The Family Beach House (12 page)

He stopped and turned. Tilda hurried forward to him.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm a little out of practice. Socially speaking, I mean. I am available for dinner this evening. If the offer is still open. Thanks.”

Dennis smiled. It was another genuine, nice smile and they made plans to meet at the Old Village Inn on Maine Street at seven o'clock. When he had walked off again, Tilda suddenly remembered the conversation she had had with Hannah on the beach, the conversation in which she had mentioned the phrase “conditions of affection.” She had told her sister she didn't know how to create “conditions of affection.” But maybe, after all, she did know. She felt both immensely proud and terribly scared of what she had just done. She had just accepted a man's—a stranger's!—invitation to dinner.

What would everyone say? Was it possible to keep the date a secret? Suddenly, Tilda was in a paroxysm of confusion and embarrassment and fear and excitement. The ice cream in her stomach did a slow and not entirely pleasant dance and Tilda hurried to her car.

 

The Cape Neddick Lobster Pound, which was immediately across the road from the Cape Neddick Campground, was open for lunch. At the Pound, Craig's old friend Chip Morrow was tending bar.

Back when they were teens, Craig and Chip had waited tables together at Mike's Clam Shack, on Route 1 in Wells. Chip had never moved away. He was married to his high school sweetheart and had three kids. The oldest was already almost twenty. Chip had not changed much in the years since he and Craig had first met. He was a little balder and a little heavier, but otherwise, he was still the same slightly wild, slightly lazy, entirely good-hearted guy he had always been. Chip was reliable in that way.

Craig shook hands with his old friend and ordered a beer and a turkey club. It was just noon. He was the only person at the bar; the tables in the big room behind him were only just beginning to fill. In the evening every table would be occupied, mostly by families from the campground.

“Word has it your father's pretty serious about this woman Jennifer,” Chip said when Craig's sandwich arrived.

“He might be,” Craig said. “I don't really know.”

“Well, your brother's been talking. Not that that's much of a surprise. He's always liked to hear himself talk.”

Craig smiled. “So, what's he been saying?”

“That no one not a born McQueen is getting Larchmere. Making threats, nothing too specific. Being a blowhard.”

“That sounds like Adam.”

“What do you think about the house?” Chip asked.

Craig put down the sandwich he was about to bite. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you ever think about inheriting that big old place?”

“Me!” Craig laughed, a bit too loudly. “No way. Who wants that sort of responsibility? I'd probably only sell it, get it off my hands as quickly as I could. The upkeep alone could bankrupt a person. And the taxes? No, Larchmere isn't for me.”

Besides,
he thought,
I don't deserve it. Someone like me doesn't deserve that sort of privilege.

Chip sighed. “It is a beautiful place, though. Wouldn't mind that sort of house being in my family. Can see the ocean from your own front porch!”

“You can see the ocean from a fishing shack. The ocean is everywhere, Chip.”

“Maybe so. But a big house like that…”

“Sometimes,” Craig said, wondering who he was really trying to convince, “big, spectacular-looking things are more trouble than they're worth.”

“Maybe. No point in thinking about it anyway. My father's got nothing more than a rusted old plow to leave me!” Chip laughed, obviously not in the least bothered by the fact of his meager inheritance.

Other customers came in then, a vacationing couple in matching polo shirts (why did some couples do that, dress alike?), and Chip moved off down the bar to serve them. Craig quickly ate the rest of his lunch, left the best tip he could afford, and went home.

 

While her brother was having lunch at the Cape Neddick Lobster Pound, Hannah was driving down to see her father's car mechanic in York Beach. Her car had been making an odd sound and she was eager to get it looked at. Herbie did just that, adjusted something or other, and the odd sound was gone.

On the way back to Larchmere she had decided to stop at Billy's Chowder House, less for something to eat, though she was hungry, than to visit the marsh that spread behind the building. She loved marshes, in all weather and at all levels of tide. There was something compelling about a marsh, something mysterious. Marshes made her think of ancient times and bogs and ritual burials in the mud under the green and yellow and brownish grasses and tall, sturdy cattails. Besides, at high tide you could paddle a canoe through a marsh and that was a totally enjoyable, almost spiritual experience.

Hannah took a seat in the bar area where she had a full and unobstructed view through the large wall-to-wall windows. She ordered a bowl of haddock chowder and a beer. While she waited for her lunch, she gazed out at the marsh spreading behind the restaurant. The tide was low. It would begin to come in soon. She noted the striations of earth below the grasses and above the muddy ground. To herself, she recited these lines:

She rarely remembered poetry—back in grammar school it had been hell to memorize even short poems, except the famous one about the purple cow—but those particular lines had stayed with her. They were from a poem by a Maine writer. The title was “Marsh at Mid-Life.” She had read the poem in one of the small, local papers back in Portland.

At first Hannah couldn't figure out why the lines—pretty depressing, she thought—had stuck with her, especially since she had made no effort to learn them by heart. And then she had got to thinking. Those lines kind of described her own life at that moment in time. She was waiting, but for what, exactly, she didn't know. Answers? She was stagnant, like the marsh at low tide. She was stuck, mired in indecision and fear. She was in the middle of her life. There was no going back but the idea of moving forward just inspired confusion.

Her lunch came and Hannah ate it but without enthusiasm. As soon as she was finished she paid the check and left. She did not look back at the marsh, now slowly filling with the incoming tide.

The moment Tilda had gotten back to the house from the Cove she sought out Hannah, who had just returned from the mechanic's and her solitary expedition to the marshes in Wells. Tilda told her about the date she had made with Dennis Haass, if only so that someone knew where she was going and with whom. She had read enough mystery fiction not to meet with a stranger without some sort of witness—even though she and Dennis were meeting at the Old Village Inn where almost every staff member knew her and her family by name. And that fact, too, had given her pause. What might the local gossips make of her having dinner with a man other than Frank, other than her father or brothers?

She had come very, very close to canceling. Dennis had given her his cell phone number. She could simply call and say that “something had come up” or that she had forgotten a prior family obligation. She sensed that Dennis would be a gentleman about her cancellation and not press her for details or make her feel badly. But she had not cancelled, partly because Hannah threatened to drag her to the restaurant by force if she tried to back out and partly because—and this surprised her—she actually wanted to play the evening through.

Tilda went up to her room and opened her closet. Deciding what to wear took an agonizing hour. She tried to remember the last time she had struggled to choose her clothes. She couldn't. She had not dressed for someone in years and years. Maybe she never had. She had always been so entirely comfortable with Frank. She couldn't now recall if in the very beginning she had dressed to impress or to attract him. She doubted that she had. But maybe Frank would remember differently. If he were alive. God, she wished she could ask him to clarify her own life for her, to help her to remember! With Frank gone, so much of herself was gone.

Tilda surveyed the limited selections in her closet. All she had to choose from was what she had brought for the two weeks at Larchmere and a few other staples she kept at the house. Not that her entire wardrobe, if it could even be called that, contained anything appropriate for a first date. But was this a “first” anything? Was it even a date? And what did forty-seven-year-old women wear on dates these days, anyway? If it involved anything cleavage baring, she was out of luck. She had very little cleavage to begin with and certainly nothing designed to show it off.

Finally, finally she chose a pair of wide-legged, cuffed, chino trousers—they required that she wear her one pair of sandals with heels—a white blouse, and a navy cardigan with gold tone buttons. It wasn't a sexy outfit but none of Tilda's clothes were sexy. She had brought only one bag with her, an oversight, and it certainly was too bulky for a dinner date. Then she remembered something. She dug in the back of the closet for the cardboard box that contained an assortment of accessories that had belonged to her mother. She found what she was looking for—a simple, woven clutch with brown leather trim. She had never before used it. Maybe, she thought, it would bring her luck, or ensure a nice evening.

She had about an hour to kill before it was time to leave for the restaurant. She was loathe to encounter any of her family (other than Hannah) because then she would be compelled to explain why she was wearing heels and makeup, so she stayed in her room. She sat in the seat by the window and looked out but didn't see much. Her thoughts, as they were almost always wont to do, circled around the two most significant events of her adult life—the death of her mother and the death of her husband. Even the birth of her children, whom she dearly loved, could not touch these other two moments in significance.

In a matter of eight years she had lost the two most solid anchors in her life. It was strange and awful to feel so un-moored, even at the age of forty-seven. Age and maturity didn't entirely erase the need for the comfort, the surety of maternal love, and it didn't necessarily strengthen you against the brutal fact of being widowed.

She thought about how after both losses it had been hard to take interest in the things she had once enjoyed. That was normal, she was told. She was told to be patient. But the experiences had been hard to bear. For example, after Charlotte's accidental death, Tilda found that she no longer cared about knitting. She had loved to knit since she had learned, on her own, when she was ten years old. Over the years she had made lots and lots of scarves and mittens and sweaters for her family but mostly for her mother. Some of the sweaters she had made Charlotte were, Tilda thought, really beautiful. (Where had all those things gone? Funny. Tilda hadn't seen any of those sweaters or scarves or mittens in her mother's closets when she and Hannah had cleaned them out after Charlotte's death.)

Ten years later, and she still had no interest in knitting. Recently, she had asked Jane if she wanted her collection of needles and yarn (mostly scraps), had even offered to teach her or pay for a few lessons. Jane had nicely but firmly rejected the offer. Knitting wasn't her thing. The needles and bits of yarn had gone to a local thrift shop.

And then, when Frank died…Well, things had been much worse. Tilda found that she could no longer read. Knitting had been an enjoyable hobby. Reading was a necessity of spirit. Reading was to Tilda akin to breathing, something natural and necessary. It was unthinkable, not to be reading several books at a time, not to be going to the bookstore and the library every week to restock her personal shelves. The problem wasn't a lack of focus. She could concentrate on her lesson plans and she could reread familiar material for her classes. She could read the local paper and the national and international news online. But books, ones she had not yet read, proved impossible. She felt a frightening sense of disability, as if she simply was not capable of taking in or comprehending anything new. After six months she forced herself to go back to her book group. The experiment failed. She found the reading choices of the other members unsatisfactory but she couldn't say why. She tried to read new gothic novels, new mysteries, and found them all insipid. She was getting desperate. It was torture.

Finally, finally, after almost a year, her ability to read came back, slowly at first, then rapidly and completely. How and why this had happened Tilda didn't need to discover. It was enough that her greatest passion—aside from her love for her family—had returned.

But some things still hadn't settled or resolved. There were still things—seemingly small things—that appeared insurmountable, incomprehensible to her. Like going to the movies by herself. In college she had loved to go to the movies on her own, and for a few years after that, too. But once married to Frank, she had gotten into the habit of renting the movies she wanted to see and Frank didn't. That way, they could at least be in the house together, though in separate rooms. That had seemed important. Now, the idea of going out to a movie—or, for that matter, to a restaurant other than Breaking New Grounds for a cup of coffee!—seemed monumental, virtually impossible. What had happened to her independence? What had she allowed to have happen to it?

The therapist she had seen for a while had encouraged Tilda to take a trip on her own, nothing major, maybe just a weekend away. “A change of scene would do you good,” the therapist had said. A change of perspective might ensue. But Tilda had stayed home, paralyzed. It wasn't fear, exactly, that held her back. It was more a failure of imagination. She simply could not imagine traveling without Frank.

The last big trip they had taken was to Montreal for their tenth anniversary. Because it was October and the kids were in school and too young to stay by themselves, Hannah had stayed with them. Charlotte was supposed to have come down for a day to relieve Hannah but for some reason that Tilda now could not remember, she had cancelled her visit.

Tilda and Frank had splurged and stayed in a fancy hotel, one ordinarily beyond their means, and eaten at five-star restaurants two of the five nights, though Frank, a basic sort of guy who preferred his food basic, too, wasn't as impressed by the cuisine as was Tilda. But they had loved the city and often talked about going back someday. They never did make it.

Nor had they made it to Paris. They had been planning the trip, a delayed celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary. But plans had come to an abrupt halt when Frank got sick. There simply was no money to spend on travel or other things not strictly necessary. Anyway, before too long Frank had been too weak to travel farther than Maine Medical, a fifteen-minute drive from their home.

Tilda sighed, got up from the chair, and stretched. She wondered if she would ever be able to break out of the uncomfortable comfort zone she had somehow fallen into.

She looked at her watch. It was time to leave for the Old Village Inn. It was time to start regaining some of her old independence and sense of adventure. Yeah, right! Her stomach was jumpy. She felt a bit sweaty, in spite of the deodorant and powder she had liberally put on. She felt more like she was going to an execution than on a date. An execution! Really, how melodramatic could she be? She would drive into town, have dinner, and drive home. That was all there was to it, she told herself. That was all there was to it. Step one, step two, step three.

No one was around when she got downstairs. She could leave the house unnoticed. She checked her image in the hall mirror for one last time before leaving the shelter of Larchmere and closing the door behind her.

 

The Old Village Inn was crowded, no surprise there. Built in the nineteenth century, it was a warren of dark, cozy rooms decorated with quality antiques and Americana. Tilda passed through the front hall and peered into the bar. The bartender waved to Tilda. One of the waitresses, a veteran of crazy Ogunquit summers, nodded to her as she wove her way around the small and charming dining room off the bar, dish-laden tray on her shoulder. One of the OVI regulars, in his corner stool, shot glass in front of him, smiled in her direction. Tilda had never seen him anywhere else but on that bar stool in the corner. Not on the street or on the beach or in the corner market. She wondered where he lived. She wondered if he had any family or friends. She realized she didn't know his name. She smiled back.

“Tilda.”

She turned to find Dennis a few feet behind her. He was wearing a navy blazer, pressed chinos, and a white dress shirt open at the neck. He looked trim and sporty and handsome.

“Hello,” she said, with a smile. She felt surprisingly calm, now that the big night had officially begun. She did not feel sick to her stomach, not like she had when she had first glimpsed Frank.

“I made a reservation this afternoon,” Dennis said. “I wasn't sure what luck we'd have getting a table without one.”

“Good idea. I should have thought of it.”
But,
she added silently,
I was too busy having an emotional crisis and wallowing in my misery.

They were given a table for two in a corner of the smallest dining room. A quick glance around told Tilda that the other diners were strangers. Good.

They discussed the menu, selected wines, and ordered. Dennis told her that he was sixty-two. He had been divorced for about six years. His wife had left him for another man.

“That's so sad,” Tilda said. “Actually, it's more than sad. I think it's horrible.”

Dennis smiled. “It wasn't fun, I'll say that much. I'd be lying if I said that my ego didn't take a bruising. But you work things through. You get past the negative feelings. You have to.”

“Yes. But I'm sure that some people just can't let go of those negative feelings. Don't you think?”

“I suppose. But those people aren't my concern. I don't mean to sound cold. It's just that going through the divorce taught me that I needed to focus on me before anyone else. Again, I really don't mean that to sound off-putting. But I do think that everyone should cultivate a healthy level of selfishness, or self-centeredness. If you don't live your own life, who else will do it for you?”

The words hit home with Tilda. “Well,” she said vaguely, “I suppose that's true.” You just have to be ready and willing and yes, capable, of living your own life, and that was a tall order, especially for emotional cowards!

They talked about their children. Dennis had the son, Dan, in Arizona and a daughter in Florida. “I get to see her pretty often,” he said. “I like to cook and Marie can't boil water. She's getting a doctorate in marine science. Don't ask me to explain anything about her particular specialty because I can't. I do worry, though, that she won't find a job in her field. With the economy the way it is, I think she's going to have a hard time.”

“Do you think we'll ever stop worrying about our children?” Tilda asked then.

“Never!” Dennis laughed. “It's a life sentence, this thing called being a parent. It's not for the faint of heart.”

Tilda thought of Hannah and her hesitation to start a family. She had always thought of her sister as brave. But did Hannah feel otherwise about herself? Did she doubt her ability to be a good parent?

They talked about what sort of books they liked to read (Dennis was into nonfiction and spy stories) and what sort of movies they liked to watch (Dennis, unlike Frank, did not care for Will Ferrell). They talked about their careers. Dennis had retired early. He had made a good deal of money in systems management, whatever that was. They talked about Ogunquit. Dennis's wife had preferred spending summer vacations at the family's house on the Jersey shore and it was only after his divorce, when he was no longer welcome at his in-laws' home, that he'd first come to Ogunquit. They talked about its charms and Tilda told him, from an insider's point of view, about its more difficult aspects, like summer traffic jams and bleak Februaries.

Finally, a check was brought to the table. Dennis reached for it immediately, as if there was never any question of who would be paying. Tilda opened her mouth to protest or to offer to pay half, she wasn't sure which, and then closed it. She had not been out with a man other than Frank in over twenty years. What were the rules? What was the etiquette? Should she offer to pay next time? But that would be presuming a next time!