Amy Doan - The Summer List

“It’s changed, though. Not as quiet as it used to be.”

“I go to sleep to the sounds of the #1 California Muni bus,” I said. “It makes these horrible groaning noises as it struggles up the hill. I feel like one day they’re going to ask me to come out and help push.”

“Did you drive in through town or did you take I-5 and Southshore?”

“Southshore.”

“So you didn’t see how fancy we are now. We have two espresso places and a Chef’s Choice. You know, so you don’t have to haul all the way to Tahoe City for your triple-shot latte and your ten million kinds of chèvre . ”

“And there’s a fantastic bookstore, I hear.”

“Who told you, your mother?”

“Yeah, she—”

“Right. Like she would use the word fantastic to describe anything remotely associated with me.”

“She doesn’t—”

“Stop. Don’t even try. So. Speaking of goat cheese. I think it’s time to move this wild party indoors. Unless you think we’ll be too crowded .”

* * *

Jett was still sleeping when I opened the car door. I clipped her leash on before she was alert enough to go nuts. “Wake up, sweet girl.”

She shook herself, jingling her tags, and perked up the second she got out, excited by new smells. I let her pee and sniff her way down the driveway while Casey switched lights on behind us.

My phone rang and Sam’s face flashed on my screen. Sam was the “goofy foot,” the famous surfing lefty, from his café’s name. The picture I’d programmed in, though, was Sam as I knew him, not the cocky young surf-punk from the past that I emblazoned on his T-shirts and magnets and mugs, but forty pounds heavier and forty years older. Big and weather-beaten, kind of like an aging Beach Boy. I liked that Sam best.

He knew I’d been considering visiting my hometown this weekend. He was the only person I’d told, and he’d urged me to go, to take a risk. His exact words were You need more friends besides that hyper mutt and some old has-been fatty ex-surfer.

“I shouldn’t have come,” I whispered into the phone. “It’s beyond awful. Are you happy?”

“I think the question is ‘are you happy?’” He spoke in his best Yoda imitation. Which was a pretty poor one. There was a fine line between Yoda and Fozzie Bear from the Muppets, and Sam always veered too Fozzie.

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Sam. I’m not up to it right now.”

“Sorry, sorry. But keep me posted. And if you wimp out and come home early, you’re fired. Anyone can slap some doodles on a T-shirt. You’re totally replaceable.”

“Supportive as always, Sam.”

“Email me. I want to live vicariously.”

“This is all about you, then.”

“Naturally.”

“Bye.”

Jett was about as eager to go inside as I was but I tugged her leash. “Time to go in, JJ-girl.”

Time to trade one unfamiliar landscape for another.

Casey had told the truth; she and Alex hadn’t made many changes to The Shipwreck. Though there was evidence of a child—a fairy book, glittery purple sneakers on the floor, one of which I had to wrestle away from Jett as Casey walked over from the kitchen.

“Behave, Jett. Sorry.”

“She’s all right.” Casey scratched her under her collar. “Jett, you said? As in Joan? Right, the spiky black hair.”

I waited for Casey to give me just a little more. For her voice to warm a few degrees as she said, Remember the poster you gave me? That CD you used to hide at my house?

“She’s a troublemaker like her namesake,” I said.

“She’s a sweetheart. I love Labs.”

“Thanks. And how old is your little girl? Elle, you said? Not that I mean she’s the same as a pet...” I needed to stop talking. Or at least rehearse every sentence in my head a minimum of three times before letting it exit my mouth.

Casey waited for me to stop. No “no worries,” an expression it seemed the rest of the world used ten times a day. No “don’t be silly.”

“She just turned ten. She’s been with us since she was five.”

“Can I see her picture?”

Casey pointed to the photos hung on the stairwell. “You can see dozens, we’re running out of room.”

I walked up the stairs to examine the pictures while Casey crouched and scratched Jett’s stomach. Jett was in textbook passive pose, on her back, paws limp. Casey had already won her over. At least she was making an effort with my pet.

I didn’t have to hunt long for the little girl’s face. She was all over the wall. A plump child with wavy brown hair and brown eyes, younger in the photos closer to the center, older in the ones crammed around the edges. There she was with a smiling Casey, fishing. There she was with her face red from a Popsicle. Carrying a backpack in front of my old elementary school.

“She’s adorable,” I called.

“Thanks.”

Alex had started the wall the September after she and Casey moved in, first with a handful of framed photos clustered where they were easily visible from the middle step. The collection had grown outward, the spacing tightening over the years as real estate got scarce.

I knew so many of the images. Casey blowing out birthday candles at three and four and seven, her cheeks round, her eyes bright. Casey jumping off dive blocks at swim meets, her age only discernible by the length of her blurry legs. Casey and Alex on the trip to Mexico when Casey was fifteen, toasting with their margarita glasses in some awful spring-break club. Casey in the garden, pretending to mash herbs with Alex’s mortar and pestle, her raised eyebrows showing just what she thought of Alex’s pagan phase. Alex at her pottery wheel, squinting into the sun, her cheeks and forehead flecked with white clay. Alex as a toddler on the beach in San Francisco, the ruins of the Sutro Baths behind her. I looked at that one closely, trying to identify the old Victorian up the hill that Sam had turned into his shop, years after the photo was taken. But I couldn’t find it.

I’d once been on the wall, too. Prominently featured. By senior year I was in ten pictures. My favorite had been positioned eight steps up. Me and Casey in the kayak, raising our paddles over our heads and laughing, water pouring down in shining streams around us.

But that one was no longer there, and neither were any of the others. I’d been curated out of the gallery.

I walked down the stairs, smiling so Casey wouldn’t know what I’d been thinking.

“My mom still has them.”

“Has what?”

“The pictures of you. She keeps the one of us in the kayak in her studio.”

I nodded. What was I supposed to say? No worries?

“So,” Casey said, walking to the kitchen. “Wine? Rosé all right? And I wasn’t kidding about the cheese. I didn’t know what you’d like so I got it all. Hard, soft, everything in between.”

“What, no cookie dough?” I followed Casey across the living room.

“Cookie dough?”

“You know, trio of cookie dough.”

She turned to face me.

“Trio of cookie dough,” I said. “Manicures. Crank calls?”

“What are you talking about?”

And I realized it even before my hand closed around the invitation in my pocket.

The invitation Casey hadn’t sent.

I’d handled the hot-pink envelope so much over the past three weeks it had gotten soft. I passed it to Casey and she pulled the card out. After one glance she walked over to the rolltop desk in the corner, so fast I didn’t have a chance to read her expression.

She handed me a piece of filmy blue stationery. “We’ve been had.”

The handwriting’s resemblance to mine was impressive.

“‘Dear Casey, I’ve been thinking about our friendship a lot lately, and missing you. Would you mind if I came for a visit? I’ll be in town on...’”