This Summer Will Be Different(17)

I rarely drink brown liquor back home, but I could use the fortification. My mind has been stretching, bending, performing acrobatic feats on a balance beam, twisting to process Felix’s evident discomfort with me and Bridget’s runaway bride act. I take a sip, and the caramel burn in my throat grounds me. I’m on the island. Back at Summer Wind. And something weird is happening with my best friend. I’ve never seen her crumble like she did at the beach.

I find bread in the freezer and Cheez Whiz in the back of the Clarks’ fancy new refrigerator. I’ve just settled the grilled cheese sandwiches into the pan when I notice photos tacked to the side of the fridge. That’s new. I checked for family pictures that first summer. I wanted to see just how oblivious I’d been to who Felix really was, but there were none. At the very least, I wasn’t that clueless.

The only photo of the Clarks that Bridget had on display when we lived together was a framed picture on her dresser, taken when she and Felix were children. But during that earliest visit, I forced her to give me a guided tour through the family albums Christine keeps in the TV room, so I’ve seen some of the ones on the fridge before. Class pictures and snapshots of family reunions and sandcastle competition winners. The Clark siblings at various ages. Bridget has looked like Bridget since she was a newborn, but Felix grew into himself. He was a wrinkly red baby with a thatch of dark hair. I know he cried nonstop—that’s how he got his nickname. The howling wolf. He was a bright-eyed boy, a bit on the small side, and a cocksure teen, one of those guys who skipped the awkward phase and went straight to heartthrob. There’s one of him and Bridget in their bathing suits, arms around each other. It’s not from that long ago—Felix has a beard.

You need to study Felix and Bridget closely to see the resemblance—the neatly sloped nose they got from their mom, the square jaw from their dad—but it’s there. They share more than excellent faces with their parents, though. The Clarks feel like they belong to each other in a way that I admire and envy. Each is unique. Christine is the bluntest. Bridget, the most orderly. Ken is the peacemaker. Felix the rock. But they’re all very Clark-like. Self-actualized. Resilient. Physically affectionate. Steadfast.

It’s a different family from the one I grew up in. My mom, the dentist—precise, skeptical. My dad, the mortgage broker—practical, stern. They have none of the Clarks’ sense of fun. Our life was routine. Cereal for breakfast, chicken for dinner. Evening news and prime-time sitcoms. Shuffling to and from arenas for my brother’s hockey games. Lyle is six years older than me, and while my brother and I look alike—deep blue eyes, straight noses, thick heads of reddish-brown hair, good cheekbones—we had nothing in common as kids. A whole evening could pass with hearing my dad say little more than a few sentences. It wasn’t a terrible childhood, but it was quiet, and I was often lonely.

Aunt Stacy felt like family, like pieces of me came from her. She was the antithesis of my mother—exuberant and fashionable and full of stories from her acting days. She was steadfastly single, but her heart was open. Bridget was a homesick twenty-two-year-old when I introduced her to Stacy, and my aunt scooped her up, fed her take-out Italian, and turned our duo into a trio.

I flip the sandwiches, and then go back to the photos, gawking at Felix’s bare chest. Maybe that’s why it takes me another minute to see that I’m on the fridge, too. I haven’t seen this one before. Bridget and I are in the living room, and the Trivial Pursuit board is on the coffee table. We’re on the couch laughing, both of us in sweaters. It was taken the year I came for Thanksgiving. Felix is in the photo, sitting in the armchair, his eyes clamped on me. My legs bristle with goose bumps, and then I hear the floorboards shift.

“What’s that smell?” Bridget says.

I sniff.

That smell is burnt cheese.



* * *



? ? ?

After our six o’clock dinner of blackened grilled cheese sandwiches and gherkins, Bridget and I sit on the deck, watching the birds flit through the trees. Bridget is wearing her dad’s HISTORY IS NOT BORING T-shirt and a pair of leggings she describes as lovingly worn but are actually more hole than pant. She has no time for fashion, and her design sense is atrocious. She once tried her hand at flower arranging, and when I asked whether she was color blind, she thought I was joking. Every so often, she sends me photos of bouquets she thinks I’ll like. They’re terrible, and I love them.

Wind tinkles through the chimes. I don’t know when they arrived, but they bother me. All I want to hear when I’m at Summer Wind are the breeze and the birds.

A strong gust sends the chimes into a tinny tizzy, and Bridget jumps up to remove them from the hook.

“I hate these things,” she says.

“The worst.”

“I’ll be back in a sec,” Bridget says, stepping inside.

The ceramic toad watches me with bulging eyes while I wait. “Don’t look at me like that,” I grumble.

My mind, the wretch, sneaks upstairs to Felix’s bedroom and back to our first night together. It feels like a lifetime ago, as if we were two other people. Sometimes I wonder if I was willfully ignorant. I didn’t see the toad, but there were other clues. The fact that his parents were out of town. The impeccable flower beds—I knew Christine was an avid gardener. The piano that featured heavily in Bridget’s family legends. There was a bottle of my favorite vinho verde lying on the bottom shelf of the fridge that her parents had bought for us, but I didn’t spot it. Maybe if I had, I would have clued in. Or maybe not.