The Summer Cottage (8 page)

“More coffee?”

“Yes, John, that would be lovely.”

“It’s me, Helen.”

Claire looked up at the face of her daughter. “I was thinking about how your father and I used to sit here at night, monitoring the actions of all of you with limited success.”

“You were fairly on top of things, as I remember.”

“You were all pretty good—well, except for Charlotte.”

Helen smiled. “She was the original piece of work.”

“My guess is she still is,” said Claire.

Pammy appeared at the porch entrance, a square hole the size of the two French doors that were fully opened at the end of June and latched to the porch wall until Labor Day. Pammy held the pot of decaf and a small bowl in her hands.

“You read my mind,” said Claire, holding up her mug. It was a mug Pammy had given her many years back, when the “I Love New York” advertising campaign was in full swing.

“And you’re using my mug.” Pammy filled it halfway. Then, tipped in the kitchen by Helen, Pammy took two cubes of ice from the bowl and slid them into her mother’s mug. All of them pretended not to notice.

“It’s a nice size,” said Claire. “Not too big.” Pammy poured coffee into the other two mugs Helen had brought to the porch. All three of them drank their coffee black. “Do you still love New York, Pammy?”

“In some ways I do.” Pammy took a sip of her coffee and sat back on the wicker couch she and Helen shared. “I like my job, and I like all the options I have during my off-hours.”

“You haven’t been able to find a man.”

Pammy breathed in deeply. “No, Mother, I haven’t been able to find a man.”

Claire sipped her coffee. “I’m not saying you need one, Pammy. But it’s probably about time to stop searching.” Tears came to Pammy’s eyes. “Oh Lord, I’ve said the wrong thing.”

“What am I supposed to say to that, Mother?” Pammy looked at the faded wool rugs that covered the floor instead of at Claire.

“All I meant, Pammy, is searching in vain is disappointing and depressing. You cannot begin to realize your potential until you stop thinking it can only be reached through someone else.”

“I don’t think that, Mom.”

“When I was swimming,” said Claire, as if she hadn’t heard Pammy’s remark, “I wanted more than anything in the world to be an Olympian. That was my single focus. The regional and national titles I held? Sure, they were nice, but they didn’t make me happy. At some point—much later than it should have happened—I realized that I wasn’t going to the Olympics. And while I was absolutely crushed, I was also, somehow, liberated.” Helen looked at Pammy, who was now wiping her nose with one of the napkins she had brought to the porch. Claire continued. She had always been undaunted, unmoved by what she deemed unnecessary emotion. If she hesitated, if she corrected herself, it was out of respect for the person emoting rather than any reaction on her part to the tears themselves. “You may very well find someone dear. But I firmly believe that it won’t happen, not at your age, until you stop looking.”

Helen stood. “I could use something sweet. Pammy, didn’t you say you brought something special for dessert?”

“I did,” she said, flashing a fake smile. “Macaroons from my favorite bakery.”

“I love macaroons,” said Claire.

“I know,” said Pammy.

“I’ll get them,” said Helen, leaving the porch. In the living room she called, “In the white bag next to the fridge, right?”

“Yes.”

Pammy sipped her coffee, her eyes resting on the bookcase against the house wall that held paperback novels she had read over the years:
Jaws, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Jurassic Park
. Missing were the romance novels that Pammy had been reading almost exclusively for the last five or six years, a substitute for a fulfilling relationship. She hid them from her mother, for fear of being teased or reprimanded. But she read them in front of Helen, who asked her to read the best parts aloud. Pammy was already looking forward to the trip into town, to the secondhand bookstore to find something for the beach.

“Pammy.” Pammy looked at her mother. “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.” While Pammy wasn’t ready to accept her mother’s apology, she did anyway, by nodding her head. It was a start, Claire saying she was sorry, because Pammy knew how difficult it was for her mother to do so. Claire was adept at what Pammy called the detached apology, meaning she would say something like, “I’m sorry you were hurt by that remark.” But the personal apology she just uttered, attaching herself to the deed done, was rare and, therefore, meaningful.

Helen came back with a plate of macaroons and more napkins. “Delicious,” said Claire, biting into the cookie she had taken when Helen presented them to her. “That’s the best macaroon I’ve ever tasted—blue ribbon.”

And while Pammy hated her mother’s competition-laced language, she gave her a smile. It did, after all, feel good to receive a compliment, even about something she had purchased, from someone whose praise had always been hard to earn.

“Listen to the crickets,” said Helen. “They are outdoing themselves tonight.”

And the three of them fell silent, each in her own way grateful for singing insects and stilled tongues.

C
HAPTER
10

 

P
ammy and Helen got dressed without turning on the lights. They had laid their darkest-colored shorts and shirts on the chair next to the window before getting into bed in their underwear to wait. They listened, as they often did, to their parents talking quietly as they climbed the stairs for the night. The girls were normally still, focused on Claire’s and John’s words, waiting for the names Pammy or Helen to spring forth into the hallway ahead of their utterers. But tonight Pammy and Helen were preoccupied with their plans, with their imminent departure into the darkness. They continued to listen, as Claire and John, in their nightclothes finally, got into the bed that had previously belonged to Claire’s parents and grandparents, the bed that creaked with their weight as they shifted, settling in. Helen had then stared, assiduously, at her watch with the illuminated dial, for ten minutes before giving the sign: three soft knocks on the bunk bed railing. She quickly descended the ladder and, crossing the room silently, met her sister at the chair. They slipped on their clothes, then tiptoed to the window that opened onto the roof above the outdoor shower and back door. The screen, which they had earlier unlatched, slipped easily off its hinges. Helen handed it to Pammy, who propped it against the bedroom wall, like they had practiced. Helen boosted herself up onto the sill and stuck one leg out onto the roof. She glanced back at Pammy, who gave her the okay sign, then ducked her head under the raised window and out into the sticky night air. Helen lifted out her other leg, then turned around, so her back was against the house and her bare feet were firmly planted on the slanted roof, toes pointing out to the edge, some fifteen inches away and twelve feet off the ground. Like a crab, Helen inched along the roof until she reached the outdoor shower below. She glanced back at Pammy, now on the roof and looking at the dark grass beneath them. As instructed, Pammy closed the window to within an inch of the sill behind her. Her movements were slow, deliberate, fearful.

“Don’t look down,” Helen whispered.

“Where else am I going to look?”

“At me,” said Helen. “Look at me.”

“We should have practiced this.”

“You can’t practice sneaking out of a bedroom window at night. Just follow me.”

Slowly, Helen lowered herself onto the top of the shower’s standing wall. The house provided two sides to the outdoor shower, a curtain the third, and a white wood wall the fourth. Once atop the wall, Helen grabbed hold of the iron shower rod and swung down, Tarzan style, to the ground. Pammy sat three inches from the window, frozen. “I can’t do this,” she whispered urgently.

“Then go back inside and go to sleep.”

“Helen!”

“What do you want me to say? I did it. So can you.”

Pammy shifted her bottom away from the window. She closed her eyes and felt the tar and sand of the shingles grab at her shorts as she dragged herself along the roof. A meticulous laundress, Claire would know Pammy had been up to something. Helen sat down on the grass, then lay back to look at the stars, innumerable and brilliant against the black sky. Thomas was teaching her the constellations. She had found the Big and Little Dippers when she heard the thud. “Ouch!” said Pammy, picking herself up.

“What happened?” asked Helen.

“Some accomplice you turn out to be.” Pammy brushed the grass off her shorts. “I slipped right off the edge of the shower. You didn’t tell me it was wet.”

“Showers are always wet.” Helen smiled at her sister.

“Well, that hurt. I probably broke my ass,” said Pammy, looking at Helen for the impact of using a prohibited word. When she got no reaction, she said, “Wait until you get hurt.”

“That,” said Helen, offering no sympathy either, “never happens.”

Helen started walking across the backyard, looking back at the house for signs of her parents; Pammy followed at a distance. Abruptly, Helen stopped, letting Pammy catch up. Holding hands, they ran through the Callahans’ yard, which was illuminated by a giant spotlight affixed to the garage, then down the street and around the corner to the docks.

During the day, the docks were a friendly place. Helen, who crabbed at least once daily, knew every plank. She also knew most of the weekend fishermen, who sometimes congregated after their morning ritual, all holding up their biggest fish in an effort to win storytelling rights for the day. If they cleaned their fish there, Helen watched, never disgusted, as fishing, to her, didn’t seem like the slaughtering of innocent creatures. All these fishermen ate what they caught, so the fish were food, pure and simple. The young fathers with toddlers in tow arrived at the docks after the fishermen had gone home for breakfast. With sleep still in their eyes and uncombed hair, they smiled at Helen as they ushered their charges across the planks. Harnessed into puffy orange lifejackets, the kids would scamper into the family Boston Whaler and wait for their dad to start the engine. Down the creek, out to the islands, over to Sandy Point, the destination never seemed to matter to the children, teeth chattering from the early morning chill and excitement, as they embarked on another summer adventure.

But at night, the docks lost their warmth and charm. Poorly lit and eerie, they looked like scary movie graveyards, with each wood piling marking the dead down below. The water gently shoved itself against the boats in quick, slapping waves that sounded, at night, like footsteps. Helen glanced behind her. Was someone coming?

Seeing the tiny orange lights in the distance, Helen and Pammy, still holding hands, knew they had found them. Six—no, eight—Helen thought, as she counted again—including Charlotte and Rick—people stood at the end of the first dock, smoking and, Helen guessed, drinking beer. The night just didn’t feel right, she had once overheard Rick say to Charlotte on the beach, without a beer in one hand and a babe in the other. Helen could think of at least a hundred reasons why she wouldn’t want to be Rick’s babe. Number one was that he was gross. He had straight, jet-black hair down to his shoulders that looked greasy. His beard was scruffy, looking more like a failure than a success, and his chest hair, which was always visible because he hardly ever wore a shirt, barely covered the pimples beneath it. Charlotte, she was convinced, had a screw loose to date him.

“Let’s try to get closer,” said Pammy.

“I think they’ll see us. We can wait here until they go to the beach. That shouldn’t be too long.”

They lay on the grass, tummies down, and watched the cigarette light show. Pammy wished she were older, while Helen twisted blades of grass between her fingers and simply waited. Within minutes, the teenagers cast their butts into the water and walked back down the dock. Charlotte and Rick, holding hands and bottles of beer, strode within twenty yards of Helen and Pammy, who had put their faces into the grass and were praying they would not be discovered. When Charlotte and the others were gone, Helen and Pammy stood and brushed the freshly cut grass from their clothes. “Yuck!” Pammy said, pulling several blades from her lips. “Did you see where they went?”

“They must have gone to the beach. Let’s go by the rocks and see if we can come up behind them.”

Helen and Pammy climbed down the huge rocks engineered to retain the dirt cliff between the docks and the houses it supported from extinction. At the bottom, they ran along the water’s edge until they reached the stone wall that bordered the Tetreaus’ property. Backs to the wall, they moved slowly toward the end, where the bathing beach began, and, they hoped, where Charlotte and Rick and their friends could be found. Once there, Helen peeked around the corner and, seeing nothing, waved Pammy on. Staying close to the sea wall, they walked along the beach in silence, hoping they would see more cigarettes or hear voices. Just when Helen was about to give up on the beach and try the duck pond, she heard Rick say “money.” She pulled at Pammy’s shirt and motioned for her to be quiet. They got down on their hands and knees and crawled along the sand until they reached the side of the steps that led up to the public access, just down the street from the Thompson cottage. Helen held her breath, believing if Rick found them spying on his gang, he might break her wrist by twisting it or pull half her hair out of her head.

Risking discovery and certain injury at the hands of her sister’s dopey boyfriend, Helen peered over the steps and saw Charlotte sitting as part of a circle on the other side of the steps. The distinctive smell of marijuana drifted over and hit Helen like a hot, moist breeze. She sat back down and looked at Pammy, who was smiling and holding her nose.

“Who’s in with me?” asked Rick. No one answered. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s easy money, and nobody wants any of it.”

“I might be persuaded to take some of it,” Charlotte said, with a giggle.

“You’ll get plenty of it, babe. But I want a man on the job with me. No babes involved. What about you, Dave?”

“I’m not interested in going to jail, man.”

“Nobody’s going to jail. We wear stockings over our heads. We wear funky clothes from that consignment store in town. We hold our hands in our pockets like we’re loaded, and we get all the cash in the drawer. Then we run out of the store and split. Easy money.”

Jimmy Stockton, a fifteen-year-old who Helen knew from Charlotte was anxious to fit in with the group and eager to please Rick, asked when Rick was planning to do the job.

“Anytime. We can go tomorrow night. Can you stay out past ten?” Everyone in the circle laughed.

“I can stay out as late as I want,” said Jimmy.

“Good,” Rick said. “We’ll hit it Monday night, at closing time when it will be quiet, then drive back here and split up the money.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

“Sixty-forty,” Rick answered. “I’m the brains here.” Helen let out a giggle. “Who the hell is that?” Rick stood.

“I giggled,” said Charlotte. “Or at least I think I did. God, I’m stoned.”

Rick sat back down. “None of you breathe a word of this.”

“I think it’s
breathes,
” said Charlotte. “I think
none
takes a singular verb, which in this case would be breathes.”

“What the hell you talking about, woman?” asked Rick.

“My mother was an English teacher—remember? Sometimes she does grammar drills at dinner.”

“Your mother is a psycho,” said Rick.

“You’ve got me there.”

Everyone in the circle was quiet for a moment. Most of them were, like Charlotte, feeling the effects of the joint they had shared. It was this middle high time that Charlotte liked best. Bookended by thinking everything was hilarious and eating a pint of chocolate chip ice cream, the middle high presented time for reflection. Sometimes Charlotte focused on her split ends or a chipped fingernail, but other times her mind flew into the night sky, landing on a bright star or the moon, pondering the cosmos.

Rick stood. “Well,” he said. “I think it’s time to call it a night.” They all knew what this meant. And they all dutifully stood, said their good-byes, and walked up the cement steps to the street. Some of them would linger there, smoking the last cigarette of the evening, while others, bound by curfews, would head home, already looking forward to the bag of chips in the kitchen cupboard or the leftover spare ribs in the fridge. Charlotte and Rick stayed, as they always did.

“Let’s go,” whispered Pammy.

“We’re done?”

“I don’t think you want to see what’s coming next.” Pammy started to crawl along the beach, back whence they came. Helen followed her, but stopped for a moment to look back at her sister, who was allowing Rick to take off her shirt. Once out of eyesight and earshot, Pammy and Helen stood and ran the rest of the way. They rounded the Tetreaus’ seawall, and then jogged along the cement walkway to the road. They slowed their pace, now that Rick and Charlotte had little chance of discovering them, and walked back along the street-lighted road to their cottage. Helen boosted Pammy to the top of the shower wall, where she stepped onto the roof and crept along until she reached the window. When Helen was at the top of the shower wall, a car pulled onto their grassy driveway, its headlights shining on Helen. She froze.

“Well, well, well,” said Thomas as he got out of his Ford Pinto. “What do we have here? Helen Thompson, I do believe you’ve been up to some mischief.”

“Shhhh! Mom and Dad are sleeping.”

“I’ll keep my voice down all right,” said Thomas, smiling at his youngest sister, “just as soon as you tell me what I’ve missed.” He walked to the shower and held up his arms. Helen lowered herself down into them. Pammy, thinking that if Thomas did not talk to her directly she was not caught, scooted through their bedroom window that she had just reopened and then sat on the pine floor, stripping off her shirt and shorts, hoping to get back into bed without further discovery.

Helen never minded getting caught by Thomas; in fact, she liked it because it meant she got to spend time with him. Because he was eight years older than Helen, Thomas was often elsewhere—working mostly—but also hanging around other kids his age. When Helen was able to turn his attention toward her, she instantly turned her full attention to him, reveling in every minute they spent in one another’s company, every bit of advice offered, every burst of laughter. They never fought, Thomas and Helen, like he and Charlotte did. And Helen thought the difference in their ages might have something to do with this, at least that’s what her mother had told her one day. But she also knew that she and Thomas were connected. Other older brothers barely knew their much younger siblings existed. But Thomas had always been a part of Helen’s world—doing puzzles with her when she was in kindergarten; drawing with her when, in second grade, she thought she wanted to be an artist; taking her on biking adventures; and, just this past year, occasionally picking her up at school and driving her to Dairy Queen for a dip cone.