The Goodbye Summer (13 page)

In 1969, with Estella away at school (Shepherdstown College, Shepherdstown, West Virginia), and in search of a
quieter, more contemplative life, Doré moved to Damascus, Maryland. There, to make herself useful and give meaning to her days, she took a part-time job at Nawson’s Jewelers. In a short time she was promoted to assistant manager. More surprising still, a year later she became affianced to Clarence “Bud” Nawson, and the couple were wed on June 4, 1971.

Doré continued her volunteer and community activities in Damascus, and also enjoyed success and some acclaim as a model for the Mrs. & Older line of clothing at Jewell’s Department Store. The Nawsons enjoyed vacations in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Tragically, their happiness was short-lived. In 1974, Bud, a lifelong smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and in three months he was dead.

Grief-stricken, Doré sold the store and moved west again, this time to Michaelstown, where she bought a condo on Marshall Street and set about rebuilding her life. Never one to remain idle for long, and even though finances were not a problem, she soon found meaningful work in the accounts department at Harris Recreational Vehicles on Route 15. There the friendliness and camaraderie of her coworkers acted like a tonic on Doré’s downcast spirits. She took up ballroom dancing, studied French at night at Boormin Community College, and renewed an old, neglected passion, Japanese flower arranging.

Fate took a surprising twist in 1978. Having vowed never to remarry, Doré could hardly believe it when she found herself falling in love again. Stewart R. Harris swept her off her feet, and after a short, whirlwind courtship, the couple flew to Acapulco, Mexico, where they became man and wife.

“With Stewart, I found what my heart had been searching for. We were a purely blessed union. I had never known such happiness, nor will I ever again. He was my Galahad, my Lancelot.”

Stewart wanted to name their new Airstream, a wedding present, after his bride, but Doré insisted on calling it
Excalibur.
In it they took many an idyllic road trip, and Doré now has seen every state in the Union except Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.

And so life passed in a happy glow, and as the couple’s golden years beckoned, Stewart began to think more and more about retirement. They planned trips—Stewart had never been to Europe, unlike Doré—and joked about what he’d do with himself if he weren’t selling RVs. In preparation for their new life, Doré finally retired from the Women’s Auxiliary of the Michaelstown Key Club, where she had served for many years on the planning committee and one year as treasurer. Best of all, they bought their dream house: a four-bedroom split-level on three and a half semiwooded acres in the Tortoise Creek Hills subdivision.

And then, on June 4, 1988, thirteen days shy of their tenth wedding anniversary, tragedy struck again. While cutting the lawn on his riding mower, the John Deere Cadet Doré had given him for his combination birthday/housewarming present, Stewart suffered a massive heart attack. Paramedics were summoned, but to no avail. He passed away next to the lane of Leyland cypress trees he had planted along the driveway just one week before. Doré was kneeling by his side, holding his hand. His last words were, “Dodo [an endearment], I’ll see you in heaven!”

“The rest isn’t important,” Doré says. “To tell the truth, I barely remember the nineties. Without Stewart, my soul mate, who loved me more than any man ever had or ever could, my life withered on the vine. Material possessions meant nothing to me, nor do they mean anything to me now.”

Doré has been at Wake House since 2001, when heart trouble made living on her own too dangerous. Would she do anything differently? “What a question!” she says. “Who wouldn’t?
And yet, I do feel as if my life had a purpose, an arrow pointing me in one direction and one only: toward Stewart Harris. If I had a second chance I would try to find him sooner, for it’s when I met Stewart that my real life began. And his, too, I believe. True love is a fragile, rare thing, but we had it. Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Desdemona, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Gatsby and Daisy, Ross and Rachel—I would add to that list Doré and Stewart Harris. Yes, I would! We had a love for the ages.”

Thea arrived for her first piano lesson late on a Wednesday afternoon, and as she was coming in the wide-open front door, Angie Noonenberg was going out. Caddie introduced them. Afterward, Thea tossed her pocketbook on the living room sofa and exclaimed, “Oh, my, what a beautiful girl. Those
eyes.
”

“I know. Too bad she’s mad at me.”

“Why?”

“Artistic differences.” She explained about the Miss Michaelstown contest next December. “Angie’s my best violin student, and now she’s decided she doesn’t like the piece by Massenet we’ve been practicing for the last six weeks, it’s not
fun.
She wants to play…” She laughed; she could still hardly believe it. “She wants to play a
bluegrass fiddle song.
And sing!”

Thea laughed with her. “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, no, not you, too! But it’s her decision, all I can do is advise her. Today I won, but who knows what she’ll decide when the time comes.”

Angie had been secretly practicing “Man of Constant Sorrow,” the twangiest of twangy country tunes, and today she’d played the solo break and sung the song a cappella for Caddie for the first time. “Just
listen,
okay, just try to hear it with an open mind,” she’d begged, then launched into a performance Caddie could truthfully tell her afterward was
soulful.
Angie had a pretty voice, but for “Man of Constant Sorrow” she flattened it down to the thinness of ribbon, changing the lyric to “maid” and singing through her nose. With a lot of feeling, though—Caddie couldn’t deny that Angie
sang and played her bluegrass tune with more enthusiasm and emotion than she played “Meditation.”

“I’m just disappointed,” she confessed to Thea. “We’ve been together a long time. I’ve been watching her grow. She’s got real talent, and I hate to see it go this way.”

“But if she really
wants
to play the fiddle.”

“I told her the judges won’t take her seriously. She’s going up against girls singing opera and dancing ballet. I told her the baton twirlers never win.”

“Is that true?”

“I don’t know. But it ought to be. Well, anyway—here you are.”

“Here I am. Caddie, those lawn sculptures—I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“I know. There’s nothing I can—”

“They’re fantastic, I
love
them.”

“You don’t.”

“They’re
wonderful,
so inventive and free. I recognized the one called
Birth Canal
from Frances’s description. Aren’t you proud of her? I think she’s a phenomenon.”

Caddie searched Thea’s face to see if she was pulling her leg. “She’s one of a kind,” she agreed, inwardly wondering how Thea would like Nana’s sculptures in
her
front yard. “Well, shall we start?”

Thea pulled up her shoulders on a deep inhale and patted her heart. “I’m nervous.”

“No, this is going to be fun. Come and sit. Really, nothing but fun, that’s why we’re here.”

“Yes, but have you ever taught a complete know-nothing before? Not a child, I mean a grown-up, a
fossil.
”

“Beginning adults are easier to teach than kids. It’s their idea, they’ve come willingly, they really
want
to learn. You don’t read music at all? We’re going to start very simply. Don’t panic. This is the book I like to use for adult beginners, but if you don’t—”

“Caddie…” Thea touched middle C with one of her pink-painted fingernails. She looked smart today in white slacks and a canary-colored
blouse, her hair pulled back from her face with pretty combs. “At the risk of being as big a pain in the behind for you as Angie…”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’ve been thinking about this since you said you’d teach me. I’m an old lady, I don’t want to play the scales or learn music theory, I don’t want to work my way up from ‘Little Bo Peep.’ ”

“Oh, Thea.” She could see trouble coming.

“Honey, I’m sixty-nine years old, I’m never going to be a real piano player. All my life I’ve wanted to play one song, sit down and entertain people with
one
song.”

Oh, boy. “What?”

“ ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ ”

Caddie put her head in her hands and wailed.

“I know! I know it’s hard, but believe it or not, I’m musical. I can pick out melodies by ear, and I can already play the top part with one finger. If you’d just show me the chords on the bottom—”

“Oh, Thea! Do you know how hard it is to play ragtime?”

“I
do.
”

“It sounds easy, but it’s not, it’s as hard as classical music for a beginner. You might as well say, ‘Caddie, I just want to learn Beethoven’s Ninth, that’s all I want to play.’ ”

“Now, that is an exaggeration.”

“Okay, but almost. It’s the rhythm that’s so tricky, you have to play a march tempo with your left hand and a very complicated syncopated beat with your right. Honestly, you could hardly pick a more difficult piece.”

“But you could simplify it for me.”

“There are simplified transcriptions, yes. All over the place.”

“I really want to play it, and I’ve got nothing but time. I’ll be the most conscientious student you ever had. Teach me.”

“You don’t look anywhere
near
sixty-nine years old.”

Thea put an arm around her waist and hugged her. “Don’t sidetrack me—will you teach it to me? Please?”

Caddie kept shaking her head, but then she laughed, helpless. “Okay, I’ll try.”

Thea clapped her hands.

“But
why,
of all the songs—”

“Because I love it! It peps people up. As soon as you hear it, you start tapping your foot and smiling. I want to learn it before I get so old I can’t see the keys.”

Caddie was getting excited in spite of herself. “I can make a recording, a simplified version you could listen to over and over, get used to before I show you how to play it. I’ve never taught without music before, I’m not even sure how we’ll do it. How does it go? I don’t even know what key it’s in. A-flat? It’s got four sections, they all do, rags, almost all, and they repeat.” She hummed a few notes—“No, that’s ‘The Entertainer.’ How does it go?”

Even Thea couldn’t remember how it started. She put her hands over her ears. “Wait, hush, let me think.”

They came up with it at the same time. “Bum bum—do
-do-
do-do-do—”

“Do
-do-
do-do-do!” Caddie played the first four measures with her right hand, and they burst out laughing.

“You see? It never fails!”

“You’re right, it’s happy music. But I can’t play any more without the sheet music, I really can’t.” So there wasn’t much more they could do at Thea’s first lesson. “Would you like to have some coffee?” Caddie invited, and they adjourned to the kitchen.

Thea spotted an envelope from Wake House on the counter and tapped her fingernail on it. “You got one, too.”

“Brenda’s letter?” It had come yesterday. She apologized over and over, but the bottom line was, rates at Wake House were going up. “It’s worse for you, Thea—you’ve hardly been here a month, and she’s raising the price.”

“Sounds like it’s unavoidable. Repairs for staying certified, that kind of thing. Last week it was squirrels in the chimney, this week the roof leaks. Always something.”

“I know, but still. It’s a hardship.”

“Are you and Frances…”

“We’re okay. I worry about some of the others, though.”

“Caddie, look.” She froze in front of the window over the sink, pointing. “You’ve got a Baltimore oriole on your feeder. Oh—he flew away. Did you see him?”

“No. Well, wings, I saw something.”

“They’re getting so rare, and they used to be everywhere.” She sat down in Nana’s old chair at the scratched white metal table, and Caddie thought how natural she looked there, comfortable and relaxed, as if she were in her own kitchen. How long had it been since Caddie had had company, somebody in the house who was a friend, not a student?

“Are you a birder?” she asked. “Nana was, sort of. I put food out, but I don’t pay much attention to who’s who.”

“Not me—Will was the bird-watcher. His lifelong hobby. He was so keen, and he knew
every
thing.” She had wistful gray eyes that crinkled at the corners, even when she wasn’t smiling. “I think of him all the time, but seeing a bird, oh my, just about
any
bird, that’s a guaranteed memory.”

“Will was your husband?” Thea nodded. “Did you lose him recently? I was thinking it had been some time.”

“It was two years ago in February. February the eighth.”

“You miss him a lot,” Caddie said shyly, setting their cups on the table, sitting down in her old chair. “How long were you married?”

“Four years.”

“
Oh.
Oh, I thought—”

“He wasn’t my first husband. And we lived together for a couple of years before we got married.” She sipped her coffee pensively. “He was nothing like the kind of man I ever thought I’d marry, but for the time we had together I’d never been happier. Which shows what I knew.”

“What was he like?”

“Younger than me. Not too much, six years. And not successful, not in the way most people define success. The way
I
defined success—he was nothing like my first husband, in other words. Or my father, or my grandfather, the men in my life I’d always used as models.”

“Thea,” Caddie interrupted, “I could write your biography. You could talk to me just like this, and I could write it down for you.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Want me to? It’d be fun.”

“Oh, but then I’d have to reveal all my secrets.”

“You keep secrets from
me
?” She mimed shock.

“Only the ones you don’t need to know.” Thea’s smile was more tender than jocular. “Anyway, I’m too young for a biography! You’d have to keep updating it.”

“You are, much too young. Do you have a picture of Will?”

“Not with me, I’ve got one at home.” She gave a wondering laugh. “At
home,
listen to me.”

“Does it feel like home already? It does to Nana, I think. Your room is fabulous.” Thea’s tower suite had the sun all day from three windows set deep in its graceful, rounded wall. “You must feel like a princess.”

“Maybe one that’s a little long in the tooth.”

“Why did you come to Wake House? If I may ask,” Caddie thought to add. “You’re younger than anybody. You’re healthy, you could be independent if you wanted.”

“I’m getting macular degeneration in one eye.”

“But still—”

“And arthritis in my toe, I told you. Don’t laugh, it’s disabling. I have to wear old-lady shoes or I hobble around like a cripple. But at least it’s my toe and not my thumb—then I couldn’t play ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ ”

“Seriously,” Caddie pressed.

“Seriously.” She sat back in her chair. “The house was so sad without Will. The nicest thing Carl, my first husband, ever gave me—he was a banker, a pillar of the community, we didn’t suit at
all
—was our vacation home in the settlement. It’s not very big or fancy, but it’s old and lovely, and it’s on the prettiest little creek. Heron Creek—near Berlin on the Eastern Shore. I went to live there after the divorce, and eventually I hired Will to dam up a little piece of the creek so I could swim there. That’s how we met.”

“How romantic.”

“He was a handyman. That’s how I found him in the want ads, under ‘Handyman.’ Oh, my, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t fix. Or make.”
She slid one finger around the rim of her cup, her face dreamy. “It started with me taking coffee out to him and talking with him while he worked. We were both divorced, but his was friendlier and his ex-wife had just died. So he was sad. He had a daughter, but she was married and living way out in Phoenix. Still does.”

“You were both lonely.”

“Well,
I
was. Will had more outlets.” She laughed. “After he dammed up the creek, he built me a garden shed. Oh, you should see it, it’s a work of art. Then it was bookcases for my bedroom, then a new chimney. When fall came, he went back to his
real
job—selling woodstoves and solar heat panels.
And
he was a poet.”

“Goodness.”

“I’d never met anybody like him, needless to say. He didn’t care a thing about money, had no ambition except to enjoy his life—that’s what drove wife number one crazy. ‘It goes by so fast,’ he’d say, ‘I can’t sleep through any of it.’ That was his philosophy. One day we just drove up to Atlantic City and got married. Ha! He proposed to me in a poem. Oh, we were like teenagers. He made our wedding rings.”

“Oh, Thea.”

“I told you he could do anything.”

“It’s beautiful.” Caddie had admired it before, an unusual ring of heavy, twisted gold.

“We had nine perfect years, which is more than lots of people get. The last one wasn’t so good—he got cancer, and it killed him. ‘You see?’ he’d say. ‘I told you it goes by fast. I didn’t want to have to
prove
it to you, though.’ ” Her smile was full of melancholy.

“After he was gone, I waited two years—that’s what they say, don’t do anything, take no drastic steps after you lose your spouse for at least two years. And I found I couldn’t stay in the house without him. So here I am, I’ve come home. This is the town I grew up in, you know.”

“Where, what street?”

“I’ll take you by it sometime, my aunt and uncle’s house—I went to live with them after my mother died.”

“How old were you? When your mother died?”

“I was nine.”

“Oh, Thea—”

“But that’s another story. A
long
story. Hey, you’re worming my biography out of me!”

“I wasn’t trying to, honest. But, Thea, I was nine when my mother died, too.”

“Were you?” She looked at her with warmth and interest and no surprise. “Then we have something sad in common.” She stroked her finger lightly over the top of Caddie’s hand. “Remember that game we played? The one where we had to describe each other?”

Caddie made a face. “When I found out I’m the kind of person who wears flannel pajamas and never gets a speeding ticket.”

“Oh, did that hurt your feelings?” Thea chuckled. “When it was your turn, I said you made me wish for something again. Something I used to wish for, but then I got too old. Do you know what it was?”