Enchanted August (8 page)

B
everly had brought the coffeemaker up to his room and set it to brew upon his usual waking time, ten thirty, but the blasted sun had risen so early he'd been up for ages and drunk the entire pot before ten.

He wrapped his cashmere dressing gown around his generous frame, more generous now that Possum had gone. It amused him that the robe—a gift from Gorsch—was made by Abercrombie & Fitch, once such a bastion of heterosexual rectitude, now advertised with gay soft porn. How times had changed. Gorsch and he could be married these days, if Gorsch had lasted. What kind of wedding would we have had? The blue-blazer “let's pass as real men” style they'd affected for so long? Or a drag queen blowout?

Beverly thought back to his countless High Teas in the Pines. No blue blazers there, God knows, even twenty years ago. Gorsch worked in the city most weekends but always provided a summer house for Beverly and Possum at the beach. Beverly didn't think too hard about what Gorsch got up to in the city, and Gorsch in turn drew a veil over what went on in the Pines. The place Gorsch rented was a shack, really, and in those days shacks were truly shacks. Back then, there was still more than enough rough trade on the beach to take the edge off. Beverly was lucky to have gotten away with so much.

He opened up his Vuitton valise and looked a bit sheepishly at the contents. Framed photos of Possum filled it to the brim. There was Possum as a kitten, Possum in L.A., Possum at the Grammys, Possum old and mean. Gorsch was in the background of almost all of them. Dear, sweet Gorsch.

Each frame was a testament to its own era: plastic and tacky in the early years; sterling at the end. Beverly picked out the first one, his favorite—he and Possum together on the terrace of the Eighty-third Street place—and put it on the painted wooden dresser on the side wall. It would take till dinner, at least, to arrange them all.

 • • • 

Rose spotted Lottie upstairs on the ferry when she herself jumped on. She considered not climbing the short ladder stairs to see her, but then she thought better of it. Having Lottie for company at the grocery store would not be so bad.

“I was just going over for the ride,” said Lottie. “But now I can shop with you. There's a hat party on the twentieth. I said we'd bring something.”

“Well, that gives us plenty of time to plan,” said Rose. Lottie was the type who didn't mind being poked fun at.

“Maybe a casserole?”

That was a word Rose hadn't heard in a long time. It conjured up pictures of Campbell's soup cans and frozen vegetables. “How do you know about a hat party? Did you meet people?”

“I did!” Lottie told her about her success at the tennis courts. Rose would have found it hard to make friends as quickly. “They're not lost souls at all!”

“Maybe we can do better than a casserole.” Rose thought of a summery ratatouille with lavender, if she could find it. “We don't want to let down the Hopewell Cottage side.”

“Okay, but I've been told there's a whole section on casseroles in the Little Lost cookbook. It's at the library.”

“There's a library?” Rose pictured a long table, a bay window, a place to write.

“It's beautiful, they say, except for the roof.”

“What happened with the roof?”

“Too much rain this spring. I made other friends too,” said Lottie, continuing. “The Beauchamps are here for two weeks. The Hamlins stay till October and commute to Belfast. There's an all-island work party on the fifteenth, if that's a Saturday, and a Ladies Association for Beautification picnic on Labor Day. I've never been to a Ladies Association for Beautification picnic,” she said. “I wonder if we could stay another couple of days.”

“Lottie, we're here for a
month
,” said Rose. She still could not get her mind around that length of time. “Think of Ethan.”

“Oh, Ethan will be here by then.”

“What?”

“Ethan will be here by then,” Lottie repeated. “And Jon, too. I can see it. Can't you?”

The ferry bumped the dock on the other side.

“I don't actually see it, Lottie. No.”

“You'll have Fred here, and the twins. I see that, too.”

They got off the ferry and walked over to the car, which had been washed of its mud and grime in last night's rain. The field of parked cars looked like a Subaru/Volvo dealership. Lottie deferred to Rose for the driver's seat, even though Lottie was the better driver. “Fred and the twins aren't coming here, Lottie,” she said, to convince herself. She suddenly missed them so much it made her shake. The car started up right away, despite all the rain. “This is my time away from them. This is to give us all a little space. Can you read the directions, please?”

“We're going into Dorset Harbor, so it's left at the top of the hill, then second right,” she told Rose, not even looking at Robert SanSouci's precise hand-drawn map, which Rose had remembered to grab from the kitchen. “I know you and I feel as if we need time away from the mess of our families, but I actually think what we need is to be together more. Bear right here.”

Lottie seemed to have an unerring sense of direction.

“Straight on this road till the light. We passed through on our drive in. And I do see Fred and the twins here. They'll want to come. All of them.”

“Please, Lottie. Stop saying that.”

Lottie stopped talking, except for directions. Rose wanted to be angry at her, but she couldn't. The drive was just too beautiful in the daylight, and Lottie meant no harm.

They crossed the long, low causeway bridge, whose pavement hummed strangely—what was it made of?—and found themselves in Dorset Harbor, a touristy little town with the usual complement of businesses: an ice cream store; a fudge and taffy emporium; water-view restaurants; an alternative healing clinic; three T-shirt shops. But even these didn't seem too tacky: perched up on a hill above a harbor as the town was, every vista was glorious. Even the supermarket parking lot had a view.

The Dorset IGA was well stocked, and Rose felt they could all eat rather well for not too much more than she'd budgeted for food (she was used to Coop prices). Fred had told her not to be ridiculous about the money but this trip was still coming from her own account. There was a farm stand across the street, so they were able to get the zucchini and tomatoes for Rose's ratatouille, which she thought she might try tonight.

Before they left Dorset Harbor, Rose wanted to try to reach Fred and the twins. It was so hard to call them—she'd be interrupting whatever they'd be doing and reminding them that she was away. But if she didn't at least hear their voices, she'd be a wreck. Though if she called and they weren't interested in talking to Mommy—

“We need to call home,” said Lottie. “I do, at least, and I'm sure you want to. Let's see, it's still only Friday, so they just got to Jon's parents' last night.” She pressed the number on her cell phone. “Hard to believe we haven't even been gone two days. Service!” she cried. “Three bars!”

Then Rose saw her face light up. Ethan must have answered. Lottie prattled on and on to him, standing stock-still on one side of the parking lot so as not to compromise reception. Rose stepped a few paces away, slowly took out her phone, and dialed home. She went straight through to voice mail.

 • • • 

Caroline figured the cottage was 1880s, 1890s, built not long after the brownstone she was now renting in New York, with more rooms and much more light and air. Since the others seemed to be gone for the morning, Caroline decided to give herself a house tour. She would have liked to have a native guide and interpreter but that would have meant extending herself to the taciturn Max or to one of the islanders, whose tennis balls she could hear
thwoking
in the near distance. Neither of which she wanted to do.

She opened the door that led to the upstairs hallway. Thank God her room and Beverly's were so far apart—there was no insulation in this cottage, so everyone could hear everything. Hence the name, she realized suddenly. A house, no matter how palatial, is a cottage if it's only meant for three months of the year. Even the past couple of nights it had been chilly.

Caroline wandered down the dark hall, opening one door after another to take in the whole place. A bedroom, another bedroom, a sort of dorm room, another bedroom. There was a tiny sink in almost every room, a holdover from when a washing bowl and pitcher stood there instead.

Each bedroom was neat and faded and a little antiseptic. Nobody really lived here, it was clear. She went back to the dorm room. It was long and narrow and looked out onto the woods. It had surely been more than one room to start. Someone had taken down the walls to make the place a giant room for kids. Hogwarts in Maine.

Her eyes caught the markings on the plank ceiling. She couldn't figure it out. The marks were clearly footprints, and they were clearly on the ceiling. She pictured Fred Astaire doing that dance routine where he danced up and down walls. He would have had to dance in work boots to make these kinds of footprints. Hard to dance in work boots, even if you're Fred Astaire.

She looked harder at the footprints. The wide planks that made up the room's ceiling must at some point have been lying on the ground, before the house was built. A workman in 1880 stepped all over them, then used them to make the ceiling above her. Now, all this time later, the boards were still unfinished and the footprints were still there. She liked the continuity of this place. Another Max with another hammer. Maybe even the same hammer.

This dorm seemed to be a boys' room, even stripped down as it was. Striped sheets, old ticking pillows, a blue corduroy bean bag chair, three half-finished model airplanes from a time when there was such a thing as model airplanes. Carved into the wooden plank walls were a height chart and a lot of messages: “John R, 1938,” “Dick + Ellie,” “RMBG WAS HERE,” and something else that looked like Boy Scout code. Larger nails had been banged into the walls as hooks to hang up jackets and towels. There was a door partially hidden behind a beat-up metal trunk from the seventies, probably, judging from its garish colors. She tried the door handle. Locked, of course. On the wall next to the door was an enormous map of the Harvard campus, copyright 1952, Caroline read. All the boys in this dorm room had clearly got the message: all roads from Hopewell had better lead to Cambridge.

The dorm room needed something to warm it up. She took a few cushions off the windowsill and arranged one apiece on the faded ticking pillows of each bed. It wasn't much, but it was something.

Caroline walked down the stairs, her feet echoing. The house sounded almost hollow. It must be hard to have a great sex life here, she thought. Everyone can hear everything. Though if you were into that it would be ideal.

There were two living rooms on the ground floor. On the fireplace mantel were photos of the Little Lost set in almost every decade of the past century. Little Lost tennis champions, 1947. Everyone in crisp whites. Every
one
crisp and white, in fact. Ladies Association for Beautification Society Picnic, 1972—oh, how effortlessly groovy they were. The men—so slender!—in pants that proudly clung to their crotches, with horrible facial hair; the women in long skirts or caftans, looking as close to indigenous as they knew how. Lottie would not be amiss in this group, she thought. No one obviously smoking pot but pot smoking must have gone on, even here. And then in the back row were the matrons, who must themselves have been the winners of that same tennis championship in 1947, and on the lawn the children who would be the matrons of the future.

A door, uneven on its hinges, led to the side porch. She nudged it open and stepped out. The birdcalls and nonstop chittering were even louder here. They never shut up, these animals. She had never much cared to know the difference between a pigeon and a mourning dove in the city, but here it felt like it mattered which was which. So far the mourning doves and the crows were all she could recognize. The shady path out this side door invited her to explore the island itself, but the house—the cottage—still held more interest. She wasn't ready for the island yet. Corny as she knew the thought was, the house was crying out for love.

Caroline thought about love as she went back upstairs to her own little porch. She sat down on the chaise again and closed her eyes. She imagined herself installed in this cottage, a doting tennis player mixing her a cocktail as the sun went down. Not a tennis player—he wasn't coming into focus. She was just getting a picture of who might be mixing the cocktail when her reverie was disturbed by another sound: the clump of footsteps up the outside steps to her porch. Her private porch.

“Max?” she said.

It wasn't Max. It was Rose and Lottie, peering at her from the top of the steps. She opened her eyes, and then closed them again.

“Do you need sunscreen? Because Rose brought some. That is a really tiny bathing suit. We're worried about sun damage.” Caroline could feel Lottie's enormous eyes widen at the diminutive size of her bikini. And it was not her briefest.

“Then wear a hat,” said Caroline.

“We thought we'd make lunch,” said Rose. “Would you like to join us?”

Caroline thought that if she took long enough to reply they might go away. It was a long beat before anyone spoke.

“I think she wants to be left alone, Rose,” Lottie said. “That's why she is not answering us.”

Lottie had seemed the flighty one on first acquaintance, but Caroline was beginning to admire her intuition.

“Caroline came here to be alone and now we're not letting her do what she most wants to do.” Caroline opened her eye just a tiny bit and saw Lottie take Rose's arm. “We've been taking care of other people for so long that we can't remember how to take care of ourselves,” Lottie added. “Rose will remember, I know it. Me, too.” She heard the two of them walking away, leaving her alone with the sound of the sea.