The Summer We Fell Apart Read online

  “Like a time machine?” some kid yelled from the back row. “Trek me, baby!”

  George leaned forward and rested his elbows on top of his desk. He couldn’t tell who’d made the lame joke but he was more concerned that Asa had slid down in his seat with his chin buried against the Windsor knot in his navy blue tie. He wanted to applaud Asa for his intelligent dialogue and was about to when the bell rang, signaling the end of class.

  En masse the boys shuffled out with backpacks carelessly overstuffed and half-zipped slung across one shoulder. George got up from behind his desk and walked over to Asa. The boy was bent over, busily packing his backpack down on the floor and didn’t see George. George tapped him on the shoulder and Asa looked up, his face a deep shade of scarlet from his upside-down position.

  “Interesting ideas today, Asa.”

  The boy straightened up and nodded as he stood.

  George was not surprised to see that they were eye to eye. “Do you like the book?”

  One half of Asa’s mouth turned up in a grin when he said, “It’s my fourth time reading it.” Then he slung his backpack over his shoulder just like the rest of them and ambled out of the classroom.

  George was retelling this story to his little sister, Amy, and her boyfriend, Owen, over cheese fondue at their apartment in Brooklyn. She had invited him for dinner and to help decorate their tree. Though Amy was only sixteen months younger than George, nearly twenty-nine to her brand-new twenty-seven, he sometimes felt much older than her. Like right now.

  He wasn’t sure that Amy was hearing his story entirely. She was too busy frowning at the lumps in her fondue. She kept swirling it around in the pot with the fork, checking the flame and adding beer to it while George and Owen, totally oblivious to any problems, continued to spear hunks of bread and dip them into the rapidly thinning cheese sauce and then into their mouths. While he chewed, George contemplated the fact that Amy, who’d gone on scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design, could make almost anything with her hands—except food.

  “It’s pretty damn hard to screw up fondue, Amy, maybe you should quit adding beer.” Amy held a beer poised above the pot and Owen stabbed the air around it with his sharp little fondue fork. Amy half squealed, half giggled and put the bottle down.

  “It’s only melted cheese, baby,” Owen explained with a smile as he reached for the beer that Amy had been emptying into the pot and put it to his lips for a swig before he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

  Owen was a musician. Amy, when describing his band to George, said they were a lot like Belle and Sebastian. George hadn’t known who Belle and Sebastian were and had to go to the store and listen to a CD so he had a reference point. Owen’s band, with a dozen band mates that George had trouble keeping track of, played odd instruments that George had never heard or even known existed, along with the usual guitars, drums, strings, and keyboards. He was initially afraid that their music would be some New Age crap that gave him a headache. Instead, what he found was an incongruous mixture of folk, punk, and pop with a throw-back to the early sixties (perhaps the Beatles?) and thought-provoking lyrics by Owen. It might sound trite, but George really did feel like sometimes the songs were poetry set to music. Although he would never say that to Owen; it sounded too—well—faggy. Sometimes when he hung out with his little sister and her friends, he felt like an old man trying to act hip. Being gay didn’t even up the coolness ante anymore.

  In an attempt to bring Holden Caulfield and Owen’s music together, George casually informed Owen that Belle and Sebastian mention The Catcher in the Rye in one of their songs. He said this while avoiding Amy’s eyes, since she knew she was the one who told him about Belle and Sebastian in the first place. Of course she’d see right through George’s feeble efforts to impress her boyfriend and he hoped she wouldn’t call him out. It was important to George that Owen liked him and continued to find him interesting, more for his sake than Amy’s. He actually counted Owen as a friend and he dared to hope that Owen felt the same way about him, although guys, especially guys past the age of five, didn’t go around asking a thing like that so he would just have to take it on faith. He was sure this funk he was in had to do with being left by Jules. Even though he had known Jules wasn’t his soul mate, it was humiliating being dumped for the window dresser at Brooks Brothers with a better apartment in Chelsea.

  Amy had abandoned the fondue disaster and moved on to the tree—a skinny, long-needled fir desperate for decoration—and was gesturing to him to join her. Owen knelt on the floor by her feet, untangling a pile of tiny pink lights while Amy handed him a square blue box. Inside were miniature bird’s nests made out of white feathers swaddled in tissue paper. Inside of each nest was a bird made out of soft wool in a rainbow of colors: lemon yellow, periwinkle, and poppy. Their tiny faces were animated, as though they were winking.

  George lifted one out of the box and held it up in front of his face in astonishment.

  “Amy, these are amazing.”

  Amy just shrugged and smiled. She was uncomfortable taking compliments, even though he knew that she thirsted for them. She squeezed a small silver clip that was on the underside of the nest and demonstrated how to attach them to the branches.

  Owen stood up to unfurl the jumble of wires. “You have to see the creatures she’s been staying up all night to make; she has so many orders she isn’t even sleeping.”

  On cue, Amy yawned and tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away and Owen left the lights and walked to the far end of the loft, where he had portioned off a large chunk of unused space and made a studio for Amy. He returned with an armful of soft-sculpture birds, a larger version of the nesting kind that George was putting on the tree. They were the kind of doll a kid could love just as easily as an adult for whom you didn’t know what to buy. Their faces and bodies were all just a little bit different and oddly alive. Attached to the wings of each bird was a storybook, illustrated by Amy, hand-pieced with drawings and paint and brightly colored scraps of fabric that gave a name and told the story of the individual doll.

  Owen looked affectionately at Amy before he set the dolls down on the purple velvet couch and ran a hand through her still short and blond spiky hair. Ruffling it so it stuck up even more. Just like the baby birds. She curled into him and he hugged her hard against his wiry chest. Over her shoulder, Owen said to George, “I am so proud of her; they’re magic, aren’t they?”

  George was too choked up to talk. It wasn’t so much her successes or even how much Owen obviously adored his little sister, it was that Amy with her whimsical little creatures was re-creating a childhood she wished she’d had. It made George want to cry. He turned away and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. God. He felt like a stereotype of a gay man too often lately.

  Amy eventually broke away and started humming to herself as she unpacked box after box of her homemade menagerie and placed them on the tree. “I told you we’re going out to Long Island to Owen’s sister’s for Christmas, right?”

  “Mmm,” George murmured, hoping to avoid the subject entirely.

  “So, what are you going to do? Have you talked to anyone?”

  George knew that by anyone Amy meant either one of their siblings, or their mother. Since he and Jules had broken up right after their father died, Amy seemed to take a proprietary interest in making sure George was never alone. Like tonight. So George recited the familial plans he knew of so far. “Mom is on location in North Carolina.” He rolled his eyes. “Kate reluctantly invited me to tag along to Virginia to some Republican bed-and-breakfast with her and her new lawyer friend, but I declined.”

  “They have Republican bed-and-breakfasts?” Owen marveled out loud.

  Amy ignored Owen and laughed. George smiled widely. “I know, right?” He paused. “Frankly, I was surprised she offered. Think she’s becoming human?”

  Amy made a face at the mention of Kate. She frequently claimed to George that Kate couldn’t pos
sibly be related to them. And it wasn’t about her job or her money—it was all about the attitude. She had crossed over to the other side, as Amy put it. She hardly laughed, almost never smiled, and she was never ever wrong. How could someone like that be their sibling? George reminded Amy that Kate had always been like that, since she was a kid. He even claimed Kate, despite her hubris, was vulnerable and certainly they knew how to bull’s-eye her weak spots. But Amy resisted him where Kate was concerned.

  “What about Finn?” she asked hesitantly.

  George shook his head. The last he’d heard through their mother was that Finn had lost yet another job after he disappeared on a bender shortly after their father had died in September.

  George looked at Owen, who grinned and scratched his head and said, “Man, you’re welcome at my sister’s house. It’s really casual.”

  Amy glanced at Owen quickly before she offered, “Or we can come back Christmas afternoon and celebrate together here, have dinner or get loaded at the karaoke bar if that’s your mood. Whatever?”

  Owen shrugged and nodded. George envied Owen’s easygoing demeanor. He actually would have preferred nothing more than taking Amy’s suggestion but instead he shook his head. “I went to the Strand and bought myself an early Christmas gift of about fifty books I’ve been meaning to read. I’m planning to spend the day in my pajamas eating and reading. I’ll be perfectly happy.”

  Amy frowned and bit her lip. “I don’t want you to be alone, George.”

  “I like being alone, Amy.”

  “You’re going to sulk.”

  “I’m going to read.”

  “I bet you don’t even have a tree,” she challenged.

  “I do too,” George lied.

  “So give me a few of these book titles,” Amy demanded with her hands on her hips.

  George was aware that Owen had long ago collapsed onto the couch and seemed to be enjoying the sideshow that he and Amy provided. When suddenly he stood and grabbed Amy from behind and pulled her down with him onto the couch, George was absolved from coming up with an answer. They tumbled together and he tickled her sides until she shrieked and cried uncle. George looked at them with envy. For a moment he caught Owen’s eye and saw there an understanding and empathy for George’s position. He smiled tentatively and Owen nodded and George again found himself for the second time that night gulping back tears.

  It was the afternoon before winter break, and Asa Malik and his father were due in George’s office for a conference. Every teacher at Tate served as an adviser for ten students. This year George had only seven advisees, and since Asa was a new student he had been assigned to George. Ordinarily they would have had a meeting before now, but this was the only afternoon Asa’s father had been available.

  Asa was slumped in the chair opposite George’s desk. His father was late. He had taken a handheld game out of his backpack and held it up to George and raised his eyebrows. George nodded, pleased with their nonverbal communication and glanced down at the papers on his desk, unable to concentrate. He swiveled in his chair, turning his back on Asa, and looked outside. The window in his office looked out onto a courtyard where several boys tossed snowballs back and forth to each other. Last night had been the first snowfall of the season. George wanted to be anywhere but inside. He wanted to take a walk through the park; maybe he’d see if Amy and Owen wanted to rent some skates. Then again, maybe not. He had to stop appropriating his sister and her boyfriend as his substitute for a social life. He actually needed to get one of his own. He sighed. Was he depressed? Was this what depression was? Maybe after the meeting he’d swim some laps. He needed to get in the pool and get his blood flowing.

  The volume of Asa’s game was turned up enough that George could hear the music. Every once in a while there was a familiar grunt or scream that he couldn’t quite place. Since his knowledge of video games was limited, he couldn’t imagine he had a clue as to what Asa was doing.

  “Asa, volume,” a voice commanded. “Please put that away now.”

  George swiveled around to face the melodic voice that addressed Asa. It was gentle, full of affection, yet firm at the same time, with a hint of an accent. It was then that George realized why the grunts and screams sounded so familiar. He looked up at the man attached to the voice and smiled. “It’s okay, actually, that’s my mother.” He surprised himself by blurting out what he usually kept secret out of embarrassment.

  Asa’s head jerked back. George had piqued his curiosity, as well as that of his father. George explained, “My mother is Marilyn Haas—she is the—”

  “The innkeeper in Dead, Again,” Asa filled in for George animatedly as he nearly jumped out of his seat at the mention of her name.

  George shrugged. “The one and only, I’m afraid,” he added as he caught Asa’s father’s eye and gestured for him to take a seat next to his son. He did as George asked but not before extending his hand and giving a slight bow in George’s direction. He had the same deep-brown, heavily lashed eyes as his son, yet his skin was several shades darker.

  “Sam Malik, pleasure to meet you.”

  George was surprised that the accent he had heard was British. He also noted that Sam Malik didn’t apologize for his tardiness. He couldn’t make up his mind whether he admired Malik’s lack of acknowledgment as honesty or was annoyed by his rudeness.

  Asa cut in, “Your mother? Man she is so cool.”

  Sam smiled indulgently at his son’s enthusiasm and then turned to George and said, “I never thought I’d allow these video games. When you’re a young idealistic parent, you have other ideas, I suppose.” He laughed softly.

  George appreciated Sam’s self-deprecating humor and laughed too. “I never imagined my mother would actually end up on one of those games, but,” George said with a shrug, “that’s a story for some other day.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows at George. For the first time George noticed Sam’s brown wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail and his calloused hands resting on the worn knees of his paint-spattered jeans. It looked to George like real paint, not the jeans that would-be hipsters purchased with faux paint and rips scattered throughout. On top he wore a gray hooded sweater, a T-shirt beneath that, and a black jacket over all.

  George tried to ignore the little quiver of heat that quickened suddenly in his gut, but still, he stammered a little under Sam’s intense gaze when he asked him if anyone else would be joining them. He hadn’t noticed a ring on his left hand and there was no record of a mother in Asa’s file, but George knew after all this time that student files rarely gave the whole picture.

  Asa looked out the window beyond George when Sam said, “It’s just Asa and me, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s fine,” George assured them, not wanting to pry but finding himself hoping for a little more information. When none was forthcoming, he then opened Asa’s file, even though he already knew the meager information that had been provided from his last school in Michigan.

  Asa’s GPA for the first semester of high school was high. His math scores were a little wanting, but his English scores were off the chart. His entrance exam for Tate supported this as well. That explained of course why this go-around at Holden’s tale was his fourth and why his observations had been so keen. Sam expressed some interest in a tutor for the math scores and blamed his own poor math skills for the boy’s failings, at which Asa sighed and rolled his eyes.

  The meeting ended abruptly when Sam’s cell phone rang. George had been in the middle of explaining the tutoring program when Sam excused himself to take the call. He stood outside George’s office and argued with someone on the other end about uncrating a painting. From what George overheard, apparently a corner of a canvas had torn when an inexperienced gallery assistant had enthusiastically attacked the packing with the edge of a screwdriver.

  George smiled at Asa and tried to appear riveted by the papers in front of him, but the boy’s constant sighs couldn’t be ignored. Finally, George said, “This happen often
?”

  Asa shook his head and his cheeks flamed burgundy. “Nah,” he said and shifted in his chair. “It’s just that this is his first New York show and it’s been taking up a lot of time.”

  “Your father is an artist?” George asked before realizing how stupid he sounded. Way to go, Sherlock.

  “A painter,” Asa said, then changed his mind. “Well, I don’t know what he’d call himself. He used to make these wire sculptures when I was small and then…” He frowned and seemed to be considering his next words. “Then he built a model of a, uh, vagina—only it was supersize, like gigantic. It was about the whole process of life. How we all come from that one place.” He wrinkled his brow and looked up at George to see if he was getting it.

  George bit the inside of his mouth in order to stop from laughing out loud. A supersize vagina? Just then Sam came back into the office and grinned. “What—you’re going to leave out John’s rocket?” He paused to put his cell phone back in his pocket. “You’ve gone this far—you should tell Mr. Haas the rest.”

  Another sigh from Asa. “My dad’s partner, John—”

  “Ex-partner,” Sam corrected Asa as George wondered if they were really using the gay definition of the word partner.

  “Ex-partner, John,” Asa continued after he corrected himself, “built a rocket on wheels that he tried to ride into the…” Asa coughed and George remembered suddenly that he was only in ninth grade.

  George held up his hand to avoid hearing Asa struggle with the rest of the story. “I think I’m getting the picture.” He looked up at Sam. He hadn’t taken his seat again and was obviously trying to encourage an end to the meeting. Except George couldn’t figure out why he just had Asa tell him that part of the story. Was it for the shock value? Did George seem like he would shock easily? Or was it something else?