The Color of Water in July

by Nora Carroll

  I shall take the liberty to sign myself as,

  Your great-uncle,

  Chapin Emelius Flagg.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  JESS, AGE THIRTY-THREE

  Jess walked around the cottage slowly now, hesitant, the way you walk around a place that you know you are leaving, that is no longer yours.

  With Russ gone, the life seemed drained out of the cottage—his newness, his oddness, his very wrongness had at least made the cottage seem a living place. Now, Jess saw the cottage for what it was, a summertime lair for Miss Havisham—old, faded, worn out, already dead.

  Typical Russ, he hadn’t really seemed to quite get it when she had said, “Leave.”

  He was looking over his shoulder, saying, “What about the photo shoot?” as she was practically shoving him out the door. She had called a cab for him, said, “I need to be alone for a while.” She stopped answering the phone. Found two of Toni Barnes’s RE/MAX cards stuck in the back screen door. The papers for the closing lay, unsigned, on her grandmother’s writing table.

  It had turned to August now, you could feel it right away, the lack of sincerity of summer, the hint that it was already planning to leave. There was a fierce north wind blowing across Five Mile Point, bringing cold air down from Canada. She could see the Slades’s American flag flapping on the flagpole. Up from the lake came the clanging sound of sailboats at their moorings. The sky was a sharp, cloudless blue. Out the window, she could see the branches whipping back and forth—a smattering of green leaves were falling. It gave the impression of sunlit snow.

  A week ago it had all seemed so easy. She would fly up for a week and sell the cottage; she would then pack her bags and return to her life in New York.

  That long-ago afternoon when she and Mamie had sat on the upstairs bed folding pillowcases—what was it that her grandmother had said? Mamie’s face flashed in front of her, the way it had been that summer: pale-blue eyes, white skin soft but already lined with age. Hold on to what matters. She hadn’t understood, then, what her grandmother had been talking about. Now, after all these years, it was possible that she did.

  Jess looked down at the desktop. There were two photographs, side by side, held down by the beveled glass tabletop of the mahogany desk. One was of herself, another of Margaret. The one of Margaret bore a caption: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Neither picture was recent. Her mother was truly striking—thick, confident black eyebrows, wide dark-brown eyes, and a full, determined mouth. Of course, Margaret was much older now. You couldn’t get her to admit it, but she had pretty much retired. She could still turn heads in a restaurant though, even at her age. Margaret was a person who always looked like she mattered.

  Jess had called her mother, of course, about the inheritance. Before she had left on the trip. Right after she got the official call from Mamie’s lawyer about the will.

  “What cottage?” her mother said.

  “Mother,” Jess said, “don’t play games with me. I know you know what cottage. What do you think I should do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Sell it,” Jess said into the phone.

  “Then sell it! For Christ’s sake. She gave it to you. If the money makes you feel guilty, give it to Oxfam or something.”

  “But Mamie said . . . ”

  “You know, Jess, I think Mamie raised the both of us to know how to do what we want.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “What’s past is past,” Margaret said, sounding just like Mamie, the way she seemed to more than ever these days.

  Jess was still surprised by such a clear international connection. She hadn’t gotten used to hearing her mother’s voice without the familiar crackling of static overlaying it, the tinny faraway sound that Jess had eventually grown to associate with comfort.

  “Mom,” Jess said, not wanting to lose such a good connection, “when are you coming to New York?”

  Jess edged back the glass top. She grasped the corner of the picture and slid it out from under the heavy glass. Underneath, Jess saw that there were several more pictures of Margaret, each one showing a younger face. Jess shuffled through the little pile of pictures: Margaret in a cap and gown, Margaret in a white dress holding flowers, Margaret holding a microphone.

  With surprise, Jess came upon the last picture in the pile. It was not a picture of Margaret at all, but the image of a young man wearing a soldier’s uniform—a tall man with broad shoulders, very young to be a soldier. He was wearing a peaked navy cap and tunic, and was holding an ornamental sword in his hand. For some reason, he looked a little familiar, though she was certain she had never seen the picture before. Jess turned the picture over.

  On the back was written: “On the occasion of his enlistment in the Navy. Thomas Cardwell Cleves. 1917.”

  The big old cottage ticked and creaked around Jess, never perfectly silent, always with its own faint music. Jess recognized the melody now. It was made up of the songs of a family whose lives, like familiar refrains, still mattered.

  All this time, she had felt guilty about the cottage, thinking that Mamie wanted her to hold on to it, imagining that was what Mamie had in mind. But she should have known Mamie better than that, should have known right away what Mamie wanted.

  Hold on to what matters.

  What matters . . .

  Jess sat at Mamie’s desk looking out toward Hemingway Point. She could see the spot, about halfway across, where the water was bluer, deeper, and where the surface was always flecked by the path of the wind. Through the doorway, she could see into the shadowy interior of the cottage, the interior that would always have the patina of so many summers past.

  She glanced at her watch. It was not yet noon. The closing was scheduled for two, the flight for four. She hesitated, not long, just enough to hear her heart beat once or twice, then, leaving the unsigned papers lying on the desk, she walked slowly toward the back door, ever so slowly, like she wasn’t going anywhere. As she crossed the sill, she broke into a run.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  JESS, AGE THIRTY-THREE

  She had known that it would be easy to find him, but that she would have to look. At first, every time she had rounded an aisle in Olsen’s Market, or turned a corner when walking in town, she had that tiny anticipation that she would look up and there he would be. But in the end, she had known that it would not be a chance meeting. She would have to seek him out, if only she could find the courage to do so.

  She rushed headlong out the back door, letting the screen door screech and then slam behind her. She moved so quickly up the back slope, up the stone steps in front of the garage, past the row of hollyhocks that stood brightly in a line in front of the stone wall. For a moment, she sat still, key in the ignition, inhaling the new-car smell of the blue-plush upholstery in the rental car, then she flipped the ignition and gunned it a little bit, spraying gravel as she went down the back road and out the stone gates toward M-66.

  In town, the scene around her was tranquil—not too many tourists in the streets at this time of day. She saw an elderly couple, almost matching in blue and white clothing, walking slowly down the sidewalk just barely holding hands. From behind, a boy in a neon shirt raced up on a scooter, neatly arcing around the old couple and skimming on down the street.

  Jess forced herself to think about the possibilities. He was out on an expedition. Hadn’t Toni said he would be? He would surely be married (his wife would no doubt be a beautiful marine biologist). What if he was married and his wife was handling the front desk? What if he answered the door with a baby balanced on his hip?

  She just wanted to see him; that was all. Trying to conjure a feeling that seemed platonic and mild, Jess stood up from the bench and walked down Pine Street toward the chamber of commerce building. Without hesitation, she followed the walk around the back of it, where a small office, more of a s
hack, really, was built close to the water’s edge. She saw a sign that read: SOO EXPEDITIONS. D. PAINTER, PROPRIETOR. Forcing herself—feeling outside herself—she walked in the half-open door.

  Surprised to see no one behind the desk, Jess took a moment to look at the simple surroundings: some brochures in a metal rack, an electric clock on the wall, a gray-metal counter across the middle of the small room, a feed-store calendar with a grainy picture of a couple of grazing cows. It took her a moment to see the little paper tent resting on the countertop scrawled in pencil with the words Out Back. Jess pushed the door open and blinked for a second in the glaring light; she peered around the rear of the shack, but it appeared to be flush with the wharf. Around the other side, however, the cement path continued, where there was a cement parking lot backing up to the water. There were several white trailers, each of them stacked with green and red canoes resting on white-metal railings, two across, three up. One canoe, a worn-looking red one, was resting on cinderblocks. Next to it, a broad-shouldered man was squatting in shorts and Teva sandals, facing away from her, holding a small can of shiny black paint. She stood there watching the man’s back, not sure. Cottages, she had found, don’t change much over the years. She could recognize Journey’s End in her sleep, in a trance, in her dreams; but a person . . . Broad shouldered, close-cropped hair with a few visible flecks of silver. The man put down the paint pot and stood up, turning so slowly that she realized he had known she was there all along.

  “Toni told me you decided to sell it,” he said. “Somehow, I kept thinking that in the end you wouldn’t.”

  Jess held her hand up to her brow, thinking that if she could block the sun she would be able to see more clearly.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “Where are my manners?” Wiping his painty hands on the sides of his frayed khaki shorts, he stepped forward, holding out his hand.

  “Welcome home to the North Country, Jess.”

  Later, looking back, it was the word home that struck her first and hardest; that left an immediate and indelible mark.

  Daniel Painter had perfect white teeth that showed as his lips parted into an easy grin.

  “There is something I need to tell you,” she said.

  EPILOGUE

  SEVEN YEARS LATER

  Jess leaned against the door frame in her sunny kitchen, cradling the phone in the crook of her neck, listening carefully and nodding, asking the occasional question while looking out the kitchen window at the sunlight playing on the surface of the lake. The window was open, and a white-cotton gauze curtain ruffled slightly in the mild summer breeze.

  “What time did they start? Have you had any bleeding? When’s the last time you felt the baby move?”

  At the faint sound of a beeper buzzing on vibrate mode, Jess looked down at her waist where her beeper was clipped, pushing the buttons and scribbling a phone number on the paper in front of her, all the while murmuring listening sounds and nodding.

  “It sounds like time for you to head in . . . I know, I know,” Jess said, her voice soothing. “Yes, I’ll come to the hospital as soon as you get there. Don’t worry. You know I promised you that.”

  Jess scribbled a note that she left on the kitchen counter: Gone to the hospital. First labor. Might be long. I’ll try to be there by seven.

  Driving in, she was a few minutes late, her hair still damp from the rapid hospital shower. About an hour ago, she had delivered her patient’s healthy six-pound baby boy. She caught sight of the Wequetona gates, the painted sign, the trim row of trees. Even after all these years, Jess still got a funny feeling when she drove past the Wequetona gates. She didn’t drive through them anymore. Of course, the conservancy had opened a new roadway, which led around the back of Wequetona Club to a widened gravel parking lot. Down along the left side, there was a massive row of arborvitae towering up, over eight feet tall. The trustees had insisted on planting them when Journey’s End was no longer part of the Club. Straight in front of her, the cottage looked exactly the same as ever though—except for the sign, which read: LITTLE TRAVERSE CONSERVANCY HEADQUARTERS. PINE LAKE.

  Inside, of course, everything looked completely different. The walls to the downstairs bedrooms had been taken out, so that now the whole first floor, except for the kitchen, was one enormous meeting space. There were massive lines of track lighting everywhere. The lights blazed down on the banks of chairs. From the kitchen, the scent of percolating coffee wafted out, and there were tables set up with red-felt tablecloths, covered with pamphlets about conservation and petitions to sign. She caught sight of the framed Town & Country cover; it showed the front of the cottage looking better than it ever really had looked—red-white-and-blue bunting, bright geraniums, and borrowed brand-new wicker, with the caption The Other Kennebunkport emblazoned across the front. She smiled for a minute, thinking of Russ. Last she heard, he was still in New York and had gotten the coveted editor’s job at Architectural Home.

  Inside the main conference room, she was pleased to see that people were still milling around and not yet seated. She was shocked, though she shouldn’t have been, to see how elaborately everyone else was dressed. Jess saw a number of Wequetona people, not surprising, she guessed. It was funny. Even though they lived just down the road year-round, they almost never ran into the summer people. There was Toni Barnes dressed in a butter-colored linen sheath, holding a plastic cup filled with white wine and a little green cocktail napkin, talking to . . . someone . . . Wasn’t that Philip Cartwright? Over in the corner, Jess saw a tall, thin woman, slightly stooped, who might have been Martha Whitmire—hard to tell since so many of those women looked alike, and with her back to Jess, over near Martha, she saw a gaunt figure in a navy-blue blazer, a small bald spot glowing faintly on the back of his head, probably Phelps.

  It took a moment for Jess to see Daniel. As always, it was like she felt his presence before she really saw him, felt that momentary clutch, even still, after all this time. He was standing in the corner wearing jeans and a sage-green hand-knitted sweater. She could see several people clutching his new book—Soo Tales: A Canoer’s Story—standing in line, waiting for him to sign. Jess saw that he had seen her, saw the flash of white teeth, the little piece of a smile. Clutching his hand, sucking on her fingers, there was Maggie, hair in long black braids, dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt and her best purple velveteen pants.

  “Mommy!” she shouted out, skipping across the weathered floorboards of the old cottage. “You came back!”

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Early in the story, Jess is reluctant to return to Journey’s End. She thinks: “This could not properly be called returning. There was no call to feel like this. She was imputing qualities—breath, flesh, blood—to a structure made of pine board, shingle, and stone.” Why is Jess so reluctant to return to Journey’s End? Why does she seem to think of the house as a living person?

  How are Russ and Daniel different? Why is Jess trying so hard to convince herself that she is in love with Russ?

  Early in the story, Mamie tells Margaret that she is planning to sell the cottage, but she decides to leave the cottage to Jess. What makes her change her mind?

  Mamie and Margaret are completely different from each other. How does each of them affect Jess’s own personality?

  Mamie calls Journey’s End “the final keeper of secrets.” It’s striking how much upheaval the family goes through, while the house hardly changes at all. What role does the house play in the life of the family? Is it a good role or a bad role?

  Mamie keeps a secret throughout Margaret’s and Jess’s lives, and she continues to keep the secret even when it means breaking up Daniel and Jess. Mamie calls her story “the shaky foundation upon which we had built our family.” What do you think of Mamie’s decision to keep her secret?

  At the beginning of the story, Jess seems to feel that she never reached for her dreams. What changed to allow her to follo
w her passions?

  Daniel and Jess were young when they met, and they fell in love quickly. Do you think this kind of young love can endure? If they had stayed together in the first place, do you think they would have been happy together despite the difficulties they would have faced?

  Chapin writes, “I can still call to mind the precise shade of the water that day. I call that summer blue, the color of water in July—all of promise wrapped up in it, and every disappointment too.” How does the title of the book tie into its central themes? Do summer things—vacation houses, summer romances—hold a special place in our lives? Why?

  The character of Lila was something of a mystery, and even after the reader discovers what happened to her, it’s still hard to understand. What do you think of Lila as a person? Do you think Mamie did the right thing? What would you do if faced with a similar situation?

  In the end, Jess leaves the Club and donates the house to a nature conservancy. Why did she decide not to keep it? Why did she think that Mamie’s words, “Hold on to what matters,” provided the key to her future?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nora Carroll is a pseudonym for #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Letts. A former obstetric nurse, Nora Carroll now writes full time. She lives with her husband, four children, and a madcap golden retriever in Southern California.