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“What’s going on with Tim?” I ask, flipping over his wrist to trace the faint blue lines of his veins with my index finger.
“Dad made ninety meetings in ninety days a condition of employment,” Jase says. “That’s what he says people need to not drink. I kinda knew he’d do that.” His mouth brushes gently against my collarbone.
“Ninety meetings with him?”
“Ninety AA meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous. Tim Mason isn’t the only one who ever screwed up. My dad was a major partier, a very heavy drinker, in his teens. I’ve never seen him have a drink, but I know the stories he tells. I had a hunch he’d figure Tim out.”
I raise my hand, touch Jase’s lips, tracing the full curve of the lower one. “So what if Tim can’t handle it? What if he just messes up?”
“We all deserve a chance not to, right?” Jase says, and then he slips his hands up under the back of my T-shirt, closing his eyes.
“Jase…” I say. Or sigh.
“Get a room, you two,” suggests a voice. We look up to see Alice striding toward us, Brad trailing after her.
Jase takes a step back from me, ru
Alice shakes her head and walks past us.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Our house is buzzing with this strange energy on the Fourth of July.
The Fourth, you must understand, is the town holiday for Stony Bay. Early in the Revolutionary War, the British burned some ships in our harbor as a quick gesture on their way somewhere more significant, so Stony Bay has always felt personally invested in Independence Day. The parade starts at the cemetery behind town hall, goes up the hill to the Olde Baptist Church, where the veterans lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown soldier, then wends down the hill, ru
This year, that student is Nan.
“I can’t believe it,” she says over and over again. “Can you? Last year it was Daniel and now me. I didn’t even think this Four Freedoms one was my best paper! I thought the one for English on Huckleberry Fi
“But not exactly apt for the Fourth of July,” I point out. To be honest, I’m surprised too. Nan hates creative writing. She’s always been happier with memorizing than theorizing. And that’s not the only weird thing today.
Mom, Clay, Nan, and I are in the living room. Mom’s been listening to Nan practice her speech while Clay goes over the usual Fourth of July proceedings, trying to figure out how Mom, in his words, “can put some extra zing in this year.”
He’s lying on his stomach in front of the fireplace, press clippings and pieces of yellow-lined paper spread out in front of him, a highlighter in one hand. “Seems as though you’ve got your standard stump speech goin’ on here, Gracie. The curse of the ‘common weal.’” He looks up and winks at her, then at Nan and me. “This year we’re going to need fireworks.”
“We have them,” Mom says. “Every year Donati’s Dry Goods donates some—we get the permit lined up months in advance.”
Clay ducks his head. “Grace. Sugar. I mean figurative fireworks.” He slaps the press clippings with the back of his knuckles. “This is fine for the expected line from the local pol. But you can do better. And darlin’, if you’re going to win this year, you’ll have to.”
Pink washes across Mom’s cheekbones, the unmistakable flag of blond chagrin. She comes over next to him, rests a hand on his shoulder, bending to see what he’s highlighting. “Tell me how,” she says then, clicking her pen open and flipping to an empty page on her pad, Nan and me forgotten.
“Wow,” Nan says as we get on our bikes to ride to her house. “That was freaky. That Clay’s really pulling the strings with your mom, huh?”
“I guess,” I say. “It’s like that all the time lately. I can’t figure out…I mean…she’s obviously really into him, but…”
“Do you think it’s”—Nan lowers her voice—“the sex?”
“Yuck, Nan. I have no idea. I don’t want to think about either of them in that context.”
“Well, it’s either that or she’s had a frontal lobotomy,” Nan murmurs. “So what do you think I should wear? Do you think it has to be red, white, and blue?” She slips off the sidewalk onto the road so she can ride parallel with me. “Please say no. Maybe just blue. Or white? Is that too virginal?” She rolls her eyes. “Not that that’s not appropriate. Should I have Daniel film me reading the essay and sub that with my college application? Or would that be dorky?”
She keeps asking questions I don’t have answers to because I’m completely distracted. What’s happening to my mother? When did Mom ever listen to anybody but Mom?
Tracy comes home for the Fourth of July command performance. She’s okay with that because, she tells me, “The Vineyard is jammed with tourists over this weekend.” There’s no point in asking her how a month or so of waiting tables at a Vineyard restaurant has separated her from the tourists. Tracy is Tracy.
Flip’s home too. He’s given Trace a te
To me it sounds like one of the T-shirts Nan would sell at the B&T, but my sister’s eyes are shining.
“What happened to the long-distance love thing and how that wasn’t going to work?” I ask. Call me Killjoy.
“That’s September!” Tracy laughs. “Jeez, Samantha. Months away.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You’d understand if you’d ever been in love.”
Part of me so much wants to say, “Well, Trace, actually…”
But I’m so used to saying nothing now, so used to being the audience while Mom and Tracy are the ones with the stories. I just listen as she tells me about the Vineyard and the Harbor Fest and the Summer Solstice Celebration. What Flip Did and What Flip Said and what Tracy did then.
By the time the school bands assemble at eight in the morning on the Fourth, it’s already eighty-five degrees, and the sky is that searing summer slate-blue-gray that tells you it’s only going to get steamier. Despite this, Mom looks cool and poised in her white linen suit topped by a big blue straw hat with a red ribbon. Tracy, under protest, is wearing a navy sundress adorned with a white sash. I’m in a smocked white silk dress Mom loves, in which I feel about ten, tops.
Standing with Mom and Tracy as the parade marchers assemble, I can see Duff balancing his tuba, red in the face before the marching even begins, and Andy, squinting her eyes shut, tightening one of the strings on her violin. She looks up as she perches it on her shoulder, spots me, and gives me a broad grin, braces twinkling.
Garrett’s Hardware isn’t open today, but Jase and Mr. Garrett are selling little flags and bunting and streamers for bike wheels outside the store, with Harry next to them hawking lemonade in an aggressive fashion: “Hey you! Mister! You look thirsty. Twenty-five cents! Hey you! Lady!” Mrs. Garrett is somewhere lost in the throng with George and Patsy. I don’t think I ever realized before how everyone in town really does come to this parade.
The first song the band plays is “America the Beautiful.” At least I think that’s what it is. The band’s pretty bad. Then Mr. McAuliffe, who leads the Stony Bay Middle School band, is off and marching, the parade dragging behind him.