Summer of My Youth

Summer and I spoke occasionally after I left. She wrote to me regularly, and I responded at leisure. She congratulated me on my successes in business, and I asked politely of our friends back home.

Summer had no major ambitions. She was happy to merely to exist in that sleepy little town and I couldn’t understand it. Who could be content with sheer existence?

I’m not sure exactly when our correspondence came to an end, but I believe it was around the time I met Jean. Jean was an attractive, ambitious secretary at my office who shared the same dream as me: to succeed. We hit it off immediately. Falling for the secretary is terribly clichéd, but that’s just what happened, and every thought of Summer went right out of my mind.

Jean’s polished poise impressed me. Her blonde hair gleamed with health and always had an impossible shape to it that must she must have spent hours perfecting. It defied gravity. Her makeup, carefully and liberally applied, highlighted the best parts of her face, her high cheekbones and her slightly slanted blue eyes. Expensive clothes clung to her trim body as closely as the sweet perfume she wore. I couldn’t resist.

Of course, two years later when Jean was offered a more profitable position at a company in another state, she took it, and she walked right out of my life as easily as she walked out the door to go to the supermarket. No real thought involved. The same thing I’d done to Summer, I suppose.

*****

We walked hand-in-hand into the woods toward the creek. It tumbled over smooth, slippery rocks, and tiny fish darted in and out between our feet as we waded in. The water was so cold as to be almost painful, and I let out a long breath.

She reached down for a handful of water and splashed it on her sweating face. I did the same, gasping as the ice-cold water cascaded down my neck, soaking the collar of my shirt.

We waded up and down, snatching at minnows in the shallow water and collecting shiny rocks from the silt-covered bottom.

After half an hour or more of play and talk, more like children than adults, we climbed out, our feet like ice blocks, and lay side by side on the bank. The sun began to lower in the sky, and we watched the lightning bugs emerge in the dusk. Her hand felt warm in mine, alive.

My toes tingled as the blood rushed back to them and my fingers tingled from contact with hers.

She turned to look at me, her green eyes pained. “Will you remember this?”

Her voice cracked, almost allowing a sob to escape, and I saw the wetness on her cheeks for what it was, not water from our horseplay in the creek, but tears. I moved my other hand to her face to wipe the sadness away.

“Of course. Always.”

We lay there together, waiting, and when darkness finally consumed us, the fireworks began.

The great bangs in the sky thrilled us and we watched, amazed, as the colors exploded overhead.

*****

As the last firework faded in front of me, like a last hope fizzling out, I drew my last breath. My assistant, Jonathan, kneeled on the floor next to me, on the phone with a 911 operator.

I knew he wasn’t going to be able to help me, though. It was over. Done. My life had come to an end, and it was an ending I never expected. Dying on the floor of your office seems so… ordinary.

Just before I slipped away, I whispered something with my last breath and Jonathan leaned in to hear it, thinking it would be momentous. I always assumed myself that dying people must have some last burst of clarity before life fades. Don’t kings and leaders always go out with some earth-shattering tidbit of wisdom? Or at least a humbling joke that can be laughed over at the funeral? Jonathan would have liked that, to be in on my last joke. Unfortunately, I had nothing to give him.

“Yes?” he said eagerly, taking the chattering operator away from his ear for a moment to hear me better.

“There it is. I remember now.”

“Remember what, Henry?” Jonathan asked, his face within inches of mine, his breath hot on my face.

I smiled, but the smile was not for him.

“Her nose.”