Jill Barnett - The Days of Summer

“Med schools are packed. No one wants to go to Da Nang.”

“Too many body counts on the news. Was that the last of your applications?”

“No. I haven’t heard from San Diego, Texas, and University of Southern California.”

“What are you going to do if they all say nada ?”

Head down, Cale rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“I can’t believe you gave away your Grade Point Average for a forty-inch bust. Did you go to any classes last year?”

“Some.”

There was a long pause before Will asked, “Was she worth it?”

Cale laughed bitterly. “No.”

“Have you talked to your grandfather yet?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. I’m looking forward to that conversation.”

Will picked up a basketball and began to toss it from hand to hand. “Victor Banning. The great and powerful Oz. I only met him once. Kept wishing I had a crucifix to hold in front of my face.”

“One of his better qualities.”

“He has to be able to help you. With his connections?” Will quit tossing the basketball and faced Cale. “What would happen if you had a heart-to-heart talk with him?”

“He doesn’t have a heart.”

“Talk to him.”

“I’ve spent years trying to talk to my grandfather. No one talks to Victor. He talks to them. Every time I go home, I hear about how I’m throwing my future away. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t go home.” Cale looked down, then shook his head. “God, Will. How could I screw up so bad?”

The only sound in the room was the basketball bouncing off the ceiling, then nothing but a long silent pause. Will held the basketball at chest level, looking at him. “Bad- ly ,” he said, and threw the ball at Cale.

Instinctively, Cale caught it, then laughed. “Kiss my ass, you literate jock.”

Will grabbed the ringing phone. “Timothy Leary’s House of Hash. You smoke ’em, we coke ’em.” His gaze shifted to Cale. “Yeah, he’s here … somewhere. Let me see if I can find him. Oh, I think I see his foot. There! Yes! In the corner! He’s buried under … Wait! Wait, I need a skip-loader here.” He paused for drama, then shook his head. “Uh-oh. Too bad. Looks like he’s a goner. Make a note for his epitaph, will you? ‘Here lies Cale Banning, who, on April 3, 1970, suffocated to death under the largest pile of med school rejections in the history of the modern world.’” Will held out the phone and whispered, “It’s Jud. Lucky Mr. Four-F.”

“Hey, there, big brother.”

“Hey, you.” Jud’s bass voice sounded exactly like their dad’s. Cale always had to take that one extra second to remember who was on the other end.

“Will Dorsey is a nutcase,” Jud said.

“Yeah.” Cale looked at Will. “I know. You ought to try living with him. It’s like being trapped inside a Ferlinghetti poem.”

Will flipped him off and jogged into the bathroom. A couple of seconds later, Cale heard the shower running, then the tinny notes of a transistor radio playing a Jimi Hendrix song. “What’s going on?” Cale asked Jud.

“I’m on a pay phone at the steamer dock, waiting to board the boat. I’m going to the island a day early.”

Damn … He’d forgotten this was the weekend they’d planned to meet at the Catalina place. “I can’t leave yet, Jud. There’s a play-off game tonight.”

“I know. I just wanted to let you know I’m going over early. I’ve got to get out of here today.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What isn’t wrong.” Jud sounded disgusted.

“Victor.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get me started. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

They hung up. He hadn’t seen Jud in months. Cale used school as an excuse to avoid going home; it had become a comfortable habit. He used sports, studying, anything to weasel out of going to Newport. Nothing waited for him at home but Victor’s expectations. He grabbed his game gear from under the bed, slung the athletic bag over a shoulder, and hammered on the bathroom door, then opened it. Steam hit him in the face. “How long are you going to be in here?”

“Till I’m clean.”

Cale turned down the radio.

“What’s going on with Mr. Perfect?” Will asked.

“Jud’s not perfect.”

“He’s a helluva lot closer than anyone I know.”

Cale glanced in the mirror at his foggy reflection. Smeared and far from perfect. Maybe his grandfather wasn’t the only person he was avoiding. Jud had been accepted to his first choice—Stanford—for both undergraduate and graduate studies. He wouldn’t have any idea what a rejection letter looked like. Cale’s most insurmountable problems were a piece of cake for Jud, who skated through life on silver skates, never slipping, never falling. Never failing. Jud first took off for college when Cale was still in high school, and he knew he would never forget that summer, because Victor gave Jud their dad’s MG.

By August it was just Victor and him, which meant they lived in a house of silence until a long weekend or school vacation when Jud came home. Life was pretty much a set formula. Jud set the bar; Cale usually failed to meet it. From the very day they drove up to their grandfather’s home in that long black limo, his life had been very different from his older brother’s, and he had the feeling that was exactly the way Victor wanted it.

Cale zipped his shaving kit closed. “I’m going to meet my brother tomorrow at the Catalina place. Since it looks like you’re gonna stay in that shower till graduation, I’m heading over to the gym. I’ll shower there.” He closed the door, but stopped in the middle of the room. The torn envelope sat on his bed. Talk to Victor, Will had said. Cale could just hear his grandfather now. You young fool. You let a girl snatch away your dreams. Your only job was to go to college and study, not skip classes and screw some sweet young thing . Victor had an uncanny ability to zero in on an open, bleeding wound and stick a knife squarely into it.

Cale threw the envelope in the trash. No way he would go to Newport now. Will had been right on when he’d called Victor the great and powerful Oz. He was. But for Cale, no place was home.

CHAPTER 6

During the years she lived with Julia, Kathryn Peyton had lost herself. Her mother-in-law hadn’t been old when Jimmy died, only fifty-five to Kathryn’s twenty-three, but she was frail, her bones the first thing anyone noticed about her and much of what gave her the hard look that went along with her controlling nature. With Laurel in the house, Julia’s mind stayed sharp, but her body hadn’t. Those bones shrank into nothingness over twelve years, and even Julia, with her sheer determination to control everything, couldn’t stop her own death.

Those same twelve years had shrunk Kathryn into a nonentity. She was Laurel’s mother, Julia’s daughter-in-law, a reclusive artist known only through the pieces sold. No Kathryn. Her life had been dissected into two precise pieces—before Jimmy died and after Jimmy died. Everything before was only a dream, everything afterward alien territory.

It wasn’t until recently that she had faced her own existence with clearer eyes, and saw what it had been—one distraction after another. Laurel needed her. Julia needed her. Her work—a place to hide from what she was really feeling. Then one day she was living in her dead mother-in-law’s home with no one to tell her what to do or how to live. She didn’t fit anymore and felt swallowed by the emptiness of her own existence. Until Evie called with a plan. She was getting married and moving to Chicago, so Kathryn should buy the house on Catalina Island. The timing was perfect. Nothing was keeping her in Seattle. “After all, Kay,” Evie said, “you’re almost thirty-six years old.”