Summer Friends (26 page)

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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Summer Friends
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49
It was an unusual gathering for a Saturday morning. With the exception of Charlie, who was at the diner, the other adult Crandalls were gathered at the family home. Even Jackie was there; Dave Jr. had gone up to the Portland market without her. Kitty was on the last play date she might have for some time. The mother of the little boy who lived next door had been instructed to let the children watch a movie on DVD. No running around, nothing risky. Infection and easy bleeding were now things to be seriously avoided.
Patrice was in the kitchen. The others were seated or standing around the living room. Delphine was pacing.
“Look,” Jackie was saying. “The doctors told Joey and Cybel that Kitty's current white blood cell count is not half as bad as it could be. That's a good sign. And the leukemia hasn't spread to her brain or to her spinal cord. That's another good sign. We have to stay positive.”
“That's easy to say,” Delphine muttered, “not so much to do.”
Dave Sr. cleared his throat. “I read that the current survival rate for kids with ALL is now about eighty percent.”
“That's twenty percent less than perfect.” Delphine turned to her sister-in-law. “What exactly have you told her?”
“She knows she's sick,” Cybel said. “She knows she has something called ALL. She doesn't need to know the details. Not yet, anyway, not until we know more.”
“Has she asked?” Delphine demanded.
“Well, yes, sort of, but—”
“Have you told her she could die from this?”
“Delphine!”
She ignored her sister. “Does she know she has cancer?” she persisted. “What do a bunch of initials mean? Nothing.”
“Technically,” Jackie said, “it means ‘acute lymphoblastic leukemia.' ”
“That means even less than initials to a child, a bunch of big words.”
Joey sighed. “Delphine, what's your point? Why are you fighting us?”
“Does she know she might get sicker before she gets better?”
“We'll tell her everything the doctor and the social worker advise us to tell her.” Cybel got up from the easy chair in which she had been sitting and reached out a hand. Delphine ignored it. “I know you're upset, Delphine. We all are. This feels like a nightmare. We're just going to have to trust the experts to tell us what's going on.”
“And pray.” That was Patrice. She had come in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “There's a fresh pot of coffee. I suggest everyone have some and try to calm down.”
“That would be directed at me.”
Patrice nodded firmly. “Yes, Delphine, it would.”
The family regrouped in the kitchen. Delphine poured a cup of coffee, took a sip, and put it down. She could barely keep down water, not since learning that her Kitty was sick.
“I just wish we knew what caused this,” Joey said. “I wish we knew if this is somehow our fault.”
Jackie gave her brother's arm a squeeze. “Of course it's not your fault. Don't be ridiculous.”
“The doctor told us no one really knows for sure all the risk factors. But still . . . I'm her father. I want to know if there's anything I could have done to protect her from this.”
“Some people think that this can happen because the mother was over thirty-five when she gave birth.” Cybel wiped at her eyes with a napkin. When she spoke again her voice was wobbly. “This could be my fault. Kitty was such a surprise. . . .”
“Listen, all of you.” Patrice's voice was commanding. “There's no point now in playing a guessing game or pointing fingers. Or,” she said, looking pointedly at Delphine again, “in fighting amongst ourselves. What we do now is stick together and do what we have to do to make Kitty better.”
Jackie turned to her brother. “When does Kitty start chemo?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Joey said. “It's a fast-growing cancer, so the doctor said she'll need to start treatment immediately. This will be the first phase only. It'll be pretty intense. The doctor says it'll go on for about a month.”
“All right then,” Patrice said. “Let's sit down and work out a schedule for relieving Joey and Cybel while they're at work. Dave Senior, get me that pad of paper on the counter, will you?”
Suddenly, overcome with exhaustion, Delphine sank into a chair at the table. She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was her sister's.
50
The morning sun was strong as Maggie pulled into the yard of Crandall Farm on Sunday. She got out of the car and knocked on the open door of Delphine's office.
Delphine looked up from her computer and then back at the screen.
“I'm pretty busy right now,” she said.
“You're always busy,” Maggie countered, not for the first time that summer. She had noted the dark circles under Delphine's eyes and her wan complexion. “That's no excuse. I've been so worried since I last talked to you. How is Kitty feeling? Tell me what's going on. How are you holding up?”
Delphine continued to focus on the computer screen. “There's no need to worry,” she said. “Everything is under control.”
“That's impossible,” Maggie said. “Nothing can be under control. You've just gotten some rotten news about someone you love.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Why won't you talk to me?”
Delphine sighed and finally looked back at Maggie. “What's there to talk about? Kitty is sick and we're dealing with it. There's no point in going on about it.”
“I'm not ‘going on' about it,” Maggie argued. “I just want to talk about this, with you. And I think you need to talk to me.”
Delphine didn't reply.
“You can't avoid me,” Maggie said, her voice rising with frustration. “You have to talk to me. I'm your friend, Delphine, your best friend.”
Delphine continued to say nothing.
I never said that I was your best friend,
she thought,
not in a very long time. I don't have a best friend, not anymore. I don't need one.
“I have money, Delphine,” Maggie went on. “If your brother and his wife need it, it's theirs. I want to help.”
“You assume we need help,” she said now.
“Yes. I'm sorry if I'm assuming incorrectly, but I don't think that I am. So please, I can write a check right now. I did some research online. . . . She has leukemia, is that right? That's what Nancy told me. Treatment could go on for some time, for years even. It's going to cost and keep on costing. Now, I don't know the details of Joey and Cybel's health insurance, assuming they have any, but—”
“No.” Delphine rose from her chair. “The Crandalls don't take charity.”
“Charity!” Maggie laughed in disbelief. “This isn't charity!”
“Then what would you call it?”
“One friend helping another.”
Delphine crossed her arms across her chest. It was not a usual gesture. “No. Thank you, Maggie, but it's impossible.”
“I don't understand,” Maggie said, with another small, frustrated laugh. “Is it because I offered to help with money? I can explain that. I'll be leaving before long. I don't live here. I can't be making casseroles for the parents. I can't be around to take turns sitting with Kitty or driving her to and from the hospital. Money is what I can offer, and if it's not as good as being a good neighbor I'm sorry; I am.”
“Money,” Delphine said tightly, “is only part of why I don't need your help.”
Maggie shook her head. “You think money is somehow evil or wrong, don't you?”
“It's not good,” Delphine replied, “not usually.”
“Delphine, money is amoral. It has no meaning in and of itself. None. It only has meaning through its use. If you take this money you can help relieve your family's suffering. Then, the money becomes good. You've made it good.”
“No, Maggie. That's my final word on the subject. We don't need or want your money.”
Maggie felt her anger rising. “But you'll take someone else's money? Is that what you're saying?”
“The subject is closed.”
“It's like all those years ago,” Maggie cried. “And it's like when Dave Junior got in trouble. You're shutting me out again when I'm trying to help you.”
Delphine felt a slight tingling in her head, her blood pressure rising. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said.
“Of course you know what I'm talking about,” Maggie said fiercely. “It's become a pattern with you. Something troublesome happens in your life and you run away from me. Maybe you run away from everybody, I don't know. But I don't care about everybody; I only care about me. Do you have any idea how I feel when you turn me away? All I'm trying to do is help. You're my friend. You owe me the right to offer my help. You owe me—”
“Nothing!” Delphine shouted, her arms dropping to her sides. And in a slightly quieter voice she said, “I owe you nothing.”
Maggie felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Tears flooded her eyes. She felt nauseous.
“I really have to get back to work,” Delphine said, turning toward her desk, her back to Maggie. “So why don't you just go.”
51
It was Sunday afternoon and Maggie was miserable. She had wandered aimlessly in town, then, annoyed by the press of vacationers, walked down to the beach, hoping to find a small, quiet spot where she could be alone. It was difficult, but she found a place about halfway down to Wells, up against the dunes. She sat directly on the sand, heedless of her expensive linen pants. The water was silvery in the sun. Seagulls cawed madly, circling above a scattering of beached clams.
She sighed heavily. To think she had been stupid enough to want to present Delphine with that aquamarine necklace on their trip to Boston. That necklace had become a tainted reminder of past joy, a macabre relic of a once-revered living thing. What had she been thinking, that she would give Delphine the necklace as a prize for good behavior, as a reward for being her best friend again? She supposed that if she really cared about Delphine and not more about her own need for the friendship she should give her the necklace anyway, for old times' sake, for the sake of selflessness. And then, she should walk away for good.
A shout of laughter brought Maggie's attention to the moment. A group of about six young people were setting up chairs and laying out blankets a few yards to her right.
So much for peace and quiet,
she thought. She got up, brushed off her pants, and walked back to Main Street, intending to go directly back to the hotel, by trolley if one came by.
As she reached the corner of Beach and Main Streets, she saw Jemima Larkin parking her car outside the Village Food Market. She didn't like Jemima and she strongly suspected that Jemima didn't like her, but she was feeling close to desperate. She had to make some connection with Delphine, no matter how tenuous.
“Jemima,” she called when the woman had gotten out of her car. “Wait.”
Jemima looked up to see Maggie hurrying toward her. “Yes?” she said when Maggie was a few feet away.
Maggie attempted a smile but couldn't muster one. “I want to ask you something,” she said. “I want to know if you can explain to me why Delphine won't accept my help for her family.”
Jemima smiled blandly. “Why don't you ask her that?”
“I have asked her. Of course I have. But she won't give me an answer.” That was a bit of a lie. Delphine had given Maggie a firm and strongly worded answer. But it wasn't an answer she wanted to accept.
Jemima folded her arms across her ample chest. “You need to understand something,” she said. “You're not one of us. You don't belong here. It means nothing that your parents rented a house here thirty years ago or however long ago it was. That doesn't make you belong.”
Maggie laughed. She felt helpless. “That's crazy,” she said.
“That's the way it is.”
Jemima's smug smile was maddening. “You weren't born here,” Maggie said, ashamed at engaging this horrid person in an argument but unable to keep silent. “Delphine told me so.”
“I married a native,” Jemima spit. “And this is not about me.”
Maggie shook her head. “Why do you dislike me so much?”
“I have no opinion about you either way,” Jemima lied. “But I do know that you're not good for Delphine.”
“That's even crazier! I've known Delphine for almost all of my life!”
“You used to know her. But whoever it was you once knew is gone. Long gone.”
Maggie felt Jemima's words like a slap. She suspected that this awful woman might be right. Maybe she had been supremely foolish, seeing what she wanted to see, imagining a Delphine who didn't really exist.
“Delphine is not a child,” she said finally, her voice shaky. “I think she can decide for herself who's good and who's bad for her.”
Jemima worked to hold back another smug smile of triumph. “I think,” she said, “that she already has.” She turned and walked off in the direction of the bakery.
 
After leaving Jemima, Maggie found herself on Shore Road. She had been driving aimlessly for over an hour, largely unaffected by the beautiful old homes with their gardens lush with flowers, by the vistas of the silver blue Atlantic, by the marshes with their dense clumps of wild grasses. She didn't want to go back to her hotel. She didn't want to walk through town. She felt, alone in her beautiful car, like more of a stranger to Ogunquit than ever. This place, with all its contradictions and quirks, with its fiercely independent locals and its wealth of natural splendor, was not hers. Maggie Weldon Wilkes was an interloper.
Jemima Larkin had said as much earlier that day. Her words continued to taunt Maggie as she wandered. “You don't belong here.” “You're not good for Delphine.” Maybe she was right, Delphine's ornery neighbor. At that moment Maggie felt that everybody was right, everybody but her. At that moment Maggie felt that everybody belonged somewhere specific and special, everybody but her. She was brimming with self-pity. She was bitter with self-recrimination.
She passed a big old pile of a house that Delphine had pointed out to her the week before. It had been in the same family for generations, Delphine had told her, as had the Crandalls' farmhouse. Vaguely she noted the elaborate nineteenth-century carriage mounted in the front yard. Last week she had exclaimed over its pristine quality. Now, it seemed just useless and forlorn. She turned on the radio and almost immediately turned it off again. She wasn't in the mood for music or for the learned opinions of pundits. She felt fidgety, and then lethargic, and in the next moment fidgety again.
Her mind returned to the awful encounter with Jemima. The most hurtful thing Jemima had said to her—also perhaps the most truthful—was that the person Maggie had once known was no longer. That the Delphine Maggie had remembered or imagined was a phantom, a chimera, a myth. Whatever she was, she wasn't real. Maggie had been laboring under a delusion. How had she come to this point in her life, a point where her need for companionship was so great she had created a fantasy and then proceeded to believe in it as real?
Stick to financial futures, Maggie,
she told herself sternly,
and leave the world of interpersonal relationships to people more qualified to make and keep friendships.
A tour bus passing way too fast in the opposite lane startled Maggie back to the moment and she became aware that she was now coming up on a lovely sprawling hotel, more of a resort really. “The Shoreman,” a sign proclaimed. The name sounded vaguely familiar, and then she remembered it was where the man she'd met at the Old Village Inn said he was staying. Funny, that she should be passing it just now, when she was feeling so low and almost despairing, when only weeks ago really Dan—yes, that was his name—with his chat and offer of a drink had made her feel so good, so . . . noticed.
Maggie turned abruptly into the long driveway of the hotel, causing the driver in the car behind her to lean on his horn. She winced. She'd given no notice of her intention to turn off the road and should have waved an apology but didn't, and drove on toward an empty parking space. When she turned off the engine she sat there, her hands still on the wheel, as if stunned.
What am I doing here?
she asked herself, while at the same time justifying her last-minute decision—if it could even be called a decision—to . . . To what? She reached for the key, which was still in the ignition, intending to start the car and drive off again, but instead she removed the key, on its Tiffany silver key chain, and dropped it into her bag.
I'll just peek in at the bar,
she told herself, stepping out of the car, adjusting her sunglasses, smoothing her slacks.
I'll just peek in—Dan said it was a nice place—and maybe if he's there I'll say hello and have one drink and then I'll go back to my hotel. And if he's not there, I certainly won't stay. Either way,
Maggie thought as the automatic doors slid open to admit her to the lobby,
I'll be in my bed before long and this horrible day will be over.
A hotel employee in a navy and white uniform pointed her in the direction of the bar. Maggie thanked her with a smile. She peered into the room—dark, but not overly so, decorated with the requisite amount of nautical accoutrements, including a large anchor hung on the back wall—and saw that aside from the bartender and an older couple at a small table in a corner there was no one there.
I'll just leave now,
she thought. And she walked into the room and over to the bar, where she slid onto a bar stool upholstered in red leather.
The bartender, a tall man in his twenties with a shaved head, placed a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of her. “What'll it be?” he asked pleasantly.
“A martini,” Maggie said. “Gin.”
 
“I'm sorry. I can't do this.” Maggie rose quickly from the couch and began to button her blouse.
The handsome man from the Old Village Inn, Dan, lay back on the couch, his own shirt untucked and partially unbuttoned. They were in his room at the Shoreman. It was close to midnight. “Hey, come on,” he said. “I thought we were having a good time.”
Maggie ran her hand through her hair and scanned the room for her bag. “No. I mean . . . I just have to go.”
Dan—she hadn't asked for his last name—laughed in disbelief. “So you're just a tease, is that it? I spend the whole evening buying you drinks for this? Nice.”
“No.” Maggie grabbed her bag from the top of the dresser and turned toward the door. “I'll give you money. You don't understand.”
“I don't want your money. What I want is—”
“I'm sorry!”
“You know,” Dan called out as she tore open the door, “you're too old to be playing games.”
Maggie ran down the hall, through the lobby, and out through the hotel's automatic doors. She got into her car—she was vaguely aware that she shouldn't be driving after all she'd had to drink—and fumblingly inserted the key in the ignition. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she drove off in the direction of her hotel. She felt self-loathing and fear and panic. She half wished she would be pulled over by a policeman, that her career would be destroyed, her life ruined. “God,” she muttered as she drove, her hands gripping the steering wheel, “what has become of me?”

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