A Summer Morning

Hot--it’s so damn hot out here. Even the air is sweating big sticky drops that tastes like water, only sweeter, and cling to everything. Including and especially this lame-ass getup Mama makes me wear since Uncle Roy kicked the bucket.
He died Tuesday, and I still have to wear the thing. Black and made out of some sadistically heavy wool, it falls from my chin to ankles, encasing my legs in black knee socks, swallowing any hint of femininity I’ve managed to cultivate. I wouldn’t care so much but the fucker itches like a full-body Brillo pad.
Paul coasts into the driveway standing on his Schwin’s pedals. It’s the girls’ model, painted a dull metallic pink with a basket wired to the front, but he doesn’t care.
“Hey,” he says, and laughs. Hard. “Who died?”
I keep a straight face. “My uncle Roy.”
His grin drops and shatters on the gravel. “Oh my God.”
Let him squirm a minute, I think, and watch him tug at the four hairs perched on his upper lip, as if he’s trying to make them grow faster. “It’s no big deal. He was like eighty.”
“Yeah?” Slightly relieved, Paul comes over and sits beside me on the steps. I can smell soap and toothpaste and pimple wash; he must’ve just gotten up. “I didn’t know you had an uncle Roy.”
“Me neither,” I say, “not until Tuesday.”

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“What about Tuesday?”
“That’s when he died.”
“Oh.” Lapsing into silence, Paul fiddles with a bottle cap he finds in his jean pocket. I wonder if it’s from the Coke we took swigs out of all through the matinee a week or so ago. “So, do you feel bad or anything?”
“I didn’t really know him.” I shrug and pluck at my dress. “I kind of hate him for making me wear this, though.”
Mama hums in the kitchen--we can hear through the open window, and I imagine her waltzing among the casseroles and pies, under the fan that does nothing except push around the warmth.
“The funeral baked meats,” Paul says. I swear he can read my mind when he wants to. He really can.
“Yup.” The street is bare--has been since the thermometer passed ninety--but I crane my neck to the right anyway. Nope. “The family should be getting here eventually.”
We both stare into the heat, watching it shimmer over the tar and grass and feeling it breathe down our necks until he says, “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Want to go to the Waterfall?”
Not a real one, of course, not around here. It’s just a pond in the woods with a pile of rocks on one side jerry-rigged to trickle water, and a couple hibiscus bushes planted to make it all tropical. Everybody just uses the town pool, mostly.
“Yeah, I want to,” and it comes out before I can stop it, “but Mama won’t let me.”
His lip curls scornfully. “You always do what your mom tells you to?”
“No.” Yes. “It’s just that there’s the funeral.”
“You didn’t even know the guy.”
“Well--”
“They won’t even miss you.” He stalks back to his bike. “But whatever.”
“Paul.”
“See you.” Kicking up the stand and moving forward in one smooth motion, he starts to gain momentum.
I’ve never seen him so disappointed. It’s kind of scary. “Wait--I’ll come, I’ll come!”
“Hurry up, then!” he calls, halfway down the block. I hike the damn skirt to the edge of my socks and hurry after him.
Eventually he takes pity on me running in all that black (looking, I have no doubt, like a massively overfed crow trying to take flight) and slows to a stop. I collapse onto the handlebars and take gulps of the air that slaps my face.
“Here, get down.”
One last push and we’re through the last clump of trees. “I can’t wait until you get your driver’s license.”
“You and my mom both.” He opens the basket, digs a minute, and a bottle of Coke plummets toward my face. My hands snatch, fumble, panic--drop. Glass and fizzy brown liquid geyser across the dress.
“Crap.”
Mildly amused, Paul looks up from chaining the Schwin to a trunk. “Crap? That’s all you got?”
“For this, yeah. Sorry about the Coke.”
“No big deal. There’s another one in there. And a bottle opener, too, should be.”
I busy myself with finding them, fitting the jaws around the cap, pulling it slowly and listening to the hiss promise cool sweet satisfaction. Summer’s just made for Cokes.
“Give me a swallow before I get in, will you?”
I turn around and find Paul standing there in his boxers. And only his boxers; t-shirt and jeans crumple, abandoned, against a Schwin tire.
My cheeks flame with an embarrassment that feels weird. We’ve been swimming together since kindergarten Guppies, right? So why do I suddenly notice his bare chest, and the funny little bulge?
Disturbed, I sit at the edge and peel off a sock. Sand gritting against my palms, flower perfume kissing my nostrils, cascading water tickling my ears--none of it fools me, not completely. But if I close my eyes and dip a toe--
“Gotcha!”
I have time to register a tug on my bare leg and realize that Mama is going to kill me, lay me out next to Uncle Roy in this hideous, ruined dress just to prove a point, before I plunge into the pond and give in to its silky smooth caresses.
Paul surfaces next to me, right up close and grinning. “Isn’t this a helluva lot better than a wake?”
“Yeah.” I poke his shoulder and dog paddle in the opposite direction. “You’re it?”
An arm slides around my waist and gently, oh so gently, pulls me back. He wants to say something, I think, something important judging from the way his face has gone still. I wait, breathless.
But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything at all.

“Mama, I can explain.” The whopper leaps from my mouth and dances wildly so maybe no one will recognize it for what it really is.
She glares, surrounded by curious relatives holding plates and plastic cups. “Well?”
“I--went for a walk,” I say, and falter to a stop.
“Where, in the ocean?” Her eyebrows swoop together in a V, demanding more.
“You know how those afternoon showers are,” Cousin Sophie interjects. “Come out of the clear blue without so much as a thunder clap to warn--”
“Go apologize to your uncle.”
I much over to the casket, open to Uncle Roy’s top half. He doesn’t look so good; his face is powdered this horribly flat yellow and spreads on the pillow a bit like a flattened balloon. Crossing myself for good measure, I mumble, “Sorry.”
“And change out of that dress,” Mama fumed, “I swear--thirty dollars, plus another fifteen for tailoring--and you’re missing a sock! Where’s your other sock?…”

Half an hour later, the washing machine is chewing on the dress and white linen shorts flap around my legs. Refreshed and liberated but careful to keep my head down and my mouth solemn, I go onto the porch, where I see a black wooly snake staring at me with a dull metal eye.
Thoughtfully, I pick up the sock and the bottle cap and walk back into the house.