Summer Island

Ruby pulled the cardboard flaps apart and peered inside the box. “Oh, shit. ”

It was their sixteen-millimeter movie projector and a reel of film. She turned to her mother.

“Home movies,” Nora said with a forced smile.

“Dont tell me you want us to bond over old times?”

“I want to watch them, thats all. You can join Me . . . or you can set it up and leave me . . . alone. ”

Ruby was trapped. Whether she watched the movies or not, shed know that the film was here, in the house, waiting like a monster beneath a childs bed. She reached deeper into the box and found a folded white sheet and a set of thumbtacks. Their old “screen. ”

She set up the projector on a table in the living room, clicked the reel into place, and plugged the cord in. Then she tacked the sheet onto the wall.

She refused to dwell upon how big a deal it used to be to watch family movies. Every Christmas Eve, theyd sat together in their pajamas, with their unopened gifts glittering seductively beneath the tree, and watched the highlights of their year. It was an essential tradition in a family that had only a few.

Ruby turned off the lights. With a dull, clacking sound, the film started as a gray and black square in the center of the sheet.

Ruby lowered herself to the sofas arm.

The words LOPEZ ISLAND TALENT REVUE stuttered understood across the makeshift screen. There was a buzz of people talking, then her mothers voice, clear as day, There! Rand; shes coming.

Ruby couldnt have been more than five years old, a scrawny, puffy-cheeked kindergartner dressed in ragged pink tutu. She twirled and swirled drunkenly across the stage, her toothpick arms finding all kinds of awkward angles.

-Oh, Rand, shes perfect

-Hush, Im trying to concentrate

Onstage, Ruby executed an uneven spin and sank into a curtsy. Applause thundered.

The picture went dark, then stuttered back to life. This time they were down at the beach. Caroline, in a skirted one-piece bathing suit, was splashing in the ankle-deep water, laughing. Ruby was wearing a bikini; her belly poked out above banged-up stick legs. Her mother was sitting in the sand, looking through a plastic bucket full of shells and rocks. Ruby ran over to her and stamped a foot down beside the bucket. Mom leaned over and fixed a strap on her saltwater sandals, then pulled a wiggly, laughing Ruby into her arms for a kiss.

Mom . . .

There she was.

Ruby slid off the arm of the sofa and landed on the soft, threadbare cushion. Her whole childhood played out in front of her in staccato, black-and-white images accompanied by the sounds of children laughing.

How was it shed forgotten how much theyd laughed . . . or how regularly her mother had hugged and kissed her? Shed remembered the feel of riding on her dads strong shoulders, of seeing the world from way up high, but not the gentle pressure of her mothers kiss.

But she remembered it now. She was seeing it.

There was no way to keep her distance from this. There was Dad, twirling Ruby around and around in a circle . . . and Mom, teaching Ruby how to tie her shoe . . . a rainy Halloween with two princesses skipping hand in hand up to the Smithsons" front door; carrying pumpkin-headed flashlights . . . the snowy Christmas morning when Ruby had gotten a guinea pig from Santa . . . Mom and Dad, dancing in the living room of this very house, the picture blurry and bouncing from a camera held in a childs hands . . .

By the time the final bit of film flapped out of the reel and the screen went blank, Ruby felt as if shed run a ten-mile race. She was unsteady as she turned off the camera and hit the lights.

Her mother (Nora, she reminded herself) sat hunched in her wheelchair; hands drawn into a tight-fisted ball in her lap. Tears glistened on her cheeks and lashes. She caught Rubys gaze and tried to smile.

At the sight of her mothers tears, Ruby felt something inside of her break away. “You and Dad looked so happy together. ”

Nora smiled unevenly. “We were happy for a lot of years. And then . . . we werent. ”

“You mean you werent. I saw what it did to him when you walked out. Believe me, he loved you. ”

“Rand would have stayed with me forever; you’re right about that. Just as hed vowed

to do. ”

Ruby frowned. “He would have stayed because he loved you, not just because hed promised to. ”