Summer's End (33 page)

“Not in the immediate future. My focus right now is
Scott and Emily and, to a lesser extent, myself. I've been seeing a therapist,” Ian said, “and I hope to find someone here. Yes, Joyce is needy and critical, but those are her issues. What I'm trying to figure out is why I was drawn to someone like that, why I wanted to be coupled with a difficult person.”

“Do you have any answers yet?” Amy asked.

“Not a one,” he said almost cheerfully. “But I'll get there.”

 

Like most skaters Amy needed a routine, and as a navy wife Gwen was used to one, so the newly expanded household immediately settled down. Scott and Emily remained quiet and fearful, but the predictability of Gwen's schedule was soothing.

“I don't think we are being much fun,” Gwen whispered to Amy as they waited for the children to set the table one evening. “But this might be what they need.”

The one thing Gwen had asked of Hal was that Ian not hang around the house all day. “Amy is fine,” she had said. “She's a woman. But I'm not going to face having a man at home until you retire.”

So Hal had found Ian office space at the college, and while the kids were at school, Ian went to the campus and worked on the tapes his students were sending to him. It was, Amy had to believe, as good for Ian as it was for Gwen.

Amy wasn't wild about training alone, but her skating was going well enough. For an hour every morning a student from the college came in and videotaped her practice. She watched it and then express-mailed it to Oliver, who would watch it and call her with comments.

She had been in Iowa nearly a week and felt that she
had not seen anything that justified Jack's concern. Gwen really did seem fine.

Finally she called Holly from the rink. “Would you tell Jack I'm getting nowhere? Your mom seems fine.”

“Of course she is. And why don't you call Jack yourself? You don't need me to be a go-between.”

“Just call him, will you?”

“All right, but only because it means I can tell him he was wrong.”

Two hours later, the college student who opened up the rink for Amy called her back to the phone.

It was Holly. “He wants to know if she is being herself or if she's just being the perfect wife and mother.”

“What does he mean by that?”

“It can be really hard on a military wife of Mother's generation when her husband dies on active duty. She not only loses him, but she also loses her job. This sounds weird to us, but being a C.O.'s wife, then an admiral's wife, really was Mother's profession. But she did fine after he died. She got new routines for herself, she met all kinds of new people, went to museums, took classes.”

Amy thought before she answered. “She's not doing anything like that now.” Taking care of Hal, Ian, Scott, and Emily was her job now. And Amy. She was also taking care of Amy.

“But there are things to do, aren't there?” Holly asked. “With the college and all? And what about the house? At the beginning of September she was saying that there was tons to do. She said that the rooms needed painting, the kitchen needed updating, and every single window in the house had pinch pleats, but I haven't heard her talk about that in weeks.”

“I haven't heard her talk about that at all.”

Amy had almost completely cooled down by now, so she did a minimal stretch and went home. Gwen was out, and the house was quiet.

Before she even took a shower, she walked through every room. The walls did need painting, and every single window except those in the kitchen did indeed have pinch-pleat draperies, velvet on the first floor, chintzes on the second. Her mother hadn't been the least interested in interior design.

But Gwen had had wildflowers on the mantels and the side tables all summer long, emerald ferns arching out of earthenware vases, vivid masses of goldenrod, the soft, pale stems of the touch-me-nots. Gwen loved beauty in her home.

She heard Gwen's car in the drive and glanced out the kitchen window. The truck was open; Gwen was unloading groceries. Amy hurried out to help.

“I talked to Holly today,” she said when they had the groceries inside.

“I'm glad. I love it that you and she get along so well.” Gwen handed Amy a box of cold cereal to put away.

“She said that you'd been thinking about doing some redecorating.”

Gwen started folding the grocery bags. “It was just a reflex. John and I always bought whenever we moved, and we never could afford what we wanted. So I would always spend the first year of a tour working pretty hard on the house to get it halfway tolerable.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes. I got a little sick of doing the painting and sewing, but picking out everything was fun.”

Amy had had nothing to do with the decoration of her
Denver condo; she hadn't had time. But she could see that it might be fun. “Why don't we do some stuff, then? Why don't we do it together?”

Gwen shook her head. “I have painted with children in the house, and trust me, it isn't anything you would want to do.”

“We aren't going to paint ourselves,” Amy said firmly. “We're going to pay people to do that, and we're going to pay them a huge amount to do it quickly. We'll just do the fun parts. Where do we start?”

“I always wallpaper my own bathroom first. It's cheap, it's fast, and you're in it every day.”

“Then let's forget about making dinner”—Amy didn't like cooking any more than she ever had—“and let's wallpaper your bathroom.”

Amy had never looked at a wallpaper book in her life. Her designer had always ordered reference samples and had taped them to the wall for her approval, but within ten minutes of arriving at the paint store, she was ready to wallpaper every room in her condominium. There were so many pretty patterns.

“We should bring Emily,” Amy said. “I would have loved this as a kid. Maybe she will.”

“If you don't mind, we could let her pick out a border to put up in your room. We wouldn't even have to repaint. Just slap something up. We can always take it down after she leaves.”

That sounded like a great idea. Amy had never gotten to pick out anything for her room. “Did you let Holly pick out her paint colors and such?”

“Amy, I let
Jack
pick out what he wanted in his room.”

Amy stuck a piece of scrap paper in one of the books, marking a pattern that she liked. “You really are a noble person.”

Amy had no idea what the future held for her and lack, but she knew one thing for sure. There was no way she was ever letting him pick out paint colors.

 

So Amy now spent her afternoons helping Gwen with the house. While Gwen was far more experienced, Amy's eye for color turned out to be better, and if it was Amy leaving the message, painters and contractors returned the call.

Gwen had long since met all of Hal and Eleanor's friends in the college community, but when she and Amy were in town, looking at fabrics and carpets, they occasionally ran into women whom Amy knew and Gwen did not. These women were the professional community, the wives of the doctors, lawyers, and bankers. Amy knew them because they ran the local charities, and they had appreciated the usefulness of her rising fame long before any of her parents' friends ever had. The first public speech of her life had been in front of the Lipton PEO, an organization her mother would have never joined.

They were orderly, elegant women who were accustomed to their order and elegance being essential to their husbands' careers.

When Amy and Gwen were comparing wallpaper selections with Mrs. Selfridge, a lawyer's wife, it occurred to Amy that Gwen would probably have more in common with these ladies than she did with Eleanor's friends. But she would never have a chance to get to know them. They would never think to invite a music professor's new wife to their homes. There was little socializing between the
business community and the college. Gwen would never have met them through Hal. Her friends would have to be Eleanor's friends.

Not if Amy could help it. She was going to introduce these ladies to Gwen. She would have a luncheon and invite them all. It would be strange, her guests would be very surprised at the invitation, but they would come.

Amy thought about the details. If she had it at home, Gwen would end up doing all the work. She could have it at Staunton's, the town's nicest restaurant, but she suspected the people she was inviting went there all the time.

It wasn't childish to call Gretchen for advice, she told herself. Having such poor problem-solving skills herself, she had hired Gretchen for hers. And Gretchen had the solution, the name of a company that air-shipped a complete New England clam and lobster dinner packed in its cooking pot. All Amy would have to do was set the table and add boiling water. This even Amy could do.

“My new stepmother is from the East,” she said when she issued the invitations, “and misses the seafood. Could you join us?”

She invited Phoebe as well. She did it to be polite. She didn't really expect Phoebe to take off work to come eat clams with women she had little interest in. But Phoebe did. The two sisters did all the serving and clearing, leaving Gwen to entertain the guests.

By the end of the party Gwen volunteered to cut down and re-hem the old bedroom drapes so that they could be used in the rec room of the local shelter. She appeared eager to hear a lecture on Oriental rugs at the next Service League meeting. She indicated that she and Hal would be pleased to get an invitation to the Literary Volunteers' annual fund-raiser.

“I didn't understand why you were doing this,” Phoebe said when the two of them were alone in the kitchen. “I thought you were showing off. But I was wrong, and I'm sorry.”

 

The following day she had to go back to Denver. Oliver was insisting on it. “I have to see this live.”

“You can have two days,” she told him. “I'll come back for two days, but that's it.”

The little world of professional skaters was all atwitter about the fact that Amy wasn't training in Colorado, and other coaches started sniffing around, seeing if she was ready to leave Oliver. But she didn't want to leave Oliver. She didn't want to break her close association with Henry and Tommy. She simply wanted to stay in Iowa for a while.

In October, the professional season began. The professional competitions weren't really true competitions. They were television events, designed to run opposite football games. Only the most competitive-natured skaters, like Henry, cared very much who won. But the appearance fees were considerable, and the exposure enormous.

The hoped-for triple salchow was not going to happen. Amy knew that technically she was not skating her best. “That's not good,” Tommy said when she confided this to him. “Even at your best you're one of the worst skaters here.”

But professional competitions weren't about technique. They were about performance, and Amy was still one of the best performers. Her new material was so strong and so unexpected that she started winning by unusually large margins.

Since the competitions were taped for future airings, they were often held during the week. One Friday afternoon Amy was at home in Lipton when Ellie called. “Oh, Aunt Amy, I need a huge,
huge
favor. Can you baby-sit Alex and Claire on Saturday night?”

It was a complicated story, involving a date with someone Ellie adored. “I asked him. Do you believe it? None of us have ever asked a boy out. And Charles never dates. I used to think it was because he was so smart, but Nick said it might be because he's shy and nervous—”

“Nick? You talk to Nick?”

“Oh, sure. Well, it isn't
talk
. We e-mail each other almost every day, and he told me that I should go ahead and ask this guy myself. So I did, and I was so nervous that I forgot that I told my mom ages ago that I would sit tomorrow night, and none of my friends can do it, and if I tell my mom I want to go out, then she and Dad will stay home, and I will feel really bad and—”

“Ellie, I can't follow a word that you are saying, but I'm very happy for you. What time do I need to be there?”

When Phoebe heard of this plan, she was horrified and called Amy. “I can't let you do this.”

“Dad and Gwen are going out.” They had been invited to dinner by one of Gwen's new friends. “Ian is taking his kids to the movies, so I was going to rent a video for myself. You have videos in Iowa City, don't you?”

“Giles can go to this alone.” Phoebe was not going to be distracted. “Everyone will understand.”

“But that's not the issue,” Amy countered. “Look, Phoebe, that afternoon at the lake, you said I never do anything for the family, and—”

“I should not have said that,” Phoebe interrupted. She was mortified. She hated being reminded of that.

“Maybe you shouldn't have said it
then
. But you should have said it sometime because you were right. So for the first time in my entire life I've got a chance to do something for you, and you're being a pill if you don't let me. Furthermore, if you change your plans, Ellie will be miserable, and apparently this date is a pretty big deal to her.”

“It is that,” Phoebe acknowledged.

“Then I'll be there at seven.”

Phoebe and Giles had left by the time Amy arrived. Ellie explained all the rules about bedtime and television, and then the doorbell rang and Ellie went pale. So feeling quite the helpful aunt, Amy went to open the door, and then it was young Charles's turn to go pale. He had clearly not expected to be meeting Ellie's famous aunt. He dropped his eyes, snatched his hand away as if hers were burning, and greeted Ellie as if she were a St. Bernard rescuing him from a blinding snowstorm. But he was surprisingly good-looking for the captain of the chess team.

Amy had never baby-sat before in her life, but she proved perfectly able to microwave a bag of popcorn and read some stories. Fortunately, the kids didn't fight and went to bed almost willingly. Amy then watched her own video and looked through reports of charitable foundations until Phoebe and Giles got home.