Jill Barnett - The Days of Summer

Rachel came running outside. “Rudy!”

He jammed his key in the ignition.

She pulled open the passenger door. “Stop! Wait!”

“Go to hell.”

She crawled inside and tried to grab the keys. “Don’t leave.”

Rudy grabbed her wrist, pulled her across the seat until her face was inches from his. “Get out or I’ll drag you with the car.” He shoved her away and started the engine.

“No!” She closed her door and reached for the keys again.

His foot on the gas, the car raced down the street, straddling lanes as he struggled for control. Tires screeched behind them, but he didn’t give a damn.

“Rudy, stop!” She sounded scared, so he turned the next corner faster. The car fishtailed and he floored it again. She hugged the door and seemed to shrink down into someone who actually looked human, instead of a goddess who painted intricate canvases and saw the world with a mind and eye unlike anyone else’s. Ahead the stoplight turned red. He slammed on the brakes so hard she had to brace her hands on the dashboard.

“You’re driving like a madman. Pull over and we can talk.”

“There it is again, Rachel, that calm voice. Your reasonable tone, so arrogant, as if you are far above the rest of us mere mortals because you don’t feel anything.”

“I feel. You should know. I feel too much. I know you’re upset. We’ll talk. Please.”

“Upset doesn’t even come close to what I am. And it’s too fucking late to talk.” The light turned green and he floored it.

“Rudy, stop! Please. Think of the boys,” she said frantically.

“I am thinking of the boys. What about you? Can you ever think about anyone but you?” He took the next corner so quickly they faced oncoming traffic, honking horns, the sound of skidding tires. A truck swerved to avoid them. It took both of his hands to pull the careening car into his own lane. At the yellow signal, he lifted his foot off the gas to go for the brake, paused, then stomped on the accelerator. He could make it.

“Don’t!” Rachel shouted. “It’s turning red!”

“Yeah, it is.” He took his eyes off the road. “Scared, Rachel? Maybe now you’ll feel something.” Her whimpering sound made him feel strong. His father was wrong. He wasn’t a weak fool. Not anymore. The speedometer needle shimmied toward seventy. The gas pedal was on the floor. He could feel the power of the engine vibrate through the steering wheel right into his hands.

“Oh, God!” Rachel grabbed his arm. “Look out!”

A white station wagon pulled into the intersection.

He stood on the brakes so hard he felt the seat back snap. The skid pulled at the steering wheel, and he could hear tires scream and smell the rubber burn. Blue lettering painted on the side of the station wagon grew huge before his eyes:

ROCK AND ROLL WITH JIMMY PEYTON

AND THE FIREFLIES

The other driver looked at him in stunned horror, his passengers frantic. One of them had his hands pressed against the side window. A thought hit Rudy with a passive calmness: they were going to die. Rachel grabbed him, screaming. With a horrific bang, her scream faded into a moan. The dashboard came at him, the speedometer needle still shimmying, and everything exploded.

CHAPTER 2

Seattle, Washington

Three hours ago, a complete stranger stood in the doorway of a downtown apartment and told Kathryn Peyton her husband was dead. The stranger, a local police detective, wanted to notify her before some reporter did, but the news flashed on the radio within minutes after she closed the front door.

“ Twenty-six-year-old singing star and entertainer Jimmy Peyton, whose fourth record went number one last week, died tragically tonight in a deadly car accident in LA .”

Hearing the report on the radio made her husband’s death more real—how could this be happening?—and when Kathryn called Jimmy’s mother, she was told Julia Peyton was devastated and unavailable. So Kathryn dialed her sister in California and talked until nothing was left to say and staying on the phone was empty and painfully awkward.

A few reporters called to question her. She hung up and unplugged the phone. Later came the knocks on the door, which didn’t sound as loud from her bedroom, and by midnight they’d left her alone. In her bedroom with the curtains drawn, it was easy to ignore the doorbell, to turn off the phone, to lie on their bed holding Jimmy’s pillow against her, holding on so tightly every muscle in her body hurt.

The smell of his aftershave lingered on the pillowcase; it was on the sheets, and faintly recognizable on the oversized blue oxford shirt she wore. Sheer panic hit her when she realized she would have to wash the pillowcases and sheets; she would have to get rid of his shirt, all of his clothes, or turn into one of those strange old women who hoard the belongings of the one they’d lost and who kept rooms exactly as they had been—cobwebbed shrines to those taken at the very moment they were happiest. Now, alone in the dark, Kathryn cried until sleep was her only relief.

The ringing of the bedside alarm startled her awake, then made her sick to her stomach, because every night when Jimmy was on the road, he would walk offstage and call her. I love you, babe. We brought down the house .

But in this surreal world where Jimmy no longer existed, the alarm kept ringing while she fumbled in the dark for the off switch, then just threw the damned clock against the wall to shut it up. A weak, incessant buzzing still came from a dark corner of the room, and she wanted to put the pillow over her head until it stopped, or maybe until her breathing stopped.

Eventually, she got up and turned off the alarm. A deep crease on the wall marked where she’d thrown the clock. The paint was only three weeks old and blue like the sheets, like the quilted bedspread and the chairs, blue because Jimmy’s latest hit song was “Blue.”

Kathryn dropped the clock on the bed and walked on hollow legs into the bathroom, where she turned on the faucet and drank noisily from a cupped hand. She wiped her mouth with Jimmy’s shirtsleeve, then opened the medicine cabinet.

His shelf was eye level. A clear bottle of golden hair oil she had bought last week. A red container of Old Spice without the metal cap. She took a deep breath of it and utter despair turned her inside out. The bottle slipped from her fingers into the wastebasket. Seeing it as trash was more horrific than seeing it on the shelf. Didn’t that then mean it was all true? When all was in order on the shelf, life still held a modicum of normalcy.

She carefully put it back exactly where it belonged, next to a small black rectangular case that held Gillette double-edged razor blades, which she looked at for a very long, contemplative time, then she reached for a prescription bottle with “James Peyton” typed neatly in epitaphic black-and-white. Seconal. Take one tablet to sleep . Count: 60 .

Take one tablet to sleep. Take sixty tablets to die. She turned on the faucet and bent down, a handful of red pills inches from her mouth.

“Is that candy, Mama?”

“Laurel!” Kathryn shot upright, the pills in a fist behind her back, and looked down at the curious face of her four-year-old daughter. “What are you doing up?”

“I want some candy.”

“It’s not candy,” she said sharply.

“I saw Red Hots, Mama.”

“No. It’s medicine. See?” Kathryn opened her hand, then put the pills back inside the bottle. “It’s just medicine to help me sleep.”

“I want some medicine.”

Kathryn knelt down. “Come here.” Laurel would have found her. Laurel would have found her. Shaking and numb, she rested her chin on her daughter’s head, surrounded by the scent of baby shampoo and Ivory soap, a familiar, clean smell. It took a long time for Kathryn to let go.