The Children (14 page)

Whit did pay us kids for chores. He paid Sally, mostly, because she always outbid the rest of us. Yes, that's right: Whit had us bid for household jobs, as if we were contractors. He wanted to teach us about how a free economy works. When we were kids, Sally's desire to win at everything, her hypercompetitive drive, made her the hardest worker in the house—and the most poorly compensated. On a typical summer morning, Whit would announce at breakfast that the vegetable garden needed weeding. He'd ask if anybody wanted to make a little cash.

Perry would usually start out by saying, “I'll do it for, I guess, ten bucks.”

I would underbid just a hair. “Nine-fifty,” I'd say.

“Five dollars!” Sally would call out defiantly.

Perry and I always laughed at her. “You're doing it again, Sally,” I'd tell her. “Remember when you got paid two dollars for cleaning out the entire attic?”

“Yeah, well, you guys got nothing,” she countered.

“Now, that's what I call a good work ethic,” Whit said, winking at Sally. His praise buoyed her through the beginning of the weeding. It wasn't until the second or third hour of toiling in the heat and mosquitoes, while Perry and I sailed back and forth in front of the beach, taunting her from the boat, that she saw her mistake. Next time, she would let one of us be the “winner.”

Now Sally said, placing a storm window carefully on the roof, “The last time I did this, Whit paid me a dollar a window.”

“Did he help you? I remember that he'd help with heavy stuff like this if he was home,” I said.

“Whit was always home, Charlotte.” She laughed.

It was true. Whit was always home. He was always busy. And he made a lot of noise. I can't remember a quiet afternoon, ever, when Whit was alive. He would listen to bluegrass while working in his shed, and the breeze usually carried the frenetic sound of the fiddles and banjos up to the house and out across the lake. The neighbors would often comment on how extraordinary it was that the music carried so far, and he took their comments at face value, rather than wonder why they were delivered in such terse tones.

“Yes,” he would say, “the hills around the lake create a giant amphitheater effect. Wonderful what it does acoustically!”

It wasn't just that Whit created a racket in the shed. He was a large man and a stomper. The sound of his work boots on the old wooden stairs could be heard throughout the house as he came and went. He liked to sing. He sang to the dog, he sang to Joanie, he sang to himself in the mirror. And then there was the incessant banter—on the phone, in the driveway, down by the lake. People loved to stop to chat with Whit. There were men hanging around the shed year-round, “shooting the shit,” as Joan liked to say. The guys on the town's road crew would always stop for coffee if they drove by and saw Norm Hungerford's car. (Norm was Whit's childhood friend, and his car in the driveway always meant coffee in the pot.) Sailors and rowers in the summer, skaters and cross-country skiers in the winter—everybody who traveled across the lake stopped to catch up with Whit.

“You know, it was the silence that caught me so off guard those first few times I came home after Whit died,” Sally said to me. “You were here all the time, so maybe you didn't notice it, but the atmosphere felt completely different here after that.”

“I noticed it,” I said. I would walk outside and listen for a song from Whit's shed, and when it didn't come, I'd suddenly have to hold on to a wall to steady myself. It would be hard to breathe sometimes.

I tried to talk to Joan about it once.

“Sometimes I find myself having actual conversations with him,” I said to her not long after the funeral. Sally had gone back to the city, but I had decided to stay here at Lakeside with Joan. “When I walked in the house today, I almost called out to him.”

“Did you, dear?” Joan asked, glancing at her watch. It was a Saturday. She had a tennis tournament.

“I guess it's because it's so quiet. If he hadn't been so noisy before, the quiet wouldn't be so … strange. How can you stand the quiet?”

“I keep busy. I don't really notice,” Joan said.

“Have you been able to go into his shed yet?” I asked her one day.

I hadn't been able to bring myself to open the door to Whit's shed since the funeral. When he was alive, I had rarely opened the door without finding Whit on the other side, covered in sawdust, humming or singing along with the music on the old boom box there. He always gave me a big grin. Sometimes, he'd give me a new instrument to try out. I imagined it would be too much for our mother to go inside the shed as well, but Joan had replied, “Oh yes, I was in there this morning looking for a broom and dustpan, and sure enough, there they were. He was always taking things from the house and leaving them in that damn shed.”

 

ELEVEN

We had just removed the last of the storm windows from Spin's room when the cars pulled up. I grabbed Sally by the wrist and peered around the front edge of the house and down at the driveway. Spin's Jeep was in front; Perry had pulled up behind him in his shiny black Range Rover. I squatted down low on the porch roof and pulled Sally down next to me.

“Don't let them see us,” I said.

“Why not?” Sally asked.

“I don't want to see anybody yet.”

Perry's voice came from below. “Joan's car isn't here.”

I heard the voices of his children, Emma and Jake. Jake was saying, “Where's Nana Joan?”

“Maybe nobody's home,” Perry said. “Jesus, look at this place. Still a total mess.”

“It's like
Grey Gardens,
” we heard Catherine say.

Sally clutched my wrist too tight. “What the fuck?” she hissed.

“Was it more … kept up when your dad was alive?” That was Laurel.

“Um, no,” said Perry. “But for some reason I thought that was Bud Hastings's fault. I thought Everett would start fixing things up once his dad retired. He's supposed to be the groundskeeper now, but things are as bad as ever.”

“
The
groundskeeper,”
Sally whispered. “As if we live on
grounds
. As if Everett were a servant. Everett, who's known Perry since they were kids.”

“Shhhh,” I said.

Now we heard them walking along the porch, just below us.

“I think we should wait outside until Joan gets home,” said Spin. “Let's take the kids down to see the lake.”

“Why?” Laurel asked. “Why don't we just go in?”

“Well, at least let's knock, give them a little heads-up.”

“Really, Spin? You knock now?” Perry asked.

“Yeah, ever since Dad died. I knock, and then go in.”

“That's weird,” said Perry.

“I thought it was weird, too,” said Laurel.

“I know, I just feel that it's the right thing. I don't think she's here, anyway.”

We stayed perched on the roof of the porch. I saw that the rain gutter was filled with leaves from last fall. Nobody had cleaned the gutters in who knows how long. They were dark with mildew and had started to decompose. No wonder there was rain rot all along the edge of the porch floor.

“She's not there, so just go in,” Perry said.

“Wait, I do want to see the rest of the property,” said Laurel. “I haven't seen the whole place, just the house and the dock.”

We heard them walking down the porch steps. We heard Catherine say, “Is there some way to get this cleaning maniac to break into this house?” We heard them all laugh, even Spin. Sally had her hand on my wrist and she squeezed it tight.

A moment later, they were down on the lawn, facing the lake. Little Jake had found a stick and was chasing Emma around in circles. Riley, our dog, was trying to get the stick from Jake, and Catherine cried out, “Spin, grab that dog. He's trying to bite.”

“He doesn't bite,” Spin laughed. “C'mere, Riley.”

“We can't stay up here all day,” Sally whispered.

“I know. Let's just wait until Joan comes,” I replied. We sat back against the house. The lake was calm and a slight breeze moved the clouds across the sky, creating panels of shadow that shifted across the water's surface. Near our shore, two geese glided along behind a family of ducks, who complained loudly about this pair of oversized tagalongs. Out beyond our float, old Ethel Garner was sailing her Sunfish. She sailed past the float once, then tacked and sailed past it again, this time waving to Spin and the others.

“Hi, Mrs. Garner!” Spin called out to her.

“Hi, dear. OH, HI, SALLY! HI, CHARLOTTE!” Mrs. Garner shouted, and Sally and I watched in horror as the group on the lawn turned around and gazed up to where Ethel had been waving. Sally stood and pretended she was moving one of the storm windows. I smiled and gave them all a feeble wave.

“Sally! Charlotte!” Spin cried out happily. “There you are! Didn't you hear us knocking?”

“No,” Sally replied. “No, we didn't.”

They were shielding their eyes with their hands so they could see us better.

“What the hell are you two doing up there?” Perry asked.

“We're trying to swap out the storm windows. What does it look like we're doing?” said Sally. “We're taking care of this old house of yours.”

“The shingles are loose; you'd better be careful,” said Spin. “Here, let me come up and help you.”

“Where's Everett?” Perry called to us. “Isn't he supposed to do this stuff? Isn't that his job?”

Spin had been correct about the loose shingles; the one beneath my foot was almost completely dislodged, and I enjoyed the fleeting image of it leaving my hand like a boomerang, slicing Perry's prematurely balding scalp from his tanned forehead, and then returning to me.

“No, don't come up, we'll come down,” Sally said, but we could hear that they were already in the house.

“You should have let me do that,” Spin said as he helped us with the last window.

“Well, you can do the others. You two are staying here, right?” Sally asked.

“We were planning to, but if it's a problem, we can always stay at Perry's,” Spin said.

“Of course it's not a problem. This is your house, too,” Sally said, and I caught Laurel shoot a quick glance at Spin. I knew Sally saw it, too. Her cheeks had turned pink. She and I both sensed that they had misunderstood; that they thought Sally felt some kind of ownership, which, of course, was ridiculous. It was our mom's house. Hers, Perry's, and Spin's.

Laurel said, “Let's get our stuff, Phil, and then maybe Sally and Charlotte can show us around. I've never walked around the property, or even seen the entire house.”

Again, we were momentarily confused. Yes. Phil. It was his real name. She liked calling him that. Never mind that nobody called him that—not his friends, not his colleagues, not even his own mother, who had given him the name. It seemed that Laurel wanted her own name to call him. I wasn't sure why this irked me, but it did.

We met up with Perry and Catherine downstairs. After Spin's car was unloaded, we all went on a little tour of Lakeside.

*   *   *

Sally loves showing off the property; she's done it many times. She was always fascinated with the history of Lake Marinac and all the Vandemeer cottages. She devoted many hours one childhood summer to reading about them at the Harwich library. When our family used to participate in the annual garden tour of the Vandemeer homes, Sally was always the tour guide. She started right in now, telling Laurel about how the house came to be situated there on the point. It was because of Holden Academy, she explained. In the early years of the school, in the mid-1800s, Holden boys used to hike the four miles from the school's campus to a campsite on Lake Marinac. The campsite was on the point of land where we now stood.

“This used to be called Point Bliss,” Perry interjected. “My great-grandfather had the name changed to Whitman's Point.”

“Well, technically, according to town records and maps, it still is Point Bliss,” Sally corrected him. “But everyone in the area has called it Whitman's Point for generations.”

“They call it Whitman's Point because it
is
Whitman's Point,” Perry laughed. “It was legally changed by my great-grandfather.”

“That's not actually true,” Sally said, “but who cares? Anyway, it was 1904 when your and Spin's great-great-grandfather George Perry Whitman decided to have his classmate Karl Vandemeer build Lakeside Cottage. He had loved Holden Academy, and his fondest memories involved the days and nights camping on Point Bliss. The school abandoned the tradition of camping on the lake sometime around the turn of the century, after one of the kids drowned in a canoe accident. So George bought the whole point from the school and had the trail along the lake—really not much more than a cow path at the time—improved up to right about there, where the driveway begins. Later the state widened the carriage road for automobiles all the way around the lake.”

“My grandfather paid for the original road, so he had it curve inland just before the point,” Perry said. “When it eventually was extended, it curved back alongside the lake about a quarter mile past our property. That's why Lakeside is one of the only houses that has any considerable amount of acreage right on the lake. The other cabins and houses were all built across the street from the lake. Now you can't build anything on the lake. The few areas that haven't been developed are protected by the wetlands commission or are part of the state forest.”

“Yep,” Sally said. “The Whitman estate once consisted of thirty acres, most of Point Bliss, or if you prefer, Whitman's Point, and the land leading up to it. Over the years, as property taxes rose, the property was pared down to just over eight acres, just the point itself. The rest was deeded over to the town's land trust.”