Through Summer

It was summertime. You could hear the frogs croaking down below the jut of land out back, announcing their presence from the edges of the creek. You could hear the wind chimes singing on the porch of the woman next door, five-foot-one and sun-wrinkled, but I never learned her name. You could feel the sweat in the summer breeze, blowing all the fisherman's early morning sighs right to your front door.

Summer's more than just a season, here. A haven, religion, way of thinking. Summer like slow humming, like wet ankles, like the texture of chewing on a blade of grass.

He was dropping off milk, the first day. Four days into summer, and I was wearing these new purple-blue-plaid shorts that Mom had bought me after I asked and asked. I thought they were cute, and it's hard to find things to wear when your wardrobe is stock-full of pleated school skirts and blouses, stained at the pits and the same colors you've been wearing since kindergarten. Begins to wear down your sense of self, when it's been that way for more than ten years.

Sixteen and I probably should have learned how to shop for myself, brought a group of friends to go shopping or something, but I'm not that kind of girl. Kids at school all look the same, feel the same, talk the same. Seems like the stray cats at the docks and the birds in the backyard would have better advice.

He had freckles all across his arms, and I didn't know him from school. I stood in the doorway and watched him. He couldn't be younger than me because he had just gotten out of the milk truck; made me jealous because Mom said I wasn't allowed to learn how to drive yet. She says I don't need it, not when I can bike to school, or Lou could take me if I really needed it. Lou lives three doors down in a nice big house with four siblings, though, and I don't like riding in a car with all of them, even when it's winter.

He watched me watch him, but didn't say a word. Didn't blush or anything, so he wasn't shy, just took our empty bottles from our milk box to his truck, came back with the full ones, and stood for a moment, looking at me.

"You want these inside?" he asked. He had a skinny nose and more freckles on his face than anywhere else, thin arms but strong enough to hold all the milk no problem.

"No," I told him. I didn't know where Mom wanted them. I thought she could deal with it. I was going to bike into town and hang around there all day, anyway. She wouldn't know I was talking to this milk boy.

I didn't ask him how or why he was delivering the milk, but I wondered it. Usually Mr. Sherman did it, lots of smiles, very round pink cheeks like a year-round Santa Claus.

So I asked him the next week, when I saw him again. I was sitting on the front porch step, tearing up dandelions. Not to weed, but because the house was locked and Mom wasn't home from the store yet. I'd been up early to get fresh bread, and the loaf was sitting next to me in a brown paper bag. Mom always says the earlier in the day you buy something, the better it tasted. Didn't make much sense to me because I don't eat breakfast and we eat the most at dinner.

"I'm doing it for the summer," he said. He was very short with me. Not in an unfriendly way, but in the way people who don't have much to say are. I noticed his sleeves were all scrunched up, long sleeves, and he pushed them further up his arms when he talked.

"Do you work for Mr. Sherman?" I tore off a piece of bread and started chewing on it, then held the rest out to him.

His mouth did a little twitchy smile, and I could see the perspiration on his forehead. Sun was hot today, and the air muggy. All the little insets in the yard were screaming with the heat. He took some bread, nodding.

"He lets you drive around all by yourself?" I eyed the milk truck. For someone who just started a job, it sure seems like he was trusted to do the work.

His eyebrows raised. The sun was so hot I thought I might die, or melt. I wanted to do everything and nothing at all. "You wanna drive around with me?"

Of course I did. He showed me all the pedals in the truck as he drove, explained what the buttons inside did. His dad was a mechanic, and so he learned how to drive as soon as he turned fifteen.

Every week I saw him. Most weeks I accidentally bought an extra cinnamon roll or had just been happening to be about to go somewhere, wearing a summer dress and ribbon in my hair. He talked more and more the more I knew him. I rode around with him sometimes, and he'd take a wrong turn and drive by the docks, letting me stick my hands or my face out the window and feel the sea-blown air. Once I stayed with him his whole route, face to the sun like a flower while he'd get out and deliver the milk, and then he parked the truck at an alcove by the cliffs and we sat on the ground, leaning against the tires, talking until the sun set.

He promised he'd teach me to drive. I promised I'd show him the caves down by the water. He said he'd buy me ice cream, and I told him I'd buy him a hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. He suggested we go skinny dipping, I put a hand on his arm. Summer melted into a single moment when he kissed me.

That night I came home with soggy shoes and watery hair and a sloppy smile. Mom stole all the joy, slammed the door closed behind me, told me to never do that again. She paced the living room, I started shivering, even in the stifling warm air in the house. She'd seen me with that boy. Everyone in town knows it. Elizabeth's mom said she'd seen me joyriding around town, distracting him, shaming myself.

"Shame for what?" I yelled back. Small, thin, red summer dress soaked to the last thread, hair in tangles and watery tears in my throat.

"It doesn't look good," she told me. "People notice these things," she said. "He'll take advantage of you," she warned.

"I love him," I clipped back. I feel like a fish caught in a net, wriggling to get free. Back to the air, the night, him, the perfect summer.

Mom dragged me by the wrist to my room. Told me to shower. Told me I was not allowed to go out at night. Was not allowed to drive around with that boy. Was not allowed to be in love when I was so, so young.

Mom doesn't know anything at all. Mom has photos of my father when they were sixteen, I've seen them, even though I wasn't supposed to, and I think they were in love. Even if he didn't stay.

The rest of the summer was my little secret. A love letter to myself: early mornings at the docks, meeting him before Mom would notice I was gone. We named all the seagulls, made friends with some fishermen, who don't gossip, and I learned all the ways I could love him.

He was gentle, like a passing cloud, and thought for long periods of time before speaking. We'd listen to the waves, scatter whispers into the morning air, kiss until we were tired. I kept it all so secret; I spent my days with Lou and her brothers so Mom never suspected a thing.

By the end of summer, the days were shorter, the air was less hot, the mornings less warm. Mom was too busy and tired to notice me sneaking out of the house at night.

He taught me to drive, though I was bad at it. The roads were empty, just us, headlights, and the low murmur of toads.

On this night I was wearing just a tank top and skirt, my hair in a bun with little pieces falling out because that's how he liked it. I drove to the edge of the water, jerky on a few turns but he stroked a thumb across my arm and told me I was doing just fine. We ended up in the backseat. A messy, sweaty, summer. The perfect summer. And then he told me he was leaving. Back home, he said, with his mom.

"But you live here," I said, covering myself with my tank top. The air had never been so cold. "With your dad." I think I was trying to convince him.

"Just for the summer," he told me. "I didn't think..." He stroked my hair.

He was always thinking. But he didn't think about this? He was my secret, and this was his. "I thought you loved me," I whispered. You could have heard a pebble drop into the sea, could have heard every ripple.

He tucked my face against his arm. "I know, baby." It didn't make me feel any better. I pushed him away, put on my shoes, climbed out and started walking down the road. I walked the whole way home, no matter what he said. No matter how many times he apologized. He followed me, slowly rolling next to me in his dad's car, talking more words than I've ever heard him say. I kept my arms folded, my back hunched, to help me fight against the tears.

When I got back home I stood on the doorstep and turned to watch him. He watched me watch him. He got out of the car, engine still idling. This time he didn't say a thing. I kissed him one more time. Then I went inside.

Mom was standing outside her room in a robe when I got upstairs. It took everything in me not to fall to my knees and hold my hands over my ears, terrified as I was at betraying her. I still hadn't let loose a single tear, and I could still hear the engine idling outside. I was hanging on by a thread, and any one thing would break me.

It was when she sighed that I blinked up at her. Mom tilted her head, eyes tired, not angry. It was when she hugged me that I broke. She held me up while I cried, because she knew, and she whispered into my hair that it was ok. It was summertime, she whispered. Summertime makes us do all kinds of things. It's ok, it will pass. Summer always does.

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