Page 40 of Songs of Summer

“Where are you from, Maggie?” Paul asked.

“Ohio,” Maggie responded tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure of her answer.

“Wow! Really? We live in Gambier,” Bea reported enthusiastically. “We teach at Kenyon College.” She pointed to herself, “English lit,” and to Paul, “applied mathematics.”

“Two professors! That sounds like a good life. I’m happy for you.”

The young woman, Maggie, must have realized it was an odd thing to say, as she turned bright red.

“And you?” Paul asked.

She again took a beat to answer.

“I live in a small town outside Cleveland, Chagrin Falls.”

“I’ve heard of that place—they famously drop a popcorn ball on New Year’s Eve, right?” Paul asked Maggie.

“A popcorn ball?” Bea questioned.

“Yes! The Popcorn Shop has been dropping an eighty-five-pound ball for, like, seventy-five years,” Maggie explained proudly. “It’s not Times Square, but it’s pretty great.”

“How very small-town Ohio,” Paul noted.

Talking about her town seemed to break the girl out of her shell. She continued at about three times the pace of her previous revelations.

“We take our traditions very seriously in Chagrin Falls. After Halloween there’s a huge pumpkin roll. High school kids swipe hundreds of pumpkins off people’s lawns and roll them down Grove Hill. It started as a prank in the sixties and stuck. No one really knows when it will happen. We go all out for Christmas too. The store owners compete for best window decorations, and Santa arrives in the town square in a hot-air balloon. Plus, there’s a documentary film festival every October and Art by the Falls in June.”

“Let me guess. You work for the Chamber of Commerce?” Paul joked.

“No,” she laughed, blushing, “I own a record store—it’s a family business.”

“Wow! Matt must love that!” Bea surmised.

“I heard record stores are having a resurgence. Kids today are embracing that delicious feeling of peeling the cellophane off the album cover, pulling out the sleeve, and reading the liner notes,” Paul said with a sentimental smile.

“They are,” Maggie agreed, putting her hands to prayer. She saw Matt in the distance and jumped ten feet in the air before taking off toward him.

“Young love,” Paul observed wistfully. “Remember when we couldn’t be apart for ten minutes?”

“We still have young love,” Beatrix countered.

“Yeah. As long as you don’t go postal on your sister and end up in jail. I’m not making conjugal visits and smuggling in copies of theParis Reviewand those bran muffins you love from Wiggin Street Coffee.”

Bea laughed.

“I’m not going to kill Veronica. I still love her, you know. She’s still my baby sister.”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” he said under his breath.

She responded with another dramatic eye roll.

“Just behave this one weekend, for your dad’s sake. I know you. If you don’t, the guilt will eat away at you for months.”

She appeared to be pondering his words again when Matt arrived and greeted Paul. The two couples began laying out a varied collection of blankets and throws that brought to mind exotic destinations like Marrakesh and Jaipur, though they were more likely sourced from mall stores like Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters.

After weighing down their edges with books and sneakers and beach chairs, the four took a big step back to admire their work. It looked beautiful, like a Bedouin beach festival. Jake arrived with two surfboards (yes, he could carry two at one time) and instructed everyone to construct two long mounds of sand. He placed a surfboard on each and voilà—two cocktail tables ready to be covered in snacks and libations.

The whole experience reminded Paul of one of those bonding exercises at freshman orientation that he and Bea were forced to attend. They were once charged with building a tower out of spaghetti, marshmallows, string, and tape. Bea was surprisingly competitive.

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