The Summer We Fell Apart Read online

  “Don’t do me any favors, please.” More to myself than George I said, “Why didn’t Dad stop Finn?”

  “What’s Dad going to do to stop him?” George touched my shoulder. “Amy, why don’t you ask Finn yourself if you don’t believe me?” He tried to grab the pillow back. “Let me sleep.”

  I shrugged him off and pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them tightly. I looked down at the floor where a pile of wet swim trunks and a towel were probably getting moldy. I nudged it with my toe. Soaking wet. I thought about getting in touch with Kate to find out if she’d seen Dad as they’d planned, but I didn’t really want to have to go through her. Kate, ever the oldest, would only talk down to me in that way she always did when she thought she needed to impart an important life lesson. I’m sure she could explain away Dad’s “other interest” enough to make me feel like a fool. “Have you talked to Mom?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” he growled. “Yesterday afternoon when I bummed a twenty.”

  I sighed; money reminded me that we needed groceries. I said this to George and he said, “Now? Seriously Amy, you need to get a life.”

  Just how was I going to do that? I looked around George’s hole of a room and grabbed the olive-green-and-gold-striped afghan from off the desk chair and tossed it on top of George’s head. Our grandmother had made one for each of us; mine was orange, purple, and yellow, like Easter dye gone bad. He mumbled something from beneath the pile of acrylic, but I didn’t stick around to listen.

  I can’t remember specifically how the idea of a dinner party came about. We were at the grocery store, Miriam and I, and she came around the corner with a gorgeous pile of deep-purple grapes in her hand and a frozen container of daiquiri mix and the next thing you knew, in our cart we had several steaks, cheese, pears, butter, garlic, leaf lettuce, and a few baguettes, and were planning a party. It was to be a proper dinner, Miriam insisted, one where we dressed up and ate at the table and used napkins.

  The afternoon of the dinner party I skipped out on swimming and stayed behind to make a cake even though I was the absolute worst person for the task. I read and reread the directions on the box until I was confident enough to begin. Even if I screwed up it was better than the alternative activity. The novelty of Miriam’s diving lessons had finally worn off.

  Before she left, Miriam helped clean the dining room. We drew back the drapes and opened the windows. On the sideboard I placed a vase of creamy hydrangeas from the old bushes that circled the foundation of the house. I cleared off the table then washed the dusty lace cloth and hung it on the line to dry in the sun. When the cloth was ready, I planned to set the table with the bone-white china plates and mismatched etched glass goblets I’d found on the top shelf in the pantry.

  A week had passed since I’d spied on Miriam and Finn in the kitchen. I tried to ignore the sound of Finn haunting the halls long after we’d all gone to bed. He remained as absent as ever during the day and I had come to the conclusion that maybe George was right—I needed a life other than the one I invented in my head.

  The heat was back. Sweat trickled down my back and between my breasts and I regretted my decision not to go swimming. I chewed on ice as I waited to take the cake out of the oven. This last bit of summer made me sad; the days were waning. Soon George would leave, school would start, my mother’s play would be over and she would be forced to make an attempt at parenting until her next job came along. And what about Finn?

  That evening the purple sunset cast shadows around the room as I lighted candles. Finn teased George relentlessly about his clothes. Under orders to dress up, George had found (God only knows where) a wrinkled pair of herringbone pants and a mustard-yellow button-down shirt topped off with one of our father’s old tuxedo jackets. He paired the ankle-length pants with low black Converse sneakers sans socks. He smelled funny but I decided not to say anything since Finn, in pressed khakis and a deep-red bowling shirt that said “Ralph” over the left breast pocket, had greeted him by saying, “You are the least stylish homo I know.”

  That prompted George to sulk a moment by the drink cart I had set up. He poured himself a glass of the leftover rum from the daiquiris and downed it in a swallow before elbowing Finn in the stomach. Laughing maniacally, Finn grabbed the waistband of George’s belt and was about to give him a wedgie when Miriam entered the room. They stopped scuffling and Finn stumbled away from George. I turned around to see Miriam catch Finn by the arm. George yelled, “Let him fall,” then he hesitated, suspending us all for a second, before he grinned and I found myself laughing a little too loudly in relief.

  Maybe my reaction was because of the high color in Finn’s face that hadn’t been there before as Miriam let him go. But more likely it was because wrapped around Miriam’s torso was one of my mother’s scarves. She had tied it twice around and knotted it in the front. It bared a sliver of belly below which she wore a black velvet skirt that touched her ankles. It was the most daringly sexy thing I had ever seen on someone my own age—and it belonged to my mother. On her wrist was a rope of pearls that she had wound around several times, her hair was loosely knotted at the nape of her neck. In contrast, my sleeveless black dress that I had considered to be slightly Audrey Hepburn–like now seemed cheap and constricting.

  George began to hum and Finn remained speechless, looking everywhere in the room except at Miriam. It was funny that we all seemed shy now that we were dressed in something other than bathing suits or less. What had once been a sophisticated and fun idea seemed all the more like playacting when I said, “Let’s start off with some drinks.”

  Eagerly we tossed aside dinner-party etiquette and downed the first pitcher of daiquiris and then a second and started on a third. By that time Miriam’s legs were propped on the chair next to her and her velvet skirt was up around her thighs. I had kicked off my heels and George abandoned his hideous shirt and wore the tuxedo jacket over his bare chest. Finn, who had drunk copious amounts of alcohol, at a faster rate than the rest of us, was quickly becoming the drunkest of us all. He rested his head on his arms on top of the table.

  “Doesn’t a dinner party have food?” George asked.

  “You look like a rock star,” Miriam said to George, ignoring his question.

  George did a little air guitar for Miriam’s benefit.

  Finn lifted his head off the table and enunciated very slowly, “I am hungry.”

  I stood quickly, too quickly. My vision blurred and my tongue felt thick and awkward in my mouth. I sat back down to wait out the double vision. I wasn’t aware that Miriam had left the room but when she returned she had the plate of pears, grapes, cheese, and one of the baguettes. We swarmed the food until there was nothing left but the stems and lightly nibbled innards of the pears.

  The bread and cheese had almost an instantaneous effect on me. Maybe it was the booze that gave me courage or maybe I just told myself it did. When I finished chewing and swallowing, I looked across the table at Miriam and said, “I didn’t realize you and my mother were close.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Finn’s head swiveled in Miriam’s direction.

  When Miriam looked confused I gestured with a knife. “Your top,” I clarified. “It’s her scarf isn’t it?”

  She nodded quickly. “Is it a problem?”

  “Amy,” George said quietly.

  “Not mine.” I shrugged, refusing to acknowledge George. “I mean, you mentioned the scarves before so you must like them, right?” I picked up my glass and set it back down without drinking. “Finn seems to like it.”

  “Amy, what do you mean?” Miriam’s brow was wrinkled and she looked genuinely upset. She glanced at Finn but he seemed unable or unwilling to meet her gaze. I was sorry the words left my mouth but it was too late.

  George smiled slowly. “Don’t listen to her. She’s had too much to drink.” Miriam didn’t really look like she believed George but she returned the smile anyway.

  “How do you know what I do and do not mean?” I asked George
. “Weren’t you the one who told me to ask Finn?”

  “Then ask Finn and stop being a bitch.” George had said the word bitch so softly I wasn’t sure I heard him. Then he stood up and announced to us before he left the room, “I’m going to put the steaks in the broiler.”

  My heart was thudding in my ears when I turned to Finn. “When is Dad coming home?”

  He looked down at his plate.

  “Come on Finn, you have to answer me,” I cried. “Why did you leave early?”

  Miriam shifted in her seat and leaned toward Finn. “Tell her,” she said quickly.

  Before I really processed that Miriam knew something about my family that I did not, she followed George out of the room.

  Finn finally looked at me and said, “He’s not coming home.”

  I watched his face, waiting for something more but there was nothing, so I asked, “Not, as in never?”

  He shrugged and twisted his body so his legs were stretched out to the side. I stared at the name embroidered on his pocket while I waited for his answer. My eyes followed the curly script: R—A—L—P—H. Eventually he said, “He’ll show up again. At some point.”

  It seemed, after all of our father’s absences, that the information I had pushed Finn for was, at best, anticlimactic. “Mom knows?”

  Finn sighed and rolled his eyes at me like I was the stupidest human being in the world. “I don’t think he hides anything from her.” He cleared his throat. “She was the one who told me that Miriam is the daughter of one of Dad’s friends.”

  My cognitive abilities were obviously shot, because I was totally confused. “What are you talking about? What friend of Dad’s?” Finn was silent until it dawned on me what he meant by the euphemism. I leaned back in my chair and stared at my lap. “Shit.”

  When I looked up again, Finn was rubbing his face with both hands. In a muffled voice he said, “It’s not Miriam’s fault. Dad…” He paused and looked at me like he was in pain. Finn was not your man if you were having an emotional crisis. Finally he mumbled, “Miriam didn’t know who we were until she got here.” He stalled by loudly clearing his throat. When he was done he said, “Think about it, Amy, we’re the same as Miriam. I mean whoever Dad is doing—”

  I cut him off. “I get it. Except I don’t think Mom is about to ship us off to live with one of them…”

  Finn laughed. “Don’t count on it.”

  I figured only he could joke about something like that, because he was the one who was closest to Mom. He wasn’t in danger of falling out of her graces no matter what he did, and in fact she seemed to care more about him than the rest of us no matter what he said or did.

  Secretly I started hoping that Finn had formulated a plan to get rid of Miriam. Because I didn’t want to be responsible for showing her the door and incurring the wrath of our father. Even after everything I now knew, I had to admit that I had grown to like Miriam.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “You mean with Miriam?”

  I nodded.

  “Nothing. We do nothing.” There was a slight hint of a challenge in his voice.

  “How long do we wait?” I asked.

  “The thing about you Amy is”—Finn explained like I was a small child—“you need to stop waiting.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. I could hear Miriam and George laughing in the kitchen, fat from the steaks popping and sizzling in the broiler and silverware clattering in the sink. I thought about how George said that Finn was the coward among us—that he would never challenge Dad—so it was logical that he wouldn’t challenge Miriam’s place with us. It was obvious I was getting nowhere with Finn. Suddenly I remembered the package of love letters I had found under his mattress. I pushed back my chair and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I could see Finn tense; he was all coiled up like he might need to spring into action at any minute. In his eyes there was fear and then surprise when I headed upstairs and not in the direction of the kitchen. He must have thought I was going to drag Miriam out here and have it out. When I returned from my room with Holly’s letters, he was slumped in his chair with his eyes closed.

  “Here.” I dumped them in his lap. He opened his eyes and fumbled with the rubber band as he squinted at the handwriting.

  As soon as he recognized them, he said, “What the fuck? Where did you get these?” The rubber band snapped as he extricated an envelope and unfolded a letter. He held the paper up close in front of his face; his mouth moved but he made no sound as he read. Finn pulled out several more and continued to read. I realized as I watched a bevy of transparent shifting emotions flit across his face that I had been wrong about love. It was not a linear thing with a beginning, middle, and (sometimes) an end. Perhaps love was just a myth or as simple as the desire not to be alone. That desire could justify anything—what else could explain how my parents lived as they did?

  Finn placed the bundle of letters on the table. He looked like an old man beaten down by default; the legacy of our father was his and his alone. His fingers traced the rectangle of the envelope and then he dropped his hands in his lap. “You can’t fix everything.”

  I blushed with embarrassment that he thought I was trying to rekindle a high school romance for him. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”

  He shook his head and shoved the letters away from him. “I mean about Dad, about me and Dad. It’s not your problem to fix.”

  “Tell me what the problem is!” I shouted with frustration. “I don’t even know. I know nothing except you went away with Dad and now you’re home early.” I leaned across the table. “Please, tell me.”

  His eyes darted around the room as if he was looking for a place to settle where I didn’t exist. Finally, he sighed and said, “I had too much to drink.”

  I slid the remainder of my plate toward him—a crust of bread and a trio of grapes. “Here—eat this.”

  Finn’s lips were twisted together like he’d tasted something sour. “Not tonight, with Dad.” Finn got up and grabbed randomly at a bottle on the liquor cart and poured what was left into his glass. Before he screwed the cap on, he offered the empty bottle to me. Confused, I shook my head. I noticed his hand trembled as he set the bottle on the table and finished his drink in a swallow. “I got loaded and told Dad I wasn’t going to be his witness anymore. That he could fuck anyone he wanted but I wasn’t going to sit there and watch him.”

  George had been wrong. Finn wasn’t a total coward, although apparently he needed alcohol to work as a truth serum. “What did Dad say?”

  “He asked me to come outside with him and talk it out like a man.” Finn looked into his empty glass, seemed to consider refilling it, and then set it down on the table. “So I did.”

  “Was the girlfriend there?”

  “We were waiting for her to join us,” Finn said. “Unfortunately she arrived just as I knocked Dad to the ground. Even though I was trying to help him up, she came over and took his arm and told me if I didn’t leave immediately, she was going to call the police.”

  I exhaled as the enormity of what Finn said washed over me. “You hit Dad? Finn? Really?”

  He sank back down into his chair at the table and cradled his head with his hands. “I didn’t mean to; I sort of pushed him. He was trying to tell me that he needed to take this chance at love—some shit like that—that he didn’t want to lose me, to lose any of us.” Finn’s face was contorted with anguish. “As if I didn’t fucking know that Dad fell in love constantly.” He laughed and looked at me for confirmation. “I mean, aren’t I right? He’s always fucking someone. Why was this time so different?”

  I tried to put that information aside. “Did you say that to him?”

  By his shrug I guessed that he hadn’t shown that much courage. “He wanted me to come back and tell all of you how happy he was. He was using me! It was fucking selfish lying bullshit, Amy; I just wanted him to shut the fuck up. So I pushed him back a little.” He demonstrated with h
is hands palms out. “I thought it was a little, I don’t know. He stumbled and Ana Sophia came running over and…and the next thing you knew I was fucked.”

  Physically Finn and Dad were probably evenly matched. What must it have felt like? The thought of it made me dizzy, I could see it—Finn pushing him down, the panic when he’d realized what he’d done. “Dad didn’t stand up for you? Didn’t he tell her she had it all wrong?”

  Finn squeezed his eyes shut tight and then opened them, blinking several times before he answered, “No.” Whatever he had remembered just then he wasn’t going to share. After a long pause where I pondered why my father lacked the capacity to be a parent let alone a decent human being, Finn said, “I’m going to stay here for a while with George gone soon…” His voice trailed off.

  I considered Finn in this new role of provider and protector and it was hard to imagine—then again, people changed. “What will you do?” I asked.

  “Hopefully something different.”

  Finn’s answer surprised me. I didn’t know whether he meant different from my father or different from what he was doing in Boston. In the end I decided that it didn’t really matter which question he answered.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until George walked back in the room and tossed a baguette like a football at Finn. It bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor. They were miscreants masquerading as humans. Finn picked it up and threw it back at George, who caught it with one hand. Behind George, Miriam twisted her body shielding a platter of steaks and a bowl of salad.

  The savages managed to break the tension and we sat down and ate the dinner. It seemed like the simplest solution. After all, there was nothing else to do, was there? While I pushed the food around my plate, I remembered how Miriam studied our family pictures when she first got here. I thought it was envy on her part but now I imagined it was something else.

  I should have stopped drinking when I’d sobered the first time around. Instead, along with the berries in amaretto over the cake, I indulged in some Kahlua while the others had cognac. By then, we were so drunk and it was so hot in the house we’d moved to the backyard. I reclined in a lawn chair while I watched Miriam, George, and Finn attempt to play soccer.