Firefly Summer (4 page)

C
HAPTER
7

R
emy looked out the kitchen window and whispered, “Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”

Remy smiled. Jim, the science professor, had always been good at explaining things. Since that night Remy had discovered, to her surprise, the same weather lore was in the Bible. She'd stumbled across it in the book of Matthew:
Jesus replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast . . . ' ”
She couldn't believe the lore went back that far, but then again, most of the disciples had been fishermen, so they must've kept an eye on the weather.

She filled a glass with cold water, squeezed a slice of lemon into it, reached for her book, and stepped out onto the screened-in porch to settle into her favorite chair. A moment later, Edison—the handsome gray tomcat with snow-white boots that had appeared on her doorstep one snowy November evening ten years earlier—hopped up on her lap, pressed his nose against hers, and promptly curled up on. Remy stroked his soft fur. She'd come to believe that Edison watched and waited for her to sit down, because every time she did, he appeared. “Where've you been hiding?” she asked, but he just purred. His exploits were a well-kept secret.

Remy opened her book and started to read, but almost immediately, her thoughts began to stray. Why was she having so much trouble concentrating lately? She used to devour books—three in a week, at least! Recently, though, she'd had trouble getting through one page without dozing off, and if she did make it through a page, she often had no idea what she'd read. And if she had a glass of wine—which she rarely did anymore—there was no point in reading at all, because she'd be asleep before she even opened the book. She didn't know how Birdie and Sailor did it. They could drink a whole bottle of wine and stay up late reading—or in Sailor's case, working.

She looked down at the page. She'd always loved Anne Morrow Lindbergh's timeless meditation on the stages of a woman's life, but this time, she couldn't seem to concentrate on the lovely words. She ran her hand lightly over the page—maybe it was because she'd read the book so many times, or maybe it was because her tired old brain didn't work as well as it once had. Maybe she was actually developing early-onset Alzheimer's—it couldn't be regular Alzheimer's because she was only sixty-five—but she'd certainly become more forgetful lately. She had to write everything down. In fact, she had lists all over the house, and if she went to the store and forgot her list, she might as well turn around and go home. And then there was the clutter that was accumulating in the spare bedroom—she didn't know how it had happened. She'd always prided herself on keeping a tidy house, but that room was an embarrassment—so much so she had to keep the door closed. Heaven forbid her kids ever saw it. They would think she was losing it!

Remy looked at the darkening sky and sighed. She'd read somewhere—she couldn't remember where—that clutter was another symptom of dementia or Alzheimer's. Heaven help her if she had Alzheimer's! What would happen to her? Would any of her children—Payton or Eliza or Sam—take her in? They were so busy with their own families and she definitely didn't want to burden them . . . but she didn't want to be in a nursing home, either. She hated nursing homes; when Birdie had insisted on putting their mom in one, Remy had been against it. As far as she was concerned, nursing homes were a miserable, lonely, end-of-life existence.

“Oh, dear God, don't let me have Alzheimer's,” she whispered, “
or
be a burden to my children. Just let me die in my sleep . . . on the port side of my own bed!”

Her cell phone started to play “In the Mood” and she picked it up and looked at the screen. It only showed a number. “Hello?” she said quizzically. “I'm sorry. Who did you say?” she asked, frowning, and then her face lit up. “Oh, Sam! I was just thinking about you. . . . Yes, I know, I need to put your name in my phone.... I just can't seem to figure out how.... Yes, I know you showed me. . . . Maybe you could show me again the next time you're here.... Yes, everything's fine. It's
so
good to hear your voice!”

C
HAPTER
8

S
ailor poured the last of the bottle into her glass and looked up at the wispy streaks of purple drifting across the coral sky. “You sure know how to paint a sunset, Lord,” she murmured. “We muggle artists can't even begin to compete!” She took a sip of her wine, realized “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was drifting from inside the house, and followed the sound to her studio. She picked up her phone, looked at the screen, and promptly turned it off. She had nothing to say to Frank, and she certainly didn't want to hear what
he
had to say.

As she walked back through the cottage, she plugged in the lamps she'd brought from home—two floor lamps in the living room and a small lamp on the bedroom floor next to one of the kids' old sleeping bags, her accommodations until her bed arrived. She'd always hated gloomy, dark rooms; although she'd never been officially diagnosed, she was convinced she suffered from seasonal affective disorder, and she was equally certain that being an artist didn't help either. Everyone knew artists tended to be more sensitive. Look at all the artists, writers, and performers who'd fallen into the grips of substance abuse—it was because they all felt life too keenly.

Now that she was up and moving, Sailor could feel the effects of gravity on her bladder. She hurried to the bathroom—the old storage tank definitely wasn't the iron vault it had once been! Back in college, she could drink her friends under the table and still not need to
go,
but now, if she laughed or coughed without crossing her legs, she sprang a leak. It was a good thing she worked from home because there was no way she was going to wear panty liners or, heaven help her, diapers!

Sailor would never forget the time she'd had to help her mom after they'd first moved her into the nursing home; it was before the damn dementia—as she called it—had completely robbed her of every bodily sensation, so she still knew, and was able to signal when she needed to
go
. Sailor had called the nurse, but she'd been slow in coming, and finally, sensing it was urgent, she'd wheeled her mom into the bathroom, helped her stand up, pulled her pajama bottoms down, and realized she was wearing a diaper—no wonder the nurse hadn't been in a hurry! “Oh, Mom,” she'd murmured in dismay. “Is this what it all comes to?” She pulled the bulky diaper down, felt its heavy weight, and realized it was already too late.

Martha had stood, hunched over and staring straight ahead while Sailor pulled off the wet diaper and slipped on a fresh one from a package in the corner. “I'm sorry, Mom,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I'm so sorry all this is happening to you.” If her mom couldn't feel humiliation, she could certainly feel it for her.

“Damn it, God!” she'd railed as she drove home. “Why did You have to make getting old suck so much? Why can't people get old with their dignity still intact? Is it too much to ask? It's pretty poor planning on Your part! I don't think You thought the ‘getting old' stage through very well!” And when she finally got home, she called her youngest daughter and told her what had happened. “If I ever get like that, Merry, just shoot me!”

Meredith had laughed. “Oh, Mom, that's not gonna happen to you.”

Now Sailor sighed—it already
was
happening.

She reached for the toilet paper, realized there wasn't any, and shared her favorite expletive with the silence. “I guess it's drip-dry today,” she mumbled, pulling up her underwear and shorts in one swift motion. A moment later, she opened the box on the counter labeled
TOILETRIES
and realized she'd stuck a half a roll in the box—just in case. She shook her head, slipped it onto the holder, and made a mental note to buy more.

She finished unpacking the box—her soap, shampoo, facial cream, toothpaste, and toothbrush—and stood in front of the mirror, studying her reflection, trying to decide if it was the mirror or the lighting that was more forgiving than the one at home. She touched her short salt-and-pepper hair and then lightly traced the wrinkles around her eyes. “I shouldn't have smiled so much in life,” she said to her reflection. “All those fake, forced smiles at parties and reunions . . . and now, I'm paying the price.” She turned her head. “I'm just one big wrinkle! Maybe that's why our vision gets worse with age,” she mused, “so we can't see our wrinkles!” She shook her head. “So You
do
have a plan,” she said in a voice edged with sarcasm, “a flawed plan, but a plan nonetheless.”

She turned off the light and went into her studio. “Ah, where to begin?” She reached for the glass she'd left on the drawing table, took a sip, put it on the bookcase, and set to work securing her lamp to her drawing table. The black “combo” lamp, as it was called, had an incandescent and a fluorescent bulb that, when on at the same time, illuminated her work surface with light that was similar to pure northern light, but after she tightened the clamp, slid the arm into its sleeve, crawled under the table, plugged it in, crawled back out, and pressed both switches, only the incandescent came on. She shook her head in dismay. “Geez Louise! If it's not one damn thing, it's another!”

“Moving on!” she declared. She took another sip of her wine, opened the flaps of an old box she'd plopped onto her chair, paused, realizing the contents, and began to slowly unwrap a collection of framed photos. Sailor had always loved the black-and-white photographs David had taken of the “Quinn Sisters,” as he called them. It had been a summer tradition to walk out on the dunes of one of the beaches or out to Rock Harbor at sunset and have their picture taken. It was also a Christmas tradition for David to give them each a framed copy of that year's photo. Birdie and Remy and Piper usually hung the photos up here and there in their homes, but Sailor had always thought they should be hung together. Unfortunately, she'd never wanted to hang them up in the house in Cambridge. For some reason, the sprawling house she and Frank shared never “fit” the way she felt about her family—so she'd always kept them tucked in a box. Now, as she looked around the room, her eyes settled on the wall next to her drawing table—it was the perfect spot.

She looked down at the photos again. When viewed together, they were an extraordinary collection—it was stunning to see how she and her sisters had changed over the years. She picked up the very first one and realized she must've been around eighteen at the time—which would've made Birdie twenty-two, Remy twenty, and Piper only thirteen. Look at them! They were all so slender . . . and gorgeous . . . and independent. Although the family resemblance was strong, the similarities ended there—they were all so different. The only lasting similarity was the solemnness in their eyes, a solemnness that revealed a shared sorrow—one of which they never spoke. Sailor never understood why her parents never talked about that night . . . why they never even said Easton's name, and through the years, whenever she or her sisters said it, they were given looks that said “
don't go there
.” Eventually, they learned not to mention him, and looking back now, it was an absolute wonder they weren't all more messed up. She'd tried to work her issues out on her own. She'd even gone to therapy for a while, hoping that a therapist would be able to help her relax and not be so afraid to express her feelings, but it hadn't helped. She couldn't even tell
him
about Easton. Her parents' silence, she'd decided, was so ingrained in her psyche that she felt like she was betraying her family if she said anything. Maybe she was more screwed up than she thought!

She looked back at the picture and searched her sisters' eyes. They were definitely all products of the same upbringing and shared family history, and as a result, they loved each other fiercely. Maybe that was the one good thing that had come from the tragedy of losing their brother.

She put the photo back with the others and looked at them again. Even their clothing was an unintended study in the fashion of the times—from college T-shirts and L.L.Bean polo shirts to linen blouses and flowing sundresses—their clothing revealed roots firmly planted in the soil and sands of New England, and as they'd aged, they looked more and more like the strong New England women they'd become.

Sailor picked up one of the more recent photos and smiled—it was, by far, her favorite. At the time, however, she hadn't even wanted to be in it. She gazed at it now. She was very thin, hollow-cheeked, and gaunt, and her sisters all had their arms around her. Without looking, she knew the photo had been taken in 2006 because that was the year she'd had a double mastectomy and then endured twenty-eight rounds of chemo. She hadn't wanted to be in the picture because she'd lost all her hair and she'd thought she looked terrible, but her sisters had insisted, saying it was more important than ever. Birdie had found a soft hat for her to wear, and as they'd all stood on the beach, her sisters had wrapped their arms around her and held her tight . . . and her eyes had filled with tears—she'd never felt so much love.