A/N: Second part up! Thanks for the all the great reviews guys, I'm surprised how many people liked it! Keep reviewing!
Ah, this chapter's bugging me a bit but...I'll post it anyway!
Chapter One
Summer was a rock chick. It was Zeppelin's leaving mark after his death, a bit of his personality tattooed onto hers. She liked to scream along with old Foo Fighters songs, dance to The Darkness and depress herself with Nirvana.
Friday mornings were her mornings to listen to music. It was a stupid thing they did, a stupid thing they always did. It was in the same vain of kids who had "turns" for riding in the front seat of the car. On Monday mornings, when they hustled and bustled around getting ready for school and work, it was Seth's turn. Monday for her was brushing her teeth along with some old Death Cab for Cutie songs. Tuesday was Manhattan's day. She liked old Beatles songs, eighties rap like the Beastie Boys and was in love with the "hottest" underground punk band at the moment, Dead Beat Holiday. Her taste in music was strangely eclectic and could be heard singing Iggy Pop and Elvis in the same breath.
Halle liked the "heavy stuff". It was what she always called it and although people usually thought she meant heavy metal, she was "talking 'bout rap". She would serenade her father with The Hilltop Hoods on Wednesday mornings, while he clumsily tried to brush her hair and threatened to kill her. "Oh, my ears, they bleed," he always melodramatically cried.
Thursdays was Zeppelin's day. They ate breakfast while Led Zeppelin sang That's the Way and his home-made mixed cd of seventies rock was played so much, it broke in half.
And Fridays was Summer's, which explained why Summer ate toast with Manhattan while The Vines swirled around them.
"Mom," Manhattan picked at her toast distractedly. "I know this is your morning for music or whatever…"
Her voice trailed off. Summer raised one eyebrow.
"But, come on! Play some new stuff! The Vines are like, from fifteen years ago."
"I think it's more twenty," Summer calmly replied. "Beside, every person plays old music in this house beside you."
Manhattan laughed. "Yeah, Dad does but he's allowed. That's what dads do. They play old, boring music that no one cares about. You're way cooler than Dad."
Summer nodded. Oh, she was way cooler than Cohen.
"And Zeppelin does, but he's kinda allowed to. I mean, you give him a retro name Mom, what do you expect? And his stuff are classics. I admit I play a lot of old stuff sometimes, but they are classics. The Vines are not classics."
"Oh! Who are you to judge? You're an eight year old."
"With tonnes of musical knowledge. Let's face it Mom, we are the coolest, rockiest kids on the block. We know our music. And I turn nine like in five months."
"What about Halle? Her favourite band is some rap group from Australia from the early 2000s who's no one heard of! I don't hear you telling her to change her taste."
They stared at each other haughtily for a few moments. Manhattan was impossibly like Seth but he always said she was impossibly like Summer. She was neither really, just a quieter version of both of them who sometimes broke out into speech.
It was Friday morning, the last day of the school for the kids before summer. Manhattan and her sat quietly at the table. Upstairs, she could hear Halle and Zeppelin sing along to Craig Nichols. See, I do have good taste, she told herself. James sat beside her in his high chair and burbled happily. Seth was singing in the shower.
This was her life now. At thirty-four, she was married, had four kids, was still paying the mortgage off the house and didn't even own a car. She wondered what she had written down in her old diaries when she was a senior in high school, plotting her dreams and her life paths. Probably not this.
But she was happy.
She supposed.
The way Seth described it was closer to the truth.
'I'm not unhappy but I'm not happy either."
He said it five nights ago. It was a perfect setting, she supposed. Swinging on their hammock on their front porch, the summer heat making their skin glow; she wore a floral cotton dress, and she felt as if she belonged in To Kill a Mockingbird or something.
He draped his arms around her and breathed in her scent of clean soap and baby powder. She always smelt like baby powder these days, what with Baby James and all.
It felt as if Caffeine in the Morning Sun by The Sleepy Jacksons should have been playing.
"Mmm, sometimes I love my life." He kissed her skin. "Lying on my hammock with my wife, the sun setting, the warm air, watching our kids play baseball, the sounds of New York city…it's a cliché…it's such a simple life…I love it."
She sighed.
"Are you happy?"
He brushed the hair out of her face.
"I'm not unhappy but I'm not happy either."
Manhattan climbed in her lap. She buried her face into Summer's hair.
"I'm sorry Mommy," she whispered.
Manhattan was the spitting image of her, with straight, dark brown hair and dusky eyes. The only visible feature of her father was his smile and his height.
Summer picked up Manhattan's left arm distractedly and habitually ran her thumbs up and down the scars. They snaked up Manhattan's arm, from her wrist and up past her elbows, like train tracks telling a story about her past. She got them when she was six years old and fell through a glass window. Manhattan's skin was dark and olive, but the scars were pale and fleshy, and Manhattan hated them.
Life was just that. Seth and Summer dropped their kids off at school, a public Protestant one where only ten percent of the children were actually Protestant (it was Queens, after all) and everybody ran around in a grey and red uniform. Baby James was dropped off at a neighbour who did free day care for the entire neighbourhood, then Seth kissed her goodbye at the subway station.
"Have a good one Sum," He told her.
She hated the subway. She hated every single thing about it. She hated the people who caught it, she hated the smell, she hated how she never got a seat. And she hated not having a car.
She knew Seth hated it more. Every morning he would go off to the city wearing a business suit and riding a push bike. He hated that bike. He would come home and slam it down on the floor and stalk off to the bedroom. The tyres were always going flat, the fifth and fourth gears didn't work and it had a bright pink Barbie sticker on it that Halle stuck on years ago. He would spend several nights a week sitting on their front porch, rocking in their hammock and trying to peel that sticker off. Yet through rain, hail or shine it would sit proudly for everyone to see.
Ryan offered to buy them a car once.
"It will be just so much easier for you guys. You guys are late enough without a car."
But Seth muttered to himself something about pride and handouts and went and sat down and watched the Superbowl.
Ryan turned expectedly to Summer.
She forced a smile.
"Thanks, but I think we'll survive. It's New York. We don't need a car."
But they did. They were always running late. They were that family, that family whose clothes always look wrinkled and their hair always messy and they were always late.
Ryan always wanted to give "stuff" to people. Especially to the Cohens. His job as an architect and owning his own practice which had branches in New York, Chicago and LA meant a pretty sturdy paycheque. And he was always trying to "make up" for all the things the Cohens paid for him.
Instinct told her that something was happening to her and Seth. It was the same instinct that told her that she loved Blood on the Microphone by Gerling the second she heard the first seconds of the beat. That instinct was never wrong. It wasn't as if they fought all the time, because they didn't. And it wasn't as if one of them was cheating on each other, because they weren't.
Seth turning down the offer of a car made her instinct bite. Saying he wasn't unhappy but not happy either was another thing. Seth's utter dislike for the bike was something else too.
Maybe they were unhappy. She thought that a lot sometimes. They had come a long way from the struggling twenty-something year olds. Or they hadn't, really. They had come all this way and they were basically in the same place they started from.
Hours passing was just time passing and time was the biggest façade in history. Work always seemed to end just as it was starting and she was always slightly amazed when she wound back up at home.
There were many traditions in their house, the Cohens' one for traditions and rituals. Last day of school of the year meant a barbeque, meant sitting up all night playing games, watching television, meant the kids going psycho on sugar and soda.
"Favourite night of the year," Manhattan said shyly to her mother, while they lounged on their hammock on their front porch and tried to stay cool.
"It's so hot," she moaned.
It was hot. The nights were hotter than the day, for reasons that escaped her and for the past week, summer teased them by making their hair stick, their forwards shine and the night intolerable.
It was her favourite night of the year too, after Fourth of July. Her unofficial anniversary with Seth.
"I'm so excited," sang Zeppelin, dancing around on their front porch, "because I can stay up and watch Late Night with Will Black."
"Ugh, I miss Conan O'Brien," Seth moaned, and sat down between his two favourite girls on the hammock. "I hate this Will Black."
It always ended with the kids watching The Late Show. It always began with a family softball game. And somewhere in the middle, there was always a dance.
At some point, usually around nine pm, the kids were all miraculously out of the house. Usually around that time they visited the De Palmers next door, devout Catholics with seven kids.
"I do love an empty house," Seth said softly to her.
It was his turn to pick a song. Another unofficial Cohen tradition. Gotta have a dance in the kitchen baby, gotta dance the night away. He said to her one year, drunk off his arse and it stuck with her ever since. It was corny and stupid but that pretty okay, sometimes.
Sounds of Ben Harper singing Sexual Healing live at a concert filled their tiny home.
"You're so cheesy Cohen," she laughed, standing in their kitchen, clutching her beer.
"Haven't you said that before?" He asked.
She thought she had. She couldn't quite remember. She had the feeling she had said it a million life times ago.
Dancing with Seth was pretty okay too. They almost always just swayed along, holding each other closer and having small, private conservations. It wasn't anything amazing or even anything special. Just another Cohen tradition. Probably didn't look like anything at all, to most people. But it was theirs.
They sat down on the couch and she sighed.
"What's up with us Seth?"
He didn't answer for awhile.
"I miss Zeppelin," he finally said.
"Our…our son?"
"No, dead Zeppelin," he stated bluntly. He picked at something on his hand. "I swear I saw him the other day. My heart like jumped into my throat. It's stupid I guess. I only really knew him for five years. I still shouldn't miss him."
She took a swig from her beer.
"Well, you've still got me Seth."
He sighed. "I sure do."
She fingered her wedding ring, twisting and turning it.
"Seth, what is up with us? I'm getting worried, I someti-"
Halle burst through the front door.
"Daddy, daddy, Michael next door says I have a 'fro. What the hell is that?"
He tussled up her curls.
So this was my life, Summer thought while she was curled up in bed, her clock flashing 12:03 am. Beside her, Seth was snoring lightly.
It felt like she had just noticed her life for the first time. And all she seemed to be doing was thinking about the past.
"I wanna be twenty-two again" she muttered to herself.
She wanted to be, she wanted to be, she wanted to be…
She wanted to be happy. It was sinking in that maybe she wasn't.