No books in the bookshelves, just more figurines and photographs of Nan and Tim, very twinnish, in their early years. I study them for the millionth time as Nan spells out her address. Baby Nan and Tim dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus. Toddler Nan and Tim, fluffy-haired and round-eyed, as chicks for Easter. Preschool Nan and Tim in a dirndl and lederhosen. The pictures stop abruptly when they turn about eight. If I remember correctly, they were dressed as Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross for the Fourth of July that year, and Tim bit the photographer.
In the pictures they look much more alike than they do now. They’re both redheaded and freckled. But, because life is unfair, Nan’s hair is a pale, washed-out strawberry blond, and she has freckles everywhere and blond eyelashes. Tim’s got only a few stipples of freckles across his nose, and his brows and lashes are dark, while his hair is a deep russet. He’d be a knockout, if he weren’t always so out of it.
“I’m on hold with Columbia—getting my application,” Nan whispers. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve been totally sidetracked.”
“I called your cell but got Tim, and he wouldn’t look for you.”
“That’s where it is! God. He’s used up all his minutes and now he’s after mine. I’m going to kill him.”
“Couldn’t you just go to Columbia’s website and order the application?” I whisper, even though I know the answer. Nan’s hopeless with her computer—she keeps so many windows open at the same time and never shuts them—her laptop’s constantly crashing.
“My laptop’s in surgery with Macho Mitch again.” Mitch is the incredibly good-looking, if vaguely sinister, computer repair guy who makes house calls on Nan’s PC. Nan thinks he looks like Steve McQueen, her idol. I think he looks sulky and annoyed because he’s constantly fixing the same problems.
“Thanks—yes, and when will this be sent out?” Nan says into the phone just as Tim wanders into the room, hair sticking up in all directions, wearing a ratty pair of tartan flannel pj bottoms and an Ellery Prep Lacrosse T-shirt. He doesn’t look at us, just roams over to the Hummel Noah’s Ark display on the window seat and rearranges the figures in obscene combinations.
He’s just finished putting Mrs. Noah and a camel into a compromising and anatomically difficult position when Nan hangs up.
“I kept meaning to call you,” she says. “When do you start lifeguarding? I’ll be at the gift shop starting next week.”
“Me too.”
Tim yawns loudly, scratches his chest, and places a couple of monkeys and a rhino in an unlikely threesome. I can smell him from where I sit—weed and beer.
“You could at least say hi to Samantha, Timmy.”
“Heyyyyy kid. I feel as if we spoke only a few brief moments ago. Oh, that’s right. We did. Sorry. Don’t know where the fuck my manners are. They haven’t been the same since they shrunk at the dry cleaner. Want some?” He pulls a vial of Visine from his back pocket and offers it to me.
“Thanks, no, I’m trying to cut down,” I say. Tim’s gray eyes are in need of the Visine. I hate it, watching someone smart and perceptive spend all their time getting blurry and stupid. He collapses on his back on the couch with a groan, draping one hand over his eyes. It’s hard to remember what he was like before he started auditioning for Betty Ford.
When we were little, our families spent a lot of summer weekends together at Stony Bay Beach. Back then, I was actually closer to Tim than Nan. Nan and Tracy would read and sunbathe, dabble their toes in the water, but Tim was never afraid to wade out and pull me with him into the biggest waves. He was also the one who discovered the riptide in the creek, the one that zoomed you down and whipped you out to sea.
“So, babe—gettin’ any these days?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me from his supine position. “Charley was going nuts because you wouldn’t go for his nuts, if ya know what I mean.”
“Hilarious, Timmy. You can stop talking now,” Nan says.
“No, really—it’s a good thing you broke up with Charley, Samantha. He was an asshole. I’m not friends with him anymore either because, strangely enough, he thought I was the asshole.”
“Hard to imagine,” Nan says. “Timmy—just go to bed. Mommy will be home soon and she’s not going to keep buying that you took too much Benadryl because of your allergies. She knows you don’t have allergies.”
“I do so,” Tim says loudly, all out-of-proportion indignant. He pulls a joint out of the front pocket of his shirt and waves it at her triumphantly. “I’m allergic to weeds.” Then he bursts out laughing. Nan and I exchange a look. Tim is usually stoned and drunk. But there’s a nervous, jacked-up energy about him now that hints at harder stuff.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say. “Walk downtown.”
She nods. “How about Doane’s? I need some chocolate malt ice cream.” She grabs her purse from a puffy flowered chair and leans over, giving Tim, who is still chuckling, a shake. “Go upstairs,” she says. “Now. Before you fall asleep.”
“I’m not gonna fall asleep, sis. I’m just restin’ my eyes,” Tim mumbles.
Nan nudges his shoulder again. As she moves away, he grabs her purse so she jerks to a stop.
“Nano. Sis. Nan, kid, I need something,” he says urgently, his face all desperate.
She raises a pale eyebrow at him.
“A shitload of jelly beans from Doane’s, okay? But no green ones. They scare me.”
Chapter Seven
On the porch, I grab Nan’s hand, squeeze it.
“I know!” she says. “It’s so much worse since he got kicked out of Ellery. He spends all day like this, and God knows what he does at night. My parents are completely and totally without a clue. Mommy buys all his lies—‘Oh, that’s catnip in that bag, Ma. Oh, those pills? Aspirin. That white stuff? Just salt.’ Then she busts him for swearing—by making him put money in the swear box. He just swipes more from my purse. And Daddy? Well.” She shrugs.
Mrs. Mason is the most relentlessly cheerful person I’ve ever met. All her sentences begin with exclamations: So! My! Well! Goodness! By contrast, Mr. Mason rarely says anything at all. When we were little, I had this windup toy, a plastic chick from an Easter basket—and I thought of him sort of like that. He remained virtually unmoving in a plaid armchair from the moment he got home till dinner, then resumed his position after dinner until bedtime, wound up only long enough to get to and from work and to and from the table.
“He’s even got Tim’s pot plant in with his own plants, giving it Miracle-Gro. What kind of man was young in the eighties and doesn’t recognize marijuana?” She’s laughing, but her voice has a hysterical note. “It’s like Tim’s drowning and they’re worried about the color of his swimsuit.”
“And you can’t tell them?” I ask, not for the first or second or hundredth time. Although who am I to talk? I didn’t exactly ’fess up to Mom about Tim either.
Nan laughs but doesn’t really answer. “This morning when I came down to breakfast, Daddy was saying maybe Tim needed military school to make a man out of him. Or a stint in the army. Can you imagine? You just know he’d be that soldier who got his superior officers so angry they’d stick him in some horrible underground cave and forget he existed. Or ticked off the campus bully and got himself beaten to death. Or got into trouble with some drill sergeant’s wife and then shot in the back by her enraged husband.”
“Good thing you haven’t spent much time worrying about the possibilities,” I say.
Nan loops an arm around my shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Samantha. I’m sorry. I’ve been all caught up in Daniel—going to his graduation parties—just staying away from home, really.”
“What’s going on there?” I can tell she’s dying to get into it, get away from the Tim drama.
“Daniel.…” She sighs. “Maybe I should stick to crushing on Macho Mitch and Steve McQueen. I can’t figure out what’s going on with him. He’s all tense and wigged out about going to MIT, but you know how brilliant he is—and school doesn’t start for three months anyway. I mean, it’s June. Can’t he just relax?”