The Summer Cottage (23 page)

C
HAPTER
29

 

D
aniel took Sally, Peter, Todd, and Ned to McDonald’s for dinner because the older boys said they couldn’t possibly wait until eight o’clock to eat. Sally and Peter were thrilled at the prospect of having a Happy Meal, something their mother allowed only when they were traveling, and of being in the company of their cousins, who had played with them on the beach all afternoon. They were fast friends. The four of them built a two-story sand castle, wrapped in brown seaweed for extra strength and to gross out their enemies. They caught hermit crabs at the sandy end of the beach, and they closely inspected and commented on the twenty-five snails and mussels they pulled off various submerged rocks. Buoyed by their victories on the tennis court, Todd and Ned had twice their usual energy, which made them perfect companions for their younger cousins. When they played Wild West, Peter was never disappointed in Ned’s bad guy death throes. With each imaginary wound, he would feign agony, violently twitch, twirl in place, drop to his knees, and then fall facedown onto the sand. And Sally, who loved being in the water, dove off Todd’s shoulders three or four dozen times. McDonald’s was the next logical step, according to Daniel, who had been watching and occasionally participating in the afternoon’s activities.

As soon as they all drove off in Charlotte’s rental, Pammy and Barb took off in Pammy’s Lexus for the farm in the opposite direction from town for the corn. Helen, normally in the middle of food runs, meal preparation, and general set-up, helped her mother, awake and reading a novel, out of bed and down the stairs to the porch. The pot of tea Helen had made, before she went to check on Claire, sat on the coffee table between them. As soon as Claire was settled in her chair, Helen poured her a mug of tea and held it out to her. “Careful,” she said. “It’s still a bit hot.”

“Set it down on the table, then,” said Claire. “I’ll have it in a minute.”

Helen poured herself a mug and then sat in the chair facing her mother. “You had quite a nap,” she said. “Are you hungry? Barb brought cookies.”

“I’ll wait for dinner, I think. What are we having?”

“Lobster. Charles and Thomas just left to pick them up in town.”

Claire smiled. “I can’t wait to see him.”

Helen laughed. “Me neither. He arrived, left for town, got back from town, swam to the raft, and then went back into town. I had about five minutes with him.”

“And what did you learn in that five minutes?” Keen observation is crucial, Claire had told her children, to assessing one’s competition, whether in the pool or in life.

Helen shrugged. “He looks good. He looks like the Thomas we saw five years ago, except a little bit grayer.” She smiled.

“Is he still speaking Canadian?”

“Meaning what?” asked Helen, who had had this conversation with her mother before. Claire couldn’t understand why he lived in Canada, why he didn’t want to come back to his own country.

“You know, that
out
and
about
thing they have.”

Helen hesitated. Did she want to get into this again? Did she want to bring up the various accents characteristic of various regions in the United States or anywhere else in the world? Claire had been overly proud of America, blind to its deficiencies, since her swimming days. Nothing Helen could say would open her mother’s mind about other countries or cultures. Claire simply didn’t want to know. “I didn’t notice,” said Helen.

“I wonder if he still likes lobster. They probably don’t get much of it in Ontario.”

Again, Helen held her tongue. She could have told her mother that some considered the food in Ontario to be superior to that of many areas in the United States. She’d read, in fact—had the article been in
The Economist
?—that the produce in Canada was better because it was more often local and organic. “I know
you
like lobster.”

“Oh, I do indeed,” said Claire. “I love lobster.”

“Me too,” said Helen, sipping her tea.

“I remember the time your father bought two lobsters here, at the very fish market Thomas and Charles are getting our lobsters from today I suspect, and had them packaged up. He hid them in the car and then stuffed them into the outside refrigerator when we got home. That night, after all you kids were in bed and I was terribly sad—I was always melancholy at the end of the summer when we had to leave this house—he brought them out, boiled them, and we had a lovely lobster dinner in the kitchen.”

Helen scrunched her eyebrows. “I don’t remember that.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Claire. “You were just three or four at the time. The others noticed though—it was hard not to. You know how boiling lobsters can stink up a house for days. They complained, saying lobsters had always been a family meal.”

Helen laughed. “I don’t remember them ever saying that about other things, pork chops for instance.”

“Pork chops
were
a family meal, every Tuesday. Your father loved them, could have eaten them three nights a week.”

They were silent for a minute. “We’re all here, Mom,” said Helen.

“Yes.” Claire sipped her tea.

“I wasn’t sure Thomas would make it.”

“I was.”

“Because you’d cut him out of your will if he didn’t show up?” Helen knew she was being mean, but, at that very moment, she wanted to be. She thought her mother’s insistence that her children all come to the cottage this particular weekend could have been orchestrated without the threat. Hell, Thomas didn’t need the money anyway. None of them did, really. It was the cottage that caught their attention. It was the prospect of losing the cottage, even though none of them, save herself, visited on a regular basis, that was most compelling. Even though Thomas hadn’t been to the house in thirty years, he had asked about it numerous times during his phone conversations with Helen. Who was doing the maintenance? Were the taxes still rising at an alarming rate? He told Helen that he missed the place and would get back soon. But it hadn’t happened, until now.

“You think I was wrong to put out the ultimatum.”

“We’ve had this discussion.”

“We seem to be having it again,” said Claire, pushing the cotton blanket Helen had laid on her without asking off her lap and onto the floor.

Helen poured more tea into her mug. Claire’s mug was still three-quarters full. “Everyone, including Thomas, would have come anyway.”

“I had to be sure,” said Claire. “But you’re right. I think Thomas would have come no matter what. If not to see me, he’d certainly come to see you. He was always very good to you, Helen. He loved you dearly—still does, I would imagine.” She sipped her tea. “He wasn’t as good to your older sister.”

“I think that’s because they’re closer in age.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Claire. “I think it’s because she’s Charlotte.”

“You may have a point there,” said Helen.

“Oh, I’ve got a point all right, a point I’ve been meaning to make for a while.”

Helen shifted in her chair and directed her gaze firmly at her mother. She wasn’t sure where their conversation was headed, but its sudden twist interested her. Charlotte’s behavior was something her parents had always acknowledged and punished, but never discussed with their other children. “Your older sister,” said Claire, “put every gray hair on my head, put the anger in my voice, and put the creak in these old bones. She’s exhausted me, mentally and physically, and yet I still fight. I’m not over the anger, even after all these years, at the selfish way she chose—chooses—to live her life.” Helen moved from her chair to the chair closer to her mother. She put her hand over Claire’s. “Don’t patronize me, Helen. I want to talk.”

“I know you do.”

“I never understood her. I still don’t,” said Claire. “Walking in here, into our family house, with a teenager for a boyfriend. Growing up, she never listened to me, or your father for that matter. And that broke his heart. He was ashamed of her behavior, and I didn’t blame him. But he blamed himself. He searched and searched for something to be proud of, and when he found it, he encouraged it. Lord, he went to every one of her track meets her freshman year in high school, but that wasn’t good enough. She quit after one season, started smoking and fooling around with boys.”

“You did what you could,” said Helen, though she was convinced otherwise.

“I don’t know if I did,” said Claire. “I pushed her; I pushed all of you. Maybe I pushed her too hard.”

Claire had, indeed, pushed too hard. She insisted Charlotte run track when she wanted to take art lessons instead. She pushed Thomas into baseball. He turned out to be very good at it, but Helen knew he felt that he fell short of his mother’s goals. Knowing Pammy had little hand-eye coordination, Claire suggested she swim. But knowing she could never come close to performing the way her mother had in the pool, Pammy suggested volleyball instead. She was an average athlete on her best days and had to endure Claire’s sitting at her games with a neutral look on her face and her arms crossed across her chest. Helen, by chance and with effort, was the best athlete of the family. And she sometimes wondered if that was why her mother gave her so much of her attention. As a child, Helen hadn’t noticed the difference between the way she was treated and the way her siblings were treated. But she had seen it as an adult. She was the favorite—not in her father’s eyes, as he was measured and fair and would, if asked, claim that he loved his children differently but equally. Helen was her mother’s favorite, for her athletic abilities, for her proximity, for her willingness to act as caregiver, and the others knew it just as Helen did. Claire’s favoritism had become even more pronounced after her husband’s death—the voice of reason silenced.

Helen was tempted to speak—to point out to her mother the parenting mistakes Claire had made. It wasn’t right to have a favorite child, just as it wasn’t right to have a least favorite child. Her mother had treated Charlotte differently. In some ways, Helen thought Claire had given up on her oldest daughter—something Claire would never admit to. Charlotte didn’t subscribe to Claire’s mandate in life, and when Claire couldn’t bend her, mold her like she had the others, she turned her back. John Thompson had never given up, but he couldn’t do it alone, and he certainly couldn’t influence Charlotte’s behavior once she’d left the house for college. Like Thomas, Charlotte moved out at eighteen. Helen, the most moldable, pliant of the four, had rarely bucked or protested.

Claire sipped her tea. “I’m having trouble with this,” she said. “She gives me pain, Helen. And I’m too old for that. I want to die loving my daughter.”

Helen hesitated. Did she want to bring this up now? Did she want to tell her mother that she’d failed at raising her oldest daughter? Would it do anything other than hurt her mother’s feelings? “Then do that,” said Helen, resolved to keep her opinion to herself. “Let go of your anger. It won’t change her, and it only hurts you. Charlotte hurts all of us, Mom, but I think she hurts herself the most.”

Claire produced a weak smile for her daughter, and then lowered her head until it touched the back of the chair. She closed her eyes, tired again, even though she had been up just a short while. She was now often asleep more than she was awake during the day. And she looked exhausted.

Minutes later, Charlotte walked down the stairs and onto the porch. “Where’s Daniel?” she asked.

“In town,” said Helen. “He took all the kids to McDonald’s. They were famished.”

“Me too,” said Charlotte, laying her hand against her flat stomach. “When’s dinner?”

“Not for a while. Charles and Thomas went into town to get lobsters, and Pammy and Barb went to get the corn.”

“In that case, where can a girl get a drink around here?”

“We’ll have one just as soon as they get back,” said Claire, who never had a drink before six. “We’ve got some wonderful hors d’oeuvres—the Brie is on the counter getting to room temperature. It won’t be long.”

Charlotte looked at her watch. “I’ll have one now,” she said, walking out of the porch and into the living room, “and another one with all of you when they get back. Helen, are there any unsalted almonds left?” By this time she was in the kitchen, looking for something to eat rather than a response from Helen.

“See? What is that, Helen? Where did I go wrong with her?” asked Claire, unable to let it rest.

“Charlotte chooses her own path.”

“Yes, but why is her path so drastically different from yours, or Pammy’s, or Thomas’s?”

“I don’t know.”

“I tried to raise her the same way,” said Claire, barely hearing Helen’s reply. “She fought me from the outset. She became a terrible two at one and never came out of it.”

“She’s not terrible, Mom.”

“She can be, Helen.”

“Perhaps she’s more misunderstood,” Helen offered.

“She’s no more misunderstood than the rest of us. She needs more attention than any one person or family can give her. I’m so tired of it all.”

“I know you are, Mom,” said Helen, getting up from her seat, signaling the end of the conversation, the end of her patience. “You sit here. I’m going to put the cheeses on a platter and fix the vegetable plate. And I will quickly wash the romaine lettuce for the Caesar salad.”

“My favorite,” said Claire.

“Mine, too.”

“Do you need my help?”

“I always need your help,” said Helen. “But today I’ll manage without it.”

Helen bent over to grab the tray holding the teapot and mugs; she lifted it to her waist and then walked out of the room. From her chair, Claire could see her walk through the living room and into the dining room before disappearing around the corner to the kitchen. Instantly lonely, she looked out the porch screens for something, someone other than Charlotte to occupy her thoughts. A young boy on a bicycle peddled furiously down the street, almost running over a cat on its way across. Then, a woman appeared at the top of the beach steps. When she got closer, Claire could see she was carrying a towel, a chair, and a red cloth bag. She wore a straw hat with an enormous brim, which rested on the top of her large circular sunglasses. The young woman looked into the porch as she walked by and then looked away. Claire waved as she always did, even though she had no idea who the woman was. The old guard was moving out, dying, and the new group was moving in, treating the beach as if they had always owned it.