Summer House (46 page)

A jealous thought popped into Helen’s mind:
Was this the sort of place Worth had taken Cindy?

Stop it!
she mentally ordered herself.
Love over fear, remember?

“Let’s go to bed.” Worth held out his hand.

Helen hesitated. Suddenly, she felt shy. She put her hand in his.

Worth led her to the king-size bed. Together they turned back the covers. He crossed the room to pull the draperies shut, but a streak of daylight still striped the room, and Helen felt even more timid. She did not want to be judged and found ugly in comparison to a younger woman. And yet this was such a new moment between them, she didn’t want to spoil it with her jealousy.

Worth quickly stripped off his clothes and slid naked into bed. She undressed too and got into bed, pulling the covers up.

Worth turned on his side to look at her. “Come here often?” he asked.

She laughed, grateful for his attempt at humor. Reaching out, she put her hand on his chest. He was so warm.

Worth pulled her to him. At first she was awkward, insecure, and too occupied with her thoughts, but her husband wooed her with his hands and mouth until she surrendered to the moment, and then they were together, warm and tender, familiar, but excitingly just a little strange, a little new. In the heat of the moment, she wept, and her husband kissed her tears.

Afterward, they slept.

When they woke, it was evening.

“Hungry?” Worth asked.

“Starving.” Helen stretched her limbs in the bed, which, after her nights on the sleeping-porch daybed, felt luxurious. “Should we walk into town?”

“Do you suppose they have room service?” Worth asked.

Helen grinned. “I bet the Red Sox have a night game.”

“You’re right,” Worth admitted.

He rose from the bed and stalked naked across the room to the desk where the leather portfolio lay. “Ah. They do. Have room service.” He looked at Helen.

“It sounds lovely,” she said.

Worth phoned in their order, and then, at Helen’s request, dialed Nona’s number.

“Ah, Glorious, it’s you.
Wonderful.
Look, Helen and I are spending the night in town. We just wanted to let everyone know so you don’t wonder where we are.” Worth grinned as he listened to the voice clamoring around Glorious. “No, thank you, Glorious, we don’t need to talk to Grace. We’re fine, and we’ll be home tomorrow, around noon. Would you please tell Nona this yourself? Thanks.”

“Poor Grace,” Helen said, not without a bit of pleasure. “She must be crazy curious.”

“It will be good for her,” Worth said.

“Well, we’re only an old married couple having room service and watching television,” Helen said.

Worth smiled at her from across the room. “Two people, together,” he said.

Wednesday morning
, Helen and Worth walked into town, ate a long satisfying breakfast at Fog Island, then sauntered up and down the cobblestone streets like a pair of tourists. Worth bought
The New York Times
and Helen bought a toothbrush. It was fun to be in town in the morning along with all the other people—families, dog walkers, and lovers, young and old—strolling along, enjoying the bright day.

But when the hour came to check out of their hotel room, reality descended. It was time to return to the summer house.

Worth drove the old Chrysler, and Helen sat in the passenger seat. As they drove along the winding road, Helen studied her husband’s face. “How do you feel about Nona’s news?”

“I’m still processing it. And it’s still hard. I don’t think I’m ready to tell the children yet.”

“Do they ever need to know?” Helen asked.

“Yes. Yes, I think they do. Sometime. And Grace should know, too. But Nona took her own sweet time telling me. I don’t want to rush things. We’ve all had enough drama this summer.”

“Yes,” Helen murmured. “That’s certainly true.”

Worth reached across and took Helen’s hand. “I want to talk to
Teddy and Suzette. I want to tell them I’m sorry I acted like an asshole. I want them to know I’m ready to love their baby—” “She’s very easy to love,” Helen said.

“—and maybe we can just have a normal family life for a while.” Helen laughed. “If there
is
any such thing as normal family life!”

Drooping heavily
with leaves, the roadside trees and abundant bushes made a green tunnel of the road. In the verge, asters and wild daisies and Queen Anne’s lace dotted the green with yellow and pink and white. They arrived at Nona’s driveway, turned onto the dirt lane, and suddenly slowed.

“What’s that hellish noise?” Worth asked.

Helen listened, frowning, to an unnerving shrill whine, vibrating, shaking the air. “I don’t know, Worth. I can’t imagine.”

Worth stepped on the gas, sending the Chrysler speeding over the dirt road. As they grew closer to the house, the noise grew louder and more intense.

They came to a halt in the middle of the drive.

Two enormous dump trucks blocked the way. One had a chipper attached behind it. A man wearing heavy black earphones was feeding branches into the machine, which screamed shrilly as it ground away, spitting chips into the truck bed. Behind him, two men wielded chain saws as they sliced branches off the privet hedge. Already one side of the hedged garden had been removed. Bare stumps protruded from the ground. The sun flooded in on the slates, warming ground that had been shaded for generations.

Worth and Helen jumped out of the car and ran down the drive, around the trucks, and into the house.

Nona was in the living room, seated on her chaise, watching through the closed French doors as the men worked. She looked wonderful. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright with excitement. She wore a pair of white fur earmuffs. Seeing Worth and Helen, she yelled, “It’s the only way I can tolerate the noise. It’s all too fascinating
not
to watch!”

“Nona!” Worth cried. “What’s going on?”

“Exactly what you see, dear. I’m having those hedges taken down. I’ve wanted to do it all my life. I have no idea why I’ve waited so long. It’s going to be awfully noisy here for a few days. Once they get all the branches down, they’ve got to dig out the stumps. And then, then, my dear, we’ll plant a real garden, full of dahlias and cornflowers and roses.”

She held up an ancient pair of mink earmuffs to Helen. “Want some?”

Helen took them and settled them on her head. The day was hot, and fur on the head was not the wisest choice, but the earmuffs did soften the noise considerably.

Nona yelled, “What do you think?”

“I think it’s fabulous!” Helen yelled back. “Look at all the sunshine!”

“I’m thinking about all the flowers we can plant now,” Nona said. “I want to talk to Charlotte about this. She’ll know what sorts of things grow well in full sun.”

Worth yelled, “Where’s Grace?”

“Oh, Grace has gone off in a flap. She’s afraid I’ve gone nuts. Perhaps you can calm her down.”

Helen exchanged a look with her husband. “I’m not sure Worth is up for any more family responsibility these days.”

“That’s all right,” Nona said.
“You
are. Oh, look.” She pointed. “That tree is about to go.”

The air shuddered with the noise of the chain saw as a small privet tree, freed of its lower branches, was cut down. It toppled slowly to one side, letting the sunlight illuminate another rectangular portion of Nona’s land.

Full Bloom

Twenty-nine

C
harlotte slipped
into her shed, where the noise of the saws was slightly diminished, and started to punch Whit’s number into her cell phone.

She hesitated. Was this the right thing to do? Was she just grasping at any excuse to see him again? She would see him tonight. Couldn’t she wait?
Shouldn’t
she wait?

She hadn’t slept well that night—but it had been a happy insomnia, filled with sensations and desire and a kind of terrified hope. This morning it had felt good to rise early and stalk out to her garden, to pick and wash vegetables and set them on her farm table.

Then the tree service arrived with their chain saws and trucks and chippers, and her concentration was destroyed.

She’d raced up to the house to see what was happening. Nona was sitting just inside the French doors, watching the work and looking absolutely beatific. Grace fluttered around wringing her hands and fretting while Mandy shadowed Christian, who was fascinated
by the workers and their tools. To escape from the noise, Suzette carried her baby down to the little beach where Glorious had set up some chairs, and after a while pregnant Mellie joined her, with Mandy’s daughter Zoe in her arms. Grace drove Teddy to work and returned home to phone Kellogg in Boston, begging him to come home and help her—she was afraid Nona had lost her mind.

Charlotte returned to her garden, but now in the dazzling sunlight her thoughts flew around her head like brilliant butterflies. Nona was taking the hedges down! It was amazing.

Actually, it was
monumental.

And she wanted to share it with Whit.

She punched in the final number. The phone rang. Whit said, “Hello?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but could you help me survive one more family event?”

Whit came
immediately. He parked on the side of the drive and met Charlotte just outside her shed.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Come see.” Taking his hand, Charlotte led him up the drive.

The air was filled with the buzz and shriek of machinery, and sawdust filled the air as branches and limbs fell to the ground.

Whit shouted something at Charlotte, but she shook her head and pointed to her ears. “Follow me!” she yelled. “My room’s at the back of the house, so we’ll be able to hear ourselves speak.”

She took him in through the living room where Nona and Glorious sat, wearing earmuffs, watching the hedge fall. They all waved hello. Charlotte drew Whit up two flights of stairs to the attic. She pulled him into her room and shut the door. It was probably twenty degrees hotter here than on the ground floor, but a fresh breeze swept off from the ocean into the small gabled chamber.

There was only one chair in the room and it was covered with
clothes. She gestured to Whit to sit on the bed while she paced the floor.

“Whit, what do you think?”

“Nona looks like she’s having the time of her life,” Whit said.

“Yes. Why, yes, you’re right, Whit. Oh, I’m glad you’re here. Nona does look happy, doesn’t she? I mean, I don’t need to worry about her, do I? But Whit, taking down the hedge is such a stupendous event! It’s been there for at least two generations! Shouldn’t Nona have discussed it with us? Or, at the very least, had some kind of family ceremony, maybe with champagne? This is all so casual! So weird!”

Whit thought about it. “Well, it seems to me that Nona’s at the age where she doesn’t have control of much. Her body’s giving out, and her family continues to change. This is something she can control. She probably likes making one huge event happen.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. But I still feel restless. Unsettled.”

Whit asked, “Because of the hedge?”

Charlotte turned from the window. For a moment, she pushed back all her fears and concerns and allowed herself to just
look
at him. She’d always known he was handsome, and that had irritated her, and now she had to admit that what she’d designated as irritation was really an intense physical connection that scared her half to death. But she was also oddly calmed by his presence. She liked it that now, in the midst of all the chaos in her house, he had focused on the personal, the immediate, the physical.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe it’s not the hedge. Maybe it’s my life.”

He didn’t speak but looked at her steadily in a way that made her legs go weak.

“Maybe it’s you,” she said quietly.

“That would be good.”

Charlotte sat down on her bed, next to Whit but not touching. Looking at her hands, she said, “I never wanted to be attracted to you, Whit, and I guess I’ve figured out it was because it would have been what my father wanted me to do.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“But now I’m thinking, Well, that’s not such a bad thing. Making my father happy.”

“It
would be
a bad thing if you married me only because it would make your father happy,” Whit said.

Charlotte blinked and looked up at him. “How did we get to the subject of marriage?”

Whit said, “When has the subject ever been anything else?”

“Well!” Charlotte hugged herself nervously. “Well, Whit. I mean, we don’t even know if we’re compatible.”

“Yeah, we do know,” Whit assured her. “We’re compatible. Think of yesterday. Talking. Just being together.”

It felt like her lips were freezing. And her fingertips. “But maybe we’re not compatible … sexually?” She could hardly get out the final word.

Whit said quietly, “We’ll just have to research the question, won’t we?”