Summer Friends

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Maybe you think too much about what’s missing in your life. That’s bound to make a person unhappy. I prefer to think about all that I have.”

  Maggie looked over at Delphine. “You never miss what might have been? You never find yourself wanting something you can’t have?”

  “No,” Delphine said. “I’m content.” She wondered if she was being entirely truthful with Maggie, and with herself. Of course she wasn’t. But at this stage in their so-called friendship she didn’t owe Maggie anything other than her company, if that. As to what she owed to herself, that was a question better left for another time. Like, maybe never.

  They drove past a garden lush with roses and wildflowers, then a house with a bower of purple wisteria. They could make out the hammering of a pileated woodpecker in the distance, and the salty smell of the ocean on the late morning breeze.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” Maggie said. “Really, Delphine, you’re so lucky to live in Ogunquit.”

  “I don’t dispute the ‘lucky’ part. But remember, you’ve never been here in the winter.”

  “I’m sure it’s beautiful, all the pine trees covered in snow. It must be so romantic.”

  “Sure, nobody can beat us for perfect winter postcard scenes. But we’ve also got power outages and ice storms and high tides that flood homes, and then comes mud season. That’s a real treat. The world is grey and brown for weeks. Not inspiring.”

  “Well, I guess you never really know a place unless you’ve visited in every season.”

  “Unless you’ve lived through every season,” Delphine corrected, “not just visited. You can’t really know a place until you’ve slogged through muddy fields just to get to work and shoveled piles of snow just to get out of the house and—”

  “Okay,” Maggie said with a laugh, “you’ve made your point.”

  Delphine nodded. “Off to the right, behind those trees, there’s a parcel of land that’s been in my family for hundreds of years.”

  “Really? I don’t remember you ever mentioning that before.”

  “I was a kid when we . . . when we knew each other. I didn’t understand the importance of heritage and history.”

  “I’m not sure many children really appreciate the past,” Maggie said. “I mean, children don’t have much of a personal past. Why would the average boy or girl be interested in a family’s ancestry?”

  “You’re probably right. Anyway, that land means a lot to my family. It’s a piece of living history. The ruins of the original Crandall house are still there. Well, barely. You can tell where the foundation was laid. My father has a piece of old glass that supposedly came from the original house. I don’t see any reason to believe otherwise. And there’s a lilac bush that’s about a hundred and fifty years old. It still blooms every year. It’s incredibly beautiful.”

  “Talk about having roots in the area.”

  Delphine laughed. “Yeah, that’s the Crandalls. Old as dirt.”

  A few minutes later, Delphine dropped Maggie off at Gorges Grant and headed back to the farm. In spite of herself, she had actually enjoyed the time with Maggie. Somewhere along the way she had begun to feel almost comfortable. Not that it was like old times. Nothing would ever be like old times and that was a good thing. Delphine enjoyed exploring the past when it wasn’t hers. Like, when it was re-created in historical novels about people she would never know, or when it was in stories about her long-gone ancestors.

  That sort of past, other people’s past, couldn’t hurt. It might entertain or educate or even provoke, but it could never really hurt.

  10

  Later that afternoon Maggie called Delphine and suggested they meet for drinks after dinner. They’d had an enjoyable morning and Maggie was eager to capitalize on what she saw as a development in their relationship.

  Delphine had hesitated. Going out with Maggie that evening would cut into her alone time, the time she spent knitting and reading with Melchior on her lap. In the end, and she wasn’t sure why, she agreed to meet Maggie at seven, but only for a little while. Briefly, she considered asking Harry to join them. She had hardly seen him in the past week and maybe a friendly bar was a good venue for a meeting between Maggie and her boyfriend. Better, anyway, than the three of them being stuck in her living room with no distractions from what she felt sure would be an awkward scene.

  But in the end she decided against asking Harry along. She wasn’t entirely comfortable—well, she wasn’t at all comfortable—with introducing the two, so why force the issue? And Harry didn’t mind staying home. While he liked the occasional night out with some of the guys from work, he was really much happier in his armchair, with a can of beer and a copy of the day’s paper.

  Maggie suggested they meet at the Old Village Inn on Main Street. She had never been there. Back when they were teens, they had been more interested in places with a younger crowd and electronic dance music. Maggie recalled her parents having dinner at the Old Village Inn once or twice. Her mother, she remembered, had liked the décor—lots of antiques—and her father had liked “the generous pour.” Maggie hadn’t understood what that meant until she was in college.

  Maggie was already seated at the bar when Delphine arrived.

  “I have a habit of being early,” she explained. “I think I get it from my father.”

  Delphine shrugged. “I guess it usually doesn’t much matter if I’m early, on time, or late. I mostly set my own hours.” And, she added to herself, I’m not in the habit of going out to meet anyone of an evening. Jemima never went out at night. Maybe once or twice a year Delphine and Jackie caught an early evening movie. As for dates with Harry . . . Well, they were few and far between.

  Delphine ordered a beer and took an appreciative sip. “How was the rest of your day?” she asked.

  “Oh, fine. I walked down to the Cove and did some browsing. I used the hotel’s Jacuzzi. There’s nothing like a Jacuzzi when you want to relax.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Delphine said.

  Maggie turned completely toward Delphine. “That guy,” she whispered, “the one at the end of the bar, the one wearing the Red Sox cap. Do you see him?”

  Delphine nodded.

  “He’s had three drinks since I came in. Scotch, I think. That’s three in less than half an hour. And without ice or a glass of water on the side!”

  “That’s Barry Franks,” Delphine said. “He’s known mostly as Old Barry, though I don’t think he’s even sixty. He’s a regular.”

  “A regular drinker.” Maggie frowned. “I wonder why he drinks so much. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he’s lonely or having a spiritual crisis.”

  “I don’t think so.” Delphine regarded Old Barry over Maggie’s shoulder. He was laughing and the man seated next to him, another local, put a companionable arm around his shoulder. “I think he drinks because he likes to drink. That is possible, you know. That drinking doesn’t have to be a problem.”

  “A medical doctor or a psychiatrist wouldn’t say so. They’d say he has an addiction. Alcoholism is a disease.”

  Delphine shook her head. “Doctors don’t know everything, Maggie.”

  “They know enough to say he’s destroying his liver, maybe even killing himself.”

  “Maybe he is,” Delphine conceded, “but it’s his business, isn’t it? Old Barry doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself. He’s got no wife, no kids, and no boss. If he wants to spend every night at the OVI drinking with his cronies, let him.”

  “But then how does he get home? If he’s driving drunk then—”

  “No, no,” Delphine said, “he lives in an apartment around back. Besides, no one would let him drive when he’s drunk. He’s got friends, you know. People like him. People look out for him.”

  Maggie frowned. “People are enabling him is more like it. I’m sorry. I guess I can’t be so nonchalant about it as you obviously can.”

  “I don’t think I’m being nonchalant,” Delphine protested. “It’s just
not my business to get all worked up about.”

  “Live and let live?”

  “I suppose. In Old Barry’s case, anyway. He’s just a small-town character. One of many.” And, she added silently, you shouldn’t judge him for it. Your standards are not ours.

  Maggie was wise enough to let the subject of Old Barry drop. What she really wanted to talk about with Delphine was the subject of their friendship. She had enjoyed the shopping trip, in spite of the fact that Renys wasn’t exactly Lord & Taylor’s. She had felt that Delphine had been a little more relaxed and welcoming than she had been since their first meeting.

  Still, she hesitated. She didn’t want to scare Delphine off by seeming too eager to bond. Maybe that’s what had happened all those years ago. Maybe something she had said or done had scared Delphine back to Ogunquit, or at least, maybe Maggie had been part of the reason for her sudden retreat. She had lived with the uncertainty for so long she would almost believe any reason Delphine could give for her defection.

  But Maggie Weldon Wilkes was not a quitter. She hadn’t come all this way after all this time to skulk off no wiser than she had been when she’d arrived. “Do you remember,” she asked now, “how we used to celebrate a ‘pretend birthday’ every summer? Because your birthday is in March and mine is in November we picked a day in the summer, a day we could share.”

  Delphine nodded. She did remember, but vaguely. She couldn’t recall the date they had chosen and now, from the perspective of middle age, it seemed like a pretty silly thing to have done.

  “And then for a while,” Maggie said, “after college, we would send each other a card on that day. August fourth.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. Maggie had continued to send a card for a few years. Delphine had sent a card just once, that summer after graduation.

  Oh, that was it, Delphine was thinking, August fourth. She wondered why had they had chosen that particular date. She had no idea. A bit of a line came to her then, from John Banville’s The Infinities, a novel she had read the year before. “When I peer into memory’s steadily clouding crystal . . .” Yes, the past was continually clouding over. Mostly, that was just fine with her.

  “And then,” Maggie was saying, her tone light, “we stopped. Or one of us stopped or forgot or got too busy and then the other one did, too. When was that? When did we stop caring about that shared birthday?”

  “Pretend birthday,” Delphine corrected. She felt as if she was being accused of negligence toward the friendship and she didn’t like it. Yes, she knew all too well that she had withdrawn from Maggie, but it wasn’t a crime for which she should be punished. The past was the past. If you didn’t shed the past, like a snake shed its old skin, it would choke you to death. That was a lesson Delphine had learned from her mother, very early on. There was never any point in dwelling or pondering or moping or pining. It was always best simply to take a deep breath and look at what was directly in front of you.

  “So, you don’t remember why—” Maggie began.

  “No,” Delphine said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Do you want another beer?” Maggie asked. Her tone was neutral, hiding her disappointment in Delphine’s reluctance to engage in a revealing conversation.

  “All right,” Delphine said, against her better judgment, just to be polite. “One more.”

  Maggie hailed the bartender and a moment later he delivered their drinks. Maggie slid the glass of beer closer to Delphine and took a sip of her wine. One more try, she thought. One more foray into the past Delphine seems determined to erase. “I still have the birthday cards you gave me,” she said. “The real ones and the ‘pretend’ ones. And all of the letters you wrote to me during the school year, before we went to college. I’ll admit I haven’t looked at them in a long time. But I never threw any of them out.”

  Delphine shifted on the bar stool. “Oh,” she said.

  “Do you still have my cards and letters?”

  Delphine took a long sip of her beer. Again, she bristled at the implication of—of what? Disloyalty? Unconcern? Maybe, she thought, I’m being paranoid. Maybe my guilty conscience is being its own accuser. Oddly, she hadn’t known that she had a guilty conscience before Maggie’s return. Not really. Maybe just a little. She put her glass down on the bar. “I don’t know,” she said, careful not to reveal her annoyance. “There’s a lot of stuff at my mother’s house, up in the attic. My stuff, Jackie’s, Joey’s. I don’t know what she’s thrown out and what she’s kept.”

  “Oh.”

  “Excuse me.” A tall man, dressed in a crisp, tailored long-sleeved shirt and expensive designer jeans, was standing just behind them. Maggie guessed him to be about forty. He was very handsome, in a way that reminded her of Jon Hamm, that actor from Mad Men.

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” he said now, with a brilliant smile. “I’ve been sent on a mission by my colleagues.” He gestured over his shoulder and Maggie saw a table of similarly good-looking, well-dressed men.

  “Not at all,” she said. The man placed the drink order for his table. Maggie raised her eyebrows at Delphine. Delphine shrugged.

  “May I buy you ladies a drink?” the man said now.

  Maggie smiled as brilliantly as he had. “Well, thank you very much,” she said. She told him what they were drinking. The man gestured to the bartender again. “I’m staying at the Shoreman,” he said. “They have a good bar. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime? My name is Dan and I’m in town for two weeks.”

  “I’m Maggie. Maybe you will see me sometime.”

  Delphine coughed. The man smiled once more at Maggie and returned to his table. Maggie couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

  “Wow,” she said in a whisper, though the man was too far away now to hear. “No one’s flirted with me in ages. And he’s so good-looking!”

  Delphine rolled her eyes. She had no patience for flirtation. She never really had. And they were adult women, almost fifty years old, in committed relationships. Neither had any business flirting, especially with a younger man. I sound like an old fart, she thought. “Whatever,” she said.

  Maggie was wise enough not to continue the one-sided conversation the man had interrupted. “Your friend Jemima seems like an interesting person,” she said instead.

  “She’s had a bit of a tough go,” Delphine said, preferring to let the choice of “interesting” pass. “Her first husband was a jerk.”

  “Maybe that explains it. She seemed to have a bit of a chip on her shoulder the other morning.” And those clothes, Maggie added silently, were a crime. No good-looking man would be flirting with her any time soon.

  Delphine refrained from pointing out Maggie’s several social faux pas that might have heightened Jemima’s bad attitude. “She’s a good person,” she said. “She works really hard. Her arthritis makes it hard for her to be on her feet a lot, so the waitressing job is tough on her.”

  “So why doesn’t she quit?”

  “And do what?” Delphine said. “She doesn’t have a lot of options. Most people around here don’t.”

  “Well, times are tough everywhere, that’s for sure.”

  “They can be tougher here than a lot of other places.” Delphine realized she had probably sounded defiant, but that was all right because she felt defiant. Maggie’s bringing up those stupid fake birthday cards had put her on edge. Another line came to her now, from another novel that had made a deep impression on her, one that, given her by then ancient, defunct friendship with Maggie, had disturbed her. The novel was The Evolution of Jane, by Cathleen Schine. “Is there anything more petty,” the line read, “more exalted, than a friendship between two girls?”

  Delphine reached into her pocket for her wallet. “Look,” she said. “I’d really better be going. It’s getting late.”

  Maggie nodded and reached for her bag. She knew better than to argue. They had spent less than an hour together this evening. She had pushed too hard. She wondered if she had lost what little ground she had gained with
Delphine that morning. She thought that maybe she had, and it made her feel bad.

  On the way out of the restaurant, the handsome, well-dressed man who had flirted with her at the bar caught her eye and winked. Maggie couldn’t help herself and winked back. She felt a tiny bit less bad.

  11

  1975

  It was the summer after the Weldons’ infamous European vacation. The girls had been forced to spend a whole summer apart, though Maggie had sent Delphine a postcard every week. But now they were back together again and all was right with the world. Delphine had looked forward to Maggie’s arrival with an intensity that made her feel sick to her stomach. When the Weldon family car pulled up to the Lilac House, there had been much squealing and hugging and jumping up and down.

  The first week had been bliss. The girls had revisited their favorite cloud-watching spot out in the field behind the Crandalls’ main barn and they had ridden their bikes, new ones because they had outgrown the banana seat bikes, down to the beach. They had snuck out to the old movie theatre on Main Street, the Leavitt, and seen Jaws, even though their parents had told them they weren’t allowed to. One night, Delphine had stayed over at Maggie’s house. Another night, Maggie had stayed over at Delphine’s. It was just like old times.

  But then everything had gone horribly wrong. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Maggie had come down with a big, fat crush on Delphine’s brother, Joey. Okay, at the same time Delphine had gotten a little, tiny crush on Peter, who everyone said was very handsome, so that was excusable. But Joey? Delphine was totally annoyed that Maggie, her sworn best friend, like-liked her totally gross and annoying brother. She felt betrayed. She didn’t care if Maggie was miserable or if she got her heart broken. And she totally couldn’t understand why it didn’t bother Maggie one little bit that she, Delphine, had a crush—though not a big one—on her brother, Peter. She had never felt so confused in her entire life. She wished she had never met Maggie or Peter. She wished that Joey had never been born. She wished that everything could go back to way before these stupid crushes that were ruining her entire life.