The Days of Summer

Cale crawled in and lay board-stiff, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Do you want the light on?”

“No,” Cale said disgustedly and jerked the covers up over his head as the light went off. He could see through the white sheet.

His grandfather filled the doorway, backlit from the hall light. “Banning men don’t need anyone, Cale. We stand on our own.” He closed the door and the room went black.

* * *

Jud awoke to a sound like someone beating trash cans with a baseball bat. By the time he reached the window, the neighbor’s dogs were barking. It was after midnight, and misty fog hovered in the air. Cale lay sprawled in front of the wooden garage doors, two metal trash cans lids next to him, one of them spinning like a top, the barrels rolling down the concrete driveway toward the street. His little brother had tried to look in the high glass panes of the garage doors. Jud opened the window and called in a loud whisper, “Are you nuts? Get back inside. Hurry up!”

Cale sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I want to see the red car.”

“Moron! It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but he won’t let me see it. He won’t let me talk to you or sleep with you. Besides, he’s asleep.”

“I was asleep, but someone woke me up making more noise than a train wreck.” Their grandfather stepped out of the shadows and walked toward Cale. There was a threat in the way he moved.

Jud leaned out the window. “Don’t you hurt him!”

His grandfather looked up, frowning. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

“How do we know that?” Jud yelled. “We don’t even know you!” He raced down the stairs. By then the chauffeur was outside his room over the garage, dressed in pajamas and carrying a shotgun, and Cale glared up at Victor with a stubborn look on his face … one that was exactly like their grandfather’s.

“Don’t hit him,” Jud said.

“I’m not going to hit him,” his grandfather said in an exasperated tone. He looked down at Cale. “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”

“I don’t care if you do.”

“This is all your fault,” Jud said. “You should have shown him the car, too.”

The chauffeur came down another step. “Mr. Banning?”

“I’ve got it, Harlan.” His grandfather sounded tired. “Go back to bed.”

The chauffeur turned back up the stairs.

“Harlan, wait! You—” Victor pointed a finger in Cale’s belligerent face. “Apologize for waking him up.”

For a moment Jud thought Cale was going to say no. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, then Cale faced the chauffeur and didn’t look the least bit apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s all right, son.” Harlan went back upstairs, leaving the three of them standing silently.

“So, Jud. You think I should show Cale the car?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Victor took a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door, and held it open. “Go inside, both of you, and look all you want.”

In a flash of brown Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, Cale slipped under Victor’s arm and Jud followed. The MG was low and lean, its chrome sparkling. The tan top was folded down and the glass in the headlamps picked up the reflection of too-bright overhead lights. You didn’t see that kind of car anymore, except in old movies. It was square, with running boards, tan leather seats, and a red paint job that made it look like a miniature fire engine.

“Wow!” Cale walked around the MG, then put his hands on his knees and made a face in the side mirror, then more faces in the polished chrome grille. He was just a little kid with his pajamas buttoned wrong and leaves from the driveway sticking to his back and spiky hair, which looked as if it were angry.

Their grandfather leaned on the fender. “I bought this car for your father.”

Jud didn’t know the MG had been his dad’s. He could only picture his dad behind the wheel of that old two-tone Ford. But something wild had lived inside his father, like the red car.

“Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”

He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”

Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.

CHAPTER 4 (#u72d2fca6-1860-5aae-a9ac-956cb623ea69)

Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.

“You’re late, Kathryn.” Julia stood at the front door dressed in heels and pearls. “I expected you before lunch.”

“The movers took longer than I’d thought.” Kathryn snapped her purse closed, annoyed at herself for automatically making excuses.

“Grandmama! Grandmama!” Laurel jumped up and down. “We’re coming to live with you!”

“Yes, you are. Come give me a hug.” Julia opened her arms and Laurel ran into them.

Kathryn turned to look back down the hill at the tail end of the cab as it disappeared around the iron gates. In the distance, a metallic sheet of water spread out to the cloudless blue horizon, broken only by a green hump of land called Bainbridge Island and the snow-dusted Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound. This is the place whereeagles drift by. A line from one of Jimmy’s songs. Too many lines came to her now, not just as song lyrics—but the words gave a timelessness to his thoughts and proof he had once lived.

With a loud hiss of air brakes, a green-and-yellow Mayflower moving van turned up into the driveway. It was done, she thought.

“Come along now, Kathryn. There’s so much to do.” Julia disappeared inside with Laurel still chattering excitedly.

Unmoving, Kathryn clung to her handbag with both hands and stared up at the imposing house where her husband grew up, and where now her daughter would do the same. In the useless days since Jimmy’s death, nothing had changed the feeling that she was trapped between him and their child. Trapped. She felt it now. She had no home anymore. She had no husband. Laurel was here. Julia was here. Some part of her must still be here? That’s what she told herself.

Kathryn put one foot in front of the other and said, “I can do this.”

Within two weeks, the tension between the women in Jimmy Peyton’s life could be cut with a knife, and Kathryn, who didn’t handle conflict well to begin with, was quickly losing her will to fight Julia.

The first incident happened when Kathryn unpacked Jimmy’s framed records. Just looking at them tore her apart, so she put them in a box and sent them up to the attic, only to come home a day later to find them displayed in the front entry hall, where everyone could see them the moment they stepped through the door. Crying, she hid them under her bed. At dinner that evening—meals that nightly consisted of Jimmy’s favorites—Julia confronted her.

“You took down Jimmy’s records.”

“Yes.”

Her mother-in-law angrily chain-smoked through dinner, until the silence was thick as cigarette smoke and sitting there became unbearable. Kathryn stood. “It’s time for your bath, Laurel.”