Free A Week in Summer: A Short Story by Maeve Binchy Page A

planets from their children, they say, and, Lord, I’ve seen enough of it in the houses where I deliver food. But older parents? That’s a solar system even farther away. Anyway, whyshould the girls hang out around our home, with Brian always so worried about everything, big lines of worry etched into his forehead, and me always up to my elbows in pastry dough? Not much fun with us. And I remembered my own childhood. I didn’t want to hang around my house when I was younger, either.
    And, of course, I could have gone away with my girlfriends. (All right, we’re all in our fifties, but we think of ourselves as girls and we always will.) But I didn’t want to spend our hard-earned money on a vacation with them. I wanted to be with Brian. I love Brian. I always have, since the day I met him, with his dreams and poetry and hopes of changing the world. It didn’t matter that he didn’t earn much of a living or that nobody thought very highly of him. He was the man I wanted; always has been. I can just see him in a tuxedo, like the men in the advertisements. I can see us spending long afternoons in a bedroom, a cabin, a sleeping-car compartment. Wherever. I can see us exchanging a knowing glance that says there will be more of that later on. I’m not sure why I can see this so clearly, but somehow I can. And Brian needs a holiday even more than I do these days. You see, he has just been suspended from his school. It’s August now, and he hasn’t any position for September, when the school year starts. A man of fifty-seven without a job. And all because he had to speak his mind. And what’s more, to speak it at the parent-teacher association.
    It was the occasion for congratulating the school for doing so well and for concentrating on the positive side of things. But my Brian had to choose the occasion to tell people that he did not think the war in Iraq was a just war. This was in a community that had already lost two young men on tours of duty. They didn’t even wait until the next day to tell him that his services would no longer be needed. The principal came around to our house that night and said he was sorry, but feeling was running too high. “I’ll only teach math in future,” poor Brian had promised. “Too late,” the principal said.
    It hit Brian very hard. He didn’t want me to tell the girls. “I don’t mind you knowing that I’m an all-time loser,” he pleaded, “but I don’t want my daughters to know this. Not yet.” But Mel and Margy would have to know come September, when Brian wasn’t returning to school, I told him. “Hey, honey,” he said. “They’re not really all that interested in what I do or don’t do. Just give me time, Kathleen, just give me a little time. I know I don’t deserve it, but I can’t breathe properly. This would give me some breathing space.”
    I don’t know why I agreed, but I did. “Right,” I said. “I’ll trade you. We have a vacation together—just one vacation–and then I’ll give you time.”
    He smiled a horrible smile, as if there was nothing behind it. As if he was an empty head. All the color and life had gone out of his face.
    “And maybe you might go to the doctor for a checkup, too,” I suggested.
    “Don’t move the goalposts, Kathleen. A week in summer. You organize it. That’s the deal.”
    He looked wretched. He didn’t want a holiday. I loved him to bits. Maybe a kinder person would say forget the holiday. But somehow I thought it would be the making of us.
    “A week in summer, that’s the deal,” I said, and we linked little fingers, the way kids do.
    He never asked where we were going to go; he made no suggestions. His face was gray; his mind was miles away. Brian was more of a shadow than a man. So I did it all. I found his passport. I checked our savings account to see how much we could spend and then I went to the Snappy Seniors’ Travel Agency to discuss dates and venues with one of their Vacation Buddies.
    His name was