Bitter Sweet (49 page)
He helped Maggie put the dock in and built a new arbour seat which she’d decided she wanted at the end of the dock instead of clear back by the tennis court, which had lost much of its charm as a parking lot. When the last nail was driven they sat on the new arbour seat holding hands and watching the sun set.
‘Katy has agreed to come and work for me this summer,’ she told him.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘School is out the last week in May.’
Their eyes met and his thumb stroked the back of her hand. After a wordless exchange she quietly laid her head on his shoulder.
He came the day he put the Mary Deare in the water, sailing in below the house and bleating his horn, bringing Maggie flying down to the front porch to wave and smile as he’d often pictured.
‘Come on down!’ he called, and she raced down the verdant spring grass between rows of blossoming iris, and onto his deck to be borne away over the waves.
And again, later, when the Montmorencies and Mcintoshes were in full bloom, he came in his battered pickup, cleaned both outside and in for the occasion and bedecked with blossoms that held Maggie momentarily in thrall, and then brought tears to her eyes. He took her to an orchard in full bloom, laden with scent and colour and birdsong, but once there they shared only a melancholy silence, sitting wistful, holding hands again.
May arrived and with it warm enough weather to paint the unheated apartment over the garage. He helped her prepare it for Katy, furnishing it with familiar pieces from the
Seattle
house.
Mid-month brought a steady stream of tourists and fewer times together, then their last night before Katy came home for the summer.
They said good-bye on the deck of the Mary Deare at ten after one in the morning, loath to part, surrounded by blackness and the soft wash of waves against the hull.
‘I’ll miss you.’
“I’ll miss you, too.’
‘I’ll come when I can, in the boat, after dark.’
‘It’ll be hard to get away.’
‘Watch for me around eleven. I’ll blink the lights.’
They kissed farewell with the same anguish they’d suffered when college had forced them apart.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.”
She backed away, holding hands until their outstretched fingertips no longer touched.
‘Marry me,’ he whispered.
‘I promise.’
But the words were mere pining, for though he’d filed for divorce immediately after leaving
Nancy
, the correspondence from her attorney remained unchanged: Ms Macaffee would not agree to a divorce, but desired instead a reconciliation.
Chapter 15
Katy had made up her mind she’d give her mother the benefit of the doubt. Grandma had written and said, your mother is having an affair with a married man, but Katy had decided she’d ask her mother straight out. She was sure Grandma was wrong; it was something she only suspected.
After the words they’d had at Christmas, she didn’t see how her mother could possibly have done anything except refuse to see her old boyfriend again.
She stopped in
Chicago
behind. Living by the lake might not be so bad after all, though she wasn’t too sure how she’d like being a cleaning lady. But what other choice did she have? Until she graduated from college her mother controlled the money, and her mother had not invited Katy as a guest. She’d invited her as an employee.
Cleaning. Shit. Scrubbing the pots after strangers had used them, and changing sheets with curly black hairs in them. It was still beyond Katy why her mother wanted to be an innkeeper. A woman with a million dollars in the bank.
Her hair whipped in the wind and she glanced around to make sure nothing was in danger of sailing out of the backseat.
She returned her eyes to the road, the countryside ahead.
Crimeny, it was a pretty place. Everything getting green and the orchards in full bloom. She did want to get along with her mother. She did. But her mother had changed so much since Daddy died. All this independence, and it seemed as if she just forged ahead and did things without considering Katy’s feelings. And if what Grandma had said was true, what then?
Fish Creek was back in full swing. The doors of the shops along
Up on Cottage Row the summer places had been reopened for the season and a man was out trimming shrubs beside a stone entry into one of them.
At her mother’s, a new sign hung: HARDING HOUSE, BED-AND-BREAKFAST INN. Next to the garage Maggie’s
Lincoln
was parked beside another with
She wasn’t halfway down the steps before Maggie came charging out, smiling, calling, ‘Hi, honey!’
‘Hi, Mom.’
‘Oh, it’s so good to see you.’
In the middle of the walk they embraced, then Maggie took one suitcase and they headed towards the garage, chatting about the trip up, the end of school, the nice spring weather.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ Maggie said, leading Katy up the steps that climbed the outside wall of the building. She opened the door. “I thought you’d like a place of your own.’
Katy looked around the room with wide eyes.
‘The old furniture.., oh, Mom . . .’
‘You’ll have to use the bathroom facilities in the house, and eat there with me, but at least you’ll have some privacy.’
Katy gave her mother a hug. ‘Oh, thank you, Mom, I love it.’
Katy loved her lodgings, but her enthusiasm quickly changed to dismay when she was faced with the realities of having guests in the main house, moving about at all hours.
Maggie kept the kitchen door to the hall closed so that the portion of the house reserved for their private use seemed hemmed in. That afternoon there were no less than five knocks on the hall door, bringing bothersome questions from guests. (Can we use the phone? Where can we rent bicycles? What restaurant would you recommend? Where can we buy film, bait, picnic food?) The telephone rang incessantly and the overhead footsteps seemed an intrusion.
In late afternoon a new party checked in and Maggie had to interrupt meal preparations to show them upstairs and get them registered. By suppertime Katy was totally disenchanted.
‘Mother, are you sure this was the right thing to do?’
‘What’s wrong?’
Katy gestured toward the hall door. ‘All the interruptions. People coming and going and the phone ringing.’
‘This is a business. You have to expect that.’
‘But why are you doing this when you have enough money that you wouldn’t have to work for the rest of your life?’
‘And what else should I do with the rest of my life? Eat chocolates? Go on shopping sprees? Katy, I have to be occupied by something vital.’
‘But couldn’t you have bought a gift shop or become an Avon lady- something that wouldn’t bring your customers into the house?’
‘I could have, but I didn’t.’
‘Grandma says this was a foolish move.’
Maggie bristled. ‘Oh? And when did you talk to Grandma?’
‘She wrote.’
Maggie took a bite of chicken salad without remarking.
‘She said something else that’s been bothering me, too.’
Maggie rested her wrist on the table edge and waited.
Katy looked square at her. ‘Mother, are you still seeing that Eric Severson?’
Maggie took a drink of water, considering her answer.
Setting the glass down, she replied, ‘Occasionally.’
Katy dropped her fork and threw up her hands. ‘Oh, Mother, I don’t believe it.’
“Katy, I told you before -’
‘I know you told me to butt out, but can’t you see what you’re doing? He’s married!’
‘He’s getting a divorce.’
‘Oh, sure, I’ll bet that’s what they all say.’
‘Katy, that was uncalled for!’
‘All right, all right, I apologize.’ Katy held up her hands like a traffic cop. ‘But I’m appalled just the same, and I think it’s a hell of a shameful situation.’ She jumped to her feet, took her plate to the garbage and spanked it clean with three loud whacks of a fork.
Maggie forgot about finishing her supper. She watched her daughter moving angrily to the sink. How was it that since last fall they had been on this merry-go-round of aggravation with one another? No sooner did they reach some truce, than up flared the tempers again. Other parents went through this during their children’s teenage years, but for the Stearn family those had been surprisingly calm.
Maggie had thought she’d made it through raising Katy with unusual luck only to find the distress beginning now at the time she’d thought they’d be most close.
‘You know, Katy,’ she said reasonably, ‘if we’re going to be at each other like this all the time, it’ll make for a very long summer. Furthermore, our guests can sense if there’s friction in the house, and they deserve to be greeted with genuine smiles. There’ll be times when you’ll be the one greeting them, so if you don’t think you can handle it, tell me, now.’
‘I can handle it!’ Katy snapped and left the room.
When she was gone Maggie sighed, propped her elbows on the table and massaged her forehead with eight finger- tips. She sat for some time, staring down at her plate and the unfinished chicken salad.
Suddenly the pieces started swimming and a tear plopped onto a leaf of wilted lettuce.
Damn, not again! Why am I doing this so often lately?
Because you miss Eric and you’re tired of all the duplicity, weary of fighting your family and afraid that maybe he never will get free. She was still sitting there wet-eyed when a guest knocked on the hall door. Go away, she thought, I’m tired and I need this cry. Tired- yes, she’d been so tired lately. For a moment as she pushed to her feet her head felt light. Then she swiped her eyes with a sleeve, put on a cheerful face and went to answer the knock.
It became apparent with Katy’s first day of work that maintaining discipline as an employer of one’s own daughter would present problems for Maggie. Like the parent giving her own child piano lessons, she found her orders taken lightly and followed sluggishly: “I’ll be there in a minute.’
“You mean I have to dust the furniture every day?’
‘But it’s too hot to clean all three bathrooms!’
Though Katy’s dihtory attitude incensed Maggie she refrained from badgering in hopes of minimizing the tension between them.
Then on the third day after Katy’s arrival, her listlessness received a shot of adrenalin. She was stuffing soiled sheets into a canvas laundry bag when a lawnmower roared past the window, pushed by a shiftless young man dressed in red shorts and sockless Nikes.
‘Who’s that!’ Katy exclaimed, staring, stalking him from window to window.
Maggie glanced outside. ‘That’s Brookie’s son, Todd.’
‘Mowing our lawn?’
‘I hired him as my handyman. He comes two days a week to do the heavy work - mow, trim, clean the beach, take care of the garbage.’
Katy strained to watch him, her forehead bumping the screen as the mower moved beyond range and decrescendoed.
‘Wow, he’s cute!”
“Yes, he is.”
Katy made the dust rounde for the remainder of the morning and found countless opportunities to step outside: to shake the dust mop and rugs, to sweep the porches and carry trash up the hill to the dumpster beside the garage. She finished her cleaning in record time and careened downstairs, halting, breathless, beside Maggie who sat at her desk in their personal parlour.
‘I scrubbed all three bathrooms, changed the beds, dusted the bedrooms and the guest parlour, including the windowsills.
Can I be done now?’
Their agreement had been that Katy would work each day until two o’clock and after that would take turns with Maggie being available to check in arriving guests. During neither of her first two days had she completed her work by two; today, however, she was done by
.
‘All right, but I need to buy groceries sometime this afternoon, so be back here by three.’
Katy scudded across to the garage, appearing minutes later in the yard wearing clean white shorts, a red halter top and fresh makeup with her hair in a neat French braid. Todd was emptying grass clippings into a black plastic bag.
‘Here, I’ll hold that for you,’ Katy called as she approached him.