All Summer Long

Part One -- July
Page One

      (July 2) Mari rolled onto her back and yawned. When she finally dragged her eyelids open, she was surprised (for the thirty-fourth morning in a row) to find Blaine sleeping quietly beside her. As her mind worked its way to comprehension, she reflected on her continuing state of shock and wondered if this period of wedded confusion would last much longer. She hoped so. Surreality was pleasant.
      They had taken their own apartment in downtown Layla:), not far from Mari's job at the Pilgrim's Bodega. Blaine worked early mornings as a lifeguard and took extra classes at Layla:) University in the afternoon. He was hoping to graduate a semester early. Mari took care of the apartment after work, and sometimes she sat in on Blaine's music classes. The professors thought it was "cute" for a 17-year-old in pigtails to do a Roman numeral analysis faster and more accurately than a bunch of college adults. The students just got irritated. Mari was finding herself impatient at having to finish high school.
      Junior year had ended two weeks ago, with goodbyes all around. Dream was heading to French horn camp in the Alps. Tianne was going to a summer-long Christian retreat. Frogman was vacationing in Brazil, Dava and the rest of the Wizarding students had internships, and anyone who wasn't rich enough to vacation was working for the summer. Practically the only people left in town were Doreen, who was working at the Seafooderie, and Lynette, Mari's delinquent Girl Sprouts buddy who attended Newshregsburg Private School. Since Doreen and Lynette couldn't stand each other (stemming from Doreen's mysterious two years at NPS), any kind of "girls' night out" was likely out of the question. Doreen did call occasionally, mostly to let Mari know how much she missed Frogman. Lynette came over twice a week to play cards, do crafts, and yack about everything under the sun.
      In fact, Mari thought as she stretched, today was a Lynette day. Blaine had a late night at school, core curriculum classes that Mari wasn't interested in. The thought of girl talk and brownies was almost enough to keep her spirits up during a long shift at the Bodega. And speaking of which...
      "Blaine," Mari cooed into his ear. "Time to get up for work."
      Blaine responded the way he usually did-- by throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the sunlight peeking through the blinds.
      Mari ignored him and got up to make breakfast. She made the same thing every day-- scrambled egg and cheese sandwiches on wheat toast. She also made coffee in their little four-cup percolator, and sliced up kiwi or bananas. On Sundays, they got up late and went to the Shore-ly Good Donut Shoppe on Surf Strip for muffins or bagels.
      While Mari was buttering the toast, Blaine padded barefoot into the kitchen and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "Mmm," he said, sniffing appreciatively.
      "Good morning," Mari laughed. He was never fully awake without coffee. Damned adorable, though.
      They ate in silence, KLPS playing 80s pop softly in the background. Mari finished first and headed for the shower.
      When she emerged, Blaine was dressed and packing a lunch. He would shower after his shift at the beach, a bit of logic Mari had insisted on after one night of sand in the sheets.
      She slipped on a sundress and sensible sneakers, combed her wet hair into a bun, and went back out to the kitchen. Blaine was pulling on his lifeguard windbreaker.
      "I've got a late night, but I'll stop home for dinner," he promised. "What are we having?"
      "Pork loin with pineapple glaze, baked sweet potatoes, and something with zucchini."
      "Definitely making it home for dinner."
      "Lynette will be here." "And brownies for dessert?"
      Mari grinned. Perhaps they were getting into a rut, but it was a good rut.

***
      "Go fish," Mari said later that day, across the kitchen table from Lynette.
      Lynette Today was tall in a gangly sort of way, blonde in a flaky sort of way, and weird in a scary sort of way. She had tumbled into Mari's life, literally, one day early in sixth grade at Calypso Beach Middle School, tripping over someone's bookbag in the hallway and landing face-first in front of Mari's locker. From that moment on, they'd been best friends. And through puberty, braces, and all sorts of gross science experiments, they had stuck together for three years. Then Lynette had gone off to high school at Newshregsburg Private, while Mari took the cheap route and went to Layla:) Public.
      For the past three years, they'd mostly only seen each other at Girl Sprouts meetings and campouts. That was plenty of fun, of course, but they'd sort of stopped being girlfriends somewhere along the way. But since nobody else was around this summer...
      "Got what I wanted," Lynette said, showing her pair of sevens.
      "Dang."
      "Got a nine?"
      "You really didn't have to ask," Mari said, handing over the last card from the deck. "I'm pretty sure you won, too. Don't bother counting."
      Lynette grabbed her stack of playing cards, easily twice the size of Mari's measly stack of matches, and fanned them out. "I rock!"
      "Let's play something else. I think I've got Parcheesi around here somewhere."
      "Nah. Let's drop water balloons off the roof," Lynette said, eyes glittering with malevolence.
      "No! I almost got evicted after the last batch!" Mari protested. "I am not moving back in with Blaine's folks-- nice as they are-- just because you feel like smacking pedestrians with water bombs."
      "Oh, fine." Lynette pouted for a moment, then bounced out of her chair. "I know. We can go down to the hardware store and pick out paint for your bedroom!"
      "Yeah!" Mari cried. She'd been thinking about giving the bedroom a fresh coat of paint. She was really, really sick of "toothpaste green". "And maybe there'll be some interesting people walking around downtown that we can stare at and make up stories about."
      "I still think that undertaker guy steals the bodies and sells them to Layla:) U's medical school," Lynette said, referring to someone they'd seen on their last foray into the wilds of downtown Layla:).
      "Layla:) U doesn't have a med school."
      "Well, they should, so that guy will have someone to sell his cadavers to," Lynette said reasonably.
      "Right."
      "Hey, did you hear about Doreen?"
      Mari locked the door behind them. "What about her?"
      "She's pregnant again."
      "Huh? Again?"
      "Oh, right," Lynette said. "You guys wouldn't know about that. Her parents paid a lot to hush it up. She had twins with this guy from NPS last year. That's why she got transfered to LPHS. He had to go into counseling and I think he's still in some kind of military school abroad, just to stay away from her."
      "Whoa. What about the kids?"
      "Her older brother and his wife took them in, but she won't give up her parental rights so they can't adopt 'em."
      "How do you know all this stuff?"
      "I was her best friend last year," Lynette shrugged. "Heaven only knows why people always come to me for advice."
      "Oh, I get that kind of thing, too. How annoying," Mari said. She shifted her bag on her shoulder, checked the traffic, and dragged Lynette across the street before the Mack truck a block away could barrel into them. "But when I said 'again,' I thought you meant in addition to the one she had about three months ago. So you say she's pregnant for the third time?"
      "Three months ago?"
      "Yeah, she disappeared for third quarter, but we knew what happened. We all think it was with Inda Nett, 'cause his parents took the baby in. But I think they're also like second cousins or something, too."
      "Ew, gross. But, yeah, the third time then. Anyway that's what I hear from Dream, who heard it from Tianne in a postcard, who got an email from Frogman, who presumably is the father."
      "OH, GROSS!!" Mari screamed. Passers-by turned to look at her, but she was entirely oblivious. "I didn't know frogs and people could... ew..."
      "I hear he's no different from human guys in that respect," Lynette whispered.
      Mari shuddered. "I don't even wanna know how you know that."
      "Rumors. Locker-room gossip from guys that don't realize I'm listening."
      "You should go into spying," Mari said. She turned a corner, headed toward the one and only hardware store in Greater Layla:), and therefore the only place in town that stocked paint.
      "Nah, I don't think I could wear the leather cat-suit."
      Mari shuddered again. Dear Lord, but her friends had problems. Then she remembered that she was 17 and married. "So, Doreen's a regular breeding-pod, huh?"
      "You wouldn't think it, with those skinny hips of hers."
      "Shew, yeah. You'd think she'd have broken her pelvis by now."

***
      (July 5) Mari hummed, self-satisfied, as she washed her hands in the bathroom sink. Her bedroom-painting project was done, in record time (three days), and Blaine even liked the theme she'd chosen: Blue Hawaii. Lynette called it the "lei" room, at which comment Mari had blushed becomingly, then chucked an empty paint can at her friend's head.
      Lynette's art skills had come in handy. Mari was ashamed to admit that she had difficulty drawing a straight line with a ruler. But Lynette was an excellent artist and had been more than happy to decorate the walls with big surfboards and leis. She'd wanted to do a giant dragon wrapped around the windows, her specialty, but Mari had forced her into a compromise: one of the surfboards was decorated with a dragon.
      Mari had helped to fill in the larger areas of Lynette's designs, and when the detail work was all that remained, had turned her hand to painting the headboard of the old double bed.
      Said bed had been inherited from Blaine's mother's family, one of those Old World pieces that had been handcrafted millennia ago by some barely-capable ancestor and passed down sheerly out of misguided sentimental value. Mari loved it. She figured twenty-some-odd young brides had lost their virginity in it. Babies had been conceived and born in it. Probably a couple of old people had died in it. It had just the continuity and permanence that Mari was always seeking.
      It had been painted about once every twenty years, mostly in white or black, judging by the chipped-away layers. Some daring decorator had once painted it puce, though, so Mari felt no qualms in adding her own bright lime layer. In deep blue, to match the bedroom walls, she scrawled the lyrics to "Here, There and Everywhere". Lynette had asked if it was a Beach Boys song.
      "No," Mari had replied, "Beatles."
      "Beatles?"
      "They're on the radio a lot, so I bought some albums-- on vinyl-- from the flea market last Sunday. There's some good stuff." Mari had grinned suddenly, eyes gleaming. "That Paul McCartney is a hottie."
      "Isn't he, like, old or dead now?"
      Mari had sighed and launched an explanation. She'd gone through the same thing zillions of times regarding Brian Wilson. Choosing idols from the AARP crowd had its drawbacks, for sure.
      Now, in the bathroom, wiping her hands on a towel, Mari sighed again. She had to work the early shift tomorrow. She had nothing against working, exactly, just... working at Pilgrim's Bodega really sucked.
      "I'm home!" Blaine's voice from the kitchen pulled Mari out of her mirror-gazing reverie.
      "Good for you," she shouted back before emerging from both bathroom and bedroom to meet Blaine in the hall. "How was your day?" she smiled as she leaned up for a smooch.
      "Eh. It went quickly, I'll give it that," Blaine shrugged. "Done painting for the day?"
      "For a lot of days. The bedroom is finished. Finito!"
      "Thank goodness. The futon was a tad uncomfortable. By the way, Dr. Mezzo wants to know if you'll be in class next week. He's got a review by the accreditation board and you make him look good.
      "I'll have to check my schedule." Mari paused. "But isn't that unethical?"
      Blaine smiled tiredly. "Probably. But I took ethics freshman year, so it's hard to remember."
      "I'm sorry your teacher likes me so much, B. If it makes you feel better, you're still a better musician than me. You can play a billion instruments, and I can barely play piano and guitar. And you taught yourself. So what if I can read music, if I can't play it?"
      "Don't beat yourself up on account of me, babe. So, what's for dinner?"
      "Nothing." At the look on his face-- hungry!-- Mari laughed. "We'll order in. Chinese or Italian?"
      "Mmm, calzones. But can we afford it?"
      "Yeah," Mari said. "I saved money from other places, and Lyn's been chipping in for what she consumes here." She cautiously did not mention the "five-finger" discount she'd been taking at the Bodega, in light of their recent ethics conversation. "So we can get a calzone to split, two salads, and even a two-liter of soda if you want."
      "Garlic bread?" Blaine asked hopefully.
      "That's free, thank goodness."
      "You should learn to make calzones," Blaine said.
      Mari laughed her loud laugh again. "Hon, the trial and error would cost way more than ordering in a couple times a month."
      "Point and match."
      "I'll call Andy's, you set the table?"

***
      (July 7) "Ahh," Mari sighed, flopping on the futon. "The end of another harmless day in our bucolic hell."
      "Shew. Bored much?" Blaine asked.
      "Only like every other second. B, I gotta have a new project. And find a new way to avoid Doreen. Cripes, she's been pregnant two days and she's already called me forty zillion times. What do I know about babies?"
      "Hey, let's have a sing-a-long," Blaine suggested, hauling his guitar out of the closet where it had recently been languishing. "Poor thing is so out of tune..."
      "The guitar, or me?" Mari giggled. "I haven't sung since the end-of-year choral concert."
      "You sing with the radio every morning."
      "That doesn't count. It's half humming, and I'm usually imitating, like, Roy Orbison or Bob Dylan. It's not my own voice."
      Blaine nodded and played a few experimental chords. "Any requests?"
      "Beatles," Mari said. Blaine glanced up, surprised. Obviously, he'd been expecting Beach Boys. Mari shrugged. "My tastes change from time to time. How about 'Here, There and Everywhere'?"
      "Okay." Blaine started playing. Mari was always amazed at the sheer volume of songs Blaine had accurately stored away in his head. Sure, she knew a lot of songs, too, but she couldn't play them so fluently on the guitar. Couldn't get her fingers to switch around fast enough.
      "Each of us thinking how good it can be," she harmonized as Blaine sang lead. "Someone is speaking--"
      The phone rang.
      Mari sighed. "We are NOT answering that. It's Doreen, being a pain. Or Lynette, and I just saw her three hours ago."
      "Okay," Blaine said. He picked out the melody to another song. Mari smiled, leaned back, and let Blaine serenade her. "Something in the way she moves..."

***

Page Two