The Goodbye Summer (17 page)

She’d wanted so much to thank the doctor, who was kindness itself, but she’d been unable to speak because she was crying, and that had embarrassed her. She’d had to hang up without saying a word. Not even goodbye.

This was like that, only worse.

Before Caddie could put the Pontiac’s brake on in front of Wake House, Thea waved to her and started down the steps. Right behind her came Magill—with Cornel holding on to his arm. Cornel? Why was
he
coming? Oh, brother.

Bea and Edgie Copes sat in their side-by-side rockers on the front porch and called out over the railing, “Woo-hoo, Caddie!” On either side of them sat the Harris wives, ignoring each other as usual. Maxine waved her church fan; Doré acknowledged Caddie with a nod of her perfectly permed head. “Have a nice time!” Bea called out, and Caddie smiled and waved through the window, feeling guilty.

They’d all swallowed the cover story: she was having a very tiny student music recital in her home tonight. She’d be having others later for similar small groups, but to this first one she could only invite two people (which was completely absurd, and yet nobody had questioned it). Well, apparently she’d found room for a third: Cornel shambled down the walk looking even grumpier than usual, dressed in blousy seersucker pants and a powder-blue golf shirt. Between him and Magill, it was hard to say who was supporting whom; Magill had problems with his balance, but Cornel, much as he denied it, had arthritic hips, and on bad days they made him take short, mincing steps, like a woman in a too-tight skirt.

“Did you make the score?” Thea asked, still six feet from the car.

Cornel cringed. “Shhh!” he said, which made Magill laugh, which made them both tip dangerously sideways against the stair rail.

“I made the score,” Caddie assured Thea once she was in the car and buckled up. She looked so pleased and excited, Caddie had less trouble hiding her own dismal mood than she’d thought she was going to. She’d considered canceling the pot party, postponing it till she felt better, whenever that might be, because it could hardly have fallen on a worse day in her life. But now she was glad she hadn’t. It might even cheer her up. She’d been miserable for two weeks, each day as wretched as the last, no differentiation, no distinction. Until two days ago, when everything had gotten immeasurably worse.

“And you didn’t have any trouble?” Thea asked her.

“No trouble. I was born for the doper life.”

Magill’s dealer buddy, a balding, clean-cut young man named Chip, had come to the house yesterday, right in the middle of Caitlin Birnbaum’s piano lesson, and he and Caddie had made the exchange on the front porch: a little plastic baggie inside a paper sandwich bag for ninety-five dollars in cash. “This is highly excellent stuff, I can personally recommend it,” Chip had told her. “You want to sample it first, that is no problem whatsoever.” She’d whispered that that wouldn’t be necessary and wished him a nice day.

“I’ll write you a check when we get to the house,” Thea said happily, patting her pocketbook. “Why don’t you put the top down, Caddie? I haven’t ridden in a convertible in I don’t know how long.”

“It’s stuck, it doesn’t go down anymore. Rust.”

“You people have completely lost your minds,” Cornel grumped, settling himself in the backseat. “How’s it going to look if you get caught? Have you thought about that? It won’t be so funny when you’re behind bars. And you,” he told Magill, “you won’t be wearing that smirk on your face when you’re a jailbird.”

Magill caught Caddie’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Cornel’s the designated narc.”

“Laugh, go ahead, you’ll be glad when
one
of us is sober,” Cornel said darkly.

“Straight,” Thea corrected, “not sober. You’re our straight man.”

He kept it up all the way to Caddie’s house, warning about bad trips and drug busts and reefer madness. “Cornel,” Thea finally turned around
in her seat to say, “Caddie can take you back to Wake House right now if you’re going to spoil this for the rest of us.”

He scowled and shut up.

Magill couldn’t get over the sculptures in the front yard. The sun was going down, glowing orange between the dark leaves of the oak tree in Mrs. Tourneau’s yard, casting shadows that added length and a little dignity to
Oppression
and
Earth Mother.
He had a cane tonight, and he used it to navigate around Nana’s grass-blooming earthworks and metal contraptions. “These are amazing,” he marveled. “Incredible.” Thea had seen them before and Cornel wasn’t impressed, so they left Magill wandering in the yard and came inside with Caddie.

She put them in the living room and went to get drinks. “This is pretty nice,” she heard Cornel say on her way out. “Feels good to be in a real house, doesn’t it?” Funny; she’d thought the beauty of Wake House was that it
was
a real house.

When she came back, Magill was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling a joint, with Thea beside him and Cornel looking on from a superior distance in the armchair. She set a tray of glasses, snacks, soft drinks, and a pitcher of iced tea on the coffee table. “I have booze, too, if anybody wants a real drink.”

“Got any cold beer?” Magill asked.

“Yes.”

“Me, too,” said Cornel.

“That sounds wonderful,” said Thea.

“Oh, okay.” So they were drinking. She returned the soft drinks to the kitchen and came back with beer.

“What’s that noise?” Thea asked after everybody had toasted.

“I don’t hear anything,” Magill said.

“Yeah,” Cornel noticed, “like a bird chirping.”

“Oh, it’s Finney,” Caddie said. “I locked him in Nana’s bedroom. I can let him out if nobody minds.”

Nobody minded.

“He should be fine since you’re already here—it’s when strangers come to the door that he goes nuts.”

She went upstairs to let him out. He hardly spared her a glance before tearing down the hall, down the stairs, yipping, squeaking, a whitish blur of excitement. By the time she got back to the living room, he was wriggling on Thea’s thighs in uncontrollable delight, leaving a blizzard of hairs on her skirt.

“Should we have some music?” She went to the stereo and leafed through the CDs currently scattered on the shelf. She put on a Brahms symphony, but after a couple of seconds she turned it off. “That’s not right,” she said, talking to herself. “Something lighter. I guess.”

Magill came over to help. He’d cleaned up for this night out; he wore a pressed shirt and a nice pair of gray slacks. They were both too big for him, though, and the worn place on his belt was a couple of inches away from the current notch in the buckle. But still, he looked tidy and clean-shaven, and he might even have gotten a real haircut instead of letting Maxine cut it for him.

“You look very nice tonight,” she told him.

“I like your hair that way,” he mumbled.

“Oh.” She had to touch her hair to remember how she’d combed it. Behind her ears with two barrettes. “Thanks.”

“So what have you got that’s really decadent?”

“Decadent?”

“For Cornel.” He ran his index finger along first one stack of discs, then another. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Is this what you listen to all the time?”

“What’s wrong with it? Not all the time.”

“What’s in here?” He squatted down and opened the cabinet under the stereo. “Aha. Your secret stash. Why do you keep the good stuff down here, Caddie? It’s not…”

It’s not pornography.
That’s what he was going to say, she was sure. She watched his ears turn pink and concentrated on not laughing.

“Bessie Smith. Sippee Wallace, Ma Rainey, Jelly Roll Morton. Memphis Minnie?”

“She’s good,” Caddie said, defensive for some reason. It
was
almost as if he’d stumbled on her secret collection of erotica.

“Who else…Eubie Blake, Koko Taylor. Alberta Hunter.” He turned an old Etta James disc over and read from the back, “ ‘Hot Nuts, Get ’Em from the Peanut Man.’ ” He grinned up at her. “Play this. It’s perfect.”

She shrugged. “Fine, I’ll put on a whole stack. There’s nothing the matter with the blues.”

He straightened up, using the edge of the shelf for balance. “That’s for sure.” He was looking at her with a sweet, intent expression, as if seeing something new, some intriguing facet he hadn’t suspected. She’d revealed too much, she felt obscurely, and she wasn’t even sure how. Or, for that matter, what. She shrugged again, signaling indifference, and stacked the CD player with music.

Cornel got up and closed the curtains over the front window. “For security,” he told them.

“It’s going to get hot,” Caddie warned. It already was hot. She had an air conditioner in her bedroom, but down here only a fan.

“Anybody can stand on your porch and look right in. I for one don’t want to get arrested tonight.” Instead of going back to his chair, Cornel plumped himself down next to Thea on the floor, knees cracking. His pant legs rode up to show hairless white calves above shiny black socks.

“Cornel, why won’t you let me write your biography?” Caddie asked him.

“Because I’m not dead yet. I told you.”

“I bet you’ve had a very interesting life.”

“Not that interesting.”

“Or I could interview you—just ask questions, and you could answer the ones you wanted.”

“That’s an idea,” Thea said. “Why don’t you, Cornel?”

He looked dubious and flattered at the same time. “I’ll think about it,” he begrudged. “Meanwhile, can we get this foolishness on the road?”

“Yes, let’s.” Thea’s eyes danced with anticipation; she was almost rubbing her hands together. She had on a flowered sundress that bared her freckled arms and chest, the kind of dress Doré Harris said nobody over sixty should wear. “Women past a certain age ought never to reveal their
arms,” she’d once told Caddie, in an obvious reference to Maxine, who’d been sporting a sleeveless blouse that day. “Even in summer?” Caddie had asked. “Not if she has any personal pride.”

“You look beautiful tonight,” Caddie said to Thea impulsively.

“Why, thanks. I wanted to come as a hippie, but I don’t have any bell-bottoms.” She had on gold hoop earrings, though, gypsy earrings that made her look reckless and carefree. No wonder Cornel couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Magill struck a match and lit the tight, fat joint. Took a hit.

“Is that how you do it?” Thea took the cigarette from him in her fingertips. “Hold it in for a while before you blow it out, right?”

“If you can,” he said, exhaling. “But take a small puff the first time, just a little, otherwise it’ll make you cough.”

“I used to smoke cigarettes,” she said. “I quit in 1968.”

“I quit in 1969,” Cornel said interestedly, as if this gave them a special bond.

“Just a little puff,” Magill warned again.

Thea brought the joint carefully to her lips and inhaled. Her eyes bulged; she looked as if she was strangling, but she managed not to cough. “Aagh,” she exclaimed on the exhale, “it’s so
harsh,
not like tobacco at all. Let me try another puff.”

Magill sat back and laughed.

“What else do you call this besides a joint?”

“Doobie, jay. Spliff. Joystick, roach. Twist.”

Cornel was scowling like a vulture but missing nothing. “Sure you don’t want to try?” Thea asked, holding the joint out toward him, waving it invitingly.

“Positive.”

“Could be your last chance.”

“Good.”

She shrugged and took another hit, very expert-looking now, holding the smoke in her lungs for a full five seconds before blowing it up at the ceiling. “Here, honey,” she said, handing the joint to Caddie. “Your turn.”

The loose paper crackled and sparked; Caddie tapped the long ash into the ashtray and started to take a drag. But then—“No, you know, I don’t think I want any, not right now.”

“
One
sensible person,” Cornel said.

“Maybe later. I have a little headache. It’s nothing—maybe later.”

“I thought so,” Thea said, reaching over to touch her arm. “Thought you weren’t quite yourself tonight.”

“Sure?” Magill said. Caddie said she was sure, and he took another toke.

“Okay.” Thea straightened her skirt over her legs and draped her hands over her knees, yogi style. She stared ahead, alert-faced. “I don’t feel anything. Shouldn’t I be getting paranoid?”

“Not quite yet,” Magill said consolingly.

“I’ve been wanting to try this for years.”

“Why?” Cornel demanded.

“Because.” She looked at him in perplexity. “It’s a new experience.”

“Hmph.”

“I like the way it looks, too. I like the way you hold the cigarette and the way you hiss the smoke in through your teeth.” She stroked her hands over her knees. “Mmm,” she said on a drowsy but intense sigh, “I think it’s hitting me.” She leaned back against the sofa and stretched her legs out. “I love this music. Who is this, Caddie?”

“Hoagy Carmichael.”

“What’s it feel like?” Cornel wanted to know.

“A little strange. But dreamy. Disconnected. Time, something about time…”

“It becomes groovy,” Magill said, and he and Thea started to giggle.

Caddie and Cornel smirked at each other.

Magill lay down on his back. He tried to haul the dog up on his chest, but Finney was more interested in the cheese and crackers on the coffee table. “Now what are
we
supposed to do,” Cornel groused to Caddie, “just sit here and watch?”

That set Magill and Thea off again. Caddie was enjoying the way Cornel’s craggy face softened when he looked at Thea. The conversation
meandered in a familiar, stoned way. Caddie thought of a boy she used to go out with in college, Michael Dershowicz, whose idea of a good time was getting high and listening to heavy metal music. They’d lie on top of his dorm room bed and listen to Megadeth and Annihilator while he described to her the
geography
of the music, explaining it like architecture, like a painting. He could
see
it, he’d say, and they would have long, abstract, artificially intense debates—he stoned, she straight—over what color the notes were right here, this section, or what shape, what personality. She’d enjoyed those conversations, but she hadn’t been tempted to try pot herself. If she was ever going to, she couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather do it with than the three people in her living room tonight.

“Oh, I’m having a good trip.” Thea scooted over and lay down beside Magill. Immediately Finney ran over and licked her in the face. “Oh, bluh.” Her stomach bumped up and down with laughter.