Summer People
Authors: Brian Groh
Summer People
A NOVEL
For Jeff and Steven
In the morning, Nathan awoke and discovered Ellen was notâ¦
Light mist thickened into heavy rain that afternoon, and insteadâ¦
The next morning, Ellen sat in the living room, watchingâ¦
At dinner that evening, Ellen didn't ask a single questionâ¦
In the morning, Nathan awoke to the sound of poundingâ¦
When the doorbell rang the following morning, Nathan left hisâ¦
Pounding on the front door awoke Nathan again the nextâ¦
For much of the next day, Nathan ruminated about theâ¦
It surprised Nathan to see Carl again, but there heâ¦
Waking felt like a little victory until he attemptedâ¦
Leah, it turned out, was on the pill, and the combinationâ¦
Nathan went to bed that evening with his door ajar.
In a dream he had that night, Nathan was onâ¦
The next morning Nathan felt woozily hungover as he squintedâ¦
Living room draperies billowed gently over the couch, and behindâ¦
Ellen Goes Missing ~ A Visit to St. Michael's ~ An Unconventional Sermon ~ An Apparition Becomes Real
I
n the morning, Nathan awoke and discovered Ellen was not in her room. Her bed was clumsily made, the blue comforter pulled over rumpled white sheets, and her closet door stood wide open. Downstairs, sunlight poured through first-floor windows, and on his way through the living room, Nathan still registered mild surprise at his surroundings. The house, a sprawling, white clapboard manse, with three chimneys and a wraparound porch, sat on top of a grassy slope with a breathtaking view of Albans Bay. Yet where Nathan had expected an interior expensively understated, he'd encountered only a kind of rundown rusticity. Couches and chairs didn't look much different than the faded department-store variety in the shared house where he'd been living, the dull hardwood floors hadn't been polished in decades, and his bed upstairs was so old that its creaking had occasionally interrupted his sleep. In the kitchen, he shouted, “Hellooooo!” and went to the window. The sun flashed between the distant islands and anchored sailboats of Albans Bay, and staring
down at the pale crescent of Parson's Beach, Nathan saw for the first time what he would see repeatedly that summer: wealthy New England parents and their children, relaxing on unfolded chairs and blankets, with the sound of silvery laughter filling the air. Nathan thought, Sweet Jesus, it exists, the scene I've been seeing in Lands' End catalogs all my life. As he stepped onto the porch, the screen door slapped behind him and he cupped his hand above his eyes. Besides the few clusters of families, a man in a fishing hat was walking his dachshund, but that was all.
Backtracking through the house and upstairs, Nathan peered into the three extra bedrooms, where white sheets were still draped over much of the furniture. He called her name but heard only distant voices on the beach and the barking of a neighbor's dog. In his bedroom, he pulled on his shoes then wandered back down to the kitchen. He opened the door to the cellar and peered into the musty shadows.
“Ellen?”
He waited.
“Ellen?”
With a sigh, Nathan tramped down the stairs. A dust-smeared window let in only a cloudy beam of light at the back of the room, and although a lightbulb dangled from an old, fraying cord, Nathan was too afraid of electrocution to touch it. In a near corner lay bags of mulch that the yardman must have recently purchased, but near the back wall, old paint cans, bags of cement, and wooden lobster cages looked as if they had been moldering down there for decades. As Nathan turned, a spider-web pulled gently across his forehead and he scrambled back up the staircase like a smothered man desperate for air.
In the living room, he stood staring out the French doors that led onto the porch and offered a view of the harbor. Was she down on Parson's Beach, somewhere he couldn't see? The back lawn sloped steeply toward the water, and Nathan took long, purposeful strides, stopping once to survey the grounds, before continuing down to the shore. He nodded and smiled at the parents who watched him as he weaved in between the massive rocks.
“Did you lose something?” asked a man, squinting through sunglasses, his children laboring in the sand beside him. Nathan had recently attended college, but looked younger, and he suspected the older man was trying to find out if he was trespassing.
Nathan didn't look at him long, not wanting to satisfy him. “I just lost my watch.”
“You want some help?”
“No. Thank you, though. I don't want to bother you.”
“It's no bother.”
The father set his book down on his chair, and Nathan wasted several minutes walking back and forth over a stretch of sand that was the one place on earth he now knew Ellen was not.
“Are you visiting someone here?” The man had a long, patrician face and unnaturally white teeth.
Nathan admitted, “I'm kind of helping out for Ellen Broderick this summer.”
“Is that right? So she made it back. Well, good for her. She's doing okay?”
There was more in the man's question than a casual inquiry. But, distracted, Nathan answered, “Yeah, she seems like she's doing all right.”
When he hastened back to the house, and entered the kitchen, he patted the pockets of his shorts and felt the car keys against his thigh. There was no reason for him to be worried, he thought. She had seemed in good health around him, if a little quiet, and it was her first morning back in her summer home, so she had probably gone next door to visit friends. Nathan made a piece of toast and ate it as he walked around the first floor, sipping orange juice, occasionally glancing out windows. He decided to retrieve from the car the bag of art books and comics he'd brought with him from home. Outside, in the warmth of the sun, he was crossing the well-manicured lawn toward the driveway when he noticed Ellen. She was sitting in the passenger seat of her maroon Volkswagen Passat. Her head was resting against the closed window, and although she was only seventy-two, according to his father, Nathan immediately feared the worst
while hurrying toward her. Her once petite frame, now slackened into a huskier solidity, sat slumped in its seat, but her face still held the high cheekbones of a once classically beautiful woman. Her eyes were closed, her lips barely parted, and Nathan's heart pulsed in his ears as he rapped hard on the glass. Ellen's head jerked from the window, her blue eyes wide.
Nathan waited to see if her heart would fail, then opened the door. “My God, I'm sorry, are you all right?”
Clearing her throat and blinking, Ellen's eyes narrowed in recognition. “I suppose so,” she answered. She wore a blue, calf-length dress, and an unbuttoned white cardigan that nearly matched the hair, pulled into a bun, which rested against the base of her neck. Pushing a loose strand from her face, she sighed and looked Nathan over. In addition to the same pair of shorts he'd worn to pick her up from the airport the previous evening, Nathan was wearing old running shoes, a wrinkled T-shirt, and his hair, still uncombed, looked as if someone had rubbed it vigorously with a balloon.
Nathan asked, “Why were you sitting out here?”
“I was just thinking.” Ellen turned to look through the front windshield at nothing in particular in a neighbor's yard. “This is Sunday?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well,” she said. “Would you like to take me to church?”
Â
N
athan hurried back to his room, changed clothes and combed his hair, then hustled back to the car. “All right, can you tell me how to get there?” he asked, helping Ellen fasten her seat belt. Ellen flashed a more wrinkled version of the flat-lipped smile Nathan had first seen in an old photograph while interviewing to be her escort to Maine. In the photo, positioned on top of the grand piano at her home in Cleveland, she was a slender, elegant young woman, sitting by herself on the beach, her chin over her shoulder as she smiled amusedly through windswept hair.
“I've been coming here since I was a little girl,” Ellen said.
“Okay,” Nathan said, nodding. “Well, do you know if we're on time for a service? It's a little bit after eleven.”
“I think we'll be fine,” Ellen said. She guided Nathan up the gravel road onto Birch Hill Boulevard, a broad, tree-canopied street that was the central corridor of Brightonfield Cove. On the far side of picket fences and spacious lawns, large homes of brick and clapboard sat with robust contentment. Bicycles and beach toys lay waiting on porches for children to finish breakfast or return from church, while cheery flowers waved from windowsills and modest, well-tended gardens. In the fresh morning light, the neighborhood glowed like the America of Norman Rockwell's sweetest dreams, and with one arm draped outside the window, Nathan sighed and settled into what he was starting to hope would be a long drive.
“Here we are,” Ellen said, gesturing toward a narrow blacktop road that cut through the trees and sloping grass of a golf course on the left. Nathan sat up straight and glanced at Ellenâdoubtful now of her directionsâbut as they turned and ascended the sloping hill, a steeple rose above the horizon. The stone Episcopal church sat beside a small graveyard in the very center of the Alnombak club golf course. St. Michael's in the Field was the church's proper name, but it was not uncommon during the summer to hear it called St. Michael's in the Way. Wire mesh protected the stained glass, and there was no parking lot, so parishioners, most of them golfers, parked their cars gingerly on the fairway. Women in pastel dresses and men in summer blazers congregated near the stone walkway, and only when Nathan noticed a slow trickle of parishioners into the church did he stop hoping he could escape attending the service. Other stragglers greeted Ellen with warmthâand occasionally questioning expressions, Nathan noticedâas everyone filed through the arched doors. While they sat toward the back on an uncushioned, hardwood pew and a few people stole furtive glances at her, Ellen sat with almost perfect posture, head erect, her chin tilted slightly up. Her deepening laugh lines and crow's-feet, Nathan knew, were the result of a lifetime of summer tennis and golf, but she seemed to be aging naturally, without tucks or lifts, and she held herself with a kind of dignity thatâalthough he couldn't determine if she was oblivious to others' glances, or just ignoring themâmade Nathan strangely
proud to be with her. She stared ahead as the pastor rose to the pulpit and cleared his throat.
“âLet no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth,'” the man began, reading from Corinthians I. The sentence hung in the stony-smelling church air as he raised his head and peered out at the congregation from behind round, wire-rimmed glasses. Hefty and broad shouldered, black hair prematurely flecked with gray, Eldwin Lowell had ashen crescents beneath his blue eyes, and looked more like an overworked professor than the eager boy-man ministers Nathan had known.
The story he told, about how his son had recently started school and acquired new friends, eventually led into an exploration of Aristotle's writings on friendship, provoking Nathan to glance around him at the surprisingly impassive reactions of the congregation. Growing up in suburban Cleveland, he had attended church almost every Sunday with his mother, but he had never heard any minister quote Aristotle.
“Perfect friendship is the friendship of people who love one another not because they are useful to one another, and not because they are entertaining to one another, but for themselves,” Eldwin continued. “Aristotle says that such friends wish the best for one another by reason of their own natures, and such friendships last as long as they are goodâbecause goodness is an enduring thing.” Eldwin had been looking down at his notes, but now he looked out into the faces of a few of the people seated before him. “Because goodness is an enduring thing.
“I'm sure that this morning, looking around at people you have known for many years, some of you are lucky enough to have such friends here. But it seems to me, as I'm sure it seems to you, that even these perfect friendships aren't perfect. Even with those select fewâor select oneâwith whom you speak freely of your hopes and feelings, you know you're always speaking with a limit. There is a limit to our trust and understanding of one another that cannot be helped. Nevertheless, this longing, this hunger for understanding, propels us toward nobler, higher friendships, which give our lives meaning and joy, and provide us with glimpses of the joy of
heaven and of communion with God. When you feel yourself weakening, tempted toward sins of cowardice, or self-indulgence, be strong in knowing that there are others who are also working for good, and that if we persevere in God's work, we will join their company, and the longing in our hearts will be answered.”
Eldwin asked the congregation to join him in prayer, and everyone bowed their heads. Nathan bowed his also but kept his eyes open. Late the previous evening, while preparing for bed, he'd pressed his face to the screen of his bedroom window to watch a young woman stride through the moonlit grass of the yard below. She seemed a kind of apparition. But now a young woman who looked very much like her was sitting just a few pews ahead of him, with two small children on her left. When the prayer ended and she rose to sing with the congregation, Nathan saw she wore a dark green summer dress. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as she reached down for her hymnal.
“Aren't we going to sing?” Ellen asked.
Nathan pulled out the hymnal in front of them, but by the time he'd found the right hymn they only had time to sing the last chorus. He glanced sidelong at Ellen to see if she was disappointed, but she just smiled expectantly at him, waiting for him to lead them out of the aisle. On the way out, old couples crossed over pews to chat with Ellen, and although their inquiries about her health were often delivered with faces pinched by concern, Ellen assured them she was fine and thereby encouraged the conversation to hurry along to something else. She seemed pleased to see her friends, but she addressed very few people by name. She nodded, smiling, saying, “Oh, yes,” and “Oh, fine,” and “It's great to see you, too,” but she spoke very little about herself. Those who approached filled in the silences by speaking about grandchildren recently born, a son's admission to Exeter, a husband's long hours at his firm (“He's planning to come up sometime next month and he'll be so pleased to know you're here”). Outside, along the stone walkway, Eldwin Lowell shook hands with Ellen and Nathan and explained how
he was the replacement for Pastor Russell, who had returned to Boston for cancer treatment. Eldwin said to Nathan, “You should introduce yourself to Leah, our nanny. She's with Meghan and Eliot around here someplace.”
Nathan's face reddened. He knew the young woman he'd been admiring was walking with Eldwin's children on the fairway.
“All right, I will,” Nathan said, extending his hand for the pastor to shake although they'd already shaken hands a moment earlier. Surprisingly, for a woman of otherwise erect bearing, Ellen employed a gold-handled cane, and as she said good-bye, balancing between the cane and Nathan's arm, her white, toothy smile closed into tight-lipped determination. Together they shuffled down the stone walkway, onto the grass, while Nathan tried to set a pace that would allow her to keep her balance but put them inside the car as soon as possible. He wanted to go back to the house, sit on the porch, maybe draw a sketch of Leah as he remembered her from last night, walking up from the beach. He did not want to talk to her now. He wanted time to think about what he would say when he met her, and he wanted to be wearing something other than this short-sleeved, button-down navy shirt. It made his pale, unmuscled arms look even more pale and thin than they were. As they inched closer to the car, Nathan tried to seem preoccupied with Ellenâturning his head only between her and the groundâbut he could feel the young woman approaching.
