Summer's End (35 page)

Gwen clasped her hands. “My baby's going to be all right.”

Amy loved her routine. Every morning she shared a quiet cup of coffee with Gwen, the only other person in the house yet awake. They would talk about the redecorating, about the new people Gwen was meeting, and about Amy's workouts. Gwen admitted that she didn't understand half of what Amy said about her skating, but she hadn't understood submarines either.

On the way to the rink Amy often stopped and bought doughnuts for the rink staff; after practice she picked up sandwiches so Gwen didn't have to make lunch. Her practice schedule was common knowledge, and a couple times a week a few retired people would show up to watch her. She stayed at the rink during the Tuesday-Thursday preschool class, helping the tots put their skates on, chatting with the mothers. Emily had been boasting about her famous aunt so much that her teacher arranged to have the class come to the rink as a field trip. Amy couldn't imagine what a group of first-graders could learn from watching her do the same thing over and over, but Gretchen had some Amy Legend key chains made up, and each kid got one to hang from the zippers of their backpacks, so she was almost as cool as the trip to the fire station.

Travel from Iowa was more difficult than it had been from Denver, but even that was turning into an advantage. She had known for a while that she was involved with some charities that really did not need her. They had so thoroughly developed the potential of their fund-raising base that the presence of a celebrity made little difference in how much money they raised. Amy Legend's presence at their annual banquet was a lovely reward for a job well done, but the job would have been equally well done without her. The long waits for a connecting flight out of Chicago made her think carefully about each trip. She quit hopping on a plane every time someone breathed her name.

Ian's new therapist didn't seem to think much of him living with Hal and Gwen. “It's important to have shelters and safety nets,” she said, “but what example are you setting for the children?”

“I never quite know what she means,” he said when reporting this conversation to Hal, Gwen, and Amy, “but I'm getting the picture on this one. I need to take responsibility for my children.”

So he rented a house for the rest of the school year. A nice lady from the nearby Mennonite community came two mornings a week to clean and do the laundry, but Ian was still at the schoolyard every afternoon at three-thirty to walk Scott and Emily home. The two of them were still fragile, trembling at any disappointment, but Scott was a star on the third-grade soccer team and Emily was getting to pick out another wallpaper border.

Amy felt as if she should leave too. The best thing she could probably do for Gwen now was give her time alone with Hal.

“But you don't want to move back to Denver,” Gwen said.

That was true. Amy didn't want to live in Denver anymore. She wanted to go on working with Oliver. She wanted to retain all her business ties with Tommy and Henry. But she wanted to live near her family. “But I can't live with you and Dad forever.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gwen agreed. “But you're gone a lot, and frankly it's easier for me to have you here than it would be to drive across town and pick up your mail and newspapers.”

That was true. If she got her own place, she would have to figure out how to take care of things when she was gone. She couldn't recreate her life in Denver; she couldn't buy a condominium in a high-rise with a doorman, a front desk, and a concierge. The tallest building in Lipton had five floors, and the closest thing any establishment had to a doorman was the cheerful mentally disabled man who helped load groceries at the Safeway.

On the other hand, if she got a place of her own, she might have gutters that needed cleaning.

 

It was time to make Thanksgiving plans. Ian was trying to negotiate with Joyce so that the children could see her, but Holly and Jack were coming, and Amy had accepted no holiday shows, so there would be eleven of them. Gwen said she was perfectly willing to cook; she was also equally willing to go to Phoebe's. Phoebe was saying that she was also willing to have it at either place.

“How shall we resolve this?” Phoebe asked.

“Amy, what do you want to do?” Gwen asked.

Amy blinked. “What do
I
want?” She had not expected that question. “I haven't given it any thought. It seemed
easier to let the two of you decide, and then you can be the ones who are wrong.”

“Amy, if I didn't love you so much,” Gwen said, “I would say that you sometimes have too much in common with my sister and her daughter, both of whom live to have other people be wrong.”

Gwen's sister Barbara and her niece Valerie were Nick's family. “Keeping your mouth shut is so safe,” Amy replied. “Your sister's smarter than you know. But maybe we should try something completely different.” Last year's idea of everyone going to a big hotel no longer sounded appealing. She preferred something homier…although in truth as long as Jack was going to be there, she would have gone to Neptune. He was still at the lake, and so they talked to him only when—

“I know.” She suddenly had an idea. “What will the weather be at the lake? Would we freeze to death if we went there?”

“Thanksgiving at the lake?” Phoebe asked. She looked surprised.

“Jack is finishing the garage as a communal kitchen,” Gwen mused. “It might work if the weather isn't too awful. What's it like there at Thanksgiving?”

Phoebe didn't know. They had never needed to know. The family had gone only in the summer. “I imagine it's cold.”

“But how cold?” Amy asked. “Uncomfortable cold or instant-death cold? How would we find out? If we wait until morning, I could call Gretchen.” Amy had already concluded that if she was going to buy a house in Iowa, she should hire some Gretchen-type person as a housekeeper and assistant. That person could run the errands,
collect the mail, and cook some meals…although she would not clean the gutters. That had to be very clear. Amy's gutters would be far too delicate to be touched by anyone but Jack. “She can find out anything.”

“So can I,” Gwen said. “We'll call the local radio station right now.” She was already moving to the phone.

Five minutes later, she had an answer. “Guess what? It's like everywhere else. The weather at Thanksgiving varies. There's no telling. It could be in the mid-forties with no snow; it could be below zero with three feet of snow. But it's been a dry fall so far.”

“Which means nothing,” Phoebe said.

They were all quiet for a moment, no one wanting to make the decision. A heavy snowfall could trap them at the lake for days. The road would eventually get plowed, but not immediately. And if it was truly cold, biffy trips would be memorable indeed. On the other hand, to be there, with the last few golden leaves clinging to the branches of birches, with the Norway boughs soft and perhaps snow-filled, with the smoke from the fires curling up from the cabin chimneys through the thin autumn air…

Phoebe threw up her hands. “Oh, why not? The worst that will happen is that we'll be snowed in for the rest of the winter, but then it will be Amy's turn to be wrong, and that thought will keep us warm.”

 

Everyone loved the idea. Ian told Joyce that she had to commit herself absolutely to spending Thanksgiving with her two younger children or he was taking them to the lake.

“I just don't know why we can't wait and see if Maggie's going on this ski trip,” she answered.

“Because Scott and Emily's plans are as important as
hers,” he said, “and they're in no shape to cope with uncertainty.”

But she was unwilling to make definite plans. “She's trying to see how much she can get away with,” Ian told the rest of the family. “So we're coming to the lake. My kids are going to be with people who think they are important, and I'm not going to have to spend the rest of my life listening to what a great time you all had freezing to death.”

The television networks and cable stations had learned that the only programming that could hold its own against holiday-weekend football was figure skating. So throughout November Amy was traveling every week, appearing in the competitions that would be shown over Thanksgiving. Each time she returned, Phoebe and Gwen had done more to plan and prepare for the holiday.

Gwen had decided to fly up the Friday before. “We really don't have any idea what Jack's been up to. He says everything is in great shape, and for the most part I do believe him. But he is a man; he will have forgotten something.”

Phoebe clearly wanted to go with her. “But I'm in charge of the Multicultural Thanksgiving feast in Alex's class on Wednesday. I have to be there.”

The three of them were at Phoebe's, making pilgrim hats and collars out of black and white construction paper. Gwen and Amy were enjoying the work; Phoebe was grateful for the help.

“I could come,” Amy said. “I leave Detroit Friday afternoon. I could meet you in Minneapolis. I won't be much help in the kitchen, but I generate body heat.”

“We're going to need that,” Gwen agreed.

 

She was going to see Jack again.

Last summer Thanksgiving had seemed so vague and far away. It had loomed as the problem. She and Jack couldn't remain lovers because of Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's when the family would be together.

But Thanksgiving was finally here, and this time Amy wasn't coming to see the family. She was already with the family. What difference was that going to make?

She skated horribly in Detroit, landing only one of her triples, doubling all the rest. But no one else skated any better, and so her scores were fine. The skaters' hotel was close to an upscale grocery store, and when Amy's luggage was transferred from the Minneapolis-bound flight to the little commuter plane, it included a big cardboard box fill of Belgian chocolates, Spanish oranges, and champagne from France. “I've never traveled with provisions before,” she said to Gwen when they met in the Minneapolis airport. “But I have brought all of Europe with me. I'm turning into my sister.”

Jack was meeting them at the airport in Hibbing. It was too small a facility to have jet ways. Stairs were wheeled up to the side of the plane; the passengers climbed down and crossed the runway. Amy had done it often in the summer but never in November. The sharp chill in the air caught at her lungs, froze the inside of her nose.

Gwen gasped at the cold. “Whose idea was this?”

Amy didn't answer. Jack was waiting.

She and Gwen hurried across the tarmac. The glass of terminal's windows was tinted against the sun; Amy couldn't see inside. But the airport was warm, and there Jack was, leaning back against the wall, straightening, stepping forward when he saw them.

Gwen called his name. Amy held back so that he could greet his mother first. They embraced, Gwen patting the back of his shoulder. Then Gwen stepped away, and he turned to Amy. He hesitated, she paused, but it really was wonderful to see him. She had to touch him. She moved forward; his arms closed around her. She felt the soft weave of his shirt against her cheek and the brush of his lips in her hair.

He stepped back. “You're shivering. I thought you would be used to the cold.”

If she was shivering, it wasn't from the cold.

He looked great. Once again his thick chestnut hair needed to be cut, but he had on a sage-colored rugby shirt under a plaid wool shirt. The sett of the plaid was shades of green—olive, sage, and moss—while the accent line was rust.

“I love your shirt,” Gwen exclaimed. “The colors are wonderful on you. Did you get it up here?”

Amy knew the answer to that. No, Holly had given it to him. There was no way Jack had picked out that shirt himself. He would have bought navy blue.

“Holly sent it to me,” he said. “I was telling her how cold it was, so she sent up a couple of shirts. She says that she doesn't care about me being cold, she just can't stand to be seen in public with me because I dress so badly.”

“You don't dress
badly
.” Gwen wanted to be sure that her children were getting along. “You haven't developed a good sense of color.”

“No, Gwen,” Amy put in. “He dresses badly.”

“I suppose he does.” Gwen sighed, then spoke briskly. “We have a ton of luggage. Hal went over to the chemistry department and got the most gorgeous cardboard boxes you have ever seen, and I filled every single one of them.”

The Hibbing airport did not have automated baggage service. Luggage was taken off the airplane by hand, wheeled into the airport on a cart, and then transferred to the claim area by the same people who processed the tickets. Gwen's and Amy's suitcases arrived soon enough, but Gwen's boxes were the last items off the plane, perhaps because of the boxes' stern preprinted warnings about the chemicals that had originally been shipped in them.

While they were waiting, several people came over and spoke to Jack. He would introduce them to Gwen and Amy. “This is my mother and her stepdaughter Amy.”

“You know a lot of people,” Amy said to Jack as they carried the luggage out to the curb.

“Not that many. The lumber yard guys and I are real buddies, and people at the airport, I know them.”

“Why?” she asked. As far as she knew, no one had flown up to see him.

“I've been taking flying lessons.”

He sprinted across the parking lot to get his truck. Amy urged Gwen to wait inside the warm terminal; Gwen refused. If Amy could wait outside with the luggage, so could she. A minute later Jack's black truck eased up to the curb. He got out of the cab and went around back to lower the tailgate.

Amy handed him the first box. “You're learning to fly a helicopter?”

“Not yet. It turns out that helicopters are hard to fly. You're better off starting on fixed-wing aircraft. So I'm down here a couple days a week, sometimes more.”