The Family Beach House (5 page)

Adam fixed his sisters with a stern stare. The notion of “home” meant absolutely nothing to him. He was proudly un-romantic and unsentimental. And he was proudly a fan of expensive real estate. “I'll do anything it takes,” he said now, “to prevent the passing of Larchmere from this family.”

“I didn't know you cared so much about the house,” Tilda said. She felt a bit angry, a bit confused, even a bit desperate. She wondered if Adam would be her ally or her enemy in the looming, perhaps imaginary, battle for Larchmere.

“Do you know how much money this place could be worth as a luxury bed and breakfast? Or, when the market fully recovers, as a luxury home sale? I'm not letting a financial opportunity like Larchmere get away.”

“But the house doesn't belong to you,” Hannah pointed out, “not legally.”

“It will someday. I'm the oldest child. It stands to reason Dad plans to leave the place to me. And I'm not letting anything or anyone get in the way of my inheritance, especially not some tarty gold digger.”

For a brief, awful moment Tilda wondered if her brother was capable of murder. Ridiculous! There was that flair for the dramatic! Frank used to tease her about the number of gothic and mystery novels she devoured, classics and contemporary stories, anything she could get her hands on. If there was a masked murderer afoot or a nasty demon in the attic, Tilda had to read about it.

“God, you are presumptuous!” Hannah cried. “Really, how did you come by that sense of entitlement?”
Mom,
she thought.
Mom is to blame. She made him think he's entitled to and deserves anything he wants.
“And you know nothing about this Jennifer person,” she added. “No more than we know, anyway.”

“Which is virtually nothing.” Susan stood and stretched. “I'm going to bed. The sea air makes me sleepy. And I think I ate too much.”

“I'll come with,” Hannah said.

Tilda, reluctant to remain alone with her older brother and his presumptions, also went up to her room.

Tuesday, July 17

Marginal Way, a one-and-a-half-mile long walking path along the coast, stretched from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Beach. It was, in Tilda's opinion as in the opinion of many, many others, one of the loveliest spots on the northeast coast.

It was about nine in the morning and Tilda was making her way along the path. Attractive stone and wooden benches, memorials to former residents, dotted its length. The path was for pedestrians only; bicycles and skateboards and roller skates were not allowed. At places the path was so narrow that baby strollers and wheelchairs gummed up the flow. But a town—especially one that relied so heavily on the tourist trade—could hardly prohibit the passage of baby strollers and wheelchairs.

The craggy cliffs and spectacular whirlpools below the Marginal Way were gorgeous in a romantic sort of way, but they were best kept away from and respected. Still, every summer a few foolish middle-aged men and women (never teens, who, interestingly, seemed to know better) would attempt to climb down the cliffs, maybe to get a close-up shot of some rock formation, or to capture on film a violent little eddy, and invariably wind up injured and stranded, at the mercy of the fire department. It was a bit of a joke among the locals, the idiocy of people on holiday.

The pines and scrub along the Marginal Way were distorted and scoured and stunted by a lifetime of exposure to the often brutal wind coming off the water. But the view out to sea was spectacular, grand, intimidating in its beauty and scale. In summer the path was alive with dragonflies of immense proportions and shimmering colors. Tilda had once read that there were over 113 species of dragonflies and 45 species of damselflies in the state of Maine alone. That was a lot of winged creatures.

Tilda finally reached her destination, a small dip off the concrete path, a natural alcove of sorts, a protected, shaded little spot before the massive drop of the cliffs. On a drizzly, summer morning two years ago, just as dawn was struggling to break, she and Jon and Jane had sprinkled Frank's ashes from just this spot. She had cried, but soundlessly. Jon, trying hard to be strong for his mother, had remained dry eyed but Tilda was sure that it had cost him. Jane, sixteen at the time, had clung to her mother's arm. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she had whispered when the last of the ashes were lost to the ocean. “I love you.”

How deeply lonely she had felt that drizzly morning, in spite of her children's presence! And how much more lonely she had become since then!

Tilda sat on a large gray rock in the little alcove and looked out at the sea. It was glittering in the morning light. Unconsciously, because it had become a habit, she twirled her wedding ring with her thumb. She had kept Frank's wedding ring, first at home and then in her safety deposit box at the bank, in the hopes that someday Jon might want to wear it, if he decided to get married, that was. Of course, she had not expressed that hope to her son. That would seem like pressure. She didn't want to presume anything about the lives of her children. Maybe Jon wouldn't want to marry. Maybe Jane wouldn't either. Maybe she would never have grandchildren.

Tilda sighed. She knew she was indulging in self-pity, more than ever lately, and she knew it was an unattractive quality, but she just couldn't seem to stop it. After all, she had been virtually dumped by the majority of their couple friends. She wanted to tell them that death was not contagious. “I don't have a taint on me,” she wanted to say. Frank's cancer wasn't an infectious plague. Or was it that some people didn't want her around because she was a reminder of death, a reminder of what dreaded possibility they, too, might face?
If it could happen to Tilda McQueen O'Connell, it could happen to me. If Tilda could wind up all alone, then so could I.

There was an antiquated notion of married women not wanting their single girlfriends around for fear they would try to steal the husbands. But Tilda refused to believe that anyone she and Frank had called friends would indulge in such a dated, sexist stereotype. They had all gone to college. All the women had careers. So what was the problem?

About a year earlier she had read a blog in which the writer, a woman divorced after almost thirty years of marriage, had warned that single women could be “ghetto-ized” if they didn't “live strong.” At first the choice of words had struck Tilda as overly dramatic but as time went on, she had come to agree wholeheartedly with the writer's observation. Only in movies were single women—some of them—glamorous and wanted.

It had been different in the beginning. Soon after Frank's death, friends had reached out and invited Tilda to dinners and card parties and picnics, but the mood at such gatherings was invariably tense, as if no one wanted to be the first to laugh and thereby declare that life went on even after the death of someone special. So then the invitations to dinner and card parties and picnics waned and in some cases, mostly the cases of married couples, eventually stopped coming. Tilda had told herself that she didn't really care. And for a while, she really didn't care. She did nothing to encourage a social life. She stopped making friendly phone calls, stopped replying to e-mails, stopped suggesting lunches or movies or shopping trips to the outlets in Freeport.

Now, two years and some months after Frank's death, she found that she had become alienated from the majority of her old friends and acquaintances. Now, two years and some months after Frank's death, she found that she did care about being alone. She cared very much.

Invariably, weekends were the loneliest. She was hesitant to invite a couple over for dinner, or to ask them out to a movie—wasn't Saturday night date night for most couples? And didn't couples spend lots of time on the weekends hunkered down with their children and running errands and doing chores they had not managed to squeeze in to their hectic work weeks? No one had time for a single woman, divorced or widowed. Or so it sometimes seemed to Tilda, who, as she readily acknowledged, struggled against self-pity but all too often succumbed to its dubious comforts.

She couldn't very well beg Jane and Jon to spend their weekends with her. It would be unfair to them, and unreasonable. The kids had homework and jobs and social lives of their own. She felt she should be thankful they still lived at home, though more and more it seemed that they only stopped by for the occasional meal or to sleep. But their moving away from her was inevitable. Time brought change.

It was just that Tilda had never expected this particular change, that at the age of forty-seven she would be single and alone. Not that every single woman was alone or even lonely. Her college friend, Clarice, had never married, and claimed she had never wanted to marry. She had moved to Seattle after graduation and had been living alone there ever since. She seemed perfectly content to date men without any desire to build a relationship. Not long ago, Tilda, feeling very much the social pariah, had called Clarice and asked if she ever felt the same. Clarice had laughed at the notion. “Maybe,” she had said, “some people don't want me around for whatever twisted reasons they have, but I've never noticed any discrimination. I go where I please when I please. And I don't ever feel lonely.”

Tilda believed her old friend. She had never known Clarice to be hesitant or indecisive or fearful. She seemed always to be—content. Tilda now envied her. She wanted Clarice to teach her the secret of contentment. There had to be a secret, a magic button she could press, a wand she could wave, something.

Or maybe it was all about hard work and courage. And courage was hard to come by when you were an emotional coward by nature.

Tilda sighed. It was time to get back to the house. She got up from her seat on the rock and made her way back along the path to the parking lot in the Cove. Once there, a small crowd of people in party clothes caught her attention, a photographer and her assistant laden with cameras and other equipment, and most importantly, a bride and her groom. The couple was having their pictures taken against the backdrop of the glittering blue ocean and the gray, rocky shore; no doubt the group would wind its way up onto Marginal Way before long for more spectacular backdrops. Maybe they would gather for a picture just where Tilda had sat that morning.

Tilda stopped to watch. The bride wore a white, strapless dress, which seemed to be the most popular style these days, and her hair was piled high on her head in an intricate updo, interwoven with small pink flowers. She looked very pretty, like a sugar confection. The groom was standard issue in a neat black tuxedo and black shoes highly shined.

Tilda's heart contracted. Weddings had always made her cry, but more so since she had lost Frank. They had married at Larchmere on an afternoon in early October. She had wanted to wear her mother's dress but Charlotte, admittedly not sentimental, revealed that she had sold it years before to a high-end resale shop in Boston. Instead, Tilda had worn a simple, ivory satin sheath with an ivory satin bolero jacket (the woman at the bridal store had insisted that the jacket gave Tilda some much needed “padding”) and dyed-to-match kitten-heel shoes. She had danced with her father to “Moon River” and tossed her bouquet of ivory roses and green verbernum to the single women present. (Hannah had declined to participate but Ruth had joined in for the fun of it.) Oddly, now Tilda couldn't remember who had caught it. The next day she and Frank left for a honeymoon in Jamaica, though secretly Tilda had wanted to stay in Maine. Frank had never been to a tropical island before, so for his sake, she went along and of course, they had had a good time.

The bride modestly adjusted her bodice. An older man now stood at her side, in a tuxedo much like the groom's.
Probably her father,
Tilda thought. Her proud, and slightly sad, father. Tilda turned away, tears in her eyes.

Poor Frank. He hadn't lived to see his daughter marry. And poor Tilda! The thought of attending the wedding of one of her children alone, without the father of those children, without Frank, reduced her to something like despair. Weddings were part of the plan. Have children, raise them, send them to college, see them married, be given grandchildren, live out the rest of your life in peace.

But in her case the plan had gone horribly wrong. Well, she supposed that most life plans went wrong somewhere. Why were people stupid enough to plan what they couldn't control? She had been stupid. So had Frank.

Tilda got into her car and headed back to Larchmere. Frank! How could she possibly walk down the aisle of her daughter's or son's wedding on the arm of just any man, just a friend she knew from town or from work? She wanted that man to be Frank. But that was now impossible. Almost as impossible as it was to imagine attending the wedding of one of her children with someone who was a real partner, a lover, a companion, even, possibly, a husband.

Well, Tilda supposed she could wrangle Craig into being her date, if he was around when a wedding was scheduled to take place, if she could count on him not to take to the road and leave her stranded. That was unfair. Craig was good to her, as good as he could be to anyone, she supposed. He would keep a promise to his sister.

Still, her brother as her date to her child's wedding was an unsatisfactory option. Unless…Tilda turned into the driveway at Larchmere, a smile creeping across her face, an idea taking shape in her mind. Yes, she would talk to Craig as soon as he arrived. There might be a solution to this problem of aloneness, for both of them.

Craig arrived at Larchmere later that morning in his usual fashion, with a toot of his horn and a call of “The festivities may commence!”

He drove an old, rusty, red van that he had bought from a guy up in Bar Harbor at least twelve years earlier. Tilda didn't know how it still operated. Craig did have a lot of natural “fix-it” talent but even the most inspired and talented amateur mechanic had need of a professional from time to time. Where did he get the money for a tune-up or an oil change or for new tires? He certainly had never asked her for money.

Craig McQueen had always considered himself the odd duck of the McQueen family and indeed, a physical resemblance was hard to pinpoint. He didn't look much like either of his parents or his siblings. His hair was blond and though his eyes were blue, surrounded by very dark lashes, they weren't blue like his father's or like Hannah's. He was about five feet, eight inches, with broad shoulders and a muscular build. His coloring, too, was unlike that of the other members of his family. He seemed to have a perpetual tan while the other McQueens were pale to downright milk-skinned. Craig had always been very attractive to women—his smile was winning, his features regular, his walk confident—and he had always known it, though he had been a lot less of a cavalier or a Casanova than he let on.

Now he was wearing slouchy jeans, beat-up leather sandals, and a mock bowling shirt. Tilda recognized the shirt as one she had given him for his birthday several years earlier. How, she wondered, and not for the first time, did he do his laundry when he wasn't staying with her? Where did he shower and shave? (He was always clean shaven.) What did he do when he was sick? When was the last time he had seen a doctor? He certainly didn't have health insurance. Her brother's life was a puzzle to her.

But maybe it didn't have to be. She had been mulling over her plan, formulating it, since that morning in the Cove when she had seen the bride and groom. Why couldn't she and Craig be a sort of “couple,” sharing a house and chores and meals? Why couldn't they live together like Charles and Mary Lamb—well, without the matricide part? Or like William and Dorothy Wordsworth? Even when William married—which Tilda had no intention of doing, but Craig might, someday—Dorothy had lived with the couple. Most importantly, if she and Craig lived together neither of them would have to grow old alone.

He was barely out of the van when Tilda, the only one there to greet him, said, “Craig, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can't I settle in first?” he asked. He stretched his arms over his head. “I've been driving all day.”

“No. This is important.”

Craig dropped his arms. “Tilda, I've been on the road for—”

“Please, Craig, it will only take a minute or two.”

He sighed. “Okay. What's up?”

Tilda shot a look over her shoulder, but no one had appeared from the house. “Look, Craig, I was thinking. How about you move in with me? In South Portland. You can have Jon's room. He won't mind switching to the den, and he'll be moving away before long anyway, and there's plenty of room in the garage for your van. You know the neighborhood, you know how to get around, and you can be in the Old Port in ten minutes, maybe fifteen. You like to go to Rí Rá when you're in town, right? Doesn't your old friend, the one from college, Jake somebody or other, tend bar there? And—”

“Tilda!” Craig put up his hands. “Please, just stop.”

She stopped talking. She figured her brother needed a minute to take in her surprise offer. But Craig wasn't entirely surprised at his sister's offer. He knew she was afraid of growing old alone. He knew she was reluctant to meet another man and maybe start a relationship. He knew she saw him as her easy way out of a painful situation. He felt somewhat flattered by this. He also felt somewhat annoyed. It might not look like it but he had a life, too. He was fully aware that since Frank's death his sister increasingly had been seeking his time and his presence. He knew she was lonely and he was more than willing to help around the house, especially with the chores Frank had once handled, but he also knew that she needed to stand on her own two feet.

“Thanks, Tilda,” he said, with what he hoped was a kind, at least a patient, smile. “Really. It's a sweet offer. But you and me living together is just not a good idea. Trust me on this.”

“But why not?” she said. “It would be good for both of us. You could have a home base. I'm not saying I'd ask you never to travel and see your friends and—”

Craig reached out and squeezed his sister's shoulder. “I'm sorry, Tilda, really. Thanks for the offer. It's very generous. Now, I'm sorry, but I really have to use the little boys' room.”

Craig hurried off into the house and Tilda stood at the foot of the stairs alone, angry, hurt, but in the end not really surprised at Craig's rejection of her offer. She knew it had been a pathetic cry for help, an act of cowardice and need, rather than an act of real generosity. Still, he might have pretended to consider the offer! He needn't have dismissed it so immediately! Tilda felt like a fool. She knew Craig was a kind person, and knew he would never mention their talk again. Still, she felt embarrassed.

Slowly, she went inside.

 

“Smartinis!”

Tilda, who had rapidly deemed her earlier embarrassment unnecessary, and who very much wanted to enjoy her younger brother's company, was in the kitchen, as were Hannah, Susan, Adam, and Craig. Kat was taking a nap. Ruth had taken Cordelia and Cody into town with her to pick up more milk. The kids seemed to drink it by the gallon. Bill was in his room, reading.

Craig held a martini shaker in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. “Who's up for one of my specials?”

Tilda smiled. All the locals knew, and some remembered, that around 1947 the actor J. Scott Smart had come to live—to preside, some would say—in Ogunquit. At five of an evening he would stand in his doorway and with a cry of “Smartinis!” beckon his friends to cocktail hour.

“I'll have one,” Hannah said. “With three olives, please. I need my veggies.”

“Me, too, but just one olive. Aren't olives a fruit? Tilda, what will you have?”

“As much as I hate to be a killjoy,” she told Susan, “I'll stick to wine.”

“Adam?” Craig asked.

“No, thanks,” he said curtly.

Craig shrugged and went to work at the kitchen bar.

Next to Tilda, Adam bristled. “I hate it when he does that.”

“What?”

“That stupid ‘Smartinis.'”

“I think it's kind of clever.”

“Clever? It's ridiculous. I'm getting myself a scotch.”

Adam went to the liquor cabinet and Tilda to the fridge to retrieve the bottle of sauvignon blanc that had been chilling. She wasn't the killjoy. Adam was.

When the siblings each had a drink, Tilda proposed a toast.

“To what?” Adam asked.

“Uh, to your mother?”

“Good idea, Susan.” Tilda raised her glass. “To Mom.”

“To Mom,” they chorused. “To Charlotte.”

 

Ruth had set the dining room table that evening with pale gray linen napkins against black linen placemats and stark, white dishes. At one end of the table, to allow guests an unobstructed view of each other, sat a tall, silver vase in which Ruth had placed several orange day lilies plucked from the garden.

Tonight, the McQueens would meet their father's romantic partner. Ruth's expectations for the reception were not high. There was nothing wrong with Jennifer Fournier. But only Craig had welcomed the news of her being in Bill's life. Tilda, Hannah, and certainly Adam seemed predisposed to find faults where there were none.

Ruth, herself, found her brother's new girlfriend near perfect. For one, she was not at all like her predecessor, which, in Ruth's opinion, was a good thing. And Jennifer seemed to like Ruth, too. Not that Ruth required her to, but things had worked out nicely this time for her. No more having to put up with a prima donna, just for her brother's sake.

At six-thirty, Bill opened the door for Jennifer and led her into the sunroom where the rest of the family was gathered. “Everyone, this is Jennifer,” he said, with a big, proud smile.

Hannah said, “Hi.” Tilda gave a silly little wave. Susan gave her a hearty hello. Craig shook her hand. Adam nodded. Kat shyly told Jennifer that she liked her bracelet.

Jennifer Fournier was an attractive woman. She was almost as tall as Bill, taller in heels. Her blond hair was thick, straight, and bluntly cut. She wore minimal makeup and dressed simply but stylishly in black, brown, taupe, and tan. Her jewelry was singular and stunning and she wore very little of it at a time. That evening she was dressed in lightweight, taupe, wide-legged linen pants over which she wore a long, white linen tunic. A large wooden bangle around her right wrist—the bracelet Kat had admired—was her only adornment. Tilda now felt childish in her mint green crew neck sweater and jean shorts, though earlier that day she had caught sight of herself in a hall mirror and thought she looked kind of cute.

Yes, her father's new friend was definitely a standout, and that bothered Tilda. She would vastly have preferred Jennifer to be old and frumpy, maybe even missing a front tooth, maybe even cursed with blotchy skin. Jennifer would be far more acceptable and certainly less threatening if she was visibly flawed. The thoughts were irrational and unworthy, but there they were.

The talk during dinner—lobster risotto, salad, and strawberry sorbet—was vague and general and polite. There had not been a good rain in almost three weeks and people were worried about their crops and their lawns. The president had just returned from a visit to South America and reactions to what had happened there were mixed. When Adam got a bit agitated, the subject of politics was hastily abandoned and Hannah wondered what everyone thought of the new teen trend, in her opinion ridiculous, of having the very tip of the nose tattooed. Weren't nose rings gross enough?

The only awkward moment came when Adam unnecessarily, and apropos of nothing, recalled the fact that their mother, Charlotte, had won a beauty contest when she was seventeen. What was there to say to that, except, “She must have been very pretty.”

“She was beautiful,” Adam had replied, the implication being, of course, that Jennifer was not.

As soon as the dessert plates were cleared into the kitchen, the group drifted onto the big front porch. (Percy, who had a limited tolerance for company, went up to Ruth's room.) The night was warm. The waves were just audible. Everyone took seats. Craig perched on the wooden rail. He asked Jennifer where she had grown up, and where she had gone to college, and did she miss living in Ogunquit year round.

“Of course she does,” Adam said under his breath. “That's why she's with Dad, so she can get her hands on Larchmere.”

Craig noted that Tilda had gone to Hampstead College, too, and asked his sister what year she had graduated. Tilda told him and Jennifer said that she had graduated the year Tilda was a freshman. No, they hadn't known each other.

After about twenty minutes of orchestrating the conversation, Craig announced that he had plans to meet a friend. When he was gone, the conversation went dead.

Bill looked down at his cell phone and excused himself to take a call from the minister regarding a detail for Charlotte's memorial service, which was being held at St. Peter's-by-the-Sea in Cape Neddick.

When he had gone inside, Adam, who had not addressed Jennifer since dinner, said: “So, Jennifer, Ruth tells us you have a little design business.”

Jennifer smiled. “Yes. I own an interior design firm.”

“That must make a nice little pastime.”

Ruth shot her nephew an angry look, which he ignored. Hannah shot a questioning look to Tilda, who didn't know how to respond.

“Well,” Jennifer said, with great composure, “as a matter of fact it's a full-time job. I work at least forty hours a week. And that doesn't include the time spent commuting from one location to another.”

Adam laughed. “Hard to imagine that sort of thing would be profitable in this economy. People tend to cut out what's not necessary and spend only on the important things.”

The tension on the porch was palpable. Susan looked as if she could leap from her chair and strangle her brother-in-law. Kat looked confused.

“I do just fine,” Jennifer said after a moment, with a tight little smile.

Ruth cleared her throat and said, “Not to change the subject but—”

But Adam spoke right over his aunt. “You don't need a degree for that sort of work, do you? No special training? Just tell people to paint their walls green instead of orange.”

Tilda was mortified by her brother's behavior but felt completely incapable of coming to Jennifer's defense.
Yes,
she thought,
I am truly tongue-tied.

“Excuse me.” Jennifer rose and walked into the house. Ruth got up and followed her.

The moment the women were gone, Susan turned to Adam. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded. “How could you be so rude?”

Adam shrugged. “I wasn't being rude. I was simply asking about her business. I think we have a right to know what our father's girlfriend does for a living.”

Kat was looking at her hands, which were flat out on her lap.

Tilda finally said, “You could have been nicer, Adam.”

Hannah said, “Yeah.”

Ruth came back out onto the porch. She looked furious. “Jennifer is leaving for a B and B. Your father is confused. He doesn't know why she isn't staying here, as usual. I didn't have the heart to tell him it's because his son was an ass to his girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Tilda said.

“I'm surprised she was able to get a room at this late hour and at this time of year. And by the way, Adam, she has a master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.”