Summer Friends (15 page)
Authors: Holly Chamberlin
22
“Did you hear about the trouble Dave Junior got himself into last night?”
“Dave Junior? No, what happened?”
Maggie was in Ogunquit Sundries on Main Street Thursday morning, hoping to find cuticle cream, which for some reason she had forgotten to pack. She was peering down one of the narrow aisles when she overheard a bit of the conversation between two older women to her right.
Maggie didn't make it a habit to listen in on other people's conversations, but this was different: This was about her friend's family; it had to be. She turned and took a small step closer to the women, pretending to examine a box of Efferdent on the shelf in front of her.
“Well, I don't know if the police are involved,” the first woman was now whispering. “But I did hear that his parents are absolutely . . .”
Her words were lost as the woman and her friend passed behind Maggie and moved toward the back of the store. She abandoned the search for cuticle cream and hurried outside. It was only nine o'clock, but already the sidewalks were filled with tourists. Maggie made her way to the corner and found a relatively quiet spot alongside the Bread & Roses Bakery. She called Delphine's house. When no one answered, she left a brief voice mail and tried Delphine's cell phone. Again, the call went to voice mail, and Maggie left another, similar message. “Hey, it's me. We had talked about maybe getting together today. Call me on my cell. Bye.” She knew by now that Delphine would only ignore a text.
By ten o'clock Delphine hadn't returned Maggie's call. Maggie left another message; and at noon, another. Finally, beginning to worry in earnest, she got into her car and drove out to the farm. She found Delphine in the office, just rising from her desk chair. She startled when she saw Maggie.
“I thought I'd find you here,” Maggie said. “Did you get my messages earlier?”
Delphine looked away, in the direction of the corkboard on the wall. “Yes. Sorry, I've been busy.”
“You're always busy,” Maggie said with a smile. “We had talked about maybe getting together today.”
“I know, I'm sorry, but the day just got away from me.” She passed a hand through her hair, which was messy and unwashed. “It'll have to be another time. I've got a lot to do.”
Delphine walked past Maggie and out into the dusty yard.
“Wait,” Maggie called. “Delphine. In town, this morning, I overheard some people talking.”
Delphine came to a stop and slowly turned around. Maggie noticed that she looked suddenly exhausted, deflated.
“Talking about what?”
“I didn't hear it all,” Maggie admitted. “Something about Dave Junior being in trouble.”
“People should mind their own business.” Delphine's voice was flat.
“By âpeople,' do you mean me or those women I overheard in Ogunquit Sundries?”
Delphine hesitated, and then sighed. She felt she had been caught or defeated. “You'll find out about it anyway,” she said. “Better to hear it from me. Last night Dave Junior got into a fight with some kid on vacation here with some friends. A kid around Dave Junior's age, seventeen. Too young to be drinking, but it seems that he had been. They were all hanging out in the parking lot at the beach. The kid started bad-mouthing one of Dave Junior's friends, a girl he goes to school with. Dave Junior asked him to stop, but the kid wouldn't. So Dave Junior hit him. The kid lost a tooth. His friends wanted him to call the police, but he refused. Just ran. Seems he's been in trouble before and his parents, who I talked to this morning, don't want to draw attention to the incident.”
Maggie put her hand to her heart. “My God. Is everything okay now?”
“Everything will be,” Delphine said firmly. “The parents want compensation. They want money for the tooth to be replaced. They don't have dental insurance. If we don't give it to them they'll call in a lawyer. I talked to a dentist in town, got some information on how much this procedure might cost, and I negotiated a deal with the parents. It's all taken care of. End of story.”
“Delphine,” Maggie cried, “that is not the end of the story! The parents don't want to call attention to the incident, but they're ready to hire a lawyer to sue you? No, you have to call a lawyer of your own. These people are trying to bully you. Who are they? What do you know about them? They could be con artists andâ”
“Look,” Delphine said, retreating a step. “We can't really afford a lawyer right now. Things have been kind of . . . tight. And we absolutely don't want bad publicity for our family. We'll pay what these people want and everything will stay quiet. They're not being unreasonable. Not really.”
Maggie laughed in disbelief. “Not being unreasonable! Delphine, you're being pressured into a deal that's probably entirely unfair. If it were my daughter whoâ”
“Well, it's not your daughter,” Delphine almost shouted, “and it's not your nephew. This is not your business, Maggie. You need to stay out of it.”
“How can I stay out of it?” Maggie argued, undeterred by her friend's vehemence. “What sort of friend would I be if I didn't offer to help? Look, I could make a call. Gregory's probably too busy right now, but I know several other lawyers in Boston who could probably give you a cut rate, maybe even take the case pro bonoâ”
“I said, no. Thank you. Leave it alone, Maggie.”
Delphine turned and once again began to walk off in the direction of the house.
Maggie couldn't help the words from spitting out of her mouth. “God, it is so frustrating dealing with you!”
Delphine whipped around. “Frustrating?”
“Yes, frustrating, because I don't understand why you do the things you do. I can't understand why you make the decisions you make. They seem so . . . They seem so self-defeating.”
The look on Delphine's face chilled Maggie. “Then don't,” she said, “ âdeal with' me anymore. I didn't ask you to come back to Ogunquit.”
Maggie felt as if she had been slapped across the face. Delphine's eyes were hidden now behind sunglasses. Her expression now was blank.
“You're right,” Maggie said finally, weakly. “You didn't ask me to come back.”
Delphine turned away again and this time Maggie let her go.
It's just like all those years ago,
she thought,
when Delphine walked away from our friendship. I've been rejected again. I've offered love and support and I've been turned away. When will I ever learn to give up?
She thought it was Einstein who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
It's just like all those years ago,
she thought,
when Delphine walked away from our friendship. I've been rejected again. I've offered love and support and I've been turned away. When will I ever learn to give up?
She thought it was Einstein who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
When Delphine was out of sight Maggie got back into her car and, drained of energy and purpose, headed back to her hotel room.
23
It was about nine o'clock on Friday morning. Delphine had been at the farm since early morning, as usual. But around eight-thirty she realized that she wasn't concentrating on her work. She was bothered by that conversationâwell, that fightâshe'd had with Maggie the day before. She left the office, got into her truck, and drove out to the beach. Maybe a brisk walk in the fresh air would help. She hoped that something would.
She began to walk toward Wells, high up on the beach close to the dunes. A local man, Wade Wilder, was fishing down by the shoreline, as he had done every morning since his retirement. Wade, who didn't like to eat fish, routinely threw back whatever he caught or gave it to a passerby. He was a nice man, but Delphine wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone. She put her head down and hoped that he didn't turn around and see her and think her rude for ignoring him. He was nice, but he was also a gossip. By afternoon everyone he had encountered would know that Delphine Crandall had snubbed Wade Wilder. The Crandalls had endured enough bad publicity in the past twenty-four hours.
This morning the sand looked as if it had been freshly groomed. The tide was pretty far out, exposing what seemed like miles of beach underwater at higher tides. Way, way out on the horizon Delphine could see a pleasure craft, maybe a for-daily-hire fishing boat. She had seen hawks and even eagles wheeling in the sky over the dunes, but this morning her only company was seagulls and three grey pigeons.
She rarely spent time at the beach, certainly never lying in a chair and soaking up the sun. She envied vacationers who could enjoy a slow walk on the warm sand or an afternoon frolicking in the waves without feeling guilty about being away from work. Well, maybe some, or even most, people on vacation did feel guilty or worried about being away from their jobs, but at least they had a vacation in the first place.
And there it was, the stirring of self-pity, an emotion she usually fought off with energy. The fact was that she was being absurd.
Yes, she definitely had been too harsh with Maggie, rejecting her offer of help out of hand, acting so defensively. But the truth was that Maggie's showing up after all these years had shaken her, had suddenly highlighted certain things about her life she had been content to leave in the shadows. It had made her remember things she had fought strenuously for over twenty years to forget. It made her question some of the choices she had made for her life. And she didn't like it.
A seagull screamed loudly overhead. Delphine startled. She had lived with the sound of seagulls all her life, and yet the harshness could still surprise her.
And yes, she was still a bit angry with Maggie for having shown up at the diner. Though really, Maggie had done nothing wrong. She was the one who had reacted badly. And she thought she knew why. Not long ago she had read an article about something called Social Comparison Theory. That was when people who started out at the same place, with pretty much the same advantages, tended, years later, to compare their achievements with those of their former colleagues. In her own case, she thought it likely that in the eyes of the “world,” she had not measured up as a person with a college degree should have done. She wondered what Maggie saw when she looked at her. She wondered if Maggie judged her life as somehow unfulfilled, inadequate, wasted.
It was like those wrinkles on her face and age spots on her hands. She had known they were there. She had accepted them with some semblance of unconcern. But since Maggie had shown up, those wrinkles and spots had taken on significance; they had found a voice. They had become nagging, obvious reminders of the fact that she was almost fifty and had little to show for it, at least by certain standards. No husband, no children, no grandchildren. She hadn't traveled much, she didn't own her home, her parents did, and she hadn't even bought a new truck in ten years. That her life was the way it was due to choices she had freely made suddenly didn't seem to matter.
Delphine felt sweat trickle down her back and realized that she had practically been running. She slowed her pace, but her mind continued to race along a path she knew was dangerous.
What if all, she asked herself, or even most, of the choices she thought she had made freely had actually been forced upon her? The choice to leave Robert, the choice to come home to Ogunquit, the choice to let her friendship with Maggie die a slow death, the choice to work for the family farm rather than go to work elsewhere or establish her own business. Even the choice to stay with Harry all these yearsâcould that have been foisted upon her in some way? She wondered if she had been living a life someone else wanted her to live. She banished the thought as preposterous. Because if the answer to that question was in fact yes . . .
The beach was beginning to fill with vacationers, parents lugging coolers and lounges, kids racing ahead trailing Boogie Boards, young, single people in barely there bikinis and low-slung trunks. She looked at her watch and saw that it was almost ten o'clock. She had been away from her chores for too long. Besides, Melchior would be waiting impatiently for his mid-morning snack. Delphine half ran back to the parking lot, where her big old reliable truck stood waiting amid a sea of SUVs and sports cars.
24
At the same time that Delphine was walking along the beach, Maggie was walking along the Marginal Way. She remembered fondly the times her father would take her there, special times when they could be alone together. After walking the entire length, they would stop at Harbor Candy Shop on Main Street. Her father had loved the hard round candies with the watermelon flavor. She had loved those green jelly candies in the shape of a leaf and with the flavor of spearmint. And those round caramels with the white icing in the middle. They'd never told her mother about the visits to the candy shop. Mrs. Weldon would not have approved.
Maggie stepped a bit off the path and looked out over the water. She had gotten her first kiss on the Marginal Way, under the partial privacy of a crooked old pine tree. The boy, whose name she had long ago forgotten, had been a tourist, in town with his parents for a week. They had met at the ice-cream shop in the Cove. The kiss, like the boy's name, was forgettable. Well, in retrospect it was, compared to other kisses she'd received later on, like Gregory's first, impassioned kisses. Now, Maggie couldn't remember the last time she and Gregory had really kissed, other than a quick peck on the lips or cheek, a brief greeting or a hasty good-bye.
She began to walk again, slowly. The Marginal Way was a just-over-one-mile-long path along the coastline, stretching from Perkins Cove to Ogunquit Beach. Only pedestrians were allowed, no bikes or Rollerblades or skateboards. The path was very narrow in parts, so strollers and wheelchairs and even slow-moving groups of tourists on foot could cause frustration to those behind. But the view of the magnificent Atlantic, and of the grey, craggy cliffs, and of the frantically eddying pools below, and of the soaring, cawing seagulls overhead made up for minor annoyances like oblivious tourists. The trees and shrubs along the Marginal Way were fantastically distorted by years of wind and rain. The people who had homes along the Marginal Way were blessed with a magnificent view year-round, even if in summer months that view included a steady stream of people in sneakers and baseball caps.
But at that moment, Maggie was largely alone, with just the distant, glittering ocean for company. It would have been nice to be walking with Delphine. Maggie remembered the summer her family had gone to Europe instead of coming to Ogunquit. Ancient stone castles with spooky dungeons, glorious old cathedrals with glowing stained-glass windows, magnificent museums filled with works by the people whose names Maggie had started to learn about in art class, charming cafés serving delicious pastries, crumbling ruins on which a kid could climb to her heart's contentâit had all meant little or nothing without Delphine by her side, someone with whom she could giggle and take note and dream. Peter had been no company. He'd spent the entire time grumbling about not being able to play baseball and missing his favorite TV show.
A dragonfly darted by, close to her face, and then another. Maggie had been frightened of dragonflies when she was little. Once, she and Delphine had come across a dead dragonfly. It might even have been Maggie's first summer in Ogunquit. Somehow she had gotten up the nerve to kneel down next to it and see what it looked like up close. She had been amazed to find that it was beautiful. She hadn't been afraid of dragonflies since then. It was a sad way to learn a lesson, she thought now. To learn to appreciate somethingâsomeoneâonly after it had died.
Maggie sat on one of the benches along the path, placed there in memory of a person who had loved this spot on earth more than any other. She wondered how many people had chosen to have their ashes scattered from the cliffs. She had no deep attachment to this place, not like Delphine seemed to, anyway. She had wonderful memories of her summers in Ogunquit, this “beautiful place by the sea,” but she would never consider living here year-round. She wasn't a victim of wanderlust, but neither was she a person who was passionate about place. Maybe that had something to do with her family having moved so often when she was growing up. Maybe that had something to do with her mother's passion for change and redecoration.
A massive seagull landed a few feet from her and cocked his head. “Sorry,” she told him. “I don't have any food.” The bird regarded her closely for another moment and then stalked away to find a person of value.
Maggie sighed. She was annoyed with herself. She was throwing herself at a person who clearly didn't want anything to do with her. She wondered what had happened to her self-respect. She wondered what Gregory would think of her chasing after Delphine. She had been too embarrassed to tell him the important reason she had come back to Ogunquitâto make a real and vital connection with someone. And that was sad, not to be able to trust your spouse with your uncertainties, your hopes, your fears, your loneliness. It was sad, but maybe it was also common. Maggie didn't know. She didn't have any close friends with whom she could talk about her marriage. She certainly couldn't talk to her mother about it. And Delphine . . .
How stupid she had been, keeping that aquamarine necklace all these years and then thinking that this summer, reunited with Delphine, would provide the perfect moment to finally present it to her. How stupid, how adolescent, how naïve she had been to believe that the two of them would come together as easily and as immediately as they had the summer before fourth grade.
That was something else Gregory didn't know about, the necklace or the hurt feelings that had prompted Maggie to withhold it from Delphine all those years ago. She had told him about the fact of the friendship, where it had started and how it had grown, and then how it had suddenly died. But she had never talked about the depth of pain Delphine's defection had caused her. Maybe she should have. Maybe she still could. Maybe it was too late. Maybe it just didn't matter what she felt.
Because it was true what Delphine had said. She hadn't asked Maggie to come back to Ogunquit, to return to the origins of their friendship. That had been all Maggie's idea, a misguided notion, a silly hope for the revival of what had once been an essential relationship, the central relationship of so many years of her youth.
Well, maybe she was partially to blame for Delphine's resistance to her friendship. Maggie suspected that since she had arrived in Ogunquit she had been making assumptions about Delphine's life, regarding it as inadequate, judging it against standards that simply didn't apply to a Crandall. Her offer of help for Dave Jr., her unthinking comment about waitressing that morning with Jemima at Delphine's houseânone of that had been helpful, had it?
For all those summers they had spent together, and then, through four years of college, it had never really occurred to Maggie that she and Delphine were from such very different worlds. She had never really acknowledged the radical separateness of their lives. And it had certainly never occurred to her that those differences could one day become a problem. Children, young people, didn't look for division; at least she hadn't. Love, even the love of a friendship, had truly conquered all.
No, a sense of division and separateness came with time and experience. Discernment became, in many cases, prejudicial or judgmental thinking. Maybe that was inevitable. If so, that was sad.
Suddenly, Maggie felt very, very tired. She got up from the bench and began the long walk back to her hotel. In Perkins Cove a monstrous tour bus was discharging a group of elderly people, mostly women, dressed in the unflattering clothes some nasty person in some snobby design studio thought elderly women should be resigned to wearing. A few of the women linked arms for support as they began to walk toward the water for a better view. Maggie felt her throat tighten, a prelude to tears.
Once she was on Shore Road, she fought a tide of mothers and fathers loaded down with beach gear, their children in brightly colored bathing suits and Crocs, jumping along beside them. Couplesâwomen with women, men with men, women with menâsome, the middle-aged couples, wearing matching T-shirts, others flashing new wedding bands and honeymoon nails, others visibly pregnant, still others merely teens. She felt she was the only person in the entire town of Ogunquit who was on her own.
It was with relief that Maggie shut the door to her hotel room behind her. She took off her shoes and lay down on the neatly made bed. Again, she thought that maybe she should cut short her visit to Ogunquitâher doomed visit to the pastâand just go back home to Lexington. She could sell the aquamarine necklace there. There was a reputable family-owned jewelry store right in town that would probably buy it. The stone was a good one and the price of gold was still high. She couldn't imagine giving the necklace to someone else, one of her daughters perhaps. And she certainly couldn't imagine wearing it herself, not with all of the emotional resonance it held.
Maggie didn't make it a habit to nap. But now, she allowed her eyes to close and to stay closed. Before long, she was in a deep and dreamless sleep.
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