Summer Friends Read online

  “And what about Gregory?” At least, Delphine thought, I remembered her husband’s name.

  “He’s fine,” Maggie said. “He’s doing really well at work. He’s a senior partner in his firm, which means he has to travel a lot. And, well, to be honest, things aren’t what they used to be between us. Nothing major is wrong, though,” she added hurriedly, with a flick of her wrist, at the same time wondering if that was really true. Not the trouble part but the “nothing major” part. “It’s probably just the twenty-four-year apathy setting in,” she went on. “The arduous middle years. It was probably bound to happen. This, too, shall pass. It is what it is.”

  If Delphine was remembering correctly, it was unlike Maggie to resort to a string of clichés. But maybe she wasn’t remembering correctly. And people changed. She really knew very little, if anything, about the woman sitting across the table from her. Maybe Maggie was a bit nervous, after all. Why else would she have revealed to someone she hadn’t seen in over two decades, that there was trouble in her marriage?

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re probably right. Everything will be fine.”

  “Oh, sure,” Maggie said, with that same dismissive flick of the wrist. “I know. Hey, the other day I was thinking about the time my parents took the two of us to see that musical at the Ogunquit Playhouse. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was, but I do remember that when we came out of the theatre we were both totally convinced we were going to become actresses. Do you remember that?”

  “No,” Delphine said.

  “Oh. Really? My mother made us get dressed up and we were both sure we were going to have an awful, boring time and then we wound up having a blast.”

  “I’m sorry. I really don’t remember any of that.” Delphine looked down at her watch. “I should probably get home. I go to bed pretty early. And I get up pretty early, too.”

  “Sure, okay,” Maggie said, reaching for her bag. “Let me get the check. This is my treat.”

  “No, no. We’ll split the bill. Please.”

  “Well, okay,” Maggie said. “But next time it’s on me.”

  No, Delphine thought, it won’t be on you. I can pay for my own meals.

  There was little conversation as the bill was asked for and then paid. Together, they walked out into the gravel parking lot. The evening sky was streaked with purplish clouds. The tide had come in a bit more since they had arrived and now the water of the Cape Neddick River lapped up against the shore. A small overturned rowboat rested close to a shed decorated with colorful buoys. The air was filled with the excited, happy shouts of kids from the camp across the road, some playing in the calm waters of the Cape Neddick Harbor.

  “It’s a beautiful evening,” Maggie said. “I forgot just how lovely it is here.”

  “Yes,” Delphine said. She lifted her hand in a sort of wave. She really didn’t want to attempt another hug and hoped that Maggie felt the same. “Well,” she said, “it was good seeing you again, Maggie.”

  Maggie smiled. “Thanks. It was good seeing you, too. But we’ll see each other again, soon. I’m booked at the hotel for several weeks.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was hoping we could spend some quality time together, really catch up, you know. I’ve missed you, Delphine.”

  Delphine hesitated. She looked away, a bit over Maggie’s left shoulder. She had not missed her old friend, not in a very long time. She couldn’t afford to be missing people. There were too many people right in front of her, in the present, who needed her. “Yes,” she said, knowing her reply was inadequate but feeling helpless to respond otherwise. “But I do have to work. Every day, sometimes all day. I don’t have much free time.”

  But Maggie was not going to be put off. She wouldn’t allow herself to be so easily dismissed. Not again. “Oh, I know that,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want to interfere with your job. But I’m sure I could squeeze myself in some times. I mean, you must have an odd hour here and there, maybe in the evenings?”

  Delphine forced herself to look directly at this person from her past, this person who seemed to badly need or want a connection. She managed a smile. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll . . . I’ll make some time. Sure.”

  “Good. Well,” Maggie said, indicating a sleek hardtop convertible, “this is my car. Good night, Delphine.”

  Delphine watched as Maggie got behind the wheel. She wondered how much a car like that cost—a Lexus of some sort, she saw—and if it was worth it. But “worth” might mean something very different now to Maggie than it meant to Delphine. Value was a subjective notion. Maggie waved as she drove off, back in the direction of her hotel.

  Well, Delphine thought as she climbed up into her truck, that was a disaster or pretty near to one. But Maggie seemed determined to repeat the disaster. Vaguely, Delphine remembered this about Maggie—her persistence, her refusal to walk away from a friend even when she was being ignored or pushed along. She shook off the memory and pulled out of the parking lot onto Shore Road.

  Before going home she would stop at the farm and check on that worrisome hen. Jackie, of course, would already have done so, but it was better to be safe than sorry, as her father always said. And then, before going to bed, she would read a few pages in the novel that was currently absorbing her—a mystery by C. J. Sansom, set in the time of Henry VIII—and work for a bit on her current knitting project, a fairly mindless one, a simple, lightweight scarf for her sister. It would be good to be home with Melchior where she could attempt to put thoughts of her dinner with Maggie—and of what might come in the weeks ahead—out of her mind.

  4

  The next morning Delphine was at her office at the farm by six-thirty. The air was already thick and sticky. It was going to be a hot day, and humid. She might even need to turn the air conditioner on when she got home, even if Jemima wasn’t coming over. With all that fur, Melchior didn’t do well in the heat, either.

  Maggie, of course, had the option of spending the day in her hotel room in air-conditioned splendor. Delphine sighed. She thought about the awkward conversation they’d had last night over dinner. She thought about the glaring difference in their appearance, a physical difference that reflected a deeper divide.

  Delphine turned on her computer and entered the password that would allow her access to the farm’s financial information. She wondered if she and Maggie had ever really had anything in common. Adults had the freedom to seek out friendships in a variety of places and among a variety of people. But the social life of children was limited by so many factors. In her own case, school had been let out for the summer and there had been no money for her to attend a day camp. And then, Maggie had appeared, just down the road. Maybe proximity alone had made them friends. Maggie had been available to Delphine. Delphine had been available to Maggie. Maybe they had always been just accidental friends, meant to come together, have a few laughs, learn a few life lessons, and then move apart.

  But then, Delphine asked herself, if that was the case, why had it hurt so badly to walk away? She shook her head as if that motion could toss off the disturbing thoughts.

  “Aunt Delphine!”

  Delphine looked up from her computer to see her niece, Kitty, standing in the doorway. Behind her stood her mother, Cybel.

  “I hope we’re not bothering you,” Cybel said as they came into the office. “Kitty was just dying to show you the picture she made last night.”

  Delphine smiled and put out her arms. Kitty charged into them and hugged tightly. “Of course you’re not bothering me,” Delphine said. Often, when she looked at her niece she had the sense that she was looking at herself at Kitty’s age. She was not alone in noting this. Everyone who met the two noted that the family resemblance was indeed strong. They had the same dark, unruly hair and the same big brown eyes. And there was something more, something indefinable, a common spirit maybe, a shared energy.

  But lately, Kitty had been less energetic than usual. She was looking a lit
tle wan, too, a little pale. It worried Delphine, but she hadn’t said anything as of yet to Cybel. Cybel and Joey were good parents. She trusted them to be on top of their daughter’s health and well-being. And she hated the notion of intervening, which seemed more often than not to be interfering.

  “It’s a noodle picture,” Kitty explained unnecessarily. “I dyed the noodles with food coloring, and when they were dry I pasted them on the paper to make a picture. It’s you and me, see?”

  “You’re quite the artist!”

  “It’s like what the Impressionists do,” Kitty said. “It looks all mushy up close, but when you look at it from far away it makes a picture.”

  Delphine raised her eyebrows. “How do you know about the Impressionists?”

  “From a book in the library,” Kitty replied. “The picture is for you, Aunt Delphine. You can put it on your ’fidgerator.”

  Delphine bit back a smile. She, too, had been unable to say “refrigerator” until she was almost ten. “Thank you so much. I’ll put it up the minute I get home.”

  “Next up are woven friendship bracelets,” Cybel said. “I’m glad we’re still at the basic craft stage. I’m dreading the day she decides she’s into sports. I’ll have to take a second job to keep up with the cost of the equipment.”

  “Well, if she decides to take up knitting, instead, you know where to come. I’ll teach her and she can use my retired needles.”

  Cybel put out her hand for Kitty to take. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. Come on, kiddo, let’s drop you off with Grandma. Mommy has to get to work.”

  Kitty hugged Delphine hard—yes, Delphine thought, Kitty felt skinnier than usual—then took her mother’s hand and left the office.

  Delphine turned back to her desk. It was going to be a particularly busy day. When you ran a farm the notion of a “weekend” made as little sense as the notion of a vacation. Today there were bills to be reviewed—her own and the farm’s—and an office inventory to plan. But as busy as she was, she found her thoughts returning to Maggie and their strange reunion the previous evening.

  Ideally, of course, reunions should be about reestablishing a useful emotional or social connection; they should not devolve into a beauty or a career contest, though they usually did. Seeing Maggie’s smooth face and unblemished hands at dinner the previous night had made Delphine highly conscious of her own physical flaws. This annoyed her.

  She was aware that the sun and the wind and the cold had done its work on her face and hands and arms. She had what was known as a “farmer’s tan,” pretty much year-round. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. There were dark spots on the backs of her hands and her cuticles were perpetually raw. She used sunblock, she used moisturizer, she even, at her sister’s suggestion, used cuticle oil, but nothing that came in a tube or a jar or a little glass bottle, no matter how expensive (not that Delphine bought expensive products) or touted as miraculous, was going to effectively combat hours, days, weeks, years of sun and wind and cold. Then there was the housekeeping and the shifts at the diner, which sometimes involved loading and unloading the dishwasher and scrubbing the grill. Soft, unmarked skin was just not going to happen for Delphine, and until Maggie’s arrival she had never thought of it as an issue.

  Nor had her fingers ever felt so . . . inadequate. Next to Maggie’s smooth, long fingers, wearing a considerable amount of diamonds, she thought her own fingers looked . . . juvenile. Adornment shouldn’t be equated with maturity, she knew that, but somehow those sparkly rings seemed to Delphine like signs of achievement or success. Ridiculous. Vanity had never been a troublesome issue for her and she didn’t want it to become one now. That would be a moral defeat.

  Delphine suddenly looked up from the computer. One of the chickens, a light brahma, was standing in the open doorway, staring at her. If chickens could actually stare, and Delphine wasn’t sure that they could. She smiled. “What’s up, Lucy?”

  Lucy had nothing to say for herself. Grandly she turned and strutted off. Delphine turned back to the computer. I bet Lucy doesn’t waste her time comparing the color of her feathers to the color of her coopmates’ feathers, Delphine thought. No, only humans, who knew the limited nature of time on earth and who should cherish it, were in fact so wasteful of it.

  And that was what Maggie’s visit to Ogunquit felt like to Delphine, a waste of time. They had briefly caught up on the present. What were they to talk about now, the distant past, a past that, with a few exceptions, she was not eager to revisit? In Delphine’s opinion there was no point to reminiscing. You couldn’t recoup the past, should you even want to, and you couldn’t change anything about it, except, maybe, for your feelings about it.

  Besides, it didn’t take a genius to know that in any relationship, a romance or a friendship, there had to be a give-and-take or the relationship would die. And what could she possibly offer Maggie after all this time? What could Maggie possibly offer her? There was simply no room in Delphine’s life for someone she had already once abandoned, for someone whose daily life was so drastically different from her own. There had to be current commonality for a friendship to have a purpose.

  Delphine sighed and rubbed her temples. She felt tired. Maybe, she thought, I should just give in to the memories, just for a moment or two. Like now, she was remembering so clearly the first time she had met Maggie. Forty years ago. Her mother had sent her up the road to the Lilac House with a welcome basket of homemade jams and pickles. Delphine remembered being a little nervous. She didn’t meet many strangers. She knocked on the door and waited. When no one answered after a moment or two, she was tempted to leave the basket on the porch and run. And then the door had swung open. A tall, slim, blond girl stood there smiling.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Delphine had been struck dumb for a moment. “Hi,” she said finally, holding out the basket. “This is for you.”

  Maggie had taken the basket. “Thanks,” she said, with an even bigger smile. “I’m Maggie.”

  Maggie’s hair was smooth and shiny. Her clothes were pressed and new. Delphine, with her messy, uncombed hair and hand-me-down clothes, felt slightly in awe of this smiling, pretty person.

  “I’m Delphine,” she said. “I live on the farm down the road.”

  “Oh, good. I’ll have someone to play with. I’m here for the whole summer. Wanna come in?”

  Delphine hadn’t really been sure that she did, but Maggie seemed kind of nice, so she shrugged, said, “Okay,” and followed her inside.

  Mrs. Weldon was in the kitchen. She was wearing a mini-dress and pink frosty lipstick. It was the first time Delphine had ever seen a mother wear a mini-dress or lipstick and she felt a little weird about it. But Mrs. Weldon was also very nice and accepted the welcome basket graciously. She gave the girls some grapes and lemonade and went off to continue unpacking. Delphine remembered sitting at the kitchen table with Maggie, popping grapes into her mouth and listening to Maggie chatter on about herself. Maggie told her that she had first been on a plane at the age of four. “My mom’s parents live in California,” she explained. “So we had to fly. The plane actually had an upstairs and a downstairs! And they showed movies and gave us food and everything.”

  Delphine was suitably impressed. She had never been farther from her hometown than Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  “Is Portsmouth nice?” Maggie asked.

  Delphine nodded.

  “Maybe I could get my mom to take us there someday. That would be fun!”

  And right then and there, sitting at the kitchen table, Delphine had decided that Maggie was okay. Even if they were different in a lot of ways, so what?

  The adult Delphine knew that kids seemed to have a natural ability to accept and appreciate what was put in front of them and ignore as unimportant issues that would give an adult pause. She had seen it with Norman, with Dave Jr., and then with Lori. She was seeing it now with Kitty. Kitty’s best friend, Emily, spoke French at home. Kitty and her p
arents spoke only English. Emily’s family was Jewish and the Crandalls were vaguely Christian. Emily had no use for reading while Kitty couldn’t get enough of books. Emily was a classic tomboy. Kitty preferred skirts to pants. The girls got along like clams. Their parents waved at each other from a distance.

  It was just like it had been with the Crandalls and the Weldons. By the second summer Delphine had understood that her parents and Maggie’s parents were not going to be best friends. She remembered the adults being polite when they met and politely interested in each other’s affairs, but they had never hung out in the evenings together in the fancy living room at the Lilac House or on the Crandalls’ front porch. They had never gotten together for town events like the Fourth of July parade or the communal lobster dinners. For the Crandalls, Sunday mornings had meant early church services followed by a communal pancake breakfast; for the Weldons, Sunday mornings had meant sleeping late, and then coffee and the New York Times. Delphine’s family had lived in the same house for generations. Maggie’s parents had moved four times in the first six years of their marriage. The Crandalls didn’t as a rule go to college. The Weldons routinely achieved degrees in higher education.

  Sitting at her desk now, Delphine couldn’t help but smile. If the adults had been content to be nothing more than polite neighbors, Maggie and Delphine had not. From the day the Weldons arrived in late June until the day they went home to Concord in late August, the girls were inseparable. They jumped rope on the deck behind the Lilac House and roller-skated up and down its lengthy front driveway. They did crafts on the Crandalls’ front porch and got ice-cream cones at the shop in Perkins Cove. Mrs. Weldon would take them to the beach, where they would swim and play for hours while Mrs. Weldon perfected her tan. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, she would take all five kids to the movies in town at the Leavitt Theatre. While they watched the movie, Mrs. Weldon shopped or had a cocktail at a local restaurant. Delphine never told her parents that Maggie’s mother left them alone in the theatre. The secret was part of the fun. The girls watched television together, shows like The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. For a while, both girls had a big crush on David Cassidy. Sometimes, Mr. Crandall would let them help out with small chores at the farm. Mrs. Crandall taught them to bake, and on the weekends, when Mr. Weldon was at the Lilac House and not at work in Boston, he sometimes would take the girls and their brothers out on a rented fishing boat. When Delphine was old enough to work at the family diner, Maggie waited impatiently for her to come home from her shift so they could get back to the business of being friends.