Summerland: A Novel Read Free Page B

thought. That had been one of the rare times when she had craved a partner, a spouse, a husband, someone to turn to and ask, “Can you believe this crap?”
    That was the end of Marcy the psychologist. “Just be aware”: ha! Zoe was aware of that and a lot more. She would take care of her daughter herself.
    Zoe had heard warnings from other mothers since Penny was a little girl: “She’s cute now, but just you wait!” Something sinister lurked on the horizon; it would roll in like bad weather. Adolescence. But Zoe and Penny had remained close. They were
best friends.
As a parenting strategy, this was neither popular nor fashionable, but Zoe didn’t care. She loved her intimacy with her daughter. There were nights when Penny climbed into Zoe’s bed and the two of them slept next to each other, sharing a pillow like orphaned sisters. Zoe continually told both the twins, “You can tell me anything.” There would be no judgment, nothing to fear. She loved them unconditionally.
“You can tell me anything.”
    And right up until the day she died, Penny had told Zoe everything, or what Zoe had assumed was everything.

JAKE
    T hey flew to Boston, then boarded a shuttle bus that would take them to the international terminal. Jake’s father kept doing the shoulder thing. He didn’t touch Jake’s mother at all, not even accidentally, but that wasn’t unusual. Jake’s mind was spinning and flashing like a police light.
Escape! Get back home!
He was ten months away from his eighteenth birthday.
    The dirt on Penny’s grave was as moist and black as chocolate cake. Grass would grow over it, but Jake couldn’t decide if that would make things better or worse.
    Terminal E. Boston to LAX, LAX to Sydney. After that interminable trip, another six-hour flight to Perth. They were traveling to the other side of the world.
    Their gate was filled with jolly Australians. Was there such a thing as a national temperament? Jake wondered. Or were there Australians out there somewhere who
weren’t
open and friendly and affable? Jake’s mother perked up as soon as she heard the accent. It was as if she had been transported into an episode of
Home and Away,
the Australian soap opera that she watched incessantly on the bootlegged DVDs sent to her by her sister May. She swung her hair around gracefully and said, “I’m going for a coffee. You want?”
    “No, thank you,” Jake’s father whispered.
    Jake shook his head.
    His mother gave him a genuine smile, an event that was so rare it actually spooked him. She was the unhappiest person Jake knew, though she hadn’t always been that way. Before Jake’s infant brother, Ernie, had died, Ava had been normal and momlike, maybe a little annoying, maybe a little uptight and preoccupied with giving Jake a sibling. But there were pictures of Ava in the redphoto album where she was making silly faces and kissing baby Jake and Jake’s father. There were pictures of her before Jake was born where she was deeply tanned and wearing a bikini, her golden-brown hair braided down her back. There were pictures of her surfing and kayaking and one of her leaping in midair, getting ready to pummel a volleyball. Jake used to stare at these pictures. That was the woman he wanted to claim as his mother. But since Ernie had died in his crib at eight weeks old, Ava had become jagged and shrill half the time, and mute and despondent the other half. Anger and bitterness—which were really sadness and deep, deep grief, his father said—lived inside her like a monster. Jake’s father pleaded with Jake to try and forgive her for the way she sometimes acted. But it was too much to ask, Jake thought. Jake had grown calluses over his nerve endings where his mother was concerned.
    Ernie had a tombstone in the cemetery, just as Penny now did. Jake’s mother tended the plot at Ernie’s grave; she bought bouquets of supermarket flowers every week. When Ava was home, she sequestered herself in the room where Ernie