The Summer We Fell Apart Read online

  “He was probably delayed again and didn’t want to call since it was so late,” Saul said from the back doorway as he walked into the kitchen and over to the coffee pot. “I’m sure he’s on the way.” He looked rumpled still from sleep, and one side of his face had pillow creases. He squinted and pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.

  Marilyn nodded and lit the flame under the teapot. She tried not to look at any of her children’s faces and instead concentrated on lining up the vitamins she needed to choke down with her yogurt and granola. Her hands and fingers twitched. She had put a fresh patch on upstairs, but right this moment all she wanted to do was bum a cigarette off Kate. The teapot whistled and she could think of nothing else except how good a smoke would be right now. Just one.

  “Look who’s a health freak all of a sudden,” Amy said from her perch on the counter as she picked at a bowl of leftover pasta salad from the night before.

  Marilyn grimaced as the first pill slid down her throat aided by yogurt. She looked over at Amy to see if she was being sarcastic, but Amy’s smile looked sincere enough. She was surprised. Maybe Amy was being nice because she figured Marilyn had heard her remark about keeping her legs shut. Still, it was unlike Amy to make amends.

  “It sucks,” Marilyn said as she choked down more vitamins and accepted from Saul a cup of green tea without milk or sugar.

  “Living longer really sucks,” Saul joked.

  Marilyn smiled. “Says he who is allowed to have a cup of coffee.”

  Everyone laughed, but when she looked at Asa, he was frowning down at his plate, drawing a line of syrup with his knife. The ceremony wasn’t until five, but one by one everyone left the kitchen to shower and get ready for the day. George and Sam were infinitely more relaxed than they had been the day before as they went out to the porch with the newspaper and coffee. Amy went into the dining room with a box that held the cake topper she’d made—there were some last-minute adjustments and she needed space to work. Kate gathered all of her paperwork and jammed it back into her briefcase. Cell phone in hand, she left the kitchen jabbing at numbers on the keypad. Saul and Owen went out back to meet the tent guy and Marilyn concentrated on cleaning up the breakfast dishes, because the caterers would be here soon. She tried not to pay too much attention to the clock or to the phone that hadn’t brought word of Finn.

  Asa still lingered until finally Marilyn said, “Do you have butterflies?”

  He shook his head.

  “What is it then?” Marilyn dried her hands on a dishtowel and touched Asa’s shoulder. He may be taller than her but his bones still felt fragile beneath his shirt.

  He squinted up at her. “Are you sick?”

  “Me?” Marilyn shook her head. “It’s called growing old.”

  “You’re not that old,” Asa blurted.

  Marilyn cocked her head to the left. “Oh, but I am in some tribes.”

  “I don’t want to be treated like a baby.” His cheeks and neck colored a deep crimson. He seemed embarrassed and worried at the same time.

  “I would never…if there was something to tell, I’d tell you.” Marilyn stared hard at him. There was no reason to tell him all the things that could go wrong. That was one of the great things about being young. Unless there was something specific, you just didn’t think about all the what-ifs.

  Begrudgingly, Asa said, “Okay.”

  She rubbed his shoulder. “Now go get into your flower-girl clothes,” she teased to lighten his mood.

  Asa grinned and slid off the stool. “I think I’m going to go to the beach first. I have time, don’t I?”

  Marilyn nodded at him and watched as he jogged out of the kitchen. She forgot how boys his age always seemed to run everywhere—their store of energy was tireless. She bent down and put the last mug into the dishwasher. She almost wished she’d jogged along with Asa down to the beach. Instead, she went to find Saul in the backyard. She needed to keep busy.

  Later, from her bath, Marilyn could hear the cars as they arrived in the driveway: the caterers, the florist, the baker delivering the cake, and the minister from Boston. Then, as she applied makeup and put on her suit, more cars carrying guests and the voices of Amy, Asa, and Saul as they greeted people rose up through the windows of Marilyn’s bedroom.

  So it was a surprise then, when she walked into the kitchen to check on the caterers, that she saw Finn in a thin green T-shirt and jeans standing at the sink with his back to her. His shoulder blades jutted sharply through his shirt. His arm was raised, bent at the elbow, and he was drinking a glass of water that he refilled twice. From across the room, Marilyn, hidden by the bustle of the two women from the catering company and their tower of plastic boxes containing food for the reception, watched with her breath caught in her throat.

  When she could finally say his name out loud, he turned and smiled in her direction. The skin on the lower right side of his face even nearly a year after the fire was still shiny, pink, and tight. The grafting was evident and causing a crooked smile, which seemed to add to his charm instead of detracting. His hair had grown in enough that he now wore it cut short but enough to cover the scars on his scalp. Instead of the long waves he used to have, his hair now stood up like the thick bristles of a brush all over his head. He ran his hands through it as he waited for Marilyn to make her way across the room to him. He opened his arms to her and she gave him a long, hard hug. She tried to put everything into that hug because she just didn’t trust herself enough to say out loud that she was so glad he was alive. She hadn’t seen him since she put him on the plane to Seattle all those months ago. Then he had still been so physically and emotionally ravaged that she wasn’t positive she’d ever see him again. She had nightmares that he’d find a way to leave the facility in Seattle and just disappear. Now here he was. She hugged him again before she let go and realized, with an incredible sadness, that Finn was the only one of her children that she had really physically touched since they’d all been here.

  “Did you just get here?” She noticed the fatigue around his eyes and beneath his tanned face. It looked different from the weariness he’d had when he’d been drinking. This looked more like he just hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.

  He rubbed his eyes. “Plane delays everywhere because of storms. Even Boston is a fucking hailstorm of rain and wind. Unbelievable. It took me hours just to move a mile on the Mass Pike. Ridiculous. I couldn’t even get cell reception and I didn’t want to pull off and try and use a pay phone. I figured it was hell here as well.” He made a face and said, “Then I get here and it’s like nirvana. Clear blue sky, warm breeze.”

  Marilyn rubbed her hand up and down the length of his arm and squeezed. He was real. He was here. “Perfect day for a wedding.”

  Finn agreed and leaned back against the sink. “I can’t believe they’re really going to do this.” He snorted. “I mean who really thought George would be the first of us to get married?”

  Marilyn laughed as she glanced at the commotion going on outside in the driveway through the window above the sink. George and Sam had invited about forty guests. That seemed manageable on paper, but now, as she looked out at Saul’s yard, it seemed impossibly huge and out of control. “You don’t have long before we start…”

  “I want to grab a quick shower—do I have time?” He lifted up his arms and sniffed at his armpits and made a face. “Twenty hours in this shirt.” Finn started to walk out of the kitchen and then turned back to Marilyn with his eyebrows raised.

  She nodded, then added, “But hurry.” He looked so thin, but healthy. Yes. Healthy. Strong. There were muscles visible in his arms. He was still her most beautiful boy. She remembered when the doctor had handed him to her all those years ago, his solemn dark eyes against the most amazing porcelain skin. She blurted out, “You look good. Do you spend a lot of time outside?”

  “Some.” Finn nodded. “Out on the deck. I’ve got an easel set up and I’ve been painting some and…” Then he added shyly, hi
s words all in a rush, “writing, I don’t know if it’s anything but yeah, well, I’ve been writing.” He put a finger to his lips like it was to be their secret.

  “Writing?” Marilyn whispered. The painting didn’t surprise her; long before Amy had found art, Finn used to paint. He stopped somewhere between middle and high school when other things became more interesting. But writing? His struggles with school were rooted in writing and reading, because the letters and the words just hadn’t made sense to him. Writing? Now? She thought but didn’t add: just like your father.

  “It started in rehab. One of the things was keeping a diary. Noting your moods, why you wanted a drink or whatever your poison.” Finn hesitated and seemed to read her mind. “Don’t worry about me going off like him. I’ve already been there and it holds no allure, believe me.”

  She did worry. Early on, she had romanticized Richard’s drinking. It was part of his allure as tortured artist. For the longest time she associated sex with the taste of alcohol on her lips. Then, as the years and professional disappointments took their toll, Richard’s drinking made him mean and destructive. As Finn acknowledged, he had already been there. Still she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you really okay?”

  Finn gave that lopsided grin again. “If you mean can I be trusted not to drink all the cough syrup and mouthwash out of the medicine cabinet? Then yes. Although that’s pretty much a strictly hour-by-hour thing.” He laughed when he saw the expression on Marilyn’s face. “No worries, Ma, okay? I’m kidding.”

  She smiled back at him. She wanted him to tell her everything. She wanted reassurance. But this was neither the time nor the place.

  “About the mouthwash anyway,” he quipped as he left the kitchen, but he was smiling, pleased with his joke.

  So Finn was writing. Everything good and bad about her marriage had been tangled up with Richard’s writing. When the work was good, his appetite for Marilyn had been insatiable—her children were conceived when Richard’s career was going well. Even in her ninth month, when Marilyn had been heavy with child, he wanted her and he wouldn’t stop until he got her so she almost always gave in to him. No protection, wrong time of the month. He didn’t care and he was always able to persuade Marilyn that she shouldn’t either.

  Yet each time she had told him she was pregnant, he had looked at her like he had played absolutely no role in the conception, even though they were all his. Even Finn, the one pregnancy she couldn’t be positive about at the time. But when he was born with Richard’s chin, the same stubborn set to his mouth, there had been no doubt. By the time Amy was born, Richard’s pursuit of her had stopped. The writing soured and he went elsewhere until he either couldn’t find his way back to her or she simply didn’t want him to.

  She took a deep breath, exhaled, and looked around her at the wedding preparations as though she had just woken up in a foreign land. She blinked once, twice, terrified that she didn’t know what to do next—that she had gotten in over her head. Every inclination she had was telling her to run.

  “Amy?”

  Marilyn looked up. George was standing in the doorway with his tie in his hands. It was true of her children that Finn had needed the most and so he’d had what there was of her limited attention span. But George was the most openly affectionate toward her, seemed to hold the least amount of grudges, even if she didn’t deserve it. He, above them all, treated her most like a mother.

  “I can’t seem to make my hands work.” He held a lavender-and-navy-striped tie out to her. “I was looking for Amy to help me.”

  When she didn’t answer him, he said louder, “Mom?” as he walked over and stood in front of Marilyn.

  She smiled up at him and took the tie from his hands. “Bend down a little please.”

  George did as he was told and Marilyn lifted his collar, draped the tie around it, and tied a neat Windsor knot. When she was finished, she scrutinized her knot, straightened it, and patted him on the chest. “Done.”

  George stood back up. “Isn’t this when you give me some last-minute advice about the wedding night?”

  It felt good to laugh, to be useful, even if it was just to tie his tie. “Ready?”

  He nodded. She took his hand and led him out the back door toward the tent, where Sam was waiting for him.

  Marilyn tried to pay careful attention to the ceremony, but she was distracted. She imagined that if she had the chance to take everything back and find the right place to start her time with them all over again, this would be it. She watched the faces of her children gathered around Sam and George as they exchanged their vows. Amy and Asa had been the official witnesses, and then George had requested his other siblings to stand up there with them as well. Marilyn sat in the chairs with the rest of the guests while Saul acted as photographer.

  Amy giggled nervously while they waited for Owen and his band to finish playing and for the minister to speak; a bouquet of orange gerbera daisies clasped in her hands and held up to her chin vibrated along with her laughter. Her short dress matched the daisies—an orange sixties lace in a flower pattern over a slip in the matching color along with high white boots. Sam, George, and Asa wore suits while their feet were clad in old Chuck Taylor sneakers. Sam’s in purple, George’s in white, and Asa’s in red. Every single one of them looked nervous, even Kate, but Marilyn could tell it was a happy kind of nervous, when you realized that something you’d only dreamed of was about to happen. That feeling Marilyn recognized.

  Of course, there was an equal amount of discord. While they were united in their happiness for George, she could tell that Kate was avoiding Finn, something was definitely wrong between them. At one point before the ceremony, Marilyn had seen Finn glance in a conciliatory way in Kate’s direction, but Kate purposely stepped behind someone else so that she could no longer see Finn or he her. Marilyn realized that any other parent could probably demand outright to know or at the least ferret out enough information to piece it all together, but she wouldn’t even begin to insinuate herself like that. She wondered briefly what it would be like if Richard were still alive.

  Afterward, as the food was consumed and George and Sam were toasted and the chocolate wedding cake was cut and passed around, Owen and the band began to play. Asa came over and pulled her out of the chair to dance.

  She let him whirl her around the floor completely out of time with the music. The kaleidoscope of people around her seemed to all be doing their own thing anyway, and she allowed herself to be passed off to her sons and her new son-in-law until finally she was dancing with Saul.

  Marilyn felt sweaty and red-faced, grateful that the music had slowed. She forgot for a moment that she wanted to keep Saul a secret as she slipped into his arms. Thankfully, the cameras around his neck prevented them from getting inappropriately close. “I need to get something to drink, and to sit,” Marilyn groaned. Her feet were killing her.

  Saul led her to a table and held up a finger indicating that he’d be right back. For the first time, Marilyn noticed that the sky was dark and the candles inside the tent had been lit. Dancing was in full force now and Amy had joined the band, hopping around with a tambourine. Owen grinned at her while he sang about the girl of his dreams dressed in high white boots. Marilyn felt like crying.

  When Saul returned, he handed her a pale-red fizzy drink with two cherries and an umbrella.

  “What’s this?” she asked, taking it from him and bringing it to her lips.

  Saul grinned and said, “A Shirley Temple.”

  Marilyn laughed and drank it, grateful for the cool wetness sliding down her throat. She fished a cherry out with her fingers and offered it to Saul. He raised one eyebrow at her before he plucked it from her fingers.

  While he chewed, he said, “You know what I thought when I first met you?”

  Curious, she shook her head and urged him to go on.

  “Well, I guess I’m really thinking about the time before we were formally introduced. It was at that stupid festival
down in Tribeca, remember that?”

  Marilyn did remember that stupid festival. She had a cameo in a dreadful small film where every actor had been barely legal and she had felt as old as the universe. It wasn’t until two weeks before the premiere that she had found out that her part had been cut, but she had been invited anyway. A mercy invite. She’d gone because she had nothing else to do. Or maybe it was fate. Now she nodded at Saul to continue.

  “I let you walk away from me, and as you did, you turned back and looked my way one time and my heart gave a little squeeze, you know?” He made a clutching movement with his fingers and put a palm over the Nikon camera strap and slapped his chest. “And I thought: I’m a glasses-wearing doofus and you are way far out of my league and still”—he paused—“I wished I had said something or everything.”

  Marilyn smiled at Saul’s description of himself. She recalled Saul’s funny yet persistent courtship and teased, “You waited a long time for someone you thought was so out of your league.”

  “I’m always better on my second try,” he said seriously and then hesitated. Marilyn was suddenly nervous. What if Saul was going to do something ridiculous, like get down on one knee? Instead, he was looking toward the dance floor as he said wistfully, “I always wanted to play the tambourine in the band.”

  She followed the direction of his gaze. Amy was still jumping around and hitting the tambourine against her hip, but she was starting to look a little weary. “I think this is your chance. Go for it,” Marilyn urged as she stood. Now that she wasn’t dancing anymore, she was cold. “I’m going to go into the house for a shawl, you go take that tambourine from Amy.” She squeezed Saul’s arm and gave him a little shove. He gave her a distracted smile as he moved into the throng of dancers. When he was halfway there, he turned around and gave her the thumbs-up. He was already on his way to claim his place in the band.

  Marilyn was surprised how quiet the house was, compared to the tent. She went up to her room and opened a drawer and fished out a periwinkle-colored shawl from a pile of scarves. There was a time she had worn scarves every day—she had fancied them her signature—wrapped in her hair or around her body as clothing. Why she kept them after all these years she had no idea. Certainly it wasn’t for the memories.