The Summer That Made Us. Robyn Carr

be in touch, then. And, Hope? I want to remind you that the insurance coverage you have will pay for counseling...if you’re interested.”

      She stiffened. She had told him many times before that she would indeed consider counseling—marriage counseling. She was about to remind him of that when she remembered she needed that check right away—to cover the carpet cleaning, window washing and beauty shop expenses. Where did her money go? She couldn’t eat that much every month. And there were only those few little COD catalog purchases... “Thank you, Franklin,” she said as sweetly as she could. “Please convince the girls to extend their vacation time with me. Please. It’s very important to me...and I ask for so little.”

      “I’ll speak to them,” he said.

      She was so tired. All that cleaning and primping. All that stress and worry. She would have to rest now and wait. It was going to be all right. Once she saw Grandma Berkey again everything would be fine.

      She didn’t think about Megan’s four-year battle with cancer. Her oblivion was so complete that if someone asked her, right now, how the family fared health-wise, she would say, “Very well, thank you!”

      * * *

      In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down and the Game Boy was introduced, right before Hope was due to become a junior in high school, she took her last realistic look at her family. Her cousin Bunny was dead. Her parents had had a very troubled marriage and her father, Roy, had run off, couldn’t be found and didn’t send money. Her mother was sick—depressed and emotionally unavailable. Her mother had no job, no husband and no money. Her sister Krista couldn’t stand to be at home anymore and was running with a bad crowd, skipping school and getting into serious trouble. Twice the police brought her home in the middle of the night. Her youngest sister, Beverly, had been Bunny’s best friend and was broken by her loss. She was in even worse shape than Jo. Her cousin Charley had been exiled to Florida to have and give up her illegitimate baby. Charley’s last letter to Hope said, simply, “I’m going to run away the second I get back to Saint Paul so don’t expect any help from me...unless you want to come with me.”

      “Mama,” Hope entreated. “You have to ask Grandma and the judge for help!”

      “The judge can’t help us,” Jo said.

      Hope later learned that the judge had offered help with the condition that Jo agreed to divorce Roy and live by Berkey standards. Jo refused.

      The family was in utter chaos after Bunny’s death. And that was when Hope started looking for a better life.

      As a little girl Hope had spent hours looking through the photo albums at pictures of her mother and Aunt Lou dressed for their formal dances at the club and pictures of their incredible coming-out parties and unbelievable weddings. Aunt Lou had twelve bridesmaids—like Grandma Berkey before her—and so did Hope’s mom. There were trips to Europe and carriage rides through the streets and ice-skating at the winter carnival. What the hell had happened to them all? How could this be? Falling apart was one thing but this whole family was ready to be shot and buried—they were that humiliating.

      Grandpa Berkey was still on the bench and she went to him. “Please,” she begged. “I’ll do anything you want, act any way you please, just let me live with you and go to a decent high school and maybe get into college somewhere. Please, I’m begging you. I want to have the kind of life you planned for your daughters.”

      Charmed, her grandparents took her in. They dressed her, showed her off, sent her to a private school. And she did as she had promised. She followed their every wish from crossing her legs at the ankle to getting home before ten every night. She went with them to the club for dinner every weekend, danced with all the old codgers, learned to play bridge and wore long, lacy dresses when torn jeans, bra tops and exposed garter belts were all the rage.

      She had a coming-out party, got her college degree and met a man from a rich family. When she got married in Saint Paul, a simple but elegant affair held at Central Presbyterian Cathedral with dinner at the country club, she introduced Franklin’s wealthy family to Grandma Berkey and the judge as the people who’d raised her. She had whispered to the Griffins that her biological mother was emotionally unwell and Hope hadn’t lived with her since she was small. Jo didn’t argue with this story. Hope’s father, they said, was deceased. No one else from the family came to the wedding. No one seemed to think this odd. Nor did they ask any questions.