“Oh, sure. That’d be great.” He handed them to me. “Is she upstairs?”
I watched him go up, taking the steps two at a time. He moved through our house now with the ease of someone who no longer considered himself a guest, no sidestepping knickknacks and perching on the edges of furniture but walking easily across the floors as if he belonged there. It hadn’t taken long for Lewis to feel at home; he’d come along when we needed a man in the house. With my father gone and the three of us struggling to fill up the spaces he’d left behind, it was only natural that Ashley would find someone to hold her together, to take care of things. Maybe it was the very thing I hated about Lewis—his absolute dullness—that attracted Ashley most to him. After the divorce and all the craziness, she’d needed something normal and steady to ground herself. Maybe by then she didn’t want any more surprises.
Ashley always turned to a new boy when things got sticky or hard, or lonely. But she was never alone. She called the shots, easing people in and out of our door and our lives with the wave of one hand. The ones I liked and the ones I hated, they came and went at her whim with little or no explanation to the rest of us other than a slammed door or a muted sniffle that I could only hear late at night. Ashley kept it all to herself, even when she wasn’t the only one who was affected.
Ashley dated Sumner all that Virginia Beach summer and into the next fall, speeding around town in the Volkswagen and laughing all the time, filling the house with noise whenever they came breezing through. Whenever Sumner was over, everyone came out of their respective hiding places: my mother from the kitchen, my father from in front of the TV, all of us migrating towards his voice and laughter, or whatever it was that made everyone want to be around him. He and Ashley celebrated each month they’d spent together; he bought her a silver bracelet with a slender heart that dangled off of it and brushed against her watchband. I could hear them in the driveway just after curfew, their voices rising up to my window, and then the putter of the VW engine as he pulled away, that low, steady murmur that filled the entire street, humming. Ashley was happy and nice to me and things were good that fall as the days turned crisp and sharp and the weather on channel five was still being done by Rowdy Ron the Weather Mon, who was overweight, more than a little crazy, and no threat to my parents’ marriage whatsoever. A new family moved in down the street and Ashley had a new best friend, a girl named Laurel Adams, with freckles and a long drawl. Ashley and Sumner gave her a ride to school every day that fall after Virginia Beach and introduced her around; pretty soon she was breezing in the back door with them. Sumner imitated her accent and she and Ashley traded clothes and I hung around the edges of rooms watching them, listening to their voices through the house. Sumner would always look up and see me and call out, “Miss Haven, stop hiding and show yourself,” and Ashley would put an arm around me and tease Sumner about two-timing her with me. Laurel Adams would toss her long honey-blond hair and just say “Lawwwwd” the way she always did when she had nothing better to contribute. The weather turned colder and colder and my mother packed up all my summer clothes, shaking the sand of Virginia Beach from my shorts and tank tops before whisking them off to the attic until Memorial Day.
Halloween came and Sumner carved a jack-o’-lantern that was supposed to look like Ashley but turned to mush. Ashley’s had one of Sumner’s awful ties hanging off of it and dangling over the porch rail. Ashley went as Cleopatra, Sumner as a mad scientist, and Laurel Adams as Marilyn Monroe in a peroxide wig and a dress that I could tell my mother thought was entirely too tight. They took me around the neighborhood, house to house, and ate my candy; I felt like I was really doing something, being somebody, with them all around me. Afterwards they dropped me off at home and Ashley kissed my forehead, which she never did, and then they were gone, puttering down the street with the light catching the blond in Laurel’s wig and turning it silver, I sat up and watched my father scare the hell out of all the trick,or,treaters with his monster mask until everyone had gone home and I got sent to bed and ate candy in the dark. I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard them outside.
First the car coming up the street and pulling into the driveway, and then Ashley’s voice, harsh. “I don’t care, Sumner. Just go, okay?”
“How can you do this?” He sounded strange, not like himself. I sat up in bed.
“It’s done.” A car door slammed. “Leave me alone.”
“You can’t just walk off like that, Ash.” His voice was bumpy, breathless, like he was moving around the yard after her. “At least let’s talk about it.”
“I’m not talking.” Her feet were stomping up the front steps. “Let it go, Sumner. Just forget it.”