A Summer Place

by Sloan Wilson

  “I wish they weren’t so solemn. It’s absurd, I guess, but I want them to celebrate. I never hear them laugh…”

  “It takes time,” he repeated. “It always does.”

  On Friday Sylvia awoke at dawn. She went to the window and seeing that the sky was almost clear and that the few clouds on the horizon were white, she was grateful. She had dreaded a rainy day for the wedding. Going downstairs, she had a sudden idea: why not have the ceremony in the garden instead of in the living room? The piano could be moved out on the terrace. The forsythia was blooming and a few of the rose bushes were in blossom. Sylvia had had a clear conception of what the proceedings in the living room would be like, with Helen, in all probability, wringing her hands in the corner by the fireplace, and the thought of changing the whole setting appealed to her. Helen, who had arrived with Bruce at a hotel in Stamford the night before, would still be there, but it would be good to get the whole ceremony out into the sunlight.

  The wedding was scheduled for eleven o’clock. At ten the big black Cadillac arrived with Bruce and Helen. As she had been since the death of old Margaret, Helen was in mourning. She had been instructed by her doctor to take a sedative in preparation for this occasion, and she appeared rather vague when Ken and Sylvia greeted her. Old Bruce was wearing a blue serge which he always referred to as his funeral suit. He was not without dignity as he stood supporting his ailing daughter on his arm, trying to help her make conversation with her former husband. Wasn’t it lucky, he said, that the weather had turned out so well for the wedding, and the garden certainly was a fine place for it, wasn’t it? Yes, Helen said in a weak voice at regular intervals, oh yes. She sounded like a small bird chirping.

  To Sylvia’s dismay, Helen asked to see Molly before the ceremony. The child should be left in peace while she dressed for her wedding, Sylvia thought, but there was no way to forbid her mother. Sylvia escorted Helen to Molly’s room and knocked. “Molly, your mother’s here,” she said.

  “Come in,” Molly replied in a clear, firm voice.

  When they opened the door, they found Molly in her new blue gown, sitting on the edge of her bed. At the sight of Helen, she stood up, looking almost incredibly beautiful, Sylvia thought, with her glossy dark hair brushed back from her fine forehead, and the full blue skirt billowing out all around her. “Hello, Mother,” she said. “I’m glad you came.”

  Helen kissed her, a swift peck on the cheek, and began to cry. “I felt I should be here, dear,” she said in a broken voice. Taking a handkerchief from her pocket, she began dabbing at her eyes. Molly, who was a little taller than her mother, put her arm around her and patted her shoulder, saying, “It’s all right, Mother, it’s all right,” and they stood together there for almost a minute, curiously reversing their roles of mother and child.

  “I think that perhaps we should go downstairs now, Helen,” Sylvia said from the door. Obviously in deep grief, Helen turned and meekly followed her. She sat next to old Bruce, twisting her hands precisely as Sylvia had imagined her doing. Now there’s a figure of joy, Sylvia thought, first with bitterness and then with sudden compassion. Oh, let the wedding bells ring out; let us burn incense and dance the whole night through to celebrate the nuptial rites. What is so gay as a wedding in the garden in the spring?

  At eleven o’clock the minister, who had been talking with Ken in the house, came out and stood alone by a stone wall at the end of the garden. He was a rather stout man, only half as tall as the young lilac bushes at each side of him. A few minutes later John, wearing a white linen suit, walked from the house to the garden and stood nervously in front of the minister. On the terrace a spinster who taught music at the local high school began playing the wedding march, hitting the keys as hard as she could to make the music carry to the end of the garden. Carla came down the steps from the terrace. She was beaming. Twenty-five feet behind her walked Ken, also dressed in a linen suit, and at his side, with one hand on his arm, walked Molly. The wind ruffled her skirt and she looked precisely as all brides pray to look, Sylvia thought, except that she was too pale. The piano, beaten so hard, sounded tinny and oddly irreverent. Sylvia was glad when Ken and Molly reached the minister, and the music stopped. Ken stepped rather awkwardly to one side, leaving Molly beside John. Somewhere in the distance a crow called and was answered raucously by another. The minister cleared his throat, and in a highly cultivated tenor voice which to Sylvia sounded monstrously like Bart’s, he began the marriage ceremony. The sun shone so blindingly on his white surplice and on the suits of John and Ken that it was difficult to look at them. Helen cried audibly.

  It was the first such ceremony Sylvia had ever attended which seemed so long. The minister read several prayers from a book, some of which he had difficulty finding. While he riffled the pages, he coughed discreetly, and always in the background there was the sound of Helen’s snuffling. John stood very straight, and when it came time to put the ring on Molly’s finger, he did so without fumbling.

  “You may kiss the bride,” the minister finally said, and Molly tilted her face up with her eyes closed. Looking as though they were in a trance, they brushed their lips together, and the ceremony was over.

  The brief reception which followed on the terrace was so much the way Sylvia had imagined that it was like reliving a dream. With a rather set smile Ken handed out glasses of champagne. Old Bruce said one glass would be enough because it disturbed his stomach, and Helen used hers to wash down a pill. John and Molly stood together, looking like proud youngsters on graduation day.

  Finally it was over. John and Molly walked toward their old Plymouth, which had already been packed. Carla threw a handful of rice at them and they were off, bound for Pine Island. Sylvia, in her new yellow dress, stood at the edge of the terrace looking after them, and she was shocked at a sudden desire to swear. It shouldn’t be like this, she thought with rising anger. I wish we were savages. I wish we had garlanded them with flowers. We should be singing.

  But of course there was no singing. Helen and Bruce left immediately in their Cadillac, closely followed by the minister and the piano player. Carla went upstairs to change her dress, leaving Ken and Sylvia alone on the terrace. The garden with its empty chairs seemed strangely forlorn. Ken came toward her, carrying a bottle of champagne. “There’s plenty left for us to celebrate,” he said.

  Wordlessly she turned to him and threw both arms around his neck. With his free arm he held her tight. He didn’t say anything, but when the embrace was over, Sylvia felt better. Smiling, she picked up an empty glass and held it toward him. “Let the celebration begin,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  IT WAS A STRANGE START for a honeymoon. The first day John stopped in Portland, where he felt impelled by conscience to visit his father in the hospital. They found Bart in a ward full of the sick and the dying. In the bed on one side of him was an aged fat man with his face nearly covered by bandages, and in the bed on the other side of him was a swarthy thin man who coughed constantly. Throughout the visit the eyes of both these patients remained almost hungrily on John and Molly, and it was difficult to talk much. Bart was so weak that he could not lift his head from the pillow. He said “Thank you” in a low voice when John said they were on their way to the island, and he said “Good luck” when John told him that he and Molly had been married. Other than that he said nothing. His exhausted eyes shifted restlessly from John’s face to Molly’s and he seemed relieved when they said goodbye. The smell of ether and illness seemed to cling to them as they left the hospital.

  The morning they got to the island there was the difficult business of getting rid of Todd Hasper, who had simply ignored the fact that Bart had fired him. As they moored the schooner, Hasper did not come down to the wharf, but they could hear his dog barking somewhere in the distance. “You stay here, Molly,” John said. “I’ll go see him.”

  “Be careful,” Molly replied.

  “You better take the gun,” Herb Andrews sai
d. “Here are your keys.”

  John walked slowly ashore with the shotgun in one hand and a large bunch of keys in the other. At the top of the hill Hasper, holding the dog on a leash, stepped suddenly from behind the old inn. The dog flattened his ears and bared his teeth, but made almost no sound. Hasper looked older and thinner than John had remembered him.

  “Hello, Todd,” John said.

  “What are you here for?”

  “I’m going to stay awhile. When are you leaving?”

  “I ain’t planning to leave.”

  “I thought Dad asked you to.”

  Hasper spat contemptuously. “He was drunk,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not drunk, and I’m telling you to leave now. The boat will wait while you get your things.”

  “Who the hell are you to give orders?”

  The dog growled and strained at his leash. John pulled back both hammers of the shotgun, and there was a soft click. “Be careful not to let that dog go,” he said.

  Hasper glared at him malignantly.

  “If you don’t leave, I’ll get the police from Harvesport,” John said. “If we have to, we’ll shoot the dog and carry you aboard the schooner tonight. I’ll give you an hour to pack.”

  “All right!” Hasper said. “You can stew in your own evil—you and your whole family!’’ He turned and walked toward his cabin with the dog trotting obediently beside him. He disappeared inside and shut the door. John returned to the schooner. “Is everything all right?” Molly asked.

  “I think so, but I won’t believe he’s gone till he’s aboard ship. While we’re waiting for him, we might as well unload our gear.”

  “I bet we have to tie him down to a stretcher,” Herb Andrews said as he handed up the suitcases and the boxes of groceries. “I don’t know why your father put up with him as long as he did.”

  But in the end no violence was necessary. With surprising meekness the old man came down the hill carrying a large duffel bag on his shoulder and leading the dog. Wordlessly he picked his way over the rotten wharf and dropped the bag to the deck of the schooner. He looked crestfallen and tired. Even the dog, reflecting his mood, did not seem particularly fierce any more. He followed him to the forecastle of the ship, and whined as Hasper tied him to the anchor bitts. Hasper glared balefully at Molly but said nothing. The sun was hot, and the dog started to pant.

  John handed Andrews the gun. “Thanks a lot, Herb,” he said.

  Andrews grinned. “Good to have you back, Johnny! You and your pretty new Missus!”

  “Thanks!” Molly said, and jumped nimbly to the wharf. She looked graceful balancing there, as though poised for flight, with her candy-striped skirt billowing out in the wind. John waited beside her while Herb backed the big schooner off and headed out of the harbor. Then he picked up the suitcases. “Watch out, Molly,” he said. “This is an easy place to break a leg.”

  “I’m all right!”

  At the head of the wharf he paused and put the suitcases down. Conscious now of being the only people on the island, they stood looking up the hill toward the dilapidated old inn, which suddenly appeared sinister. Without the barking of the dog, the island seemed strangely quiet. The wind sighing in the trees and the distant whisper of the surf sounded eerie.

  Briskly John carried the suitcases and the boxes of groceries to the wide veranda of the inn. After fumbling with the keys for a moment, he opened the front door and they walked into the cavernous living room. Glass from the window he had broken when he came to get the silver and the other things to sell still littered the floor. “Johnny!” Molly said. “What happened here?”

  He told her. “I’ll fix it temporarily with a storm window,” he concluded.

  “It must have been awful for you,” she said.

  “Not so bad. Come and I’ll show you where we’re going to stay.”

  He carried the suitcases to the master bedroom, put up the shades, and opened the wide windows which overlooked the harbor and the garden where he had trimmed the lilacs and the hydrangeas. A fragrant wind swept through the musty room. While Molly began to dust and to make up the beds, he went downstairs, his footsteps echoing in the empty hall. He picked up the glass and put on a storm window from another part of the house. After taking the groceries to the kitchen, he went to the cellar to turn on the water and start the generator which made electricity for the inn. When everything was in working order, he went upstairs and lay on the bed watching Molly hang up her dresses, taking pleasure in the sinuous way she moved as she held up a pale green skirt to get the wrinkles out of it. Busily she stored in drawers some cream-colored lingerie which smelled of lavender. When she had finished, he took the empty suitcases to the cellar. Upon returning to the bedroom, he found Molly at an open window, looking pensively down into the garden. The hum of bees was in the air. At the sound of his footsteps she turned toward him. Standing there in a shaft of yellow sunbeams in her white blouse and candy-striped skirt, she looked phantasmal to John, as though she had just been created in a blaze of light. He kissed her, bending her to him. “Oh, Molly!” he said with agony.

  She put her hand gently on his cheek. “What?”

  “I can’t touch you without wanting to make love to you. I can’t even look at you, and I’m always afraid that you don’t feel anything that I feel, that I’m taking advantage of being your husband, and…”

  “Hush,” she said.

  “I know you’re still afraid!”

  “No, Johnny…”

  His voice was tortured. “We’ve got to face the truth, Molly! You don’t feel what I do. You never have. At least we don’t have to lie about it! You just married me because…”

  “Don’t insult me, Johnny.”

  “Does it make it any worse to say it?”

  “Kiss me.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t say no to me now, Johnny. I’m trying.”

  “It’s horrible that you have to try.”

  “It’s not horrible. I asked you to kiss me. Am I going to be refused?”

  He kissed her, feeling her lips part timidly. It was a long if gentle kiss. When it was over she said, “Slowly, Johnny—we have plenty of time.”

  Later that day they took a long walk down the beach. As they sat watching the colors of the harbor deepen with dusk, John had an intense conviction he would never forget anything that was happening. The fine, almost feathery texture of the sun-silvered driftwood they gathered for a fire became a part of his memory, to be conserved decades after the wood was ashes, and the call of the gulls that night was lastingly recorded.

  This feeling that everything he experienced was somehow permanent persisted. There was, for instance, the picture of Molly the determined housewife, a young woman with a bandanna around her head, spending the second morning of her honeymoon scrubbing on her hands and knees, cleaning the garage apartment, which Bart had left in indescribable disorder. There was the serious face of Molly the fledgling intellectual, insisting that she not be interrupted while she tried to write verse, and an hour later there was the sensual picture of Molly standing with elaborate insouciance on the wharf, like a Balinese girl, wearing nothing but a crimson beach towel pinned around her waist, and eating a banana.

  At three o’clock of the second morning they spent on the island a thunderstorm struck the old inn. Half asleep, John sat up in bed suddenly with the roar of the wind in his ears. The rain was battering the windowpanes and whipping the foliage. At the instant of awaking, he was confused, half feeling that he was a boy again, alone, with Bart lying sick and drunk in the next room. The well-remembered sounds of loneliness were all around him, the bang of a loose shutter, the lashing of the tree branches, and the rising tempo of the surf. A deadly, familiar sense of desolation gripped him until suddenly there was a flash of lightning. In its glare he saw Molly lying beside him, with her hair streaming back over the pillow, and one tanned shoulder emerging from a swirl of white sheet. Then it wa
s dark again. The clap of thunder which followed awoke her. “Johnny,” she said. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She sighed, rolled closer to him, and went back to sleep. For a long while he lay awake listening to the storm. The steady beat of the rain sounded peaceful and good.

  About the Author

  Sloan Wilson is, of course, best known as the author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but he is also the author of fifteen books, including a little-known novel written ten years before called Voyage to Somewhere, and of dozens of pieces for The New Yorker, Harper’s and other magazines. It took him fifteen years to attain the rank of a full-time professional novelist. He has been a third-class blacksmith in a shipyard, a sailing instructor, a Coast Guard officer in command of small supply ships to Greenland and the South Pacific, a newspaper reporter, a foundation executive, an English professor, a public-relations man, a magazine editor, Education Editor for the New York Herald Tribune and Assistant Director of the White House Conference on Education.