Beyond Summer (6 page)

An uncomfortable sensation crawled underneath my golf shirt, turned my neck hot and itchy. “It’s Friday,” I whispered.

“Right . . .” he muttered. “Friday.” His gaze slid back and forth across the fireplace, as if he were searching for something in the squares of white marble. “Almost the weekend. Nobody does business on the weekend.” Chewing his bottom lip, he nodded, still scanning the wall, the darkness in his face easing slightly. “Nobody does business on the weekend.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable, uncertain. Something was wrong. This man heaped in the chair, babbling nonsense, his cheeks wet with tears, was not my father. My father was strong, silent, always on the cell phone, wrapped up in negotiations to take a partial interest in some business deal, in return for attaching his name to it. Anything attached to Paul “the Postman” Lambert’s name and face was golden, even fifteen years after his playing career was over. My father was larger than life in every possible way.

“Dad, what’s the matter?” Maybe Barbie had stormed out again. Maybe they’d had a fight about the Escalade. “You’re scaring me.” Surely he knew that Barbie wouldn’t really leave. Where could she go? Her family, whom she didn’t speak to anyway, lived in some backwater town in Louisiana, and none of her spa girls or her mothers’-day-out friends would take on Barbie and the Four.

Maybe my father’s meltdown was work-related—some deal gone wrong. He’d be on the cell phone like crazy for a day or two, and then this weird, weepy mood would blow over.

Would he really sit in the game room and shed tears about work?

Shaking his head, he cupped his fingers over his lips again. I heard the nanny coming in the kitchen door. In a few minutes, she’d start rousting the twins, and then the house would descend into the usual chaos. “You might as well tell me,” I said. “If it’s going around at the club, you know I’ll hear it. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
An affair. It’s probably an affair. Somebody strayed, and now word’s out. It’ll be a big scandal at church.
“I’m not a child anymore.”

“No,” he murmured, his eyes falling closed again. “It’s just business. These things get blown out of proportion.”

“Ohhh-kay, but what . . .”

The nanny walked by in the hall, and we waited for her to pass. “
Hola
,” she called; then a string of Spanish drifted behind her as she continued down the hall.

“She wants you to know you forgot to leave her check out last week. Counting this week, you’re three weeks behind.”

He nodded again. “I need to go talk to Barbara.” Pushing himself out of the chair, he stood up and left the room. Overhead, dull thumps shook the ceiling, followed by the crash of something hitting the wall, then bansheelike howling. The sibs were awake.

I hurried to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water and a breakfast square, and make my escape before the Four moved downstairs. Outside, Aunt Lute was sitting in a reclining chair by the pool, her legs crossed yoga-style and her arms held out with her index fingers touching her thumbs, so that she looked like one of those goddess statues from India. The only thing missing was six more arms and a headdress. She was wearing white spandex exercise clothes with a Bahamas logo on the front. It looked like something out of Barbie’s closet—not a good choice for a seventy-year-old woman. Loose, wrinkled skin hung out everywhere, folded and bunched like yesterday’s laundry.

Stuffing my breakfast in an empty Whole Foods bag, I ran upstairs, grabbed my golf shoes and a string top with a cute pleated miniskirt for later, plus a jacket for the clubhouse—maybe I’d ask Emity to meet me for lunch, and then we could hang out at the pool and talk about Europe. She’d be upset that I hadn’t told my dad about our plans yet, but today clearly wasn’t the day to bring it up.

Stuffing everything in a gym bag, I checked myself in the mirror—not too bad. I’d be a mess by the time I left the course anyway. The main thing now was to get out the door before one of the sibs decided to stow away in my vehicle. For them, escaping the house and hiding in one of the cars was the coup de grâce of nanny pranks.

Landon was standing at the top of the stairway rubbing his eyes, naked except for his Spider-Man undies. His little body was bony and brown and potbellied, so that he looked like a poster child for a Feed the Children campaign. His hair, which had dried in soft, wavy curls after last night’s swim, framed his face as he yawned, swayed on his feet, and held out his arms like he was waiting for a hug.

Squatting on the top stair, I reached for him, and he looped his arms around my neck, then nestled under my chin. The sibs could melt you when they wanted to. “Hey, buddy,” I whispered, because Mark and Daniel’s bedroom door was open, and I didn’t want them to hear me. The boys were never all in a good mood at once. “What’s the matter?” I could hear the nanny in the twins’ room, which meant Landon had gotten out of bed on his own this morning. “Go lie back down for a bit. Esmeralda will be there in a minute. I have to head out to the club.” If I didn’t show up on time to play eighteen this morning, after having left the lesson yesterday, Coach would give me more than just a lecture.

Landon shook his head, the cottony tips of his hair tickling my neck and chin. I tried to stand up, but his arms tightened around my neck so that he rose with me, then looped his legs over the top of the gym bag.

“Landon, I’ve got to go.”

He held on like a spider monkey clinging to a branch in a stiff wind. The circle around my neck tightened until I was choking, the strap of the gym bag cutting into my collarbone.

“Landon, quit it, now. I said I have to . . .”

He sniffled, and I felt moisture on my skin.
What in the world . . .

Something slammed against the master bedroom door at the end of the hall, and Landon jerked in my arms, his body quivering. The muffled sound of Barbie yelling drifted forth, followed by the deeper tone of my father raising his voice in response, both of them trying to be heard at once. Something metallic collided with the door, then spilled what sounded like marbles onto the floor. They click-clacked against the tile and clattered around the room.

The argument continued. I wanted to move close enough to make out the words, solve the mystery my father had created downstairs, but Landon trembled in my arms, whimpered softly, and suddenly I knew why he was up before the nanny call. His room was right next to the master suite.

Slipping a hand into his hair, I started down the stairs, my stomach clenching and tears prickling my throat. I knew what it was like to wake up with your parents eviscerating each other on the other side of the wall. “Hey, buddy, it’s all right,” I whispered, and kissed the downy hair over his ear. “Big people fight sometimes just like you guys do. It doesn’t mean anything.” The irony of that statement struck me as I reached the downstairs landing.
Big people fight just like you guys do. . . .

No wonder the boys acted the way they did. Nothing here was like it was supposed to be. Nothing was right, or normal, or secure. Even the kids could feel the ground constantly shifting.

In the living room, I pried Landon off, set him on the sofa, then turned on a Disney movie. “I’ve gotta go, bud-pud. Just sit here and watch your movie until Esmeralda comes down, okay?”

Landon didn’t answer. He was already zoning out to the opening credits of
Toy Story
. Something thumped so hard upstairs, it rattled the chandelier overhead. Landon didn’t even notice. He wiped his cheeks and curled into a ball in the corner of the sofa, his blue eyes dull and unfocused. I tossed a fuzzy
101 Dalmatians
blanket over him, and he snuggled it against his chin.

Via the baby monitor on the end table, Jewel let out a wail. Mark or Daniel hollered something from the top of the stairs. A mystery object hit the floor. Landon tugged the blanket up higher, pulling it off his legs. There was a bruise on his thigh from the slide collapse last night.

The back door opened, and Aunt Lute stepped in, her face serene, a faint smile on her lips, as if the commotion in the house were of no concern to her.

“Aunt Lute, can you watch Landon?” I asked, and then headed for my car without waiting for an answer. I was out of the garage before the long hand on my watch could slide past another minute. My cell rang while I was on the way to the club, and it was Emity, of course. “
Hola, chica
,” she said, and after the bizarre morning at home, the cheerfulness in her voice seemed out of place. “
Buenos días.
”

“No foreign languages today, all right?” For a while now, Emity and I had been working on conversational French, Spanish, and Italian, so we’d be ready for Europe.

“Whoa, what’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry. Weird day on Wisteria Lane. You know Barbie.”

“Word’s around about her taking out the Baby Bundle.” Emity hitched a breath, and I could tell she was ready to get the dish on last night.

Normally, I would have been totally into spending the drive dealing out the Barbie details, but I couldn’t get past the picture of my father crumpled in the chair, crying in the morning light. It made the Barbie blunder seem anything but funny. “I don’t know what’s going on. My dad was sitting in the living room crying this morning. Crying. Can you believe that? When I left, they were having a massive fight upstairs.”

“Whoa,” Em breathed. “What about?”

“No idea. Have you heard anything? Like, from your mom?” Emity’s mom was head of the Coffeetime Club at our church, Forest Lane Fellowship, so she more or less heard everything. Aside from that, my mother and Em’s mom had been friends since Em and I were in diapers together, so she’d scoop the dirt on my dad’s new wife any chance she got.

“Nothing, except she took out the Baby Bundle with the Escalade. I heard she got her heel hooked under the gas pedal and couldn’t get to the brake. Your dad’s probably ticked about that.”

“Yeah, I guess. The Escalade’s still drivable, so it could be worse.” But there was a queasy swirl in my stomach that wouldn’t go away—as if I’d eaten something bad, and it was coming back to haunt me. “It was just weird. He said I might hear stuff at the club, and I shouldn’t listen to it. What kind of stuff, you know?”

Emity thought for a minute. “I guess about the big wreck.”

“I guess,” I muttered. “Hey, Em, I’ve got to go. I’m at the club. Come meet me for lunch at the Club Grill, ’kay? See if your mom knows anything . . . about Barbie, or whatever, all right?”

Em answered in Spanish, and then we signed off. I went into the clubhouse feeling like there was a bomb hidden somewhere, and I was just waiting for it to explode. All morning long, I heard it ticking in my ear. My eighteen holes with Coach were uneventful. Not good, not bad. He thought I was a little off, but other than the blips in my swing, there was no indication that today was anything but normal.

In the clubhouse after lunch, the manager politely pointed out that our tab from last month hadn’t been paid yet. I told him I’d remind my dad. “I think everything just autodrafts from the checking account,” I said, and instantly the argument with Barbie started making sense. She’d probably run the household account dry again, and autodrafts were bouncing all over town. No wonder Dad was ticked.

Emity and I blew the afternoon at the mall, and then I headed back to the club to play another eighteen, while Emity went to her cousin’s birthday dinner.

The nanny called just as I was setting up on the second tee. She was yelling in Spanish so loud and so fast, I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. In the background, Barbie was screaming at someone, the sibs were running wild, and a man was trying to speak above the fray. The male voice was not my father’s.

“Esmeralda! Esmeralda!” I hollered into the phone, but the line went dead. When I redialed, no one answered. I gunned the golf cart back to the clubhouse, left my clubs and everything else with the attendant, and ran for my car.

Horrible possibilities raced through my mind, and the few miles from the club to the house seemed endless. When I pulled into the driveway, a sheriff’s department car was leaving our curb, the nanny was standing in the doorway trying to keep Mark and Daniel from escaping onto the front walk, and Barbie was kneeling on the front lawn, clutching a piece of paper in one hand and a cell phone in the other. As I stepped from my car, she pushed to her feet and staggered toward me, her eyes rimmed with mascara tears, her hands shaking. “It’s . . . it’s not true. It’s a mistake. . . . I can’t . . . I can’t find him, though. He. . . .”

She reached toward me, and I stepped away. “Barbie? What are you talking about? Who? Who’s missing?” Panic exploded like a scatter bomb inside me, and I looked toward the door, counted the faces pressed around the nanny. Where was Landon? “Who can’t you find? Barbie! Who?”

Barbie staggered backward, her heels sinking into the sod. “I tried to call. I tried to call so he could talk . . . the sheriff.”

“The sheriff . . . what? Barbie, who’s missing? Who?”

Shaking her head, she held out the paper, stumbled sideways. “It’s not true. It’s . . . It’s a mistake. I tried to call Paul. I tried to call.”

“Dad?” I reached for the paper. “You tried to call Dad?” I pinched the paper between my fingers, pulled on it, but Barbie held tight. “Let go!” I snapped, then yanked it away. The sheet fluttered in my hand. I straightened it out, scanned the boldface line of print at the top.

 

 

The reverend father at the Crossings Church has talked longer than usual today. His voice is deep, and his face is a smooth, even brown, like a palm leaf when it dries. I know the word for his color of skin. It is far back in my memory.
Mulatto
, my father would have called him, and pushed air through his teeth and spit on the ground. But here, no one says the word, or spits on it. Here at Crossings Church, the people are so many shades of color that no one seems to notice, except me. I only see it because my father taught me to see when I was very young, and the lessons taught to the young grow deep roots.