Summer
by wolf
Copyright 2012 wolf
Smashwords Edition
www.wolfauthor.com
This book is the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.
G.
Table of Contents
I’m on a beach, she tells me. I’m on a beach, and it’s a still night.
The only light comes from the moon, breathing pale rays across the landscape like an old god from times past. She’s not wearing any clothes. Her hair hangs down to her shoulders, motionless. There are no stars in the sky, no chairs on the beach, no wind moving the sand. It’s then that she realizes: this is different. Not a scene from a memory, not a place she’s read about, not some strange situation that she’s been told of. A world entirely of her own creation. There’s no trace of movement across the endless sea of sand and ocean. Except for the waves. Water makes its way gently up the shore, pulling the beach away into the deep and eating away at her reality. Only her, the moon, and the beach.
***
“When you meet someone for the first time,” my father began, “do you ever wonder how many memories you’ll end up creating together?”
The countryside flew by us. Wind snaked its way around and over the windshield of the convertible, giving the illusion that we were moving through time much faster than normal. The radio was on, and a piano sonata that could barely be heard over the drone of the air was playing.
“I mean, you don’t even have to think about that in terms of people. For simplicity’s sake, think of it in terms of objects. Take this car,” he said, slapping the wheel of the convertible with his free hand, “on the day I was at the car lot, negotiating the price with the car salesman, this car was an empty shell, devoid of meaning and emotion. Just a twisted cage of metal and paint and machinery. Like a blank canvas to paint on. But as time went on, obviously my life has continued, with all of its problems and triumphs and vicissitudes and breakdowns and quotas and headaches and paranoia…”
I turned away and watched the landscape move by. Most of the fields were empty, but a few here and there had some cows staring into space.
“…and joy and awkward moments and love and anguish and pain and depressions and beautiful moments, and this car has been there the whole time. And every day, when I get out of the car, I never know what’s going to happen between then and the next time I get back in again. I’ve infused it with the- essence?- of what’s happened to me since I bought it. Did I think that when I got this car, I ever imagined that I’d ever be driving my son around, trying to help him make sense of why his wife left this world?
“It reminds me of a movie that I loved when I was a kid. And when I mean love, I mean I really, really loved this movie. It was an animated movie, I’m pretty sure, about animals. Pretty standard as far as children’s movies go, but I adored it. Every time your grandmother would take me to the movies, I would insist on seeing it, and if she refused I would throw a temper tantrum until she bought tickets for us. Which was strange, now that I think about it, because I was a pretty well-behaved kid. Anyway, obviously at some point, maybe when I was going into elementary school, I stopped watching it. I figure I probably grew out of it, or found another movie that I liked. Kids are fickle, and who’s to say that I was an exception? Everyone grows up.
“So fast-forward to when you were born. We were in the basement of our old house one day, rummaging around through our old stuff, when your six-or-seven year-old self found that movie on tape. I had bought the twentieth-anniversary edition of the movie for you one day when I had seen it in the store. But we had never gotten around to watching it, and, like so many of our other things, it ended up being tossed into the basement, gathering dust until we would inevitably deem it ready to be thrown away. But after you found that tape, we decided to watch it together. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, I didn’t have work, and you were still at the age when a parent was a god. We sat down to watch it, and as the credits rolled, I got the strangest feeling. I realized that, at some point, there was a moment where I watched this movie for the last time during my childhood. The last time I would see the opening logo of the production company, the last time I would see the credits roll, the last time I would see the little animated dog wave goodbye to the little animated cat. And when I watched those last moments of the movie as a child, I had no idea how much time would pass, how much life would happen to me, before I would see those same scenes again. It was an overwhelming feeling. It was as if the experience, not even the movie itself but how I saw it, was some pair of intangible bookends to frame these totally different parts of my life as I grew up. And then I realized that our lives are full of these little bookends- songs you listen to, people you meet, places you end up going to- that serve as both beginnings and ends, depending on how you look at them. And you know what? Now that I think about it, it’s probably been about twenty or so years since you’ve last seen that movie. I’m pretty sure I still have that copy, if you want to watch it. Just be ready the next time you do.
“It’s the same thing with people. When you meet someone for the first time, do you ever wonder if you’ll end up as friends? Enemies? Lovers? The potential that every experience holds is truly staggering. Sublime, when you sit down and really think about it. Some people take that potential and turn it into a positive manifesto, a testament to the freedom of life and the possibilities that it holds. But it just makes me feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and scared, like I’m falling. Like I’ve woken up one day in a glass cube with no way out. And all I can do is pace around inside, watching the rest of the world move by around me.”
The countryside continued its pilgrimage around the car. We passed a small farmhouse with an old man sitting on the porch, holding a sign about the End of Days.
“It reminds me of something that happened during my college years. You never met her, but my grandmother- your great-grandmother- passed away towards the end of the first summer I was home from college, so in between my first and second year. The last time I ever saw her was the day before I left to go back to school. Both of us knew that we probably wouldn’t see each other again after that- which ended up being true- so before we parted, we had a very long hug. Most people say that their last memory of a relative involves some characteristic smell or habit that the person had, something unique to only them, or what-have-you. My last memory of her is staring at the point where the floor of the room met the wall, while we exchanged our last hug. It’s not that I didn’t care. I loved her very much, and still do. It’s just the image that I associate with her, with our last moment. The point where the floor met the wall of the hospital room that tried ever-so-hard not to look like a place where people went to die.
“That same summer- this is years before I met your mother, mind you- I started sleeping with a girl who was a lot older than me, who had graduated from the same school that I was going to at the time. She had dated an acquaintance of mine, someone I knew through a school club I had been in during my first year. I had actually met her a few times over the course of the previous year but we had never really ‘clicked’. She was just another face in the crowd, if you will. One day during the beginning of the summer, after she and him had broken up, we ran into each other at a school get-together and ended up hitting it off pretty well. We started talking a little more after that, and things just kind of gravitated towards a casual relationship. During the previous school year, when she and the guy I knew had been dating, I remember hearing that he was dating this girl and wondering who she was, and if I’d ever get to meet her. It’s pretty funny to look back and know that, several months after asking myself that question, I would end up sleeping with her.
“At some point in my first year of school- the year before that summer- my grandmother, who was about ninety years old at the time, got into a massive car accident on a highway. Somehow, she was fine, but obviously didn’t have a car, and my family wasn’t about to let her buy a new one. So, my family started driving her around to run errands and such a few times a week, seeing as we lived next door to her. When I came home for the summer, most of my Saturday mornings and early afternoons were spent driving her around town so she could run whatever errands she needed to run. I never really did anything on Saturday mornings and I never slept late so it wasn’t any inconvenience. I’d talk to her while we were driving around, and read in the car while she was running errands in various stores and such. It wasn’t a huge commitment, and it was nice spending time with her and reading. I knew she really appreciated it, which in turn made me happy.”
The piano sonata finished, and we were left with the static of the radio. My father turned the volume down, until there was nothing left but the sound of his voice and the hiss of the wind to break the silence.
“I had a really boring summer job, and aside from driving my grandmother around on Saturday mornings, I really had nothing to do in my free time. Most of my friends were gone for the summer in one way or another, so I ended up using the rest of my free time on the weekends to meet up with that girl, who lived about an hour away from me. It was pretty emotionless. The kind of thing where we’d roll around in bed for a few hours, and then spend the rest of the day wondering what to do with ourselves. We’d go to the mall, or watch a movie, but I never really had anything to talk about with her. Like we were two different tribes on different parts of a mountain that could only communicate through smoke signals. That being said, one might imagine I would remember how she smelled, or how her skin felt, or how she giggled when she took off her underwear. But the one thing I remember, the one thing that stands out in my memory, is the way that the sun came through the curtains of her room. Part of the curtains were pale red, part of them were opaque white, and because of this ‘double-filter’, the light that came in felt very ethereal. As if we were in some solipsistic dream. No matter what the weather, her room always had the same feeling. Like you were waiting for someone, or something. But I could never figure out who or what you would be waiting for.
“After a month or so of me and my family driving our grandmother around, she ended up buying another car without telling any of us. We drove to her house one day, and there was a brand new car in her driveway. My whole family was, as you can imagine, pretty angry. And, because we were the family members living closest to her, we were the ones getting the angry phone calls from our extended family. I just gave up on answering the phone after about two days. A week later, I came home, and she was sitting in our living room with a look of defeat on her face. She’d agreed to loan us the car until she took a test telling us whether or not she was fit to drive. My uncle was there in the room as well. He had bought me a really nice sweater for driving her around all summer. It was from Iceland, I think.
“One Saturday afternoon, my ‘girlfriend-but-not-really’ and I had finished our weekly ritual, and we were lying there in silence, her absentmindedly rubbing my chest and me watching the sunlight come through her curtains and listening to the rhythmic creak of the fan she had set up in the corner of her bedroom. We were lying there, and I began to tell her about how much I liked fans. I told her how I usually have a fan on all the time in my room, even during the winter. I told her how I maneuvered my desk at work to be in front of the room’s air vent so I could have a breeze on me constantly. I told her about how I feel uncomfortable whenever there isn’t a fan on. Come to think of it, even to this day I don’t know why I like them so much. That little monologue might have been the most I talked for that entire summer. My throat was sore the next morning. But anyway, I kept talking and talking until she stopped me and reminded me that we had to move some exercise equipment out of her basement and into the living room so her mom could use it while she was watching TV. It was also the last time that I was at her house. We split up the next week, the week after I returned for my second year of college. Think about that: I left her house for the last time that day. Who would have known that I’d never set foot in there again, that it would be my last moment in that house, for the rest of my life? Anyway, she visited me once during the first week of school, but it wasn’t the same. It was as if our ‘relationship’ was something that could only exist in the summer, something done to keep the cruel realities of growing up at bay”
The car crested over a large hill and began the roll down the other side, picking up momentum until the wind in our ears became deafening. He had to yell to be heard over the roar.
“When you first met her, did you ever, in your wildest imagination, think that we’d be here right now? That one day, she’d be gone? That one day, you’d be lost inside your own head?”
2
The only sound is the falling of waves on the shore, and the whispering of sand under her shifting feet. From the moment she begins her existence in this strange place, every step she takes, every subtle digression of her bare feet, disturbs the ground in some way. No matter how hard she tries to stay still, no matter how hard she squeezes her toes together to stop the inevitable cascade of grains between them, every moment she intrudes on the scene sees her changing the beach in some sublime, irreversible way. Every breath that she takes pushes the air around her, away from where it is supposed to be, away from its home. Every turn of her head, every soft pushing of her feet deeper and deeper into the sand, is an intrusion into the simple co-existence of waves and the sand.
And while she knows that, in theory, in her mind, it would be possible to move each lost grain of sand, each molecule of air, back its original home, she also knows, deep in the recesses of her heart and soul, that such a task would be impossible. From the moment she begins her existence in this strange place, from the moment that this world is conceived, she has no choice but to slowly erode its fragile placidity. Her hair remains still. I’m on a beach, she tells me, looking out across the waves, and behind me is a hotel.
***
“Aren’t you wondering how we ended up here? Why we’re in this aquarium?”
He gestured around him at the walls, the ceiling, the entirety of the room other than the floor and door.
“I’m sure you’re wondering how a college professor could afford to have an office underwater?”
I couldn’t think of any way to get such an office. He leaned back in his chair, resting his feet on the desk. He wasn’t wearing shoes, only socks.
“I’ll tell you how, because I know if I don’t, you’ll spend our entire conversation wondering how something like this could be possible. I went to a pretty normal middle school. Nothing special, as far as middle schools go. Normal kids, normal teachers. I met a kid in this middle school, whom I eventually became somewhat of a friend with. While he was nice enough, and a good friend, I’d have to say that nothing in particular stuck out to me about him. It was as if someone took every possible characteristic of human beings and made one person have the average of all these traits. Most people liked him, but no one really knew him. That being said, even if he was a bit quiet and average, he was a genuinely nice guy. At least, as far as I could tell. Soft-spoken, always willing to lend a hand when needed. But it was as if he was only the outline of a person, without any of the insides filled in. You got the feeling that no matter how hard you tried, you could never really truly understand what was inside his head. Anyway, in high school, he kind of just dropped off the grid. Disappeared, as it were.
“It wasn’t that he was a strange child, or had any questionable circumstances surrounding his disappearance. In fact, he was liked by pretty much everyone. One day he just wasn’t in class, and the teacher told us that he had moved. Nothing out of the ordinary. Most of us found it odd that he had left without saying goodbye, but we knew he wasn’t much of a talker. But at the same time, it was disorienting. Imagine that you take the same bus to work every day. And you pass the same tree every day, as the bus rolls by a park near your office. And this routine goes on for several years, until you take it as a fact of life that this tree will be there. No matter how bad your day goes, you can always count on seeing that tree on your way to and from work, even if it doesn’t have any particularly deep meaning to you. Except one day, you do your normal morning routine, get on the bus, and look out the window, only to see that the tree is gone. Disappeared without a trace. It’s nothing drastic, and you can’t even put your finger on why the bus ride feels so vacuous at first. But you know something very permanent has changed, and you don’t notice it until it’s been taken from you. That’s what it felt like. So, we were all a little baffled by the abruptness of this kid’s move, but life goes on, doesn’t it?
“So fast-forward thirty years. I’ve completed my master’s, and have this very teaching position, a normal office in a normal college with normal students, teaching normal classes. One day, a day in which nothing in particular was going on, out of the complete blue, I get a phone call from this kid. Or, rather, the kid who was now a man, obviously. Who would have thought! Coincidentally, he had gone into academia as well, and had also become a professor at a university. Eco-psychology, or a similar discipline that was strangely specific like that. Anyway, it turns out he had recently performed some kind of major study, and that was why he wanted to call me.
“Pretty interesting, I thought, but why was he calling me, thirty years later, to tell me about a study he had performed? I do studies all the time, and you don’t see me calling old middle school acquaintances to tell them about it. Not that I said such things, of course. I was happy to hear from him, in a nostalgic way. It was just that, at that point in the conversation, I didn’t understand what any of it meant. How it would end up affecting me. Come to think of it, that wasn’t a normal day, like I had said. From the moment I’d woken up, I’d been feeling very caught up in everything, for some reason. Nothing concrete, but you know that feeling when you walk into an old, dark place, and any moment, you feel like there’s a million spider webs about to wrap around your skin? That’s how my mind felt that day. I don’t know how much that fits into the context of his story, but I feel like it was worth mentioning. At least from my own sake.
“Anyway, he had received funding from a very interesting organization to perform this particular research project. It wasn’t a ‘shady’ organization, per se, but this group flew far under the radar, funding professors in very obscure, strange subjects. He had been writing grants for this particular experiment for years, but it was much too costly to be financially feasible. That is, until this organization caught wind of it. The company would let him perform the test however he wanted, and would give him what was, essentially, unlimited funding. However, the catch was that they would only give him the money if, within the scope of his research, he would perform some alternate tests, alternate tests that they would specify. He’d be allowed to publish his work, royalty-free and without credit to the company. But he couldn’t publish the results of their tests; only his. A little odd, he thought, but nonetheless the extra research wasn’t too difficult, or strange, and it was well-worth the funding. Legally, it all checked out. He had been thinking about this particular experiment for several years, but it had been too difficult, both logistically and financially, to perform. So naturally, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.