Tim follows him down the corridor, looking uncomfortable anyway, sensing that plagiarizing Ronald Reagan won’t help in this situation.
“So, was your dad always a hard-ass?” Tim asks, driving us home an hour later.
I’m automatically defensive, but Jase seems unperturbed. “I thought you’d think so.”
I watch Jase’s profile in the passenger seat of the car, his hair flipping in the wind. I’m in the back. Tim’s again working his way through way too many cigarettes. I wave my hand in front of my face and open my window a little further.
“Helluva condition for employment.” Tim tips the sunshade down so the packet of Marlboros falls into his lap. “Not sure it’s worth it.”
“No skin off my back.” Jase shrugs. “But is it any worse than now? Can’t see how, really.”
“It’s not that it’s worse, asshole. It’s that it’s not a choice.”
“Like you’ve got so many,” Jase says. “Worth a try, I’d say, man.”
I feel as though they’re speaking in code. I have no idea what is going on. When I lean forward to look at his profile, he seems elusive, not that boy who kisses me good night so sweetly.
“Here you two are,” Tim says, pulling into the Garretts’ driveway. “Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Good night, young lovers.”
After we say bye to Tim, we’re left standing on the Garretts’ lawn. I glance over at my house to find, as expected, all the lights out. Mom’s not home yet. I pull at Jase’s wrist and check the time. 7:10. Must be another motivational meeting/civic function/town hall arena…or whatever.
“What’s going on with Tim?” I ask, flipping over his wrist to trace the faint blue lines of his veins with my index finger.
“Dad made ninety meetings in ninety days a condition of employment,” Jase says. “That’s what he says people need to not drink. I kinda knew he’d do that.” His mouth brushes gently against my collarbone.
“Ninety meetings with him?”
“Ninety AA meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous. Tim Mason isn’t the only one who ever screwed up. My dad was a major partier, a very heavy drinker, in his teens. I’ve never seen him have a drink, but I know the stories he tells. I had a hunch he’d figure Tim out.”
I raise my hand, touch Jase’s lips, tracing the full curve of the lower one. “So what if Tim can’t handle it? What if he just messes up?”
“We all deserve a chance not to, right?” Jase says, and then he slips his hands up under the back of my T-shirt, closing his eyes.
“Jase…” I say. Or sigh.
“Get a room, you two,” suggests a voice. We look up to see Alice striding toward us, Brad trailing after her.
Jase takes a step back from me, running his hands through his hair, leaving it rumpled and even more appealing.
Alice shakes her head and walks past us.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Our house is buzzing with this strange energy on the Fourth of July.
The Fourth, you must understand, is the town holiday for Stony Bay. Early in the Revolutionary War, the British burned some ships in our harbor as a quick gesture on their way somewhere more significant, so Stony Bay has always felt personally invested in Independence Day. The parade starts at the cemetery behind town hall, goes up the hill to the Olde Baptist Church, where the veterans lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown soldier, then wends down the hill, running into tree-lined Main Street, past the houses painted regulation white and yellow and barn-red, neat and tidy as the boxes in a watercolor set, and finally to the harbor. Bands from all the local schools play patriotic songs. And since her election, Mom always gives the opening and closing speeches. The valedictorian of the middle school recites the Preamble to the Constitution, and another star student reads a paper about life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice.
This year, that student is Nan.
“I can’t believe it,” she says over and over again. “Can you? Last year it was Daniel and now me. I didn’t even think this Four Freedoms one was my best paper! I thought the one for English on Huckleberry Finn’s and Holden Caulfield’s rebellion against life was much better.”
“But not exactly apt for the Fourth of July,” I point out. To be honest, I’m surprised too. Nan hates creative writing. She’s always been happier with memorizing than theorizing. And that’s not the only weird thing today.
Mom, Clay, Nan, and I are in the living room. Mom’s been listening to Nan practice her speech while Clay goes over the usual Fourth of July proceedings, trying to figure out how Mom, in his words, “can put some extra zing in this year.”
He’s lying on his stomach in front of the fireplace, press clippings and pieces of yellow-lined paper spread out in front of him, a highlighter in one hand. “Seems as though you’ve got your standard stump speech goin’ on here, Gracie. The curse of the ‘common weal.’” He looks up and winks at her, then at Nan and me. “This year we’re going to need fireworks.”
“We have them,” Mom says. “Every year Donati’s Dry Goods donates some—we get the permit lined up months in advance.”
Clay ducks his head. “Grace. Sugar. I mean figurative fireworks.” He slaps the press clippings with the back of his knuckles. “This is fine for the expected line from the local pol. But you can do better. And darlin’, if you’re going to win this year, you’ll have to.”
Pink washes across Mom’s cheekbones, the unmistakable flag of blond chagrin. She comes over next to him, rests a hand on his shoulder, bending to see what he’s highlighting. “Tell me how,” she says then, clicking her pen open and flipping to an empty page on her pad, Nan and me forgotten.
“Wow,” Nan says as we get on our bikes to ride to her house. “That was freaky. That Clay’s really pulling the strings with your mom, huh?”
“I guess,” I say. “It’s like that all the time lately. I can’t figure out…I mean…she’s obviously really into him, but…”
“Do you think it’s”—Nan lowers her voice—“the sex?”
“Yuck, Nan. I have no idea. I don’t want to think about either of them in that context.”
“Well, it’s either that or she’s had a frontal lobotomy,” Nan murmurs. “So what do you think I should wear? Do you think it has to be red, white, and blue?” She slips off the sidewalk onto the road so she can ride parallel with me. “Please say no. Maybe just blue. Or white? Is that too virginal?” She rolls her eyes. “Not that that’s not appropriate. Should I have Daniel film me reading the essay and sub that with my college application? Or would that be dorky?”
She keeps asking questions I don’t have answers to because I’m completely distracted. What’s happening to my mother? When did Mom ever listen to anybody but Mom?
Tracy comes home for the Fourth of July command performance. She’s okay with that because, she tells me, “The Vineyard is jammed with tourists over this weekend.” There’s no point in asking her how a month or so of waiting tables at a Vineyard restaurant has separated her from the tourists. Tracy is Tracy.
Flip’s home too. He’s given Trace a tennis bracelet with a tiny gold racket dangling from it that has spawned lots of new Tracy hand-and-wrist flicking gestures designed to show it off. “The note that came with it said I live to serve you,” she whispers to me the night she gets home. “Can you stand it?”
To me it sounds like one of the T-shirts Nan would sell at the B&T, but my sister’s eyes are shining.
“What happened to the long-distance love thing and how that wasn’t going to work?” I ask. Call me Killjoy.
“That’s September!” Tracy laughs. “Jeez, Samantha. Months away.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You’d understand if you’d ever been in love.”
Part of me so much wants to say, “Well, Trace, actually…”
But I’m so used to saying nothing now, so used to being the audience while Mom and Tracy are the ones with the stories. I just listen as she tells me about the Vineyard and the Harbor Fest and the Summer Solstice Celebration. What Flip Did and What Flip Said and what Tracy did then.