Summer House (9 page)

Helen dropped her bag on the floor and collapsed on the daybed. This gave her a view of the ceiling, which was a yellowed white with a water stain in one corner. It would be cool out here at night, perhaps even cold. Nantucket Junes were notoriously unpredictable. But there were plenty of wool blankets in the linen cupboard. Besides, Helen liked a cool bedroom. The room had no closets, but someone had once hung a couple of black wrought-iron plant holders near the windows. The plants were gone, but the little metal arms would serve very well to hold a few hangers. And she didn’t need a chest of drawers. Well, she would when she returned for the summer. If she intended to sleep here for the entire summer….

From the hall came Grace’s voice. “Mandy? I’m taking Christian down to the beach with me, all right?”

“Thanks, Mom!” Mandy called. “I’ve got to nurse the baby.”

Oh, fortunate Grace, to have that darling bright-eyed little grandson!
Helen could hear the child’s high sweet voice as they went down the stairs. “Will the seals be on the beach this time, Grandma? Maybe the bottle with our message will be there in the sand! Can I take my shoes off now?”

Helen had been surprised at the satisfaction she’d felt when Grace’s daughter gave birth to Christian, the Wheelwrights’ first grandchild. She remembered visiting Mandy in the hospital, and being given the infant to hold, and gazing down at that perfect baby boy with his pearly skin and pursed mouth. He is the future, she had thought with a surprising surge of optimism. Look at the generosity of the universe, giving us this perfection, this potential, this reason for joy and hope.

Would she ever have grandchildren?

Lying on the sloping daybed, Helen thought that if she had a grandchild she wouldn’t mind so much about Worth and his affair. She had shared an extravagance of love with Worth during their lives together. When she first met Worth, her heart had warmed, as if a well-fed cat had jumped up on a windowsill, turned around, and settled down, purring, in a square of sunlight. Worth had been a lovely lover. His present affair could not erase the memories of all those past embraces.

And it did not make those memories false, did it? Worth was a splendid father, and he would be a doting, involved, attentive grandfather. If only Charlotte would fall in love! If only she would get married—never mind marriage, if only she would fall in love and have a child! Then, perhaps, Worth would lose interest in this other woman and, sharing the new adventure of grandparenting with Helen, return his attention to his family. To his wife.

But perhaps not.

And would she want him back on those terms, or was everything broken between them?

Six

C
harlotte saw
the cars arriving: a Yukon with Mandy, her husband and children, and a desolate-looking Mee crammed in the backseat; a Volvo with Mellie and her husband, Douglas; and then Aunt Grace and Uncle Kellogg in a cab.

Charlotte waved from her row of strawberries, feeling torn. She loved the drama of arrivals, everyone hugging and talking at once, and she didn’t want anyone to feel that she didn’t care that they were here, but she really did need to take advantage of every daylight minute on warm days. Also, she wanted to impress upon her relatives that she was out here
working.

She continued picking strawberries, delicately tugging the sweet crimson fruit off the plants and dropping them in a wicker basket lined with a blue-and-white-checked napkin. She’d found a trunk of these old hand linens in the storage room in the attic, and Nona gave them to her readily. Charlotte used them to line baskets when she took the lettuces and vegetables to the restaurants that bought her
produce, and everyone seemed to appreciate the attractive presentation. Even the lettuces seemed to frill a little more briskly, lying there against the crisp cotton cloth.

A squawk from a car horn made her look up. Aunt Grace waved from Granddad’s beloved Chrysler convertible, which had slumbered in the garage patiently all winter, then tore off down the road toward town and the airport. Charlotte waved back, grinning. Aunt Grace loved to drive that car.

She reached the last plant, chose the ripest berries, and then she was done. She stood up, put her hands on her back, and leaned far back, looking up at the sky, feeling the welcome stretch in her spine. It was after seven. Everyone would be more or less settled now, having cocktails, waiting for the others to arrive before sitting down to dinner.

Carrying her basket, Charlotte walked between her long rows of plants and along the edge of the garden until she came to the far end gate. She went out, double-checked that the gate was fastened with its loop of wire, and continued walking down the dirt path to the main road and her little farm stand.

Bill Cooper was there, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a Red Sox cap, holding a bunch of radishes in his hand. “Hey, Charlotte.”

“Hi, Coop. What’s up?” Remembering the conversation she’d overheard earlier in the day, she felt herself flushing.

“Do you have any more of that arugula?”

Charlotte scanned the table. Only a bag of mesclun remained of all the lettuces she’d picked and set out this morning. Her wicker basket was full of bills and coins. “Sorry. No more until tomorrow.”

“Damn. That arugula’s tasty.” He picked up the mesclun. “Well, I’ll take this. It will keep for a couple days, won’t it? I mean, I’ll eat half tonight, half tomorrow.”

Charlotte felt her flush deepen. Was he trying to inform her indirectly that he was eating alone now? “Sure,” she replied. Then she remembered. “Oh. Wait. Aren’t you coming to Nona’s birthday party?”

“Absolutely. How could I forget? Ninety. What a milestone. She’s an incredible woman, your grandmother.”

“She is. The amazing thing is how good her hearing is. And her
memory. She has to walk with a cane, and she can’t go far, but mentally she’s exceptional.”

“She always was exceptional.” Coop leaned a blue-jeaned thigh against the long picnic table. “Mom and Dad tell some great stories about her.”

Charlotte thought she was probably staring at Coop like a teen seeing her favorite rock star. She was absolutely
beaming
at him. “Are they coming?” Charlotte picked up the bills and patted them into a neat pile as she spoke, then tucked it and the coins into the little money bag she wore on her hip. When she got back to the shed, she’d count the money and record it on her computer.

“They wouldn’t miss it for the world. They’re flying in tomorrow morning. Staying with me.” As Charlotte lifted the red-and-white-checked tablecloth and shook it out, he asked, “Can I help you with anything?”

“No, thanks. I just don’t like to leave this out overnight.” She folded it neatly in half and then again and draped it over her arm.

“Is Oliver coming?”

“Of course! He flies in tomorrow.”

“Great. I haven’t seen him for years. Will Owen be with him?”

“Yes. They’re staying at an inn in town. Nona thinks it’s so they can have mad homosexual sex, but I know it’s because they can’t handle the chaos and clamor the Ms cause.”

“Well, little children make noise….”

“Mandy’s children are adorable. They’re not the noisy ones.
You
know, Coop, you remember what it’s like in the summer, the Ms tripping around together squawking like some kind of bird with three heads.”

Coop laughed. “Still, I’ll be glad to see them again.” He reached over and plucked one strawberry from the basket sitting on the table. “Yum. Do you have more?”

“I’m picking more tomorrow morning. You’ll have to get to the table early. The strawberries go fast.”

“You’re developing quite a name for yourself, aren’t you?”

“I hope so. I know I’m a novice, but in some ways that might be good. At any rate, I sell everything I can grow.”

“You need a better sign.”

They both stared at the piece of plywood nailed to the tree. Two winters ago she had spent days on it, using patterns to trace
Beach Grass Garden
in Lucida Calligraphy font, which was clear but slightly curly, just a little bit Victorian, just a hint old-fashioned, like her little farm. She’d painted berries, potatoes, tomatoes, and onions around the edges of the board and slashed long green beach-grassy knolls in each corner, and when she had finished she was quite pleased with the result. But two summers of sun and rain had faded it slightly, and it did look amateurish, and now she wasn’t so sure she liked it anymore.

“Mmm,” she said. “But what?”

“A quarter board. Gold letters.”

Charlotte squinted. “I’m not so sure. Gold letters might be too upscale for me. Plus, I think people like the idea of a real local home-run garden.”

A car came down the road from town, the woody convertible. Aunt Grace slowed when she turned off onto the drive and Charlotte’s mother stuck her head out the window. “Darling! Hello! We’re here!”

“And everyone’s starving!” Aunt Grace yelled.

Charlotte’s father waved from the passenger seat, rolling his eyes at his sister’s bossiness.

Charlotte grinned. “I’ll be right there.”

Aunt Grace gunned the motor, and the convertible disappeared down the lane in a little cloud of dust.

Charlotte looked up at Coop. He was truly handsome. But she had to stop gawking at him this way. “So, okay, so I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Great.” He held up his mesclun. “Off I go, to my lonely bachelor’s salad.”

Now that
was
a hint. Charlotte couldn’t ignore it. “Where’s Miranda?”

“I have no idea,” Coop told her. “We’ve broken off.”

“Wow, Coop. That’s huge.”

He shrugged. “Not so huge. It was never very serious in the first place.”

From a nearby juniper, a catbird began to chatter. She’d never thought of Coop as a cad or a playboy but really wasn’t this a little careless, breaking up with a woman in the morning and smiling about it that evening? Charlotte was confused.

“I’d better get to the house now that the parents have arrived.” She picked up the basket of strawberries. “See you tomorrow night.”

“Looking forward to it. Am I right, you’re having a band?”

“We are. Jeremiah and the Blue Fins. They can play it all, Ginger Rogers to Tina Turner.”

“Great. Save a few dances for me, okay?”

His grin made her breathless. “Sure. And hey, that mesclun, just keep it in the crisper and it will last for days.”

He waved and headed back along the grassy verge to the dirt lane on his land. Soon he was out of sight, hidden by a forest of pines, scrub oak, juniper, and tupelo trees.

The sun was still high as Charlotte went along the lane to the shed. It was almost June 21, the longest day of the year. Summer always came late to the island, but in the past few days a kind of steady warmth seemed to emanate from the earth, as if winter’s frost had dissipated and the ground had become soft and receptive to the sun’s rays. Birds flitted high in the sky. From here, this lane leading to the house, her market garden, neatly protected by the wire fence, seemed tidy and flourishing, and the slant of sunlight made the green leaves luminous. She was physically tired. She’d been up almost fifteen hours. But her work gave her such satisfaction. She was surprised at how she had come to love her garden. Love was not a frivolous word, either. After three years of tending it, fertilizing it with organic matter, manure, and horrid-smelling fish entrails, and all her careful study and research and plant selection and planting, and the endless weeding and watering—after all that, each clod of earth seemed personal to her. Sometimes in the very early morning, when she came out in her work boots and floppy sun hat, she’d feel the garden perk up when she entered the gate. Silly, of course, and yet the plants did
perk up when she watered. They lifted their heads as if the slender stalks, replenished, were stronger, and more eager to meet the heat of the sun.

Kicking the dirt off her boots, Charlotte stepped into her work shed. She’d paid someone else to pour the concrete floor and install the electricity, but she’d done much of the construction herself: bought the boards, hammered the nails, combed the Take It or Leave It shack at the dump for tables at just the right height. It didn’t matter that they were old or scarred or cheap to begin with, she needed them to hold her trays of seedlings beneath the overhanging fluorescent lights. Nona had a small greenhouse off the library, and she’d allowed Charlotte to cram it with as many plants as would fit, but Charlotte was going to have to build a bigger greenhouse up here by the shed. If she continued to make money, perhaps she could have it built this winter.

For now, she was happy with this little place. Water had been piped up from the main well for an outdoor shower on the side of the big building that had served, long ago, as a barn and was now used as a garage and storage shed. Charlotte had built her toolshed on the outer wall of the barn, and it had been a simple matter to have a deep sink installed and a faucet for hoses. During the winter she had pottered around happily in the shed, cleaning it, making it a bit more cozy for herself and for the baby plants she would set into their little seed trays in early spring.

Now she stripped off her work gloves, washed her hands at the sink, and rubbed creamy lotion into her skin. She’d hung a little mirror in the shed, to reflect light and make the room seem bigger, but she found it useful for checking herself for stray bits of dirt on her nose, and she did so now. In spite of her sunblock and floppy hat, her face had tanned and her cheeks and the tip of her nose were rosy. She lifted up the basket of strawberries, shut the shed door and latched it, and walked down the driveway toward the house.

She went through the mudroom, sat on a bench to unlace her boots, kicked them under the bench, and went into the kitchen. Glorious was busy at the stove.

“Hey, Glorious, I’ve brought some fresh strawberries for dessert!”

“Want me to cut and sugar them?”

“Mmm … let’s just rinse them. We can put out some powdered sugar if anyone wants to dip them. They’re pretty sweet.” She handed one to Glorious, who tasted it.