The Summer Cottage Page 4

  “That’s my girl,” said Claire, returning to the paper.

  When Helen walked out the front door, John turned to Claire. “Do we have to turn absolutely everything into a competition?”

  “Life is a competition, dear.”

  John reached for the front section of the Times that Claire had already read and laid on the table between them. “For some of us.”

  “For all of us.”

  CHAPTER 5

  2003

  Helen set the dining room table, using the delicate white dinner plates with the blue flower border her mother and father had eaten from for the first twenty years of their marriage. It was a popular pattern that many young brides of the day had chosen for their everyday setting. But Claire had grown weary of its simplicity in her middle age, replacing it with mustard-colored china hand painted with wild birds. Helen had told her mother at the time that she was most likely suffering a midlife crisis, but Claire had simply and unemotionally packed her wedding china into cardboard boxes bound for the cottage. Now, again, Claire found comfort in the tradition of the white and blue plates.

  Helen took the dishes from the dining room into the kitchen and set them on the counter next to the stove. She fished peas out of the small sauce pan with a slotted spoon and spilled them onto the plates. She used a wood spoon to scoop a small serving of the baked cheese and rice casserole she had removed from the oven before she set the table onto the plate beside the peas. She again opened the oven door and, ignoring the whoosh of hot air, stabbed a stuffed chicken breast with a fork. Placing it next to the peas and the rice, Helen began the tedious task of cutting the chicken into tiny, chewable, digestible pieces. This done, Helen put the plate in the refrigerator to cool its contents.

  Claire’s illness and subsequent treatments had sensitized her mouth, leaving her with intolerance of hot or cold liquids and foods. Her morning coffee, taken black and piping before, now needed three ice cubes to make it palatable. Ice cream had to be left on the counter until its firm, delicious peaks had succumbed to their tropical surroundings and fallen into vague mounds and soupy valleys. Meals, for the most part, had to be prepared ahead of time, so that each and every component was as temperate as the room in which it was served. When this was impractical, Helen simply cooled hot food in the fridge or heated cold foods in the microwave. Resistant to change in general and this one in particular, Helen had fought her mother, refusing at first to give her cool soft-boiled eggs and tepid orange juice. But in the end, Claire won by simply refusing to eat. The futility of arguing with a seventy-nine-year-old hunger strike victim became frightfully obvious very quickly. Helen’s refrigerator/microwave trick shortened the process, which seemed to make it more reasonable, understandable even.

  Grabbing another plate, Helen repeated the process for herself, save cutting the chicken and cooling it down. Taking a warm biscuit for herself from the toaster oven, Helen grabbed her mother’s plate from the fridge and walked both of the plates back into the dining room. After setting the plates down, she lit the candles. Taking a step back from the table to survey her presentation, Helen smiled, knowing how pleased her mother would be with a well-set, attractive table. The flowers Helen had brought from home sat in a water pitcher, helping to compensate for the empty spaces. “Mom?” she called, walking back into the living room, where her mother had chosen to sit after her late afternoon nap. “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Really?” Claire looked up from the magazine she wasn’t reading. “We haven’t had lunch.”

  “Sure we did. Tuna sandwiches at home,” said Helen. “Your favorite.”

  Helen helped her mother off the couch and into the dining room, where Claire’s eyes grew large. “Helen! What a lovely scene.”

  Helen patted her mother’s shoulder and then sat her at the head of the table, at her end, in the large, cushioned chair paired with her room-temperature chicken. Helen sat on her mother’s left. Like dry-land synchronized swimmers, both women put their napkins in their laps, folded their hands, and closed their eyes.

  “Dear Lord,” Claire began, and then stopped to clear her throat. “Thank You for this day and for the opportunity to live it. Thank You for this lovely food and for my precious daughter who prepared it. Watch over those traveling here, Lord. Give them a safe journey. And bless John. May he rest peacefully with You. Amen.”

  Claire prayed for her husband at the dinner table every night. She had loved him with a noticeable devotion that made Helen, as a child, feel safe. Claire would often tell Helen that their relationship was spawned from a different time, that she and John, like many of their friends, looked at marriage as a lifelong partnership. Divorce was not an option, as it was nowadays. Claire wrinkled her nose every time she said the word divorce. She thought all divorced people were weak, that they simply hadn’t tried hard enough, and that included her oldest daughter, Charlotte, who had been divorced twice. This did not mean that she and John had always seen eye to eye, Claire was fond of saying. But whatever problem that arose to separate them was analyzed until its significance diminished, until they were able to talk about it without anger in their voices. Claire had never thought about leaving John, nor he her, a testament, she thought, to their work ethic as much as their affection for one another.

  “Amen,” said Helen, pulling her thoughts back to the dinner table. Suddenly ravenous, Helen ate quickly. Claire speared a few peas and lifted them with effort to her mouth, where she chewed them meticulously. Again and again, Claire returned to the small, manageable peas, sweet and comforting. When they were gone, she put her fork on her plate, signaling defeat. “Mom,” said Helen, eyeing her mother’s plate, “have some chicken. It’s your favorite. Plus you could use the protein.”

  “I’m tired of protein.”

  “Maybe you’re tired because you don’t get enough protein.”

  “What about our tuna salad lunch?”

  “You’ve got me there,” said Helen. “Just a few bites of chicken.”

  Claire forked a morsel of chicken into her mouth. “I feel like a child being coaxed to eat.”

  “If the shoe fits . . .”

  Claire smiled. “Fine. If I eat half my chicken, can I have dessert?”

  It was Helen’s turn to smile. “You’ll be pleased with dessert.”

  “Blueberry pie, right? You said you were going to make blueberry pie.”

  “For the weekend,” said Helen. “I’m going to make two pies for the weekend.”

  “Then what are we having tonight?”

  “Pudding.”

  “Really? Butterscotch pudding?” Claire asked, shoveling two pieces of chicken into her mouth.

  “With a layer of cream on top.”

  “Helen,” said Claire as she chewed, “you are good to me.”

  “Don’t get too excited. It’s instant.”

  “Nothing wrong with instant.”

  “Now she tells me,” said Helen. “If I had known that, I never would have made Aunt Margaret’s scalloped potatoes from scratch.”

  “Good practice for you, Helen,” said Claire. “Although I prefer Stouffer’s myself.”

  Helen laughed. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”

  “I like to keep you on your toes, Helen.”

  “I’m always on my toes,” said Helen.

  “You always have been, dear.”

  The next afternoon, Pammy arrived. She parked next to her sister’s car and immediately opened her trunk. Beside her bright yellow duffel bag lay four loaves of artisan bread, a half dozen bottles of white wine, dinner for three from Pasta Extravaganza, and two Bloomingdale’s shopping bags that held presents for everyone. Leaving the duffel and the shopping bags in the car, Pammy loaded everything else into her arms and walked with purpose toward the back door. Guessing the low success rate of opening the screen door without dropping at least one of the wine bottles, Pammy yelled for help. “Helen!”

  Thoroughly engaged on the porc
h by the latest issue of The New Yorker, Helen started when she heard her sister’s voice and then ran to the back door. Seeing Pammy, with her cumbersome load and a panicked look on her face, Helen couldn’t resist asking the obvious. “Can I help you with something?”

  “You’ve got exactly three seconds to open that door to avoid certain death!” Helen laughed and held the door open for Pammy who rushed past her and dumped everything onto the counter. “Phew,” she said. “What an ordeal.” She tucked the dark brown hair that had fallen out of the clip at the back of her head behind her ears.

  Helen gave her sister, three inches taller to match the three years older, a hug and kissed her on the cheek. “You make it an ordeal, sweetheart. I said bring nothing but yourself.”

  “But you really don’t mean that.”

  “I really do, though. It’s everyone else in the world who doesn’t mean it.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Every dinner party I go to in New York is the same. The hostess says don’t bring a thing—after you’ve exhausted yourself making clever suggestions—and then is offended if you don’t show up with cute cocktail napkins, a bottle of wine, or a bouquet of fresh flowers. Then you’re supposed to say something, like, ‘I just couldn’t resist,’ when you hand her the goods and give her a perfunctory kiss next to her cheek.” Pammy pushed the hem of her shirt back into the waistband of her pressed khaki shorts. She liked order in her life. Without it, without everything in its proper place, she felt adrift; the belt that matched her shoes was like a bow line connecting a boat to its mooring. She had not always been this way, not cared as much. It was when she turned forty and had no husband that she decided the dignity in her life would come from the appearance of having it.

  “Still jaded, I see, by city life.”

  “You know,” said Pammy, beginning to unload her bags, “I’ve lived in that city for twenty years, and I don’t think I’ll ever make it into the social registry.”

  “You were invited here, weren’t you? This is the event of the season.”

  “And you never change, thank God.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “How’s Mom?” asked Pammy, as she put four of the six wine bottles into the cupboard.

  “Going downhill quickly,” said Helen, “as you already know.”

  “Is that why she’s so pissed off?” Pammy put the pasta, mushroom sauce, and Caesar salad takeout containers in the fridge.

  “Pissed off?” Helen folded her arms across her chest.

  “Yeah, pissed off.” Pammy mimicked Helen’s stance. “I mean, she’s got to be pretty pissed off at me, Charlotte, and Thomas to order you to call us with her crazy ultimatum. What kind of mother does that—demands that her kids show up at the cottage if they want their share of the inheritance?”

  “Maybe a mother who wonders if her kids care about her at all.”

  “So you agree with her tactics. You think she did the right thing.”

  “I’m not saying that,” said Helen, lowering her arms. “But you need to look at it from her standpoint.”

  “We’ve lived our lives from her standpoint.”

  “No.” Helen shook her head. “You’ve lived part of your life from her standpoint. You’re an adult, Pammy, and you can now choose how you react to what she says and does. You barely listen anymore when I try to describe her condition to you.”

  “Well, Dad used to explain it.” Pammy opened the fridge again and placed the remaining two bottles of Chardonnay on the bottom shelf.

  “Yeah, I know. Since Dad died, I’ve been flying solo.”

  “What do you mean by that?” said Pammy on her way back out the kitchen door.

  Helen followed her. “You live a hundred miles away, and we see you twice a year. And when we talk on the phone, we talk about you, not Mom. That’s what I mean by that.”

  Pammy grabbed her duffel bag from the back of her car and handed it to Helen. She lifted the shopping bags out of the trunk and then closed it. “Helen, you know how busy I am.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Helen. “I’m busy too—taking care of Mom all by myself.”

  “Which you seem to enjoy, by the way. And Thomas and I work seventy-hour weeks, and Charlotte lives on the West Coast. What do you expect?”

  “You’re welcome,” said Helen, striding toward the house and letting the screen door close behind her. Helen marched her sister’s duffel bag up the stairs, and set it in the pink room she and Pammy would share. Charles had offered to sleep on the pullout in the den and the boys had begged to sleep on air mattresses on the porch, so that Thomas and his family could have the green room with the double bed and other set of bunks. Charlotte and her latest boyfriend could sleep in the queen-size bed in the yellow room. Claire would stay where she always stayed, in the blue, front room she had shared with her husband for forty-six years. When Helen came back down the stairs, Pammy was sitting with their mother on the porch.

  “Come join us,” said Claire. “Pammy is just catching me up on work.” Helen made eye contact with her sister, holding her gaze for a second longer than Pammy.

  “We were just talking about my latest account,” said Pammy. “I’ll be working with a hot, new IT company.”

  “How long have you been with Paulson and Garvin?” asked Claire.

  Pammy looked at the ceiling, counting the years in her head. “For twelve years,” she said. “It will be twelve years in September.”

  “I remember you telling us—was it at Thanksgiving, Helen?—that you thought you’d make vice president soon,” said Claire. “I haven’t heard whether or not that’s come to be.”

  Pammy looked at Helen before looking at her mother. “No, Mom,” she said. “The job was given to Patrick O’Brien.”

  “And you stayed?” asked Claire, incredulous. “You got passed over, and you stayed?”

  “It’s a good company, Mom, and I’ve got a lot of creative freedom.”

  “I’d start looking around if I were you. They sent a clear message when they promoted that O’Brien fellow instead of you.”

  Helen jumped up from her seat. “Who’d like some iced tea?”

  “Not me,” said Claire, hand to belly. “I’m still full from that wonderful chef salad you made for lunch.”

  “Pammy?” said Helen. “Let’s get some tea and head down to the beach. You haven’t seen the water yet. Mom, you don’t mind if we go for a quick walk, do you?”

  “Go right ahead,” said Claire, waving them off. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  As soon as they had their tea in plastic tumblers and were walking across the street to the beach, Helen said, “She doesn’t mean it.”

  “She most certainly does. She means every damn word of it. God, Helen, and you wonder why I don’t get to Connecticut more often.”

  “You’ve got to ignore it. Whenever she says hurtful stuff like that, you’ve got to ignore it.”

  “Easy for you to say, cherished one.”

  “I get my share of it, too, Pammy. When you spend several hours a day with your aged, ill mother, you get a ration.”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard, Saint Helen.”

  “It’s so easy for you to say that, to justify your absence and your lack of concern.” They descended the steps to the beach. Pammy walked into the water; Helen followed.

  “I am concerned, Helen. I’m just not very good at showing it.” Pammy looked over at her sister. “And I know you’re a good caregiver. Because you are, the rest of us can take a holiday.”

  “I need a holiday.”

  Pammy smiled. “You got one, sister. Saturday is the Fourth of July!”

  Helen laughed. “Work aside. How are you? How is life in that big, bad city?”

  “Big and bad.”

  “But you love it.”

  “Most of the time, I do,” said Pammy, wading out of the water and onto the sand. “But sometimes I wonder what took me there in the first place.”

  “I believe his name was Haro
ld.”

  “You have the memory of twin elephants. How did you ever remember Harold?”

  “Easy. How can you forget a guy whose mother named him after hearing ‘Hark! The Harold Angels Sing’ piped into the delivery room of the hospital on Christmas Eve?”

  “I’d forgotten that.”

  “What I forget is who came after Harold—Sam or Anthony?”

  “Anthony,” said Pammy, leading Helen back up the stairs, back to the house. “What an ass he was. Remember how you had to call him Anthony? If you called him Tony, he wouldn’t respond.”

  “Yes,” Helen said. “I do remember. Charlotte called him Tony the entire Labor Day weekend that year.”

  “Charlotte was always so contrary.”

  “She still is,” said Helen. “You’ll be able to see that for yourself tomorrow.”

  “How about Thomas? Is he coming?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’m hopeful. Saturday, I think, if he comes.”

  “Only you,” said Pammy. “Only you could get Thomas to come.”

  “It’s really Mom who got him to come—if he does come.”

  “And if he does come, will Barb and the kids come with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a peach, isn’t she?” Pammy opened the back screen door for her sister.

  “Absolutely,” said Helen.

  “How about Charles and the boys?” Pammy looked at the floor next to the washing machine and dryer for ratty sneakers and wet towels, evidence of her nephews’ presence.

  “Fishing. They should be here on Friday.” Helen hesitated, wondering if she should ask about Pammy’s latest companion. Pammy read her mind.

  “Mark’s not coming. He’s really busy at work right now and didn’t think he should take the time.”

  Seeing the injured look on Pammy’s face, Helen wrapped her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “Then I’ve got you all to myself,” she said. “Let’s check in with Mom on the porch.”

  “You go. I’m going to head upstairs to unpack.”

  “Put your suit on, so we can sit on the beach.”