That Camden Summer (23 page)

"No, I don't. I can't know, because losing my husband was totally different than losing your wife. But I can imagine. And I can see you suffering still, and that tells me a lot. What I'm asking you to understand is that it was equally hard for Isobel, and you never shared that with her. You handled your grief separately from hers, and by doing so, you made her believe she was in your way. You're angry with me for being so blunt, I can tell."

"Y'damned right I am. You're accusing me of a lot of things here that I don't think I deserve."

"I'm not accusing you.13

"The hell you're not!" He leaped to his feet. "You're telling me I haven't been a good father to Isobel, and just who appointed you judge! "

"I never said that."

"You've said plenty! Behind my back at your house - you just admitted it! What do you do, Roberta? Take a break from being my daughter's

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best friend to point out how her father suffers by comparison?"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Gabriel."

"Oh, now I'm ridiculous, am I? Well-, maybe I have been, for letting her hang around there too much."

"Look what we found!" The girls were back, bearing a good-sized starfish. Isobel said, "We're going to boil it and keep it and maybe at Christmas if we painted it gold we could use it on the tree somehow."

"Not now, girls!" he snapped. "Roberta and I are talking about something important." Roberta ignored him and reached out a hand.

"A starfish ... here, let me see," then examined the specimen and said., "Oh, it's a beauty." Gabriel declared, "You're not bringing that

thing into our house, Isobel! It'll start stinking before you ever get around to boiling it, and besides, we have a star for the top of the tree, so go throw it back."

Isobel looked nonplussed. "What's wrong, Daddy?"

What could he reply? He was being a boor and he knew it.

Roberta stepped in. "I think our food is done. Let's uncover it, girls."

"I'll uncover it!" he snapped.

Their outing was thoroughly ruined. Though jerky conversations were attempted while they ate_, none were between Roberta and Gabriel. It was nearly ten o'clock when they repacked the hamper. He shoveled sand into the fire pit and Roberta sent the girls on to the car with the

bushel baskets and clam rake. She watched him ramming the shovel into the sand and tossing some on the smaller fire with pent-up anger in every beat. Finally the coals disappeared and left them in moonlight. He threw two more shovelfuls and they listened to the lonely sound of the metal biting the sand.

Finally, she simply had to speak.

"You're really mad at me. I mean, really." He leaned over to whisk something up off the sand, something unnecessary, she thought, to escape facing her. "Yes, I am, Roberta."

"Gabriel, listen to me. It's all right if you're mad at me. just ... just don't take it out on Isobel, okay?"

"V7hy should I take it out on Isobell Jesus, Roberta, you think I'm some kind of a brute!" "I do not. But sometimes when you're mad

at me you get really grouchy with her. Just remember, this was me talking tonight, so if you want to take it out on somebody, do it on me because she doesn't deserve it."

Suddenly he turned on her and jabbed a finger northward. "You know, things ran pretty smoothly at my house before you came to town! I took care of my daughter and we got along fine! So don't think that you're the final word on how to raise children, because I was doing all right! And maybe you'd better take a look at that junk hole you live in and see if your own mothering could use a little improvement! While you're out running all over the county inoculating kids against diseases, your own are liable to catch ten others from the unsanitary

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conditions in your own damned house! And for God's sake, why don't you ever iron your dressesP)

By the time he finished he was shouting.

In the following silence they glared each other down and felt their blood race. Then he spun and strode across the flats, gripping the shovel handle like a javelin.

She planted her feet wide and yelled after him, "You damned bullheaded, closed-minded, jackassed plebeian dunce!" then kicked a spray of sand out of her path before heading after him.

When she reached him he was cranking the car as if he wanted to lift it and drag it home. "I'll do it myself!" she insisted, knocking him aside. "Give me that!"

"Gladly," he shot back, and stormed around to the passenger side and got in, leaving her to struggle not only with the crank, but with the carbide headlights as well. After starting the drip, lighting the crystals and closing the lenses she finally climbed in behind the wheel.

It irritated him that he didn't have his own truck to drive and had to allow himself to be hauled around by her! She was too damned independent for her own good, and it was the last straw that tonight of all nights she was driving him! Furthermore, he didn't know what plebeian meant.

In the backseat the girls sat motionless, wary. No singing now, no chatter. Roberta put the car in gear and it jerked violently as she shifted. V7hen it was rolling smoothly a timid voice from

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the rear asked, "What's wrong?" They answered simultaneously. Gabriel: "Nothing."

Roberta: "We had a fight." "About what?" Rebecca asked. Gabriel: "Nothing."

Roberta: "About what kind of parents we are.

He warned, "Roberta

"Oh, that's so typical!" she shouted. "Hide everything as if they have no right to know!" "Roberta, I'll take this up with you privately, if at all! "

"If at all ... Ha!" She threw back her head. "I doubt that you'll get a chance, Farley." Rebecca had more courage than the others.

"V,/Ihat does that mean," she asked, "what kind of parents you are? You're both good parents, arenit you?"

"It seems that Mr. Farley thinks "Roberta, shut up! "

"I don't shut up around my kids, Farley!" she yelled. "That's why my family works! So don't tell me to shut up! You shut up! You're so good at it anyway, it should come naturally! Shut up all your feelings, and all your wife's old dresses, and the truth about what your mother and the respectable citizens of Camden think of Roberta Jewett and her girls! Well, we're just as good as anybody in this town, and you can go back and tell them that for me! "

Gabriel clammed up and glared outside at the roadside weeds flashing green in the carbide lights. A night creature with amber eyes

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disappeared into the ditch. Houses hunkered like sleeping elephants behind dark overgrown front-yard trees.

The backseat passengers rode silently. Roberta took a curve too fast and brought Farley's back away from the seat.

"Slow down," he ordered.

Go to hell, she thought, and continued at the same breakneck pace. Into Camden they rumbled, over the streetcar tracks, past the mill and up the hill to Alden Street.

Nobody spoke as she stopped the car, catapulting them all forward in their seats. She set the various levers, got out and stopped the carbide drip. In grim silence they all started dividing property. He took the clamming equipment to his truck, but Isobel hovered behind, quite near tears.

"Thanks for the picnic," she told Roberta timidly, then whispered3 "Aren't you and my dad going to talk to each other any more?"

Though Gabriel had the power to rouse her temper, Isobel's vulnerability did quite the opposite. She touched Isobel's jaw. "I don't think so, honey."

"But" -- Isobel glanced at her father-, who was lighting his headlamps - "can I still be your friend?"

Roberta dropped the hamper and took Isobel in her arms. "Oh, of course you can, sweetheart. We'll always be your friends." Isobel clung and tears stung Roberta's eyes. Against the top of the girl's head she said-, "I'm sorry we made tonight end badly after it started out so fine."

From his truck Gabriel ordered sternly, "Isobel, come on, we've got to go."

Isobel drew back reluctantly. Rebecca, Susan and Lydia hovered nearby.

"Good night," Isobel said to them, then added with a note of pleading, "Can we do something tomorrow?"

"Sure . . . " Lydia and Susan responded lamely, uncertain of what the adults would have them say.

Gabriel's engine fired, and above its loud belching he shouted, "Isobel, come on!" His truck door slammed.

"'Bye," she whispered, and Roberta heard tears in her voice.

Her own three said good-bye, and Roberta carried the hamper to the house while Farley chugged away, leaving the girls watching after him like a trio of birds just out of the nest but not yet ready to fly.

OBERTA and Gabriel had spent too much time together to shrug off their R

fight as if it didn't matter. It was an ending, and endings hurt. This kind did. Neither of them deluded themselves about how close they had come to a romantic connection. The truth was, they had grown to like each other, to enjoy each other's company, and the temptation to extend that friendship into some sort of light physical attachment had certainly been glimmering in their minds ever since the kiss. Roberta thought of it that way: as light physical attachment. Gabriel - he admitted after their falling-out - had occasionally imagined them as lovers, then cast aside the idea only to have it resurface with fair regularity.

The point was moot now. Their friendship had ended on a note of bitterness that carried through the days that followed. Whenever they recalled that night of the clambake-, each of them thought how nice and workable their lives had been before they met. Then they grew agitated_, remembering the unfair criticism they had suffered at the hands of the other.

Roberta thought, My house might be messy but it's cleaned as good as I have time for - and it's certainly not infested! V7ho is he to criticize the way we keep things when it suits all four of us? I'm a nurse who goes out and teaches

others about hygiene, for heaven's sake! How dare he intimate that I don't give my children proper care? I won't have them living in some ... some museum where nothing is touchable! They'll have fun in their home, and if it's a little bit messy, well, what will they remember most when they're older? The mess or the fun? And if he doesn't like the way I keep myself, to hell with him. Let him find some fluffy pink pea-brain who lives and breathes only to please him. She can have him!

Gabriel thought, She's got one hell of a big mouth for a woman who's never even seen my house, or how Isobel and I get along together, or how we handle being without Caroline. And for her to think I don't love my daughter - well, that's just rubbish! The thought of Isobel growing up and leaving me scares me half to death! Why, this place is like a jail cell without her, and when she leaves for good I don't know what I'll do. So maybe I don't fawn over my girl like Roberta does, but that's a woman's way. And maybe I make Isobel take her share of the responsibilities for keeping the place clean and neat, but that's what good parents do; they don't let their children run wild as squirrels! Roberta Jewett can raise her kids her way and I'll raise mine my way, and we'll see whose make a better impression on people around this town. And if I ever again have any dumb ideas about going over there and spooning with that woman, I hope somebody will knock my brains out for me!

One night about a week after the clambake

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Isobel was waiting when Gabriel came home from the shop.

"Daddy, guess what!" Her face was aglow with excitement. "We've been asked to put on Hiawatha for the whole school assembly!"

"That's wonderful, Isobel." "By the principal herself!"

"Well, it's a good little production. She should have asked you."

"Mrs. Roberson and Miss Werm told her about it and said the student body should definitely have a chance to see it because it's an American classic. And after hearing about it, Miss Abernathy said it would be just perfect as a lyceum program during the last week of school. So we're going to do it, and I'm so excited! You'll come., won't you, Daddy?"

He began to say, But I've already seen it. Roberta's admonition stopped him, flashing past like quicksilver. We say 'I l9ve you, in a thousand ways. If you don't know how, wa tch m e.

He found himself answering as she would. "Of course I'll go. I wouldn't miss it.13

His unexpected acquiescence widened Isobel's eyes. "You wouldn't?" Clearly she'd been prepared for excuses. "You mean it, Daddy? You really wouldn't?"

He chuckled self-consciously, caught by surprise himself "I just said I wouldn't didn't I? If I said I'll be there, I'll be there." "

Overcome, Isobel flung her arms around him and hugged him hard. "Oh, Daddy-, I'm so glad. I never thought you'd agree to see it twice.

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Thank you so much for saying yes!"

Suddenly it seemed as if Roberta was there, like some wide winged guardian angel, standing over Isobel and looking out for her emotional well-being. When instinct told Gabe to draw back, the specter of Roberta ordered him: Don't miss this chance. He curled his arms around Isobel and touched his cheek to her hair. He sensed her surprise: a moment of stillness during which his own heart kicked up a flurry and he wondered why it had taken him so long. They remained close while he felt some sentimental cog slipping into place. Then she drew back and looked up at him with a smile of such wondrous amazement he found his reward on the spot.

The moment of closeness passed, bringing a rebound of shyness. Isobel colored and said, "Well ... I have to go call Susan and Lydia and Rebecca. All right., Daddy?"

"All right," he said as his hands slid off her shoulders.

Watching her hurry away, he felt the afterglow lying deep within him making him into a more whole being than he'd been before. Such a simple thing - a hug, a kind word, a yes

- but what complex reactions it evoked. Many years ago, when Isobel was an infant, he'd felt like this whenever he'd look down at her in her cradle, as if he were so full with life that one more drop of goodness would overflow him.

It astonished Gabe how often he thought about that hug he and Isobel had shared, how warmed it made him feel, and how it touched off remembrances of Caroline. Perhaps Roberta