Page 36 of Summer Romance

“Keep,” he says, and takes it from me.

We do thisfor an hour, until a quarter of the closet is empty and there’s one modest donation pile on the floor. He is unable to part with any of the good costumes, and I don’t blame him. They have the full cast ofAlice in Wonderlandand theater-quality costumes fromThe Wizard of Oz. There’s a dress and a wig for Morticia Addams that I’m dying to put on.

I turn off the alarm on my phone and say, “So that wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“It was horrible, I need a nap.”

I sort of feel the same way, and I don’t know why. This isn’t my stuff, but there’s something about the careful way their clothes were chosen and stored that makes it all feel so important.

Ethan flops down on his parents’ bed. Now his, I guess. He reaches his hand out to me and I take it. He pulls me to lie next to him. We lie there on our backs, looking up at the amber chandelier over the bed, and he keeps holding my hand. “It’s like they’re dead,” he says. “It feels weird to be doing this. What if they come back? What if they get sick of Florida and come back in time for the jack-o’-lantern lighting and there are no orange pants? Where are they going to find orange pants?”

“For a year after my mom died, I dreamed that she came back and was angry at me for cleaning out all of her stuff. She was going to a party and had nothing to wear.” I laugh a little to take the heaviness away. It’s been two years and I’m still not able to share light thoughts about my mom.In time, sweetheart.

Ethan turns to me. “You were able to clean out your mom’s stuff, but you can’t clean out your own? That seems a lot harder.”

“It was pretty horrible. There was so much stuff, both her lifetime and my childhood. But there was no one else to do it. I brought Cliffy with me most days, while the girls were in school, so that kept me from getting too dark about the whole thing. And I actually found treasures in there.”

“Like what?”

I shake my bracelet down on my wrist. “She had this made for me when I was eight. She was a jewelry designer. I don’t know if you knew that.”

He reaches over and touches the little silver soccer ball and his fingers graze the inside of my wrist. “I didn’t know that. So did you find jewelry?”

“No, just more hooks. Like the things she’d use to attach a charm to the bracelet.” He’s waiting for me to go on. “I don’t know, it just felt like hope or something, like she thought more things might happen to me.”

“Of course more things are going to happen to you.” Once he’s repeated it back to me, I am aware of the passive voice I’ve used. I want to correct myself: I might do more things.

“Maybe. So I kept the hooks, hundreds of them, andthe tiny pliers she used to attach them.” She gave my girls bracelets too, but only lived long enough to give them a few charms. Soccer balls. A lightning bolt for when Iris finished the Harry Potter series, a gold hoop for when she took Greer to get her ears pierced. I’ve meant to keep up with it because that’s on me now, but I’m not a jewelry designer, and when I try to find similar charms online, it’s just sort of depressing. “I probably kept too much of her stuff, but the process was good for me. I guess it was a way of honoring her. Tidying up her life.”

“And that’s not something you’d do for yourself?” he asks.

Apparently not. I think of the half-unloaded groceries that are waiting for me at home. I don’t want to talk about this. “I honor myself plenty. I have enough candles in my bathroom to burn the house down.”

He turns onto his side to face me, so I do too. “What now?” he says. His mouth is so close to mine that I can feel his breath on my lips.

“What do you mean?”

He runs a finger down my neck, leaving goose bumps. “Please don’t make me go back into that nightmare of a closet.”

“Fifteen more minutes,” I say. “And then maybe we have our third date.”

21

I see Ethan Wednesday and Thursday while my kids are at camp. “Clean out the house” has become code for “skateboard and make out.” I feel like I’m sixteen and I’m riding the wave of something bigger than me. I reach for a roll of packing tape, and the brush of an arm leads to the grip of a neck, and, before I know it, I am up against a refrigerator for twenty minutes. Or maybe it’s five. I have all sorts of alarms set on my phone because I lost my mastery of time. Stopping ourselves becomes increasingly difficult, and the kissing-only rule has been loosened. “Any Ali is better than no Ali,” he whispers into my neck.

I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a small half-pipe in the basement he nearly burned down. He talks me through the fundamentals of skateboarding while also encouraging me to let go of my fear. He wants me to get my head around skating up to the top and then skating back down. It’s all physics and gravity, but also a lot of letting go and changing course, which, for me, happens in very small increments.

Friday is our custody mediation session, and Iaccidentally spend the morning with Harold at the inn. I’d noticed from the dog park that the flag hadn’t been raised, and upon closer examination, the garbage hadn’t been picked up either. He sort of left me no choice. I was worried I was overstepping, but the moment I walked into his office he pulled out his desk chair for me and said, “Have at it.” I put together a detailed to-do list—what to order when, and a checklist for the most important tasks to manage. Making sure the garbage is out on time is top of the list.

When I get home, I am buoyed by the progress at the inn, so I set a timer on my phone and spend ten minutes loading the dishwasher and scrubbing the pots in the sink. This feels a tiny bit like self-care.

I get a text from Ethan: I’ll meet you there at eleven. Still working on my costume.

Me: Can’t wait to see. What should I wear?

Ethan: Your regular weary housewife clothes are perfect.

Me: Ouch.

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