The First Day of Summer

The First Day of Summer

The arrival of summer 1966 marked the end of our time at Washington Elementary School. West Harbor was getting ready to open a new high school and the old one had been designated our first junior high. My brother Rich and his class would be the last to complete all eight grades at Washington and the first freshman class at the new high school. While Rich and his friends wore that knowledge as a badge, my classmates and I were just as certain of our own sophistication. We had already turned twelve, and we would be spending seventh and eighth grades at a bigger school, changing classes and eating in a cafeteria instead of going home for lunch every day.

Summer was my favorite time of year. The sheer freedom of the long, hot days, with nowhere to go, made you feel like you were at a carnival. What ride should we go on next? It was the mid-sixties; the baby boom was swelling schools and neighborhoods with an endless supply of children of every age. You just had to step out onto the sidewalk and look in either direction. Every house spilled out three or four children every morning.

On the official first day of summer vacation, I dressed and hurried down the stairs. In the empty kitchen, the Frosted Flakes made a ringing sound as they landed in the glass bowl, and the bottle of milk in the refrigerator had just enough left in it. I sat down to eat and read the back of the box. I was crunching through my breakfast when I heard June DiBiasi, Rosie’s mother, call her youngest sister, Allison, from across the driveway that separated our houses. The DiBiasi family had lived next door since before I started school. People like to say they grew up with so-and-so, but it wasn’t just something to say where Rosie DiBiasi and I were concerned. We really did grow up in each other’s lives.

Rosie and I had talked about the whole neighborhood and had proclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Eagan the nicest people on the street; not like Mr. and Mrs. Morris, who didn’t even like you to walk on their sidewalk. The Eagans were older than our parents, around fifty, I guess. Mrs. Eagan had a perfect smile and delicate cheek bones and wore her dark curls swept up from her face. Rosie and I imagined a former life for her as an actress. Mr. Eagan was tall and thin, and his horned-rimmed glasses made him look like a professor. He always made a point of saying hello when anyone walked by, and on hot days, Mrs. Eagan made lemonade for everyone who was around.

Wouldn’t you know it, the first day of summer vacation was a rainy one. The good thing was that rainy days meant going to the library with Rosie. Rosie was nine months younger and one year behind me in school. We had been friends since the year before I started school, and we knew even then that our friendship would matter for a long time.

           We tried to figure out how we had come to live with different families when we were obviously sisters. We came to the inescapable conclusion we had been adopted, and our parents had hidden it from us to protect us from the awful truth. Of course, that meant we had to come up with an awful truth.

           Our mother, although heartbroken, couldn’t support us in the way she thought we deserved. Her final act of love was to see that the two households that took us in were next door to each other. We never thought it necessary to include any of our siblings in the story. They were all obviously from a different planet.

What made our instant and real connection most amazing was how different we were. I thought everything could be figured out logically. Rosie always knew what people were feeling. I worried about the state of the world, poring over Time magazine when it arrived, and even saving a stack of old ones. Rosie knew small, everyday things were important and thought everything would work out eventually. I was full of stories about the places I would visit and the adventures I would have. Rosie planned to get married, live in West Harbor and have babies, but she was my biggest fan when it came to my writing.

My old-world grandmother was horrified at the thought that I wasn’t interested in learning to cook or clean or do anything domestic. When I told her I wanted to travel the world and be a writer, you would have thought I was planning to live in one those hippie communes we were always reading about in those years.

           “O Dio!” she wondered. “Marcella, how can a girl have a life without a husband and a family?”

I had heard the stories of her life in the “old country”, which was how my grandparents and all their friends referred to their lives in Italy. But she refused to understand when I told her that here in this place, at this time, a girl could have whatever life she chose. She was afraid I would starve if writing was the only thing I knew how to do.

           But Rosie understood, and she thought writing would be a wonderful thing to do. Whenever I finished a story, she was the first and most times the only one to read it. She asked about the characters and even gave some suggestions, which I often used. I was always interested in her thoughts on where our lives were going.

           “Where do you think we’ll be in twenty years?” I asked on the way to the library. Twenty was the greatest number of years I could imagine.

Rosie veered off the sidewalk to sit down on a bus stop bench. I sat down to listen because she was right most of the time about what people would do.

           “You know what I think will happen to us? I’ll have three or four babies and I’ll live here in town with my husband, in a neighborhood like ours, where we’ll know everyone. My kids will go to Washington School.”

           It made sense to Rosie. That was how she wanted her life to go, and I knew of no reason not to believe her. We sat, ignoring the passing people and cars, while she finished the picture.

           “And everyone wonders about the lady who lives alone in a big house on a hill just outside of town. They think she must be crazy or that she doesn’t like people anymore. But I tell them, ‘No, I know her. We grew up together. She’s a writer and she’s always traveling. She’s a nice person once you get to know her.’”

           She nodded as if to agree with herself as we turned toward the sound of an approaching bus. The rule was you could sit at a bus stop anytime, but when a bus came you had to let the driver know one way or the other. We popped up and continued down Main Street, the hoods of our slickers pulled up against a fine drizzle.

            When we got to the West Harbor Public Library, talk of the future was suspended. Talking was not worth the trouble it got you into. We tried to plan so the nice librarian was working when we went to the library, but that day the mean librarian was there. We were sure she didn’t like us, and we had a story about why she hated children so much. Rose had imagined she was left at the altar by her boyfriend many years before and, after that, had never married. I added that, since she never had a family, she hated being reminded that other people did. With the final drama of her house having recently burned down, it all made sense. At least for us it did.

           The drizzly morning was a perfect time to prowl the aisles, running our fingers across the spines of books and inhaling the smell of paper and ink. We whispered and giggled along the back section, through the books on countries of the world, but when we reached biographies, our chattering caught the librarian’s sour gaze. We chose two books each, checked out under her accusing glare, and made our way back out into the gray morning.

           On the way home I thought about Rosie’s description of our lives. It didn’t sound too bad, but did I like living alone on the hill? Did I ever get to have a husband or children? Where did I travel?    

           “Do you think I’ll ever really be a writer?” I asked.

           “Yep. You’ll do whatever you really want to do. You’re that kind of person.”

Years later, when I finally finished it, I sent Rosie my first novel. It was only right that she be the first one to read it. She liked it, and best of all thought it described our neighborhood and the things we did growing up together to a to T. That’s still the best review I’ve ever gotten.