Free Ann Brashares - The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares Page A

appreciate your idealism, you know?" her mother said with a smile that revealed orange lipstick on her teeth.

    Alice winced.

    � 68 � The Last Summer (of You and Me)

    "Yeah, well."

    "You're reminding me of your father," Ethan said. "In the good ways."

    Paul's face remained closed. "I guess he also specialized in polit ical failures."

    Alice saw the obvious emotion in her father's expression. Her father had felt true pathos for Robbie, and he'd loved Paul. Riley sometimes joked that she was the son her father never had, but really that was Paul. And Alice was reminded now of how stony Paul was to him.

    Once, Paul had loved Ethan in return. He 'd attached himself to Ethan like a staticky sock, mirroring Ethan's gestures and opin ions. But some time later he pulled away. Alice couldn't pinpoint the time exactly. She'd ascribed it to adolescent cheek. She'd fig ured it was part of Paul's endless rebellion.

    And it continued even now. She wondered why. She looked from one of them to the other.

    "Do you know if Riley's joining us for dinner?" Judy asked.

    Alice ran up to her room to check on her and found Riley in bed, doing something on her laptop computer. Riley often kept odd hours and made herself scarce when her parents were there. Alice understood Riley hadn't told Judy she was feeling ill. "Do you want to eat with us?" Alice asked.

    "No," Riley said.

    "How are you feeling?"

    "Fine," Riley said without looking up.

    Returning to the kitchen table, Alice looked around, seeing it though Paul's eyes. Her vision changed when he was around, and

    � 69 � Ann Brashares

    she couldn't say if it warped or if it improved or, for that matter, whether accuracy was necessarily an improvement.

    Nobody had a regular seat at this table. It was round and made of a warm-colored wood, so scratched and ringed that the damage had become the surface itself. The chairs were reproduction Wind sors from a sale at Macy's a decade or so ago. Alice remembered the shopping trip, running up and down the aisles of the huge store on 34th Street, delighting in all the little room setups with their prop TVs and fake plants. She sat on a couch in one, lay on a bed in another, trying on a different life for each. It was funny how all the different rooms existed in one gigantic room, how you didn't need walls to divide space. She couldn't remember her family shopping for furniture any other time.

    The window over the sink was big but showed only phragmite stalks and changing slivers of Paul's house. The cabinets and coun ters were a scratchy white Formica that warped in places, showing the swollen, pulpy wood fiber underneath. Alice knew how much her mother wanted sleek cabinets and stainless-steel appliances like their friends had. But her father always said, "Judy, it's the beach," as though that were the reason and no other.

    How staunchly people rationalized the things they had, even (especially) if they didn't choose them. Her father went to rhetori cal lengths to support the philosophy of a simple house at the beach and to assail the grossness of extravagance. But Alice wondered if he would change sides if he had a million dollars.

    Paul espoused the same philosophy, and he presumably did have a million dollars. But Paul had his principles, whereas her father had his feelings. Pride was what they had in common.

    � 70 � The Last Summer (of You and Me)

    Their house was built in the seventies with little generosity in material or design. The flimsiest wood, the most vomitous lino leum, the cheapest fixtures. The doorknobs felt light and wobbly in your hand. Even the aluminum windows peered out oafishly and with a look of apology. Alice often wondered aloud if the builder made it ugly on purpose, but Riley wouldn't hear a word against it. And though Alice judged her home strictly, it was the place she loved most, and she wished for it when she wasn't there.

    There were three small bedrooms upstairs and one truly tiny bedroom