It’s Not Summer Without You

Milk shakes. Milk shakes were Mr. Fisher’s thing. When Mr. Fisher came to the summer house, there were milk shakes all the time. He’d buy a Neapolitan carton of ice cream. Steven and Conrad were chocolate, Jeremiah was strawberry, and I liked a vanilla-chocolate mix, like those Frosties at Wendy’s. But thick-thick. Mr. Fisher’s milk shakes were better than Wendy’s. He had a fancy blender he liked to use, that none of us kids were supposed to mess with. Not that he said so, exactly, but we knew not to. And we never did. Until Jeremiah had the idea for Kool-Aid Slurpees.

There were no 7-Elevens in Cousins, and even though we had milk shakes, we sometimes yearned for Slurpees. When it was especially hot outside, one of us would say, “Man, I want a Slurpee,” and then all of us would be thinking about it all day. So when Jeremiah had this idea for Kool-Aid Slurpees, it was, like, kismet. He was nine and I was eight, and at the time it sounded like the greatest idea in the world, ever.

We eyed the blender, way up high on the top shelf. We knew we’d have to use it—in fact we longed to use it. But there was that unspoken rule.

No one was home but the two of us. No one would have to know.

“What flavor do you want?” he asked me at last.

So it was decided. This was happening. I felt fear and also exhilaration that we were doing this forbidden thing. I rarely broke rules, but this seemed a good one to break.

“Black Cherry,” I said.

Jeremiah looked in the cabinet, but there was none. He asked, “What’s your second-best flavor?”

“Grape.”

Jeremiah said that grape Kool-Aid Slurpee sounded good to him, too. The more he said the words “Kool-Aid Slurpee,” the more I liked the sound of it.

Jeremiah got a stool and took the blender down from the top shelf. He poured the whole packet of grape into the blender and added two big plastic cups of sugar. He let me stir. Then he emptied half the ice dispenser into the blender, until it was full to the brim, and he snapped on the top the way we’d seen Mr. Fisher do it a million times.

“Pulse? Frappe?” he asked me.

I shrugged. I never paid close enough attention when Mr. Fisher used it. “Probably frappe,” I said, because I liked the sound of the word “frappe.”

So Jeremiah pushed frappe, and the blender started to chop and whir. But only the bottom part was getting mixed, so Jeremiah pushed liquefy. It kept at it for a minute, but then the blender started to smell like burning rubber, and I worried it was working too hard with all that ice.

“We’ve got to stir it up more,” I said. “Help it along.”

I got the big wooden spoon and took the top off the blender and stirred it all up. “See?” I said.

I put the top back on, but I guess I didn’t do it tight enough, because when Jeremiah pushed frappe, our grape Kool-Aid Slurpee went everywhere. All over us. All over the new white counters, all over the floor, all over Mr. Fisher’s brown leather briefcase.

We stared at each other in horror.

“Quick, get paper towels!” Jeremiah yelled, unplugging the blender. I dove for the briefcase, mopping it up with the bottom of my T-shirt. The leather was already staining, and it was sticky.

“Oh, man,” Jeremiah whispered. “He loves that briefcase.”

And he did. It had his initials engraved on the brass clasp. He truly loved it, maybe even more than his blender.

I felt terrible. Tears pricked my eyelids. It was all my fault. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Jeremiah was on the floor, on his hands and knees wiping. He looked up at me, grape Kool-Aid dripping down his forehead. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said, rubbing at the leather. My T-shirt was starting to turn brown from rubbing at the briefcase so hard.

“Well, yeah, it kinda is,” Jeremiah agreed. Then he reached out and touched his finger to my cheek and licked off some of the sugar. “Tastes good, though.”

We were giggling and sliding our feet along the floor with paper towels when everyone came back home. They walked in with long paper bags, the kind the lobsters come in, and Steven and Conrad had ice-cream cones.

Mr. Fisher said, “What the hell?”

Jeremiah scrambled up. “We were just—”

I handed the briefcase over to Mr. Fisher, my hand shaking. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It was an accident.”

He took it from me and looked at it, at the smeared leather. “Why were you using my blender?” Mr. Fisher demanded, but he was asking Jeremiah. His neck was bright red. “You know you’re not to use my blender.”

Jeremiah nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It was my fault,” I said in a small voice.

“Oh, Belly,” my mother said, shaking her head at me. She knelt on the ground and picked up the soaked paper towels. Susannah had gone to get the mop.

Mr. Fisher exhaled loudly. “Why don’t you ever listen when I tell you something? For God’s sake. Did I or did I not tell you to never use this blender?”

Jeremiah bit his lip, and from the way his chin was quivering, I could tell he was really close to crying.

“Answer me when I’m talking to you.”

Susannah came back in then with her mop and bucket. “Adam, it was an accident. Let it go.” She put her arms around Jeremiah.

“Suze, if you baby him, he’ll never learn. He’ll just stay a little baby,” Mr. Fisher said. “Jere, did I or did I not tell you kids never to use the blender?”

Jeremiah’s eyes filled up and he blinked quickly, but a few tears escaped. And then a few more. It was awful. I felt so embarrassed for Jeremiah and also I felt guilty that it was me who had brought all this upon him. But I also felt relieved that it wasn’t me who was the one getting in trouble, crying in front of everyone.

And then Conrad said, “But Dad, you never did.” He had chocolate ice cream on his cheek.

Mr. Fisher turned and looked at him. “What?”

“You never said it. We knew we weren’t supposed to, but you never technically said it.” Conrad looked scared, but his voice was matter-of-fact.

Mr. Fisher shook his head and looked back at Jeremiah. “Go get cleaned up,” he said roughly. He was embarrassed, I could tell.

Susannah glared at him and swept Jeremiah into the bathroom. My mother was wiping down the counters, her shoulders straight and stiff. “Steven, take your sister to the bathroom,” she said. Her voice left no room for argument, and Steven grabbed my arm and took me upstairs.

“Do you think I’m in trouble?” I asked Steven.

He wiped my cheeks roughly with a wet piece of toilet paper. “Yes. But not as much trouble as Mr. Fisher. Mom’s gonna rip him a new one.”

“What does that mean?”

Steven shrugged. “Just something I heard. It means he’s the one in trouble.”

After my face was clean, Steven and I crept back into the hallway. My mother and Mr. Fisher were arguing. We looked at each other, our eyes huge when we heard our mother snap, “You can be such an ass-hat, Adam.”

I opened my mouth, about to exclaim, when Steven clapped his hand over my mouth and dragged me to the boys’ room. He shut the door behind us. His eyes were glittery from all the excitement. Our mother had cussed at Mr. Fisher.

I said, “Mom called Mr. Fisher an ass-hat.” I didn’t even know what an ass-hat was, but it sure sounded funny. I pictured a hat that looked like a butt sitting on top of Mr. Fisher’s big head. And then I giggled.

It was all very exciting and terrible. None of us had ever really gotten in trouble at the summer house. Not big trouble anyway. It was pretty much a big trouble-free zone.

The mothers were relaxed at the summer house. Where at home, Steven would Get It if he talked back, here, my mother didn’t seem to mind as much. Probably because at the Cousins house, us kids weren’t the center of the world. My mother was busy doing other things, like potting plants and going to art galleries with Susannah and sketching and reading books. She was too busy to get angry or bothered. We did not have her full attention.

This was both a good and bad thing. Good, because we got away with stuff. If we played out on the beach past bedtime, if we had double dessert, no one really cared. Bad, because I had the vague sense that Steven and I weren’t as important here, that there were other things that occupied my mother’s mind—memories we had no part of, a life before we existed. And also, the secret life inside herself, where Steven and I didn’t exist. It was like when she went on her trips without us—I knew that she did not miss us or think about us very much.

I hated that thought, but it was the truth. The mothers had a whole life separate from us. I guess us kids did too.