The Family Beach House (26 page)

Thursday, August 2

Tilda met Dennis for breakfast at Bessie's diner in town. He had a flight home to Florida that afternoon, leaving from Portland. Tilda, who was nervous about this leave-taking, didn't have much of an appetite but she ordered a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. Dennis ordered a full, heart attack special. After all, he said, tomorrow it was back to the real world. He might as well indulge while he could.

The real world,
Tilda thought.
Yes. And now, my real world is going to be different. It's going to be new. It has to be. Frank said it was all right and Frank has never lied to me.

She looked at this man sitting across from her at the Formica-topped table. She was thankful for his having come into her life at a crucial moment and literally waking her up to life's further possibilities. He had been a catalyst for change, not the only one she had encountered in the past two weeks, but an important one. And for that she would always be grateful. But her feelings for him simply weren't deep enough—or passionate enough—to justify sustaining a long-distance relationship. It would be unfair to Dennis. If, indeed, he even wanted such a thing.

It seemed that he did want such a thing. “Tilda,” he said, when they had been served, “I thought that maybe we could stay in touch. Call each other, e-mail. Maybe we could even visit each other, not right away but around the holidays. What do you think?”

“I think,” she said finally, and carefully, “that it might be best if we didn't. We've had a wonderful time together, here in Ogunquit. I don't think…” Tilda struggled to find the right words. “I like you an awful lot, Dennis,” she went on. “I'm glad, very glad, I bumped into you in the ice cream shop. But I think that now I need to go home and…I'm sorry. I don't seem to be doing a very good job of explaining myself.”

Dennis stirred his tea for a moment before answering. “I can't say I'm not disappointed, Tilda, but I do think I understand.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“So much has happened for you in just two weeks. It would be unfair of me to press for any sort of commitment at all, given the circumstances.”

Tilda sipped her coffee and Dennis ate his breakfast in a silence that was only partly uncomfortable. Dennis insisted on paying for their meals, as always. Outside the diner, at his rental car, they parted.

“Have a safe flight,” Tilda said. She reached up and kissed his cheek.

“And you have a happy life, Tilda McQueen O'Connell.”

Dennis got in his car and Tilda watched him drive off in the direction of Route 1.

When he was out of sight she walked to her own car. Her appetite had returned and now she regretted not having eaten that muffin. Well, she would be home before long and there was always something to eat at Larchmere. That was one thing she could count on—that, and her family's love.

She got behind the wheel and pulled into the street. She felt a little bit sad but also liberated. She felt eager. She thought about a man she knew back in South Portland, someone she had been friendly with since a year or so before Frank's death. His name was Jacob, he was divorced, and they had met at a gathering of the neighborhood watch. About six months after Frank had passed, Jacob had asked her out to dinner. “Just as friends,” he had assured her, but Tilda had said no, thank you, and they had gone on as before, chatting after meetings, exchanging e-mails about local issues and sometimes even those unfunny e-mails that were always circulating the Web. Jacob had a good sense of humor (he always apologized for those e-mails) and there was no denying that he was attractive. Maybe, she thought, she should ask him out for coffee after the next meeting of the neighborhood watch. Start small but make the effort. What was that saying, most of success is about showing up?

Well,
Tilda thought, as she pulled into the drive at Larchmere,
it's time for me to start showing up.

 

It was mid-afternoon. Tilda was just back from the beach, where it had been too crowded for a long walk, but she had wanted to say a farewell for the moment. She would miss Ogunquit Beach—she always did—but she would be back in a week or so. She knew she would always come home. She had not been born in Maine, nor had her parents or their parents, so she would always be considered “from away.” But that was all right. She loved Maine and she loved its people. She would not want to live anywhere else.

But on her next visit to Larchmere, she just might stay in another room, try another view, maybe the room Craig often passed up for the library couch. He could move into her old room now, if he wanted to. It was big and pleasant and they were each ready for a change.

She had already said good-bye to her father and his bride. Bill and Jennifer were on their way to Bar Harbor, where they would spend a few days at an inn owned by an old friend of Jennifer's. Tilda was sure they would appreciate some time alone, without the McQueen clan around them, and away from the curious, though kind, eyes of their neighbors in Ogunquit.

Hannah and Susan had already left for home. Just before getting into the car, Hannah had blurted their big news, that they were starting steps to have a family, and then burst out crying. Of course, that had made Tilda cry and then Susan was bawling and even Ruth's eyes had looked a little misty as she waved them off.

Just before heading back to South Portland, Tilda did a final check of her room to be sure she was leaving nothing important behind. She opened the drawer in which she kept her nightclothes and rummaged around for the button of Frank's sweater. She thought she would bring it back to South Portland as a sort of memento of these two important weeks at Larchmere. She moved the clean nightgowns aside. She pulled the drawer out as far as it would go. She bent down and peered inside.

The button was gone. As mysteriously as it had appeared it had disappeared. Tilda smiled. “Okay, Frank,” she said.

She went downstairs, hugged her aunt, and gave Percy one stroke on his back, which was all he permitted before stalking off. She hugged Craig, too, who had already begun working on a long list of home improvement projects.

“Take care,” he said. “You know where to find me.”

Tilda smiled at her younger brother. “Yes,” she said. “I finally know where to find you.”

The Present

Craig pulled into the driveway at Larchmere. The old red van had long ago been replaced by an old but eminently serviceable Volvo wagon, perfect for transporting everything from groceries to lumber to the family. He climbed the stairs to the front porch, then made his way inside to the kitchen.

“There you are!” Hannah called. “We're thinking of making grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. You in?”

Craig briefly thought about his creeping waistline and said, “Of course. I think we have Swiss cheese in the fridge. And American.” Nigel bounded up from where he had been dozing by the window and Craig rubbed his massive head in greeting. It was always nice to be greeted with enthusiasm. Adopting Nigel was one of the best things he had ever done.

Hannah and Susan and their two children were visiting Larchmere for the weekend. Katherine, called Kate, was nine and James was eight. Susan had borne them both and liked to boast about how easy the deliveries had been. Behind her back, Hannah would shake her head. She had been there with Susan and had heard the screams and seen the ick factor. But hey, if all Susan remembered was the good parts, so be it.

“I'll have pickle relish on mine, please,” Susan said now. It was a Sirico family tradition to add pickle relish to grilled cheese sandwiches.

Craig smiled when he saw his sister's look of distaste. “Me, too,” he said. “Lots of it.” Craig was still single at fifty, though for the past two years he had kept regular company (he liked that old-fashioned term) with a local artist, a painter he had met at a Barn Gallery opening. He was not opposed to the idea of their marrying at some point. In fact, he and Anna had talked about the possibility on several occasions. He just might surprise everyone in his family—again.

Like when he had promised, all those years ago, to settle down at the family beach house, at Larchmere. And he had made good on that promise. He lived there year round and managed the summer bed and breakfast he and Hannah and Susan had established. Craig's dog, Nigel, an American Staffordshire terrier, kept him good company. Nigel was his first animal companion and, while he was trained, he was also spoiled. Percy, now thirteen and more imperious than ever, was surprisingly in love with Nigel and complained angrily for days when he and Ruth went off to New York. No one had expected a love affair between the two animals but it did make life at Larchmere much more pleasant than it might have been. And, Guy Cokal had made good on his promise to mentor Craig. In addition to running the bed and breakfast, Craig was now also a CPA with his own small and respected business. Craig was busy and happy and productive. He felt needed. He felt he was making a difference. His life was good.

“I got a postcard from Tilda,” he told his sisters. “I forgot to mention it earlier.”

“So did we,” Susan said. “Sounds like she's having fun.”

Tilda was vacationing in France with her second husband. Joe Harvey was a professor of European history at Southern Maine University. She had met him while auditing a class on the ancien régime. Tilda and Joe, who had no children of his own, lived in Portland's West End, not far from Hannah and Susan and their children, all of whom they saw frequently.

For the past eight years Tilda—who had taken to wearing skirts again—had been volunteering as a grief counselor. Once a week she met with men and women who had lost a loved one and with the knowledge she had gained from her own experience, she tried to help them recover. She planned to retire from teaching high school English at sixty and spend as much time as possible in Ogunquit. And when Joe finally retired—he loved his job and planned to work until the bitter end of his energies—they would move there year round.

Unbeknownst to the others in her family, Tilda had run into Kat Daly a few years after her breakup with Adam. Kat had greeted her warmly and after a bit of a chat Tilda had taken a chance and asked Kat about the night she had begged off going to dinner at The Front Porch. She told her that she had seen Kat having drinks with another man. Kat blushed and laughed. Yes, she had met a good friend that evening. Already she had been having reservations about marrying Adam, and when she had received a text message from Paul saying that he would be in town that night, she had planned to meet him and talk through some of her anxiety. Was he helpful, Tilda wanted to know. Kat laughed again. “Yes,” she told Tilda. “Very.” She then held up her left hand for Tilda to see. “We've been married for two years and have an adorable little boy!”

Tilda's own children were doing fine. Jane, now twenty-eight, was married and had a four-month-old little girl named Gillian. She and her family lived in her mother's South Portland house, paid rent and maintained it. Someday, they hoped to buy the house straight out. Jane comanaged a small day care center, and her husband, George, was a talented finish carpenter.

Jon, now thirty, lived in Boston. Single and showing no signs of wanting to be otherwise, he was a lawyer at a big firm and hardly ever came to visit his mother or other relatives. This, Tilda knew, bothered Jane terribly as she and her brother had been so close for so long. Though he looked more like his father than ever, in attitude he was becoming more like his uncle Adam. It worried Tilda—Adam was an unhappy man—but Jon was an adult and there wasn't much she could do about his choice of lifestyle. Interestingly, as far as she knew, Jon had nothing to do with his uncle, though they worked and lived in the same city.

“And,” Hannah said, “I got a call from Ruth last night. She should be here some time tomorrow afternoon, depending on traffic.”

Ruth had long since completed her master's degree in fine arts. She spent half of her time in New York City and half at Larchmere, where she continued to have a special relationship with the now retired Bobby. Tilda, ever the romantic, hoped her aunt would marry Bobby, but she was not holding her breath.

“How long will she stay?” Craig asked. He liked it when his aunt was around. He appreciated her perspective. And she was a far better cook than he was.

Susan laughed. “Like she ever tells us her plans? Other than her showing up, we don't count on anything.”

“Like it used to be with me,” Craig said wryly.

“Way back in the dim and misty past. Will you get me the butter?”

Craig brought his sister a stick of butter from the fridge—there would, after all, be several sandwiches—and watched as she buttered the bread. His mind leapt to Adam, who, as far as anyone knew, was still probably a health nut. Adam probably had not touched butter since college. More was the pity.

Adam, after going through a very messy divorce, was single once again. Only months after Kat's defection he had married a waitress/model in her late twenties. When the marriage, which was childless, fell apart less than two years later, no one was surprised. No one felt very sorry for him, either. Communication between Adam and his aunt and siblings was almost entirely dead and when it was alive, it was incidental. Interestingly, this state of affairs bothered Craig more than it did the others. He couldn't help but recall a conversation he had had with Sarah the week of his mother's ten-year memorial. They had been sitting side by side on the front porch. Sarah had talked about everyone having a lovable self, even if that self was difficult to see. In the back of Craig's mind was the notion of someday attempting to draw Adam back into the fold, at least, of extending a friendly hand. But that would be someday.

Sarah was happily remarried and continued to keep in touch with her former in-laws. Cordelia, who was twenty, was studying business at Northeastern University and planned to go on for an MBA. Cody, eighteen, went to Clark University and wanted to be a doctor. During summers they split their time between Adam's South End condo and Sarah's house in the suburbs.

Teddy and Tessa Vickes were gone. They had passed within six months of each other about five years back, Tessa dying peacefully in her sleep and Teddy of a heart attack. They were still missed by everyone who had known them.

Bill McQueen had died at the age of eighty-two. He had suffered a massive stroke and was dead within days, unaware of what had happened to him. His family felt that it was a mercy. Still, they mourned his loss. According to the wishes expressed in his living will, he had not been buried alongside his first wife, but in a new plot he and Jennifer had purchased together. Tilda, being Tilda, sometimes wondered if her mother's spirit—assuming there was one—visited her husband's unexpectedly distant grave to give him a piece of her mind. She hoped not. Hannah thought that Adam should be buried alongside his mother, when his time came. Like should be with like. They could criticize together through the ages. Susan scolded her when she said such things but in truth, she agreed with her wife.

Jennifer continued to live in her condo in Portland where she and Bill had spent most of their nine married years together. When she visited Larchmere, which she did when business allowed, she stayed in the guest cottage, as her old room, the one she had shared for a while with Bill, was generally in use for paying guests. When in Portland she met Tilda and Hannah about once a month for lunch. She had recently taken up knitting and her enthusiasm had, unexpectedly, stirred Tilda's old love of the craft. Now, Tilda was taking advanced knitting classes at a yarn shop on Congress Street. Craig had commissioned a sweater for Anna for Christmas and Tilda was hard at work.

“Kids!” Hannah shouted. “Lunch is ready!”

Kate and James charged into the kitchen as if they had been waiting just outside the door for their mother's call. Which, Craig thought with a smile, they probably had been. They were great kids with seemingly boundless energy. And he was proud to say that they loved their uncle.

It was quickly decided that they would take their lunch out to the front porch. Susan carried a pitcher of homemade lemonade and Craig took the tray of hot, gooey sandwiches. The kids ran ahead and Hannah followed with a handful of napkins. Nigel was there before them all.

Once gathered around the lovely old wrought iron table that Craig had bought and restored, the family began the struggle to keep Nigel from snatching the sandwiches out of anyone's hand. Craig settled into his special chair, the big, ornate wicker rocker that had once been his mother's and that he had rescued from the basement, and began to eat his own sandwich—which he shared with Nigel.

Craig smiled. It was a pretty great thing, he thought, eating lunch on the porch on a warm, sunny summer day, surrounded by members of your family, the latest generation of McQueens giggling, and your faithful, furry companion nuzzling at your lap.

So much had changed, Craig thought. So much had not. Ogunquit was still and would always be a beautiful place by the sea. And it would always be his family's home.