Summertime Read online

  I still don’t ask any questions. I like not knowing.

  ‘You want to sit down?’

  ‘No. I want to get back to the meeting.’

  ‘Lucy, it’s your father. He’s dead.’

  I am silent. I wait for some rush of pain or emotion but none comes. I feel nothing.

  I say: ‘But he can’t be. Jane saw him on the weekend…’

  ‘He’s dead, Lucy.’

  Stevie’s small body, lifeless in his blue crib. The five of us standing around him, gaping in disbelief. Daddy, me, Scott, Larry and Jane. I am the first to reach for Stevie. I lift him from the crib and he feels heavier than usual, a dead weight. His face, apart from the tiny line of blood, is white and perfect. His eyes are closed. One hand has been raised a little, as if to ward off death, but as I lift him it rolls lifelessly downwards. Jane said: ‘He’s dead, Lucy.’

  ‘The details…’ says Jim. ‘I don’t know the details. But it’s not straightforward. Your sister wants you on a plane as soon as possible. Lucy… as I understand it… it appears your father may have drowned. In the ocean.’

  I look at Jim and I am brisk. I say: ‘Are you sure about this?’

  Jim says: ‘The police need to interview you. You want to call your sister so she can explain?’

  ‘No, Jim, not right now.’

  ‘Fatima’s already booked you on to a flight west. Seven p.m. You should get home and pack. You can’t go alone –’

  I hear a voice in the distance. Some woman dressed as me. She says: ‘You’re sure he’s dead? Daddy’s not just hurt, he’s really dead?’

  Jim’s head seems to tumble downwards on to his chest like a ball that’s been dropped. ‘Aw Lucy. Lucy, he’s dead. I’m real sorry.’

  ‘I don’t understand the hurry, Jim. If Daddy’s dead then there’s no point rushing.’

  Jim moans a little. His face creases up until it’s an unmade bed. ‘It hasn’t hit you yet. When it hits, it’s going to hurt.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll fly tonight,’ says the woman, ‘but book me a much later flight. Or early in the morning. I want to see this deal through before I go.’

  She starts to leave the office. She knows every face is turned in her direction. Each one of them is distorted. A lengthening or a deepening. Back in the elevator she is surprised by the ghost of a man, a big man but a man who is growing old, who is so shocked by the elevator’s velocity that he staggers back against the walls.

  ‘Daddy’s dead,’ the woman says as she walks down the hallway but the words don’t mean anything and she doesn’t break her stride.

  The boardroom feels warm. Most people are standing. There’s a residue of some desultory chatter. Our analyst is over by the window holding a boardroom coffee cup in one hand and the saucer in the other. The light out there is pale now and beyond him, floating eerily in the late afternoon sky, are the lights of other offices.

  Silence when they realize the woman’s back. People are quick to return to their seats. They stare at her and it’s obvious they’ve all read the note.

  ‘Is everything all right, Lucy?’ asks Gregory. Kent is frozen to his chair.

  ‘Well…’ For the first time, she hesitates, this woman. Then she says: ‘My father just died in unusual circumstances. I’ll be flying out to California tonight, so I’d appreciate the concentration and cooperation of everyone in this meeting right now.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what you agreed,’ says Jim when we’re out on the night street looking for a cab to take us to my apartment. ‘I don’t want to know. You should not repeat not have been in there, you should have been talking to your sister on the telephone. She’s distraught. She called three times and she would have called more if she hadn’t just been leaving to break the news to your mother.’

  ‘My sister’s a doctor, she’s never distraught.’

  ‘Well, she’s very worried about you. And your brother-in-law, Lennie, he phoned too.’

  ‘Larry.’

  ‘Larry. Larry phoned and he’s distraught too.’

  ‘He’s a shrink, he’s never distraught. Did Scott call too? I’ll bet all three of them called, right?’

  ‘Yes, Scott called and he sounds like a real nice sort of husband. Very concerned about you. Lucy, stop denying it. You want to know what happened out there on the ocean to your daddy, you really do.’

  In the street lights I see a few flakes of snow are falling.

  ‘I’ll soon know. And once I know I can’t unknow it.’

  Jim is impatient. He waves his short arms at cabs which already have passengers. He stamps his feet when there is a pause in the traffic. Then the lights change and a line of cars bounds up like a fierce, too-big dog. A tow truck passes so close that it seems to breathe on me.

  ‘Hey,’ says Jim, taking my arm protectively. He gazes into my face. ‘You scared of those big fellas?’

  I nod. I’m scared of them but I say: ‘You don’t have to take me home, Jim.’ Daddy’s death still doesn’t feel real. Right now it feels like a ploy to get me back to California, back to my past.

  ‘I do too. You’re flying from Newark and I can drive you over there.’

  He’s never been to my apartment before. When I unlock the door he lingers by it, blinking.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re really this tidy,’ he says. ‘No one is. You must have been expecting company tonight, possibly Jay Kent.’

  ‘Oh Jim, I never expect company and Kent’s never been here.’

  ‘Will you please call Jane with your flight details so she can meet you?’

  ‘I don’t want her to meet me.’

  ‘Call Scott, then.’

  ‘I’ll be fine alone.’

  ‘I’m not letting you get on a plane unless someone’s meeting you off it. And don’t try to argue, I’m your boss.’

  I sigh.

  ‘Who’s it going to be?’ he asks, handing me the phone. ‘Jane or Scott?’

  ‘I don’t want to stay with either of them.’

  ‘Just let them take care of you. Jane wants to do that, I can tell.’ Jane has always taken care of me. She was my doctor long before she was anyone else’s. When I was a kid I had the kind of ill-health which needed managing and it was my big sister who managed it. Less exercise. More exercise. Less excitement. More food. Less food. It’s three years since anyone’s cared about me as much as Jane and my throat tightens when I think about the way her long, swift fingers folded me a sling, examined my cuts, bathed my wounds. But I don’t say that to Jim. I say: ‘I’ve escaped from all that now, Jim.’

  He looks upset. Jim loves his family. He only escapes from them during office hours.

  ‘When did you last speak to your sister?’ he asks.

  ‘This morning and before that on her birthday. No, more recently. Maybe a few weeks ago. We call each other sometimes and it’s very civilized but she just can’t forgive me for going away and neither can Larry and neither can Scott.’

  Jim swallows. ‘They’ll forgive you when you tell them you’re coming home.’

  I say: ‘I’m calling Sasha.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘He. Alexander.’

  I search for Sasha’s office number. Probably it’s changed since I last spoke with him but I start dialling anyway. Jim takes the receiver from me.

  ‘Hold it. Who is this guy?’

  ‘My mother has four sisters and the nicest is Aunt Zina and Sasha’s her son. He’s almost exactly the same age as me. There are lots of cousins but he’s my favourite. They live their Russian lives in the Russian quarter of town and it’s just like Moscow only warmer.’

  ‘What does he do, this Sasha?’

  ‘Works for some big aid organization. I think it promotes indigenous culture. He more or less oversees the whole of Eastern Europe, right across eleven time zones.’

  ‘You mean, like Stalin?’

  ‘You’d get along with Sasha. He’s a cinnamon bun kind of a guy.’

  Jim looks at me suspiciously. ‘
Could he eat five?’

  ‘I’ll bet he could.’

  ‘Disgusting. Sounds like a greedy pig.’

  This time he lets me dial. Almost immediately, a thick Russian accent answers, without enthusiasm.

  ‘Is Alexander there?’

  ‘No,’ says the woman. Her tone reveals that she is already bored with our conversation.

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is he in the office today?’

  ‘He was here before.’

  ‘Is he coming back?’

  ‘Probably.’

  The voice is young and I know its rudeness and indifference can be licensed only by its owner’s beauty.

  I ask: ‘Are you Sasha’s secretary?’

  ‘I am Alexander Pavlevitch’s personal assistant.’

  I think of my mother, young, beautiful, Russian, working as personal assistant, no, secretary, to my father at the university. Did she answer Daddy’s phone this way, hostile with indifference, her tone implying some intimacy of her own with the man to whom she obstructed access?

  ‘Maybe,’ I suggest, ‘if I call in ten minutes?’

  ‘If you want,’ she says, hanging up.

  Jim is ambling around looking at the pictures and the rugs.

  ‘What are all these rocks, for God’s sake?’

  ‘They’re Daddy’s. He’s a geologist and he’s always giving people rocks.’

  ‘I thought he was a professor or something.’

  ‘A professor of geology.’

  Jim strokes the rocks. ‘They’re sort of beautiful. If you like rocks.’

  ‘I collected those stripy ones myself. I used to go with him on field trips.’

  ‘Where did you get them?’ Jim cups his palm around one of the striped rocks and rolls another in his fingers. The feel of the rocks, smooth but unyielding, pleases him. He passes one to me and it is warm and hard. I run the pads of my fingers over its stripes.

  ‘Arizona.’

  ‘So, how come they have this pattern all over? Did your dad ever explain that?’

  Daddy explained everything, using his hands to illustrate whole geological eras, raising his eyebrows until they met his shock of black hair, humanizing the rocks he held up to us. I was so enraptured by his performances that I didn’t listen to a word he said. Even in repose he had the kind of face you wanted to see in motion. Sharp-boned, his chin forceful, his nose large, he looked like a guy who had something to tell you. I slip the stone into my pocket.

  ‘If he did, I’ve forgotten. I don’t think those rocks impressed him too much.’

  ‘Why don’t you put the phone down, Lucy?’ asks Jim. I’m still cradling it against my shoulder.

  ‘It just told me there are messages.’

  I already knew that. They piled up over the weekend, five of them. I assumed they were from my family, marking Stevie’s anniversary, expressing concern, questioning my whereabouts. I didn’t listen to them. And now, when I realize that one of the messages might be from Daddy I feel my stomach shrink inside itself like a sea anemone.

  Jim’s thinking the same thing. He says softly: ‘You’d better retrieve them, kid.’

  Two from Jane. One from Scott. And two from Daddy. The first, on Saturday morning, just registers his attempt to contact me. The second is different.

  ‘Lucy, I’ve tried calling you already. Now it’s Saturday night and this has been a hard day for you. I know that. If you’re there and you’re sad and you’re just not answering the phone I want you to pick up right now.’ His voice is so powerful, so demanding, that I will myself to pick up. After a moment’s silence, Daddy is insistent. ‘C’mon, Lucy! For me.’ I think: Lucy, for God’s sake, pick up the phone. As the silence grows longer my heart aches at my own absence, at my silence.

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll just say this.’ He cradles the receiver in his large, veiny hands, holding it close to his face. His voice is big. My big, blustering Daddy. ‘I know how much you’re suffering. I know how much you’ve suffered. But don’t lock up your grief like some scary wild beast. It’s time to open the cage door and let it run right out, why, you might even find it turns into a little dog, a little dog you can pet. It will never go away but it won’t be so fierce again. And now let’s use this anniversary to take stock. You’ve been away almost three years, Lucy. I never argued with you for going. And I’m not arguing if you want to stay. You can even marry some unsuspecting fool in New York but, whether you do or not, just release Scott because he’s a good guy and he’s still waiting for you here. That’s my advice. And, by the way…’ A hesitation. A note, a small one, of vulnerability. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’ His hip. His age. The possibility of failing health, the inevitability of his death. All the things we don’t allow and never talk about, it’s as though he used a moment’s silence to shout about them. I swallow.

  Daddy’s voice drops, or maybe he moves the receiver away from his face. ‘I don’t want you to be sad, Lucy. Please don’t be too sad.’ It seems the call’s over. A long pause. And then his voice again, thick with emotion now: ‘Take care of yourself, my little Lucy. Please take care.’

  I save the message and play it again. It makes my body prickle all over, as though a cloud of small insects just landed on me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asks Jim. He’s watching me. He’s not even pretending to examine rocks or look out of the window. ‘Lucy?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  He states: ‘So, there’s a message from your father.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A nice one?’

  I think for a moment. ‘He intended it to be nice,’ I say at last.

  I save the message and play it once more. It’s true that Daddy didn’t argue with me for leaving. He was the only member of the family who didn’t say he felt angry or hurt or betrayed by my departure for New York. He was the only one who didn’t expect me back next week. And it’s true Scott’s still waiting for me. He still lives in the little beach house where the pine trees stop and the sand starts and when I think of Scott I think of his huge body sprawled across two chairs on the porch, cradling a cup of coffee, his eyes grey blue like troubled sky, scanning the ocean for me as though I’m going to arrive by boat.

  ‘When did he leave it?’ Jim asks sharply.

  ‘Saturday. I didn’t have time to listen to it before.’

  I save the message again and then find a bag and open it on the bed. For a while we say nothing as I pack and Jim sits in the adjacent room. He starts to tell me about his own father’s death. Jim’s dad had the decency to do things the slow way. Weight loss, hand-holding, apologies, farewells. Sometimes Jim’s voice breaks and I know he’s crying.

  While he weeps softly I dial Sasha’s number again. I wait for the voice of the beautiful young woman who sounds the way Mother sounded an impossibly long time ago. A man answers.

  ‘Planning and Development, Eastern European section.’ The voice makes planning, development and the whole of Eastern Europe sound beyond tedium.

  ‘Sashinka, is that you?’

  At once his voice changes.

  ‘Good God, who can be calling me Sashinka and speaking English to me at the same time?’ When I do not immediately supply an answer he starts to guess my identity. ‘Hmmm, let me think. Someone from far back, obviously…’

  Sasha always liked games. He liked to win them. On rare occasions, many years ago, when we got together with large numbers of Mother’s relatives, Daddy would take all the kids aside and attempt to impose American baseball on the Russian mind. The result was always shambolic but Sasha was guaranteed to rise from the mess pointing out that his team had most certainly won.

  I say: ‘Correct. Very far back.’

  ‘But someone with an American accent of absolute purity. Curious. Because Americans have always called me Alex.’

  ‘Not this one, Sashinka.’

  ‘Ooooooooooh. Nu tak…’ Sasha begins to mutter to himself in Russ
ian. Although his English is, of course, perfect, his cadences are not wholly American and when he lapses into Russian he does so with the ease and grace of a seal diving gratefully into the water.

  ‘Aha. Aha. I have the answer. You’re family but you’re American. My American cousins, Jane and Lucy. You’re Jane or Lucy, indeed, you are probably Lucy, no, certainly Lucy. Am I right, Lucia?’

  ‘Yes, Sashinka, you’re right.’

  ‘How delightful. How very delightful to hear from you.’

  ‘But I’m calling you because… I’m calling with bad news, Sasha.’

  I am aware of Jim, motionless on the chair.

  ‘Oh,’ says Sasha. ‘Oh, oh.’ And that oh, oh is thick with the knowledge that our lives are built on the shaky foundation of our own mortality and that of our loved ones. Oh, oh. Sasha is preparing to peer down through the cracks in the rock to that abyss beneath.

  ‘A death,’ he says. ‘A death in the family, I fear.’

  ‘Yes, Sasha, a death. In the family.’

  ‘Oh Lucia, is it your poor mother…?’

  Fleetingly, bitterly, I wish I was calling to announce Mother’s death.

  ‘It’s Daddy. He drowned today. There was some kind of accident in the ocean. I don’t know more than that, don’t ask me more.’

  ‘Oh God. Oh God. I offer you many heartfelt condolences. But where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in New York and flying west tonight. I know this is short notice. I know I haven’t seen you for a few years. I know I’m taking ruthless advantage of my favourite cousin. But would you meet me at the airport?’

  There is a pause for his surprise. I add: ‘Please?’

  ‘Well of course, there’s no question about it. Will I take you to your sister’s? Or Scott’s?’

  My turn to pause. ‘Actually, I can stay at Daddy’s house. Probably it shouldn’t be left empty.’

  But Sasha is quick. ‘No, Lucia, that would be too melancholy and, besides, it would please me very much if you would stay with us. And my mother, of course, would be delighted.’

  ‘Are you living with Aunt Zina again?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Aren’t you still married to Marina?’

  ‘She informs me that I am not. But this is no time to talk of such things. Please stay with us, it would make us very happy.’