That Camden Summer (22 page)

Inn 11

"Out

"Oh

"You

and Gabriel, now that the kiss was put behind them, found acceptable companionship in each other and, as before, enjoyed having another adult to talk with after years of having only the children.

The May sun was still twenty-five degrees off the horizon when they started out. Gabe cranked Roberta's car and she drove while all four girls stacked themselves in the backseat, singing, "We sail the ocean blue, And our saucy ship's a beauty."

Roberta and Gabe could barely hear each other above H.M.S. Pinafore.

"Where's the best place to diO" she asked. at the Glen Cove flats."

yes, I remember. Down toward Rockport." used to go there?"

"Sure, when I was in school. Did you?"

"In school and after I was married ... with Caroline."

"But you haven't been back since she died?" He studied her briefly, then shook his head. "Not since she died."

"So will it be difficult for you?"

"I)don't know. I'll find out when we get there, won t IF'

In the backseat the girls were bellowing, . . when at anchor we ride, on the Portsmouth tide . . . )

She parked on the hill above the Glen Cove clam flats, and the girls tumbled out and went clambering over the rocks that had been nudged by a million tides to form a rugged rim around the upper scoop of the

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cove. Roberta and Gabriel stood beside the car and watched them bound away with bushel baskets and clam rakes while behind them the shadows of the mountains sloped down to the sea and stained the evening blue. Before them, the flats - mushroom brown and dull except where a powerless surf lazily licked the sand silver - collected the girls' footprints. Pebbles and driftwood pocked the washed surface, too. In places the retreating tide had left flotsam in ragged windrows that created a scalloped design along the shore. Among the rocks and over the sand, crabs scuttled, searching out their supper, dipping safely into their holes when the girls pounded past.

Gabriel studied the peaceful scene and said, "She wasn't particularly crazy about clams-, but she loved to go clamming. Especially in the morning3 when the sun was on the water and the islands looked ghostly out there in the sea-smoke. Sometimes she'd talk me into bringing her out early-, even before sunrise, so she wouldn't miss the spectacle."

Roberta turned to study his profile against the backdrop of rocky shoreline. A faint Puff of wind fluttered the hair against his forehead. Twilight Painted shadows beside his straight nose and somber mouth.

"I envy You your happy memories. I wish I had more of them. "

He dragged himself from his reverie to look at her. Motionless., he stood, while the girls' voices drifted up to them - "Oh, here's one! Dig! Dig!" - joined by the coarse chorus of some

gulls whose mealtime had been interrupted, too. Roberta had the feeling Gabriel was seeing another woman, in another time, before he finally stirred himself and rejoined her in the present.

"I'll start digging the pit if you'll gather some seaweed." He stepped out. onto .the rocks, sending the sand crabs scuttling again.

For the next quarter hour everybody kept busy. While Gabe built the fire and Roberta collected kelp, the three youngest girls searched the flats for tiny sand spouts, where they dug. Rebecca, barefoot, knotted her skirts across her thighs and methodically plied the shallow water, dragging the clam rake while keeping an eye out for telltale mud clouds on the bottom. As the girls turned up their bounty, Roberta washed it. The sun slipped behind the mountain and left the air cooler and bluer. The distant islands lost their gold tips and seemed to settle deeper into Penobscot Bay as if snuggling in for the night.

When the fire had subsided to coals, Roberta knelt beside Gabriel and helped him layer the rocks, seaweed, foods and canvas, which they anchored at the corners with more rocks.

"There," Gabe said., sitting back on his heels. "In an hour we'll have a meal fit for a king." "I'm starved," Lydia said.

"Yeah, me too," Isobel added.

"Why don't you all sing something?" Roberta suggested. "That'll make the time pass faster." "I don't feel like singing," Susan put in. "Let's go see if we can outdig some sand crabs."

They moved off into the growing shadows,

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leaving their parents behind. Gabriel stretched to his feet. "I'll build us another fire so we've got something to poke at."

He did, and they sat on turtle-shaped rocks while the dusk and the dampness lowered upon the shore, cooling their backs while their faces grew as orange as paired sunsets in the glow of their small fire. The rocks were hard, but each of them had experienced clambakes before and would have disdained any more comfortable seat, after all

5 . -, rock-sitting was part of the total experience. The fire pit seethed and sent out a soft, warm hiss that kept them company.

Roberta glanced up at the sky and recited_,

"Lo! comes the evening, purply soft

To lift the glowing stars aloft."

Gabriel glanced over.

"Who wrote that?" "I did."

He pondered a moment. "You Jewetts are really something when it comes to verses. You always manage to leave me in the dust."

"Leave you in the dust?"

"You know so much that I don't know, Roberta. "

"Perhaps I do-, but I cannot build a porch." Sometimes she could really put him at ease-, this woman in the wrinkled dress and tumbledown hair. He'd come to prize spending time with her., and he was beginning to admit it wasn3t only because of the children. "I hadn't thought of that," he said. Now that he did,

however, he felt less ignorant. "You write any more of that poem?"

"No. but I can if you want me to." "Just like that?"

She shrugged as if the talent were common. "You mean you could just spout lines that rhyme, without thinking for two hours and looking in books and crossing off mistakes?"

"I always liked poetry and music and drama. That's where my girls get it."

"So make up some more."

She squinted one eye at the rising moon. Her lips moved soundlessly for a while before she caught the line ...

"Then just when dreams are turning fey They slip and fall and turn to day."

He appreciated her silently for a while before speaking. "You're really something, Roberta, you know that?"

"And you think you're not?"

"Not like that, no. I've never been good with words. My brother just said the other day that I don't talk much."

"You do around me.

"Around you I seem to. Maybe because there's always so much talking in your house that a person feels like he's got to do some of it himself or get lost in the woodwork."

She laughed, then picked up a stick and poked the fire.

"Did you and your wife talk a lot?"

"Not a lot, no. We could be quiet together

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and still feel comfortable."

"That's nice. When my husband and I were quiet together it was because we had grown to such a state of disrespect that we had nothing to say anymore."

"The more you tell me about your marriage, the worse it sounds."

"And the more you tell me about yours, the better it sounds, which is quite an eye-opener for me, because I never knew anyone who had a happy marriage. I thought they were all lessons in tolerance."

"No, you're wrong there. Not all."

"All of them I ever witnessed. Take my parents, for instance. He was at the tavern more often than she wanted him to be, so she bellyached constantly; then when he was home she harped at him to fix this, mend that, but when he did, it was never good enough for her. She criticized everything he did, until I could understand why he liked it better at the tavern. I guess that's why I started escaping into my literature and music, so I could shut out their arguing. "

He took time to mull over his own parents' relationship. "My parents got along pretty well. Sometimes her gossip aggravated him, but so did his pipe smoking. She said it clouded up her windows. He had a tendency to be lazy and she had a tendency to rush through everything, but, I don't know - they seemed to work things out. "

Roberta said "I think those who work things out are rarer tha"n those who don't. I had a friend

in Boston named Irene. She and her husband were really crazy about each other. But jealous! Heavenly days, they could get into fights about total strangers they passed on the street. If one of them returned a hello, the other one accused him of flirting, and the fight was on. If she went to the market for a loaf of bread, she had to account for every single minute she was away, and even then he accused her of ridiculous dalliances. So even though they loved each other, it never seemed enough. Why, it got to the point where they couldn't even be civil to their own friends, then after every fight Irene would come and cry on my shoulder. I used to do my best to comfort her until one day she accused me of making eyes at her husband. That ended our friendship, and I felt very bad about it.

"Then, of course, there are Elfred and Grace. That marriage is a farce if I ever saw one." "I'd have to agree with you there."

They pondered the Spears for a while, Gabriel now poking the fire along with Roberta. Some sparks rose as he inquired, "Elfred been around bothering you anymore?"

"Not since the day you scared him off." "Well, I'm glad about that. I have to admit, I got a little hot under the collar that day." "Oh?"

"Elfred thinks he's God's gift to women, and until then I'd always laughed about it. But I didn't think it was funny that day. "

Side by side, with their ankles crossed, they turned to study each other. They stopped

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poking the fire and let the tips of their sticks burn. The moon had risen and spread a goldbeaten path across the water. The buried kelp was beginning to give off an herbal aroma that contrasted with the rather musty one lifting from the warmed tarp. The soft slap of the waves lifted from the edge of the water, and in the unseen distance one of the girls shrieked, followed by a chorus of muffled laughter.

Finally Roberta asked quietly_, "So how is it5 being back here where you used to bring Caroline?"

"Not as bad as I thought it would be. Quite enjoyable-, actually. "

"Once before you mentioned a day you thought was going to be bad for you. April eighteenth. "

"Oh. that.

"Am I treading on hallowed ground?" "Surprisingly, no. A month ago You would have been, but - I don't know - maybe 15m healing at last."

"So what did you do on April eighteenth this year?"

"Fed her roses for her-, same as I do every year. They climb on a pergola outside the kitchen door that I have to walk under every time I go into the house."

"Does Isobel do it with you?" "No. 11

"Because she doesn't want to or because you never asked her to?"

"When I feed the roses is always my special

daughter."

things."

time with Caroline. I ... well, I talk to her then."

He was studying the fire. She was studying him. "Be careful, Gabriel."

He looked over. "Of what?"

"Shutting out your daughter too long." He bristled. "I haven't shut out my "She talks at our house. She tells us

"Like what? If she said I shut her out, it's not true."

Roberta could tell this was testy ground. "I'm not saying you do it consciously."

"If it wasn't for Isobel, I'd have lost my mind when Caroline died!"

"Have you ever told her that?"

"I don't have to tell her. She knows." "Funny, she thinks she's in your way sometimes."

"In my way?"

Roberta tossed her stick into the fire, brushed off her hands and hugged her knees. "Affection is a curious commodity. It opens mouths almost as easily as it opens hearts."

"But why would she think she's in my way?"

"You never hug her, Gabriel. You never touch her. I've watched you and I can see that you don't know how. I imagine when Caroline was alive she did that for both of you. That's often how it is, the mother does the overt loving. But you're her only parent now, and she needs to know you love her."

Gabe said nothing. He stared into Roberta's firelit eyes for some moments, and she could

see his jaw was clamped hard. "Showing it is hard for some people," she told him. "if you don't know how, watch me." He turned away so she could no longer read his face. "It's the little things that count-, Gabriel. We say 'I love you' in a thousand ways; some have words and some don't - touches, smiles, maybe a little warning, like 'Keep warm,' 'Keep dry,' 'Watch your head!' 'Your dress is pretty.' 'Is that a new hair ribbon? It matches your eyes.' 'I'd love to come watch you put on Hiawatha., 'Why don't we walk outside and pick some of Mother's roses together?' Have you ever done that with her?"

She was in too deep to withdraw now. There were things on her mind that she simply had to say, on Isobel's behalf.

"She's told me that she's not allowed to touch her mother's dresses-, and that the couple times when she has, she's been severely scolded. Perhaps you should let her someday. What would you have felt like if you'd been told You could not touch any of Caroline's things after she died? You would have been so hurt-, Gabriel."

He spoke at last, and she could hear his banked anger. "I didn't want her getting into them with her friends-, and you know how destructive children can be."

"She's never had friends, Gabriel. She told us so. Not until my girls came along, because you always expected her to fill in for her mother on housekeeping duties, do her homework, meet responsibilities first and foremost. I've always thought quite the opposite. Teach children

enough to get them by so they can fend for themselves when necessary, but give them their freedom. After all, they'll be adults just like that!" - Roberta snapped her fingers - "and then they'll have families of their own and all the responsibilities that go along with them. When they're children, let them be children. And that's what Isobel is at our house. That's why she likes it so much over there."

He faced her abruptly and argued with some ferocity, "But it was hard after Caroline died! You don't know how hard!"