That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  “I wouldn’t say Silas is much of a hugger, really,” she said through a slightly devilish smirk.

  Hazel unraveled her arms from Silas as quickly as she could and took a few steps back. The tingling in her cheeks and arms and belly were replaced with a fiery heat of embarrassment. She looked right into Silas’s eyes, which were brighter and warmer than his hug had felt.

  “Oh, would you cut it out, Eve,” Silas said with a smile and a slight shake of his head.

  Hazel was taken by the fact that her father looked like a man that could do things. Silas’s chest was big and wide, and he had a wild mane of black curls and a face thick with stubble. He looked tanned, relaxed and strong in a way that was unplanned. He wore a loose gray-and-green plaid shirt that was tattered and chalky with age and repeated launderings. Her mother seemed like such a helpless person to her now. So weak, so tired, so needy. Hazel was glad that somewhere in her genes was the capacity for independence, ability.

  “It’s good to see you again, kiddo,” Silas said and bumped Eve lightly with his hip. They smiled warmly at each other.

  “And I guess this makes you Hazel,” he said, smiling down at her.

  “Yup!” Eve chimed in, even though Hazel thought Silas was talking to her, and smiled a big smile that showed all her teeth.

  “All right, then. Let me grab these,” Silas said as he lifted up all four of their bags at once. Hazel watched his fingers curl around the straps. They were broad and calloused with thin scars like tally marks scattered across them. Silas remained sturdy and unencumbered as he swung the bags up onto his back and walked them over toward his pickup truck. His forearms and shoulders bulged as he swung them over the ledge of the truck bed without undoing the latch.

  He walked toward the driver’s-side door, dragging the heels of work boots through the dirt of the road. The air was tense, and thick and exciting. The possibility occurred to Hazel that Silas could just drive away in that car and leave her standing there. But as if he had forgotten something, Silas turned around and opened the back seat door. “Get on in, girls.”

  Silas leaned back in his seat, turned on the car and put all the windows down. He drove casually behind his mirrored sunglasses with his left leg bent up, foot on the seat and a single finger resting on the steering wheel. Despite the indifference of his slouch, each turn from one dirt road to the next seemed deliberate and careful. Occasionally he would rake his fingers through his hair and inhale the sylvan scent of the trees. There were no words exchanged, no music playing. Just the sound of the increasingly thick woods. And the silent anticipation of it all.

  “There’s our lake,” Silas stated matter-of-factly with a hint of pride.

  “Yeah, there’s our lake!” Eve repeated with more panache. Hazel could tell Eve felt an ownership over that body of water. Eve stuck her head out the window and shouted loudly and wildly—almost diabolically. She shook her head side to side and stretched the tip of her tongue all the way to the bottom of her chin. Her hair whipped viciously, but still elegantly, through the wind. Her voice carried in wobbling waves through the air. Silas pressed his foot into the pedal and the car began to accelerate. Hazel observed Silas’s shoulders bouncing up and down above the seat, chuckling. She instinctively stuck her head out the window to join in Eve’s entertainment. Hazel was at first taken aback at the force of the wind against her face but soon found a voice of her own.

  “We’re going to our lake!” she screamed, with all the intensity and joy and frenzy and ecstasy she had been waiting for.

  Eve pulled her body back into the car, slapped Hazel squarely on her bottom with a maniacal laugh, and then stuck her head out the window once more.

  “We’re going to the lake!” she joined in.

  Silas pressed his hand into the horn for three short beeps and then held it there for a fourth long, reverberating honk. Without slowing down, Silas ripped the wheel to the left into a narrow clearing between trees. A tremendous cabin, wrapped with porches and ivy and chirping animals, emerged in front of the car.

  “We’re here,” Silas said, bringing the car to a slow stop. “Welcome to your getaway, girls.”

  There was a pathway of once carefully laid stones, now bulging in places, leading toward the door. Eve rushed out of the car and leaped through the front door, feet not even touching the ground on her way. She made it inside before Silas could even open the car door. As Hazel began approaching the cabin, Eve poked her head back out the front.

  “Oh my god, this place is cool!” Hazel yelled, to Silas or Eve, or to no one at all.

  Hazel looked at Silas. He raised his eyebrows, which grew unexpectedly coarsely. “Uh, is that a word that’s fine to say?”

  Eve popped her hip out to the side and leaned against the doorframe. “Yeah, totally.” She winked toward Hazel. “Give Hazel the tour!” she demanded.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Silas said as he walked toward the front door, bags already assembled effortlessly on his back. He pressed through the door and Hazel followed closely behind him. The door wobbled loose in its bracket. Hazel could tell the doorframe had been recently painted, but she could still spot the vestiges of bumps and dings.

  Silas ushered them from room to room, the first a dining room that appeared to have not been used in a decade. Three gold-toned branching chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their reflections duplicated in an enormous spiderweb-lined mirror spanning one of the walls above an ornate fireplace mantel. A long, dark wooden table, covered in a membrane of dust, sprawled from one end of the room to the other. Heavy velvet drapes caressed the window frame in a swirling pattern of jewel tones. The walls were covered in a thick but worn wallpaper with a blistering rash-like texture that appeared to be caused by an unattended leak. Each room they walked through thereafter was a variation of the one before, full of things in various phases of disrepair. There was lopsided furniture, dented pots and pans, peeling wallpaper, discolored rugs, dusty armoires, tarnished doorknobs and chipped doorframes. But there was something about the way the light came so respectfully through the windows or the way Eve rushed to inspect every cranny, that obscured the line between treasure and junk. Especially because Silas narrated a story for every last thing in every last room. His words and his voice felt wise and paternal.

  When they reached the living room, Hazel bent down and grazed the edge of a beautifully crafted coffee table, a stack of books in place of one of its legs. Her fingers slowed at the broken corner, feeling for flaws.

  Silas crouched down next to her. “It’s just that if you spend all day working on other people’s furniture, sometimes you just don’t have that much energy left for fixing your own.”

  His face was so close to Hazel’s. His green eyes looked straight into hers. Hazel smiled. And Silas did, too.

  “Let’s head on over to your room, huh?” he suggested, nudging her with his shoulder lightly.

  Silas, Hazel and Eve walked together down a long hallway with creaking, undulating floors. Eve dragged her arm along the wall and hummed a song Hazel didn’t recognize. There were several closed doors along the hallway and Eve twisted the knob of each one as she passed by. Each door opened with a poof of an ephemeral cloud of dust. It didn’t seem to surprise Silas that Eve wanted to generate a little chaos. He just chuckled, and Hazel followed behind him. But then the whooshing rhythm of doors flying open was interrupted by a tense clicking sound. Eve couldn’t turn the doorknob. Silas’s jaw tensed and he rushed toward the door. Eve tried turning the knob again, but there was no movement. She whipped her body around toward Silas, who was already right behind her, chest puffed up and shoulders pressing toward his ear. “Ugh, this annoying one that doesn’t open!” she said familiarly.

  “That’s right,” he said firmly, but with a faint indication of melancholy. Eve didn’t seem to notice the melancholy.

  “Well, I’d like to remind you that I don’t think you should
call it a door if it doesn’t open. Doors open. And if it doesn’t, you should just call it a wall.”

  Eve popped her hip out to the side and raised her eyebrows, as if to challenge Silas. The exchange amused Hazel, but Eve surprisingly seemed more interested in the semantics than what lay behind the door. Hazel felt differently.

  “Keep it moving.” Silas pressed his hand into Eve’s back gently and smirked, ushering her away from the door.

  Eve kept walking without ceremony or protest. She was quick to shift her attention, her green eyes darting around. Silas stood with his feet firmly pressed into the floor in front of the door, his left hand pressed into the doorframe. His body took on the shape of an X. It seemed instinctual. “You’ll both stay in that room this summer,” Silas said and pointed down the hallway to the last door on the end.

  Silas followed Eve down the hallway and Hazel trailed behind. As she did, she slowly and quietly twisted the knob of the locked door. She wanted to see for herself. Still locked. She pressed her ear into the door and closed her eyes. No sound. She wanted to know what was behind that door, but it wasn’t only out of curiosity. It was something about the way Silas had stood in front of that door when Eve tried to open it. As if he were protecting it. Or himself.

  Before Silas could turn around, Hazel rushed back to meet him and Eve toward the end of the hallway. Silas had already started pressing open the paint-chipped and creaky-hinged door to their room.

  “Voilà.”

  As soon as the door opened, Eve leaped inside. Hazel took deep breaths and stepped as calmly and as slowly as she could behind Eve.

  There was a majesty in the sum of the parts of the rooms in Silas’s house, but no room was as majestic, as personal, as this one. The room was bright and fresh and smelled like paint and wood and wax and something special like sweat or love. The floors were old but must have been recently refinished. Light poured in through the grand window at the other end of the room and reflected a sheen on the floor.

  Against the wall to the left were two queen-size beds, each with its own four towering bedposts and sheer canopies draped open. The bedding and the pillows were all varying shades of pastel pink and paisley. The light colors and delicate patterns were in sharp contrast to the rest of the house. It was as if the entire room stood for the concept of daughters rather than Eve and Hazel themselves, but it felt sweet and honest between those four walls.

  Eve ran toward the bed closest to the window and jumped right on top of it onto her back. As she fell into the mattress, the down bedding swelled up like a gentle wave around her body.

  She giggled quietly and then exhaled audibly. Hazel almost felt a moment of calm coming, but then Eve abruptly sprang up onto her knees and ran her hand slowly along one of the bedposts.

  “Holy shit, these are cool!” she exclaimed.

  Hazel walked over to the other bed to inspect the bedposts for herself. There were deep and intricate carvings of flowers and ivy running all the way up the posts. Hazel gently placed her finger into the center groove of a carved rose and traced her finger in concentric circles out toward the edge of the blooming flower.

  “Why, thank you, Eve. I made them,” Silas said confidently but much more modestly than Hazel expected, given how magnificent they were. Hazel turned to look at Silas. His big shoulder was leaning against the doorway and he had one big clunky work boot crossed over the other.

  “You made them?” Hazel asked, her throat constricting a bit at the idea of Silas, her father, preparing such a grand gesture for their arrival. She was touched, and happy and warmed. Relieved, even.

  Hazel felt an urge in her body to get up and wrap her arms around Silas and squeeze him tight and never let go. But she found herself paralyzed. It had been a long time since she felt that free with her love and her body. It had been a long time since she felt love and attention like that.

  Before Hazel could get herself to move, or eke out an underwhelming “Thanks,” Silas had moved from the doorway and was walking to the window.

  Hazel followed him there and looked out the window. She could make out a view of the great and moody lake outside and a slightly dilapidated but sizable and prominent barnlike structure.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Ah, that’s where the magic happens,” Silas responded. “The workshop.”

  “Will you finally let me inside?” Eve asked and opened her eyes wildly. Something about the way she asked things always made them feel illicit.

  “Oh, it’s all just sawdust and old tools in there,” Silas responded. “Nothing interesting at all.”

  “Whatever,” Eve replied, as if she had never been impassioned about it in the first place. She threw her body back onto her bed, sprawling her arms out and letting her back bounce flat against the bed. She bounced up and down slightly, her breasts bouncing for slightly longer than the rest of her body.

  “You guys take it easy for a bit. I’ll make us some dinner and call you down. Sound good?”

  “Sure does!” Eve yelled from her supine position on the bed.

  Hazel lay back in her bed on top of the comforters and pillows.

  Silas left the room and closed the door behind him.

  “This is going to be great,” Eve murmured.

  Hazel nodded.

  22

  Hazel didn’t even realize she had fallen asleep when she woke up to the alluring aroma of cooking. It didn’t resemble the smells of her home at all. The scents were rich and fatty. Spicy and full. Hazel looked over at Eve’s bed, which had the imprint of a body but no Eve.

  Hazel followed the smell down the stairs and arrived at an already-set dinner table, with Eve sitting casually in one of the chairs watching Silas prepare the meal. At the precise moment Hazel stepped into the room, Silas was pulling a great big perfectly charred chicken out of the oven. Another waft of smell came over Hazel and her tummy let out a loud and gurgling grumble.

  She heard Eve cackling in reaction and then Silas turned around. He was wearing an apron that was stained with all kinds of colors and textures.

  “Perfect timing!” he said as he placed the steaming chicken down at the center of the table.

  “Come sit down.”

  Eve was still chuckling as Hazel sat down next to Eve.

  “I guess you’re hungry,” Eve teased.

  Hazel nudged her shoulder into Eve’s. “Oh, shut up,” she retorted, slightly surprised by her own boldness.

  Typical sibling rivalry, Hazel thought warmly and took a seat at the table. She felt a smile spread across her lips.

  Hazel scanned the spread. It was full of colorful roasted vegetables, a fresh salad of lettuce topped with creamy, crumbled cheese, and golden, toasty bread with a pat of butter that was just starting to melt.

  Silas unraveled his apron, tossed it onto the counter next to the remaining mess of bowls and littered cutting boards, and joined the girls at the table.

  “Oh, one more thing!” he yelled, bounced back up and made his way toward the refrigerator. He emerged with three cold beers, the necks of the bottles crossed between his fingers.

  Hazel found it curious that he didn’t want to leave some of the bottles in the refrigerator while he drank his first. Silas tucked his big knees under the table and placed the group of beers next to his plate. Then, he picked one up, meticulously leaned the bottle cap on the edge of the tabletop and then slammed his big hand down on the bottle. She heard the air release from the bottle with a gentle swish and then the light clink of the bottle cap hitting the floor.

  Hazel expected him to take a gulping sip, but instead he reached for a second, and then the third bottle, and repeated the same dramatic performance. Silas took up one open bottle in each hand and then proudly stretched them out in front of Hazel and Eve, respectively.

  “Uh, what are you doing, Pops?” Eve asked, one eyebrow arching up
.

  There was a brief moment of confusion in Silas’s eyes, followed by a deep sense of understanding and almost terror. He was asked if he kept liquor accessible. But beer was different from liquor.

  Hazel’s body was still tense and rigid at the scene. She had never had a drink before, let alone in front of an adult.

  “Oh, uh, yeah. What am I doing?” Silas asked rhetorically, now averting his eyes.

  Eve let out a sinister giggle.

  “You know we’re only fifteen, right? As in like not even close to drinking age?”

  “Um, yeah. Sorry. Uh, I must...” Silas stumbled awkwardly over his words.

  But then Eve’s eyes lit up and her spine straightened.

  “Can we have them anyway?” Eve asked, in that same illicit, excited tone.

  The question itself relaxed Silas. His jaw loosened and his shoulders relaxed and then a slight smile moved slowly across his lips.

  “Really? Have you ever had one before?”

  Eve snatched the bottle from his hand and took it confidently into possession between her index finger and thumb. “Of course I’ve had one before. What do you think I am? Some kind of prude loser?”

  Eve brought the bottle to her lips and tilted her head back. Hazel could see the outline of her throat, swelling and then relaxing, effortlessly allowing the cascade of beer down it.

  “Ah,” she said as she tilted her neck back up and slammed the beer onto the table. Hazel could make out the fill line from behind the label. Eve had swallowed nearly half the bottle in one sip.

  “Well, okay, then,” Silas said, seeming impressed at the feat. “And how about you, Hazel?”

  Hazel felt her tummy do a flip again as she made eye contact with Silas. She could feel a tingle in her cheeks and her palms start to sweat. She hadn’t even held a bottle before. She felt scared, but even more, she felt excited.

  “Uh, yeah. Of course,” she mumbled. She looked over at Eve, who had her eyes locked on Hazel, urging her to drink it, too.