That Summer

It had been a long time since I’d seen Ashley drunk. In her wilder years, back in high school, she was always getting busted coming in past curfew with a mouthful of Certs and her speech slurred. My mother was never taken in. The next morning Ashley would be grounded with a hangover, and my mother would vacuum outside the bedroom door bright and early, making a point of banging the vacuum against the wall in an effort to get those hard-to-reach spots. I’d woken up more than once to the sound of Ashley getting sick in the bathroom at two A.M., which she thought she was so cleverly hiding by running the shower and the exhaust fan. My parents were never fooled, not even for a minute. They locked their liquor cabinet and did a sniff test every night and eventually Ashley grew out of it, just like she did football players and short shorts and Sumner, not necessarily in that order. Lewis wasn’t a drinker, or a druggie, or even bad tempered. Lewis was viceless, and Ashley gave up everything to become bland, just like him. At least, until tonight. Maybe her friends had known that this was her last gasp, her last chance at the wildness she’d once been famous for. Now I looked at my sister, prone at the bottom of the stairs, and thought how I would miss her when she was gone.

“Ashley.” She still had her hand over her face, her eyes shut now. I reached down and shook her shoulder. “Come on, at least get on the couch.” I crouched beside her, my tiny sister, and put an arm around her shoulders, helping her to her feet. We stumbled together into the living room, where I directed her to the couch and covered her with a blanket, taking off her one shoe and removing the swizzle sticks from her hair one by one. I left the underwear, just out of spite for all the times she’d been nasty to me in the last few months. Some things are deserved, between sisters.

I went to the kitchen and got a trash can, which I put by her head in case things got nasty later, and just as I was leaving to go upstairs she mumbled something, then said louder, “Hey.”

“What?” She was just a blob on the couch now, in the dark. On the coffee table, by the swizzle sticks, I could see a pile of my mother’s lists, all on yellow sticky paper, lying in the one slant of light that was coming in through the curtains.

“Come talk to me,” she said, and I heard the couch creak as she slowly rolled over. “Haven.”

I sat down on the chair beside the couch, pulling my legs up to my chest. I could remember when I’d fit in it perfectly, sinking into its deep cushions, when my feet didn’t even touch the ground. Now I contorted myself, linking an elbow around a knee, just to fit in its small space. I didn’t say anything.

“I’m gonna miss you, you know,” she said suddenly, her voice clearer than before. “I know you don’t believe that.”

“I figured you couldn’t wait to leave,” I said.

She laughed, a long, lazy laugh. “Oh, yeah, I can’t. I mean, I love Lewis. I love him, Haven. He’s the only one who ever really cared about me.”

This was old news. I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see me in the dark.

“It’s all gonna be okay, Haven. You know that, right? You know it.” She was rambling now, her voice softer, then louder, falling off into sleep. “Mom and Dad and everything, it’s all gonna be okay. And Lorna. And me and Lewis. We can’t be sad about it forever, you know? We’ve got to think back to the good times, Haven, and just remember them; that’s all we can do. We can’t worry about the past or what happened at the end, anymore. I can’t and you can’t.”

“I don’t,” I said softly, hoping she’d fall asleep.

“You do, though,” she said quietly, her voice muffled by the blanket. “I can see it in your face, in your eyes. You gotta grow up, you know? It’s nobody’s fault. We had good times, don’t you understand? Some people don’t even have that.”

I saw a shadow passing on the street outside, suddenly, and thought of Gwendolyn. Of going wild. I said, “Go to sleep, Ashley. It’s late.”

“We had good times,” she murmured, more to herself now than to me, if she’d ever been talking to me, really. “Like that summer, at the beach. It was perfect.”

“What summer?” I sat up now, listening closely. “Which one?”

“At the beach... you know. With Mom and Daddy, and the hotel, and playing Frisbee every night, all night. Remember, Haven? You have to remember that, and try to forget the rest....” Her voice faded off, muffled.

“Sumner was there,” I said to her, “remember, Ashley? Sumner was there the whole time and you guys were so great together, remember? He was the greatest.”

“The greatest,” she repeated in that same sleepy, soft voice. “It was the greatest.”

“I didn’t think you remembered,” I said to her, leaning closer. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

I waited, listening for her response, but she was out, her breathing steady and soft. “I thought you’d forgotten,” I said again, quietly, before pulling the blanket tighter around her, smoothing my hand across her hair and sitting for a while in the dark, watching my sister dream.

The next morning Ashley spent three hours in the bathroom, moaning and flushing the toilet, while my mother and I stood outside the door wondering if we should intervene. Finally, in early afternoon, she emerged after a shower, looking kind of pasty but alive. Lewis showed up a half hour later, with Pepto-Bismol, ginger ale, and oyster crackers. He was quite a guy, that Lewis.