Summer's End (34 page)

“Did Ellie get off okay?” Giles asked. “Were the two of them miserably nervous?”

“He was so terrified of me,” Amy answered, “that she looked like high ground in a rising river.”

Giles put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “You do have your uses, dear sister-in-law.”

Phoebe walked her out to the car. “I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but I still can't believe what I said to you at the lake. I was so completely out of line.”

“Oh, Phoebe…don't be so hard on yourself.”

Phoebe ignored her. “Do you know the Demeter-Persephone myth?”

“No,” Amy answered. There was no point in pretending that she did.

“It's Greek. Demeter is goddess of the earth. Persephone is her daughter. Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the underworld, and Demeter is so grief-stricken that she stops doing her work. The earth is taken over by perpetual winter. She's like Lot's wife, the woman who looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt; they're both symbols of grieving too much.”

Amy no longer believed herself stupid. Phoebe's intelligence was conventionally analytic while hers was intuitive, kinetic, and aesthetic. Amy did not envy Phoebe her intelligence; she did not wish to be other than she was. But Phoebe was better educated, and Amy did envy her that.

“So you feel that you've been grieving too much?”

Phoebe nodded. “There's been times since Mother died that I've felt like a pillar of salt, full of tears yet unable to cry. But Demeter and Lot's wife were grieving for the loss of children; I've been grieving for my mother. Mother did die too early, there's no question about that, but most women lose their mothers. Of course you should mourn your mother, but I cringe at the thought of Ellie or Claire being as paralyzed by my death as I have been for the last…it's almost been two years already.”

Phoebe was learning. She was learning how to forgive herself for her mistakes.

She was wearing a dramatic necklace, a slab of mala
chite suspended from links of heavy silver. Amy touched it. “That was Mother's, wasn't it?”

Phoebe nodded.

“What about the lapis lazuli? Do you wear it much?”

“Probably more than anything else.”

Amy wasn't surprised. The lapis lazuli necklace and bracelet were the simplest of Mother's jewelry. “And the garnets? I did love them when I was a girl.”

Phoebe smiled. “Claire does too.”

Claire was five; she refused to wear anything that wasn't pink. “Are they a nightmare?” The garnets had been Eleanor's only Victorian jewelry. They were ornate and overwrought, badly set in fading gold.

“I've never figured out what to wear them with,” Phoebe admitted. Then her eyes shifted away, and she spoke without looking at Amy. “Why didn't you want any of Mother's jewelry?”

“It wasn't that I didn't want it.” Amy's words came out in a rush. Phoebe had completely misunderstood why she hadn't taken any of the jewelry. “No, no, it wasn't that. I mean, the opals and the topazes…But it did seem to me that you should have everything, that it would mean more to you than to me.”

Now, however, she could see how Phoebe had interpreted what she had intended as generosity. “Did it seem like I didn't care about Mother's dying? I did, of course I did, but I knew how devastating it was to you, and somehow that's what that time was about for me, worrying about you more than grieving for her.”

“You were worrying about
me?
” Phoebe didn't like people worrying about her.

Amy went on quickly. “It wasn't that I didn't care about her dying, but in some ways I had already grieved
for—well, not really for her—but for her place in my life.” She hoped that she wasn't going to make everything worse by saying this. “I had to accept a long time ago that Mother was never going to understand me and would never really value what I did.”

Phoebe sighed and shook her head. “My relationship with Mother was so strong and good, it's hard to understand how yours could be so different.”

“You and I are different,” Amy said. “And ironically Mother may have been the best possible mother for me. So many kids skated to please their mothers, and I used to envy them, having mothers who cared so much, but now I see how bad that was. From the very beginning I had to skate for myself. Mother made the process work—she wrote all those checks—but she didn't particularly care about the results. I didn't have to succeed for her.”

Phoebe was a mother. She understood this perhaps better than Amy herself. “I know your tastes and interests were very different from hers, but in some ways you were more like her than I am. I follow every rule ever made, and she never followed any. I knew that she was disappointed that you had so little interest in books, but secretly I worried that I was disappointing her because I was so unadventuresome. I thought I ought to be like her, and I wasn't.”

“Is that why you work so hard at everything?”

Phoebe smiled, a tight little half smile. “Giles would say so.”

“Phoebe”—Amy had to ask her this—“have you and Giles found a new lake yet?”

Phoebe shook her head. “No. We're working on it, but I know that I am trying too hard to find something exactly like our lake. Giles has sent away for about seventeen thousand sets of house plans, and he's enjoying that…You
know, Jack offered to come help him build it next summer.”

“He did?” Amy was surprised. It seemed odd that Jack was talking to Phoebe and Giles when she wasn't.

“Giles loves the idea,” Phoebe said, “although I think we should get someone else to rough it in during the spring. Then the pair of them can wire it and finish it together…if we find a site, of course.”

But there was a site, a perfect site. Amy had to try again.

“I realize it came out all wrong this summer, this business of the Rim, but I still mean it. It's there for you and Giles if you want it.”

Phoebe shook her head. “I'm still baffled by this. It's hard to believe that you own the Rim. Why did you buy it?”

“Because I'm an idiot who believes a lot of drunks, because I wanted to be the savior of the universe.”

“So why didn't you tell any of us?”

“Because it seemed so transparent, that everyone would know that I wanted to be the savior of the universe…but that doesn't matter now. For whatever reason, I do own it. Did you talk to Giles about it? Did you tell him?”

“No. That would make it seem like I was trying to do everything my way, that I wasn't willing to leave the lake.”

She had a point. “But now that you've looked for other places, maybe it would be different. Why don't you at least mention it to him? At a minimum he ought to know that his sister-in-law is an idiot who believes a lot of drunks.”

“No,” Phoebe answered. “I said I would move to another lake, and I will.”

“Would you think about it?”

“No.”

There was clearly no point in saying anything more. Phoebe was not listening to her. So when Amy got home, she sat down with her father and Gwen and told them that she owned the Rim.

Hal was as surprised as Phoebe had been. He shook his head. “Sometimes I think that your mother and I never understood one thing about you.”

“Maybe you didn't, but you never tried to change me,” Amy answered. “That's the important thing.” She had never fully appreciated that before. Her parents had never tried to turn her into Phoebe or Ian. It was a good thing because it would have been hopeless. She would have made a very poor Phoebe, but she was doing a pretty fine job of being Amy.

“Why are you telling us about this property now?” Gwen asked. “Are you hoping to sell it to Phoebe and Giles?”

Amy suspected that Gwen thought it as good an idea as she did. “Sell, give…I don't really care. But Phoebe won't even tell him about it.” She explained what was happening. “And I'm not going to talk to him behind her back.”

“That's very wise,” Gwen said.

Hal was drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair. “This really is a good solution, isn't it?”

Neither woman answered. It was obvious to Hal that they thought so.

“Eleanor and I both had grave reservations about Joyce.” Clearly he thought that this had some connection with what they were talking about. “We discussed them, and I assumed, I thought it just went without saying, that we would never say anything to him. But Eleanor always spoke her mind about everything. She said something to
him, I don't exactly know what, but I think it only made him feel more protective of Joyce and made him marry her that much more quickly.”

“So that's why you are always so careful not to interfere in our lives?” Amy asked.

“That episode certainly confirmed what was probably a natural inclination. But”—he stood up—“this is a very different case, and I think it is now time for me to interfere. I will talk to Phoebe.”

He must have called Phoebe the minute he woke up because Amy was pouring her first cup of coffee, not even ready to think about what she would wear to church, when the phone rang. Gwen handed it to her. Giles spoke without any greeting. “If I write you a great big check for this piece of property, are you going to rip it up?”

That would be Amy's first impulse. “Not if you really hate the idea.”

“I do. I'm utterly incapable of accepting such a generous gift. At least I hope I am. I want that lot so badly I might even stoop to graciousness in order to get it.”

Amy hugged the phone to her ear. She was so happy that this was happening. If anyone on earth deserved her sister, it was this wonderful man.

He admitted that he might not have been so enthusiastic about it in July. “Minnesota claims to have ten thousand lakes, and I suppose we shouldn't have gotten discouraged, having only looked at about nine thousand of them, but fatigue was setting in.”

He insisted that they all come to Iowa City for dinner that night to talk about it.

Phoebe's dining room table was covered with house plans and blueprint kits. Giles was full of questions, what
were the dimensions of the most likely building sites, what the drainage was like.

Amy was useless. “I don't know. I can't estimate distances unless I'm on my skates. I don't even know what drainage is. Why don't you ask Jack? He went there with me. He might have noticed.”

Giles instantly disappeared and came back a few minutes later. Jack had some notion of the lot size. “But he says that even he wouldn't pick plans based on those estimates.”

“Take note of the ‘even he,'” Gwen said. “No one can accuse Jack of having unnecessarily high standards. If he says something isn't good enough, then everyone needs to run to the nearest bomb shelter.”

“Oh, I think in some things Jack has very high standards,” Giles said, and pointedly looked at Amy.

That was Sunday, and Monday morning Amy was once again pouring herself a cup of coffee when the phone rang. Gwen was in the shower, so she answered it.

Static crinkled through the line. “I'm in the truck,” a voice called out, “and I'm an hour south of Indianapolis. Can you hear me?”

It was Jack. A familiar wash of joy flooded across Amy. “Yes, I can hear. It's me, Amy.”

“I can't hear you,” he was still shouting, “but tell Giles I am going up to Minnesota to do those measurements for him.”

Halfway through the word
Minnesota
the static suddenly disappeared, and Amy had to hold the phone away from her ear so that his voice didn't blow out her eardrums. She replied in a normal tone. “The line's clear now. You don't have to shout.”

“Amy?” He had thought he was speaking to his mother.

“It's me, and I hear you. You're driving up to Minnesota to measure the lot for Giles. You're driving from Kentucky to Minnesota to measure a building site.”

“It's not much more than a thousand miles. It will wreak hell with my pinball game, but I make sacrifices. I assume it's okay with your dad if I spent the night in one of the cabins. He showed me where a key was hidden.”

“I'm sure it's—” But the static was back, and a moment later the line went dead.

Wednesday, Jack called with the dimensions Giles needed. A number of trees were going to have to come down, and Jack pointed out that they could probably get better prices on tree work now than in the spring, when everyone was wanting such work done. He was quite willing to stay and arrange for the work if people would tell him what they wanted done. So Giles and Phoebe flew up for the weekend to make some decisions; Amy and Gwen took care of their children.

Amy was amazed. It took her family five years to move a gas light. Now Giles and Phoebe were hopping onto airplanes, intending to have their new cabin roughed in by next July.

“It's so beautiful up there,” Phoebe gushed when she and Giles got home. None of them had ever been to the lake in the fall. “The popple and the birch are these wonderful shades of gold and yellow. Everything was so quiet. I didn't want to come home.”

Apparently Jack hadn't either. During the two days before Phoebe and Giles arrived, he had prowled around some of the junk shops that people had set up in their garages. He found a couple of propane iceboxes in decent
condition. He called Hal. How about if he picked them up and installed them in the big garage? And then as long as he was trenching a gas line out here, why not put in some lights?

And then after Phoebe and Giles returned home, while Jack was waiting for the tree work to start, he found a wood stove that had a fifteen-gallon water cistern. “It's too big for the cabins, but if we sink a well—”

Hal interrupted, laughing. “Jack, stop bothering me. Stop driving into town to call every time you have an idea. Do whatever you want. Send me the bill.”