Summer Friends (14 page)

Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Summer Friends

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“Gotta run,” Glenda said. “Souvenirs don't sell themselves.”

“Glenda works in one of the gift shops in the Cove,” Nancy explained when she had gone. “It can be a madhouse some days, but it's a living.”

“I can imagine.” Maggie gestured to the paper bag on the checkout desk. “Please don't let me disturb your lunch.”

“Oh, lunch can wait. You know, Delphine uses the library more than anyone else in town. She's a great reader.”

Maggie glanced in the direction of the stacks. “When does she get the time? I wonder.”

“Oh, a reader will always find time for a book.”

“I have to admit I haven't read more than two or three books a year in ages. I used to read so much more. . . .” Maggie shrugged. “Now, I don't know; I just don't. Aside from the news and business reports, that sort of thing.”

Nancy shook her head. “They say the Internet and all those machines like Kindle are going to kill the book, but I say that's ridiculous. There will always be those of us who love the feel of paper between our fingers, the turning of pages.”

“Will there?” Maggie said. “I'm not so sure. A few generations from now there might be kids who find anything but electronic media obsolete. To them, a book might be some quaint relic from the past, something rare and inconvenient.”

Nancy's cheeks reddened. “I won't believe it.”

Maggie wished she had kept her thoughts to herself. She wished that Delphine would hurry up and pick a book. Happily, just then Delphine emerged from the stacks with two fat volumes in her arm. One, she showed Maggie, was Peter Ackroyd's biography of William Blake. The other was a novel by Ross King titled
Domino
. The first novel she had hoped to find was out, so she asked Nancy to reserve it for her when it was returned.

When Delphine had checked out her books and said good-bye to Nancy, the women left the library. Just outside, they ran into a short, roughhewn sort of man whom Delphine introduced as Bobby Taylor. He was still quite muscular, though Maggie guessed he had to be in his late seventies or thereabouts. His face was deeply lined and deeply tanned. He wore a clean though threadbare shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was an ancient tattoo on his left forearm, but Maggie couldn't make out what it represented. His pants were held up with suspenders.

Delphine and Bobby chatted for a moment or two about the weather and the volume of tourists as compared to the previous yearâstaples of local conversationâand then he went off into the library.

“He's a retired lobsterman,” Delphine explained when the door had closed behind him. “He's one of the other avid readers in town, along with me and Tilda McQueen. Bobby was a close friend of her father and he's been with Tilda's aunt, Ruth, forever. Her âgentleman caller,' I guess you could say.”

“The name sounds familiar. McQueen. Would I have known them?”

Delphine considered. “Your parents might have, maybe through the museum or the Barn Gallery. Tilda's family owns a big old estate overlooking the water. Larchmere. Well, actually, her sister, Hannah, owns it with her wife, Susan, now that the parents are gone. They run it as a bed-and-breakfast. Her brother, Craig, is the manager. He lives there year-round. I guess you could say the McQueens are kind of an enterprise, too, like my family. Except they're originally from Massachusetts.”

Which made them, Maggie knew, perpetual outsiders. “You know everyone around here,” she said.

“Everyone knows everyone.”

“I guess I don't remember that from when we were kids.”

“I'm not sure it's something a kid would really notice, the dynamics of a community. Kids are pretty self-involved. Of necessity, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Pretty much all I was concerned about those summers I spent here was catching lightning bugs and eating ice cream. And all my brother was concerned about was playing baseball.”

“That reminds me,” Delphine said. “I need to buy Sea Dogs tickets. I want to surprise Kitty. What says summer more than a baseball game and a hot dog?”

“And lightning bugs and ice cream. I'd love to go to the game with you. I haven't been to a ball game of any sort since the girls played soccer when they were in middle school.”

Delphine hesitated. She had planned to take Kitty on her own, just the two of them, a special outing. She looked over Maggie's shoulder, glad to be wearing her sunglasses. “I'll have to check my schedule first and then check with Cybel. . . .”

“Sure,” Maggie said quickly. “If it doesn't work out that's fine. Look, thanks again for introducing me to the Burtons and to Nancy and Mr. Taylor. Oh, and I got to meet Glenda, too. I appreciate your letting me hang out with you today.”

“Of course,” Delphine said, but she realized she felt a little bit annoyed. She wished Maggie wouldn't make herself sound so pathetic, like Delphine was doing her some huge favor by “letting” her hang out. And if Maggie really did see spending time with her as a big favor, something special, might that mean she was asking Delphine to shoulder the responsibilityâthe burdenâof a real friendship?
Either that,
Delphine thought,
or I'm overthinking this entire topic.
It had been known to happen.

“Look,” Maggie was saying, gesturing in the direction of Gorges Grant. “I can walk from here back to my hotel. I'm kind of thinking I'll go for a swim.”

Delphine nodded. “Sure.”

There was an awkward moment of silence and then Maggie turned and began to walk toward the hotel. Delphine raised her hand as if to hold her back; then she let it fall. She turned and walked in the other direction, back to her truck.

At ten o'clock Wednesday morning, Delphine got a call from her father, asking her to work the counter at Crandall's Diner. One of the women who usually handled the lunch shift, Melissa, had had a minor accident on the way in; her car, while not totaled, had been hauled off to a garage and she was temporarily stranded. Delphine left a message for Maggie, canceling their plans to have lunch at the farm, and rushed off to the diner. The last person she expected to see walking through the front door an hour later was Maggie.

Delphine was not thrilled. She didn't particularly want Maggie to watch her serving sandwiches, wiping counters, and scraping dirty dishes.
At least I'm not wearing a hairnet and a too-tight polyester uniform,
she thought.
And it's not as if there's anything unworthy about the work.
It was just thatâwell, just that this was work time, not playtime.

There was one seat left at the far end of the counter, close to the door, and Maggie took it. She smiled brightly as Delphine came toward her, order pad in hand.

“What are you doing here?”

Maggie laughed. “What do you mean, what am I doing here?”

“Didn't you get my message?”

“Of course. That's why I'm here. I figured this way we could still see each other.”

Delphine kept her tone neutral, but she could feel a flush of anger rise in her cheeks. “I'm at work, Maggie. I don't have time to chat.”

Maggie reached for a plastic-coated menu propped between the salt and pepper shakers. “Oh, I know,” she said lightly. “I've just been wanting to have lunch at the diner, for old times' sake. I told you that.”

An old-fashioned counter bell sounded. “I need to serve another customer,” Delphine said, and walked to the other end of the counter. Maggie saw her speak to a young, dark-haired waitress with a tattoo of a rose on her neck. The young waitress came toward her and with a smile asked if she could take Maggie's order.

When the waitress had gone off, Maggie examined the diner she had remembered with such fondness. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that the high-backed leather benches in the booths in front were new, at least, new to her. In her memory she saw them as red. These were blue. Otherwise, everything looked much as it had; she was sure of it. On the counter, next to the cash register, was a display of glass jars containing preserved foods made by Mrs. Crandall from produce grown on the farm. There were several kinds of sauerkrauts and pickles. In slightly smaller jars were blueberry and strawberry preserves. A picture of a bull moose was taped to the wall behind the counter. A circular glass case displayed homemade cakes and pies. At the checkout counter, next to the cash register, was a bowl filled with those awful chalky white mints. Maggie shuddered, remembering how she once had stuffed a bunch of them into her mouth, thinking they would taste good. Candy was supposed to taste good, right? She hadn't meant to, but she'd spit out the half-crunched mints, horrified. Delphine had thought it was hilarious.

The young waitress brought Maggie's lunch then and hurried off to take the order of a new customer a few seats down the counter. Maggie had found waitressing difficult as a college student. She didn't know how Delphine had handled the stress at thirteen or fourteen. She remembered that her mother hadn't let her hang out at the diner on Delphine's shifts because she thought Maggie would be a distraction. Maggie didn't think that Delphine had ever complained about having to work while Maggie was free to play, to read, to goof off. She had been the one to do the complaining: “It's not fair I have to be all alone.” Not fair. Maggie felt embarrassed by the memory of her selfish, immature adolescent self.

The man next to her at the counter ordered a whoopee pie and Maggie suddenly remembered the time someone had thrown a party at the diner. It might have been someone's birthday, but whatever the occasion, there had been a giant whoopee pie that Mrs. Crandall had sliced up like a cake. Maggie, Delphine, Jackie, and Joey had been the only kids there. A local band played old rock and roll and the adults danced like crazy. Delphine had even taken a sip of an abandoned beer.
But wait,
Maggie thought now.
Maybe Jackie was the culprit.
She couldn't remember now. Had it been a dare? Maybe. Maybe she had made up the whole story, her brain creating an event that was likely to have happened whether it did actually happen or not.

“I hope you enjoyed your lunch.”

Maggie looked around to see Delphine's father, standing at her elbow. “Oh, I did, Mr. Crandall,” she said. “It was excellent. But I really should be going, let someone else have this seat. I'll just get my check.”

“No, no,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his gnarled hand, “no charge for an old friend of Delphine's.”

“Oh, but please, Mr. Crandall, Iâ”

“Now, we'll hear no more. You come by again anytime.”

Charlie Crandall walked off to speak with a customer at one of the Formica-topped tables. Maggie felt bad. She didn't believe that the Crandalls could afford to be giving away business. It wouldn't do. She pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet and gave it to the young waitress when she came by to clear the plates. It was a tip entirely out of proportion to Maggie's bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and glass of iced tea. She tried to catch Delphine's eye, but Delphine was still down at the far end of the counter, busy cleaning away the remains of another customer's lunch. At the door, Maggie turned, but Delphine was no longer in sight, probably back in the kitchen. With a shrug, Maggie headed out into the parking lot. Overall, she was glad she had come.

1981

The first thing Maggie saw when she crawled out of bed that morning was a thick, neat stack of paper on the edge of her desk. It hadn't been there the night before. She stumbled over to the desk and saw next to the neat, paper-clipped stack her messy pile of handwritten pages.

“Hey.”

She turned to see Delphine coming into their dorm room. Her hair was wet from a shower and she was wearing her fuzzy blue robe and a pair of men's brown slippers. Maggie had pleaded with her to get a prettier pair, like, a pair for girls, but Delphine insisted these were the most comfortable slippers she'd ever had. And they had cost next to nothing.

“You typed the whole thing for me?” Maggie asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

“Yeah. It was no big deal.”

Maggie pointed at the desk. “Delphine, this is a forty-page paper! It's a huge deal! And you did this all after I went to bed last night?”

“Yeah,” Delphine said with a shrug. “I'm fast.”

“Wait a minute. If you were typing all night why didn't I wake up?”

“I took the typewriter into the hallway, down at the end by the bathrooms.”

“You sat on the floor and typed a forty-page paper? For me?”

“Well, didn't you say you were going to have to turn it in late because you didn't have time to type it, and that you'd have to take a penalty on the grade? I just figured I'd help out.”

“You're amazing,” Maggie said. “I don't know how to thank you.”

Delphine hung her towel on its hook behind the door. “Forget it. Remember back when we were like eleven or twelve and I broke a window on the garage behind your house and you took the blame for me?”

“I guess,” Maggie said. “Sort of. Maybe I'll remember after coffee.”

“Well, consider this payback.”

“You really are the best friend a girl could ever have.”

Delphine sighed ostentatiously. “I know. It's a gift; what can I say?”

“Seriously,” Maggie said, “now I owe you.”

“Let's not keep track. Everything evens out in the end with friends. I shouldn't have called this payback.”

“Well, thank you, again. I mean it.”

Maggie reached out and the girls hugged.

“Just promise me one thing,” Delphine said when they parted.

“Anything,” Maggie said. “Pinky swear.”

“Don't be late for class!”