Postcards From Last Summer (19 page)

Tuning back into the courtroom activity, she checked out Kevin's suit. The pants appeared painfully short when he sat down, and the fabric was shiny, the sign of cheap, synthetic material. If he was going to be with her, he'd have to do better. Kevin put a reassuring hand on her wrist, fingers that could use a manicure. Maybe she could get him in to see Andrea before he left Great Egg. He needed work, but the boy had potential. He was a diamond in the rough, her diamond, and she was willing to make a few cuts to maximize his value and make him sparkle.

“T
he problem with hosting parties is that you're so focused on getting it right, you don't have time to have fun.” I squinted at the blue dots of paint I was dabbing onto the yellow butterfly on my niece's face. Even with all my careful planning and luring Elle and Milo out to stay in the McCorkle house for the weekend, the graduation party gave me the jitters. Not helped by the fact that Darcy seemed to be a no-show.

“Speak for yourself,” Elle said, painting dragon scales on Shea Handwerger's face with a flourish. “I am all about fun, like a sea otter. Did you know they make a game of everything? Fishing, eating, exercise, building their homes. I am the otter. If it's not worth it, I'm not there.”

“Aren't you having fun, Aunt Lindsay?” Kyra asked, her brows arching into her strawberry blond bangs. “It's your grad-you-lation.”

“Graduation, honey. And I'm having a blast.” I knew it was a big lie, but I figured it was better to sound positive and spare the six-year-old her pathos. I leaned close to dry the butterfly on Kyra's face with a few puffs of breath. “You're done. Ready to fly away.”

Kyra pressed her freckled face close to the makeup mirror borrowed from Ma's vanity and grinned, revealing a gap in her bottom teeth that made me long for those days—six-year-old innocence when the worst that could happen was a scrape on the knee or candy deprivation. “Thank you!” Kyra said. She flipped open the screen door and skipped off to find her cousins, twirling a fluorescent stick in the air.

Dotting the back of my hand with blue paint, I wished I could muster half as much enthusiasm to fly off and be a butterfly. These past four years I'd been so focused on getting good grades, earning extra money, and scoring attention from my lit professors that I hadn't prepared for real life. The whole job thing and the feeling that I should be leaving my mother's home—despite the fact that I couldn't afford anything within a hundred miles of New York City—somehow, it all crept up on me and smacked me in the face the week before graduation.

At last, I was done with college—finito! Unfortunately, all my studies hadn't prepared me to start having a life. Unlike my friends. Tara always seemed to know she'd get into the world of law and politics, and Elle seemed to be a walking gold mine, with her professors talking about publishing her senior thesis and colleagues of her parents bending over backward to create entry-level positions for her wherever she went. Watching Tara and Elle get involved with their new jobs, make new contacts, and hang with new friends, I felt a pinch of envy. They'd sped ahead into the grown-up world, while I was still licking a lollipop at the bus stop.

With a degree in psychology, my prospective paths seemed clear. If I went back to school for a masters in social work, I'd be qualified for various government jobs with the Department of Social Services, the Department of Child Welfare . . . the various agencies that served people in various ways. A steady living, but the thought of becoming a cog in one of the many bureaucratic wheels held little appeal. An MSW would also allow me to hang a shingle and do counseling, but I didn't feel qualified. How could a twenty-two-year-old with limited life experience advise people suffering through emotional crises I'd only read about? Much as I enjoyed psychoanalyzing my friends, I wasn't up for being a professional shrink.

So I'd put in my time at the college placement office. I'd e-mailed my résumé to a hundred places and met with two employment agencies, but no one seemed to know what to do with me.

What had I been thinking, majoring in psych?

My lips pursed, I started painting ridges of little blue waves up my arm.

“Excuse me,” Elle pointed her paintbrush at me accusingly, “don't waste our paint.”

“We're done. Shea the dragon is the last.” Tuning out the music and laughter, I blew on my hand, then started capping the paint pots.

The McCorkle house was brimming over with family and friends, many of whom used the graduation party as an excuse to make the trip to the beach on this weekend of dawning summer. The street was lined with cars and minivans, the lawn was lined with flaming torches. The adult guests wore plastic leis and the children's faces were painted like cats or tigers or exotic birds or Batman. There was croquet in the side yard, badminton on the back lawn, and a makeshift pitching clinic in the driveway.

It was all good . . . a walloping fun time all around, but somehow I couldn't wait for it to be over. Family parties were fine for the first hour or two. After that, I was always trying to jump in my car and remove myself from brothers with epic tales of their heroic adventures as firemen or cops, sisters who knew it all, and diapers that needed changing—the hazards of being the youngest in a large Irish family. In this case, being the guest of honor, I felt even more pressure to circulate and accommodate—the way my mother always did. Except that Mary Grace McCorkle had a gift for hosting a party, while I just wished everyone would go home.

“What's with the puss?” Elle said. “If you don't watch it, we're going to have to paint a big red clown smile on you.”

Shea laughed. “Yeah, a clown smile. Paint one on Aunt Lindsay!”

Elle put a streak of green on his nose and nodded with satisfaction. “You're done, dragon. Go breathe fire on some marshmallows.”

Shea scowled into the mirror, then bolted off, letting the screen door slam behind him.

I continued capping paints, but Elle grabbed the red brush and brandished it in front of my face menacingly. “I'm not kidding. Snap out of it or I'll paint you happy.”

“I just wish I had a job. Graduation is sort of anticlimactic when there's nowhere to go.”

“I thought you were going to wait tables at Coney's?”

“That's a way to make some cash,” I said. “I'm talking about a career, like you going into foreign service, springing forth from your job at the Lithuanian consulate. Great aspirations.”

“You think I wanted that job? It fell in my lap and I only took it so that my parents wouldn't hatch any schemes to pull me back to Europe or Africa.” Elle picked at some glitter on her palm. “It's not like I'm planning a job in foreign service.”

“Yeah, but if I could only get a half-decent job like that . . .”

“That's just so you, Lindsay. That ‘if only' thing. If only I had a boyfriend. If only I had a ten-speed bike. If only I could lose fifteen pounds. You're totally stuck in the future.”

“That's not totally true,” I protested.

“It totally is, and I'm telling you, you've got to think otter. Be an otter. Enjoy the moment. Play at your job, and have fun at your own party or else move on to something that is fun. Don't you think you'll love working at Coney's?”

“I doubt that.” I hadn't started yet, and it would certainly be better than slinging pizza at Old Towne, which wouldn't be the same without Bear. “I do know that it's not a career, and I can't believe I worked so hard for four years to wait tables.”

“Would you shut up already? You've been out of school for, like, ten minutes.”

“And now it sounds like I'm complaining, and that's part of the problem. I know I've got it good with my family, friends, opportunities—even this party. I know it's great but I'm not loving it and I feel guilty for not appreciating it, especially considering everything Darcy is going through now.” I dropped the last of the paint jars into the plastic bin. “So that's my problem. What does an otter do when she's not having fun and she feels guilty about it?”

Elle threw up her arms, bangles jingling. “It's remedial otter training for you.”

“Is that a twelve-step program?” I stowed the bin of paints in the corner of the porch. “Because if it is, I'm sure Kevin McGowan can tell me all about it . . .” Ever since Kevin went to rehab last fall he'd become a walking testimonial about the AA one true way.

“You're evil.” Elle grinned, revealing dimples.

“I know, and I'm trying to enjoy that about myself.”

Elle nodded. “Spoken like a true otter. So what do you say we blow this popsicle stand and hit the beach?”

I winced. “Not without clearance from Mary Grace McCorkle. Don't you know anything about party etiquette?”

“That's what happens when you're raised in a jungle. But really, let's find Tara and Milo and do something. We'll hit the beach or we can even track down Darcy. After you cut the cake and kiss all the babies, no one will miss you around here.” Elle pushed open the door and led the way down to the path of scattered slate stones cut into the lawn. The driveway had been taken over by toddlers, who rumbled on Big Wheels and loaded dolls and stuffed animals into mini–red wagons.

I navigated around their sticky fingers to the rose arbor and was headed toward the back door when I caught the low drawl of male voices on the other side of the thick green laurel that shielded the driveway from the street. A few new cars were sprawled on the street—bright red and metallic blue SUVs and sports cars. Boy cars. I grabbed Elle's arm and tugged her to a stop. “Who's that?”

Elle peered through the green leaves. “The lifeguards. They must have come straight from the beach.”

I checked my watch—almost six, the beach would be closed. “Nobody invited them.” I pressed my face closer to the leaves, peering at the patchy images on the other side. The sight of Austin with his too-pretty face brought back that sickening feeling from last summer, the guilt and embarrassment, and the complications between Bear and me. I'd heard from Bear twice over the winter, once because I'd made Steve call him around Christmastime. “All the travel's a little disorienting,” he'd told me. “But it's fun to get paid for surfing.” Somehow, I'd hoped he'd find his way back to the Hamptons by the start of the summer, but the latest news from Steve wasn't so hopeful. “Bear's really digging Hawaii,” Steve had told me while I was unloading my carload of junk from the dorm. “I think he's going to stay there.”

Bear in Hawaii . . . a few thousand miles away. It was such a huge disappointment, I didn't even want to think about it.

Since that night we'd spent together, I had barely even looked at another guy. I knew Bear was the person I wanted in life, the person whose star was crossed with mine. At last, I understood the relentless commitment Darcy felt toward Kevin. And so my senior year had been academic and social, but not sexual at all. “Celibacy is a very fine thing, if you're doing it for a reason,” my friend Milo had told me during one of our many late-night discussions at college. “If, however, you just can't muster a partner—like some of us who will remain unnamed—it sort of sucks.”

I've been so good, so faithful to Bear all these months,
I thought as I eavesdropped on the banter beyond the laurel hedge. I didn't deserve to feel guilty about Austin anymore.

“I never realized lifeguards were such assholes,” Elle observed.

“Please . . .” I squinted into the hedge. “The sight of Austin Ritter makes me want to hurl—and I'm only getting a partial view!”

“Shh!” Elle separated two leafy branches for a better view. “He's right there.”

“Gentlemen? What the hell are you doing here?” asked my brother Steve.

“Lindsay asked us,” Austin said.

The big fat liar! I would have loved to reach through the laurel hedge, thrust my nails at his face, and grab him by the scruff of his tropical shirt, but it wasn't worth getting scraped by the branches.

“She told us to come. Sort of.”

“Yeah-huh.” Steve remained cool. “No, really. What are you doing here?”

The other lifeguards laughed. “You're so busted, Ritter.”

“Honestly?” Max spread his fingers wide in a peacekeeping gesture. “We heard there was beer, we know the hotties hang here, and everyone knows the McCorkles have a rep for throwing some kick-ass parties.”

“Ahh, at last, the truth.” Steve's arms rose like a preacher's as he surveyed the group. “And the truth shall admit you to the party. Go, drink and be merry.”

“Oh, shit,” I muttered as the lifeguards whooped with joy.

“Thanks, man.” Max high-fived Steve.

“Yeah, right,” Austin said, slinking by until Steve's hockey stick rose like a railroad-crossing barrier.

“All except you, Ritter.”

Austin eyed him with disdain. “Huh?”

Elle nudged Lindsay with an elbow. “This is going to be good.”

“Sorry, but we don't allow assholes.” Steve lowered the stick. “Nothing personal.”

Austin's hands balled into fists. “You're kidding, right?”

“Just go,” Steve said, “before I call the cops about all your cars blocking the entrance to our driveway.”

“Try it!” Austin growled, but the other lifeguards were in his face, backing him toward the street, saying things like, “Be cool,” and “Take it easy,” until he was escorted to his car.

Elle pushed away from the hedge with a shriek. “Go, Steve . . . it's your birthday! Go, Steve, big brother . . .” Elle swung her hips, doing a happy dance with her cheer.

I felt a swell of embarrassed affection. Twenty-two years on this planet and today was the first time I'd ever seen Steve exercise the protective instinct associated with older brothers. “Not bad,” I admitted. “Not bad at all.”