Home for the Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

  Still, the temptation to open the little book was great, as was the fear. What if Ariel had written about how annoying her sister could be or how angry Bella made her when she wore something of Ariel’s and it wound up torn or stained? What if by opening the book Bella learned that Ariel really did think her sister was dumb? No, Bella thought. I can’t open this. She wanted—she needed—Ariel’s good estimation of her, maybe now more than ever. If Ariel knew I’d broken into this book she’d be disappointed in me, Bella thought. But would she also understand why I did it, why I needed to read her own words, to hear her voice even if only in my head?

  Bella just didn’t know the answer to that question. With a sigh she got off her bed, carefully replaced the little locked book in the dresser drawer, and slid it shut.

  Maybe, she thought, I’ll call Clara.

  Chapter 22

  Frieda took a sip from the cup of tea she had just brewed. It was strong black tea, without the addition of milk or sugar, and if her dentist suggested one more time that she might need fewer cleanings if she gave it up she would find another dentist.

  Bella was at the table, staring at her phone. She had been sitting there since before Frieda had come into the kitchen and she hadn’t yet said a word. Frieda didn’t think Bella was trying to be rude. Rather, it felt as if her daughter just didn’t much care that there was another person with her in the room.

  Well, Frieda thought, I care. “My father called me the other day,” she said. “I thought you might want to know.”

  Frieda waited for a reply, and when none was forthcoming she repeated her words. “My father called me the other day.”

  Bella looked up from her phone, her expression fairly blank. “I heard you,” she said.

  “It was totally unexpected. I hadn’t heard his voice in years, but I recognized it right away.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it?” Bella asked.

  “Well, no,” Frieda admitted. “I guess it doesn’t. Unless your grandfather calls again and asks to speak with you.”

  “But he hasn’t yet, right?”

  “No.”

  “So it doesn’t matter.” Bella got up from the table. “I’m going out for a ride.”

  “How long will you be?” Frieda asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be careful.”

  Bella nodded and left the kitchen.

  Frieda took another sip of tea and then another; the drink usually had a soothing effect, but not at that moment. She had hoped that Bella’s spending time with the girl she had met on the Marginal Way might help lift her spirits, but so far Frieda hadn’t seen any improvement in her daughter’s mood. Bella’s friendships, once so many and robust, had suffered as a result of the accident that had taken Aaron’s and Ariel’s lives. Bella’s closest friend, Kerri Woods, had tried her best to reach Bella in her state of self-imposed isolation. And Frieda had encouraged her daughter to accept Kerri’s overtures. But in the end Bella’s grief had proved too heavy a burden for the relationship to bear. “She just misses Bella so much,” Mrs. Woods had told Frieda one day not long after Bella’s birthday in April. “And I don’t know how to explain to her what Bella is going through.”

  Sometimes, Frieda thought now, I can’t explain it to myself, either. And she wondered if her own process of grieving was getting in the way of her being a proper support to Bella this summer. There was Ariel’s birthday for one. Frieda had promised her mother that she would reconsider the idea of marking Ariel’s birthday with a party and she had reconsidered it, but her own need to celebrate the occasion was great and she had decided to go ahead with her plan. After all, why did Bella’s needs always have to take precedence over hers?

  Frieda was duly appalled by these feelings. To be resentful of your own child’s pain made you a freak of sorts, didn’t it?

  “What’s wrong? You look downright distraught.”

  Frieda hadn’t heard her mother entering the room, so absorbed had she been in her musings. “I am distraught,” she admitted. “I’ve been thinking the most horrible thoughts. I’ve been resenting Bella for distracting me these past few months. I’ve been resenting her for withdrawing and causing me to worry all over again with the intensity I felt in the first weeks after the accident. And I feel terrible about being resentful of my child’s needs.”

  Ruby sighed and sat at the table. “Just because a parent feels anger or annoyance with her child doesn’t mean she’s evil. You know that, Frieda. I’m sure Bella has been a burden before now and at times even Ariel must have required more than you felt you had to give, more than you really wanted to give.” Ruby smiled. “Come sit and I’ll tell you about the times when you were, how should I say this, an inconvenience.”

  “Me?” Frieda said, joining her mother. “An inconvenience? When?”

  Ruby looked to the heavens. “Ah, where to begin?”

  “Mom.”

  “Okay,” Ruby said, lowering her eyes. “There was that time you were into that dreadful boy band, who were they, The Wrong Direction or The Front Room Boys. Something silly like that. You’d play that infernal so-called music at full volume until I prayed I’d go deaf before I did something I’d regret.”

  “You could have asked me to turn down the volume,” Frieda pointed out. “And ‘dreadful.’ ‘Infernal.’ Really?”

  “Yes,” Ruby said, “really, and I did ask you to turn down the volume, repeatedly, and you would and then a few minutes later the volume would mysteriously be at full blast again.”

  Frieda smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. But when did I really stand in your way of accomplishing something important?”

  “When did you stand in my way or when did I think you were?” Ruby said. “When I was studying for exams in nursing school and you needed help with your homework. When I needed to be alone with my memories of your father and your dinner needed to be made and your laundry done for school the following day. When you first met Aaron and were so blissfully happy and so gosh darn vocal about it. Don’t get me wrong,” Ruby added hurriedly. “I was happy for you and you had every right to gush about how beautifully Aaron treated you. But there were times when your happiness only served to highlight my own aloneness and I just wished you would stop sharing. Shameful of me, right?”

  Frieda shook her head. “No. No, I can understand. Parents are flesh and blood. Flawed. Weak.”

  “Also strong when we need to be,” Ruby pointed out. “I never asked you to stop talking about Aaron, did I? I never refused to help you with long division when I had an end-of-term exam the next day, did I?”

  “No. Of course you didn’t.”

  “So be annoyed with Bella. Feelings are fine, as long as you act carefully on some feelings and not at all on others.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Frieda promised.

  “Good,” her mother said briskly, rising from the table. “Now, I’m off to the hospital. Do yourself a favor and get some fresh air. It will do wonders for you.”

  Frieda smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I mean it.”

  Chapter 23

  “Happy Fourth of July, everyone!” Phil raised his glass in a toast to his guests, who responded with a great cheer.

  As promised, Phil really had outdone himself this year. Even Bella, in her deeply antisocial mood, had to acknowledge that the party was pretty awesome. First, there was the food. In addition to the ubiquitous lobster rolls, corn on the cob, potato and macaroni salads, coleslaw and fruit salad, there were hamburgers and hot dogs, platters of cold shrimp with three varieties of dipping sauce, and everyone’s favorite, pigs in a blanket. To drink there was beer, wine, water, and a nonalcoholic fruit punch. From a bakery up in Portland Phil had bought dozens of mini cheesecakes of all different flavors, from chocolate mint to pomegranate. And in a nod to the theme of the holiday, there were three apple pies keeping warm on electric warming trays set up in the kitchen.

  There were probably about fifty or si
xty people milling around the backyard or seated at the redwood picnic tables Phil had rented for the occasion. Bella recognized most of the guests, people she had known, if from afar, all of her life. One person was notably absent and that was her mother’s old schoolmate Jack; her mother had told her he had accepted a prior invitation. Bella was glad. She supposed he was okay on his own—not that she had ever met him—but he was not okay when he was hanging around Frieda Braithwaite.

  Clara wasn’t at the party, either, though Bella had invited her. She knew Phil wouldn’t mind—he was one of those the more the merrier people—but Clara had said that she wasn’t in the mood for parties. “Neither am I,” Bella told her. “But I sort of have to go.” Clara had grimaced. “Good luck. Better you than me.” Bella had thought that was a bit of an odd thing to say, even kind of cold, but Clara was sometimes—what was the word? Surprising. Like that time she had called her housemate a bitch just because she was singing.

  A loud burst of laughter from a far corner of the yard where a few guests—including her mother—were playing badminton caused Bella to wince. It was probably wrong of her, but she resented the laughter and the obvious good spirits of the other guests. Misery loves company, she thought. It was pretty pathetic to want other people—including your mother—to feel bad just because you felt bad. Still, it was how she felt, so Bella decided to get away from the festivities. She was sure she wouldn’t be missed; she wasn’t exactly giving off happy party vibes.

  Bella passed through the patio doors, murmuring greetings to those guests who had come in to use the bathroom or to snag a piece of apple pie from the kitchen. She made her way to the library and quietly closed the door behind her. The room had been Ariel’s favorite and even Bella thought it was amazing. Phil had spent most of his life collecting books on all sorts of subjects, from art to politics, from gardening to science. The golden-colored wood bookcases reached from floor to ceiling and there were two sliding ladders to help you reach the books on the top shelves. Years earlier Phil had given Ariel a key to the house so that even when he wasn’t there she could spend time alone in his library while Bella went to the beach with her boogie board or just lazed around her grandmother’s backyard doing absolutely nothing.

  Bella sighed and sank gratefully into one of the big brown leather armchairs. The room was cool and quiet and it wasn’t long before she began to feel—better. Not great but better. Sure, she would have to go back outside at some point, and sure, she dreaded the party or celebration or whatever it was her mother was planning in Ariel’s honor two days from now, but for these few minutes she could exist only in the present. At least she could try. Colleen had talked about learning how to live fully in the moment; she had said that if you could learn how to focus on the here and now and not on what had gone or what was to come you could achieve real peace of mind.

  Whether that was true or not Bella didn’t know. What she did know was that her eyes were beginning to close and her body to settle more deeply into the chair.

  “You might at least pretend to be having a good time, for Phil’s sake.”

  Bella’s eyes flew open; she hadn’t heard the door to the library open. It was her grandmother. “That’s why I came in here,” Bella said. “I didn’t want to be a drag on everyone’s fun.”

  Her grandmother put her hand on the back of the chair and smiled down at her. “Well, that was thoughtful, I suppose. Did you get anything to eat?”

  “Yeah,” Bella said. “I’m okay.”

  “Your mother seems to be enjoying herself. I’m glad.”

  Bella shrugged.

  “People deserve what small moments of happiness they can snatch,” her grandmother went on. “Misery comes to everyone, Bella. I know you’ve been through hell, but so have lots of other people. And if they haven’t been through hell yet, they’ll be going through it one day.”

  “Sorry,” Bella said. And she remembered the quote Phil had tacked up in his office at the shop. If you’re going through hell, keep going.

  “Now, come on. Come back to the party.” Her grandmother held out her hand, and after a moment Bella rose from the chair and took it.

  If it makes Grandma happy for me to pretend, she thought, I’ll do it.

  Chapter 24

  At Ruby’s urging Bella had gone off to talk with Matilda Gascoyne, current matriarch of one of Yorktide’s oldest families. Matilda was a tactful woman. Ruby was sure she would never bring up painful subjects in a painful way. She might even be able to bring a smile to Bella’s face.

  “You need a break, Ruby.” She turned to find Phil at her side. Though the temperature was pushing eighty-five, he looked cool and collected as always in an open-necked white shirt and pressed chinos. “You’ve been at the grills all afternoon with hardly a rest. Let me get George. Or let me take over.”

  “I’m okay,” Ruby said. “Really. You know me. I’m most happy when I’m most busy.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “And sweating.”

  Phil sighed. “You’re a workaholic, Ruby.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Phil walked on to chat with another of his guests and Ruby continued to lightly grill hamburger buns. What she hadn’t admitted to Phil was that she was glad to have something to do other than chat with her neighbors, lovely though they were. This year’s party—the first since Ariel’s death—was serving to bring back the past in vivid detail. And that past, peopled as it was with her former husband, was bittersweet. How in love she had been; how much fun she and Steve had shared; how destroyed she had felt when he left.

  Ruby was not unaware of the irony of the situation. A few moments ago she had urged Bella to pretend she was enjoying the festivities when she might as well have urged herself as well. Maybe she should have left Bella alone in the library, content with her own thoughts. Lately it seemed so hard to know the right thing to do or to say.

  Ruby glanced in the direction of the long table piled high with food. George was there, plate in hand, talking with another member of the Gascoyne clan. She hoped he was enjoying the party. He had been so wise and reassuring when she told him that Steve had suddenly reached out to his daughter. Yes, Ruby thought. You couldn’t get much of a better man than George Hastings. But why did he have to propose? Why couldn’t they simply go on as they had been?

  But life was never neat and orderly and the way you expected it to be. And certainly what George had offered, a formal acknowledgment of their commitment, was something potentially wonderful, not anything odd or out of the ordinary. So then why—

  “Hey, Ruby!” It was Dan Stueben, looking tan and fit, no mean feat after the decidedly not neat or orderly turn his life had taken a few years back. Now he was thriving, having taken over Freddie Ross’s law practice when Sheila, her partner of well over fifty years, had demanded she retire. “How about a couple of hot dogs?”

  Ruby smiled. “Sure thing, Dan. I haven’t had the chance to congratulate you and Allie on your wedding. I’m really happy for you.”

  “Thanks, Ruby. I have to admit there was a time not too long ago when I never thought I’d have my daughter back in my life and a wonderful woman as my wife. When Evelyn died and I got addicted to the painkillers . . . I’m so grateful I can’t . . .” Dan shook his head. “If I go on I’ll start to cry and this is supposed to be a happy occasion.”

  “Tears often go hand in hand with happy occasions,” Ruby remarked, handing Dan a paper plate with two hot dogs in buns. “Enjoy,” she said. And as Dan Stueben went to join his family she thought, And so often, happy occasions only serve to remind us of all that we’ve lost. They only serve to—

  “Hey, Ruby.” It was one of Phil’s neighbors, a single woman in her thirties who owned a very successful full-service hair salon in town. “Can I get a hamburger?”

  Ruby nodded briskly, grateful for the interruption to her thoughts. “You like yours medium rare, right?”

  Katie Joyce smiled. “What a memory! Thanks, Ruby. I do.”

>   Chapter 25

  Frieda placed a cotton napkin next to each of the three plates set out on the kitchen table. It was July 6. Sixteen years ago at seven thirty in the morning Ariel Alice Braithwaite had been born.

  In the dollar store in Wells Frieda had found a small plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower to set atop the iced cake she had bought at Bread and Roses. From Pretty Blossoms, Yorktide’s best florist, she had bought a bouquet of pink peonies, Ariel’s favorite flower. They sat at the top of the table in a clear glass vase.

  Frieda rearranged one of the flowers and glanced at the kitchen clock. Neither Bella nor Ruby had mentioned this evening’s celebration when they had been together at breakfast and dinner. But that was all right. This anniversary of Ariel’s birth was difficult for them all, more difficult than the anniversary of Aaron’s birthday the previous October. The death of a child was the prime example of nature out of order. The death of a child felt so fundamentally wrong. But that didn’t mean the memories of the child’s life should be shunned.

  “Where’s Bella?”

  Frieda looked up to see her mother in the doorway. “In her room, I suppose,” she said. “I asked her to be here at eight.”

  “The table looks pretty.” Ruby came into the kitchen and glanced at the clock on the wall next to the fridge. “She’s got two minutes.”

  “You don’t think she’d actually refuse to join us?” Frieda asked.

  Before her mother could answer, Bella appeared in the doorway.

  “Good,” Frieda said with a smile. “Let’s take our seats.”

  Without comment Bella and Ruby sat in their usual places at the table. Frieda noted that her daughter’s expression was guarded and that her mother’s expression was wary. No matter, she thought. This will be a healing moment for us. I know it will. Frieda poured three glasses of sparkling cider and lifted her glass. “To Ariel.”