Summer Friends (32 page)

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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Summer Friends
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“Pooh. Here, let me put it on for you.” Maggie got up and fastened the necklace around Delphine's neck. She fished a compact mirror out of her bag. “Here. Take a look.”
Delphine peered at her reflection in the compact mirror and smiled again. “It's perfect,” she said. “I don't have anything else like it.”
“So,” Maggie said, “you're not refusing this gift?”
“No.” Delphine reached for her friend's hand. “I'm accepting it. I can't fight you anymore, Maggie. I don't want to. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
Maggie squeezed Delphine's hand. “You're very welcome,” she said.
65
“You promise to be in touch?”
The two women were sitting on Delphine's front porch again. It was about ten on a Sunday morning. The air was fresh, a bit cool, hinting of autumn. Melchior was inside, enjoying a nap. Eating breakfast had really taken it out of him.
Maggie smiled. “I promise. As soon as I get home I'll send you an e-mail.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Pinky swear.”
“So,” Delphine asked, “what are you going to do now?”
“I still have some vacation time,” Maggie said. “I'm going to go pay my mother a visit. It's brutal down in Florida at this time of the year, but . . . Well, I'll survive.”
“Stay inside. Keep the air-conditioning up high.”
“Oh, I will.”
“You know, Maggie,” Delphine said suddenly, “you're a lot braver than I am.”
“Oh, I don't think I'm very brave at all.”
“You take chances. You always have. You took a chance in coming here this summer.”
Maggie shrugged. “Well, I think you're just as brave as I am, Delphine, if not more so. How can I say this? I think it can be much harder to choose to value what you have than to pursue what you don't have, just because it's out there. Does that make sense?”
Delphine laughed. “Maybe.”
“And you'll keep me posted about Kitty's progress?”
“Here's hoping there is progress.”
“Hey,” Maggie scolded, “you have to stay positive about this, for her sake if not for your own. No, wait, definitely for your own sake. You need to take better care of yourself, Delphine.”
“It will take some learning.”
“You're smart,” Maggie said. “You can learn if you want to. Oh, on another topic entirely, will you recommend a book for me to read? I've so neglected my reading these past few years. I don't even know where to begin.”
“Just one book? I could recommend a reading program for the rest of your life. Why don't I send you an e-mail with some ideas? Do you want to give me some parameters?”
“Why don't you choose for me,” Maggie suggested. “I need to break out of this uncomfortable comfort zone I've been in for way too long.”
“All right. And please say hello to Gregory for me. Though he doesn't really know me.”
“He'll get to know you through me. He already knows you're important.”
“Do you think he'll like me?” Delphine asked. “I am pretty rough around the edges these days.”
Maggie smiled. “He'll love you. Gregory's a pretty easygoing guy when he's not wearing his lawyer's hat. Which isn't all that often, but maybe we can work on that. Well,” she said, getting up from her chair, “I'd better get on the road.”
Together they walked to Maggie's car. Instinctively they hugged, and it felt absolutely right.
“Bye, Delphine,” Maggie said, slipping behind the wheel.
“Drive carefully,” Delphine said.
Delphine watched and waved until Maggie's Lexus was out of sight. “I miss you already,” she said to the air.
Epilogue
A friend is one to whom one can pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
—Arabian proverb
 
 
One year later ...
 
It was early evening, around five o'clock on a Wednesday. Delphine was in her workroom. She had finished at the farm around three and come home to work on a project, a fairly elaborate hat, scarf, and glove set for a client. Around her neck she wore the aquamarine necklace Maggie had given her. She wore it all the time, only taking it off when she showered. Neither of her parents had asked where she had gotten the necklace. Delphine wasn't really sure they had even noticed it. Jackie, of course, knew the whole story. Jemima eyed it suspiciously. She knew it certainly hadn't come from Harry, but she refused to ask about it.
Waah.
Melchior, who had been sitting at Delphine's feet, stood and stretched. He had settled at twenty-two pounds and was as imperious and demanding as ever. Delphine didn't know what she would do without him. “ ‘Waah' to you, too,” she said. Melchior rewound himself and plopped back onto the floor.
Delphine went back to knitting. It had been almost exactly a year since Maggie had gone home to Massachusetts after her weeks in Ogunquit. Not long after that, Delphine had been browsing the Internet and had come across a quote from Albert Schweitzer. “At times,” he said, “our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
And that's what Maggie had done. She had rekindled Delphine's inner spirit when it had been nothing but a pile of cold, stubborn ash. If at times it had seemed an impossible task, Maggie had nevertheless persevered. Maybe she had revived Delphine's spirit for selfish reasons—she wanted, she needed, her friendship. It didn't matter. Either way, Delphine felt alive again for the first time in a very long time.
And maybe, just maybe, she had done the same for Maggie. At least, Maggie was admittedly happier than she had been last summer. Through therapy and hard work she and Gregory were rejuvenating their marriage. She told Delphine she had learned that if she felt disconnected from others in her life, it was her responsibility to remedy that, and walking away from the most solid relationship in her life, her marriage, was not the way to make repairs. At least, it wasn't the way in her case. She and Gregory were taking cooking classes together. He had been able to cut down on his business travel. If the success of their reunion seemed a bit of a miracle, then so be it. “I believed in miracles when I was a kid,” Maggie told Delphine. “Why not now as an adult?”
They had even adopted a rescue dog, a small mutt who had been found wandering the streets of Roxbury. Somehow, Maggie had overcome her fear of animals, at least, of animals that could fit in the palm of your hand. When Delphine first saw a picture of Barney on Maggie's Facebook page she laughed out loud. Melchior was easily three times his size. Gregory, it turned out, was even more devoted to little Barney than his wife was. If Barney was a late-in-life substitution for the human children who were now largely grown, that was fine, too.
As for her relationship with those two largely grown children, Maggie had admitted that she didn't feel very optimistic about the possibility of becoming best friends with her daughters. But only time would tell. She had twice been to visit her mother since her summer in Ogunquit. She was still church-surfing but reported that she was narrowing in on a particular community. She continued to read the books that Delphine recommended and they discussed the more controversial ones via e-mail or phone. Sharing books was one way toward reestablishing a bond that worked for their present and that they hoped would sustain them in their future. And both Delphine and Maggie wanted a future together.
But if Delphine and Maggie were meant to be together forever, Delphine and Harry were not. Shortly after Maggie had left Ogunquit, Delphine and Harry had officially ended their long relationship. Harry had seemed pretty relieved to be let go. No man wanted to be with a woman who found him disappointing. Harry's ego had been at stake. Still, Delphine bet he missed her cooking.
She had been surprised at how easy it was to get on with her life. It was almost as if Harry had never really made an impression on her. That was scary—to realize that for ten years you had been with a person you could so easily live without. Both Harry and Delphine had been responsible for the faulty state of their union. She knew that even if he didn't. They had each lacked the ability to communicate and to commit. Convenience was not the same as intimacy, though it often pretended that it was. She had learned that the hard way.
Most important, she had begun weekly visits to a therapist in Portsmouth. She wanted to explore and hopefully come to understand what might have become a habit of passivity and resignation. She wanted certain things about her life to be different. She wanted to be happy. At first, she had told no one about seeing the therapist. After several sessions, she'd worked up the nerve to tell her sister, who, predictably, was thoroughly supportive, and then Maggie, who was both supportive and impressed. Delphine was working toward someday telling her parents and the rest of the Crandall family. She had kept enough secrets in her life. Still, she thought that she might never tell Jemima. There were some people who saw therapy for emotional or psychological issues as a sign of moral weakness. Delphine suspected that Jemima was one of those people, but maybe she was doing her friend a disservice. The decision to tell or not to tell could wait until she felt stronger, until she learned not to care so much about what other people thought of her.
Thus far, things had been going well, but progress was slow. She was determined to stick it out, though, because the alternative—the sort of half -life she had been leading—was unacceptable. Almost too late she had realized that the two people in her life to whom she had been most drawn—Maggie Weldon and Robert Evans—were people “from away.” Both were distinctly different from her in so many ways, but both spoke to an essential part of her. Both Maggie and Robert had given her love. They had opened vistas for her, pointed out possibilities. Almost too late she realized that she needed—and wanted—something outside of the comforts and restrictions, beyond the joys and the limitations, of home, even if the form that took was a strong relationship with an “other.”
As for a romantic relationship, well, that would have to wait until Delphine got right with herself. And when she did, she was not going to sell herself short. She would rather live alone forever than be allied with someone who couldn't or wouldn't give her his loyalty. And next time, she was going to rely on Melchior's opinion, as well. If he gave the guy a malevolent yellow-eyed stare, the guy was history.
Delphine put down the half-finished glove she was working on and stretched. She then turned to her laptop and opened her e-mail. Two new orders had come in since the morning. “Yikes,” she said to Melchior. “Mommy's going to be busy.” He opened one eye, and then closed it again.
With Maggie's help Delphine had expanded her knitwear business. The first step had been admitting that it was an actual business and not only a hobby. She now advertised in Ogunquit and the neighboring towns and had a Facebook page and a designated e-mail address for communicating with customers. At first, she had been uncomfortable marketing her work, but once she got into the groove she found the habit of self-promotion less unappetizing than she had feared. Plus, there was great satisfaction in making a sale and satisfying a customer. Okay, there was that old desire to serve, but that was fine. She didn't ever want to become a selfish person. She just wanted to be someone who knew how to take care of her own basic emotional needs.
Gradually, she was cutting back on her hours at the farm. Lori was increasingly showing an interest in the behind-thescenes working of the family business. But Delphine still hoped that her niece would opt for college before settling down. Delphine was doing what she could to encourage Lori's studies, and Jackie, too, was urging her daughter to set her goals if not higher, then perhaps wider or farther afield than her mother and her aunt had done. Lori had said something about getting a degree in agricultural studies or maybe a degree in veterinary medicine.
Dave Jr. had graduated from high school that spring and was now working with his cousin Norman for Dave Sr.'s small contracting business. He still helped out at the farm on weekends. Norman's wife had had the baby, a boy they named Thomas. Kitty was fascinated by the little guy and loved to play with him, though for health reasons her access to Thomas was sometimes restricted.
The good news was that Kitty had responded remarkably well to the first and then to the second round of chemotherapy prescribed for her ALL. She was now undergoing maintenance therapy that, the Crandalls were told, might last for two or three years. She was not entirely out of the woods but getting better all the time. Her illness—and Maggie's reappearance in Delphine's life—had taught her that there were experiences she simply could not and should not try to handle on her own. She was learning to allow herself to be vulnerable. She was learning that “vulnerable” didn't have to mean “weak.”
Delphine picked up her needles again. She was also learning to say no to clients with unreal expectations or repeat clients who were ridiculously late with payment. That newfound toughness she had to attribute just a little bit to Jemima's influence. She had been known to scold unpleasant customers at the restaurant. Because she was the best waitress on staff, her boss took her righteous indignation in stride.
Jemima's wandering son, Kurt, had returned for an unspecified amount of time, and while she grumbled about having another mouth to feed and another messy person to pick up after, she was, in reality, very happy to have her oldest child back home, even if it was only for an undetermined amount of time. There had been a subtle shift in Delphine's relationship with Jemima since Maggie's visit the year earlier. A slight degree of formality had crept into their friendship. Jemima stopped by unannounced less often and waited for Jim or one of her children to mow the lawn rather than ask Delphine to do it. And she never mentioned Maggie, though she knew, through Jackie, that Delphine was regularly in touch with her. Delphine wasn't really bothered by this new dynamic. She was still a person who focused on the present rather than the past, even if she was learning that the past couldn't and probably shouldn't be ignored.
The Burton brothers had begun work on their new home on what had been the Crandalls' ancient plot. Piers had shown the architects' design to Delphine when she had last visited the shop to say hello. The house would be magnificent but no McMansion. The Burtons had been careful to respect not only the land itself but also the history and the spirit of Ogunquit. The house would be a welcome addition to both the landscape and the town. The fact that the land was no longer a part of the Crandall legacy hurt; Delphine couldn't deny that. But at least the land—and the old lilac bush—was in good hands, and that counted for something.
Delphine occasionally wondered if Robert would have found Ogunquit as provincial and uninteresting all those years go if he had met residents like the Burtons, and Nancy and Glenda, and Bobby Taylor and the McQueens and not just her own family. She couldn't be certain.
What was certain was that Robert Evans's glorious career had become even more glorious since his capturing yet another international humanitarian prize back in March. There were rumors online of an HBO movie to be made about his work in the Middle East. He was spotted at the Academy Awards escorting a very young woman in a very tight dress. His hair was still suspiciously without a trace of grey. Watching him pose and smile for the cameras, Delphine was more certain than ever that she had been right to leave Robert Evans. They never would have survived as a couple. They were better off without each other, Robert working for change in his wide world and Delphine working for the good in her more proscribed world. Still, a little part of her would always love him, even if only in memory. She would always wonder if a little part of him still loved her. But she would not contact him. That, she felt, would be foolish. It would serve no purpose. She had, however, taken his books from behind the Dickens volumes and put them on a shelf as she would any other book. There was nothing to hide; there had never been anything to hide.
Thinking of couples, Delphine thought now of poor Ellen, Harry's wife. She continued to live her sadly diminished life, and as far as Delphine knew, Harry continued his weekly visits to her. Word around town was that he had recently begun to date another woman, a single mother in her late thirties. Delphine wished the new girlfriend well. She assumed the woman was a good cook. Delphine hadn't run into Harry since this latest development in his romantic life and wondered if he would mention the new girlfriend when she did run into him. She might have to kick him in the shin with her dirty old work boot if he did.
Delphine's eye caught a stack of papers on the worktable, orders already placed for Christmas gifts. A day or two after Christmas this year she would be leaving Ogunquit for her second holiday visit to Maggie's home in Lexington. The two days she had spent with the Weldon Wilkes family the year before had been wonderful. Gregory was a kind and welcoming host. Kim and Caitlin were home for a month between semesters and Delphine had felt deeply touched by the very fact of these pleasant and intelligent young women. Maggie had done something extraordinary; she had given birth to new life and had raised two fine human beings. Spending time with the family, Delphine had felt keenly her own regrets about not having a child—regrets she had admitted to her therapist—but she hadn't let those regrets ruin her visit. Though eager to see Melchior and Kitty and to get back to work, she had also been a bit sorry to leave Lexington.

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