Summer Friends

by Holly Chamberlin

“Greetings!” From the back of the first floor two men were emerging. Delphine introduced them to Maggie.

  Piers, the younger brother, was about five feet nine inches tall and on the chunky side. He wore it well, though, Maggie noted. His clothing—a dove grey silk suit—fit perfectly. His hair was thick and wavy and brown, brushed back off his forehead in a way that made him look a bit mischievous or rakish.

  Aubrey, the older brother by three years, was a bit taller than Piers and quite slim. His appearance was neat, clean, and thoroughly dapper. He wore a white shirt with French cuffs and, over it, a brocaded vest. His polished leather slipons, Maggie saw, had to be Italian. His hair, a silvery grey, was worn just like his brother’s hair. Together, they made an arresting pair. Maggie assumed—correctly—that they didn’t do their clothes shopping locally.

  Maggie asked where the paintings were displayed and both Burton brothers escorted them to the second floor. She was immediately drawn to a large painting sitting on a tall easel. It was a landscape in oil, showing a luminous clearing in a sylvan forest. The frame was made of carved and gilded oak. The artist had signed the lower right-hand corner. The date on the back of the canvas, written in an antique hand, was 1859. Piers informed her that the artist, who was English, had been a minor but relatively popular painter in his day. The canvas had been professionally restored and was in fine shape. The frame was original to the piece.

  “It’s absolutely gorgeous,” she said. “I just have to have it. It will look perfect over the fireplace in the den. I’ve been meaning to change out the art in that room anyway. You get tired of looking at the same pieces all the time, don’t you?”

  Delphine shrugged. Her selection of art, if it could be called a selection and not a random mass, consisted of one small watercolor of Perkins Cove, done by a local minor artist; an embroidered sampler done by a long-gone great-grandmother; a framed poster of a Marsden Hartley painting owned by the Ogunquit Museum of American Art and bought at an end of the season sale; another framed poster, from a Winslow Homer show that had been at the Portland Museum of Art—that one hung over her bed—and several of Kitty’s drawings, including the latest noodle picture, held to the fridge with magnets. Even if she wanted to “switch out” some pieces, she had no other pieces with which to replace them. For Delphine, fine art was going to have to remain in what big, glossy, expensive books she could find in the library.

  “Unless the piece is a favorite,” Piers was saying. “Then, of course, one never tires of its presence.”

  “Could you have it sent to my home?” Maggie asked. “My housekeeper can accept delivery. I don’t want to risk it laying around a hotel room.”

  “Of course,” Aubrey said.

  Piers asked Maggie where she was staying while in town. When she told him, he turned to Delphine.

  “Isn’t that where you worked a few years back?”

  “You worked at Gorges Grant?” Maggie asked.

  Delphine attempted a smile. There was nothing to be ashamed of—nothing—but she would have preferred to keep this bit of personal information from Maggie. “Yes,” she said. “I worked there as a chambermaid for a few months. Money was tight. We were having an awful summer. There were big rains for weeks on end. We lost a lot of our harvest. Even the chickens weren’t laying properly.”

  “Fortunately,” Aubrey said, “many of the merchants did quite well. Visitors were booked into town, and with the beaches a literal washout they had little choice but to shop and to eat.”

  “Which, unfortunately, didn’t do anything to help Crandall Farm or any other local farm,” Delphine added.

  Aubrey frowned in sympathy.

  Maggie looked back to the painting. She felt a spasm of guilt at spending so much money on something that wasn’t strictly necessary to maintain life and limb. But as quickly as it had come, the guilt was gone, replaced by a feeling of annoyance, edged with a bit of defiance. It was her money. She had earned it; she had worked hard for it. Why shouldn’t she spend it as she saw fit? If some people had to take on an extra job cleaning up after strangers, that was not her problem to solve. Still, she wished she hadn’t learned about this bit of Delphine’s life. She didn’t like to be reminded of all about Delphine that was so foreign.

  While Aubrey completed the paperwork for the purchase and delivery, Piers chatted with Delphine. He asked after her family and she told him about Kitty’s worrisome lack of energy. What she didn’t tell Piers was that only the night before Kitty had come down with a fairly high fever. According to Joey and Cybel it wasn’t high enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room, but still, the news was upsetting.

  “Does she eat enough?” Piers asked, a hand on Delphine’s arm. “So often children don’t eat properly, no matter what the parents attempt. Our dear mother used to make us the most delectable treats but no matter to Aubrey! He was such a fussy eater. Unlike me.” Here Piers transferred his hand from Delphine’s arm to his own substantial belly.

  Delphine smiled. “Well, it’s true she’s never been much of an eater. She gets so distracted she forgets she has to actually finish a meal. Cybel’s taking her to the doctor soon. Maybe he’ll give her some vitamins or supplements.”

  The sale completed, the women took their leave of the Burtons and drove into the heart of town. “I could drop you off at your hotel,” Delphine said, “or you could come with me to the library.” Even though, Delphine added silently, I know you don’t care for libraries.

  Maggie smiled. “Oh, I’ll come to the library with you. Thanks.”

  Delphine drove back into town and parked the truck a few yards from the Ogunquit Memorial Library. They were beginning the short walk to the building when someone behind them hailed Delphine. They stopped and were joined in a moment by a man Delphine introduced as Marc Pelletier, owner of Pelletier Farm.

  “Glad I ran into you, Delphine,” he said. “Looks like I’m going to be shorthanded for a run to the market in Portland next Saturday. You think Jackie and Dave Junior could bring up some of my onions and such, sell them at their stand?”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ll have Jackie give you a call, set things up.”

  “Much appreciated. You interested in a couple of pork chops for a couple dozen of your eggs?”

  Delphine laughed. “Always.”

  While Delphine and Marc caught up on local news, Maggie thought about the exchange she had just witnessed. Delphine had mentioned barter the first night they met, at the Cape Neddick Lobster Pound. The notion of bartering had struck Maggie as quaint, like something out of an old novel. But now that she thought about it she realized that it could make good sense, if you could figure out how to value a thing, if you could figure out what price to put on it and how to ensure that there was a fair exchange. Of course, there would have to be a level of trust between those bartering, and really, what were the guidelines for trust in such a situation? Proximity? Just because someone lived down the road from you didn’t necessarily mean he was trustworthy. Of course, she thought, people could be shamed into keeping a promise, shamed into being trustworthy and honest. If you knew you were going to run into your neighbor on a regular basis, chances were you wouldn’t want to cheat him because of the embarrassment that would follow if your deceit was found out. In the end, Maggie thought, a straightforward exchange of cash for goods seemed an awful lot easier.

  Maggie refocused to hear Marc Pelletier saying good-bye and loping off. She followed Delphine into the beautiful stone building set on a perfectly groomed lawn. Delphine introduced Maggie to the librarian, Nancy Brown, and then went off into the stacks in search of a book, a first novel by a Maine writer. She had read about it in one of the local papers and was hoping it would be in. A moment after she had gone, a tall, generously proportioned woman with a mane of silvery hair came into the library carrying a brown paper bag.

  Nancy smiled as the woman joined them at the checkout desk. “Glenda,” Nancy said, “this is Delphine Crandall’s old friend, Maggie Weldon.
Her family used to rent the Lilac House, oh, many years ago.”

  Glenda shook Maggie’s hand and smiled. “Hi. I’m Nancy’s partner. Weldon, did you say? That sounds familiar. But my memory isn’t what it used to be.” Glenda turned back to Nancy and handed her the brown paper bag. “How does ham and Swiss cheese sound? With a big fat peach for dessert.”

  “Yummy.” Nancy smiled. “Glenda brings me my lunch,” she told Maggie. “It makes a pleasant break in the day for each of us.”

  “How nice,” Maggie said, even as she smiled to herself at the thought of Gregory’s coming to her office with a homemade sandwich in a brown paper bag. She would think he had lost his mind or had been replaced by an alien from a much nicer planet.

  “Gotta run,” Glenda said. “Souvenirs don’t sell themselves.”

  “Glenda works in one of the gift shops in the Cove,” Nancy explained when she had gone. “It can be a madhouse some days, but it’s a living.”

  “I can imagine.” Maggie gestured to the paper bag on the checkout desk. “Please don’t let me disturb your lunch.”

  “Oh, lunch can wait. You know, Delphine uses the library more than anyone else in town. She’s a great reader.”

  Maggie glanced in the direction of the stacks. “When does she get the time? I wonder.”

  “Oh, a reader will always find time for a book.”

  “I have to admit I haven’t read more than two or three books a year in ages. I used to read so much more. . . .” Maggie shrugged. “Now, I don’t know; I just don’t. Aside from the news and business reports, that sort of thing.”

  Nancy shook her head. “They say the Internet and all those machines like Kindle are going to kill the book, but I say that’s ridiculous. There will always be those of us who love the feel of paper between our fingers, the turning of pages.”

  “Will there?” Maggie said. “I’m not so sure. A few generations from now there might be kids who find anything but electronic media obsolete. To them, a book might be some quaint relic from the past, something rare and inconvenient.”

  Nancy’s cheeks reddened. “I won’t believe it.”

  Maggie wished she had kept her thoughts to herself. She wished that Delphine would hurry up and pick a book. Happily, just then Delphine emerged from the stacks with two fat volumes in her arm. One, she showed Maggie, was Peter Ackroyd’s biography of William Blake. The other was a novel by Ross King titled Domino. The first novel she had hoped to find was out, so she asked Nancy to reserve it for her when it was returned.

  When Delphine had checked out her books and said good-bye to Nancy, the women left the library. Just outside, they ran into a short, roughhewn sort of man whom Delphine introduced as Bobby Taylor. He was still quite muscular, though Maggie guessed he had to be in his late seventies or thereabouts. His face was deeply lined and deeply tanned. He wore a clean though threadbare shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was an ancient tattoo on his left forearm, but Maggie couldn’t make out what it represented. His pants were held up with suspenders.

  Delphine and Bobby chatted for a moment or two about the weather and the volume of tourists as compared to the previous year—staples of local conversation—and then he went off into the library.

  “He’s a retired lobsterman,” Delphine explained when the door had closed behind him. “He’s one of the other avid readers in town, along with me and Tilda McQueen. Bobby was a close friend of her father and he’s been with Tilda’s aunt, Ruth, forever. Her ‘gentleman caller,’ I guess you could say.”

  “The name sounds familiar. McQueen. Would I have known them?”

  Delphine considered. “Your parents might have, maybe through the museum or the Barn Gallery. Tilda’s family owns a big old estate overlooking the water. Larchmere. Well, actually, her sister, Hannah, owns it with her wife, Susan, now that the parents are gone. They run it as a bed-and-breakfast. Her brother, Craig, is the manager. He lives there year-round. I guess you could say the McQueens are kind of an enterprise, too, like my family. Except they’re originally from Massachusetts.”

  Which made them, Maggie knew, perpetual outsiders. “You know everyone around here,” she said.

  “Everyone knows everyone.”

  “I guess I don’t remember that from when we were kids.”

  “I’m not sure it’s something a kid would really notice, the dynamics of a community. Kids are pretty self-involved. Of necessity, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Pretty much all I was concerned about those summers I spent here was catching lightning bugs and eating ice cream. And all my brother was concerned about was playing baseball.”

  “That reminds me,” Delphine said. “I need to buy Sea Dogs tickets. I want to surprise Kitty. What says summer more than a baseball game and a hot dog?”

  “And lightning bugs and ice cream. I’d love to go to the game with you. I haven’t been to a ball game of any sort since the girls played soccer when they were in middle school.”

  Delphine hesitated. She had planned to take Kitty on her own, just the two of them, a special outing. She looked over Maggie’s shoulder, glad to be wearing her sunglasses. “I’ll have to check my schedule first and then check with Cybel. . . .”

  “Sure,” Maggie said quickly. “If it doesn’t work out that’s fine. Look, thanks again for introducing me to the Burtons and to Nancy and Mr. Taylor. Oh, and I got to meet Glenda, too. I appreciate your letting me hang out with you today.”

  “Of course,” Delphine said, but she realized she felt a little bit annoyed. She wished Maggie wouldn’t make herself sound so pathetic, like Delphine was doing her some huge favor by “letting” her hang out. And if Maggie really did see spending time with her as a big favor, something special, might that mean she was asking Delphine to shoulder the responsibility—the burden—of a real friendship? Either that, Delphine thought, or I’m overthinking this entire topic. It had been known to happen.

  “Look,” Maggie was saying, gesturing in the direction of Gorges Grant. “I can walk from here back to my hotel. I’m kind of thinking I’ll go for a swim.”

  Delphine nodded. “Sure.”

  There was an awkward moment of silence and then Maggie turned and began to walk toward the hotel. Delphine raised her hand as if to hold her back; then she let it fall. She turned and walked in the other direction, back to her truck.

  20

  At ten o’clock Wednesday morning, Delphine got a call from her father, asking her to work the counter at Crandall’s Diner. One of the women who usually handled the lunch shift, Melissa, had had a minor accident on the way in; her car, while not totaled, had been hauled off to a garage and she was temporarily stranded. Delphine left a message for Maggie, canceling their plans to have lunch at the farm, and rushed off to the diner. The last person she expected to see walking through the front door an hour later was Maggie.

  Delphine was not thrilled. She didn’t particularly want Maggie to watch her serving sandwiches, wiping counters, and scraping dirty dishes. At least I’m not wearing a hairnet and a too-tight polyester uniform, she thought. And it’s not as if there’s anything unworthy about the work. It was just that—well, just that this was work time, not playtime.

  There was one seat left at the far end of the counter, close to the door, and Maggie took it. She smiled brightly as Delphine came toward her, order pad in hand.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Maggie laughed. “What do you mean, what am I doing here?”

  “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Of course. That’s why I’m here. I figured this way we could still see each other.”

  Delphine kept her tone neutral, but she could feel a flush of anger rise in her cheeks. “I’m at work, Maggie. I don’t have time to chat.”

  Maggie reached for a plastic-coated menu propped between the salt and pepper shakers. “Oh, I know,” she said lightly. “I’ve just been wanting to have lunch at the diner, for old times’ sake. I told you that.”

  An
old-fashioned counter bell sounded. “I need to serve another customer,” Delphine said, and walked to the other end of the counter. Maggie saw her speak to a young, dark-haired waitress with a tattoo of a rose on her neck. The young waitress came toward her and with a smile asked if she could take Maggie’s order.

  When the waitress had gone off, Maggie examined the diner she had remembered with such fondness. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought that the high-backed leather benches in the booths in front were new, at least, new to her. In her memory she saw them as red. These were blue. Otherwise, everything looked much as it had; she was sure of it. On the counter, next to the cash register, was a display of glass jars containing preserved foods made by Mrs. Crandall from produce grown on the farm. There were several kinds of sauerkrauts and pickles. In slightly smaller jars were blueberry and strawberry preserves. A picture of a bull moose was taped to the wall behind the counter. A circular glass case displayed homemade cakes and pies. At the checkout counter, next to the cash register, was a bowl filled with those awful chalky white mints. Maggie shuddered, remembering how she once had stuffed a bunch of them into her mouth, thinking they would taste good. Candy was supposed to taste good, right? She hadn’t meant to, but she’d spit out the half-crunched mints, horrified. Delphine had thought it was hilarious.

  The young waitress brought Maggie’s lunch then and hurried off to take the order of a new customer a few seats down the counter. Maggie had found waitressing difficult as a college student. She didn’t know how Delphine had handled the stress at thirteen or fourteen. She remembered that her mother hadn’t let her hang out at the diner on Delphine’s shifts because she thought Maggie would be a distraction. Maggie didn’t think that Delphine had ever complained about having to work while Maggie was free to play, to read, to goof off. She had been the one to do the complaining: “It’s not fair I have to be all alone.” Not fair. Maggie felt embarrassed by the memory of her selfish, immature adolescent self.

  The man next to her at the counter ordered a whoopee pie and Maggie suddenly remembered the time someone had thrown a party at the diner. It might have been someone’s birthday, but whatever the occasion, there had been a giant whoopee pie that Mrs. Crandall had sliced up like a cake. Maggie, Delphine, Jackie, and Joey had been the only kids there. A local band played old rock and roll and the adults danced like crazy. Delphine had even taken a sip of an abandoned beer. But wait, Maggie thought now. Maybe Jackie was the culprit. She couldn’t remember now. Had it been a dare? Maybe. Maybe she had made up the whole story, her brain creating an event that was likely to have happened whether it did actually happen or not.