The Goodbye Summer (4 page)

Most women acquired their personal styles by watching their mothers when they were young, then either copying or rejecting their mothers’ styles when they grew up. What Caddie could remember of her mother was skimpy: she’d worn hippie clothes and smoked cigarettes; she’d always tapped her foot or drummed her fingers or jogged her knee up and down; she’d had long blonde hair she let fall over one eye, and Caddie always wanted to pull it back like a curtain so she could see more, unveil the secret. But her mother hadn’t been around much, and she’d died when Caddie was too young really to understand her
style.
After that she’d had only Nana’s style to observe. She’d rejected it, she was
still
rejecting it, but she hadn’t replaced it with anything interesting of her own.

But it was early days, and she was making a new start. She didn’t have the knack for living alone yet either, but it was only her first night. The
Michaelstown Monitor
ran personal ads every Friday afternoon. She got the paper, retrieved her pen, poured herself a second glass of wine—for courage—and sat down by the phone.

The code didn’t mystify her anymore; she knew what a DHM was, a GWF, an SPBM. She read the personals every week, and once in a while she even felt tempted to answer one. She never had, but if she was ever going to, tonight was the night.
Action.
“I’m all about change,” she told Finney, who twitched in his sleep on her lap. “I am a wild woman.”

Too bad the women always sounded more interesting than the men. Were they just better writers? No question, writing ads was an art form, but it was more than that. The men went on about their height and weight, the height and weight they wanted from the women who responded, the age range they would tolerate, the personality type they had to have. Whereas women seemed kinder and more open-minded. Easier to get along with. Here was an SWF who was “brainy, witty, sensual and spontaneous, loves entertaining, works/plays hard, comfortable in jeans and sequins.” Wouldn’t she make a cool friend? A lot more fun than this guy, seeking “clean SWF with high morals, no dependents.”

Slim pickings this week. This one sounded the best: “Attractive SPWM, self-supporting, good conversationalist, serious but fun, enjoys politics, long walks, old movies. ISO intelligent woman who likes same, with whom to spend time and enjoy life.”

With whom.
Wow.

If she thought about this for longer than ten seconds, she’d chicken out. She got her credit card out of her purse—two dollars and twenty-nine cents a
minute
—picked up the phone, and dialed.

“Hello, this is Byron,” a deep, prerecorded voice said. “Thank you for answering my ad. Please leave a message and tell me a little about yourself. And don’t forget to leave your number so I can call you back.”

Yikes, she was supposed to give her phone number to a total stranger? Well, if that was how it worked…

“Um, hi, I’m Caddie. Hi, Byron. I thought you sounded very nice in your ad. I was hoping we could talk and, you know, see how we, um, are together…I’ve never done this before. Ha, that’s probably what they all say! I guess I should say what I look like, that’s what…” That’s what men always wanted to know. “I’m five eleven. I’m on the thin side. Slim. Slender. I have sort of blonde hair, streaky blonde, down to my shoulders…blue eyes…I have good posture. Oh, I’m thirty-two. I’m also self-supporting, like you, so—and I have my own car. I’m living alone at the moment…I’m easy to get along with, I think, no real…um, demands or anything.” She heaved a deep, silent sigh.

“I’m just looking for a nice guy, you know, somebody to hang out with. Till we get to know each other. And then, well, whatever. Long-term relationship, that would be fine with me. That would be
great.
” Her laugh sounded nervous and silly. Time to stop talking; she didn’t like the sound of herself any more than Byron was going to. She left her number and hung up.

“Agh!” she screamed, and Finney shot up in the air. She had to catch him and console him before she could resume, in a softer voice, “
Agh, agh, agh.
”

Never again, she’d rather go to a singles bar. She’d rather be rejected for stupid things like small breasts and no butt than hang herself with her
own words.
Good posture!
“I’m all about personal humiliation,” she told the dog, and took him out for his last walk.

Unbelievably, the phone was ringing when she got back. She raced to it and tried to say “Hello?” without sounding breathless.

The unmistakable voice of Byron, low-pitched and slightly nasal, like an Englishman but without the accent, said, “Hello, is this Cattie?”

“Caddie, yes, hi—Byron?”

“I hope I haven’t called too late.”

“No, no, not at all. How are you?”

“I’m well, thanks. You said this is your first time answering one of the ads?”

“It is, yes, and it’s kind of nerve-racking. I’m not even sure what you
do.
”

“It’s an artificial socializing mechanism, true, but at the same time it’s pretty civilized, I think. You can avoid a lot of the rough-and-tumble in the beginning, save quite a bit of time.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”

“Dating is intrinsically messy, just an awkward construct by nature. I’ve never felt in any way demeaned by the personals process, never thought it tainted me as ‘desperate’ or anything of that sort.”

“Oh, no, of course not.” Not
him,
obviously. It was different for her, though, she
was
desperate. “Have you had a lot of success, then?”

“Well, that depends on your definition of success. If it’s marriage and happily ever after, I’d have to say no.”

“No, I wasn’t—”

“If it’s the quiet companionship of two intelligent, seeking people who may or may not be kindred spirits, then the results have been somewhat more encouraging. So tell me, Carrie, what do you do for a living?”

“Caddie. I’m a music teacher. I teach piano and violin.”

“I see.”

“And what do
you
do?” She felt giddy from nervousness; she wanted to giggle; she had to stop herself from adding “Brian?”

“I’m in management consulting. I design systems for expenses and inventory control for small businesses.”

“
Oh.
That sounds interesting.”

“What are your hobbies?”

It was like a job interview, but with a black screen between her and the interviewer. “Um, well, music, of course, I love to listen to all kinds. I used to be in the Michaelstown Community Orchestra, I played second violin, but I had to drop out—”

“I enjoy music, but I’m pretty much tone-deaf, you may as well know. Where are you in the sibling hierarchy?”

The sibling hierarchy…“Oh—I’m an only child.”

“I see. I’m the eldest of three.”

“Do you believe in that, birth order and so forth?”

He huffed out his breath. “Most certainly I do.”

“I’ve never thought about it much, but I’m sure it’s very revealing. Of character and…stuff. What are your hobbies?” She squeezed her eyes shut, a habit when she wished she were somewhere else.

“I enjoy antique car shows. I have a barbed wire collection. I play handball and golf. Now, let’s see…” He seemed to be ticking items off a list. “You said you currently live alone?”

She’d felt disingenuous about that, afraid it might’ve sounded as if she were temporarily without a live-in boyfriend. Which would certainly send the wrong message. “Well, actually, I live with my grandmother, but she had an accident and she’s gone to recuperate in a home. For a few months. So I’m on my own
now.
”

“Ah. You live with your grandmother, and you’re thirty-two?”

She didn’t like Byron very much, might as well admit it, but she particularly disliked the way he’d phrased that question. “How old are you?” she countered. “In your ad, you don’t say.”

“Thirty-nine. Just.”

There was a pause. She didn’t have any other questions, and she was pretty sure he didn’t either.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve found it’s better to make a clean, quick break when there seems to be, as they say, no chemistry, so—”

“Oh, I think that’s best, too,” Caddie broke in, “just get it over with.” The end was coming up fast, and she was
not
going to be dumped by
Byron. This was a two-way breakup. “It’s really been nice talking to you, though. Good luck and everything. I hope you find—”

“Yes, indeed. Bye.”

She put her head in her lap and moaned quietly for a while. It could’ve been worse, he could’ve been a stalker. He still could be, in theory, and this was how he threw his victims off, by rejecting them. But something told her she was safe from Byron for the rest of her life.

She went to bed early, but she couldn’t sleep. Nana didn’t snore or mutter or get up and down in the night, so the house shouldn’t have sounded so weirdly, unnaturally quiet. Every random creak made her start. Finney, too. He lay with his head on her shin, blinking at her in the moonlight. “You miss Nana, don’t you? Want to go see her? One of these days?” He scooted up and pushed his head under her arm. “But they have cats.
Cats,
” she repeated, to test him, and sure enough, his ears cocked. “I’ll have to call Brenda first to clear the way. They have rules.
Rules.
” Nothing.

Oh God, oh God, she was going to turn into an old lady who talked to her dog. “Go sleep in Nana’s room,” she ordered, edging Finney off the bed with her hip. “Go on. You’re not allowed up here anyway.” He hit the floor with an offended thump, his nails making a skittery sound when he trotted out of the room. A few minutes later he tiptoed back in and hopped up on the foot of the bed so gently she had to open her eyes to make sure he was there.

She lay still, taking deep, slow breaths, pretending she was asleep. So he wouldn’t think she was a pushover.

Some first night. She’d done all right on her own, she guessed, indulged herself, altered her personal space, made a few good resolutions for the future. Where she’d fallen down was in the reaching-out-to-others department, the part she couldn’t control. She watched moon shadows creep up the wall, heard the snap of her digital clock when
P.M.
turned into
A.M.
“Don’t miss me,” Nana had commanded her. Truthfully, she wasn’t doing too hot in that department, either.

“They’re starting this big memory book,” her grandmother called to say one day after she’d been at Wake House for about two weeks. “Everybody has to write out their life story, tell how it was back in the good old days. ‘We Remember’ or some such thing. They’re going to keep it on the table in the front hall.”

“I know,” Caddie said, “I was there when Brenda suggested it, don’t you remember?” Cornel, the grumpy old guy, had wanted to call it “We Can’t Remember.”

“Well, of course I do, I was there, too, wasn’t I? So I want you to type one up for me when you get time. Make me sound important.”

“Type one up?”

“It doesn’t have to be long. But not
short,
either. I’m seventy-nine years old, I’ve got a history.”

“So just…”

“When I was born, where I went to school, my accomplishments. Like an obituary, except I’m not dead.”

“Um, okay, I guess I can do that.”

“How come you’re not over here by now?”

“No, remember, I’m coming tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, that’s right. Well, too late now anyway, never mind.”

“Too late for what?”

“Today this preacher comes over, not a real one, a ‘lay preacher,’ calls
himself—now I’m thinking why didn’t
I
do that, become a ‘lay preacher’ when I was young, that’s something I’d’ve been good at, a natural, I probably missed my calling.”

“So the lay preacher came—”

“Preacher came, and he gathers everybody around for Bible study, fine with me,
but.
Guess what, I open my book, and turns out I’ve got my Koran instead of my Bible.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Caddie Ann, you’d’ve thought I let loose a basket of snakes. Especially Mrs. Brill, that one with the walker, she almost had a coronary. Christians have very little sense of humor, I’m sorry to say.”

“So you want me to bring your Bible?”

“No great rush, just if you remember.”

“How are you? How’s your leg today?”

“Leg’s fine, everything’s fine. I’ve got to go, Susan wants to use the phone.”

“See, if you had your own phone—”

“What do I need a phone for? Bye—don’t forget my history.”

“Morning,” Caddie paused in the front hall to say to Magill, who was lifting hand weights in the Blue Room. “Have you seen my grandmother?” At least she assumed it was Magill. He wasn’t wearing knee pads today, but he had on a huge, bright orange football helmet with his baggy pants and oversize T-shirt. To protect his head in case he fell, she assumed.

“Nope. Susan?” he raised his voice to say.

Caddie hadn’t seen Susan in her wheelchair by the window, listening through headphones to a tape player. She and Magill were the two “young ones,” although Susan looked at least forty. She was a librarian, according to Nana; she was recovering from a stroke; she had a boyfriend named Stan. She waved to Caddie and slipped the headphones off.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Caddie.”

“I’m looking for my grandmother. Have you seen her?”

Susan nodded, then said something in her thick, lispy voice Caddie couldn’t quite catch.

Susan gave a crooked smile and went back to her tape.

“Oh, okay. Thanks!”

“She, um…” Caddie drifted closer to Magill, embarrassed because she’d pretended to understand when she hadn’t, not wanting to hurt Susan’s feelings.

“She went to Hershey,” Magill said.

“Hershey?” That’s what she’d thought Susan had said. “Hershey, Pennsylvania? How come?”

“Field trip, Cornel and Bernie, Bea and Edgie, Frances. They’re touring the chocolate factory.”

“Wow.” How…all-American. “Well, how about that, I’ve been stood up. After I went and wrote Nana’s biography for her.” She held up the manila folder she’d put it in.

“Thoughtless,” Magill agreed.

She leaned against the piano, out of his way. “Are you going to write one? For the memory book?”

He shot her a glance, as if he thought she was kidding. “Uh, no.”

“Why not? You’re a resident—why don’t you write one?”

He hoisted his rusty silver weights behind his head, up and down, knotty muscles coming and going in his stringy arms. He smiled and didn’t answer.

“I could write it for you,” she said on an impulse. “My grandmother’s turned out pretty well. If I say so myself.” She tapped the folder invitingly. The truth was, she was curious about him. “Want me to?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Really?” He didn’t look serious. “Okay, what do you do?”

“Nothing. No, wait. Today I got my shoes on by myself. Look, perfect bows, no Velcro for me.” He stuck out a running shoe—but then he had to grab the edge of the windowsill to keep his balance.

“I mean before you came here.” Before his accident. It happened about fifteen months ago, and it was some kind of
skydiving
mishap, of all things,
but the details were off-limits. Nobody talked about it, and that by itself was strange; after the state of their health, the main topic of conversation among Wake House residents was each other.

He went back to doing curls, flexing the ropy tendons in his forearms. “Engineer.”

“What kind?”

“Biomechanical.”

A skydiving biomechanical engineer. “How old are you?”

He sent her some kind of look, but it was hard to tell what kind because of the football helmet. It wasn’t like her to be so intrusive. The pretense that this was for “We Remember” made a good cover for pure nosiness. “Thirty, thirty-five,” he said. “Around in there.”

She laughed. “Around in there?” His body was so thin and wobbly, it made him look younger. “Do you work for a company?”

“I had my own company. Have. Had.”

“What do you make? Did you make?”

“Feet.”

“Feet? Feet?”

“Feet, legs, hips, pelvises. Mostly feet.”

“Oh, you mean artificial limbs?”

“Orthotics.” He put the weights down to take a drink from his soda. No, not soda, one of those nutritional drinks they advertised on TV for old people, supposed to give you energy or a new lease on life or something. He must drink it for the calories. According to Nana, food didn’t mean anything to him since the accident. He’d completely lost his sense of taste.

“Um, are you from Maryland? A native Michaelstowner?”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I was born right here. I grew up on the west side—do you know Early Street?”

He shook his head.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Here.”

“Just till you get well. Where’s your home? I just thought maybe we went to the same school or something. We could have friends in common.”

“No home anymore. This is it.” He pushed off from the wall and walked away.

She was afraid she’d upset him—she was relieved when he just went over to help Susan change the tape in her tape player. Susan spent most mornings doing speech and physical therapy to learn how to talk and walk again. The sessions left her so tired, she kept quiet and still the rest of the day.

“Is it okay?” Magill asked her. “Loud enough? Sure?”

“It’s perfect,” Susan answered, smiling at him.

“You’re never going to let me write your biography, are you?” Caddie asked him when he came back. “Because I don’t even know your first name. Some biography.”

She was glad when he took off his football helmet, even though it had flattened one-half of his hair and made the other half stick up like a rooster’s crest. At least now she could see his face. “Yeah, well,” he said. “One’s enough for me.” When he bent down to pick up his weights, he missed; he had to try again with one eye closed. Besides everything else, he had bad depth perception. He could play cards with Cornel, but not checkers or chess. Once, Caddie saw him walk into a door.

“One’s enough? Like Cher?” It was fun to tease him. He tried not to show that he liked it, but he did. She wished she knew the secret about him, the mystery.

Thump,
step, step. Mrs. Brill paused in the hallway on her way out.

“Good morning, Mrs. Brill,” Caddie and Magill called to her in unison. Magill put his weights on the windowsill and stood up straight: Mrs. Brill brought out everybody’s best behavior. She lived across the hall from Nana. A white card on her door said in neat black ink,
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER, RETIRED,
and that was all Caddie knew about her. She had on white gloves today, and black-and-white spectator pumps with a matching purse that swung wide from her wrist each time she pushed her metal walker. She pulled back the left sleeve of her polka-dot blouse. “Good afternoon,” she corrected, tapping the watch face.

“Good
afternoon,
” they echoed, and she started off again with a push of her walker. They heard her on the porch,
thump,
step, step.
Thump,
step, step.

“Where does she go?”

“Just walking,” Magill said. “I think.”

“She’s very dignified.”

“She scares the hell out of me.”

Caddie looked at her own watch. “Wow, I didn’t know it was so late. I have to go, I’ve got a twelve-thirty lesson.”

“Uh…”

She paused in gathering up her things.

He dug something out of the back pocket of his voluminous trousers, which hung dangerously low on his hips; she could plainly see the elastic top of his shorts. “Just something,” he muttered, handing over a plastic box.

A CD case. “For me?” She opened it. It was blank, no writing on the shiny disc inside. “What is it?”

“You said you didn’t know anything about electronic music. You wished you could hear more, so you could find out if you liked it.”

That’s right, she had said that. They’d been talking about music, she and Magill and Miss Edgie Copes, and Caddie had mentioned she liked every kind of music except techno, but only because they never played it on any of the local stations and she never got to hear it. “Did you make it?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing, stuff off the computer. I burned it.”

“I didn’t know you liked this kind of music.”

“I don’t, it sounds like noise to me. You listen and tell me what I’m missing.”

“Well, thank you very much. I will.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Was it a lot of trouble? I hope it didn’t take a long time to make.”

“I only had to cancel one important business trip.” He smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Thanks again, that was really nice. I’ll listen to it tonight. Well, bye. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

He didn’t reply. Maybe he didn’t hear; he’d put his football helmet back on.

Caddie started to leave, then paused, uncertain, in the foyer. She still had her grandmother’s biography for “We Remember.” She ran upstairs and put the manila folder on Nana’s bed, where she’d be sure to see it.

Frances Marguerite Winger was born right here in Michaelstown on September 29, 1924. Her father was a conductor for the C&O Railroad, and her mother was a professional seam-stress who also sang and played the organ in the choir at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church on Reister Street. Frances had one older brother, Frank, but he died in 1930 of rheumatic fever.

Frances was a good student, and after graduating from Michaelstown High School, she went on to Peterson State College and earned a B.A. in art (1944). That same year she married Charles Eliot Buchanan, an army first lieutenant, who died tragically but bravely in Guam without ever seeing their child, born six months after his death.

For the next thirty-five years Frances taught art in almost every grade in the county school system. She was active in the Landmark Society, the Triangle Women’s Club, and the Michaelstown Garden Club, of which she was president for two terms.

In 1980, Frances’s only child, Jane Winger, a singer and musician who used the professional name Chelsea, died in an automobile accident. She was thirty-one years old. She left one child, Caddie, whom Frances raised with as much love and care as if she were her own daughter.

In the early 1980s, when other women her age might’ve been thinking about retiring, Frances’s life took a new, exciting turn. She gave up teaching and began a career as an independent artist. Perhaps taking a page from her mother’s book, her earliest medium was needle and thread, with which she constructed large needlepoint samplers with interesting and unusual messages. One of the largest of these,
Women Take Back the World,
was displayed at the Michaelstown Arts Festival of 1984, where it won second place in the sewing and crafts category.

Later in the 1980s, Frances was instrumental in the founding of EBFA, Essential Body Fluids for Art, at first a
local movement but eventually national, with members from as far away as Ohio and Virginia. Adherents of EBFA had a rich, complicated aesthetic, but to oversimplify, they basically believed that true art should include as many of the essential body fluids as possible, preferably all seven.

Frances’s restless artistic spirit took her next to mixed media and collage, followed by an energetic period of photo-realism. But in 1995 she found her true and most satisfying artistic niche. “It was an accident,” she says with characteristic modesty. Accident—maybe. One day in the early spring while checking on the status of her side yard compost heap (since her youth, Frances has been an avid and creative gardener), she noticed her clipping and leaf pile had taken on an odd formation. “It was definitely two faces in profile, one talking, one listening. They were human, but they were also part of the ground. Earth people communicating.”