The Summer We Got Free (21 page)

“No.”

“I am.” He got
up, grabbed the empty cup he kept on the nightstand for water late at night. He
opened the door, and peeked out to make sure the coast was clear before
hurrying naked down the hall to the bathroom. He let the cold tap run for a little
while,
then
filled the cup. When he got back to the
bedroom, Ava was lying on her side, turned away from him. He took a long drink
of water,
then
placed the cup on the nightstand as he
got back into the bed. He moved close to her, put his arms around her.

She pushed him
away. “I’m tired,” she said.

He blinked in the dark, feeling rejected and confused.

Ava pulled the sheet up to her chin, even though the
room was stiflingly hot.

Paul lay down on
his back, frowning into the heavy darkness. “I killed somebody,” he said, so
quietly that he was sure she had not heard him and, worried that he might not
have the guts to say it again if she hadn’t, he made himself say it again,
louder. “I killed somebody, Ava.”

She turned over,
squinted at him in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

“It was a long
time ago,” he said. “And I didn’t mean to do it. But somehow that don’t make it
even a little bit better, even though you’d think it would.”

“Who did you
kill?”

“A woman.
No, a girl.
She wasn’t but sixteen. She was hurting my sister.
I was just trying to stop her.”

Ava’s eyes were
wide in the dark.

“That’s why I
got sent to
juvie
. I was in until I was eighteen.”

Ava sat up in
the bed, reached over and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. In the
light, her face was heavy with shock, her brow drawn tight,
her
mouth slightly open. “I can’t believe you never told me this,” she said.

“I couldn’t. Knowing
what happened to your brother, I didn’t think you could love me if you knew.”

He reached over
to take her hand, but she moved away from him, getting up out of the bed. She
was trembling.

Paul wished to
God he had told her before now.
Anytime before now, before
the last few days.
This trembling woman was so different from the wife
he had known for four years. A few days ago, she would have been shocked, she
might even have thrown him out, but she would not have stood there as she stood
there now, looking at him with devastation in her eyes, shaking from head to
foot with what he knew was disgust, and fear, and anger.

He got out of
the bed and stood on the other side of it, stark naked. He wanted to reach for
his pants, but he was afraid that if he looked away from her she would be gone
when he looked again.

“Baby,” he said.
“Ava. It was an accident. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t mean to.”

“You meant to
lie about it all this time.”

“What would have
happened if I told you?
Way back, in the beginning?
You wouldn’t have had
nothing
to do with me. I didn’t
want you to walk away from me over something I did when I was fifteen,
something I never meant to do, something I suffered over every day since it happened.”

She stared at
him for a long moment,
then
asked, “Who was the girl?
What was she doing to your sister?”

“She lived in
our building,” he said. “Our mothers was friends and she would come over with
her. She used to tease Helena all the time about being so black, make her cry
all the time. When I came in that time, she was holding her down. I grabbed
her, and pushed her. She fell against a glass table, right against the corner
of it, and it snapped off and cut her.”

Ava grabbed the
arm of the chair by the bed and sank down into it. She closed her eyes and took
a long breath. When she opened her eyes, she frowned and said, “Put something
on, please.”

He reached for
his boxer shorts and pulled them on, then his undershirt. Then he sat down on
the bed and watched her, waiting.

After a little
while, she said, “I feel like I don’t know you, Paul.”

He didn’t mean
to laugh, but he couldn’t help it.

“That’s funny?”
she asked.

“No. But
I been
feeling the same thing about you for days. And you
aint been rushing to tell me what’s going on with you.”

“I can tell you
for sure I aint killed anybody.”

Paul got up,
grabbed his pants. He pulled them on, and then his shirt, and moved to the
door.

“Where are you
going?” she asked him.

“Somewhere
else.”

“
You’re
walking out? You got some nerve.”

He ignored her,
ran down the stairs, and out the front door.

***

Ava awoke craving coffee. It was just after dawn and
the bluish light coming in through the window cast long, thin shadows along the
walls, shadows that reached up onto the ceiling and stretched across the bed.
From one dark corner of the room she felt a presence, a hum that was different
from that of the box fan, the low hum of another soul, and she sat up in the
bed and looked around the room, peering into the shadows. At first, the hum
felt vague and unfamiliar, but as she sat there it grew stronger, and clearer,
and she recognized it. It was Geo. All around her, heavy in the dark of the
room, was the spirit of her brother. It was so palpable, and so close, that she
expected him to emerge from the shadows any second, and she climbed out of the
bed and stood in the center of the room, and waited. The dark seemed to breathe
around her. Outside the window, the sky continued to lighten, and the shadows
shifted and crept, and reached out for her.

“Geo,” she
whispered. “Are you here?”

No answer came.
Daylight spilled into the room, erasing the shadows, and with them the murmur
of his presence.

She went downstairs to the kitchen, where Sarah and
George were already up, finishing their breakfast before leaving for work. She
went straight to the coffee pot and poured herself some, then stood there with
her nose inside the cup, thinking that the coffee smelled much richer than
usual. “What kind of coffee is this?” she asked.

“It’s Maxwell
House. Like it always is,” Sarah said. “You the one bought it.”

Helena came in and
said good morning to all of them. Her hands were dirty and she went and washed
them in the sink. She was wearing a thin-strapped top and her shoulders were
bare and Ava noticed the delicate bones that went from her shoulders to the
base of her throat, where little beads of sweat had gathered, looking like tiny
drops of coffee against her black skin, and Ava wondered for a moment what they
might taste like. Helena seemed to feel her staring and glanced at her. Ava
held the cup of coffee out to her. “Smell that.”

Helena sniffed the coffee.

“It smells different?”

“It smells like coffee,” Helena said.

Ava put her nose back in the cup and breathed in the
dark aroma, loving it.

“You’re up
early,” Sarah said.

“I was doing some
work in the front yard,” Helena told her.

George frowned.
“What kind of work?”

“Turning over
the soil. I’m going to plant some flowers there. Your wife told me last night
how much her flower gardens used to mean to her and I thought I’d do it as a
thank-you for your hospitality.”

George wanted to
object, but he couldn’t think of a reason.

“Paul and I are
driving up to French Creek today,” Helena told Ava.

“Where’s that?” Sarah asked.

“In the Poconos.
We used to go up there with our father when we were kids.”

“How y’all
getting there?”

“A friend of
Paul’s is loaning us his car. Whitey, or somebody.”

“Milky?” Sarah
asked.

“That’s it.” She
looked at Ava. “Is Paul still asleep?”

Ava shook her
head. “He aint here.”

“Oh. He left
already to get the car?”

“No.”

“Well, where is
he?” Sarah asked.

“He walked out,”
Ava said, “in the middle of the night. I don’t know where he is.”

George looked up
from his cereal. “What you talking about?
Walked
out
?”

“You had a
fight?” Helena asked.

“They don’t
never fight,” Sarah said.

Ava laughed. “We
do now.”

The phone rang.

“That got to be
Paul,” George said, getting up to answer it.

Ava stared down
into her coffee cup.

“Paul, where the
hell you at?” George said into the phone. Then, “Yeah, she right here. Hold
on.”

He held the phone out to Helena. She glanced at Ava,
then
took it.

Ava turned back to the counter and added sugar to her
coffee. She was not thinking about Paul. She was thinking about her brother,
about what she had felt in her bedroom that morning. She wondered if he had
really been there. With all the ghosts that had appeared to them in the last
few days, it seemed likely that he would show up at some point. But he had not
showed himself, as the others had, and Ava wondered why. And, too, she wondered
what seeing him would do to her, what memories it would unlock, what emotions.
Perhaps seeing him would bring it all back.

“Alright, I’ll meet you over there,” Helena was saying
into the phone.

Ava sipped her
coffee and wondered what would happen if Paul did not come home, and whether,
in that case, Helena would leave, too.

The temperature reached ninety-seven degrees by eleven
o’clock and through the front window of the bank, Sarah watched people moving
slower up and down Chestnut Street, their feet almost dragging on the concrete
sidewalks, their images blurred by the wavy lines of heat rising in the air.
Around noon, thunder rumbled, and the sky opened, and sheets of rain slid down
the bank’s large windows, obscuring Sarah’s view, so she could see only watery,
distorted, umbrella-shaped images hurrying by. The storm moved through quickly
and the city steamed for hours afterward, the air moist and heavy, but cooler
than it had been that morning.

Sarah took the
bus to Penn’s Landing at one, hoping to catch the fire-eating man at the end of
his performance, so that she could talk to him when no one else was around.
When she got there, though, she found him just starting, lighting fire at the
tip of each baton while the small crowd watched. The rain, Sarah thought. It
had forced him to start later. She stood there watching the performance, the
juggling and flipping, enjoying it as much as she had the last time, but still
seeing no opportunity to talk to him. She checked her watch. There was no way
she would be able to stay until the end. She felt frustrated. At this rate, she
would never be able to make her
lie
the truth, and
Helena would never see her again.

“For this next part,” the fire-eating man was saying,
“I’m gone need a brave soul. Any brave souls in the crowd today?”

Sarah had never,
ever, not once in her whole life, thought of herself as brave. But she needed
to get closer to him. So, she stepped forward. When he smiled at her, she was
sure he remembered her from years ago. Positive. But a second later, she told
herself she was crazy, that he couldn’t, because no one ever remembered her.

He bowed and
offered her his hand, saying, “Come and stand right here beside me, young
lady.”

She took his
hand, which was warm and
rough-feeling
, and stood beside
him.

“What’s your
name?” he asked.

“Sarah.”

“Ah, yes, Sarah,
that’s right,” he said, nodding. “Sarah, you sure you brave enough for this?”

“I aint brave at
all. I don’t even know why I came up here. I must be out my mind.”

“Well,” he said.
“In lieu of bravery, insanity will do.”

Everyone
laughed, except Sarah. What in the world was she thinking, getting up here like
this? All because her little sister had embarrassed her? She was thirty-two
years old, for Christ’s sake; she wasn’t a child anymore.

“I changed my
mind,” she said.

The fire-eating
man grinned at her and whispered, “Don’t worry, pretty girl. I aint gone hurt
you none.” Then he moved and stood beside her. Sarah watched as he picked up
the flaming batons again. “Ladies and gents, sisters and brothers, friends and
best friends, I give you Sarah, the Brave.”

Some people clapped.

The fire-eating man got close behind Sarah, very
close, and whispered, “I need to get close to you as I can for this, but don’t
worry, I don’t mean nothing untoward by it.”

She stood as
still as she could and did not breath. She felt his chest press against her
back, and he reached around her and extended his arms out on either side of
her, so she could see his hands, in which he held three batons, all of them still
on fire. He bent his elbows and Sarah could see the definition in his
light-brown arms. Slowly, he began to juggle the flaming batons, not three feet
from Sarah’s face. She watched them, wide-eyed, and at first she was afraid.
But something about the warmth of the fire so close, and the heat of him, stole
the fear from her. She stared at the flames, as they rose and fell and licked
the summer air, and at his large hands as they caught the batons, over and
over, until the movement, the rhythm of it, of him, seemed to fill her like a
fire in a hearth and, without thinking, she leaned back into him. Her sudden
movement caused him to drop one of the batons. It smacked against the ground at
their feet. A collective sigh of surprise moved over the crowd.

“Oh,” Sarah
said, looking down at the baton, which was still on fire. She turned her head
and looked at him. “I’m so sorry. I moved.”

He grinned at
her, the lines around his eyes deepening, and said, “It’s alright. It’s good to
be moved sometimes.”

French Creek State Park was a couple of hours from
Philadelphia and a welcome reprieve from the city. It was heavy with forest.
Dense with oaks, hickories, maples, poplars, and beech trees, and here and
there you could see mountain laurels and rhododendrons. Wetlands and pristine
streams flowed through rich, damp creek valleys.

Paul and Helena
parked
Milky’s
Datsun in a lot near a ranger station
and, carrying a bag full of sandwiches they had bought at a store on their way
up, and a blanket, they walked together up into the forests.

“It smells the
same,” Helena said, breathing deeply.

Paul breathed
in, too, and the green-smelling air filled his lungs. “It sure is better than
car exhaust,” he said. He pointed to the lake in the distance. “Remember we
went canoeing out there?”

She nodded. “I
remember those orange life jackets, and seeing fish swimming around us.”

As children,
they had come here a handful of times with their father, up until Paul was ten,
when he had stopped coming around. They would put up an old tent that Paul was
sure his father had found in a dumpster somewhere, because it smelled like old
produce, and they would camp for two or three nights. Around the campfire,
their father would tell them scary stories while they roasted marshmallows and
ears of corn. Their father would always bring whiskey, and at some point he
would pass out, and Paul and Helena would sit up looking at the stars, amazed
at how many could be seen out there, and re-tell each other the same stories
their father had just told, changing them so that the monster or serial killer
died at the end, so they could get to sleep without fear of anything coming
after them. In the mornings, they would fish and cook their
catchings
for breakfast over the campfire. Their father had a knack for open-fire cooking
and those fish were still the best Paul had ever tasted.

They found a
spot on the side of a hill overlooking the lake and put down the old blanket
they had brought along. Helena lay on her back, with her fingers laced together
behind her head, staring up into the clear sky. In the trees around them, birds
called in high and low voices.

“I used to dream
about this place sometimes,” Helena said, “when I was in Baltimore. It didn’t
really look like this, you know, the way things don’t look like they really are
in dreams, but I knew it was supposed to be this place. I’d just be wandering
around out in these woods. I could hear you and Daddy in the distance, but I
couldn’t get to you, as hard as I tried. I’d just go around in circles until I
woke up.”

“I had a dream about that girl last night,” Paul said.

Helena looked over at him.

“I aint had one in a while,” he said. “Years.”

“Years?” she
asked. “Lucky you. I’ve never gone that long without one.”

“What you dreaming
about it for?” he asked. “You aint got nothing to feel bad about. You aint do
nothing wrong. I’m the one killed her.”

“It was an
accident.”

“The judge never
bought that,” Paul said. “I don’t know if I ever did, either.”

“What do you
mean? You meant to do it?”

“No. But calling
it
a
accident don’t seem right, either. I was angry. I
was so full of anger back then. I was gone hurt somebody, at some point. If it
wasn’t her, it
woulda
been somebody else. I used to
think about killing somebody. Some
fool make
me mad,
I’d think about it. I thought about killing our daddy. If he’d ever showed up
again, I might have.”

“No, you
wouldn’t,” she said. “I don’t care what the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania says.
You are not a killer, Paul.”

He sighed.

For several
minutes, neither of them spoke. Paul continued to watch the lake, where a few
small boats moved on the water, and waited. He knew Helena would ask him about
juvie
again and he decided maybe he could talk about it a
little. The past few days with Ava had made him think that keeping the past all
locked up inside you might just mean letting it eat you from the inside out,
taking little bites over years, until, maybe, one day, you just went crazy.