By Teresa Tumminello Brader
The first boy of summer arrives in June, the heat and humidity as high as August or September. After knocking on the door, he’s backed away, almost to the sidewalk. He says he’s trying to earn money over the summer, asks if I need anything done, like cars washed. I glance at my clean vehicle, barely used these days. I say my husband does such chores. The boy accepts that politely and shuffles off. He’s an older teen, wearing glasses, but I’m reminded of Wybie from the film version of Coraline. My heart goes with him as he passes my open-blinded front windows, certainly my imagination has added the detail of his hands in his jeans pockets.
Two boys of summer appear in early July, wearing school T-shirts and gym shorts, remaining close to the threshold. They ask if I need the grass cut and laugh over a joke I don’t catch. One of them lives down the block. My husband and I used to see him playing with his younger brothers, in their yard, on the sidewalk, in the street, seeming to get older and taller in spurts. Our lawn is trim. I say my husband cuts it. The friends are lighthearted and when they leave, my heart stays. Later I’ll discover the neighborhood boy is sixteen and already has a summer job with our son-in-law, cutting grass two days a week, in between football practices.
The last boy of summer—it’s still July—is short and slightly built. Through the peephole I thought him a child, though he’s got to be the oldest of the bunch, in his early twenties at most. He stands midway between the door and sidewalk, says he does pressure washing, can handle anything we need. I say our grandson has a pressure-washing business. The advertising sign is in our front yard, though I don’t point to it or say that. He’s the first not to leave after I say no thank you and good luck. Whether out of nervousness, desperation, or something else, he continues his spiel, says the first wash is pay-what-you-want. He doesn’t carry anything; if he has a car, it’s not in sight. I suspect his need for cash and I feel hard-hearted.
The next morning a family tragedy will clear these boys from my mind. When I’m able to return to my computer, I see this title in its folder and my heart is twisted into knots. I avert my eyes.
My sleep is never undisturbed. That part is normal. But at 3:40 a.m., I wake hardly able to breathe, congested, almost choking, my hand grasping my throat. My other hand feels its way along the closed bedroom door, the chest of drawers, back toward the bathroom I missed in my dark disorientation. The choking sensation stops and I go back to sleep.
Several hours later we get the phone call.
My husband was a widower when we were married over twenty-three years ago. Today, July 12, is his sixty-ninth birthday. The pressure-washer grandson is less than two months from a birthday he won’t reach, his seventeen-year-old heart stopped in the small hours, or the dawning day, we can’t be sure, by one of the world’s scourges.
No more boys of summer come to our door. Some attend the funeral.
School starts. Fall arrives. Summer temperatures stay.
One night the boys of summer won’t let me sleep. The next day I finally reopen this document, last saved on July 11, and I revise: Hoping the last young man has made it through the summer, and beyond, unlike our boy, whose story I can’t change. Trying to shake a vision of the boy of June still walking the hot suburban pavements, accepting homeowners’ responses with equanimity, eager for a refreshing blast of water from a garden hose as he suds up a car dirty from the street.