A Tale of Two Summers

I have always thought the term ‘summer love’ was a bit cliché. But you know what they (whoever ‘they’ are) say about ‘being on the outside looking in’, ‘seeing is believing’, and any other suitable idiom that can be used to explain that something may seem odd and unbelievable – until you experience it for yourself. Well, I got caught up in a ‘summer love’ cliché of my own some thirty-odd years ago, and it was all because of you.

“Shandy! No!”

I screamed as my puppy dashed onto the busy street by my house. But my warning was too late. I felt the tears begin to prick my eyes as I picked up her bloody, still twitching body and brought her onto the driveway. She was panting, but each breath came out bloody. I knew it would be too late by the time we got to the vet. About five minutes later, she went still in my arms. I do not remember how long I sat there with her. But when I felt your gentle touch on my shoulder and looked up, the fiery orange sky of the evening was beginning to give way to the dark purple hues of the coming night.

“Is she dead?” you asked softly.

I nodded mutely as your eyes bored into mine. Those eyes, reflecting the last of the dying sunset, were the shade of caramel mixed with rich amber. They pulled me in hypnotically and began making inroads on my little fifteen-year-old heart. I stared. And you stared back.

“Kevin! Come inside!”

Your head snapped around at the sharp tone from a woman (who I would later learn was your mother). Then suddenly I realized that you were a complete stranger. You squeezed my shoulder once more before retreating.

Over the next few days, I figured out that you were my neighbour Leroy’s youngest brother, and you were here from the United States spending the summer holiday. My family was renting the bigger side of the house from your sister’s in-laws. Needless to say, we were living in the same house but just on different sides – a typical middle-class residential set-up in Jamaica. Your mother was a weird person and watched you like a hawk whenever you would come onto the verandah. We had not exchanged many words since the night Shandy died, and it was not a problem for me as I liked my own space. But somehow, you were always trying to stir up conversation. You never took the hint to leave me alone.

Then one afternoon, about a week later, I had no choice but to talk to you. I was in pain from period cramps and had gone to the shop for my mother. When I returned, there was no one to open the grill for me. You were on the verandah and quickly went for the key. I could have walked around to the back. But you were already standing in front of me and opening the lock. I remember how sneakily you whispered to me to avoid your mother’s sharp ears, asking how old I was as I looked like jail bait, and you wanted to make sure you would not get into trouble for talking to me. I told you I was fifteen. You smiled and said good because you thought I was thirteen. You said you were seventeen.

That evening, by some miracle, your mother allowed you to sit with me on my side of the verandah. I think she liked me back then. And based on how things unfolded decades later, I know she regretted not letting me know. Maybe if she had said something, things would be different now.

We were soon going to the shop several times a week for both of our mothers. Oh! We volunteered quickly to buy as little as a pound of flour, anything to get some time alone. The best excursions were the furthest ones on a Saturday, which were a good half an hour walk away, where we would take the grocery list and do the shopping for our households for the week. If we had been ten years older, it could have easily been the shopping excursion of a young couple. Those trips provided the time we needed to talk and get to know each other better. We learned that our birthdays were just a week apart, and I never let you forget that you were a mere one year, eleven months, and three weeks older than, not two years as you liked to think. We were both in grade ten at our respective schools, as the Jamaican age system was a little different from the American. We were in higher grades at a younger age. I learned that your family was from rural Jamaica, Portland to be specific, but one by one, you all had come to Kingston, then migrated to the United States after your father filed for you all. You had been the first to go at age twelve.

The long summer days were blissful. But the nights… oh the nights!

There was nothing noisier than a quiet house in the dead of night when every creak of the doors sounded like a siren and every whisper sounded like the screams of a banshee. But we made it work. Whether it was the back porch or the front verandah, after everyone was in bed, we would find each other. Sometimes it was just to sit and have those never-ending, ever-repetitive conversations that seemed to be the first ones we had ever had on whatever the topic at hand was. Other times it was to be, well, a bit naughty. That summer, we crossed off a list of firsts (except one).

We had freedom beyond our wildest dreams as my older sister Charmaine was also in a ‘thingship’ with your older brother Leroy. How cliché, right? They were our unspoken chaperones, and we tagged along to the beach or to clubs that would turn a blind eye to our age. But whereas they were in their twenties and just playing the field, I knew you and I had something authentic. But how tables can turn!

August came too quickly, and with it, the end of your summer vacation. And just like that, you were gone. Enter the new relationship we developed with the post office. The letters flew between us as quickly as the planes could carry them. Kids these days have a meltdown if their text goes unread for sixty seconds. Ha! Try waiting for a letter for three weeks. But we made it work. The months flew by, and just like that, summer was here again. This time around, you came in late June when I was in the final stages of my CXC exams and graduation practice.

I remember getting home from exams, and just knowing that you were there brought a smile to my face. I could not change out of my uniform quickly enough! This year was different. Sixteen and eighteen are a little different from fifteen and seventeen. We were grown! At least, that is how I felt. And being grown, I felt - ready.

This summer was different in many ways, though. For starters, our freedom was curtailed, not because of anything we had done, but because of what the adults did not want us to do. You see, Charmaine and Leroy had an ‘oops’. And our mothers did not want us following suit. But because they were grown, things were allowed to slide. On top of that, Leroy had migrated to the United States in March, and Charmaine was due in July, so any hopes of having chaperones were gone. You were there for my graduation from high school, which was followed a few days later by the birth of our nephew. I remember that night at the hospital as we waited to hear the news. We had actually gone out to the balcony to talk about our own dreams of longing for the day when we would be the ones welcoming our child. We were so smitten with each other! And we had a plan.

But our true love bore the brunt of our older siblings’ sins as we came under heavy scrutiny. Time was precious and often stolen. But we made the best of it despite the watchful eyes. Each day, we were monitored. Our shopping excursions were now joined by your ten-year-old nephew, Matthew. He walked ahead to give us our privacy, but there was certainly no stopping along the way (not that we were that crude to find a public space to be private). At home, there were no closed doors. We had to stay on the verandah under any number of watchful eyes. But you know, I was always the one to push the envelope and be bold in plain sight with an innocent smile. Do you remember the evening we had a ten-minute window of opportunity and I made you quiver with just a few light touches, and the excuse you had to quickly make as to why you needed another shower? I was a cheeky one.

The eyes stayed on us daily. But they could only stay open for so long before they drooped with sleep when night came. And short of setting a rotating watch on us, there was very little they could do to keep us apart.

The nights were ours.

Whispered conversations as we lay entwined on the lounge chair on the verandah, looking up at the stars, became our version of sleep. Anyone who has ever been in love knows the energy one can squeeze out for an entire day from just two hours of sleep each night. When the house quieted, we were on the back porch or verandah by eleven-thirty. We did not creep back to our beds until the first hint of dawn touched the sky. Man! We talked, and kissed, and hugged, and dreamed, and eventually had that most important of firsts crossed off the list. If only we knew then what we know now. But when you think you are grown and know it all, reality has a way of reminding you of the child you really are.

August was upon us again.

I remember that last Sunday. You had a morning flight, and we all loaded into the taxi to take you to the airport. You held my hand in the backseat, rubbing your thumb over mine as you spoke without words. I had never been in love before. But I knew then that I wanted this to be my forever story. I could hardly wait for the following summer again.

By some stroke of luck, your flight was delayed and we returned home. Looking back, I see where it could have been fate telling us to make use of this extra time, because life was about to change, and our two worlds were about to diverge. But we did not then have the intel that hindsight brings. And so, we spent the extra hours on the verandah, just talking about everything and nothing. Then you went inside and had your dinner. And it was time to go.

I did not make the trip to the airport again. The last glimpse I would have of you was you in that green t-shirt and baggy jeans getting into the taxi.

If someone had told us then that the next time we would see each other would be a snowy December day, twenty-six years later in Charmaine and Leroy’s front yard (yes, they eventually got married and had two more children), we would have laughed them to scorn. But there we were, just twenty feet apart, but a lifetime of separation between us. We were older, harder, and more disenchanted with the notion of summer love.

Back then, a few months after you left, I had suddenly decided I no longer wanted a boyfriend. I was the first to make a dent in our relationship. A few years later, when I had second thoughts and wondered if we could be salvaged, you became a father in your last semester of college and had to drop out. I got married. Eventually, so did you. And though our families were intertwined by Charmaine and Leroy’s union, you and I never reconnected. Until that December afternoon.

I remember I felt a surge of conflicting emotions, and for the next three years, I would try to salvage something, anything of the love we once had. But you wanted none of it. You told me you had reconnected with someone you had known from your childhood, even before you had met me that summer. I remember cursing at you for knowing I was coming, yet still you deliberately went and sought her out. You loved her, you said. She was your true soulmate, you said. You used me as a scapegoat as your marriage imploded, and I was left being blamed for its destruction while you got even more involved with your childhood sweetheart. Yet still I tried to be even a platonic friend. But there comes a time when pride and self-worth have to say “enough”. And so, at the start of the pandemic, I eventually let you go – completely.

Through the family grapevine, sometimes, bits and pieces of information about you would slip. I heard about your coffee farm, your frequent trips back to the island, and the plans you had made to come back here permanently. Not many knew that there was someone to whom you were coming and that the someone was not me. Then there fell a silence about you and your endeavours.

Five years have passed since, and surprise, surprise, your plans did not go quite as expected. I had finally crawled out of my self-imposed exile and visited my sister for two months earlier this year. Your name was not mentioned, nor did I ask. However, I learned from your mother (in one of our secret little meetings away from the prying ears of my mother and sister) that you were not as enamoured with retiring back home as you once were, and that you had been treated badly by persons you had trusted in your childhood community. I heard that you are now living seven hours away in South Carolina instead of the three you had been when in New York, but that you still make time for a few visits to see your brother and his family each year. I saw the pictures of you at our nephew’s wedding the year before. I heard that you were on hand to help with the renovations of our oldest niece’s house. I heard that your son is trying to figure life out as an adult in his thirties, and your daughter in her twenties (yes, you had a second child) barely speaks to you. I have not heard anything about your childhood love and you two becoming official. (I know if something was going on there, my sister would not have been able to resist the temptation to tell me and would have said something.) I do not even know if you are divorced or just living in a perpetual state of separation from both your wife and your estranged children.

I do not feel any sense of triumph or victory in how your life has unfolded. I am not having an ‘aha’ or ‘told you so’ moment. That would not be very gracious of me.

I do not know what life holds for us now on these separate paths we have taken. Will they cross again? Only time can tell. What I do know is that I will not be sitting around hoping and dreaming. Those days are long gone for me. I may not have the life I wanted, but I have the life I need. We may not have the children we wanted and the happily ever after we dreamed about those summer nights so long ago. But it is in our own best interests to make the best of the present. We cannot rewind the clock some thirty-five years ago and use knowledge of that divergent catalyst to our advantage to thwart the powers that would separate us. I cannot make you love me again. What I can do is know that you loved me once. And that, that is okay for me.

I have never had quite a summer as I had those two summers. Despite where we are now, unable to stand the sight or sound or even the mention of the other, the memories of those two summers are mine to keep and savour. They no longer hurt, nor do I pine for what could have been. They were simply two summers for two kids, dreaming of what could be yet never was.