Summer in the City Read online

  Summer in the City

  Elizabeth Chandler

  To Carla,

  who graciously allowed me

  to “redecorate” her home,

  and Monalisa,

  who lent her name and open spirit.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  “They’re dancing really close, Jamie.”

  Chapter 2

  On the second Friday in June, I rolled down the…

  Chapter 3

  “WE WANT TURTLE SOUP,” I read from a sign that…

  Chapter 4

  During dinner that night at Holy Frijoles on The Avenue,…

  Chapter 5

  By the next morning, the score had tipped the other…

  Chapter 6

  “Monalisa Devine,” my mother repeated. “What a wonderful name for…

  Chapter 7

  “Ladies, I expect you to be on time,” Josh lectured…

  Chapter 8

  “Do you have time for lunch?” Mona asked me.

  Chapter 9

  Wednesday morning, as I walked across the grass to Stonegate’s…

  Chapter 10

  “You sure know how to create some excitement,” Mona observed…

  Chapter 11

  Of course, the bristly pigs didn’t speak French. It was…

  Chapter 12

  Thursday morning I arrived at camp three minutes late.

  Chapter 13

  Maybe it was out of respect for Josh, or maybe…

  Chapter 14

  Saturday morning I woke up at seven. I was tired,…

  Chapter 15

  When we arrived home that night, there was a message…

  Chapter 16

  “So you’re Jamie’s teammate,” Ted said.

  Chapter 17

  Mona called that night.

  Chapter 18

  “Andrew!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 19

  Mona and I met early on Tuesday to transfer her…

  Chapter 20

  At six P.M., Mona and I were sniffing every bottle…

  Chapter 21

  Some mornings, usually at the beginning of basketball season, when…

  Chapter 22

  I told myself that it was NCAA Finals, University of…

  Chapter 23

  Wednesday night, I wished for the deep and dreamless sleep…

  Chapter 24

  Thursday night, after a quiet dinner and an even quieter…

  Chapter 25

  When I arrived home that afternoon, I found my mother…

  Chapter 26

  “Baby, are you awake?” my mother asked from the other…

  Chapter 27

  Saturday evening, right after dinner, Mom started writing, and I…

  Chapter 28

  “Comfy?” I asked, lying on a blanket with Josh, on…

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  “They’re dancing really close, Jamie.”

  I nodded, unable to tear my eyes from the couple spinning slowly beneath the ballroom chandelier.

  “I think his arms are Krazy Glued to her back,” Mike added.

  “Looks like it,” I muttered, wondering how I could be the last to know about this.

  “They’re dancing really, really slow,” said Ron, who was standing on the other side of me.

  “Well, the music is slow,” I pointed out.

  “Dance any slower, and they’re going to stop and make out.”

  “Ron, please!” I hissed.

  But it didn’t matter if anyone else overheard my two escorts and me talking. Everyone at the senior prom had already noticed. The lineup of faculty and chaperoning parents had their eyes fixed on the couple.

  “Do you think old Rupert’s going to break it up?” Mike asked.

  Ron snorted, and I imagined our vice principal hauling the couple off the dance floor, lecturing them in the coat-check room. But the truth was, they weren’t doing anything off-limits. Maybe that was what fascinated me. They gave a whole new meaning to the word romantic, showing the rest of us, who went from a clumsy version of slow dancing to a clumsy version of stuff that was off-limits—in about fifteen seconds—to be total amateurs.

  I watched the guy who, earlier in the evening, had gazed at me in my green, strapless gown, and said, “My God, who is this beautiful woman?”

  I watched the one guy who’d always made me feel good about myself, the one guy I could count on whenever I had a problem, looking at someone else as if she were his whole world, as if he wanted to ride off into the sunset with her. Well, after this prom was over, he and I were going to have a talk, a good, long talk.

  I just hoped he made it home before I did. It’s embarrassing when your dad has a better time at your prom than you.

  At six A.M., with Mike curled up and sleeping like a six-foot-five baby in the back seat of the car, Ron walked me to the front door. “You’re the best, Jamie,” Ron said.

  “Yeah, thanks, it was fun,” I told him. “Good night—good morning—whatever.”

  And good-bye to the most disappointing high school dating career in Michigan, I thought. Well, that was an exaggeration—it’s not like I had distinguished myself in that category. No, I had simply joined the very large club of high school girls who hoped things would be better in college. Some of those girls didn’t go to our prom at all; some went with girlfriends; some went with guys they had dated forever and wondered why they had even bothered; and some, like me, got together with guys who were “just friends.” I happened to have two “just friends” who couldn’t face asking a real date to the prom, but being jocks, were too embarrassed to go with each other.

  Walking to the front door, I noticed that Dad’s car was missing from the driveway. I let myself into the silent house. Our rancher, one of the newer houses at the edge of our small Michigan town, was a place guys loved to hang out, with chip bowls instead of vases decorating the living room, sports trophies lining the fireplace mantel, and a big-screen TV facing a black leather sectional. There were smaller TVs on either side of the big screen, because sometimes great games are scheduled for the same time slot, and watching a game on tape just isn’t the same. I have trouble remembering the way the place looked eight years ago, when my parents filed for divorce.

  My mother loved me, and I loved her, but from the moment I was born, I was Dad’s kid. I played every version of little league sports available to girls and tagged along with him to practices and games when he was a young coach teaching at the only high school in town, the one from which I was now graduating. It was natural that the guys who hung around Coach Carvelli’s house, even as they gradually became my age, were great buddies with “Coach’s kid.” The fact that I could even off a pickup game—and was better than some of the guys my dad coached—was a big plus. For them.

  Something had happened to me in the last two years. No, not hormones—those kicked in at the beginning of middle school when I first started noticing more about Dad’s players than their game stats. In some ways it would have been a lot easier if I could have said to my girlfriends, who think that I am lucky to hang around a lot of guy jocks, “I am so freakin’ frustrated by all these turkeys who want to be just friends. I want sex.” I mean, everybody is supposed to want that, right? But what I wanted was a whole lot more and a whole lot harder to come by: romance. Judging from the way the other girls at the prom were watching Dad and Miss Matlock, wrapped in each other’s arms, off in a world of their own, maybe romance wasn’t an easy thing for any of us to come by—even those who didn’t stand six feet tall in their glittery stocking fee
t.

  I looked down, then peeled off my sparkling panty hose and draped them on this year’s trophy for All-Regional Girls Athlete, front and center over the fireplace. Outside, a car door closed quietly. I had left the front door open, so Dad knew I was home and awake. It seemed to me he took an unusually long time to walk from our driveway to the house.

  “Oh, hello,” he said, trying to look surprised to see me. I saw myself in the reflection of our big-screen TV, standing stiffly with my arms folded, my blonde hair a tangled mess, looking like a parent who had been kept up way too long.

  “Have a good time?” I asked.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “And you?”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “Join me for an orange juice?” he asked, and I followed him into the kitchen.

  We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, as we had a million times before. Even in the morning light, the rental tux worked its magic, making him look at least ten years younger than fifty-one, which was still a good ten years older than Miss Matlock, I figured.

  “So you and Miss Matlock have been seeing each other,” I said.

  “Well, we see each other at school every day, of course,” he weaseled.

  “You know what I mean, Dad.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. I’d wondered if you’d noticed that I wasn’t always at home or practice.”

  I had, and I had even noticed him standing in the school halls talking to Miss Matlock, seeming very interested in what she said. But since she was our junior–senior guidance counselor, and Dad was always working to get his athletes well placed in colleges, I had chalked up their conversations to that. Or to me—we had started scouting out women’s athletic scholarships the end of my sophomore year. Naturally he’d talk to my guidance counselor. It had never occurred to me that he might be planning for the future of someone other than his athletes or me.

  As for him being out a lot more than usual, I had been so grateful for the privacy, so glad for the opportunity to turn off ESPN and click on a romantic DVD, I hadn’t given much thought to what he was up to. Besides, if I’d asked Dad where he was those evenings, he might have asked me what game I’d been watching, which was the last thing I wanted. Dad and I didn’t talk about feelings—except those connected to the thrill of winning and the agony of defeat. I could never have admitted to him that I had started reading the kinds of books Mom liked—the kinds of books Mom wrote.

  As if Dad had just read my mind, he said, “You’re almost eighteen, Jamie, ready to go off to college. I guess it stands to reason that we both have secrets.”

  But your secret is a woman, I wanted to argue, and mine is a novel by Nora Roberts hidden beneath the cover of Competing in a Triathlon.

  The mature part of me triumphed. “I’m glad you found someone, Dad. You deserve some good things coming your way, besides championship titles.”

  I meant it. He could hear it in my voice and took from that some encouragement. “I’ve asked Christine to join us at the cabin this summer.”

  “You’ve—what?!”

  “I’m sure you can understand, Jamie,” he rushed on. “With her schedule and mine, practice every afternoon, games on nights and weekends, and so many eyes watching us, it’s hard. We want to see…to see if it will work.”

  By it he meant a permanent pairing of them, I supposed.

  “What better place than our cabin?”

  I could think of a lot of better places. This house, for instance, next September, when I was gone. Couldn’t he wait three more months? Yes, I was being selfish. “And where am I supposed to go?” I asked.

  “To the cabin,” he replied with surprise, sounding a little hurt to think I’d do otherwise. “Jamie, it wouldn’t be the same without you. You know I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  “And does Miss Matlock know that?”

  “I explained it all to her.”

  “Did you explain what we do up there?” Basically, we fished, we hiked, and we watched sports TV; then we fished, we hiked, and we watched sports TV. Actually, last year, for the first time in my life, I had started to think it was pretty boring.

  “Oh, yes. She sees it as an adventure.”

  I didn’t know Miss Matlock well, but I had always assumed her adventures took place in shoe stores. “Does she know that there isn’t a mall within a hundred miles of the cabin?”

  “Well, I don’t think I went into that kind of detail.”

  You should have, I thought, but that was his problem. Mine was to get over the fact that this summer, which I was suddenly getting very sentimental about, was going to be radically different.

  “It will be terrific, Jamie. I’m sure of it. The three of us will—”

  I held up my hand, recognizing from his tone of voice the beginning of one of Coach Carvelli’s teamwork talks. “Dad, I’m really tired. And nothing seems terrific when you’re tired, except sleeping.”

  He nodded sympathetically, although he was wide awake, his eyes bright and skin pinkish. He was feeling like a kitten in May. “We can talk later,” he said.

  For the next two hours I tossed and turned in bed. Did Mom know about Miss Matlock? Months of conference calls had preceded the joint decision for me to attend the University of Maryland. I had always assumed that my parents had private discussions about finances; did they talk about more personal things—like who they were dating? Was that why Mom told me I was welcome to spend the summer with her and get to know Maryland a little better? No, she said something like that every year.

  I dozed off and dreamed of “Chrissy,” as the kids at school sarcastically referred to Miss Matlock, fishing at the end of our dock, swinging her happy feet in a pair of high-heeled flip-flops. She was so touchy-feely and enthusiastic about everything. Why did Dad have to pick her? I woke up even grumpier than before.

  Finally, at two in the afternoon, with sun streaming into my room, but my head lost in that weird twilight that hovers around you when you’ve been awake virtually twenty-four hours, I picked up the phone and punched in a long-distance number.

  “Hello, Mom?”

  Chapter 2

  On the second Friday in June, I rolled down the windows of my old Camry, pumped up my CD player, and headed for the interstate. For the last several days, Miss Matlock had been bustling around our house, chirping like a sparrow, helping Dad pack for summer at the cabin. I couldn’t drive away fast enough.

  I sang at the top of my lungs my first hour on the highway. During the second hour, I hummed. By the third hour, I had the car’s AC blowing and I was sipping rest-stop cappuccino, quietly listening to my music. Slipping in with my favorite songs were a million high school memories. Thoughts of friends and teammates, coaches and teachers, began to take over. Every time I thought of Dad, I got a large lump in my throat. For thirty awful minutes I drove gripping the steering wheel, slowing down and looking at exit ramps where I might get off and turn around. But I kept going.

  When I got to the small motel where my parents had insisted that I stop for the night, I discovered that each of them had called the desk four times to find out if I had arrived. The lump in my throat disappeared. So much for being on my own!

  The next morning I started out singing again, then got sentimental again, then got something else—nervous. I knew no one in Baltimore. I had never spent summer in a city. Until her move in January, my mother hadn’t lived in Baltimore since she was a kid.

  After my parents split in Michigan, Mom taught middle school in a rural town in Maryland that was similar to ours in Michigan, so I had always felt comfortable visiting her, as comfortable as I could be in rooms where everything was edged in ruffles or lace. Now that I was about to turn eighteen and start a whole new life in college—one that I secretly hoped would include romance—I wanted my parents to act the way they had always acted. I wanted them to be old and stable, boring if necessary. Instead, Dad was behaving like a sixteen-year-old in love and Mom was hurling herself headlong into her se
cond career—as a writer of romance novels.

  I arrived in Baltimore, turning into an old neighborhood called Hampden, around one o’clock Saturday. Apparently, everyone else had arrived at twelve thirty, for cars were jammed nose to tail along street after street of skinny townhouses—“row houses,” Mom called them. She had sent me a map with a note saying that something called HonFest was going on. After grabbing a space three blocks from her house, I decided to leave my boxes of stuff in the car and followed her map to Chestnut Avenue.

  A note was taped to her front door:

  Jamie,

  I’m signing books. Look for the pink

  flamingo on The Avenue. My table

  is in front of Hometown Girl.

  Love,

  Mom

  She had attached a festival map and circled her location. Before dealing with the fuss my mother always made when she first saw me, I decided to explore the place where she had chosen to live out her dream.

  The houses—most of them made of brick or covered with some weird brown-and-gray stone that was obviously fake—were narrow and long, stretching way back to the yards and alleys behind them. Hanging flower baskets, sculptures made from hubcaps and bike parts, statues of St. Francis and the Blessed Mother, and pink flamingos decorated the tiny lawns and porches. I wandered down 36th Street, a street of storefronts and houses turned into stores, also called “The Avenue,” pausing to look in a shop called Fat Elvis. Tackiness seemed to be an art form here.

  Some of the crowd that swarmed the closed-off blocks of Hampden’s main street were dressed for heat and humidity. But there was a guy in a red, rhinestone-decorated Elvis outfit, and women of all ages with huge, teased-out hair—beehives. The beehive ladies wore cat’s-eye glasses, red lipstick, and stretchy print pants. Scarves and feathery boas floated around bare shoulders as they strutted on their spiky heels. Big ball earrings swung from their ears. Nearly all of the women and girls carried fantastic purses. They were “Baltimore Hons”—I realized, after reading a festival poster with photos from last year’s Best Hon contest. My mother had said the festival celebrated working-class women and life in the 50s, a period which, apparently, had lasted a very long time in Hampden.