fact. Joan was pregnant, I don’t remember how far along, and she let me feel her baby kick. That’s all I remember about Woodstock. From there, we went to LA, and then after Janis died, we moved to India.”

“India?” Summer searched her memory and couldn’t find anything on India. Her grandmother’s name had been India. Maybe she hadn’t heard correctly.

“Yes. We moved around a bit and then settled at Belur Math Ramakrishna Mission. It’s a very pretty place on the Hooghly River. Green lawns, fruit trees, beautiful sandstone shrines. We lived there for four years and then moved to Austin...sort of. We lived in an RV and traveled around.”

“India?” Summer shook her head. Woodstock was one thing, but India? Her mother didn’t like crowds, hated disorder, and ate beef.

“Yes, my mother took the name while we were there. I can’t really blame her since her first name was Gertrude Lillian.”

Summer had never thought of her mother as a person before—someone with a childhood, or, well...a life before her. And what a life. A child of the sixties wandering around Woodstock and then traveling through India. She really didn’t know her mother at all.

The buzzer sounded.

Summer stood. “That’s lunch.”

Lilly looked around. “It’s already time to go?”

All around them, kids chatted and packed up their belongings.