Summer's End (20 page)

It was wrong of Gwen not to have told them right away, of course it was…but Amy couldn't blame her. Joyce and Ian could be difficult. Amy would have put off talking to them too.

“If there's a reason, tell me what it is.” Joyce was not going to give up.

The other adults exchanged glances. They couldn't tell Joyce and Ian about Nick's friend right now. Nick had not wanted Maggie and Ellie to know.

Joyce saw the glances. She knew that something was being communicated. She felt left out. And she couldn't stand being left out. It had been going on since the day she had married Ian. She had wanted to be as important to Eleanor as Phoebe was. She was constantly on guard, ready to be offended.

“And we
really
want to go,” added little Emily.

Nick suddenly spoke. “Maybe they should go.”

The little kids all dashed to him. Here was someone on their side. “Can we go? Can we go?” they clamored.

“It's fine with me,” Nick said. “The more, the merrier.”

Amy saw Jack tug the ends of his hair. Being merry was the exact opposite of what he had planned.

Ian's kids whooped with joy. They went dancing around the fire, thrilled at the idea of going.

“Can we go, Mom?” Alex was now leaning on Phoebe's knees, pushing his face into hers. “Please please please please
please
.”

“We'll see,” Phoebe said.

“No, Mom, don't say that, please don't say that. Just say yes. You can say yes.”

“Not until Dad and I talk about it.”

This seemed typical. Ian and Joyce's kids were taking it for granted that they would be able to go. Phoebe's knew that they needed permission.

“But if Scott gets to go, then I—”

“Alex.” Giles's voice was firm. And Alex shut up.

“All right.” Gwen spoke decisively. “Everyone who plans on going must tell Holly by eight a.m. tomorrow morning.” Ian's kids immediately started to squeal again. Gwen held up her hand. “But I don't think any of the younger kids can go unless one of their parents goes.”

“Oh,” Joyce said. She hadn't wanted to be
ex
cluded, but it wasn't clear that she really had wanted to be
in
cluded either. “Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” Gwen said.

Amy waited for someone to protest Gwen making so many of the decisions, but no one did. Wasn't this what they were all used to? Her mother had always had the final say. This might be the first time people were com
pletely comfortable with Gwen…because she was finally doing something Eleanor's way.

 

An hour later it was bedtime. Giles was burning the sugary gunk off the end of the marshmallow sticks; Holly and Phoebe were picking up the paper cups, gathering up the popcorn supplies. Amy tossed her cup into the embers of the fire. The wax sizzled; the remaining drops of lemonade popped.

“If I'm going on this thing with a hundred people, then you're going too.”

It was Jack. He was at her elbow, speaking softly.

“But I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” he interrupted, “and that's what I thought at first too, but Mom's not going, and Holly isn't either, so you have to come and protect me.”

“Protect you from what?” Amy had to smile. “I thought
I
was the big danger in your life.”

“Maybe you were awhile ago, but don't flatter yourself. You aren't half as threatening as all these plans and this organization. That's what I need protection from.”

Amy laughed. If he had been anyone else, she would have touched him, put her hand on his shoulder. “I think you'll need someone a lot bigger and stronger than me to protect you from that.”

 

Gwen looked across the campfire. Just apart from everyone, underneath the shadows of the trees, Amy and Jack were talking. Her head was tilted back, and he was looking down at her. It was too dark to see their faces, but she could tell that they were laughing.

Last night, as she and Hal had lain in bed waiting for the rain, they had made love for the first time since the others had arrived. And afterward, perhaps because their children were here, reminding them of their late spouses, they had talked about the private parts of their first marriages.

Her story was simple. She had had only theoretical information when she married John, and he had known little more, but over the years they had both learned, and they achieved pleasure simply, straightforwardly, even efficiently—sometimes too efficiently perhaps, but that was one of the realities of marriage.

Hal's marriage had been different. When he had met Eleanor, she had been, in sexual terms, casual and experienced. “I was a Midwestern farm kid,” he said. “I was dazzled.”

Sex was great fun to Eleanor. But that was all. It wasn't sacred or romantic; it was fun. Her mores were aristocratic. “It never occurred to her that once the children were born, we would continue to be faithful to each other.”

“And so she wasn't?” Gwen tried to keep the shock out of her voice.

“No, she was, but only because she realized how important it was to me. Still, I think it always puzzled her.”

Then Amy had been born. “She wasn't planned, she was a mistake,” Hal continued, “and after that Eleanor started to feel that the game wasn't worth the candle. It was as if she had fallen once too often while fox hunting. Once upon a time this was fun, but it's not worth the risk anymore.”

They had continued to have relations, but their encounters were occasional and flat. “Sometimes I look at Amy—she's so very lovely—and even though I know that
this is foolish, it seems as if her beauty is the result of, the compensation for—I don't know what—the end of her parents' sex life.”

It wasn't like Hal to be so hesitant in his expression, but he probably had never spoken of this before, not even to Eleanor.

“And yet,” he continued, “her performances are fairly sexless. I don't think I'm saying this because I'm her father. She can be warm, funny, sad, elegant, but she's never sexy.”

Gwen agreed with him. When she was getting to know him last winter, she had scrounged the corners of her local video store and found tapes of various figure-skating performances. She had managed to see a number of Amy's important numbers, and at least on video there was no sexual fire in her performance.

The other night she had asked Amy about her life, and Amy had unconsciously revealed the extent to which she was surrounded by gay men. That was no great surprise considering her profession, and artistically, financially, these men served her well, giving her excellent advice and solid support.

But surely their role in her life was more solid if she remained unattached. Was she a Sleeping Beauty and they the palace guard, slaughtering all intruders who might come armed with different sexual weapons?

Gwen looked again at her son and this exquisite young woman. They were obviously about to say good night. Jack had his hands in his pockets, just as he'd had when he had been talking to her at the end of the driveway the other day. He almost never stood with his hands in his pockets. Perhaps it was the only way he could keep from touching Amy. And her body was leaning toward his; her
hands were clasped under her chin, as if she were keeping them from reaching out to him; her shoulders were arched forward, as if drawn to him.

Amy didn't have Rapunzel's long hair. She needed Jack to crash through the thick brambles that had grown up around the palace walls; she needed him to draw his sword before the armed guards; she needed to be rescued, awakened.

And Jack needed to be needed. In so many ways the two of them were so well suited to each other…but not like this, not here, not now.

Ellie offered to put Alex and Claire to bed. “I know that you and Dad need to talk about the canoe trip.”

Phoebe thanked her. “But it's just Alex and Claire we have to talk about. If you want to go, you certainly can.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” Ellie scooped up her brother and sister and danced off to the bunkhouse.

Giles waited until the kids were out of earshot. “Ellie's getting a crush on Nick, isn't she?”

Phoebe nodded. At home thirteen-year-old Ellie and her friends socialized with boys only in groups. If she had particular feelings for any one boy, Phoebe suspected, they were directed toward the son of one of the physics professors, an intellectually gifted kid who was shy enough that he might never date until college. Nick's confident independence had clearly driven every other thought from Ellie's mind. Flushed and breathless, she watched him whenever he wasn't looking at her and nervously shifted her gaze away whenever he was.

Giles grimaced. “Actually, he's not a bad kid, but he's probably very unhappy. And she's going to have a lot of competition from Maggie.”

“That's for sure.” For Maggie's fifteenth birthday,
Joyce had taken her to the gynecologist for birth-control pills. “I want her to be able to make an informed decision about physical pleasures,” Joyce had said.

Phoebe thought that was crazy. Joyce wasn't helping Maggie make an informed decision; she was encouraging her to make an impulsive one.

Phoebe rose from her place at the campfire and went around the circle to get Thomas from Gwen. Already half asleep, he was heavy and limp. Giles opened the door to the new cabin, and they went into their bedroom. Joyce and Ian were still outside. They could talk.

“So what about Alex and Claire?” Phoebe asked. She laid Thomas on the bed and began taking off his overalls. They were dirty; the knees were out-and-out filthy. “They're dying to go too.”

“And we'd be monsters if we didn't let them. The only question is which one of us goes with them and which one of us stays home with this little munchkin.” Giles tickled Thomas's chin. He usually liked that, but tonight he was too sleepy. He lifted his chubby little fist as if to bat his father's hand away, but even that was too much effort.

Phoebe looked up at Giles. Why was that a question? Yes, half of each day would be spent sitting in a canoe, but there would be portages across uneven, rocky paths; the campsites were often up steep banks. That sort of thing was difficult for him.

He went on. “I know you must have assumed that I would stay home—and of course I will if you want to go.”

“But you want to go too.” This did surprise her.

“Whatever Jack and Nick might have been planning originally, they're going to have to take an easy trip now that the kids are going. And yes, I do want to go.”

Giles rarely spoke up like this. He certainly could have strong opinions, and sometimes he did impose them on everyone else, but he only ever thought about what was right for a whole group: he never worried about what he wanted for himself. Phoebe knew that because there had been so much he couldn't do as a kid, he had learned not to have a lot of preferences so that he wouldn't be disappointed.

“I know it isn't fair of me,” he went on, “because the minute I say I want to go, it's a done deal in your mind, you would never dream of going yourself, but that just shows you how much I do want to.”

He was right. If he wanted to go, there was no question whatsoever that he would go and she would stay home with Thomas.

She put Thomas in his crib. “Do you want to get away from the lake?” she asked.

They never talked about this, about the fact that Giles didn't love the lake as much as she did.

“That's part of it,” he admitted. “We haven't had an easy time of it this year, but I also just want to go.” His voice lightened. “I think I have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.”

“Oh?” Phoebe looked over her shoulder with a smile. He was already the most grown-up person on the face of the earth.

“Yes, I want to be Jack.”

“What?” Phoebe stared at him. Thomas's clothes fell to the floor. “You want to be what?”

“You heard me. And it's a who, not a what…at least I think it is. I want to be Jack. He's so good at all this guy stuff—the tools, the outdoors. I want to be like that.”

“Giles!” Phoebe had to laugh. “You want to be
Jack?
”
She liked Jack, she did, and yes, he did have both large-motor and fine-motor skills, and his problem-solving skills were superb, but…

“Yes. I want to be him, but in my own life. I want to keep my family and my house and my job, but just be him.”

Phoebe started to undress. “I don't suppose I need to point out that Jack doesn't have a family, a house, or seemingly even a job, and that's probably no accident. Can you imagine him doing your job?”

“Absolutely. He would keep a chain saw behind his desk, and the minute anyone started being a pain in the butt, he'd fire the thing up and start slicing the furniture. People would learn to behave.”

“If Jack had your job, he would probably use the chain saw on himself.”

“I have been known to lock up all sharp objects.”

Phoebe did love this man. She knew how their marriage must look to outsiders—oldest daughter marries crippled man so she can go on having someone to take care of. But Giles was, in so many ways, the least needy person she had ever met. She came around to his side of the bed, sat next to him, slipped her arm through his, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I'm really glad you want to go.”

The first summer he had come up here had been difficult. There had been so little for him to do. Then the next summer he had asked if he could restore the old wood boat that had belonged to the previous owners of the log cabin. Restoring it had taken him years, and ever since the boat was his; it was the one thing up here he really cared about.

And now he wanted to go on the canoe trip. She was glad.

Staying here wouldn't be so bad. Gwen, Dad, and Holly had already said that they weren't going, and Amy probably wouldn't either. So she wouldn't be alone. It might be odd to be here with so few people, it wouldn't seem like the lake, but she wouldn't think about it.

 

Jack stayed to put out the fire while the rest of the family settled down for the night. The screen doors banged, people called to one another, and through the trees he could see the flashlights bobbing down the paths to biffies. In the moonlight he could see Amy in the large cleared patch through which the clothesline ran. The kids always flung their towels over the line in wrinkled wads that would never dry. So each night Amy checked the line, folding the dry towels and rehanging the ones that were still damp. Apparently she liked doing laundry. That seemed strange to him, but he liked watching her, a shadowy figure moving through the moonlight.

He had certainly made a mess of that conversation with her. Why had he tried to be subtle? He was the least subtle person on the planet. He should have just come out and said what he had to say. That was the only thing that worked for him.

If you were any other person and I had met you at any other time, I would have come calling at your door, but you're Hal's daughter and I'm Gwen's son, so I'm not going to
.

He sprinkled another juice can of water on the fire. He was putting it out correctly, using perfect Boy Scout procedure. Normally he just threw a couple of buckets of water on a fire and let the big logs soak, but tonight he didn't have anything else to do, so he was doing it right, drizzling the water a little at a time. If you used too much
water, it was hard to build a fire on the site the next morning.

Some footsteps rustled in the pine needles behind him. He looked up. It was Holly. She had an armful of neatly folded towels; Amy must have given them to her.

“You doing okay?” he asked. He hadn't seen a lot of her.

“I am…although I would have died without the sauna. I don't think I could have stood skinny-dipping in the lake every morning.”

“Is the lack of privacy getting to you?” he asked. She was used to being alone in the mornings and evenings, and she had grown to like it.

“Surprisingly not. The times when I would have been alone at home, I'm with Amy, and I love being with her.”

“She's good company,” Jack said and dipped the juice can back into the water bucket. He was glad that the lake was working out for his sister.

“I saw you talking to Amy after the campfire.”

The juice can suddenly sank to the bottom of the bucket. He must have let go of it. That was stupid. Now he would have to roll up his sleeve and fish it out.

He unbuttoned his cuff. “I wanted to be sure that she felt welcome on this canoe trip.” The water in the bucket was cold. “Sometimes it seems like her family doesn't think about including her in things.”

“You like her, don't you?”

“Sure. I just said she was good company, didn't I?”

He shouldn't have sounded so defensive. He had probably given himself away completely. Oh, God, what would she say?

When they were kids, Holly sometimes turned herself into Junior Mom and lectured him with a persistence that
their mother never had. He supposed that she would launch into something like that now.
The fragility of a blended family, Jack…Phoebe and Ian aren't happy with so many changes, Jack…so much other stress, Jack…

He was not in the mood to hear any of it. Not at all. He stood, picked up the bucket with a jerk, and dumped the water on the coals. The embers hissed, and grimy puddles formed among the gray ashes, exactly the kind of puddles the Boy Scouts didn't like.

Well, forget the Boy Scouts. They might have taught him to use a compass and lash a table, but none of those merit badges were doing a thing to help him through this.

Holly spoke. “As much as I like it here, I'm starting to get concerned about things at work. I think I probably ought to go home to New York when you get back from this canoe trip.”

Jack blinked. Where had that come from? Not that it was a complete surprise; she had made it clear from the beginning that if she really hated the place, she would leave. But she didn't seem to hate it. “Mom would be really disappointed.”

“She would understand.”

He picked up a stick and turned one of the logs over. He really shouldn't have thrown so much water. “Is there anything I can do to make you stay?”

“Short of running phone lines, probably not…but I haven't made up my mind. I'll see how things are at the office when I go into town tomorrow.”

This was not about the office. Jack knew that. She hadn't spoken to anyone there in a couple of days. And it probably wasn't about having to pump dish water or not being able to blow-dry her hair.

Was it about him and Amy?

Holly wasn't an idiot, and she was sleeping in the same cabin with Amy and him. If anyone had a sense of how he felt about Amy, it would be her. Her notions probably wouldn't be far enough advanced for her to lecture him in the way he had imagined her doing. She probably just felt a vague unease, one she might not fully understand.

But it was enough to make her think about leaving the lake.

Amy was her pal, her summer camp buddy, the person she spent most of her time with. They got up together, went on walks together, planned their day together. What if he suddenly started romancing Amy? Holly would want to give them privacy; she would linger outside the cabin every evening, get up early every morning. She would hold back, never wanting to make plans with Amy until she was sure that Amy had had a chance to make plans with him. She would feel as awkward, as out of place, as the third party in any courtship…and she would leave the lake.

This really stank. He had been all worried about Phoebe and Ian, thinking that they couldn't handle any more family complications, but it turned out that Holly, his side of the family, couldn't either.

If there had been any doubt in his mind about keeping Amy at arm's length, now there was none. He didn't want Holly to leave the lake. He wanted her to like it here. He wanted her to want to come back. He wanted this to be where Mom, she, and he saw each other.

Because he was starting to love the place.

 

At breakfast everyone was full of talk about the canoe trip. Quickly, firmly, Phoebe announced that she wasn't going.

“Gwen and I discussed that last night,” her father said. “She suggested that Thomas stay here with the two of us. We will take care of him so that both you and Giles can go.”

Thomas stay here? That had never occurred to Phoebe, the little one staying home with the grandparents. A lot of families did make arrangements like that.

But hers hadn't.

It wasn't that Mother hadn't loved the children, that she wasn't a wonderful grandmother, but she wasn't a playful person by nature. And any lapses in her grandparenting weren't her fault. They were Joyce's.

Maggie had been less than a year old when Ian married Joyce after the briefest of courtships. They had come back to Iowa when Phoebe herself was pregnant with Ellie.

Maggie had been a difficult, colicky baby, and even after she had grown out of the colic, she was sensitive and irritable. “She doesn't like being so helpless,” Joyce had said—which had seemed absurd to Phoebe. How would a baby know whether she was helpless or not?

Joyce had allowed no one to do anything for Maggie. Phoebe supposed that such protectiveness and jealousy was natural of a single parent, but her message—
I don't want your help, I can do this
—had set a pattern for Hal and Eleanor. They had not wanted to interfere; they had not wanted to offend by doing too much.

At least that's what Phoebe had always told herself.

But this summer had been different. Thomas had become Gwen's special pet. The two of them had devel
oped their own little routines. They had a plastic bucket which they—to no purpose whatsoever—filled with pine cones every morning. They had a special stick with which they made elaborate designs in the sandy road. They dusted the cabin together. They sorted the clean silverware together. He was her little shadow.