Summer Friends Page 5

  And then, Delphine remembered, during the long months of the school year, through the rains of fall, the snows of winter, and the blossomings of spring, they had written each other letters. Maggie’s were written on pink, flowery stationery, Delphine’s on paper torn from a spiral notebook. Over the years, the letters became lengthier and more impassioned, revealing heartaches and sharing dramas and sketching out exciting plans for the following summer.

  The sound of a cat yowling in the yard brought Delphine back to the present with a start. No. Even though so many of the memories were pleasant—she couldn’t deny that—she could not allow the past to come flooding back like that. She wouldn’t allow it. You gave memory an inch and it took a mile. Memories served no purpose other than to undermine a perfectly good present. Memory, like desire, could make you sick.

  Delphine thought of Lucy and her feathered friends, who never wasted time with the past, who lived only for the moment at hand, and went back to her work.

  5

  Maggie flipped off the television—she had been watching a morning news show—and sighed. Since leaving Delphine the night before, she had felt unhappy. Their conversation had been at times awkward, at other times downright boring. And why had she even mentioned the trouble in her marriage? That had been inappropriate, really poor timing. Delphine had seemed so uncomfortable in the parking lot outside the restaurant. Maggie had had to force the issue of their getting together again. Overall, the evening had not been a great success.

  She didn’t know what she had expected. That Delphine would throw her arms around her? That in one magical instant they would regain the intimacy they had shared for so many years, until Delphine had gone back to Ogunquit and subsequently untied the bonds of their friendship for reasons that had never been clear to Maggie?

  Of course not. But still, she had hoped for more . . . joy in their reunion. She had brought the aquamarine necklace with her to the restaurant, just in case things had gone well. She had hoped to explain—she still hoped to explain—why in the end she hadn’t asked Delphine to stand up for her at her wedding and instead had asked a cousin she barely even knew.

  They had never talked about this; Delphine had never confronted Maggie about her choice. She had just shown up at the wedding—she hadn’t gone to the shower—with an impersonal gift from the registry and a card signed with only her name, no special note of support or love. That had hurt Maggie, but she thought that she might have deserved Delphine’s anger, if it was indeed anger and not just lack of concern. Maybe, by the time of Maggie’s wedding, Delphine had already completely left the friendship behind. Maybe she had shown up purely out of a sense of obligation or duty. If she was anything, Delphine was dutiful. She had learned that from her parents.

  Maggie spent some time checking in with her office (there was one minor bit of direction to give to her assistant), her husband (he was in a meeting and said he would call her back), and her housekeeper (Mrs. Barnes had discovered an ant in the kitchen and had laid down traps). She considered checking in with her daughters but decided they would only be annoyed by her texting again, so soon after her last contact. Besides, she had nothing new to tell them. She drank a third cup of coffee and immediately wished that she hadn’t. Her digestive system wasn’t what it used to be. She brushed her teeth for a second time. When she came back into the bedroom the sound of a child’s whoop of glee reached her ears. She crossed to the window and looked down on the outdoor pool below.

  A mother, father, and their toddler, a boy, were together at the shallow end of the pool. The mother was pregnant; she sat on the side of the pool, her legs dangling in the cool blue water. The father, standing in the water, held his son tightly in his arms. Maggie smiled to herself. When children were small a parent’s life was blessed with so much physical intimacy. It was of necessity, but it was miraculous all the same. That was one of the things she missed now, that physical closeness. But she had done her duty by her children, had raised them through infancy and childhood and adolescence, just as her own mother had done so neatly. Maggie sometimes wondered if her mother had felt a little lost when she and Peter had gone off to college and built lives apart from their parents. If she had felt lost, Dorothy Weldon had given no indication of that. She certainly would never have talked to her daughter about her private emotions. Emotions, Dorothy had taught, when felt at all, were best kept in check.

  Maggie turned away from the window and stared blankly at the lovely hotel room before her. She felt deflated, depressed. She wondered if she had been wrong to come back to Ogunquit. She wondered if she should have gone somewhere else, far from Delphine and the past. She wondered if she should just have stayed home.

  But what was there for her at home? Gregory would return from his business trip to Chicago and everything would be the same as it had been before he’d left. They would cross paths like the proverbial ships in the night. They would be perfectly polite to each other, exchange pleasant but largely meaningless chitchat, and eat most of their meals electronically connected to other people.

  Maggie sighed. Her marriage had changed, no doubt about it. She had never thought she could feel so distant from Gregory. In some ways, he had become a stranger. She no longer knew what he really thought about things, what he really felt about things. And there was the lack of sexual spark, though that bothered her less than mass media told her it should. You could be having sex with your partner and be emotional miles apart. No, it wasn’t just a lack of frequent or fantastic sex that was the cause or even the result of their drift. She really didn’t think so.

  Twenty-four years. They had married in October of 1987. She remembered Gregory making a joke about the start of their life together coinciding with the major stock market crash. Recently, Gregory had said something in passing about celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary in Japan. He’d always wanted to go to Japan. Maggie didn’t want to think about that upcoming landmark. It didn’t feel like there was much left to celebrate.

  She wondered now if her daughters would even remember their parents’ anniversary. They hadn’t last year, or the year before that. But maybe that was her fault, in a way. She had been happy, almost relieved, when Kim and then Caitlin had decided to go to college across the country. She remembered feeling a little bit guilty for wanting them out of the house at such a tender age, and she would never have forced them to leave if they hadn’t wanted to go, but still, life without the girls living in the house had felt more free and unencumbered.

  At first. For a while. But now, she missed her daughters, in spite of what she had told Delphine. She felt alienated from them, a feeling that had little to do with their living in California. But maybe the feelings of loneliness and alienation could be explained away by “empty-nest syndrome.” Maybe all of her dissatisfaction could be explained away by the term “mid-life crisis.” Oh, Lord, Maggie thought, maybe I’m just one big cliché.

  And that was another problem, too, she thought, sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed. For so many years she had led an unexamined life, yes, a clichéd life. And hadn’t someone said that the unexamined life was just not worth living? She just didn’t think or wonder in the way she used to, back in college, back before graduate school, back before her marriage and the children and the long, long hours in the office and in the air, flying here and there to meet with clients and advise them on their financial futures. God, she hadn’t even read anything other than business and news reports in ages.

  Maggie got up from the bed abruptly. She felt she would go mad sitting there alone in this hotel room, whining to herself. She went over to the desk and picked up her iPhone. She sent a text to Delphine’s cell. Texts were harder to ignore than calls. When no text came back, she grabbed her gym bag and headed for the resort’s spa. A workout followed by a massage might help take her mind off the suspicions that she might be largely unwanted or unwelcome in her own life.

  6

  1973

  Eleven-year-old Delphine stood be
hind the trunk of the towering pine tree at the very edge of the front yard, peeking at the Lilac House and waiting. Maggie had gone inside ages and ages ago. A flock of butterflies were madly flapping around in Delphine’s stomach. She had never felt so nervous.

  Finally, Maggie emerged from the front door and skipped down the porch steps. Delphine darted out from behind the tree and ran toward her friend.

  “What happened?” she demanded. “You were in there, like, forever.”

  “Nothing much,” Maggie replied, a small smile playing on her lips.

  “Did you tell them about the broken window? Are we in big trouble?”

  “Yeah, I told them about the window. But I told them it was my fault. I told them I was practicing my Frisbee throws by myself.”

  “What? But I was the one who threw the Frisbee into the garage window!”

  “It doesn’t matter. I told my parents that I did it and that I was sorry and they believed me.”

  Delphine was dumbfounded. “Why? Why did you lie to them?”

  Maggie just shrugged.

  “I can’t believe you took the blame for me. You’ll be punished, won’t you?” Delphine asked.

  “Maybe. But it won’t be anything bad. Maybe, like, no TV for a week. That would be kind of bad ’cause I think John Boy on The Waltons is cute.”

  Delphine wrinkled her nose. “Gross!”

  “You don’t think John Boy is cute?”

  “No way.”

  “Well, anyway, my dad usually feels so bad if he has to punish us that he lets us off the hook after about a day.”

  Delphine felt awful. The butterflies in her stomach had been replaced by a dull ache. “Still, you shouldn’t have taken the blame for me. I should confess.”

  Maggie shook her head, making her blond braids fly. “No way. Your parents are way stricter than mine. They might not let us hang out together. Then what? Besides, it’s no big deal. You’d do the same for me, right?”

  “Sure,” Delphine said immediately. She would. “Best friends forever. We swore. Remember?”

  “Of course. Pinky swear.”

  They linked pinkies and swore again. “Thanks, Maggie,” Delphine said. “I owe you.”

  “Whatever. Hey, want to ride our bikes over to the farm and see if those chicks are hatched yet?”

  Delphine smiled. “Race you!”

  7

  Delphine didn’t return Maggie’s call until Sunday evening. She had ignored her text. That wasn’t unusual. She didn’t like texting. She felt stupid doing it; her fingers, usually so deft, in this case didn’t want to obey her brain. She had mastered several difficult stitches and techniques with her knitting—she executed the difficult German Brioche stitch with relative ease—but mastery of the tiny telephone and its many options eluded her. Or maybe she was just being a stubborn holdback. The thought had crossed her mind.

  Maggie had sounded very pleased to hear from her. Delphine had suggested they have lunch together at the farm the next day. Maybe a sandwich in her cramped little office might help prove to Maggie that she really was very busy and that she really didn’t have any time to spend with her. Not much time, anyway.

  Maggie arrived at Delphine’s office a little before noon on Monday. She was wearing a sleeveless black linen blouse, white Capri-cut jeans, and pink kitten-heeled sandals. She carried a pink-and-black-checked linen bag. City mouse visits country mouse, Delphine thought, unconsciously pulling on the hem of her old green T-shirt.

  “Thanks for asking me to lunch,” Maggie said.

  Delphine shrugged. “Sure. Everyone has to eat.” She hefted a red cooler onto her desk and began to unload it. She had made the sandwiches at home, big hearty ones on whole-grain bread, filled with ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce, and slathered in mayonnaise.

  Maggie, sitting gingerly in an old folding chair Delphine had indicated as her seat, refused to reveal her disappointment. She had been hoping for a light meal of chilled oysters and ceviche, maybe accompanied by a glass of vhino verde, on a restaurant patio overlooking the ocean. Instead, she was perched precariously on an ancient piece of outdoor furniture, being offered a sandwich the size of her head. But at least she and Delphine were together. That was what she had hoped for more than an upscale meal. She accepted the monstrous sandwich, unwrapped it, and then rewrapped half of it. The beverage choices were water or coffee. Maggie chose water, thinking it would come in a bottle. Instead it came from a tap. At least, Maggie noted, the plastic cup was clean.

  As Delphine bit hungrily into her sandwich, Maggie let her eyes roam. “It doesn’t look like much has changed since I was last here,” she said after a few minutes. “The summer before we went off to college. The last summer my parents rented the Lilac House.”

  “Yeah, it’s mostly the same,” Delphine agreed. “The desk has been here as long as I can remember. My chair is fairly new, one of those ergonomic things. I got it on craigslist. And of course, the computer is new. In fact, I’m not sure we had a computer back then, back when you were around. I’d have to ask my father when exactly we changed over. I know it was Jackie’s doing that we finally went electronic.” Delphine gestured to her desk. “Though there always seem to be piles of paper . . .”

  Maggie looked up to the plain, tan corkboard over the desk. On it were tacked various bills and other official-looking notices, a faded photograph of a dark-haired child on a pony—Delphine?—and a yellowed piece of paper on which the following words had been typed by a probably now ancient typewriter: “ ‘There is more to life than increasing its speed.’—Mohandas Gandhi.” Maggie smiled to herself. Tell that to my boss, she thought. Tell that to Gregory. Tell that to me.

  Delphine took another large bite of her sandwich and glanced at her friend sitting on the old folding chair that had been leaning against the back wall of the office for years. She had wiped it down before Maggie’s arrival. Still, she was afraid that Maggie’s white jeans were probably not going to be quite so white when she got back into her Lexus. She wondered if she should have warned Maggie that the office was not a pristine place and then thought, Who would be silly enough to wear white around chickens, and mud, and farm equipment, much of which was at least partially rusted?

  “Do you play golf?” Maggie asked suddenly.

  “No,” Delphine said. “Why?”

  “Well, because I’m staying at Gorges Grant I have privileges at the Cape Neddick Country Club. I thought that maybe we could play some golf. I remember it being a gorgeous course. Well, I’ve only seen it from the road, but . . .”

  Delphine began to fold the wrinkled aluminum foil that had covered her sandwich. She would rinse the foil when she got home and use it again. After that, it would go into the recycling bin. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve never played golf. I don’t really have any interest in the game. And I don’t really have the time.” Or the money, she thought, and I don’t want you paying for me. “Sorry. You could play alone. I’ve driven by the course and seen people playing alone.”

  Maggie smiled, but she doubted her smile looked anything other than lame. “Yes,” she said, “maybe I will.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, Delphine sipping a coffee, until Maggie just couldn’t stand it any longer. Did Delphine really have nothing to say to her?

  “You know,” she said, “the farm always seemed kind of, I don’t know, like a giant outdoor playhouse. I mean, back when I was a kid. I don’t think I ever realized that people actually worked here. Whenever your father let us help out with something it was an adventure.”

  Delphine laughed. “Oh, it’s an adventure all right. Like when we don’t get enough rain and the crops dry up, or when we get too much rain and the fields flood, or the cultivating tractor breaks down and we can’t get a part for days.”

  “Then why do you still do it?” Maggie asked. “Why does your family keep farming? Aren’t most small farms a losing proposition these days?”

  Delphine felt challenged. “We do it because we’v
e done it for years,” she said, careful to keep her tone even. “We farm because we love it.”

  “I don’t know. It just seems like it’s so much work for so little return.”

  “Not everything in life has to be about the return, or about the profit,” Delphine said forcefully. “Lots of times the journey is what’s important, not the payoff at the end of the road.”

  But if the journey doesn’t make you enough money to pay your mortgage, Maggie thought, then you’re out in the streets. She let the subject drop.

  “Are you going to eat the other half of your sandwich?” Delphine asked, getting up from her chair. Clearly, Maggie thought, lunchtime was over. She’d only been at the farm for about forty minutes.

  “Oh, uh, no,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t eat that much for lunch.”

  Delphine shrugged, picked up the abandoned half sandwich, and tucked it back in the red cooler. “I’ll have it for dinner,” she said, “with the vegetable soup I made last night.”

  Maggie just nodded. So much for evening plans. She would ask the concierge at the hotel to recommend a well-reviewed restaurant where she would feel comfortable dining alone. A restaurant with a good wine list and clean chairs.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Maggie asked as they left the office and emerged into the noonday sun. “I know you’re working, of course. But I’m sure you must have a bit of free time.”