Beyond Summer (41 page)

I felt as if the room were in suspended animation, as still as the painted butterflies on the wall. Barbie stared at my father, her hand rising slowly, her fingertips touching her lips as if to move them. The tiny rhinestones from her last manicure glittered in the lamplight. Her eyes welled, then spilled over, crystal blue pools of emotion. I wondered at the thoughts behind them—was she glad he was here, shocked, relieved? Was she angry for what he’d done, or would she simply forgive and slip back into the usual pattern?

Wasn’t this what she’d been waiting for all along—for him to come back and save the day? To take care of everything?

“You’re h . . .” she whispered, stretching a hand behind herself and touching the corner of the wall, as if she needed to confirm vertical and horizontal. “You came home.” She stepped forward, stopped again, scanned his body from head to toe, seeming to notice the changes in him—the gray hair, the gaunt cheeks, the absence of his mustache. For a moment, I thought she’d say something, but then she only crossed the room, leaned over the chair, and took my father’s face in her hands. Fingers trembling against his cheeks, she studied him, then finally slid her arms around his neck and collapsed against him, weeping. I stood up and left the room, uncertain of how I felt about their reunion.

In the boys’ room, I curled up in the bed next to Landon and wrapped my arms around his tiny body, felt his heart beating against my forearm and tried to imagine our future. The boys were just getting comfortable here, just settling into a pattern with Shasta’s kids, and story time, and life in this little house. Now my father was back, and things would change again. He would never be content with the quiet, uneventful life here. He would feel the need for more. More space, more money, more deals. More . . . everything.

More than just us.

He’d be mortified at the idea of our spending time at the Summer Kitchen and the reading class.
Show some sense
, he’d say.
Anything can happen in a place like that, around those kinds of people. I didn’t give you the best education so you could hang around derelicts. . . .

He would never understand life here. He’d never be willing to try.

I closed my eyes and listened to the boys’ breathing, and tried not to think about it—tried to pretend today was just another day, an ordinary day on Red Bird Lane. . . .

When I awoke, the kids were gone. The bedroom door hung ajar, and I could hear my father in the living room. He was on the phone, but his voice was hushed, as if he didn’t want anyone to listen in.

The floor creaked as I stood up and started toward the door. In the living room, the conversation stopped abruptly. When I stepped into the hall, my father was on the sofa, looking my way. He watched me while he listened to someone on the phone; then he stood up and started toward the front door. “That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

As Dad hung up, Barbie announced that breakfast was ready, her voice fluttering through the house in a joyous singsong. “C’mon, Tam,” she chirped when she saw me in the hall. “Sleepyhead. We made pancakes.” I stopped, and she focused on me with a hopeful half smile that said,
Please don’t mess this up. He’s back.

I headed for the bathroom. “Just a minute.” Locking them outside the door, I splashed water on my face, took a deep breath, and tried to get my head together. I swallowed the urge to storm out and tell my father how I felt about his leaving, and his coming back, and the idea of Ross Burten potentially emerging from this scandal unscathed.

When I reached the dining room, the scene was surreal, like a domestic ad from an old magazine—overly colorized, unreasonably bright. My father sat at the head of the table, and the sibs were lined up along one side, waiting expectantly with forks in their hands. Barbie whirled from the kitchen like a short-order waitress, holding a platter of bacon and toast in the air. My father was sitting close to Jewel, feeding her bits of a pancake he must have stolen from the kitchen early. For an instant I watched, caught off guard. Jewel’s face was alive with light, and my father laughed as she navigated the difficult task of pinching tiny bits of dough between her fingers.

“Paul, don’t give her that,” Barbie admonished, playfully batting a hand at him.

He returned an indulgent look as Barbie set down the platter. “It won’t hurt her. I gave pancakes to Tam when she was even smaller than this.” Glancing up at me, he smiled. “Remember that, Tam? Remember all those times we ended up at the Waffle House at midnight after a game?”

I stood staring at him, at Barbie. What was the matter with them? Didn’t anything about this day bother them? How could they sit at the breakfast table chatting about pancakes as if nothing were wrong?

Aunt Lute emerged from the kitchen carrying a plate stacked high with pancakes. She was wearing a wide sun hat, flip-flops, and a long, loose cotton dress, as if she were prepared for combing the beach. A tiny carved dolphin dangled from her neck on a leather thong. “Why, of course she doesn’t remember. She was only a wee one. Just a sprite. How could she remember such a thing?” She waved the platter toward Jewel. “This one won’t remember the pancakes, either.” Right now, Aunt Lute seemed to be the most lucid person in the room. “She won’t remember the butterflies, or the Lady of the Water. The big boys, my princes, they might remember, but the wee one won’t recall this tiny castle. She’ll pass right by it and never know the difference.”

I slid into a chair as Aunt Lute dealt out pancakes, Barbie poured milk into sippy cups, and Mark and Daniel started a fight over the butter tub. “What’s she talking about?” I asked, watching Aunt Lute load up my father’s plate while Barbie handed out the cups. “What does she mean, Jewel won’t remember this house?”

Barbie’s lips lifted into a wide smile that looked glamorous again with a fresh application of makeup. “Paul thinks he’s found a place for us.” Slipping into the chair next to him, she laid a hand on his knee, her face filled with a trust and adoration that made me feel betrayed. Apparently, the fact that he’d run out on us didn’t matter, as long as he could fix everything now. “He’s taking care of it.”

“How?” I asked blandly. “We don’t have any money.”

My father gave the syrup bottle a tired look, and then reached for it. “I still have a few aces up my sleeve. I’ll work it out.” Handing the syrup to Barbie, he forced a smile, but when she leaned over the table to reach the sibs’ plates, he rested a forearm on the edge and sagged over it, as if the weight of her expectations were almost too great a burden.

Mark tipped his head to one side, taking my father in, seeming to struggle to match the picture of the gaunt, stoop-shouldered, gray-haired man with that of the stranger who’d come and gone from our house in Highland Park. Mark’s frown appeared to question whether they were one and the same. “Daddy, did you gimme pancakes when I’m a baby, like Jewee? D’we go to the Waffle House?”

The question surprised my father. He turned to Mark as if he’d suddenly realized the boys were in the room, too.

Barbie paused with the syrup bottle and glanced over her shoulder, her expression a silent plea to my father. Aunt Lute stood with the pancake platter, hovering above the table as if she, too, were waiting for the answer. We all knew that Dad had never torn up little pancake pieces for any of the sibs.

My father gave Mark the Superman wink—the one that sold cars, and energy-efficient replacement windows, and houses that would eventually leave unsuspecting families on the street. “’Course I did, buddy,” he said, then tore a bit of pancake from his plate and pitched it across the table. Mark clapped it between his palms, giggling, and my father was Superman again. What was one more well-intentioned lie on top of all the others?

The remainder of the day went by in a mishmash of Let’s Pretend and clandestine calls on my father’s cell phone. An FBI agent from the local field office came by to talk to him. During their meeting, Barbie, Aunt Lute, and I spirited the kids off to McDonald’s to get them out of the way.

“How can you do this?” I asked Barbie, as we ordered food and the boys followed Aunt Lute to the playscape. “How can you pretend things are normal, after what he’s done?”

Some stray emotion—regret, perhaps—lowered her eyes, but it was quickly masked. “He’s back,” she said quietly. “That’s all that matters now.”

“It’s not all that matters. Are you just going to forget about what he did to us—all the lies he told? Are you going to forget what he did to other people? Just because Ross Burten might skate out on some kind of plea deal, that makes it okay?”

There was a flash of emotion again—something deeper; then she turned to the counter to order Happy Meals, a salad, and two combos. “That sound all right?” she questioned, pointing to the menu board. “I can get you a salad, if you’d rather.”

“I don’t care.” I didn’t want a salad or anything else. I wanted this day to end.

Sighing, Barbie turned her back to the counter as we waited for the clerk to make our drinks. She looked at her shoes—high heels in place of the sandals and sneakers she’d been wearing since she gave up partying with Fawn. “Listen, Tam, I’m not like you, all right?” Her gaze rose slowly. I saw myself reflected in her eyes, saw my anger. “I don’t have . . . all these . . . these big ideas floating around in my head. I’m not the type who wants to teach everybody to read, or go help out at some soup kitchen, or make sure the old lady across the street is safe in her bed at night. I’m not trying to . . . fix everything that’s wrong in the world. I just want to take care of my kids. I don’t want them to wonder why Santa didn’t show up on Christmas, or to walk into school and have other kids make fun of their clothes, or have to stand outside the fence and watch everybody else play soccer because nobody wants them on their team. They need Paul.
I
need him. I just want them to have it good, you know?” Stretching out a hand, she touched my shoulder. “It’s best for you, too, Tam. You should have college, and your golfing, and hanging out at the country club, and going to the mall with your friends. All the good things.”

College, the mall, the country club . . .
I tried to imagine slipping back into the shoes of the girl whose overriding concern had been whether to take a scholarship or spend a year bumming around Europe. If my father moved us back to Highland Park, if he managed to clean up his image, would all those things be waiting? Would Emity be ready for a trip to the mall or a night of hanging out with rented movies and a quart of ice cream?

“I don’t want those things anymore,” I whispered. That life seemed artificial, shallow, pointless. It was empty, even while I was living it, which was why I’d wanted to take off for the far side of the world. I was searching for something, and somehow, in the house on Red Bird Lane, I’d found it. I’d found a purpose that was bigger than just me pleasing myself. Now they wanted me to leave it behind—as soon as Barbie and my father could make the arrangements.

She touched my hair in a gesture that felt oddly parental—strange, considering where we’d been these past weeks. “You’re so young, Tam. You don’t know what you want.”

Frustration welled inside me. “It doesn’t
bother
you . . . everything that’s happened? You don’t feel wrong about letting some sleaze win out, just because he can afford good lawyers?”

She shook her head, her mouth pressing into a downward curve. “Like I said, Tam, I’m not you.” The clerk slid our tray across the counter, and Barbie turned to receive it. “Let’s go eat, all right?”

We shared lunch and let the kids play until they were exhausted. Barbie wanted them to wear down for a nap, so my father could rest. “He’s under a lot of stress,” she pointed out.

“What a shame,” Aunt Lute chimed in, but it was hard to tell whether she was following the conversation or not.

By the time we got to the house, Landon and Jewel were asleep. The federal investigator was gone, and Dad was lying on the sofa asleep as we put everyone to bed for a nap. Barbie lay down with the kids, and Aunt Lute and I tiptoed around the house until finally a knock on the door disturbed the silence. Aunt Lute jumped, as if, in spite of my father’s reassurances, she was expecting bad news.

I answered the door, and Shasta was waiting on the other side with her boys. Seeing her there felt like having someone from a long-lost past drop in without warning. “Hey!” She looked at her watch. “You ready? We’re gonna be late for class. Cody’s gone to D.C. for a few days, so I’ve got the truck. I can dri . . .” She paused, craning to see past me as my father swung his feet around and sat up on the sofa, scratching his head. Her eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to remember where she’d seen him before.

I stretched a hand across the doorway, like a security bar. “My father’s here.” I was conscious of him surveying me from behind, trying to figure out who was visiting.

Blinking, Shasta stepped back. “Ohhh,” she breathed, concern evident in her face. “Ohhh . . .” Taking one last look into the room, she stepped out of his line of sight, and mouthed,
Are you okay?
Then she waited, her gaze darting suspiciously, anticipating some clandestine sign that we needed to be rescued.

“It’s fine.” I moved onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind me. “I’m not going to make class tonight, though. Can you ask Mrs. Kaye or someone to sit in for me? Tell them we’ve had a . . . a family emergency.”

Shasta’s disappointment was evident, and I immediately felt guilty—guilty for lying to her, guilty that my father was making arrangements to move us out of the neighborhood and I couldn’t say anything, guilty that Householders’ Superman was right around the corner, and Shasta didn’t even know it.

She leaned over and spied him through the window. “You sure you’re all right?” she whispered, rubbing her stomach and frowning. Clearly the situation made her nervous. “How’s Barbie?”

“Happy.” I wanted to slip away with Shasta and tell her the whole, bizarre story of my father’s homecoming. I couldn’t, of course. “She’s happy.”