The Goodbye Summer (21 page)

An envelope addressed to her mother with an Eastern Shore return address, someplace in Delaware called Clover. An eight-cent stamp. The letter inside, scrawled on a sheet of lined notebook paper, was dated 3-16-72.

She drove to Wake House that afternoon, in the hour-and-a-half interval she had between piano lessons. She found Nana slumped in her wheelchair, staring out the window with a slack, lifeless expression. She didn’t hear Caddie until she shut the door—then her long, pale face lit up, all the features lifting. Caddie felt her own spirits rise, and the hug they gave each other lasted longer than usual.

“
Finally,
” Nana said, with a laugh to lighten the fervor. “Feels like an
age
since I saw you.”

“Sorry, I know, yesterday was just—” She made a face and a flapping motion with her hand. “But here I am, and I brought your dyes. They were in the
basement,
I’d like you to know.”

“My what?”

“Your acid dyes. For your project. Don’t you remember?”

“Course I remember.” She pushed her lips out and blew a puff of air. “Hey, want to go downstairs? It’s Charlie Lorton’s hundred and twenty-fifth birthday, we can get some cake.”

“Ninety-eighth. Sure, but wait, I wanted to ask you—I found something this morning, a letter in Mommy’s old desk.” She pulled the desk chair out and set it across from her grandmother’s wheelchair so that they could be eye to eye. “It’s to her from somebody named Bobby. Do you know who it is?”

“Bobby?” Nana squinted her eyes and wrinkled her nose. “There was a Bobby, but I can’t just call to mind…”

“I was thinking he must be the boy who played in their old band, Red Sky.”

“Red Sky.”

“You said you went one time to hear them, remember?”

“I did?”

Caddie lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “It was a letter about breaking up. She’d broken up with him, and he was sad, and—Nana, according to the date, she’d’ve been pregnant with me. Do you remember him at all? There was a Bobby Haywood in the band, I saw his name with the others on a flyer, one of their ads.” Nana kept shaking her head. “Bobby Haywood. Are you sure? Because I was thinking.” She leaned forward and whispered it. “He could be my father. Did you ever ask my mother—anything?”

“Nope. No, I didn’t.” Nana reared back, arranging the folds of her skirt over her knees just so.

“Why not? Nothing? Why not, Nana?”

“Because. Wouldn’t have done any good. I’m the last person she’d have told that kind of thing to.”

Caddie’s hopes for some startling revelation collapsed, but she told herself she was no worse off than before. “I know you and Mommy used to fight a lot,” she said.

“Oh, Lord. We were like two cats in a bag. Your mother had no use for me whatsoever in those years.”

But she gave me to you,
Caddie thought. Her oldest wound. And it was odd that she’d lived in a state of half-mourning for her mother most of her life, but she’d always taken fatherlessness for granted.

“Course, back then it seemed like the whole world was turning inside out. What year was it? This letter? Nineteen…”

“Seventy-two.”

“But me, I was still back in the fifties, still being Mrs.
Buchanan.
” She shut her eyes. “God oughta try harder to save us from the good deeds we do for each other.”

“You’d tell me if you knew, wouldn’t you?”

“Knew what?”

“Who my father was.”

She opened her eyes. “Oh, honey. That was a door your mama just never was going to open for me. Plus I don’t even know if
she
knew. That sounds bad, and she wasn’t, she just…what was that band that had the girl who turned around in circles? She wore those filmy clothes, and they named it after the one who played the drums. You know that band.”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. She married one of them and the other girl married the other one.”

“Fleetwood Mac.”

“Fleetwood Mac. Well, that’s how it was with Jane and all her bands. They weren’t bad, they just didn’t know how to behave. It was the sexual revelation, free love, all that. Which I was against.
Then.
”

“Revolution.” Caddie had to smile. “But now you’re for it?”

“Oh, I just wish I had the time back. I wouldn’t fuss and carry on, I wouldn’t be so
mean.
”

“You weren’t mean.”

She didn’t hear. “I went around scared all the time, that was my trouble. Scared of getting found out, and now it all seems so ridiculous. What a waste of time. You know what I hate? People who say they have no regrets.”

They watched the windows of the building across the street turn blinding-gold in the late afternoon sun, while Caddie thought,
I go around scared all the time, too.
She didn’t have her grandmother’s excuse, though; she wasn’t trying to protect a reputation or a child. At least Nana had finally gotten free. Boy, had she gotten free.

Which reminded Caddie of the other thing she’d come to tell her.

“Nan?”

“Hmm.”

“I’ve done something wrong. I don’t even know why I did it. Exactly.”

“What did you do?” She was smiling, ready to brush it away.

“I took down the sculptures in the yard.”

The smile faded.

“I’m so sorry. I apologize to you. Are you upset?”

“My sculptures?”

She nodded.

Nana’s face drained white. “What do you mean, ‘took them down’?”

“I don’t know, they…it…I just…I wanted to see how the yard would look without them. They’ve been there so long, and you haven’t made any new ones in quite a while, over a year except for the cowboy boots, and the neighbors—I didn’t do it because of the neighbors,” she raised her voice
to say over Nana’s outraged snort. “I just…I thought…when you come home you can start all over, a clean slate, a—clear field. All new.”

Nana’s hands gripped and released the sides of her chair. “When did you do this?”

“Saturday.”

“Saturday. Before your
friends
came over. Because you didn’t want them to see.”

“No.”

“Because you were ashamed!”

“No, I did it
after.
Saturday night, late. I
wasn’t
ashamed.”

“Then why’d you do it? Were you drunk? How
could
you, Caddie? That was my
work,
you had no
right
!”

They both started to cry.

“I’m so sorry, you’re right, I had no right. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Go away, I don’t want to see you right now.” She jerked the wheel of her chair, trying to turn it toward the window.

“I wish I could undo it. Please don’t be mad.”

“I am mad! You can’t fix anything, so leave me alone. I mean it, go away, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m grieving.”

“Nan—”

“What I should do is sue you. Maybe I will, too. Out of my sight while I think about it. Out!”

Caddie slunk out.

Next, she had a fight with Angie.

“
God,
why don’t you get an air-conditioner in here? It’s the middle of July, for cripe’s sake.” Angie set her violin case on the piano bench with so much force, the instrument vibrated inside it.

“Good afternoon to you, too,” Caddie said.

“I mean,
God.
” She stripped off her filmy, see-through shirt as if it were a fur coat and put her hands on her hips; she looked beautiful and indignant in her cutoffs and a pink tank top. “
Everybody’s
got central air, Caddie, and you’ve got a
fan.
”

“It’s hot, I know.” She aimed the big square fan on the floor directly at Angie. “But my grandmother hates air-conditioning, so what can I do?” She shrugged, smiled.

Angie not only didn’t smile back, she rolled her eyes in disgust. It was the first clue Caddie failed to pick up on that she’d come to start a fight.

“Why don’t you warm up while I go get us some cold drinks?” Caddie retreated to the kitchen.

Teenagers were great fun to teach, but also unpredictable. Flexibility was the key, because you never knew what mood they were going to show up in. Well, one of the keys; the other was,
Don’t take it personally.
Caddie reminded herself of that while she poured soda over ice in glasses and brought them back to the living room.

“You look pretty today.” She set the drinks on coasters on top of the piano. “I like your hair that way.” She could usually jolly Angie out of a bad mood by giving her a compliment. She wasn’t any vainer than a seventeen-year-old girl with shiny brown hair and big dark eyes, perfect roses-and-cream skin, and a great figure ought to be, in Caddie’s opinion. Angie made her wish she’d appreciated her own youth more. Not that she’d ever been that lovely and poised, or ever would be, but she wished she’d relaxed and had a better time. Not been so unhappy with herself.

“My uncle says I sorta look like Natalie Wood, whoever that is, and I should cut my hair to look more like her. But I like it long.”

“Oh, me, too.” How Angie was going to wear her hair in the Miss Michaelstown pageant was a topic of endless discussion and indecision in the Noonenberg family.

“Actually, I was thinking of dying it blonde.”

“
No,
” Caddie said, aghast.

“But then I decided not to. It was Mom’s idea, just for the pageant, but I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Whew.” She patted her heart in a show of relief.

Angie stopped doing her scales. “Actually, I don’t even know if I want to be in the stupid pageant.”

Once that would’ve shocked Caddie—since she’d known her, winning beauty and talent contests had been Angie’s life goal—but lately she’d been saying things like that at almost every lesson, hints of dissatisfaction,
veiled threats of quitting. Caddie made a point of underreacting, since Angie’s moods changed on the hour. “Well,” she said, “why don’t we talk about it after your lesson, so we don’t waste time.”

Angie scowled.

“I thought we’d do something different today, anyway,” Caddie improvised. “Instead of playing your piece, I thought we could listen to the recording we made last week and critique it.”

“We already did that.”

“We listened, but we didn’t study it, which is why we taped it to begin with. I think it would help to listen carefully and pick out the sections that need more work—”

“Oh, yay, pick it apart, in other words. That sounds like fun.” She slumped down on the bench, stretched her long, tanned legs out, and stared stonily at her painted toenails.

Caddie kept quiet and put a tape in the player.

Angie thought
she
was sick of “Meditation.” Caddie had to keep reminding herself why it was still a good piece for the pageant. It was familiar, and therefore a crowd-pleaser, and yes, it was corny, but only because of overuse. If you hadn’t heard it a hundred times, it was lovely, genuinely moving.

They listened to it in silence the first time. It was from an opera about a monk and a prostitute. Lots of angst. “Now, right here,” Caddie said on the second run-through, “right there, hear it? You have to hold that note even longer, because it’s almost like a lullaby, you can’t play it too slowly.”

“Lullaby for a dead person.”

“And that measure—do you hear how you’re almost a quarter note ahead of the harp?” Caddie was simulating the simple harp accompaniment on the piano, not just to fill out the music but to help slow Angie down. “Hey, you know what I should do? Record myself, and you could use that to practice with at home. What do you think?”

“Look, Caddie, I don’t want to do this.”

“Okay, but it’s either that or the metronome, and you know how much you love
that.
”

“No, I mean the whole thing. I don’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t practice all weekend.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, I knew you’d look like that!”

“Like what?”

“That face! I knew you’d do that sad, disappointed look and make me feel all bummed!”

“Well, sorry—”

“Can you turn that off?”

She turned off the tape player.

The deep, nervous breath Angie took revealed her belly button under her top. “Here’s the thing. I don’t think I want to study music anymore. Not even in college.” She looked out the window to finish—Caddie must be making that face again. “Because it’s not fun anymore, it’s just pressure and duty. Music should be for fun, not studying. I really feel that.”

“That’s just shortsighted. You can’t have one without the other. Angie, that’s—shortsighted and immature.”

“I’m
not
mature!
You’ve
got enough maturity for six people! I’ve thought about it—when I graduate, I’m taking a year off and joining a band.”

“You’re what?”

“A bluegrass band.”

Caddie had to sit down.

Angie started walking around the room. “That’s what I want to do most, play fiddle in a band. But a progressive one, not just like all Bill Monroe or whatever. There’s this guy at school—”

“Oh,
ho.
”

“No! There’s this guy, he plays three different instruments and he’s really good, and he thinks
I’m
good—”

“You are good, but—”

“Never mind him, anyway, I can see what you’re thinking and you’re wrong. There are these great girl fiddle players you probably never even heard of, like Deanie Richardson and Martie Maguire, Sara Watkins, not to mention Allison Krause—”

“I’ve heard of her.”

“Caddie, this is what I want to do. I’ve decided, I’ve made up my mind.”