Summer's End (26 page)

“They would have?” Ellie looked hopeful for a moment, but only a moment. “That doesn't change anything now.”

“That's true,” Amy had to agree. “But her being gorgeous and smart does not change the fact that Nick could have bled to death if you hadn't acted so quickly.”

“I just blew the whistle.”

“You had a whistle; you knew the distress signal.” Amy herself had not known what the three blasts meant. Phoebe had explained it to her when they were in the canoe searching for the source of the sound.

Ellie shrugged. “That's Girl Scouts; they're always teaching us stuff like that.”

“But you applied it.”

This is me. I am being myself
.

When new girls joined the big spring tour, some of them were painfully young, fifteen, sixteen, and while they could skate exquisitely, they had no idea how to be a professional, how to get along with the others, how to remain focused. Increasingly each year Amy found herself reaching out to any who would listen to her, dropping a hint here, a suggestion there, reassuring some, questioning others.

She went on. “I'm sure I'm scheduled to visit a hospital or a health-care facility sometime this fall.” She had no idea if that was true, but as soon as she got back to Denver, she would make it so. “Would you like to come?”

“Me?” Ellie asked. “Why me?”

“If it's a group of other adolescents, you could talk about how something as little as carrying a whistle and not panicking can save someone's life.”
Or you could just come and see what I do
.

“I'd love to,” Ellie said. “If Mom and Dad will let me miss school.”

“I'm sure they will.” Giles, at least, would say yes.

Suddenly a whoop broke from the cluster of decision makers, and the two little boys were tearing down to the waterfront, shrieking.

“I get to go first,” one shouted.

“No, me, me, me,
me
,” the other one shrieked.

“What do you think that's all about?” Amy asked Ellie.

“It sounds like someone told them they could take turns in the bow,” Ellie answered, “but it makes no sense. They're too small, they aren't strong enough. I can't imagine whose idea it was.”

Amy could. The two little boys had been in the middle of Jack's canoe. “I'm willing to bet that Jack got fed up with all the discussion and just said he'd go with Alex and Scott.”

“Would he really do something that stupid?” Ellie asked.

“Yes.”

Jack broke free from the others and came over to the two of them. His expression was rueful, and he was shaking his head as if he knew that he had made a mistake. “I figure that two eight-year-olds makes one sixteen-year-old, and we won't miss Nick and his wrestling muscles one bit.”

Ellie giggled. “But they're only seven.”

“Seven, eight…what's the difference?” Jack waved his hand. “We're all men.”

“Why don't you take the smaller canoe?” Ellie offered. “Aunt Amy and I will do fine in the bigger one.”

“Oh, no. We need no concessions made for us. We are men. We will do great.”

They didn't. Jack's stroke was so much stronger than the boys' that it was nearly impossible for him to steer the canoe. They trailed way behind the others.

At the first portage the rest of the group had to wait nearly ten minutes for the “all-men” canoe. Ian was, Amy noticed, very subdued. He must have known that this would not be happening if Joyce or Maggie had been more accommodating.

When they at last arrived, Jack came straight up to Ellie.

“You're clearly the only person around here with any sense. Thank you, and yes, we accept your offer of the smaller canoe, and I don't care if you and Aunt Amy are miserable because this is all your dad's fault.”

“Dad's fault?” Ellie was giggling again. “How do you figure that?”

“Yes,” Giles put in, “how
do
you figure that?”

“Because you just stood there”—Jack glanced over his shoulder to be sure that neither Ian's family nor the two boys could hear—“and let me make an idiot of myself and you didn't say one word to save me.”

“I guess it is my fault,” Giles agreed. “For that I will take one of your packs.”

“Deal.”

Amy and Ellie took a couple more packs, and with the smaller canoe and only one pack, Jack and his crew managed to keep up.

They reached Ely in the middle of the afternoon. Nick had left messages both with the outfitter and the hospital. They were not to call his mother and grandmother. He had gotten a judge to approve his treatment. He was all stitched up and had spent the night at the home of one of the nurses. Apparently Giles had given him a credit card if he needed to get a motel room, but Nick had managed to get himself a free billet.

“Don't thank me,” the nurse said. “He was a godsend. He played cards all afternoon with my kids. I took a nap. I haven't taken a nap since my husband walked out.”

“That does it,” Giles sighed. “Nick, you are now a danger to the entire human race. You have learned what grown women truly want—some sleep. This is knowledge
so powerful that a lad of your years ought not to have it. Use it wisely, my boy.”

“Yes, sir.” Nick grinned.

The nurse gave them all the necessary information about changing the dressings, when to have the stitches removed, and such. Nick was a very lucky young man, she reported. No tendons had been cut, no muscle damaged. He was sore but able to walk.

Maggie had not gotten out of the car.

 

Although Thomas had been quite happy during his parents' absence, the instant he saw their station wagon turn into the drive, he burst into tears and punished his mother by refusing to look at her for a full five minutes.

“You little pill,” Phoebe said to him. “I love you anyway.”

Amy hugged her father, Gwen, and Holly.

“How on earth can you be out in the wilderness for three days,” Holly demanded, “and still look so good?”

“Just wait—”
Just wait until we're alone and then I'll tell you everything
—that's what Amy intended to say.

She wanted to tell Holly what had happened with Jack. They had talked late into the night about their equally empty love lives, and Amy would love it this fall if she got a giddy, gushing phone call from Holly reporting that Holly had Found Someone. Amy would want to know everything about him, how Holly had met him, what he was like. She and Holly were friends; they were sisters.

But how could she tell Holly about Jack? It was supposed to be a secret from the family, and Holly was family.

Maybe this was going to be more complicated than she had thought it would be.

“I guess”—she revised her answer to Holly's question about her looks—“it was all the exercise.”

The little kids were all talking at once, telling Gwen, Hal, and Holly about the plane that had come to get Nick. Phoebe, Giles, and Ellie were clustered around the wailing Thomas. Maggie was leaning against the garage sulking.

At dinner Maggie took her plate and ate by herself on the front porch. Gwen pretended not to notice, but Amy knew that she did.

After dinner Maggie was scheduled to help with the dishes. She didn't.

When the kitchen was almost clean, Ian came to apologize for her. “She must have forgotten to look at the kaper chart. I'm sorry.” He was obviously sincere. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Gwen shook her head. “We're almost done.” Then she laid down her dish towel. “I hope you remember that Hal and I want to take care of your kids so you and Joyce can have a night in town as Phoebe and Giles did. Why don't you go tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” Ian sounded surprised.

“Why not? Everyone must have had their share of togetherness on the canoe trip. Scott and Emily will be fine here without you.”

“I know they will.” Ian paused. “That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. I'll go talk to Joyce.”

He left. When they heard the door bang shut, Holly spoke. “Do you think they will go?”

“I hope,” Gwen answered, “although the rest of us may be in for a rocky time. It will be interesting to see how Maggie handles herself when her mother isn't around to make things perfect for her.”

 

But Gwen's curiosity was not to be satisfied. The next morning they all discovered that Maggie was insisting on going into town with Ian and Joyce.

“But I thought the point was for each couple to have some time to themselves,” Jack said.

“Indeed.” It was clear that Gwen did not approve. “They let that child make all the decisions. That's why Scott and Emily are so demanding. They know they are second.”

It was easy to lump all four of the younger kids into one squirming little mass, occasionally dividing them by their sex, the two boys, the two girls, but there was, Amy knew, another division—Phoebe and Giles's two did behave better than Ian and Joyce's. All four always wanted to go first all the time, but it was usually Scott or Emily who shrieked a claim ahead of the others. Their voices were more urgent, their need to have things their way more desperate.

And Amy could see that they knew they weren't as important as Maggie.

“Why does Maggie want to go?” Giles asked. “What does she think there is to do there?”

“You and Phoebe had a great time,” Jack pointed out.

“Yes, but it was not entirely family entertainment.”

“Oh”—Jack grinned—“I see.”

“At least,” Giles continued, “I hope it doesn't result in any more family.”

Ian sensed everyone's disapproval, and when he came over to the main cabin to get the keys to Hal's car so that he could drive into town, his face was tight and tense. He wanted everyone to think that he was doing the right thing, and he knew that no one did. It wasn't clear that
he
felt he was doing the right thing, but obviously he felt trapped. Maggie was too insistent, Joyce too determined.

Amy had never thought much about her brother's life, but as she watched the car ease around the big Norway in the center of the driveway, she longed to be reassured that he was well, that there were joys and satisfactions in his life.

At the campfire that night, she sat down next to her father. “Dad, this is embarrassing because I should already know this, but how is Ian doing professionally?” Here she had pitied herself because her family seemed to pay so little attention to her career, but did she pay any attention to theirs? “I know what he does—learns dying Indian languages—but is he doing well?”

Gwen and Holly both stopped their conversations. They were interested. Amy supposed that they too wanted to be reassured that something was going well for him.

“He's doing great,” Hal said easily. “He's terrific at what he does. He can learn a language, figure out its grammar faster than anyone. The whole linguistics community has known that since his first year in graduate school.”

“So it was easy for him to get tenure?” Holly obviously knew something about academic careers.

“Not at all.” Hal shook his head. “Everything's always been a struggle for him. He's a practical linguist, and when he was in school, no one was doing practical linguistics. They were all theoreticians. His department was completely unsupportive of his dissertation. It didn't seem to matter that he would have been, at best, a B-plus theoretician while he is really gifted at what he does. They wanted him to change, but he stuck to his guns.”

“So why is he doing so well now?” Holly asked.

“Funding. He's the only linguist who can get any kind of funding. The government is not interested in the theoretical stuff, but he has a couple of California congressmen who are really behind him, and his money is solid. He supports three or four graduate students year in, year out, on his grants, and in this day and age that's incredible.”

Amy had only the haziest notion of the difference between practical and theoretic linguistics, but she heard the larger theme. Everyone had told Ian to change, to stop doing what he was good at, to start doing what everyone else was doing. “So it is like my not being able to jump,” she said. “It would have been easier if he had done the theory stuff, but he ended up better off because he did it his way.”

Her father turned to her, obviously not having made this connection before. “Yes, I guess it is the same.”

It was so odd to think this, that her career and Ian's had something in common.

Hal put his arm around her. “I suppose that's your mother in you; she always made her own rules. She wouldn't have had children who follow the crowd.”

Ian, Joyce, and Maggie were back at the lake hours before any one expected them. From the way that Maggie slammed the car door it was clear to Phoebe what had happened. Joyce would have let the whole trip be about pleasing Maggie. Where did Maggie want to eat? What movie did Maggie want to see? And you didn't treat sullen teenagers like that. They just got more sullen, trying to see how much more they could get.

“Teenagers are difficult,” was all Gwen said.

“I wasn't,” Holly said.

“No.” Gwen patted her arm. “You weren't.”

And Phoebe hadn't been either.

“What's the history here?” Holly asked. “Why does Joyce let Maggie get away with this?”

There were only four of them on the lakeside porch of the main cabin, Dad, Gwen, Holly, and Phoebe herself. She had no idea where Jack and Amy were.

Dad answered. “Joyce's mother remarried when she was a girl. Her stepfather already had a couple of kids, and then he and her mother had some more. Joyce felt that no one paid any attention to her, that she was never heard. Ian understood that. That's why he has stepped back and
let Maggie have more of a voice than most kids. But clearly he has let things get too far.”

Phoebe was surprised. She had never heard her father criticize anyone in the family behind their back.

He continued. “Ian has probably spent his entire married life trying to prove that he loves Maggie. He does, but I suspect that Joyce doesn't believe it. There's probably nothing he can do to convince her that he does.”

That made sense. Phoebe had never thought of it that way.

This was strange. She knew her father was a quiet, observant man, but she had never had any idea how much he truly did observe. He understood Ian and Joyce so well. She felt suddenly uneasy. What had her father observed about her?

“Are you going to say anything to him?” Gwen asked.

“I have never interfered in the kids' adult lives, and this doesn't seem like the time to start.”

 

If anyone was going to say anything to Ian—Phoebe certainly was not—he needed to be told not to overact. He was furious with Maggie, and after all these years of indulgence, he was suddenly getting tough.

At the evening campfire he was after her constantly, wanting her to help as much as Ellie was. He was quiet about it, he was trying to not humiliate her publicly, but it was also very clear that he wasn't taking no for an answer. She had to help the little kids put their marshmallows on sticks. She had to shake the popcorn popper. He was trying to turn her into Ellie.

It was too much, too fast.
You can't make an Ellie overnight
, Phoebe wanted to caution him. Teenagers were so fragile, so explosive. Maggie wasn't going to accept
these changes meekly. She would thrash against the new leash, she would struggle, she would fail, not caring what or whom she damaged.

Phoebe could only hope that the damage didn't happen at the lake.

The sky was dark, the usual pelter of stars hidden behind thick clouds. The wind came up, and they put out the campfire early. Giles's leg was hurting him; he had done too much on the canoe trip. He was restless all night, and Phoebe kept waking, hearing the sharp gusts outside their window and fierce crackling of lightning overhead.

But there was no rain, and the strong winds took the clouds with them. When Phoebe woke the next morning, the light pouring through the little four-paned bedroom window was bright. She could hear Giles up in the kitchen making coffee, talking to Thomas. She shoved her feet into her slippers and was coming back from the biffy when she heard the kids rushing along the path.

“Dad, Dad…your boat.” Their voices were frantic, urgent.

“Uncle Giles, the boat, the boat.”

Giles heard and came out of the cabin, his face tense, puzzled, his brow lowered. “Go on,” he nodded to her. He didn't have his built-up shoe on yet. “Go see.”

She grabbed Thomas, ran down the path, slipping down the log steps, the kids milling around her.

There was already a crowd on the dock. Dad and Gwen, Ian and Joyce, Amy. Jack was calf deep in the water, standing by Giles's boat.

It was ruined. Giles's beautiful wood boat was ruined. The heavy winds had first smashed it against the shore and then swung it back into the dock's steel uprights,
splintering its sides. Heavily filled with water, it was listing, the starboard stern resting on the sand at the bottom of the lake.

“The rope must have come untied,” Scott shouted. “The rope at the dock must have come untied.”

“Be quiet,” Ian ordered.

Giles always tied the boat at an angle from the shoreline, knotting one end to the dock and the other to a tree on the bank. He left enough play in the ropes to give them strength, but kept them taut enough so that the boat would hit neither the dock nor the shore. Now the boat was tied only at the shore.

Phoebe saw her father step toward the end of the dock. She looked up. Giles was coming down the steps.

These steps were always hard for him. They were awkwardly spaced for his gait and there was no rail.

Why didn't we ever put up a rail? All these years…Giles has been coming here for all these years, and we never put up a rail
.

Giles was coming down slowly, not looking at his feet. He was staring at the boat. Everyone was watching him.

This boat had been his. The one thing that had belonged to him here.

“I don't know much about boats.” It was Jack, speaking from the water. “But this looks bad.”

Thomas was squirming, pushing Phoebe's chest with his little fists. She was holding him too tightly. The other kids were, for once, silent, aware of the adults' distress, frightened by it.

“Did the rope break?” Giles asked. It was the first thing he had said.

They all glanced at the upright. No. There was no line dangling from it. The knot had come undone.

This made no sense. Giles's knots were good. The rope might break, but Giles's knots wouldn't come untied. Giles tied good, clean, strong knots.

Giles didn't answer.

“It was me.”

Nick's voice came from the steps. He looked rumpled, still in the sweats he had slept in. Maggie was a few steps behind him. Obviously the noise had woken both of them up. “Giles asked me to tie it up last night.”

“My leg hurt,” Giles said.

“Did you forget to come down, Nick?” Gwen spoke carefully.

“No. No, I did. I tied it up. I thought it was pretty cool that he had asked me.” Nick was mumbling a bit, looking at his feet, seeming young. Then he lifted his head, looking straight at Giles. He came down the steps, moving easily despite the sutures in his leg. “I know what the boat means to you. I thought it was cool that you trusted me. But I must have screwed up. It was my fault.”

Everything Phoebe had ever heard about Nick's home life suggested constant evasion of responsibility, continual blaming of others. But Nick was stepping right up and accepting the blame here.

It was good for him…but oh, what he had done to Giles. He could never know.

“He didn't screw up.” Jack was out of the water now. He had kicked off his shoes before going in to check the boat, but he hadn't rolled up his jeans. The lower part of the legs was dark and wet. “I'm sorry, Nick, I know this is insulting, but I heard Giles ask you, and I came down afterward and checked your knots. Giles may have trusted you, but I guess I didn't. I should have. I always hated it when my dad checked everything I did. But they were
good knots. I tugged hard on them. There was no way they could have loosened. The ropes would have snapped before those knots came undone.”

Nick ducked his head. Phoebe supposed that he didn't want anyone to see his relief.

“Then how did it happen?” Ellie asked. “What about when you came down, Maggie? Were the knots—”

“I didn't come down last night,” Maggie snapped.

“Yes, you did. During the campfire you left. I thought you were just going to the biffy, but then we broke up a minute later, you were coming up—” Ellie stopped.

She turned toward Phoebe, her eyes desperate. Phoebe knew her daughter. Ellie didn't know what to do. She was confused, anguished. Ellie never accused anyone of anything.

“I don't know…” Ellie's voice trailed off. “Maybe I'm wrong.”

Before Phoebe could speak, before she could urge her responsible, observant daughter to have confidence in what she had seen, Ian spoke. “No. You wouldn't have been wrong about that.” His voice grew stern. “Maggie, did you come down to the dock last night? Did you untie the boat?”

Maggie glared at him. “You all think this place is so all-fired wonderful. Everything about it is so la-de-da precious—”

“Maggie, did you untie Giles's boat?”

“No. I mean, I was leaning against the post a bit, and maybe I may have loosened the knot a little, I don't know. Why should I care?”

Maggie had untied Giles's boat. It had been deliberate; she had meant to do it. At the campfire they had all been talking about how the winds were coming up. She knew what might happen.

“It's just a boat,” she protested. “So what if—”

“Shut up,” Ian snapped.

“Well, all right, I will.” Maggie whirled and marched up the steps.

“She wouldn't have done it”—Joyce would, Phoebe knew, defend Maggie in any situation, she would excuse any behavior—“if she wasn't so unhappy here. It's not her fault. You can't blame her.” And she went racing up the hill after her daughter.

Ian watched her go. “Maggie's fifteen years old. You can too blame her,” he said. Slowly he turned to Giles. “I know this isn't something money can fix, but—”

Giles held up his hand. “Not yet.”

Giles usually didn't admit that things hurt. He had suffered so much as a kid, and then in his job, he couldn't take anything, not anything, personally so he had learned not to mind.

But this hurt.

He spoke slowly. “Jack, I don't want to see it again. Would you take care of it? Sink it, burn it, I don't care.”

Jack nodded. “Sure thing.”

Giles turned and began to clump up the bank. Phoebe moved to follow him. Gwen stepped forward, her arms out for Thomas.
Thanks
, Phoebe mouthed.

Ellie caught up with her at the top of the steps. “Mom, Mom. Is Dad okay?”

“He will be. But for the time being he's pretty upset.”

“I hate Maggie.” Ellie was pale. Her freckles stood out. “She's awful.”

“She does seem that way right now.”

Nick appeared at Ellie's shoulder. “Do you want us to get the little kids out of the way? We could take them to the sand pit or something.”

“That would be a big help,” Phoebe said. “I don't think they've had breakfast. Take a box of cereal and the paper bowls.” Joyce had made such a fuss about the disposable bowls Gwen had bought that no one had used them, but right now Phoebe didn't care what Joyce thought. “Make it into a picnic. Gwen has Thomas. I'm sure that's okay with her, but ask her anyway to be sure.”

Nick was nodding. “And, Phoebe…will you tell Giles, I'm really sorry about his boat.”

Phoebe touched his cheek. “We know you are.”

She hugged Ellie and followed the path to the new cabin, but through the open screen she heard Joyce and Maggie. Giles couldn't have gone in there, not with the two of them. Nor would he have gone to the log cabin, not when they weren't staying in it. She peeked in the garage, where he had worked on the boat, but of course he wasn't there. The garage would be full of too many memories of the boat.

Here he was, suffering, and he didn't even have a place of his own to go to.

She rounded the three-sided woodshed. There he was sitting on a stump, his hands linked between his knees. The stump was used as a chopping block. It was surrounded by a thick layer of wood chips; they were pale and fragrant. Phoebe went over, put her hands on his shoulders.

How grateful she was that Gwen had been there to take Thomas, that she didn't have a child on her hip, that at this moment she was here as Giles's wife, not as someone else's mother, not as a dead woman's daughter.

“Oh, Giles, I'm so sorry, and I know it won't be the same, but let's just go buy another boat. Let's go into town today.”

How she had minded all the changes Jack and Gwen were making. Talking, planning, taking years to do something…that was part of being at the lake. Giles had been quick to understand that code. That's why he had refinished the boat in the first place rather than buying a new one; that's why he had spent two years fishing from a canoe while he had worked on it, because he had been willing to do things the Legend way.

But things had changed. It was time to accept that.

Giles shook his head. “I know everyone else would feel better if we did. But I don't want it to look fixed when it's not.”

She ran a hand through her hair. As always, he was exactly right. She was too willing to accept solutions that looked fixed.

“You know you're paying for Ian's mistake. He was coming down on her so hard last night. She wanted to lash out at some dad figure, but she was scared to hurt him, so she hurt you.”

“I don't really care.”

Phoebe heard the motorboat starting. Who would be water skiing now? Then she remembered. It would be Jack getting ready to tow Giles's boat somewhere.

Giles heard too. He stood up. There were deep V-shaped cuts in the stump. Nick had been learning to split wood; sometimes he used too much force, and his maul drove the wedge all the way into the stump. “The boat was one thing I loved here. So, from my point of view, there's no reason to come back. Other lakes have better fish. God knows there's more comfort and privacy anywhere else.”

“What are you saying?” Phoebe sank back against a tree.

He put his hands in his pockets. He didn't do that often.
He didn't feel balanced. “For sixteen years I've been coming here for you and the kids. I know it's great for them, this time with their cousins, and I know it means the world to you, but it's my turn now, Phoebe. I'm a grown man. I have a tough job and I make a decent living. But on vacations I come play son-in-law. At first I did it for you. Now I do it for the kids because they do get so much out of this. But what's in it for me? The boat. And now it's gone.”