Kartar smiled and his teeth, so straight and white, looked more adult than the rest of him. I thought he was sixteen or seventeen, still in high school, although he had none of the traits of the native-born, no teenage swagger or hostile vocabulary. His clothing and his calm, rhythmic walk down the hallway to the elevator suggested that he ignored whatever his classmates might have tried to teach him, that he was continuing to walk the path intended for him at birth.
When the elevator door closed, I left the Lucky Star bag on the counter and looked down from the windows. Double-parked on the car-dense street was a little red car with a short man standing valetlike at the passenger door. His stomach, shoulders, and face enveloped by an enormous red umbrella also stamped Lucky Star. I could read it clearly from where I stood. I saw Kartar run down the walkway, leap the flowing gutters, throw himself inside. The short man slammed Kartar’s door, ran around to the other side, javelined the umbrella into the backseat, and jumped behind the wheel. The engine revved and the car shot forward, skidding on the slick pavement, then correcting. I heard two toots of the horn as the car turned the corner.
I returned to the kitchen, unpacked the containers, flattened the bag, and wrote Kartar across the front because he was a memorable kid and I might call Lucky Star in the future.
I sat at the counter, turned on the Weather Channel, and ate the omelet and the strips of crispy bacon, which left behind a pleasant aroma. I perked up when the newscaster said, “Hey, Susanna, it’s Saturday, Columbus Day weekend. Most of the country has temperate weather, sunshine, turning leaves, but that’s not true here in our nation’s capital, so what can you tell us?”
Susanna stood in front of a color-coded map of America. I always liked watching her plushy pink lips, her pointed feline tongue that darted out from behind her blinding smile, her round breasts snuggled so tight beneath her conservative red or navy sweater.
“Well, Jed, there’s light precipitation in the surrounding suburbs, but we’re facing a rare weather phenomenon, an unprecedented storm, previously untracked, that has taken up residence over the capital. Our meteorologists are hard at work analyzing it, but expect severe atmospheric disturbances, lightning, dangerous gusts, rain, hail, you name it. All you capital folks, you’re going to be underwater soon. Stay home, stay dry, and if you have to go out, just a warning, galoshes and umbrellas won’t cut it. Hope you’re all good swimmers.”
So, I thought, my mother could actually alter the weather. I cleaned up after myself, figured noon was a good time for a large scotch, and spread out on a couch with the book open on my chest, the drink at hand. Rain battered away at the thick glass, groans rose from the old casements when the thunder cracked. Despite what Weather Channel Susanna had said, I was sure the rain would stop the next day, and the sun would shine fast, and it seemed to me then that the weather was like life, how it unfolded was impossible to predict. I turned to the next story in Ashby’s first collection, titled “Glorious Summer,” and buckled back down.
Esme sits quietly on the porch of the summer cottage and listens to the words her heart would say if it could speak. On Friday evenings, when Howard returns for the weekends, says, “Hi all my lovelies. What’s new?” Esme’s heart betrays her, goes silent when it should scream.
The girls are down at the lake, Howard is due around seven, and this summer feels like all their previous summers, except now that Aster is nearly eight and Orlanna, at the end of July, will turn thirteen, they have found a common ground, a renewed sororal language.
Otherwise nothing is different since Howard said, “Changes,” at the end of last summer. Rather, nothing yet has been altered. When this summer ends, the life Esme and Howard built over these last fifteen years will no longer exist, except in pictures and memories. Since the end of last summer, Howard has said, “I’m sorry. I never imagined I would want this. It has nothing to do with my love for you.” For nearly a year, he has tried to expand, explain, rationalize, and summarize his undefined need to tear apart their world, but she can’t make sense of any of it.
Last summer, the sky dazzled blue, pink wisteria bloomed, butterflies and bees darted among the flowers, and on weekends, the family raced in the lake, played Shark near the sandbar where the silt dropped into the deep, Howard so convincing that both girls yelled and flailed, headed straight for Esme, her open arms ready to save them. Lunches and dinners on the shore. Grand dinners at the cottage when Howard grilled steaks and uncorked bottles of thick red wine. There were nights when they finished two bottles just the two of them, and the next morning yelled to the girls, “Feed yourselves breakfast and go down to the lake. We’ll meet you there later,” and then they would screw in that unclear hungover way for hours. In early August, they had repainted the cottage. When the house was no longer a sad beige, but a sprightly light green, they debated whether the shade would hold up during the long pitiless winters.