Guests of August

by Gloria Goldreich

  She leans back in her chair, exhausted now, staring past Daniel who takes her hand and holds it tightly.

  ‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘You are not and could never be an awful person. And you know yourself that you are in no way responsible for his death.’

  He speaks decisively and, wondering on what he bases this instinctive reassurance, he breaks off a bit of the biscotti and presses it with his thumb into a design on the tabletop, a habit that always annoyed Laura. Ellen passes and he asks for the check. Wendy stands, picks up her broad-brimmed lavender sun hat, waves to Ellen and waits for him in the doorway. Her long shadow falls in a dark velvet swathe across the sun-swept street. Her eyes are dangerously bright but she does not weep. He is moved to a sudden and inexplicable sadness.

  They return to the craft shop and Wendy selects four cans of paint in different colors and four brushes suitable for outdoor use.

  ‘This should keep the boys happy,’ she says, and he nods.

  They drive back to the inn in silence, conscious that too many words have already passed between them that afternoon.

  SEVEN

  As the afternoon wanes and the sun begins its long, slow descent, the teenagers who have spent the day at the lake make their way across the lawn dragging their wet towels and ragged blankets. They form an uneasy quartet, Paul and Annette walking together, their sun-brightened faces wreathed in laughter; Jeremy, Tracy and Richie trailing after them, Richie, breaking into a run and jostling Annette as he races past her. The small boys abandon their fort, carefully situating their freshly painted stones so that they will be in readiness for the next day’s play.

  Nessa Epstein reluctantly rises from her chair, marks her place in her Ruth Rendell novel, Bruno Bettelheim having been cast aside, and makes her way to the kitchen. Simon is already there, the wicker basket open, the small plates snug in their clever, gingham-lined compartments, the serving dishes spread across a counter at a remove from the areas where the chef is preparing salads for dinner. Louise Abbot hovers near Simon, removing a large dish she does not deem clean enough and washing and drying it before setting it down.

  ‘You know, Simon, I’d be glad to let you have plates and glasses. You don’t have to bring that basket,’ she says as she has said every year.

  Like her in-laws before her, she does not really approve of the late-afternoon cocktail party on the lawn that Simon Epstein organizes annually, imitating his own parents’ Mount Haven custom. However, since the laws of New Hampshire prohibit the drinking of alcohol in public rooms, she accommodates him.

  ‘I know, Louise. But this basket is kind of my toy. You’ll indulge me, won’t you?’

  He turns to her, smiling his trademark smile, and Louise blushes.

  ‘Yes. Of course. You know I will.’

  Nessa flashes Louise a commiserative glance. Who could not indulge Simon when he smiles so charmingly and speaks so appealingly? The basket is Simon’s conceit, an artifact of his marriage to Charlotte who had thought it a ridiculous wedding present and laid no claim to it in the painful ritual of divorce when possessions were divided, mysterious preferences expressed for ceramic candlesticks or cheese boards of walnut wood. But then, Nessa acknowledges, all marriages are strangely anchored by possessions and memories, and so many are dangerously vulnerable. She thinks of Daniel Goldner and Laura, of their unlikely togetherness and of the inevitable sadness of their parting. Poor Daniel, poor Laura.

  She knows that there are those who marvel at her own marriage, but then she and Simon had been conditioned, following as they did in the footsteps of their past failures, her inappropriate lovers and the deterioration of his first marriage. They had been older, their life lessons well learned. They allow each other their disparate idiosyncrasies. They are graceful in compromise, always aware of their luck at finding each other.

  Nessa had already danced at the weddings of all her friends and admired their newborn babies, convinced that her turn would never come, that she was not sure she wanted it to come.

  One after another, her lovers had disappointed. But her life was full, her career successful and she knew herself to be happier than many of her married friends. Simon, in turn, had stumbled through the desert of a marriage grown loveless and lonely. And yet, against all odds, they had met and, against even more improbable odds, they have made each other happy, despite their disparities of style.

  Nessa drives her battered, messy van and Simon drives his snappy, impeccable sports car. He dresses carefully, his shirts meticulously ironed, his pants sharply creased, never a button missing, never a shoe un-shined. He makes his own arrangements for the care of his wardrobe, making stops at the laundry, the dry cleaners, the neighborhood cobbler. He is a man who sits on corporate boards and leads graduate seminars. His appearance is important to him.

  Nessa’s own clothes are a colorful rumpled jumble, tossed carelessly into closets and drawers or sometimes simply plucked up from the floor. She selects her loose dresses and her shirts and skirts of gossamer fabrics because they are comfortable and she moves easily in them, skirts flaring over her ample waist, sneakers tied with different colored laces, sandals more often than not unstrapped. She prefers walking barefoot, padding across the rubber carpeted floors of her Magic Mountain Nursery School or gliding through her kitchen. She loves the feel of the cold ceramic floor against the soles of her calloused feet as she cooks her extravagant unplanned meals.

  Because they are so unalike, meticulous Simon and careless, indifferent Nessa, their marriage bewilders their friends and acquaintances, but they themselves are not perplexed.

  ‘We’re like reverse magnets,’ Nessa once told Paul who commented on his father’s neatness, her own congenital disorder. ‘Opposites attract, you know.’

  Paul had nodded although he did not know. He only knows that his mother makes his studious, introspective father laugh out loud, that his father makes his mother smile, that her face glows when she sees him, that sometimes before dinner they dance to slow show tunes, her head resting on his shoulder, his fingers entwined in her unruly auburn curls. He has no other friends whose parents dance in the quiet of their own living rooms and he counts himself fortunate.

  Nessa opens the huge inn refrigerator and studies the shelf Louise allotted to her for her Fairway purchases. She hands Simon the containers that hold the different olives and watches as he arranges them artfully on the large white plate.

  ‘How did your meeting with Mark Templeton and Michael Curran go?’ she asks.

  ‘Fairly well, I think. Templeton may come through with some venture capital. A good deal for both of them.’

  ‘Good,’ she says.

  She is proud of Simon for getting involved, for making his expertise and advice available to Michael Curran whom she likes and who always reminds her of the child who appears inevitably in every nursery school class, frightened and wary, certain of failure and rejection. She is partial to such children and always proud that they leave her class standing taller, bolder at play, gay in song.

  She places the cheeses on the counter. Simon begs some lettuce leaves from the chef and positions the golden cheddar and the pale Stilton on the greenery. She is glad that she remembered the tapenade that Tracy favors and the bruschetta that Richie eats voraciously, although she really does not care very much about pleasing Richie. He is so very adept at pleasing himself. It is not that she does not like her stepson. It is that, for reasons inexplicable to herself and certainly never articulated to Simon, she does not trust him. She wonders idly if her stepchildren (she hates that word) will really stay at the inn for so long a stretch and whether Charlotte, their mother, will make an appearance. Probably not. Charlotte will most likely be off on a junket to an exotic location, choosing a five-star hotel as her base.

  Simon sets out an assortment of flat breads and crackers.

  ‘That’s an awful lot,’ Nessa observes.

  ‘Well, you know, first cocktail hour of the vacation. Everyone around. Probably every
one wanting to join us. Better to set out more rather than less.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nessa agrees, although she prefers it when the group that assembles on the lawn before dinner is smaller. But Simon is right. The first day is always an ice-breaker with everyone mingling. Later there will be more discrete pairing, absences because of day trips or evenings out.

  She holds the door open for him as he carries some of the food out and within minutes Paul and Annette dash into the kitchen, wearing fresh clothes, newly showered, their hair damp, their skin rose gold after hours reveling in the lakeside sunshine. Her heart soars because they are so aglow with youth and energy and her heart breaks because she knows how vulnerable they are, her son and this slender girl who places her hand ever so lightly on his arm.

  ‘Can we help you, Mom?’ Paul asks.

  ‘Sure. Paul, can you manage some of these bottles?’

  Simon has brought the drinks of summer – vodka and gin and Aquavit, the very same drinks his parents served during their stays at Mount Haven Inn. There are containers of juice and baskets of potato chips and pretzels for the children.

  ‘And Annette, can you take the basket? And maybe the plate with the crackers.’

  ‘No problem.’ Annette smiles.

  She is a very pleasant girl, Nessa decides, the daughter of very pleasant parents, although strangely, Jeff Edwards had been alone on the lawn all afternoon, reading beneath a tree and then going off for a walk with Helene and Greg, even though Nessa suspects that he is not overly fond of his wife’s sister and her husband. Susan Edwards had appeared briefly afterward, perhaps in search of Jeff, perhaps to monitor Matt who was, after all, happily painting the stones for the fort with Donny and Cary. Susan confided that she was working on a translation, an important work with a pressing deadline, a novel by Juliette LeBec. It surprised Nessa that Susan was working during this vacation, something she had never done before. She had once asserted proudly that she and Jeff had made a pact never to work during these August weeks. But Nessa asked no questions. It is really none of her business.

  She takes a tall bottle of tonic water, a container of orange juice and another of tomato juice out of the refrigerator and, hugging them to her chest, carries them out to the lawn. It does not bother her at all that her magenta shirt is moist and darkened by the bottles’ condensation. She smiles gratefully at Michael Curran who hurries to relieve her of the bottles.

  Simon is busily arranging the food on a small wooden table while the other men assemble the Adirondack chairs in a large circle. Daniel Goldner emerges from the kitchen with a bucket of ice. He fills a glass of orange juice, adds a few cubes but no liquor and hands it to Wendy Templeton. Nessa wonders how he could have known that Wendy would not want vodka. The older Templetons settle themselves in the chairs that afford the best view of the mountain. Mark Templeton pours himself an Aquavit in a large glass with a great deal of ice and fills a small glass to the top with vodka which his wife drinks rather too quickly. Daniel Goldner watches her, thinking of Wendy’s description of Adam’s drinking, how he spent entire afternoons filling small glasses with vodka. He watches as Adam’s mother drains her glass, leans across the table, spreads a piece of brie on a cracker and replenishes her drink.

  The other guests slide into their chairs and their conversations are the casual and pleasant exchanges of acquaintances thrust together in comfortable and finite intimacy.

  They speak and fall silent at will, luxuriating in their leisure, bending forward to idly spread cheese across a cracker, to add ice to a glass. The chaos of the world is at a distance. They are on vacation.

  They have all changed into slacks against the very slight chill of evening, oddly enough each of them choosing light fabrics of brown and gray, the colors of the soft-winged moths that will soon flutter against the shades of their lamps. Their colorful cardigans litter the grass. Andrea Templeton, however, wears a silk pant suit the color of silver. The fabric shimmers as she refills her glass for the third time. Her husband watches her, and Wendy averts her eyes.

  The sky darkens slowly. Donny, Cary and Matt abandon croquet and dash across the lawn in a game of tag, Donny’s laughter trebling musically above the shouts of his friends. Wendy smiles, her son’s happiness triggering her own. Daniel Goldner moves closer to her, whispers something in her ear and she smiles yet again. Andrea stares at them and refills her glass. But before she can lift it to her lips, Mark’s hand shoots out. With deliberate swiftness, he knocks her drink to the grass and vodka petals the silver silk of her slacks with leaf-shaped stains.

  ‘Mark!’ Andrea’s voice is shrill with anger.

  ‘Clumsy of me,’ he murmurs as Nessa darts forward with napkins and Simon picks up the glass.

  She stares at him and trains a thin smile on the others.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I shall have to change,’ she says and walks unsteadily back to the inn.

  Daniel feels Wendy stiffen and too swiftly she moves toward her son. She places her hands over his eyes, calls gaily, ‘Guess who?’ and hugs him as he squirms away. Daniel realizes that she is, in fact, trying to shield Donny from his grandparents’ discord.

  Wendy need not have worried. Mark Templeton walks across the lawn and then looks up at the inn, perhaps searching out the window of his own room where, despite the fact that darkness has not yet fallen, a small lamp glows. Andrea is there and he knows exactly what she is doing.

  Subdued, they acknowledge that the party is over. Nessa and Simon fill their picnic basket and the vacationers assemble in the dining room for dinner, heralded as always by the jangling of the bell.

  They gather in the lounge after dinner and once again arrange themselves in small groups. Annette and Paul continue to work on the jigsaw puzzle, their heads bent close together, his cheek brushing hers as he reaches for a long rectangular-shaped piece.

  ‘Lincoln’s hat,’ he says triumphantly.

  Nessa, Wendy and Helene immerse themselves in a Scrabble game.

  ‘Doesn’t your sister want to play?’ Nessa asks. Susan has long been a regular at the Scrabble table.

  ‘She’s trying to finish a section of the translation she’s working on,’ Helene replies. ‘It’s a very important book. Juliette LeBec,’ she adds importantly although she had never heard of Juliette LeBec before Susan mentioned her. She waves to Greg who ambles toward the dart board.

  In a badly lit corner of the room Jeff and Simon are hunched over a chess board while Michael Curran, seated at a bridge table, works at complicated spreadsheets, his laptop open, alternating between tapping his keyboard and making notations with a sharply pointed pencil. The small boys, as always, are lined up at the pinball machines, pumping in their quarters and shouting at each other as each game concludes. Richie is teaching Jeremy and Tracy the intricacies of shooting pool, chalking his cue with expert ease. Tracy, who knows how to play, glares at her brother and Jeremy wonders how old Tracy Epstein is. He calculates. Jeremy is a junior in high school, she is a college sophomore. Two years, he figures. Maybe three. Not such a stretch. His aunt Helene is two years older than his uncle Greg.

  Andrea and Mark Templeton, seated in the two shabby armchairs separated by a single reading lamp, turn the pages of their very thick books. Mark is immersed in the Einstein biography and Andrea is trying hard to concentrate on Barchester Towers, which she selected because it was so long. Andrea prizes books for their length, rewards herself with a drink as each chapter comes to an end and congratulates herself by indulging in a very good cognac on completing each heavy volume. She thinks Mark ignorant of this regimen. He tolerates her drinking, but that tacit acceptance has grown strained since Adam’s death. She wonders if he blames her for Adam’s drinking. She feels a surge of anger as she recalls how he had jostled the drink out of her hand. With that gesture, he had violated the mutual complicity, the defined parameters of separation, which have for so long protected their marriage. Fragile from the outset, it had always been in need of support.

&
nbsp; Their courtship had been brief, encouraged by both their families. An excellent social fit with economic perquisites. Andrea and Mark seemed well matched to others and they each thought the other to be an appropriate and attractive choice. They came together as strangers, totally unaware of each other’s frailties and strengths. Such was the pattern in their elevated social circle in which two handsome young people from good families routinely married and lived comfortable, unquestioning lives.

  They discovered, early on, that if they were to continue to live as man and wife accommodations would have to be made. They were not happy together but knew that they would be even unhappier apart. Divorce was not an option that they considered. Their families’ finances were intricately enmeshed and they enjoyed their social position. They were fond of each other and reasonably happy. Perhaps not ‘happy’ but managing. Andrea drank and she was an unrepentant drinker, given to melancholy and rage.

  They decided on an unorthodox course. Mark bought a home in New Hampshire and Andrea delighted in furnishing it, delighted in living there alone while he continued to live in their New York town house. When necessary, she came to Manhattan to host a dinner party or to stand beside him at a business reception, always elegantly dressed and softly spoken. He in turn journeyed north every several weeks to spend time with her. And he was similarly safe, no longer subject to the embarrassment of her unpredictable outbursts at dinner parties, in the lobbies of theatres and concert halls.