Summer Friends (27 page)

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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Summer Friends
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52
“I thought you'd be at the farm.” It was late Monday morning. Jemima stood at Delphine's front door, a plate covered loosely with aluminum foil in her hands. “I was just going to leave these in the kitchen.”
“I was at the farm earlier,” Delphine said, gesturing Jemima inside. “I came home for a bit. Bad headache.”
“You're not eating enough. I understand why, but you can't afford to make yourself sick. There are too many people relying on you, Delphine.”
“I know.” Of course she knew. She was never unaware of her responsibilities to her family.
“I brought you these nice cinnamon rolls. They're still warm. Do you want one now?”
“Maybe later,” Delphine said. “Thanks, Jemima. I do need some coffee, though. The ibuprofen didn't help much.”
The two women went into the kitchen. Jemima directed Delphine to sit and she brought her a cup of coffee from the pot warming on the stove.
“I ran into your friend Maggie in town yesterday,” she said, sitting across from Delphine. “She started questioning me about you.”
Delphine took a sip of her coffee before answering. “Questioning you about me? What do you mean?”
“She wanted to know why you wouldn't accept her help. By which I assume she meant money.”
“What did you tell her?” Delphine asked warily.
Jemima shrugged. “I told her that she should ask you that. She said that she had.”
“What else did you say to her?”
“Nothing. What would I have to say to her?”
Plenty,
Delphine thought. Jemima wasn't known to hold back her opinions, even when she should. And there were times, not often but on occasion, when Delphine felt smothered by Jemima's friendship. She was a possessive woman. As far as Delphine knew, Jemima didn't have any other close friends, not in the Ogunquit area, anyway. But she was also a reliable person and that wasn't to be discounted.
“I think I'll have a cinnamon roll after all,” Delphine said.
Jemima beamed. Soon after serving a roll to Delphine, she took her leave, satisfied that she had done her duty.
 
When she had gone, Delphine poured another cup of coffee and sat back at the table. She was a little bit angry that Maggie had interfered by questioning Jemima, but at the same time she acknowledged a small feeling of gratitude for her persistent concern.
Delphine sipped at the coffee and thought again about Maggie's two recent and generous offers of help. She wondered if she had ever cared as much for Maggie as Maggie claimed to care for her. She wondered if there was something about her that made her recoil from real, messy intimacy. And if there was something . . . wrong, then why? She had backed away from marriage to Robert. Maybe there were more reasons for that decision than wanting to return to Ogunquit. She had let go of, neglected, the friendship with Maggie. She was with a man who would not marry her. She lived alone. She was not in the habit of asking anyone for help. She wasn't sure she could even recognize a situation in which asking for help would be a smart thing. She often felt oddly removed from her current relationships with Maggie, Jackie, and Jemima, even when they were enjoying each other's company. She often felt as if she were a spectator and not a participant in her own life.
Delphine put the piece of foil back over the plate of cinnamon rolls. It was nice of Jemima to have brought them. Nice and typical. Her friendship with Jemima, though strong and consistent, didn't have much to do with shared feelings and dreams. It was a serviceable, workaday kind of thing. They did favors for each other. Jemima passed along coupons for cat food and Delphine picked Jemima up from the car repair shop when her old car broke down, which it routinely did. Jemima made chicken soup for Delphine when she got her annual winter cold. Delphine mowed Jemima's lawn when Jim couldn't get to it. It was all good stuff, very neighborly, but not necessarily intimate. At least, it didn't feel intimate to Delphine. Not that she knew what intimacy was, she reminded herself, not anymore. Maybe, she never had. Not even with Robert, because she had never been entirely truthful with him. And intimacy was about nothing if it wasn't about being truthful.
Maybe,
she thought irritably,
I'm just not cut out for intimacy.
And if intimacy was what Maggie was really looking for, well, she wasn't going to find it with Delphine. Maggie might be a good person, but she was also a problem. She had caused Delphine to spend too much time away from her work, from her responsibilities, from her family.
Delphine didn't believe in divine retribution—she didn't believe that some unnamable all-powerful being had struck down her niece as punishment for Delphine's neglect of her family duties—but at the same time she couldn't help but feel that she had tempted fate by planning to go away. And for what? To have “fun”? What did “fun” mean, anyway? Who, other than children, deserved to have fun?
Well,
she thought,
now that I'm not available to be Maggie's playmate, she should just go home where she's actually wanted.
Assuming Maggie was wanted at home, and from what she'd told Delphine about the current state of her marriage, maybe she wasn't wanted there, either.
Delphine felt an unwelcome rush of guilt. Just the other night, just before she had learned of Kitty's diagnosis, she had sworn never to leave Maggie behind again. What had happened to that vow? What had happened to that promise she had made to herself as well as to Maggie? Had she made it lightly, falsely?
Delphine rubbed her temples.
What has become of my life?
she asked herself.
How have I wound up here, in this place of isolation, so confused and so alone?
The answers to those questions were not going to be found at the kitchen table. In spite of the throbbing in her head, Delphine went out to her truck and headed back to the farm.
53
1984
 
Patrice and Charlie did not drive down to Boston for Delphine's graduation. Delphine was not surprised or upset by this. They had never visited her in Boston; she couldn't see why they would start now, on the eve of her homecoming. Jackie alone represented the Crandall family. She presented Delphine with a Cross pen she had spent months saving up for. Joey had sent a card.
That evening, after the ceremony, Maggie's parents threw a big party in the rooftop bar of a sophisticated downtown hotel. Delphine and Jackie were there. Maggie's brother, Peter, now in law school, was also there, as were several of Maggie's classmates and a large group of the Weldons' friends and business colleagues. When Robert Evans showed up shortly before ten o'clock, bouquet in hand for Maggie, Delphine grabbed Jackie's arm and together they slipped out the far door of the room.
“It must have been a pretty bad breakup,” Jackie had whispered to Delphine as they rode the elevator to the lobby. “You aren't even talking to each other?”
Delphine had only nodded. No one in her family, not even Jackie, had known of the engagement. She had asked Maggie not to mention Robert at all to her sister. Maggie had complied.
Early the next morning Jackie had driven back to Maine with most of Delphine's belongings. Delphine was staying on in Boston for another two days to say good-bye to a few people with whom she had worked for the past school year. She was sleeping on the couch of a fellow graduate who had rented a small apartment in Allston. Robert had offered to see her off at the bus station when she was ready to leave. She still wasn't sure she would let him.
She met Maggie for lunch at a diner they liked, close to their dorm. Today, neither young woman had much of an appetite. Delphine's tuna salad sandwich sat largely untouched. Maggie picked at her Greek salad.
“Thanks again for inviting Jackie and me to the party,” Delphine said after a long silence.
“Of course. I looked around for you when the party was over, but I guess you'd already gone.”
Delphine looked down at her plate. “Yeah, well . . .”
“Right.”
“Good luck in graduate school,” Delphine said, after another long pause.
Maggie smiled a bit. “Thanks. I'm going to need more than luck, though. Business school's going to be pretty tough.”
“You can handle it.”
She will,
Delphine thought.
Maggie can handle anything.
“Did I tell you I'm going to be living at home and commuting to school?”
“Oh.” Delphine took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee.
“Yeah,” Maggie said. “I just couldn't imagine being roommates with anyone other than you.”
Delphine felt a prick of conscience. “Well, that's probably the economical thing to do,” she said. “Save the money you'd have to spend on room and board.”
“Yeah. So, when do you think you can get back to Boston to visit?”
Delphine looked a bit over Maggie's shoulder when she answered. “I don't know,” she said. “I'll have so many responsibilities when I get home, especially now that it's summer. It's our busiest season at the farm and at the diner.”
“Yeah. Okay. Well, let me know. I'll be busy, too. My internship starts next week.”
“Okay. So, I guess we should get the check. I have to get going.”
“Oh.” Maggie fiddled with her fork. “You're sure you don't have time to catch a movie or something?
Amadeus
is playing downtown. Or maybe we could just—”
“No,” Delphine said, reaching for her wallet. “I really have to go. I have a bus to catch this afternoon.” That was a lie. She wasn't leaving Boston for two more days.
Maggie reached across the table to touch Delphine's arm but then withdrew her hand. “Delphine,” she said, lowering her voice, “look. I . . . I know I promised not to bring this up again, but I can't help it. I just don't understand why you're doing this. Please tell me it's temporary; tell me you're coming back to Boston for good or that you're getting back with Robert. Please tell me you just need a bit of a break before you get back to your real life.”
Delphine felt her hands begin to shake and put them in her lap, out of view. She fought hard against the feelings that might break her determination to live the life that was meant to be hers. Not Robert's life. Not Maggie's idea of what her life should be. “My real life is back home,” she said firmly. “In Ogunquit, with my family.”
Maggie shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just can't believe that.”
“I can't help what you believe,” Delphine said evenly.
“I feel miles apart from you right now.” Maggie's eyes were misting over. “I feel like I'm talking to a stranger.”
Delphine sighed. “Maggie,” she said, “I really have to go. Take care of yourself.”
She put a five-dollar bill on the table and hurriedly walked to the door of the diner. When she was on the sidewalk, she let the tears come, let them stream down her cheeks unchecked. It was the last time she would cry for many, many years.
54
“How long until dinner?”
“About half an hour,” Delphine called.
It was Monday evening and Harry was seated in his favorite armchair, reading the paper, watched by Melchior. Delphine was in the kitchen, halfheartedly cooking their meal. The headache was still there, in spite of more ibuprofen.
While she stirred a pot of brown rice she was thinking about the time she had lived with the Weldons, the summers before her junior and senior years of college. Paying room and board to Maggie's parents had been cheaper than renting an apartment, and their house was clean and spacious and comfortable. Back then, Delphine hadn't felt in the least bit beholden or embarrassed, but now, in the wake of Maggie's offer of money—not even a loan but a gift—the memory of that arrangement, a memory so long buried, maybe even forgotten, rankled. Maggie had said that money itself was amoral, that it was good or bad only in the way in which it was used. In Delphine's opinion, money was mostly bad; it tempted people to make stupid decisions and to create arbitrary divisions between themselves and others.
When dinner was ready, Harry came into the kitchen, washed the newsprint from his hands, and joined her at the table. He had nothing to say. Delphine was glad to be left alone with her thoughts, unhappy though they were. It was only when she brought coffee and a slice of blueberry pie to the table that a conversation began.
“I'll be visiting Ellen tomorrow when I get off my shift,” Harry said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“Fine. Did you pick up my winter coat from the dry cleaner's?” Delphine rarely bothered with a dry cleaner, but she didn't have the capacity at home to clean certain items like comforters or wool coats. Harry had offered to fetch the coat. She hadn't asked for his help.
“No,” he said, loading his fork with another bite of pie, “I forgot. I'll pick it up tomorrow.”
“You said you would pick it up today.”
Harry swallowed. “Look, Delphine, I forgot. You don't need it right away anyway. Winter is months away. What's the big deal?”
“The big deal,” she said, slowly and emphatically, as if talking to a naughty child, “is that you promised. The least you could do is say you're sorry.”
Harry sighed. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't say it if you don't mean it, Harry.”
Harry put his napkin on the table next to his half-eaten dessert. “Look,” he said. “Maybe I'd better just go, spend the night at home.”
Delphine stared down at her plate. She fought the urge to ask him to stay, at least to finish his meal. She fought the urge to offer to pack up the uneaten pie, send it home with him. “Yeah,” she said. “That's probably a good idea. Sorry, Harry. I'm just—”
Harry got up from his chair and came across to her. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “You're just exhausted. Try to get some sleep, Del. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
She sat at the table while he let himself out. When he had gone she cleared the plates and glasses and silverware off the table. She left them in the sink for morning, which was not her habit. She took a bottle of Jack Daniel's from under the sink. It had been there, untouched, for over a year. She poured herself a shot. She sat back down at the table. She wished Harry wouldn't call her Del.

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