The Last Summer - Softcover

Chapter One

They left Virginia in the soft blush of the summer dawn, the Camaro crammed to the roof with suitcases, string-tied cartons, TV, stereo, a two-foot stack of LPs, and Claire's IBM Selectric in its vinyl shroud. April rode beside her tucked down sullen and silent in the bucket seat with her arms folded, uninterested in the sights along I-95.

They crossed the empty four-lane bridge into Washington, where the Lincoln Memorial glowed lambent in the wash of the rising sun. The city hadn't wakened yet, not quite; the broad avenues were as free as superhighways, and Claire drove out Constitution with the needle dancing on the high side of fifty-five. They swung around the Capitol, Claire's last view of it, looming flagrant and serene and outsized even in this city of shrines, of monuments and temples. Power and secrets, Claire thought. Yes, that's what was hidden, locked, inside all that marble vastness, the only currency that mattered. Power and secrets -- like the gold in Fort Knox. She pushed in the dashboard lighter and felt down between the seats for her cigarettes.

April wrinkled her nose. "Already?" she said.

"You bet," Claire said. She drew the gentle, savory smoke down through herself, felt it take hold in her bloodstream, restful as liquor.

"I hate it when you smoke in the car," April said.

"I know," Claire said.

She tried not to look at the marble fortress of the Old Senate Office Building as they passed it on their left where Constitution rode up past the Capitol and the park. A Capitol policeman in dark blue stood at the top of the corner steps with his hands behind him, staring out into the new light. He didn't notice how fast the Camaro was moving, or didn't care. Not at 5 A.M. Claire thought of the lofty cave-dim corridors with their lustrous wood doors, their muted echoes and whispered voices, and everywhere the heady sensation, the quiet thrill, of history being made all around you, day to day, moment to moment.

"The smoke gets in my clothes," April said.

"Grandma's got a washer," Claire said.

"It doesn't get the smoke out."

"April, don't be a pain," Claire said.

"It isn't fair."

"Don't expect life to be fair," Claire said.

April sighed. "What are you going to tell Grandma?" she said.

"About what?" Claire said.

"You know what. Leaving like this."

"I'll tell her what I told her over the phone."

"That won't cut it. Not in person."

"It'll have to," Claire said.

The park and Capitol were behind them now, the giant dome bathed in the clean, sweet light above the trees, dropping out of sight off the rearview mirror, gone. Pretty soon the colored neighborhoods began, dingy brick houses with rickety-looking front porches. Black, you were supposed to say now. Black power, black pride. Black is beautiful.

"She'll bug you till you tell her," April said.

"Can we talk about something else?" Claire said.

"Ezra says I have a right to know."

"Ezra ought to mind his own business."

"I asked his opinion," April said.

"You do know," Claire said. "I'm sick of Washington. The politics. How many times do I have to say it?"

"You don't leave in three days because you're sick of a place. Ezra agrees."

"Ezra's a nice boy," Claire said, "but he ought to mind his own business."

"I am his business."

"I'm sorry about Ezra. You know that."

"I'll never see him again," April said.

"Sure you will."

"Bull."

"Don't use that expression," Claire said. She crushed out her cigarette in the pullout ashtray on the dash and thought immediately of lighting up another. In three days she hadn't slept much, existing on coffee and cigarettes and the savage desire to leave this place forever, to be back north where she belonged, if it could be said that she belonged anywhere.

"You swear all the time," April said.

"I'm the grown-up," Claire said.

"So?"

"Are we going to fight all the way to Boston?" Claire said.

"We're not fighting," April said, "we're discussing."

They were on I-95 again, wide and empty and white in the hardening morning light. On either side the land lay low and rolling under the gin-clear air, the building heat.

"How do you like the car?" Claire said.

April shrugged. "It's okay."

"Better than the VW, huh?"

"I hated the VW," April said.

Claire had bought the Camaro two days ago through an ad in the Post. It was a '65, yellow with a black-vinyl roof, 42,000 miles on the dash. A rash expenditure: $1,500, but Claire had the money and didn't know when she would again. Then she'd unloaded the Volkswagen at a used-car lot in Silver Spring, taking what the man had offered, $500, not bothering to try to dicker him up.

"You'll be driving it soon," Claire said. "Less than a year."

April didn't answer. She wasn't interested yet in a truce. She had no interest, either, in cars or learning to drive. Cars were a boys' thing, though Claire had learned to drive when she was fourteen, receiving private lessons from her boyfriend at the time, Tommy Riordan, in his father's snub-nosed Chevrolet. Tommy's father was over in Germany helping the good guys finish the war Hitler had started when she, Claire, was still a little girl. A war that had a logic in it that anyone could see, not like Vietnam.

"That's another thing," April said.

"What is?"

"The car. Why'd we get a new one?"

"Did you want to drive eleven hours squeezed inside a VW bug?"

April shrugged her shrug. "We could have."

"April, I want to remind you of something. You hated Fairlington. You told me that a million times."

"I didn't hate Ezra."

"There'll be other boys."

"I don't want other boys."

Claire turned on the radio, found Feliciano's "Light My Fire." It was all over the airwaves that summer. "You will," she said, "believe me."

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't," April said.

The sun climbed higher up the blue dome of the sky and the highways came alive with their heavy summer traffic -- families on the move, trucks, and Greyhound buses. The roads now gave back a dull, persistent glare while car chrome flashed and glinted till Claire's eyes hurt, even under dark glasses. Have I ever been this tired? she wondered. And later: What happens next? And where? She smoked cigarette after cigarette and brought out a large coffee each time they stopped for food or gas or to use the ladies'.

In New Jersey, in the noise and hurry and swelter of the Turnpike, April looked up from the book she was reading. "Mom? What did Senator Mallory say when you told him you were quitting?"

Claire kept her gaze pinned to the road. "I didn't tell Senator Mallory."

"You didn't say good-bye?"

"I didn't see him."

"Why not?"

"I never went back to the office. The AA came over to the apartment. Mark Fairchild. You were at school."

"Why didn't you go back?"

"I didn't want to see the senator again."

"Why?"

"He did something, April. I didn't want to work for him anymore. I didn't want to see him."

April thought a moment. "Did he want to see you?"

"I don't know. I doubt it."

"What did he do that was so awful?"

"I can't tell you, sweetheart. I can't tell Grandma, either."

"You can tell your own daughter."

"Not now. Maybe sometime."

"'Sometime' means never."

"No, 'sometime' means 'sometime.' Hand me a Kleenex, will you?"

"You aren't going to cry, are you?"

"I don't think so."

April doubled down and found Claire's purse on the floor. She rummaged around in the purse and dug out the Kleenex and passed a wad of tissues to Claire. Claire placed them in her lap.

"Want to pull over?" April said.

"I'm all right," Claire said.

"Because I don't want to have an accident."

"I don't either," Claire said.

. . .

She knew it wouldn't be easy holding off her mother. What was ever easy with