Second Chance Summer

“I think I’m going to go for a swim,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, have—” But I lost whatever I was going to say next, because that’s when Henry took off his shirt. Dear God. I swallowed hard and looked away but then, remembering my sunglasses perched on top of my head, I lowered them as casually as possible so that I could look at him and not have it be totally obvious that I was staring. And I don’t know if Henry had been lifting sacks of sugar or flour at the bakery, but his shoulders were broad, and his arms were muscular, and his stomach muscles were defined….

It suddenly seemed much warmer on the dock than it had just a moment before, and when Henry nodded at me before diving into the water, I tried to wave back casually. I watched him swimming—the stroke I recognized, the one we’d both been taught by our long-ago swim team instructors—until I couldn’t see him any longer, then pulled on my shorts and T-shirt, picked up my towel, and headed inside.

As I came close to the house, I became very aware of two things—opera and popcorn. A soprano was wailing, hitting her high note as I crossed in from the screened-in porch to the kitchen, where I discovered the source of the popcorn smell.

There was what looked like a movie theater’s worth of popcorn on the dining room table—popcorn in tins, popcorn in bags, balls of popcorn wrapped with cellophane. Warren was standing nearby in the kitchen tossing a popcorn ball up in the air, while my father sat by the table, the dog sleeping in the crook of his arm, humming along to the music, reading along with the liner notes.

“Hi,” I said as I dropped my sunglasses and magazine on the kitchen counter. I looked around at all of it, and since the house hadn’t been a popcorn factory when I’d gone out to the dock, I figured this must have been what arrived in the UPS truck.

“Taylor, listen,” my dad said, holding up a finger. Warren caught the popcorn ball, and we all listened to the woman sing something in Italian. He smiled at me when she’d finished her aria, and I noticed for the first time how white his teeth looked against his skin, which was getting a more yellowish cast. “Isn’t that lovely?”

“Very nice,” I said, as I headed over to the table and helped myself to a handful of what looked like kettle corn from an open bag.

“It’s The Barber of Seville,” my dad said. “Your mother and I saw a production of this when we were first married. And I always told myself I’d go see it again, someday.” He looked down at the liner notes, turning the pages slowly, and I took a bite of my kettle corn, which pretty much put all the other kettle corn I’d ever had to shame.

“This is incredible,” I said, and my dad gestured for me to give him some. Though he took a handful, I noticed he ate only a few kernels and winced slightly when he swallowed. But he smiled at me nevertheless.

“Supposed to be the best popcorn in the country,” he said. “I thought we should try it out, especially if we’re finally going to watch The Thin Man tonight.” I exchanged a glance with Warren, who tossed the popcorn ball up in the air again. Though none of us had ever seen it, my dad had been talking about The Thin Man for years. He claimed it was the perfect bad-day antidote, and was always offering—or threatening, depending on how you looked at it—to play it for us when we were in bad moods. “You kids will love it,” he continued. “And I think Murphy will get a kick out of Asta.” He jostled the dog, who opened his eyes and yawned, resting his head against my dad’s arm.

At least, that had been the plan. But then Gelsey came home, thrilled with the news that Nora had been given permission to sleep over. And it seemed my mom had volunteered Warren and myself as babysitters, because she’d made reservations to go out to dinner with my dad at what had been their favorite restaurant in Mountainview. Since the opera was blaring again downstairs, Gelsey was bouncing-off-the-walls excited about her sleepover, and Warren was back to the subject of How Interesting Vets Are, I retreated to the front porch with my magazine and a Diet Coke. The shadows of the trees were just starting to stretch across the gravel when my mom stepped out onto the porch, calling, “Taylor?”

“Yeah?” I turned around and saw that mother was dressed up in a way I hadn’t seen her in a while—white summer dress, her hair up in a chignon, her eyes done. I could smell her light, floral perfume, the kind she only ever wore when going out, the one that conjured all the nights I’d spent when I was younger, sitting on the bathroom counter and watching her get ready to go out with my dad, convinced that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. “You look great,” I said, and meant it.

My mom smiled and smoothed down her hair. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “But thank you. You’re okay watching the girls tonight?”

I nodded. “Sure. It’s fine.” Even though Warren would be home as well, I had the feeling he would disappear with his book at the first available opportunity. She lingered on the porch for a moment, twisting her hands together. In the silence that followed, I was aware of just how much I wished things were different. I wanted to be able to talk to her, and tell her how afraid I was of what was going to happen, and have her tell me everything was going to be all right. But the way we’d always behaved stopped me, and all I could see were the barriers and walls I’d put up between me and my mother—casually, unthinkingly, not realizing that at some point I might want to take them down.

“Ready to hit the road?” My dad joined my mother on the porch, looking more like the version of himself that I had grown up with. He was wearing a blazer and a tie, and I tried not to see how big his clothes were on him, how he seemed to be disappearing in them. As they waved good-bye to me, my mother calling out last-minute instructions while I nodded, I realized that as they walked to the car in the slowly falling darkness, they could have been just any couple heading for a dinner out. They could have been just my parents, both of them healthy and whole, the way I’d always known them, and the way I had stupidly always assumed they’d stay.

Two hours later, I stuck my head into Gelsey’s room. “You guys okay?” I asked. I expected to see a typical slumber party unfolding—snacks (God knows we had enough popcorn), magazines, makeup, maybe a stolen trashy novel. But instead, Nora was sitting on the carpet, playing a game on her phone while Gelsey, on her bed, paged through a ballerina biography.