The Days of Summer

His grandfather looked up, frowning. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

“How do we know that?” Jud yelled. “We don’t even know you!” He raced down the stairs. By then the chauffeur was outside his room over the garage, dressed in pajamas and carrying a shotgun, and Cale glared up at Victor with a stubborn look on his face … one that was exactly like their grandfather’s.

“Don’t hit him,” Jud said.

“I’m not going to hit him,” his grandfather said in an exasperated tone. He looked down at Cale. “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”

“I don’t care if you do.”

“This is all your fault,” Jud said. “You should have shown him the car, too.”

The chauffeur came down another step. “Mr. Banning?”

“I’ve got it, Harlan.” His grandfather sounded tired. “Go back to bed.”

The chauffeur turned back up the stairs.

“Harlan, wait! You—” Victor pointed a finger in Cale’s belligerent face. “Apologize for waking him up.”

For a moment Jud thought Cale was going to say no. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, then Cale faced the chauffeur and didn’t look the least bit apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s all right, son.” Harlan went back upstairs, leaving the three of them standing silently.

“So, Jud. You think I should show Cale the car?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Victor took a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door, and held it open. “Go inside, both of you, and look all you want.”

In a flash of brown Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, Cale slipped under Victor’s arm and Jud followed. The MG was low and lean, its chrome sparkling. The tan top was folded down and the glass in the headlamps picked up the reflection of too-bright overhead lights. You didn’t see that kind of car anymore, except in old movies. It was square, with running boards, tan leather seats, and a red paint job that made it look like a miniature fire engine.

“Wow!” Cale walked around the MG, then put his hands on his knees and made a face in the side mirror, then more faces in the polished chrome grille. He was just a little kid with his pajamas buttoned wrong and leaves from the driveway sticking to his back and spiky hair, which looked as if it were angry.

Their grandfather leaned on the fender. “I bought this car for your father.”

Jud didn’t know the MG had been his dad’s. He could only picture his dad behind the wheel of that old two-tone Ford. But something wild had lived inside his father, like the red car.

“Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”

He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”

Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.

CHAPTER 4

Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.

“You’re late, Kathryn.” Julia stood at the front door dressed in heels and pearls. “I expected you before lunch.”

“The movers took longer than I’d thought.” Kathryn snapped her purse closed, annoyed at herself for automatically making excuses.

“Grandmama! Grandmama!” Laurel jumped up and down. “We’re coming to live with you!”

“Yes, you are. Come give me a hug.” Julia opened her arms and Laurel ran into them.

Kathryn turned to look back down the hill at the tail end of the cab as it disappeared around the iron gates. In the distance, a metallic sheet of water spread out to the cloudless blue horizon, broken only by a green hump of land called Bainbridge Island and the snow-dusted Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound. This is the place where eagles drift by. A line from one of Jimmy’s songs. Too many lines came to her now, not just as song lyrics—but the words gave a timelessness to his thoughts and proof he had once lived.

With a loud hiss of air brakes, a green-and-yellow Mayflower moving van turned up into the driveway. It was done, she thought.

“Come along now, Kathryn. There’s so much to do.” Julia disappeared inside with Laurel still chattering excitedly.

Unmoving, Kathryn clung to her handbag with both hands and stared up at the imposing house where her husband grew up, and where now her daughter would do the same. In the useless days since Jimmy’s death, nothing had changed the feeling that she was trapped between him and their child. Trapped. She felt it now. She had no home anymore. She had no husband. Laurel was here. Julia was here. Some part of her must still be here? That’s what she told herself.

Kathryn put one foot in front of the other and said, “I can do this.”

Within two weeks, the tension between the women in Jimmy Peyton’s life could be cut with a knife, and Kathryn, who didn’t handle conflict well to begin with, was quickly losing her will to fight Julia.

The first incident happened when Kathryn unpacked Jimmy’s framed records. Just looking at them tore her apart, so she put them in a box and sent them up to the attic, only to come home a day later to find them displayed in the front entry hall, where everyone could see them the moment they stepped through the door. Crying, she hid them under her bed. At dinner that evening—meals that nightly consisted of Jimmy’s favorites—Julia confronted her.

“You took down Jimmy’s records.”

“Yes.”

Her mother-in-law angrily chain-smoked through dinner, until the silence was thick as cigarette smoke and sitting there became unbearable. Kathryn stood. “It’s time for your bath, Laurel.”

“Let the child have dessert.” Julia dropped her linen napkin on her plate and slid a bowl of ice cream in front of her granddaughter.

Kathryn sat down again and stared at the heavy gold draperies on the windows. Underneath them were pale sheers covering the glass panes. She felt as invisible as those sheers.

“Johnny Ace’s family gave his records to a museum,” Julia said.

“The records should go to Laurel someday.”

“Laurel will know they’re important if they’re hanging in the entry.” Julia’s voice was clipped. “I took down a Picasso and the Matisse.”

Later that night, Kathryn rehung the records, then walked to her bedroom, closed the door, and lay there staring at nothing and feeling everything. From then on, she came in the house through a side door or the kitchen.

Between the time she had agreed to let their downtown apartment go and their actual move, Julia had redone Jimmy’s bedroom for Laurel, but the adjoining playroom remained untouched from Jimmy’s childhood. A few nights later, Kathryn walked in on Julia with Laurel in her lap while they looked at old slides through a viewfinder.

“Come sit with us, Kathryn. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen these photos.”

“Come, Mama. Come here. Daddy had a red tricycle just like mine.”

Already Laurel sounded like Julia. Come here. Come with me. Come there. Come. Come. Come.

So Kathryn looked at photo after photo, each one drawing a little more of the life from her. She didn’t tell Evie when they talked on the phone that night, because she didn’t want any more stress. These days she folded so easily under pressure. But she slipped the rental section of the Sunday morning paper under her arm and in the quiet of her bedroom began to circle the ads.

On the sly the next week, she looked at a small house in Magnolia with a backyard and a view of the sound, and she came home later than she’d planned and rushed right to the kitchen to make Laurel lunch. On her way to find her daughter, Julia stopped her. Kathryn tried to escape. “I’m taking Laurel a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

“It’s one o’clock. She’s already eaten. I gave her a ham salad sandwich.”

“Laurel doesn’t like ham.”

“Of course she does. It was Jimmy’s favorite.” Julia took the plate from Kathryn and set it on a nearby table. “Come. I have something to show you.” She led her out through the back of the house, past the new swing set and jungle gym, to a break of cedars that bordered the back lawn. Julia stopped. “Look, Kathryn.”

Between those trees was a small building, a miniature of the big house. Julia handed her a key. “Go inside.”

What Kathryn had assumed was a playhouse for Laurel was a large open room with shelves along the walls and a deep work sink and tiled counter under a wide front window.

Julia leaned against the counter, her hands resting on the rim. “You can see Laurel’s play area from here. And from that long window. I thought we could put your wheel there. The kiln is around the corner so this room won’t get too hot. And that refrigerator is for the clay.”

“I don’t know what to say.” And Kathryn didn’t. “This is wonderful.”

“Good.” Julia cupped a hand around a match, held it to the cigarette hanging from her lips, then tossed back her head and exhaled smoke. “I know coming here wasn’t easy for you. I wanted you to know I’m glad you’re here.” For a raw instant, Julia stared at her with the expression of an animal caught high in a tree, staring down at the hunter and his gun. “Enjoy it.” Julia turned and left.

The studio of Kathryn’s dreams couldn’t have been any better. Light and warmth came through the window; the tiles were gleaming, the room pristine, new still, no earthy smell of damp or baking clay. The walls were white, stark, and clean, without a trace of life. As she stood there, her past was wiped out, her future hauntingly empty.

But something else haunted her. She looked back to where Julia had just stood and realized she understood her mother-in-law’s terrified look. Only that morning Kathryn had seen it in the mirror.

Over the next few days, Kathryn stopped reading the rental ads and Julia stopped telling her what to do and how to feel. Kathryn was dressing after a shower when she heard Laurel singing. It sounded like she was jumping on the bed next door.

Kathryn ran into the hallway. “Laurel! Tell me you are not jumping on your grandmother’s bed.” She entered Julia’s suite for the first time.

Laurel was bouncing jubilantly on her grandmother’s silk-dressed bed and chanting, “I love coffee, I love tea …”

“Stop it!”

Laurel looked at her midbounce.

“She’s fine, Kathryn.” Julia came out of her bathroom rubbing cold cream on her face. “I told her she could jump on it.” Her robe matched the room, which was a clean soft white. Even the furniture, including a dressing table in one corner and a hi-fi in the other, were painted white, and the suite was luxuriously decorated from the carpet and the bed linens to the silk draperies on two long mullioned windows that looked out over the water. Between those long windows was a five-by-eight-foot canvas of bold colors, contemporary like most of Julia’s art. Kathryn felt the blood drain to her feet.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” Julia used a tissue to wipe the cream off. “There’s another over the bed.”

Kathryn faced the bed where Laurel was still jumping.

“The artist is Espinosa. I bought them a while back. Their value must be rising, although Lord knows I paid enough for them to begin with. The gallery called a week ago. The artist died recently and her family has been trying to track down all her pieces. The canvases fit so perfectly in here I don’t think I want to sell them. I decorated the whole room around them.”

Kathryn found her voice. “Do you know who that artist is?”

“Rachel Espinosa. A Spanish artist.”

“She was married to Rudy Banning.”

“Banning?” Julia sat down. “Banning?” There was a hollowness to her voice and her skin was gray. She looked up at Kathryn. “He killed Jimmy. Rudy Banning killed my son.”

“Rachel Espinosa Banning died in the same accident. She had an art show that night. Didn’t you see the newspapers?”

Julia shook her head. “I couldn’t read them. I didn’t want to read them. I was afraid to read them.”

“She and her husband left the show arguing. He lost control of the car.”

“My God.” Julia stood. “My God …” She walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

Kathryn was left to stare at the paintings, first one and then the other, until they all blurred together and she couldn’t see them anymore.

Later that night, Kathryn awoke from the throes of a nightmare and sat up, startled at the sound of Jimmy’s music playing so loudly from the next room.

Laurel came to her bed. “Mama. The music’s too loud. Make it stop.”

Kathryn tucked her in. “Stay here. I’ll ask Grandmama to turn it off.” What the hell was Julia thinking? She rapped on the door. “Julia?” Inside, she froze. Her mother-in-law stood on the bed, a long kitchen knife in her hand, the painting slashed from one corner to the other. “Julia!”

Calmly, she sliced down the other side and faced Kathryn, then stepped down to the carpet. “I don’t want them in this room. In this house.” Julia started toward the other painting.

“Wait! Don’t.”

“I need to destroy it. They destroyed my life. They killed my son.”

“You said the family wants the paintings.”

“They do.” Julia looked so small and lost and confused, not like someone capable of setting your teeth on edge. She merely looked half there.

“Then don’t destroy them. To never sell them back is the best revenge.” Wicked words, she knew, but that made saying them all the better. “Never sell them.”

Julia looked from the knife in her hand to the other painting on the wall. She took deep breaths and wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her silk robe, then handed Kathryn the knife. Kathryn put her arm around her. “It’s okay.”

“Nothing will ever be okay again.” Julia started crying and leaned against her, no longer hard as stone but frail and brittle as shale.

“Come with me,” Kathryn said. “You can sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight. I’ll have the paintings removed tomorrow.”

“I’ll never sell them. You’re right, Kathryn. We will never sell them.”

PART TWO

1970

We often make people pay dearly for what

we think we give them.

Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausac

CHAPTER 5

Newport Beach, California

The soil was rich in this Golden State, dark as the oil pumped up from its depths. Bareroot roses planted in the ground bloomed in a matter of weeks, and every spring the lantana tripled in breadth, filling the narrow property lines between homes where every square foot was valued in tens of thousands. Roots from the pepper trees unearthed backyard fences, and eucalyptus grew high into the blue skies, like fabled beanstalks, shooting up so swiftly the bark cracked away and fell dusty to the ground. If you knelt down and dug your hands into the dirt, you could smell its fecundity, and when you stood up you might look—or even be—a little taller.

Billboards sold everyone on growth, and the coastal hills swelled with tracks of housing because people hungered for a false sense of peace from the Pacific views. Newport was not the small resort enclave it had once been, with new restaurants now perched on the waterfront, housed in everything from canneries and beam-and-glass buildings to a grounded riverboat. Luxury homes stood on most lots, which had been subdivided into smaller shapes that couldn’t be measured in anything as archaic as an acre. At the entrances to entire neighborhoods, white crossbars blocked the roads and were raised and lowered by a uniformed security guard in a hut, a kind of cinematic image that brought to mind border crossings and cold wars. But the guard wasn’t there to keep people out; he was there to keep prestige in.

The Banning boys grew into young men here, tall and athletic, golden like everything in California. Thirteen years had changed who they were, now brothers separated by a demand to be something they weren’t. They wanted to win. They had everything, except their grandfather’s approval.

As soon as the opportunity arose, Victor Banning had bought the homes on either side of him, torn them down and renovated the Lido house until it spanned five lots, encompassing the whole point. The place had three docks, boasted a full basketball court and seven garages.

Today, Banning Oil Company was BanCo, involved in everything from petroleum by-products, fuel, and manufacturing to the development of reclaimed oil land. Annually listed as a Fortune 500 company, it was the kind of proving ground hungry young executives clamored to join.

Hunger wasn’t what had sent Jud Banning to work for his grandfather the previous May, when he’d graduated from Stanford Business School in the top five percent with a master’s in corporate finance along with degrees in business and marketing. Expectation sent him there, Victor’s idea of natural order.

Every summer since the start of high school both Jud and his brother had worked for the company in some capacity—mostly peon. But a career working for his grandfather wasn’t the golden opportunity Jud’s grad school buddies imagined. For as much as the house and business had changed, Victor hadn’t. He was still difficult and demanding. Nepotism didn’t feel like favoritism when Victor Banning was the one doling it out.

It was early spring now, a time of year when the morning marine layer seldom hung over the coast, so the sun glinted off the water and reflected from the glass of waterfront homes across the isle; it soaked through a wall of windows on the water side of the Banning home. The dining room grew warm, sunlight spreading like melted butter over the room and over Jud Banning, who was sound asleep at the dining table.

He sat up, suddenly awake. And just as on the last three mornings, the housekeeper stood over him holding a carafe of coffee. He glanced around the room, a thread of panic in his voice. “What time is it?”

“Early.” Time was either early or late in Maria’s eyes. Days, weeks, and months were noted only if they held religious significance—Ash Wednesday, Lent, the Assumption of Mary. You could ask her when the steaks would be done and she’d tell you how to butcher the cow. She had come to work from Mexico as cook, housekeeper, and nanny two days after Jud and Cale arrived, and thirteen years later she was still the only woman in an all-male household. She set the coffee and a mug down with a meaningful thud. “You fall asleep here every night, Jud. Papers everywhere.”

“I know. I know.”

“Mr. Victor is coming home today. You want him to see you like this?”

“He won’t. The board meeting is today.”

“Beds are for sleeping. Desks are for working. Tables are for eating.”

“I’ve never eaten a table,” he said, deadpan. She merely looked at him, so he changed the subject. “I won’t be here next week. I’m going to the island with Cale tomorrow.”

“That boy.” She shook her head and headed for the kitchen. “He never comes home.”

“He’s busy with school.”

“He’s busy with the girls,” Maria said and disappeared around the corner.

Jud could hear the sound of Barbara Walters’s voice on the Today show coming from the kitchen TV, a sign he wasn’t late. Under the charts and graphs, notes, and P&Ls piled on the table he found his watch; it read seven fifteen. He slipped it on and ran both hands through his shaggy hair. He didn’t cut it, just to annoy Victor. Unlike Cale, Jud kept his revolts on a more subtle scale.

Around him were weeks’ worth of paperwork, but stacked on a nearby chair were glossy black presentation folders with his proposal ready for board approval. Today was the first Friday of the month, and the board meeting would begin as always at precisely 10 A. M. From the moment he’d been able to negotiate with another supplier, he knew this was a winner of a deal. It would cut the proposed cost for new oil tankers by over two million dollars, a figure he expected would bowl them over.

So an hour later, he came down the stairs whistling as he tied the knot in his new tie, then shrugged into his suit coat and stopped by a mirror for a quick look. Tugging down on his cuffs, he said, “Old man, have I got a deal for you.”

A few minutes later Maria met him at the door. “Take Mr. Victor’s newspapers with you.” She dumped them on the box of folders he carried and opened the front door for him. “It’s Good Friday. You go to church.”

“Sure thing.” He hadn’t been in a church since his college roommate got married.

The static, machine-gun racket of an air compressor came from the garages, where there was room for seven cars, plus a full maintenance bay and workshop. Harlan had his head under the hood of Victor’s silver Bentley. Three sports cars were parked in the small bays on the left side. A ’59 Porsche 1600D roadster, a ’63 Corvette convertible, and a Jaguar XKE. All of them belonged to Cale. All of them were bright red. But his brother never drove any single one of them with the regularity of a favorite. No matter how many expensive red sports cars Cale bought, none would ever be a replacement for their dad’s MG.

The MG was parked in the fourth bay, gleaming like California sunshine because Harlan was a man who truly loved cars. Every Banning automobile ran to its capacity as a finely tuned machine, engine smooth, body always washed, and the chrome and tires polished.

Jud opened the driver’s door, dropped the folders on the floor, and threw his briefcase on the passenger seat. He opened the trunk and tossed the newspapers inside—the Los Angeles Times, the Examiner, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Register, the Daily Pilot, and the San Diego Tribune. He didn’t understand his grandfather. If you’d read one paper, hell, you’d read ’em all.

Harlan lifted his head out from underneath the Bentley hood and grabbed a rag from the back pocket of his gray work coveralls. He spotted Jud, frowned, and glanced at an old Banning Oil Company clock on the back wall, then switched off the noisy compressor. “You’re leaving early. Your grandfather’s plane isn’t coming in until nine thirty.”

“I need to be there early.”

But Harlan’s expression said what every Banning employee knew. No one did any board business before Victor arrived. Harlan stuffed the rag in his pocket and went back to work.

Jud let the engine warm up and backed out, waited for the electronic gates, tapping the steering wheel impatiently before he honked the horn twice and sped away.

The Santa Ana headquarters for BanCo occupied the top seven floors of the Grove Building, a glass, metal, and concrete structure that took its vanilla name from the old orange groves that had been plowed under to clear the building site. From Fifth and Main, towering glass buildings bled from one mirrored image into another, looking nothing like farmland. Sound carried up from the nearby freeways, the constant hum of cars along Interstate 5, and the air had an energized buzz, a swarming sound of human activity that hung above busy streets at lunchtime and after five.

On the fifteenth floor, no traffic noise came into the boardroom as Victor Banning sat in front of his unopened proposal folder and listened to Jud talk.