Summer People (2 page)

The two children had broken away from her, racing back toward the church, and she was following unhurriedly after them, strolling between the parked cars, just a few yards from Nathan. Her cotton dress curved over full breasts, but she walked with a teenager's slouching posture. Pushing a lock of loose brown curls from her face, she confirmed Nathan's hopes and anxieties. Warmly knowing dark eyes, puffy roseate lips. Her attractiveness was of the no-makeup, slightly oily hair variety, and although a moment earlier he had hoped she would pass by without noticing him, he felt the lovely pull of her upon him.

“Leah?” he asked. The young woman turned and raked her hand through her hair to keep it from blowing into her face. Nathan introduced himself without moving and said, “I was just talking to the pastor and he said you were nannying for his kids this summer?”

Leah glanced back at the church where the children were hanging on to their father as he spoke with parishioners. “Well, I'm trying,” she said, a lock of hair escaping from her grasp and falling into her eyes.

She laughed at the futility of the battle she was waging with the wind, and Nathan returned her smile. He gestured through the back window at Ellen, who was staring straight ahead at the church. “I'm kind of Mrs. Broderick's chauffeur for the summer. We just got here yesterday. I think I might have seen you taking a walk last night.”

Leah said, “Oh?”

“How long have you been here?” Nathan asked.

“Two weeks.”

“How's it been?”

“It's been okay. I was making plans to run away in the beginning,” Leah said, grinning as she glanced out to where the golf course ended in a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. “I'm not used to taking care of kids, but I'm better now.” She looked a few years younger than Nathan, as if she was perhaps still in college, or had recently graduated.

Nathan said, “I haven't seen many people up here our age.”

“No, I know,” Leah said. “I've seen a few people on the beach, but I haven't met anybody.”

Nathan walked over to the driver's side with studied casualness and said, “Well, I think I'm probably free most evenings if you want to take a walk sometime. I live in that big white house with the front porch that's just as you're coming up from Parson's Beach.”

Leah's eyebrows rose and her voice seemed to resonate with possibility. “Oh! Well, I live two houses up the same street. It's a smaller house, with a little deck out front?”

Nathan managed to say only, “Okay. Great.” Opening the car door, he
raised his palm in farewell. “Well, feel free to come by or maybe I'll try and stop over at your place sometime.”

Inside the car, hot, stifling air settled around him, but Nathan took a deep breath. He put on his seat belt and watched through the windshield as Leah walked the rest of the way across the grass.

“It's very warm,” Ellen said, her right hand on her neck.

“Sorry,” Nathan said, inserting the keys to start the car. “I forgot it was so stuffy in here.”

The direct sunlight on the car's upholstery seemed to be releasing the smell of Ellen's golden retriever, back home in Cleveland, and Nathan immediately pressed the automatic windows down. But perhaps because the breeze was blowing from behind them, off the ocean, much of the stale air remained as they waited for the car ahead of them to move. When Nathan eventually pulled out of the church driveway, onto Birch Hill, he pushed the gas pedal down hard. The car filled with a sudden rush of fresh air, and inhaling it felt like a kind of triumph.

A Portentous Moment at Gilman's ~ The First Supper ~ Carl Buchanan Vents His Frustration ~ Nathan Interrogates His Father

L
ight mist thickened into heavy rain that afternoon, and instead of going to the Alnombak club as planned, Nathan and Ellen took seats in front of the TV. Nathan read a comic book on the couch and later pulled out his sketch pad to draw a profile of Ellen in her lounge chair watching golf. He worried that he had not picked up enough groceries for dinner that evening and he was concerned about leaving Ellen. But it was raining too hard for her to go with him, and an hour later—the rain still pouring in blurry waves—he told her where he was going and drove the quarter-mile into town.

Gilman's was a one-room clapboard store that sat on the far west end of Birch Hill Boulevard, across the street from the post office and near the narrow strait leading out from the inlet, or cove, into Albans Bay. Beneath Nathan's tennis shoes, grains of sand scraped against the hardwood floor. The near corner offered a rack of rental movies, and farther along the same wall, the butcher's glass case contained an iced arrangement of gourmet
seafood and meat. In back, a sandwich counter stood in front of a few tables with windows overlooking the water.

Nathan grabbed a cart and wandered the store's three narrow aisles, searching for things he could cook. In addition to steak, corn, and potatoes, he picked up assorted breakfast food and sandwich meat, a two-liter of soda, and a bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum.

“That all you need?” the cashier asked. She was a thickset woman in jeans and an untucked shirt, with long, charcoal gray hair piled somewhat carelessly on her head. Her thick New England accent, coarsened by decades of smoking, surprised Nathan, and it occurred to him that this was the first time since his arrival in Brightonfield Cove that he'd met someone native to Maine.

“That's it for now,” Nathan said, his own Midwestern accent sounding strangely flat to his ears.

The woman picked up the items from the counter and punched their prices into the register. “Who you here with?”

For an instant, Nathan was too startled by her perception to answer, but the woman knew a stranger buying groceries was very likely a summer resident's guest.

“Ellen Broderick?”

“Oh, how is she?” The woman pulled off her bifocals to turn toward Nathan with softening eyes.

“Okay.”

“Oh, that's such good news. We were so afraid that after her accident last summer she—” The woman raised her chin to peer over the aisles. “Frank, Mrs. Broderick is here this summer. She made it back.”

A balding man with thick glasses approached from down the far aisle, wiping his hands on his apron. “Aw, that's great news. She seems okay?”

“Yeah, she seems all right. What accident?”

The woman's smile fell a little as she glanced back at Frank. “Her accident with the car.”

Nathan nodded, and said, “Oh.” The parishioners at St. Michael's had seemed so surprised by Ellen's attendance, and so concerned about her
health, that Nathan was relieved to learn she wasn't suffering from some death-sentence illness.

“Tell her to stop by and see us,” the woman said as she stacked Nathan's groceries in paper bags. “So this'll go on her tab?”

“Her tab?”

“Mrs. Broderick runs a tab and then we send the bill to her at the end of the summer.”

“Oh, right, on her tab.”

The woman pulled out a pen and paper to record the amount. It began to feel odd to Nathan that he had not heard of this car accident earlier, perhaps during his interview, and he wanted to ask for more details, but it seemed too late. The cashier and her coworker were beaming at him in a manner so warm and familial that Nathan could not bring himself to shatter their misconception that he shared their relief. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking up the dense gray clouds overhead. Men and women in the street pulled back the hoods of their Patagonia and L.L. Bean raincoats to glance up approvingly at the sky. In addition to brooding over the news of Ellen's accident, Nathan was also contemplating the fact that he had just paid for something
on a tab
—something he had only seen done in old movies. Brightonfield Cove seemed imbued with this strangely anachronistic quality. The white picket fences of Birch Hill Boulevard that morning had reminded him of Rockwell's paintings, and now, talking with this folksy old couple in this quaint, old-fashioned store, Nathan felt nostalgic for a time he had never known. He drove down the gravel road toward Ellen's house and spotted a rainbow that arced over her roof and dissipated somewhere above the Atlantic. The town was almost movie-set picturesque. And because it was doubtful that he would ever have the money to own a house in such a place, Nathan assured himself that his hardships would later be transformed into great works of art.

 

O
n the rain-washed back porch, Nathan grilled two steaks and ears of corn, then carried them into the house. This was the first real meal he'd prepared—the others had been cereal or sandwiches—and as they
ate, he watched Ellen with a growing sense of having failed her. She chewed the corn in careful, diminutive bites but left the thick steak untouched.

A tall row of windows surrounded the dining room on two sides, and the fading sun painted the white walls a luminous peach. Ellen wiped her mouth with her napkin and watched the seagulls glide over the harbor.

“Have you done much sailing?” Nathan asked.

“No,” Ellen said. She tilted from side to side in her chair to indicate the roll of the sea, her nose wrinkling with mock nausea, before flashing him an impish grin. “It makes me sick.”

“Did your husband?”

“Mmm, he had a boat called the
Proud Rooster.
”

“Where did he get that name?”

“Well, that's what he was.”

Nathan smiled and took a long sip of his water. He thought it would seem impertinent to ask her to elaborate, but he wished he knew more about her life. From conversations with his father and during the interview for this job, Nathan had learned some things about her: He knew, for instance, that she had been born into money (her grandfather had been governor of Ohio and her father had owned a radio station in Cleveland), so she'd never held a real job. At her massive Federal style Cleveland home, Ellen employed a chauffeur, a gardener, and a live-in cook. On the living room walls there were photographs of her as a debutante waltzing with a bow-tied young man; then, as the years passed, as a birder grinning through leafy branches, binoculars dangling from her neck; and in khaki pants and a photographer's vest hiking the misty mountains of Peru. By world standards, Nathan supposed his own middle-class existence was a life of comfort and opportunity enjoyed by only a fortunate minority, and he did not dislike Ellen. The way she sometimes scrunched up her face in good-natured distaste, or absently stroked her long hair, reminded him that the young woman he'd seen in photos was still somewhere beneath that slackening skin. But Ellen had lived a life of comfort and opportunity enjoyed by a still smaller minority—a minority in which Nathan was not
included—and in his gut he could not help but carry a dark kernel of resentment toward her.

After a while, Nathan said, “The people who work down at Gilman's seemed glad to know you were back here this summer. They said you had some kind of accident last summer?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Nathan waited. “Did you get in a car accident or something?”

Ellen's eyebrows bunched together as she finished chewing. “Mmm…it was a car accident…but I'm okeydokey now.” There was an aggressive singsong quality to her voice that Nathan sensed was intended to put an end to his inquiry.

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“No.”

Nathan stared at Ellen, but she did not elaborate. “Well, that's good,” he said.

As Ellen continued to eat, Nathan gazed behind her at the glass-fronted liquor cabinet built into the wall. His eyes slid over bottles of Maker's Mark bourbon and Meier's sherry and finally rested on an old bottle of Wray & Nephew white rum.

“Do you mind if I have some of this?” he asked as he rose to open the cabinet. Because he had already drunk a tumbler of the rum he'd bought at Gilman's, Nathan knew he shouldn't drink any more. It often made him sulk for his ex-girlfriend. Pale and willowy, with closely cropped, mussed blond hair, Sophie Hurst liked to read, drink lots of wine, and make short, impressionistic films he occasionally thought were rather beautiful. They had dated for two years before she'd abandoned him a few months ago for someone else.

Ellen looked at the bottle Nathan was holding and frowned. “Only you?”

“Oh, well, would you like the rum or would you prefer the sherry?”

Ellen nodded at the wisdom of the question until she'd swallowed a bite of her steak. “Sherry.”

Nathan poured their drinks and slumped back into his chair. He
draped one arm across the back of the chair beside him and watched the sun burn into the horizon, slowly gilding the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Ellen said, “If I die, don't bury me at all. Just pickle my bones in alcohol. Put a bottle of booze at my feet and head. If I don't drink, you'll know I'm dead.”

“Hear, hear,” Nathan said, raising his glass.

 

I
n the living room, they watched
The Philadelphia Story.
After a late-night party, Cary Grant slid into Katharine Hepburn's parked car to rouse her softly from a drunken slumber. With both of them cloaked in shadow, heads resting against the bench seat, it was almost as if they were lying in bed. Hepburn had heavy-lidded, bedroom eyes, a voice like dark honey, and even though her words were coy and elusive, you could tell that she loved him. Nathan felt a dull longing for movie-style romance and glanced at the clock on the mantel. In her lounge chair, Ellen's head bobbed and swayed in an ongoing effort to stay awake. Nathan wished she'd stop trying. He was on his third rum and Coke, and as soon as Ellen went to bed, he planned to walk up the street to see if Leah felt like taking a stroll.

Ellen's eyes had been closed for several minutes when a woman's reedy voice called through the partly open front door, “Anybody home?”

Nathan stood, but the woman and her husband were already stepping inside the house. “Oh, Eleanor, don't get up,” the woman pleaded, hurrying over to clasp her hand. “It's so good to see you again.” The husband, a jowly, sad-eyed man in khaki pants and a green V-neck sweater, followed his wife with the slow, cumbersome movements of an old Saint Bernard.

“Well,” Ellen said, blinking at everyone with surprise. “It's wonderful to see you, too.”

The husband reached over to shake her hand. “I'm sorry if we're barging in on you. We were just on Parson's Beach and Franny saw the lights on, so—” He rubbed the back of his neck and stepped back, glancing behind him, as if afraid he might knock something over.

“Oh, you're not barging in,” Ellen said, and smiled. Her reassurance
sounded a little tired, but then she tilted her head to one side and seemed to eye the man in front of her with greater fondness. “How are you, Carl?”

“I'm all right, I guess,” he said, the corner of his mouth hooking upward with pleasure.

“Oh, but how are
you
?” Franny asked, grasping Ellen's forearm affectionately before she took a seat on the couch. Franny's round glasses reflected the light from a nearby lamp and she touched her helmetlike gray coiffure. Nathan asked for drink requests and led Carl into the dining room to let him choose his own wine. Meanwhile, Franny carried on about the exciting Alnombak centennial. Next year the hundredth anniversary of the tennis and golf club would be celebrated with an enormous party and the publication of a limited-edition, leather-bound photo album. They needed additional photographs from the 1920s—and as Franny talked more about it, Nathan slipped into the kitchen. The coffee-machine clock read 9:14
P.M.
He exited out the back door to where, in the gathering darkness, he could see the luminous windows of the pastor's two-story house.

Nathan wanted to walk over and ask for Leah, but he wasn't sure if leaving would mean shirking his responsibilities with Ellen. For the first time, he saw the dilemma that would plague him for much of the summer: Was he a caregiver, in which case he could soon walk back inside and suggest that perhaps it was time for Ellen to go to bed? Or was he just a chauffeur/cook, in which case he could just leave her talking with her friends? Neither job description seemed accurate, and as much as Nathan blamed himself for not nailing down his summer duties, he also blamed his father.

When the older man had called from his office last week to ask if Nathan would be interested in escorting a client to Maine, Nathan's instinct had been to tell him no. The call had come at seven thirty in the morning, for one thing. Nathan didn't normally wake up until noon. He'd tried to explain how inconvenient it would be to leave his part-time job at the Cleveland library and sublet his room in the house he was sharing, but his father had not been persuaded. He'd said the job lasted eight weeks and paid eight thousand dollars, tax free. Or, as he'd later phrased it to Nathan,
“Two months of doing nothing to earn half of what you make in a year.” Nathan had bristled at this condescension and almost refused; but over the next several days, after receiving another bill from the dentist for his emergency root canal, a Visa bill for the new timing belt on his Civic, and a note slipped under his door asking for the previous month's rent and utilities, he'd begun to see the logic of his father's argument.

Now Nathan wasn't so sure. Eight grand for eight weeks still seemed like a lot of cash, but he had already spent twelve hours tied to Ellen, and the day still wasn't over. Wandering down the fragrant, freshly cut lawn, he stopped to stare at the blinking yacht lights reflecting off the dark waters of the bay. Voices and laughter wafted from the boat decks across the water, but Nathan was unable to make out what they were saying. A few minutes later, he turned back toward the house, and noticed Carl behind the porch railing.