July’s hot breath tickled my neck as if it were trying quite literally to get under my skin. I felt that its boastful heat was intrusive and unkind, humbled by nothing but electric high-speed fans and ice-cold drinks. The air conditioner had failed us earlier that June as the working heater lay idle and useless, leaving Grams and me at the mercy of the unforgiving weather. Grams had thrusted all of the windows and doors open that day, beckoning the lazy summer breeze that only showed on occasion. It was as if the summer lived and breathed in my home, a distant, bothersome relative overstaying his visit.
I was reading The Swiss Family Robinson out loud to Grams (for the second time) as her sweet taffy leisurely cooled on the kitchen counter. The sugary smell chewed at the intensity of the late July heat, leaving Grams and I listening to the sound of my voice, drenched in a perfume something like sticky pancake syrup.
“Them mosquitoes acting up, Sugar?” Grams asked in her cute, crinkly, Southern voice, the edge worn dull with overuse. “Now, don’t you go silly scratching at your arm. It does no good.”
Grams was a woman of clockwork habits and dictionary definitions, a creature of omens and superstitions, and a believer of true love; she could not stand anything other than fairy tale endings the way a drunk man couldn’t imagine a geometrical world. Her soft, polished eyes picked up just as much as they did in her youth, and she had opinions on just about everything.
“Now, if only your Johnny was here to enjoy some of this darned heat with us.” Grams smiled her dented, sideways smile. “Maybe he’d find them mosquitoes quite amusing.”
“Oh, you know Johnny. He’ll be here any minute, I assume.” My eyes impulsively darted out the window like mice on edge. “He wouldn’t miss an invitation for dinner.”
“That boy’s a curious one, I dare say.” Grams said briskly. “Oh, but I wouldn’t suppose otherwise. These days it’s hard to tell the good ones from the bad.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” I agreed. “But I just got this feeling about Johnny, you know?”
The buzzing things that lived in the corners and crevices of the house became over-excited by the first hesitant drops of July rain. I could hear them buzzing away in their short, wispy language, hidden in the cracked statues of trumpet-playing cherubs and tucked in between the hideous, green plush couches.
“Grams,” I said earnestly. “Do you think he’ll ask me to marry him?”
She looked up at me from her ancient rocking chair, her baby-doll eyes fairly blazing with things she refused to say.
“I think you ought to get out there, child. We wouldn’t want the clothes drying on the rack to get wet, now would we?”