Summer Friends Read online

  It was six o’clock on a Monday evening and the sky was still bright and blue. Maggie climbed the stairs to the porch. Delphine opened the door to her knock. How many times had they played this scene, Maggie coming over to the Crandalls’ house, looking for Delphine, Delphine rushing to the door, eager to be with her friend? Only now, Delphine thought, the eagerness, at least on her side, was tempered by the long stretch of their separation.

  Mrs. Crandall—Maggie would never be comfortable calling her by her first name—was in the living room. The older woman gave Maggie a brief but strong hug.

  “It’s good to see you again after all these years, Maggie,” she said.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Mrs. Crandall. And it’s good to be back in Ogunquit, in this house. There are just so many memories. . . .”

  Maggie scanned the room. Framed photos of family members were lined up on the fireplace mantel, perched on tables, and hung on the walls. An antique brass lamp sat on an immaculate white lace doily on top of a wooden side table. A framed piece of old embroidery showing the alphabet and several small animals hung on one side of the fireplace. An oval braided rug in greens and blues covered a large part of the wood floor.

  She smiled at Mrs. Crandall. “It’s all so familiar,” she said. “I feel like this room hasn’t changed one bit. I feel like I’m twelve years old again.”

  “Well, we did have to replace the sofa,” Patrice said. “The springs just wore out. I suspect it was all the jumping on it Joey did when he was young. But otherwise, yes, I’d say everything’s about the same. ‘Why fix what isn’t broken?’ I always say.”

  Maggie laughed. “My mother used to redecorate the entire house every two years. It drove my father crazy. I kind of liked it. I’d come home one day from school and find my bedroom all colonial instead of modern. Good-bye, orange beanbag chair; hello, old-fashioned rocking chair. It was fun.”

  Delphine thought that living with such uncertainty sounded horrifying, but she kept her opinion to herself. Her mother, she knew, was probably calculating the cost of such continual home improvements and silently disapproving.

  Jackie came downstairs then. She was wearing a knit sweater that Maggie immediately recognized as Delphine’s work. She clearly had a unique talent and why she wasn’t advertising it from the rooftops was anyone’s guess. Maybe, Maggie thought, before I go back to Massachusetts I can talk some business sense into her.

  “Let’s go on into the kitchen,” Patrice said. Mr. Crandall, a man Maggie was introduced to as Dave Sr., and a teenage girl introduced as Lori, Jackie and Dave Sr.’s daughter, were already sitting around the long wooden table that dominated the kitchen.

  Patrice had made a roast chicken with sides of freshly picked Swiss chard and a plate of fresh sliced tomatoes with herbs. The bread she had baked that morning. For dessert, she had made a strawberry rhubarb pie. Maggie was pretty sure she had insulted Delphine’s obnoxious friend, Jemima, by not scarfing down her corn muffins. She would not insult Delphine’s kindly mother by refusing a piece of her pie. She would just add an additional half hour to her exercise routine the next morning.

  Patrice brought a glass pitcher of homemade iced tea to the table and Charlie took it upon himself to pour everyone a glass. Maggie couldn’t help but notice how worn Delphine’s parents looked. It was a fair bet that Patrice had not been getting facial peels. Charlie’s back was bent and his face was the reddened, leathery face of a man who had spent a lot of time outdoors in all sorts of weather.

  “I don’t remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal,” Maggie said, taking a seat at the table. “I’m afraid neither Gregory nor I are much use in the kitchen.”

  “Well, you enjoy yourself,” Charlie said. “My wife is the best cook around here.”

  Patrice waved her hand in a dismissive gesture and took her seat at the other end of the table. “I don’t know if you remember, Maggie, but we say grace before our meals.”

  “Of course,” she said. Following the example of the Crandalls, Maggie lowered her head and folded her hands. Patrice spoke a short, simple prayer, and with a sudden clatter of serving spoons on ceramic, dinner began.

  Jackie sat to her husband’s left. Lori sat to his right. She was a pretty girl, dark haired like her mother, but with her father’s deep blue eyes. Dave Sr. was a bit of a surprise. At least, Maggie hadn’t pictured vivacious Jackie being married to someone so quiet and, well, unobtrusive. He sat hunched as if embarrassed about his great height or his thinning blond hair or whatever it was that seemed to embarrass him. Maybe he was just shy. Dave Jr., who, Maggie was told, was even taller than his father, was playing basketball with some friends. Delphine had told her there was some vague hope of his having a career in the sport, but nobody was counting on it. Besides, he would always have a job at the farm, with his father, or with his uncle Joey.

  Lori ate hurriedly and then, after kissing her parents and grandparents good-bye, she left for a babysitting job down the road. Her father would pick her up later. Maggie tried to remember when her own daughters had last kissed her before charging off on a date or for work. The Wilkeses weren’t a very demonstrative family. Which was all right. Maggie hadn’t grown up in a demonstrative household, and neither had Gregory, and yet both were successful adults. They were normal.

  “We were so sorry to hear from Delphine about your father,” Patrice said when Lori had gone. “May he rest in peace.”

  Maggie smiled. She didn’t think that anyone other than Mrs. Crandall had wished that sort of thing for her father, an ostentatiously secular man. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Well, it’s been a long time now. And my mother’s doing well, so that’s one less worry for us.”

  “Does she live with you?” Jackie asked.

  “Oh, gosh no. She has a condo in Florida.”

  “All the way down in Florida. It seems a shame.” Patrice’s lips set in a thin line, a clear indication to her family of her disapproval, but not, it seemed, to Maggie.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, with her family up north . . . ,” Dave Sr. said. Later, Maggie thought that this half sentence might have been his only contribution to the conversation.

  “Oh, my mother has a great life down in Florida,” she said. “Her condo development is gorgeous and she can use the pool and the tennis courts and there are organized excursions to the mall and the local amateur theatre. There are all sorts of things to keep her busy and dressing up.” Maggie laughed. “I don’t know if you remember how my mother used to overdress for every occasion. She even wore heels to the beach. Well, I can’t say I haven’t done the same!”

  “But how often do you get to see her?” Jackie asked. “How often does she get to see her grandchildren?”

  “Oh, often enough,” Maggie said. “Gregory and I see her once a year. She doesn’t really like to travel anymore, so we go down to Florida. There’s a fabulous hotel close to her condo development. I guess Kim and Caitlin haven’t seen her in a while, almost two years I think. Spending time with their grandmother isn’t exactly their idea of a fun time. I can’t say I blame them! When I was a kid I hated having to visit my grandparents.”

  Immediately, Maggie realized she had said something she shouldn’t have, that she had been insensitive, something she had been guilty of several times since coming back to Ogunquit. The Crandalls were grandparents, and from what she had heard and seen their grandchildren enjoyed spending time with them. “What I meant was—” she began.

  Jackie mercifully cut her off. “What about Peter?” she asked.

  “Peter? Oh, my brother and his wife don’t have children. They never wanted a family.”

  “Yes, but does he visit his mother?”

  “Peter and my mother never really got along all that well after he graduated from college,” Maggie explained. “Honestly, I’m not really sure what happened. I’m not close to him, either. After our father died . . . Gosh, you know I can’t even remember when Peter last saw our
mother.”

  Charlie wiped his mouth on his napkin and then folded it neatly, tucking it half under his empty plate. “I lost both my parents before I was nineteen,” he said. “I pretty much raised my younger brother and sister by myself. They both died young, too. I don’t know why I’m still around.”

  Delphine patted her father’s arm. “Well, we’re glad you are, Dad.”

  Patrice turned to Maggie again. “Have you met Delphine’s Harry?” she asked.

  “No,” Maggie said, “I haven’t. I’m kind of wondering if Delphine’s hiding him from me for some reason. I’m only kidding, of course.”

  Delphine felt her mother’s and her sister’s eyes on her. “He’s been superbusy at work lately,” she said, which was not really a lie. “I’m sure they’ll meet soon.”

  The table was cleared then and dessert brought in. Maggie didn’t find it hard to accept a slice of pie, though the coffee Patrice had brewed threatened to burn a hole in the lining of her stomach. When those plates and cups had been cleared, Delphine and Maggie offered their thanks and said their farewells.

  “Your parents are so nice,” Maggie said when they were in the front drive. “They’re so . . . so different from my parents. Not that my parents aren’t, weren’t fine people, it’s just that . . . Your parents seem so comfortable, so sort of homey.”

  “The grass is always greener.” For some people, Delphine added silently. But not for me, at least, not always.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “I guess that’s it. Most people want what they don’t or can’t have.”

  Delphine smiled. “Anyway, believe me, my parents are not as sweet as they appear. They’re pretty tough people. I don’t mean that they’re cruel. It’s just that they’re the sort of people who have no patience with self-pity or whining and all that. Unless you’re bleeding to death, they’ll tell you to put on your own Band-Aid.”

  “I don’t remember that about them,” Maggie admitted, “from when we were kids. All I could see was how awful my own parents were. Not that they were really awful, but when you’re a kid you have an overblown sense of what’s fair and what’s unfair. I must have accused my mother and father of being unfair hundreds of times before I left for college.”

  “And how did they react?” Delphine asked. Had she ever accused her parents of being unfair? She was pretty sure that she had never talked back to them.

  Maggie laughed. “My father would pretend he hadn’t heard. He’d just walk away. And my mother would say things like, ‘I’m sorry you think so.’ There was no negotiation between parents and children in my house.”

  “Or in mine,” Delphine said. “But I think that was the norm back when we were growing up. Parenting styles have changed drastically since then. At least, from what I read and see on TV. My brother and sister have pretty much repeated my parents’ style, with some exceptions. But there’s no spoiling going on, that’s for sure. Except, maybe, a little bit with Kitty, but that’s mostly my fault.”

  Maggie thought of how she had raised her daughters and felt a little twinge of guilt. Sometimes, maybe too many times, saying yes had just been easier than saying no; sometimes backing off on a threatened punishment had just been less of a hassle than following through and having to deal with the tears and the shouts.

  Maybe, she thought now, she had been unfair to her children—there was that word again—by being too lax with discipline, too ready to capitulate to their whims and threats of holding their breath until blue and hating her forever. Maybe she had made them into young adults with little sense of generosity or compromise or kindness, young adults who didn’t know how to accept disappointment as a normal part of life, young adults who thought the world was their due. She certainly hoped not. But it was too late to change anything now.

  Maggie gestured toward her car. “Well, I should say good night. I know you like to get to bed early.”

  Delphine shrugged. “I’m not sure that I like it so much, but I need it. Five o’clock comes early, as my father always says. Drive safe,” she added, already walking toward her truck. “It’s probably too early for drunken tourists to be on the road, but you never know.”

  “I will. You too.” Before sliding into the driver’s seat, Maggie checked her watch. Only eight o’clock. She felt somehow bereft. She had so enjoyed being at the dinner table with the Crandall family. She wasn’t ready to be alone for the rest of the evening. She considered the idea of going out someplace nice for a drink, maybe some place in walking distance of her hotel so that she didn’t have to drive. Maybe she would go back to the Old Village Inn. It was a friendly place and the other night there had been that table of handsome, well-groomed men. One of them, the one she had flirted with at the bar, Dan, had winked at her on her way out. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had winked at her or made any sort of appreciative gesture.

  Maggie got behind the wheel and headed back into the heart of town. When she got to the hotel she parked and went up to her room. No, she decided the moment she closed the door behind her. I’m not going anywhere. She felt . . . restless, and to go out alone might potentially be stupid. She was upset to admit that she wasn’t at all sure she could resist a temptation. As Mr. Crandall might have said, it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

  She undressed, got into her nightgown, and crawled into bed. She wished she had brought a book to read. It was ridiculous that she hadn’t. She picked up the remote and flipped through channels. The only show that seemed at all interesting was a documentary on the state of the continuing cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico after the massive BP oil spill in 2010. She watched for an hour, and when she finally turned out the light she had no idea of what she had just seen. She dreamed that night of her children.

  19

  The Burton brothers had been born in England but raised since the age of ten in New York City. Each had a master’s degree in art history. Piers’s specialty was seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European painting and Aubrey’s was European ceramics. They owned the largest and finest antique gallery in Ogunquit and another, slightly larger gallery in Kennebunk. Both men, now in their forties, were gay and had been single at least since moving to Ogunquit nine years earlier. In a way, Delphine thought, the Burton brothers reminded her of the Simmons sisters, siblings devoted so intimately and happily to each other and to their work they might never break apart and marry.

  “Thanks for suggesting we come here,” Maggie said, climbing down from Delphine’s truck in the parking lot outside Burton’s Antiques and Curiosities on Tuesday morning. “I love browsing through old things. You never know what treasures you’ll find.”

  She looked up at the massive white structure before them. Delphine explained that it had once been a dilapidated barn. The Burtons had rescued it, rebuilding and restoring and adding on until it was the impressive place it was today.

  “I thought you might like it,” she went on, “even though you said your house is contemporary.”

  “Oh, only the master suite. I paid a not so small fortune for each area of the house to have a different look and feel. I guess I have my mother’s lust for decorating. That, or I have a fear of commitment.”

  Delphine smiled and thought about her own method of “decorating.” Was someone giving it away for free? If it was a lamp, did it have a working switch and a clean shade? If it was a couch, was the stuffing still intact? If the answers to these questions were “yes,” the pieces found their way into Delphine’s house. Along with, of course, pieces inherited from her family.

  Delphine and Maggie entered the building. Neither Burton was in sight, though the women’s entrance was surely known to them. Security cameras monitored both floors of the shop. Every summer, without fail, the brothers caught at least one potential shoplifter. Interestingly, it was always a woman, middle-aged and well dressed, the last person one would assume to be a thief. There was never a need to call the police. The woman’s subsequent embarrassment—after a requisite initial denial—was, th
e Burtons believed, punishment enough. That and the horrified look on her husband’s face, if he happened to be with her and not outside in the car, waiting and bored.

  The brothers stocked an enormous amount of objects, but there was a sense of order not always found in antique shops. Maggie looked around and noticed an exceptionally fragile wooden rocking horse on a shelf above the front counter. Immediately to the left of the counter, there was a selection of fine bone china plates, cups, and saucers in a glass-fronted cabinet. To the right of the cabinet were two end tables inlaid with marble mosaics. A brass standing lamp with a tasseled rose-colored shade caught her interest. She wondered why until she remembered that her grandmother had had one just like it.

  “Do you collect anything?” Maggie asked, pointing to a portable display case on the counter, containing twenty or thirty enameled thimbles.

  “Not really,” Delphine said. “I mean, I do have an awful lot of books, but I buy them without much of a plan. I don’t set out to find a particular edition of a particular book. I don’t think I could afford to. I just browse and see what I find.”

  “Interesting. I mean, I acquire all sorts of things, too, but I don’t actually collect anything. My mother did. I remember that when I was about eight she was mad for these lovely little delicate ceramic horses. And then, suddenly, she lost all interest in them. I was horrified when she sold the entire collection to a stranger, someone who saw her ad in the local paper. I felt so sad for the little horses. I know, it’s strange to feel sad for an inanimate object, but I did.”

  Delphine thought of Kitty and her intense feelings for her stuffed animals. Each one had a name and a history and was a treasured friend. “You were a child,” she said to Maggie. “Maybe you believed they were somehow alive.”

  “I guess. The world was a whole lot more magical when we were kids, wasn’t it. A whole lot more emotional, too, somehow. Sometimes that was painful. Like when the little horses went away to live with a stranger.”