The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

30





“I THINK I NEED TO HEAR THE HAPPILY-EVER-after part,” I said when we reconvened on the sand with tiki torches and Mai Tais.

“Okay,” Lynette said with a wry smile, “happily ever after started with an ugly divorce. No surprise the marriage to the doctor didn’t work out. And obviously I never quite achieved Hollywood stardom.”

“What was so bad about the guy?” Isabel said.

“He was a womanizer. And an a*shole. I thought things would change once he had his own practice. Then I swore I’d leave him once I got famous. But after a time, I was stuck. All those years protesting for women’s rights, and I couldn’t imagine being on my own.” Lynette laughed painfully. “I started begging him for a child, but he insisted we wait. Luckily before I won that argument, I caught him with a woman in our bed, and it gave me the guts to leave him. I went back home to my folks in Virginia. I went to graduate school and worked as a waitress. My plan was to become a drama professor. Then one day I saw Cornell’s name on a flyer at my university. A panel discussion on the legacy of Pan-Africanism.” Lynette put both hands over her heart and smiled. “I couldn’t take my eyes off him the whole time. To hear his voice again—”

“Though I can’t imagine I said anything remotely intelligent. I recognized Lynette the second she walked into the auditorium,” Cornell said with a chuckle.

“Oh hush. He was eloquent and powerful. Poetic. And handsome, of course.”

“We went out for coffee,” Cornell said, putting an arm around Lynette’s shoulders.

“And got married four months later. We had Kendra within the year.”

“Hap—”

“Happily ever after,” Isabel and I finished in unison.

What a story. I loved it—the struggle, the fight for love. It was like Remy and I—two different worlds colliding, everyone against us, trying to stop our love

“Anyone want to play Pictionary?” Arshan blurted out. I tried to see his face in the dark. His voice sounded odd. Pinched.

“I don’t know why you want to play, Arshan. You know I’m going to kick your butt again. Embarrass you in front of all your friends,” Cornell shot back.

“Yeah right, Black Panther Man. You think you and your boys were tough. You should’ve seen Iran in those days.”

I held my breath. It was one thing for Cornell to critique the Black Panthers.

“Oh, you feelin’ feisty, huh? Draw your sword, little man!” Cornell said, getting to his feet. “Oh, sorry, that’s right. You can’t draw nothin’!”

I burst out laughing.

Cornell offered his hand to help Arshan up. Arshan made a gallant display of refusing. But as he rose to his feet, he put a hand to his back and groaned.

“Pride goeth before the fall, my friend,” Cornell said as he patted Arshan’s shoulder on the walk back to the porch.



The watchman made his nightly circle around the property. He walked silently over the stubby crab grass by the parked cars. He ran his fingers along the wood boards and walked to the fence running along the beach. He leaned against a palm tree and scanned the darkness like a comic-strip villain. He crept slowly through the palm grove, listening intently to the rise and fall of voices on the porch. He paused at the fence, where he had a clear view of the vacationers.

Ahari heard the black man’s rumbling laugh. The man grabbed the chubby woman’s cheeks and noisily kissed her lips. Next to them, the fire-haired girl clapped and cheered. Across the table, the loud woman, the old man and the pretty girl all booed in protest. They were fighting. But then they laughed, too.

Ahari sat down on an overturned fishing canoe, where he could still see them clearly. He folded his arms against his chest and settled in to watch the game. It was a game of moving on and moving forward, a game of getting old and growing up. It was a game Ahari knew like the progression of a sunset—the game of learning it’s okay to laugh again.