The Summer Cottage (19 page)

Charlotte was okay, so no one but Thomas, and Eddie, needed to know about her abortion. And because she meant it when she said she didn’t want talk about it ever again, Thomas, as the years passed, forgot about it. Charlotte, of course, never brought it up.

C
HAPTER
23

 

T
homas checked his watch as he drove his Cadillac onto the grass beside Charlotte’s rental. It was exactly noon. It was a ten-hour drive from Ontario, where they lived in a suburb of Toronto that he had left at two that morning. His wife, Barb, hated the idea of getting up and coaxing the children into the car in the middle of the night. But Thomas promised he’d drive until breakfast time, and then, after an hour’s nap in the passenger seat when Barb would take over, drive again until they reached the cottage. It was a long trip, and it would be easier on the children, he reasoned, if they slept halfway through it. They were making excellent time, Thomas pointed out over breakfast sandwiches at a rest stop in upstate New York. No one but truckers and the very hardiest of drivers cruised the interstates before dawn. They also made good time because Thomas was very frugal about stopping, as he was about everything else in life. Every three hours was the rule; anything more frequent than that was unnecessary. He viewed pulling into a rest area as an excuse for Barb to buy postcards and for the kids to plead with him for money to buy candy from the ubiquitous vending machines. Yet, at six and four, Sally and Peter were well mannered and rarely complained. They were accustomed to their father’s rules and regulations. And they had a disciplined but attentive mother, who often compensated for what might be seen in their young minds as their father’s unyielding behavior. Thomas leaned over and kissed his sleeping wife. She awoke immediately. “We’re here,” he said.

Barb opened her eyes and looked at her husband. “What time is it?”

“Noon,” said Thomas, looking at his watch. “Exactly.”

“Just as you predicted,” she said. “Aren’t you clever.” She smiled at him and then looked out the car window at the house. “This is beautiful, Thomas.”

“Yes,” he said, following her gaze. “I’d forgotten how much so.”

Thomas gave his wife another quick kiss and then got out of the car and stretched his arms over his head. He breathed in the seaside air he had not inhaled for thirty years. Now that he was here, it was impossible to understand why it had been that long since his last visit. Sure, he had been busy. But too busy for this?

Helen, who was in the kitchen and had heard the car pull in, came out the door and met her brother on the lawn. Thomas wrapped his arms around his sister and lifted her off the ground. “Thomas,” she said, studying his face.

“It’s so nice to see you. You look terrific,” he whispered in her ear.

“You’re looking pretty good yourself.”

“The place looks good, Helen,” said Thomas, looking beyond his sister at the house. “You’ve kept it up nicely.”

“Dad did most of it. You know how handy he was with a hammer and paintbrush.”

“I do, indeed. That’s the very reason I’m so handy with a hammer and a paintbrush. He did like having an assist.”

Helen smiled at him. “Where’s the gang?” she asked, peering around his shoulder.

“Gathering their thoughts,” said Thomas, turning to look back at the car. Barb, who had emerged from the passenger seat, walked toward Helen as she reinserted small plastic combs into her short, light blond hair, tucking them behind her ears. Helen crossed the rest of the lawn to meet her. “How was the trip?” she asked, giving Barb a hug.

“Great,” she said. “Except we all have to use the bathroom immediately.”

“There’s nothing like a road trip with old one-stop Thomas.”

“Two stops since breakfast. He was feeling magnanimous,” said Barb, kissing Helen on the cheek.

Helen bent down to talk to Sally, who had unbuckled herself from her seat in the back and climbed out of the car. She was clinging to her mother’s leg. “Hello, big girl. I’m your Aunt Helen.”

Sally smiled and said a barely audible hello, and then looked over at her brother, who had also disengaged himself from the car and was now holding on to Barb’s other thigh. Peter was not inclined at first to talk to people he didn’t know, according to Barb’s letter. But his initial shyness would wear off quickly. And he was especially excited to meet his older boy cousins. Both Sally and Peter were comfortable with adults, perhaps because Barb and Thomas took them almost everywhere they went, rarely employing babysitters. Helen gave Peter a quick kiss on his forehead before he could back away. “Come inside,” she said. “With any luck, the bathrooms are free.” She showed her niece and nephew the tiny blue and white half bathroom off the kitchen, and then led Barb to the porch to see Charlotte and Pammy. Claire was in her room resting, and the boys had returned to the tennis court after a swim. After watching Todd and Ned win their first match, Charles and Daniel had gone to the beach with them. Helen guessed her husband was still dozing on the raft, as reported by the boys on their way through the kitchen in their wet suits.

“Thomas and Barb are here,” Helen announced in excitement halfway across the living room. She wanted her sisters to get ready, in the next few seconds, to again see their sister-in-law, their relation they had met just twice, at Thomas and Barb’s wedding and at John Thompson’s funeral. Helen knew Pammy would be polite and warm. It was Charlotte, whose relationship with Thomas had been strained for as long as Helen could remember, who was the unpredictable one. Claire said Thomas and Charlotte never got along because they were so close in age. But Helen knew that Charlotte’s being a jerk, Thomas’s favorite word for her, also had something to do with it. Helen remembered that they were closer to one another during Thomas’s last summer at the beach, the summer of 1973, but she thought they had not had much contact since. When Helen and Barb reached the porch, Pammy was standing, and Charlotte, while sitting, was looking expectantly at the doorway. “Hello, Barb,” said Pammy, stepping forward and hugging her.

“It’s so nice to see all of you again,” said Barb. “It’s been too long.”

“Where’s your no-good husband?” asked Charlotte.

“Here I am,” Thomas said, from the living room.

When he walked into the porch, Pammy hugged him, and then held him back at arm’s length to look at him. “You look pretty good for an old guy,” she said.

“Older and wiser, Pammy,” said Thomas, with a smile. “Your turn will come soon enough, little sister.”

“The coming is always the best part.” Charlotte was now standing, Helen suspected, to give her brother and Barb an opportunity to look at her chest.

“Are those new?” asked Thomas, looking at her breasts. “Or did I just sleep through your teenage years?”

Pammy, Helen, and Barb laughed at Thomas’s joke, while Charlotte quipped, “I
wish
I’d had these babies in my teenage years,” she said. “I’d have been the queen of the beach.”

“If memory serves,” said Thomas, “you
were
the queen of the beach.”

“In a good way or a bad way?” asked Pammy.

Both Charlotte and Thomas ignored what they individually perceived as a stupid and rhetorical, respectively, question. “Where’s Mom?” asked Thomas instead.

“She’s resting,” said Helen. “And Charles is down at the beach with Daniel.”

“Who’s Daniel?”

“Charlotte’s boyfriend,” said Helen.

“He’s twenty-seven,” said Pammy, crossing her arms over her chest.

“That,” said Thomas, looking at Charlotte, “would explain the breasts.”

“Thomas,” said Barb, giving her husband a look.

“Don’t worry yourself,” said Charlotte. “I can take care of myself.”

“Amen, sister,” said Thomas, nodding his head once.

They were all silent for a moment before Barb said, “I’m just going to run to the bathroom.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Helen. “Run up the stairs, if you’d like. The bathroom is on the left. Don’t worry about waking Claire. She sleeps very soundly.”

“Where are the children?” Pammy asked Barb as she was leaving the porch.

“Around here somewhere,” said Barb. “I’ll round them up in a couple minutes.”

“Are you hungry?” Helen asked Thomas.

“No.” Thomas held his stomach. “Barb packed enough snacks for a cross-country trip.”

“Good,” said Helen. “We all had a chicken embryo feast this morning, and I’m still full.”

“Eggs,” Charlotte said, by way of explanation. “They all had eggs and were disappointed I wouldn’t participate.”

“I thought you ate almost anything for breakfast,” Thomas said to Charlotte, giving her a wink. “Eggs, bacon, wedding attendants.”

“That was seven years ago,” said Charlotte, picking up Thomas’s reference to her behavior at his wedding. Drunk, she offered to peel off her leopard-skin dress and dance naked for Thomas’s ushers, if they stopped by her room after the reception. What she didn’t tell Thomas was that two out of the three of them did.

“Listen,” said Thomas, looking at his watch, “as long as Mom’s resting, and we’ve got some time before the next feeding, I’m going to drive to the motel by the state park and unpack. I’ll be back before you miss me.”

Helen put her hands on her hips. “I thought you were going to stay here. Charles and I are out of your room, and I’ve already moved my things back in with Pammy.”

Thomas held up his hands. “It’s easier this way, Helen. We’re right down the street, and I think the kids will sleep better in a bed.” Helen’s disappointment was evident on her face. Thomas walked the three steps to reach her and put his hand on top of her head. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“How can you get back in that car after ten hours on the road?” asked Pammy.

“Are you kidding?” said Helen, letting it go, teasing Thomas. “He could drive back to Ontario right now, without stopping.”

“Who wants to come with me?” asked Thomas. “Do we need anything in town?”

“We’ve got enough food . . .” Helen started.

“. . . to feed an army.” Pammy finished.

“We may be at the beach when you get back. I’ll see if the kids want anything to eat before we go,” said Helen. “Hurry, Thomas. The water is beautiful today.”

“Don’t go to the raft until I get back. We have been talking about the swim all week. Peter will need his kickboard, but I think Sally can make it the whole way. She takes after her grandmother in the water.”

“God, I hope that’s the only thing they have in common,” said Charlotte.

Sally and Peter walked onto porch just as Thomas was about to leave. He bent down to hug his children. “This,” he said to them, “is your Aunt Pammy and your Aunt Charlotte.”

“Hello,” the children said softly in unison.

“Well, hello,” said Pammy, getting down onto her knees. “I’m happy to see you.”

The children smiled at her, but said nothing.

“And isn’t that a cool shirt you have on, young man,” Charlotte said to Peter, who reached over and wrapped his arms around his father’s leg.

“You guys stay here with Mommy,” he said to Sally and Peter. “I’m going to unload our stuff at the motel. I’ll be back soon, okay?”

“That sounds great.” Barb had returned from her bathroom break. She stood next to Helen.

Helen put her arm, momentarily, around her sister-in-law. Helen hadn’t been sure until they pulled into the driveway that they, that he, would come.

 

As Charlotte said, it had been almost seven years. Thomas and Barb were married in August of 1996. All the Thompsons attended the Ontario wedding, but no one had seen him or his wife since, aside from at John Thompson’s funeral. Thomas was very busy with the self-storage business he had started in upstate New York after working in Manhattan for a decade in investment banking. One of his business connections had a business connection across the border. There was a dearth of self-storage places, it turned out, in southern Ontario, and the market was ripe, in the mid-nineties, for development and quick expansion. It was in Toronto, walking out of the elevator with his new Canadian partner, that Thomas saw Barb McNaughton in the lobby of an office building on King Street. He was immediately attracted to her, not only to her blond hair, blue eyes, and petite, fit body, but also because she smiled at him like she knew him, like they were childhood friends meeting for the first time in many years. They walked out of the building at the same time and hesitated, both of them, on the sidewalk. Thomas introduced himself to her and asked her if she had time for coffee, to which she replied yes. They talked in the coffee shop for two hours and were engaged three months later.

Thomas could still not get over his good fortune. He had dated several women over the years; he was forty when he met Barb. But all of the women fell short in one way or another: Ashley talked too much; Chantel spent too much time in front of the mirror; Marion was sweet but uncoordinated. (Thomas loved to hike on the weekends; Marion could walk like a runway model in heels, but hiking boots made her feet look ugly, Marion had protested, and gave her blisters.) They were all temporarily very engaging, Ashley, Chantel, and Marion. But each woman’s peccadilloes eventually worked their way from the back to the front of Thomas’s brain, causing him to lose sight of their good qualities and, shortly afterward, leading to the breakup of the relationship. Barb talked just the right amount. She glanced at herself in the mirror with both the confidence and indifference of someone who knows she’s attractive. And she could beat Thomas at tennis. Barb measured up to every one of Thomas’s expectations, pushing for good the faded image of Anna Santiago out of his head. This was the most convincing reason Thomas knew he was in love.

The summer after Thomas’s first year at Princeton, he did not go to the cottage because he was still not over Anna. She had written him at school a few times his first semester, and he had written back. But then he stopped communicating with her. Writing to her and Amy made him miss her more; he could not, like others were able to do after a breakup, view her as a friend. He immersed himself in his studies, played club baseball, and hung out with the guys on his floor. That summer, he stayed in Stonefield and worked for a landscaping company. He had talked Eddie Kozlowski into spending the summer at the Thompson family home. And together they mowed lawns during the day and drank beer in the evening. Thomas missed his family, but only in the abstract. He was already, at nineteen, pulled in another, more independent direction.