Another Summer

Cassidy, Gina, and Michael–
a special, joyful welcome to the family!
Marge–a sad farewell. We miss you.

A big thank you to Alan Koch for his generosity in time and spirit. He answered a hundred questions when he only had time for two and took the mystery, but not the beauty, out of orchids.

  T
HE BEACH HOUSE NOW STOOD EMPTY, PA
tiently waiting for another summer, when its shutters would be removed and sunlight would once again fill its rooms. Built in 1905, it has been silent witness to nearly a century of love and hatred, and withstood fierce storms, violent earthquakes, while hosting generations of visitors.

Location tied the house and the Santa Cruz boardwalk as much as longevity. Though neither was visible from the other, they had formed a symbiotic relationship: one drew the children, the other drew the adult the child would one day become.

Several small cities separated them. The largest, Santa Cruz, was California condensed to its purest form. To live in a place where high surf took precedence over work required tolerance, liberalthinking, and a love of the unusual. To visit such a place, T-shirts and shorts and sandals sufficed.

Considered useless property by the man who had inherited it, the five acres of rock and forest abutting the ocean changed ownership in a poker game at the Hard Luck Saloon during a turn-of-the-century celebration. The next year a farmer traded a team of horses for the land and that winter began clearing the ground at the edge of the fifteen-foot cliff. He built a rustic, one-room cabin, where a few years later he took his bride on their honeymoon.

Farming was good, and the farmer added rooms to his vacation home as his family grew. Three of his five children were conceived in the cabin. He instilled a love of the land and ocean in them all, filling their heads with stories of a future when they would bring their children and grandchildren to this beloved cottage.

The farmer was nearing sixty when the Great Depression settled across the country. The price of crops dropped below what it cost to produce them. To pay the bills, the farmer sold the five acres that surrounded the beach house to a developer. The developer divided the land into lots and sold them at a 300 percent profit.

The Depression lingered, and the farmer’s children and grandchildren left to find work in the city. He fell behind on his taxes. To save his farm he sacrificed the seed for the next year’s crop, hoping for a miracle. His “miracle” arrived in theform of a traveling salesman who offered to trade the beach house for a season’s seed and fertilizer.

The salesman repeated the story of his incredible good fortune to the other farmers on his route in the long, fertile Salinas Valley. However, he failed to note how those farmers stared at the ground as they listened to his bragging. They put in a call to his competitor as soon as he drove away, and eventually the salesman had to add another territory to earn enough money to keep his bounty.

With two territories to work, the salesman was too busy to spend much time at the beach house. Rather than sit alone at home, his wife spent all her time there. At her insistence, the salesman added another bedroom to accommodate her mother. The next year he added a larger kitchen and new fixtures for the bathroom.

Adding yet more territory to his route to pay for the improvements, the salesman went for weeks without seeing either the house or his wife. Five years later, his wife divorced him, telling the judge his long absences made her feel as if she’d been abandoned. She asked for and received the beach house in the settlement, living there until she was killed in a cable car accident on a trip to San Francisco several years later.

Joe and Maggie Chapman were in Santa Cruz celebrating their anniversary when they took a walk one afternoon and happened on the island of houses in the sea of forest. It was Maggie who firstsaw the real estate agent take a
FOR SALE
sign out of his car. They stopped to talk and struck a deal before the sign made it into the ground.

Joe and Maggie put the love into the house they had saved for the children they had failed to conceive. Looking forward to the day Joe would retire and they would live there full-time, they expanded the living room and added a deck. Then Joe had a stroke, and it was everything Maggie could do to take care of him and the house in San Jose. They found a renter, a young man named Ken Huntington, who’d hitchhiked from Kansas because it was his dream to swim in the Pacific Ocean.

Ken was a mystery to Maggie, unfailingly courteous and always on time with the rent, but forever locked away in the house playing with something he called a personal computer. She tried to listen when he told her the magical things that she would be able to do with her own computer one day, but it was impossible for her to summon anything but polite interest.

Joe’s slow recovery from his stroke wiped out his and Maggie’s savings. They were left with the beach house and their home in San Jose and a desperate need for income. Ken offered to buy the house, but only if Joe and Maggie would carry the note. In exchange, he would give them the summer months to do with as they pleased.

Unaware that Ken was one of the original Silicon Valley computer geniuses, Joe and Maggieentered the agreement, believing they were helping a fine young man buy his first home while solving their own money problems. They kept July for themselves and rented June and August, proudly presenting the checks to Ken at the end of their first summer, “to help with the mortgage payments.”

For the next seventeen years, even as Ken’s business grew to be one of the world’s leaders, the summer rental agreement continued. The beach house acquired new windows and paint, hardwood floors and a laundry room. Dry rot was discovered in the bathroom and the fireplace chimney developed a crack. Repairs were made, appliances replaced, and a new brick path installed through the garden.

Then Ken met and fell in love with a woman who opened the world to him. They were the couple written about in love songs and sonnets and romance novels. They were forever. Only death could separate them.

Ken left Julia on an ordinary commute to work. Julia blindly passed him as he lay dying on the side of the road, oblivious to all but the massive traffic jam Ken created when he lost control of his car during a heart attack.

A sadness settled through the house. Over the near century it had stood sentinel on its rocky outcropping, there had been times when weeks had passed with no one in residence. But not once in all those decades had the doors remained lockedand the windows shuttered for so long as they did that year.

During those desolate eight months a timer kept the garden watered, but no one tended the flowers or cleared the cobwebs. The bleeding-hearts, foxglove, cosmos, plume poppy, and alumroot spilled from their beds and collapsed onto the brick walkways. Worn-out, abandoned spiderwebs filled with wind-strewn debris hung from eaves and fence posts, shutters and lights.

As if through an unspoken agreement, the neighbors steered clear of the beach house that winter. When they did happen by on their way to somewhere else, they kept their heads dipped, their eyes averted.

Finally, on a warm May evening, a car appeared on the narrow asphalt road that led to the house. The woman behind the wheel drove slowly, passing houses with unshuttered windows and families gathered around dining room tables for the evening meal.

She pulled into the driveway but didn’t go inside. Instead, she took the public path beside the house that led to the beach, stood at the top of the stairs, and stared out to sea. Finally, she removed her shoes, set them under a boxwood sorely in need of trimming, and descended the stairs. She walked south, away from the houses toward the rocky outcropping that marked the southern end of the cove. When she returned, the sun rode low on the horizon.

With windblown hair, eyes swollen from crying, and designer clothes damp and wrinkled from sitting on a lichen-covered rock, she did not look like the woman of wealth who had driven there in a Mercedes to say good-bye to the man she’d loved well, but not long. Believing the memories too poignant for her to keep the beach house, she’d come there to ready it for a final summer of renters before putting it on the market.

It would be Joe and Maggie’s last July. That summer they would say good-bye to each other and the house that had given them shelter through a lifetime of joy and sorrow. Their leaving seemed to mark the end of the long season of love lavished on the beach house.

But Julia couldn’t sell. The lives of those who had gone before permeated the walls and reached out to her when she tried to walk away. One more summer, she told herself, convinced another season would give her distance and make it easier to let go. It would have to be an ordinary summer, one without life-altering changes to the people who came there, one without the magic that had touched those who came before.

When that happened, she would sell.

  T
HE ODDS WERE AGAINST HIM. ANDREW
Wells knew this as well as he knew his chances of winning the California state lottery. Of course, you had to play to win, which he didn’t. He figured the lottery was on a par with tossing money in a fountain and expecting good luck.

He was, however, willing to gamble something far more valuable to see Cheryl Cunningham again–his pride. The slim possibility she might attend their twenty-year class reunion was all the encouragement he’d needed to return the invitation, a check attached. Now, an hour into the meet-and-greet portion of the evening, it was almost impossible to sustain the hope that had brought him there.

Andrew took risks as a matter of course, always willing to live with the consequences. Some considered the risks he took lunatic. But from his perspective, hang gliding off a mountaintop, running class-five rivers in a kayak, chasing tsunami-size waves with a surfboard, and sailing around the world with only a stray dog for company had more to do with philosophy than danger. He believed if he wasn’t living on the edge, he was taking up too much space.

He looked at the melting ice in what was left of his gin and tonic and tried not to show the strain he felt listening to a group of his old football buddies trying to top each other with exaggerated stories of financial success and brilliant progeny. Glancing first at the door where he’d registered and then at the glass slider that led to the deck overlooking the eighteenth green, he began planning his escape route.

“First liar doesn’t stand a chance.”

Andrew smiled, immediately recognizing Roger Blanchette’s wry sense of humor and halting voice. Best friends for eight of the ten years they attended school together, the paths they’d taken afterward never seemed to cross at a convenient time for either of them. Turning, he clasped Roger’s outstretched hand with genuine pleasure. “Which is why I’m still waiting to add my two cents.”

Roger laughed. “You’d think their biggest problem was finding a space to park their Learjets.”

If anyone from their Santa Cruz High School class of 1981 could lay claim to a Learjet, it was theman standing in front of him. The years had been good to Roger. No longer plagued by acne or a mother who bought his clothes at garage sales and thrift stores, he could easily pass for exactly what he was, one of the startlingly rich computer moguls of Silicon Valley. He was still new enough to his riches to wear an obscenely expensive watch and bargain wedding band. “You’re the last person I expected to find here.”

“Exactly what I was thinking about you.”

“Well?”

Roger nodded toward a stunning blonde holding court with a cluster of ex-cheerleaders. “Mary wanted to come.”

Andrew did a double take. “That’s Mary?”

“Shows you what a bitchy magazine writer and a willing plastic surgeon can do to a perfectly fine woman.” He shrugged it off and changed the subject. “So, what’s keeping you busy these days?”

“I’m back in the orchid business.”

“Back?”

Even though no one new had arrived in the past fifteen minutes, Andrew compulsively glanced at the door before answering. “I thought I had the nursery sold a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work out.”

“Wholesale or retail?”

“Wholesale. Mainly to high-end retailers and florists. The shows are my bread and butter.”

“Mary has an arrangement with a nursery in San Francisco. They take care of the plants whenthey aren’t in bloom and bring them to her when they are.”

“I thought about setting up part of my nursery for boarding plants but decided it was too labor intensive.” Again, Andrew glanced at the door.

“Expecting someone?”

“Not expecting,” Andrew admitted. “Hoping.”

Roger tossed him a questioning look. “Anyone I know?”

Andrew hesitated. He could evade the question or lie, but what was the point? “Cheryl.”

“I thought you two went your separate ways in college.”

“I’ve grown older and wiser since then.”

“In other words you finally realized what a jackass you were, and you’re hoping it’s not too late.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Roger slapped a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “It’s the only way to put it where Cheryl is concerned.”

Andrew had broken her heart. He’d known he would, but it hadn’t stopped him. At the time he’d honestly believed his reasons for leaving outweighed the inner voice that compelled him to stay. For a while he’d even managed to convince himself he had done her a favor. The man she’d fallen in love with was whole and healthy, one who could fulfill her dreams of home and hearth and family. He stopped being that man his junior year. Selfishly saving himself the look of pity hewas sure he would see in her eyes if he told her, he’d simply walked away with what now seemed a callous explanation.

The calculated selfishness of his leaving was what had kept him from coming back when he finally realized how big a mistake he’d made. Then he’d heard through a mutual friend that Cheryl had moved to Montana and married a state legislator with eyes on the governor’s job. Over the years he’d found a way to let her go intellectually, but not emotionally.

“–don’t know where I’d be without Mary,” Roger said.

Realizing he’d missed most of what Roger had said, Andrew forcefully snapped himself out of his thick fog of memories. “My guess is that she’s over there saying the same thing about you.”

He shook his head. “A while back it hit me that, at best, love is lopsided. As long as a relationship is balanced out in other ways it–” He stopped, plainly embarrassed by what he was about to reveal. “Don’t get me wrong, life’s been good to me. I’ve got nothing to complain about.” A good-old-boy mask slid into place. “How’s your drink? Can I get you a refresher?”

“No thanks.”

Roger held up his empty glass. “My first–not near enough to get through the rest of this evening. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Andrew watched Roger make his way to the bar, knowing it was the last time they would talkto each other that night. While Roger might not have come to the reunion to impress anyone, he hadn’t come to embarrass himself with personal revelations either.

Sending one last look around the crowded room, Andrew absently noted how kind twenty years had been to some of his classmates and how cruel to others. With a mental shrug of acceptance, he acknowledged the depletion of his store of small talk, the lack of desire to search for more, the smile that had grown as uncomfortable as the overheated room, and the diminishing hope that had brought him there. While contemplating an unobtrusive escape through the exit next to the bathroom, he glanced up and saw Cheryl Cunningham standing at the registration desk talking to someone in an orange-and-pink polka-dot dress.

She stole his breath with the same gut-punch intensity she had that cold November morning when she’d first walked into his French class. He’d fallen in love with her that day–head over heels, illogical, down-to-his-toes love. He remembered that moment as clearly as he remembered the fog that had accompanied high tide that morning. The feeling was the first rock to tumble in an avalanche of emotion. Finally, he understood why he’d never been able to fill the emptiness with the freedom he’d sacrificed everything to attain. Only one person could cure the loneliness and ease the longing.

Still, one thing eluded him, one thing he would never understand. How had he left her? What words had he used to convince himself it was the right thing to do?

W
ITH THE VETERAN EASE OF A POLITICIAN’S
wife, Cheryl Cunningham glanced around the crowded ballroom, hiding her desire to escape the woman who had rushed up to greet her behind a practiced smile. She had no business being here, had even had sense enough to throw away the invitation when it arrived. But two days later a compelling blend of curiosity and desire and a sense of unfulfilled destiny overrode her normal good sense. She retrieved the invitation and sent in her check that same day, knowing that if she waited even a couple of hours, she would change her mind.

The check was the key. She lived too frugally to pay for the reunion and not attend. Or at least that was what she’d told herself, and any excuse that worked was a good one. She would rather spend a year on the campaign trail, a job she hated more than any she’d ever had, than have anyone discover the real reason she was there. She’d lived through humiliation: pity she couldn’t handle.

“You haven’t changed,” the woman gushed. “Not one bit.”

Cheryl struggled to connect a name with the face. Her family had moved to Santa Cruz herjunior year, which left her little more than a year and a half to form these lifelong bonds with her graduating class. Twenty years was a long time to remember pass-in-the-hall friends.

“You haven’t either,” Cheryl ventured.

The woman laughed. “Tell that to my bathroom scale. But I’ll bet you haven’t gained a pound. How do you do it?” Before Cheryl could answer, the woman added, “Do you have kids?”

“No,” Cheryl said without elaborating. Finally, she managed to catch the name tag on the woman’s ample breast. Lynn Littrell Sawyer. It didn’t help.

“I have five.” She brought up her hand to display five fingers, hitting her other hand and sending a piece of ice sailing from her highball glass. “I did okay with the first three. But everything went to hell in a handbasket after the twins.” She bent to retrieve the ice. “Max said he’s going to trade me in for a couple of twenties when I turn forty if I don’t do something to get the weight off. I told him there wasn’t one woman–let alone two–who was going to have anything to do with him once she discovered he was paying alimony to me and child support to five kids.” She grinned. “Shut him up real fast.”

Lynn put her hand on Cheryl’s arm. “So tell me about you. Still making those clay things?”

“I gave up sculpting when I got married.” She glanced toward the bar and saw a man looking back. Not the right one. Why was she doing this to herself? What did she hope to gain?

“No time, I’ll bet. I’m not surprised. A bunch of us girls got together a couple of months ago, kind of a prereunion thing, and Julie Thompson said you had to be the most famous person in our class. She said she saw a picture of you in
USA Today
at some party and that you were there with Tom Cruise.”

Cheryl knew the photograph. It was five years old. “I wasn’t actually with him, we–”

“What’s he like? Is he as handsome in person as he is in the movies? I read somewhere that he’s really short. Is that true?”

The moment captured by a photographer as she and Jerry entered an award ceremony at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center was as close as Cheryl had come to a conversation with Tom Cruise. But that wasn’t what Lynn, or others who asked such questions, wanted to hear. “He’s very nice,” she said.

“Is your husband parking the car?”

“Jerry isn’t with me,” she said, resigned to what would follow.

“Oh.” Lynn tried, but couldn’t hide a look of disappointment. “When I saw you I was hoping he’d be here, too. It’s not every day someone like me gets to meet someone like your husband.” As if realizing how insensitive she sounded, Lynn quickly added, “Of course seeing you again is wonderful, too.”

“Jerry and I are divorced.
USA Today
wrote about that, too. You must have missed it.”

Lynn’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. When did that happen?”

“Two years ago.”

She recovered enough to sputter, “How awful. Goodness, I’ll bet you were devastated.”

She had been, but not for the reason Lynn undoubtedly believed. The assumption was that no woman in her right mind would walk out on Jerry Walden, a man whose publicity photos made him out to be the Marlboro Man without the cigarette. Movie-star handsome, charismatic, powerful, rich, he looked as good in jeans as in a tuxedo, was adored by women over sixty, lusted after by their daughters and granddaughters, and drooled on and over by the stroller set.

But Jerry hadn’t walked out on her; the decision to divorce was hers. The telling clue to his own apathy over the marriage was how quickly he agreed, not even ordering a poll to see how it would affect his career until she’d made an appointment with an attorney.

When they’d met, Jerry was on a calculated search for a young, vibrant woman he could marry who could help jump-start his stalled political career. She had to be someone who could pull in the male voters without seeming threatening to their wives. Without knowing she was being tested, Cheryl aced the exam, even winning the approval of the political consultants who hovered around Jerry like gulls around a shrimp boat. Caught up in the frenetic excitement of his campaign for reelection and the heady ego of not only being needed but told so nightly, she mistook passion for love and ignored the inner voice that warned about the long fall from such heady heights.

She’d anticipated an adjustment period after the divorce, a time to settle into the cocoon of solitude. It never came. Sadly, she realized she’d been alone the entire time she and Jerry had been together.

Lynn’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, now I know why you came here tonight.” She smiled like a
Jeopardy!
contestant who knew the final answer. “I told Margo I thought it was strange that you and Andrew were both coming to this reunion when neither of you have ever come before.” She moved in closer. “Who told you he would be here?”

“No one,” she answered truthfully, feeling a momentary sense of violation at having her motive so easily exposed.

“But you were hoping.”

“Of course,” she admitted. “Isn’t that the reason we all come to these things? It’s an opportunity to see old friends.” She couldn’t tell if her attempt at casualness had worked and wasn’t sure if she cared. Did it really matter if a woman she hadn’t seen in twenty years and would likely never see again knew she’d come to the reunion to find the man who’d broken her heart and never bothered to find out if she’d survived?

Lynn swung around to study the crowd. “I saw him by the pool talking to Joan earlier.”

“Joan Beatty?”

“It’s Joan Fisher now–or at least it was last week. She’s either on her fourth or fifth husband. I lost track at three. Wait till you see her. She’s every woman’s nightmare–buns of steel with boobs to match. I hate her. I’m going to take charge of the invitations next reunion and make sure hers gets lost.”