That Summer

She smiled. “It’s okay. I think we should all be allowed to yell at each other, at least once, before the wedding. It would probably do us all a lot of good.”

Later, after we’d made small talk so that she could feel we’d ended on a good note, I sat alone at the table and stared out into the mall, putting off going to work. The Lakeview Models would make their first appearance the next weekend, kicking off the official start of mall season, each weekend an event or sales spectacular. It was a whole world, the mall, enclosed and safe, parameters neatly marked. Only Sumner seemed out of bounds, cruising in his golf cart wherever he pleased, keeping the peace and dodging the crowds. As I left I could see him over by the giant gumball machine, uniform on, looking official. He saw me and came over, leaving his cart safely parked by a row of ferns.

“You look upset,” he observed, dropping into step beside me. His uniform cuffs rolled over his feet and hid his shoes.

“Well, it’s been a long day,” I said.

“What happened?” He waved at the owner of Shirts Etc., a round woman with jet black hair that had to be a wig. Her bangs were too neat, clipped straight across her forehead.

“I just had lunch with my mother.”

“And how is she?”

“Fine. She’s going to Europe.” I was walking as slowly as I could, with the Little Feet sign looming up ahead. The words were spelled out in shoes, just like on the boxes and the name tag in my pocket, which I would wait until the last possible second to put on.

“I love Europe,” Sumner said, adjusting his glasses. “I went my sophomore year and had a grand time. Lots of pretty girls, if you don’t mind underarm hair.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Mind underarm hair?”

He thought for a minute. “No. Not especially. But it depended on my mood and the extent of the hair itself. They have great chocolate in Europe, too. You should ask your mom to bring you some.”

“I think we’re going to move,” I said, trying out the words for the first time. It felt strange. Again I saw my house, my room, the flowers. Maybe we’d end up in an apartment like Ashley’s, all white paint and new carpet smell, with a splashing pool within earshot.

“Move where?” Now Sumner was waving at all the merchants. A few days on the job and he already knew everyone, exchanging inside jokes and winks as we passed each store. Again I felt that dizzying rush: of being with him, close to him, being taken along for the ride regardless of where he might be going; that hope that maybe somewhere in all this madness and confusion, he was the one who could understand me.

“My mother doesn’t know,” I said. “She just wants to sell the house.”

“Oh.” He nodded but didn’t say anything right away. “That’s tough.”

“It’s only ’cause of the divorce and Ashley moving out,” I said. “Just the two of us now, and all that. I don’t know. Things have been so nuts lately.”

“Yeah,” he said. “When my parents got divorced it was really ugly. Everyone was fighting and I couldn’t deal with it. I just packed up my car and took off. I didn’t even know where I was going.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know ... eighteen? It was the summer before I went to college. I just traveled around doing my thing, and by the time I got back everything had calmed down a little bit. And then I went off to college.”

“I wish I could go somewhere,” I said.

“I know what you mean. Sometimes, it just gets to be too much.” Then he added, “Did you tell Ashley you saw me?”

“Yeah.” I still had my mother on my mind, the house and the move and Europe all jumbled, and suddenly here Ashley was, the center of attention again. “I told her.”

“What’d she say?”

I looked at him, wondering what was at stake here, then said, “She didn’t say much. She’s got a lot on her mind now.”

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged it off. “Well, sure. I just wondered if she remembered me, you know. If she ran screaming from the room at the mention of my name.”

“Nothing that dramatic,” I said. “She just ... she said to say hello if I saw you again.”

“Really?” He was surprised. “Wow.”

“I mean, it was casual and all,” I said quickly, worried that this little lie might carry more weight than I meant it to. I couldn’t tell him how she’d hardly blinked, hanging over the porch with her hair shielding her face. How it had barely jarred her mind from the wedding and Lewis and even the smallest thought she might have been thinking. No one wants to be inconsequential.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I just wondered if she even remembered me.”

“She does,” I said as we came up on Little Feet, with sneakers bobbing on fishing line in the window and paper fish I’d made myself stuck to the wall behind them. “You’re not so forgettable.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t know about that.” He stopped at the door to the store, sweeping his arm. “And here we are.”

“Yeah.” I looked in to see my manager folding socks. When he saw me he took a not so subtle look at the clock, craning his long, rubbery neck. I hated my job. “You know you could always drop in at Dillard’s and see her. She works at the Vive cosmetics counter.”