“I know, babydoll!” Flip calls back.
Tracy runs back to me, kisses my cheek noisily, pulls back. “Are you sure about the white shirts?”
“Yes. Go!” I say, and with a twirl of skirt and a slam of the door, she’s gone.
“Soooo, there’s an SAT test prep at Stony Bay High this August,” Nan says as we walk to the B&T. We stopped at Doane’s and she’s slurping her cookies-and-cream milkshake while I crunch the ice of my lime rickey.
“Be still my heart. It’s summer, Nan.” I tip my face up to the sun, take a deep breath of the warm air. Low tide. The sun-warm scent of the river.
“I know,” she says. “But it’s just one morning. I had the stomach flu when we took them last time, and I only got nineteen hundred. That’s just not good enough. Not for Columbia.”
“Can’t you take it online?” I like school and I love Nan, but I’d just as soon not think about GPAs and test scores until after Labor Day.
“It’s not the same. This is proctored and everything. The conditions are exactly like the actual test. We could do it together. It would be fun.”
I smile at her, reaching over to snag her milkshake for a taste. “This is your idea of fun? Couldn’t we just swim in shark-infested waters instead?”
“Please. You know I get totally freaked out about these things. It would help to practice under real circumstances. And I always feel better knowing you’re there. I’ll even pay your fee. Pleeease, Samantha?”
I mutter that I’ll think about it. We’ve reached the B&T, where we have to fill out paperwork before we start work. And there’s another thing I want to do too.
I’m sweating slightly as I knock on the door of Mr. Lennox’s office, peering around guiltily.
“Do come in!” Mr. Lennox calls. He looks surprised when I poke my head in.
“Well, hello, Ms. Reed. You do know your first day isn’t until next week.”
I enter the office and think, as always, that they should get Mr. Lennox a smaller desk. He’s not a tall man, and it looks as if the massive slab of carved oak is swallowing him whole.
“I know,” I say, sitting down. “Just filling out the paperwork. And I was wondering…I need to…I’m hoping to get back on the swim team this year. So I want to train. I wondered if maybe I could come in an hour early, before the pool opens, and swim in the Olympic pool?” Mr. Lennox leans back in his chair, impassive. “I mean, I can use the ocean and the river, but I need to get my timing down, and it’s easier if I’m sure how far I’m going and how fast.”
He tents his fingers under his nose. “The pool opens at ten a.m.”
I try not to let my shoulders slump. Swimming with Jase the other night, competing, even in a casual way, felt so good. I hated giving up swim team. My grades in math and science dipped to B’s midway through fall semester, and so Mom insisted. But maybe if I up my time and try really hard…
Mr. Lennox continues: “On the other hand, your mother is a valuable member of our board of directors…” He moves his fingers away from his face enough to show a tiny smile. “And you yourself have always been a Most Satisfactory Employee. You may make use of the pool—as long as you follow the other rules—shower first, use a bathing cap, and Do Not Let Another soul Know of our Arrangement.”
I jump up. “Thank you, Mr. Lennox. I won’t, I promise. I mean, I’ll do everything you say. Thank you.”
Nan’s waiting outside when I emerge. When she sees my smile, she says, “You do realize that this is probably the only time in his entire existence that Lennox has colored outside the lines? I don’t know whether to congratulate him or keep pitying him.”
“I really want this,” I tell her.
“You were always happier when you were swimming,” Nan agrees. “And a little out of shape now, maybe?” she adds casually. “It’ll be good for you.”
I turn to look at her, but she’s already a few steps away, heading back down the hall.
I have the late shift at Breakfast Ahoy the next day, nine to one instead of six to eleven. So I decide to make myself a smoothie while Mom frowns at her phone messages. This is the first time I’ve really seen her in days, and I wonder if now’s the time to tell her about Clay. I decide I will just as she snaps her phone shut and opens the refrigerator door, tapping her open-toed sandal on the floor. Mom always does this in front of the fridge, as though she’s expecting the bowl of strawberries to shout “Eat ME” or the orange juice to jump out and pour itself into a glass.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
This is a favorite technique too, silence so loud someone has to start talking to fill it. I open my mouth again, but to my surprise, it’s Mom who speaks first.
“Sweetheart. I’ve been thinking about you.”
And the way she says it, I just can’t help myself. “About my summer schedule?” I ask, and instantly feel guilty for the sarcasm under my words.
Mom takes a carton of eggs out, stares at it, returns it to the refrigerator.
“That, certainly. This election won’t be easy. It’s not like the first time I ran, when my only opposition was that crazy Libertarian man. I could lose my seat if I don’t work hard. That’s why I’m so grateful for Clay. I need to concentrate, and know you girls are taken care of. Tracy…” More foot tapping. “Clay thinks I shouldn’t worry. Let her go. She’ll be off to college in the fall, after all. But you…How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?”
“I’m seventeen. I understand everything.” I have another flash of Clay and that woman. How do I bring it up? I lean past her for the strawberries.
Mom reaches out to flick my cheek with a finger. “It’s when you say things like that that I remember how very young you are.” Then her face softens. “I know it’ll be hard for you to get used to Tracy being gone. Me too. It’ll be quiet around here. You understand that I’m going to have to be working hard all summer, don’t you, sweetie?”
I nod. The house already seems still without Tracy’s off-key singing in the shower or her heels hammering down the stairs.
Mom pulls the filtered water out of the refrigerator and pours it into the teakettle. “Clay says I’m bigger than this position. I could be important. I could be something more than the woman with the trust fund who bought her way into power.”
There were a lot of editorials that said exactly that when she won the first time. I read them, winced, and hid the paper, hoping Mom never saw them. But of course she did.
“It’s been so long since anyone has looked at me and really seen me,” she adds suddenly, standing there holding the filtered water. “Your father…well, I thought he did. But then…after him…you get busy and you get older…and nobody really looks your way anymore. You and Tracy…She’s off to college in the fall. That’ll be you in another year. And I think…It’s their turn now? Where did my chance go? It only took Clay a little while to come to terms with the fact that I had teenaged daughters. He sees me, Samantha. I can’t tell you how good that feels.” She turns and looks at me, and I’ve never seen her…glow like this.
How can I say “Uh—Mom—I think he might be seeing someone else too”?
I think of Jase Garrett, how he seems to understand without me having to explain things. Does Mom feel that way with Clay? Please don’t let him be some skeevy womanizer.
“I’m glad, Mom,” I say. I hit BLEND and the kitchen fills with the sound of pulverizing strawberries and ice.
She brushes the hair off my forehead, then sets the filtered water down and hovers near my elbow until I turn off the blender. Then silence.
“You two, you and Tracy,” she finally says to my back, “are the best things that ever happened to me. Personally. But there’s more to life than personal things. I don’t want you to be the only things that ever happen to me. I want…” Her voice trails off and I turn around to find her looking away, off somewhere I can’t see. Suddenly, I feel afraid for her. As she stands there, her expression dreamy, she seems like a woman—not my mother, the vacuum cleaner queen, who rolls her eyes at the Garretts, at any uncertainty at all. I’ve only met Clay twice, really. He has charm, I guess, but apparently my dad did too. Mom’s always said that bitterly—“Your father had charm”—as though charm were some illicit substance he’d used on her that made her lose her mind.
I clear my throat. “So,” I say, in what I hope is a casual, making-conversation tone, not a probing-for-info one, “how much do you know about Clay Tucker?”
Mom’s eyes snap to me. “Why do you ask, Samantha? How is that your business?”
This is why I don’t say things. I stick my spoon into my smoothie, squishing a slice of strawberry against the side. “I just wondered. He seems…”
Like a potential disaster? Younger? Probably not a tactful way to put it. Is there a tactful way to put it?
So I don’t finish my sentence—usually Mom’s technique for getting us to tell all. Incredibly, it works in reverse.
“Well, one thing I do know is that he’s gone a long way for a relatively young man. He advised the RNC during the last campaign, he’s visited G. W. Bush at his Crawford ranch…”
Well, ew. Tracy used to tease Mom about the reverent tone she used whenever she spoke the name of our former president: “Mo-om has a cru-ush on the Commander in Chiiee-eef.” I was always too creeped out by it to tease.
“Clay Tucker is a real mover and shaker,” she says now. “I can’t believe he’s taking time for my little campaign.”
I return the strawberries to the fridge, then root around my smoothie with my spoon, looking for more pieces of fruit that escaped the blender. “How’d he wind up in Stony Bay?” Did he bring a wife with him? A hometown honey?
“He bought his parents a summer house on Seashell Island.” Mom opens the refrigerator and moves the strawberries from the second shelf, where I had put them, to the third shelf. “That little island downriver? He’s been burning himself out, so he came here for a little R and R.” She smiles. “Then he read about my race and couldn’t help wanting to get involved.”
With the campaign? Or with Mom? Maybe he’s some kind of secret agent, looking for ways to discredit her. But that would never work. She hasn’t got any skeletons in the closet.
“Is that okay?” I scoop out a strawberry and gobble it down. “That you’re sort of—dating—and he’s, um, advising you? I thought that was a no-no.”
Mom’s always been incredibly strict about the line between the political and the personal. A few years ago, Tracy forgot to bring money to pay for skates at McKinskey Rink and the guy who ran it, a supporter of Mom’s, said not to worry. Mom marched Tracy right in there the next day and paid full price, even though Trace was skating in off-hours.