The Summer House

by Hannah McKinnon

Emma, who’d been sitting quietly to the side, watching the swimmers, suddenly stood. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Emma’s long, red hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her Merrill-blue eyes shaded by oversized sunglasses. She was no longer the preteen from recent summers past, whose angular frame and knobby knees Clem had empathized with.

  “That sounds good. Maybe we can collect some shells,” Paige said, hopping up.

  Emma paused. “Mom, I was kind of hoping for some alone time.”

  “Oh, okay. Sure.” Paige sat back down.

  Clem felt bad for her sister as she watched her niece head purposefully down the beach without looking back. Just two summers ago she’d been stretched beside Clem on a beach towel reading aloud from a copy of American Girl.

  “Is she okay?” Clem asked.

  “She’s a teenager,” Paige said with a shrug. “Ned’s the one I’m keeping an eye on this year.”

  Clem’s gaze swung to her nephew, who was poised on his boogie board beside George in the water. Ned had always been the more playful one, sometimes mischievously so. Two summers ago they’d caught him driving Richard’s red vintage VW Bug up the driveway with the top down. But Clem loved that Ned was spending so much time with George, who idolized his older cousin. They were both good kids—Paige was lucky.

  “When does David get here?” Sam asked.

  Clem had been wondering the same thing. Paige’s family usually arrived in one painfully ordered unit: Paige at the wheel, Thule attachment packed to survive a week in traffic, and David in tow like one of the kids. Ben had once wondered aloud if David found it emasculating to be relegated to the passenger’s seat all the time. Flossy had been quick to point out that the other men in the family should take note: David got to drink coffee or sleep the whole way up. Perhaps he had it all figured out.

  Paige checked her watch. “He’ll be here for dinner.” She remained propped up on her elbows, eyes trained on the kids in the water. The open spots on the small beach had filled in with beachgoers already. In moments like this, Clem wouldn’t argue her older sister’s efficiency. Let her play lifeguard. She couldn’t recall the last time someone else had been beside her to be on duty. Even just ten minutes of shut-eye seemed like heaven.

  The sun had moved high overhead, swathing the beach in a sleep-inducing heat. Clem sighed contentedly. Behind her, the old-fashioned organ music wafted over from the carousel, and she felt her mind drift lazily. For the last six months in Boston, a sense of normalcy had begun to ebb back. They’d gotten through the first year of birthdays, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, even the anniversary of Ben’s accident. Each one was like a small circling back to that day, a wound reopened. Sometimes, in the early months, those days invited a fit of panic that crushed her chest and made her prop herself up against a wall just to breathe. But eventually, even those subsided. Her therapist noted her progress aloud, spreading out her weekly appointments to twice monthly. She began sleeping through the night—a milestone so simple and exempting.

  In that same vein, this trip was another milestone to be endured. Returning to the summer house for the first time since Ben had left them. She still liked to think of it as his leaving. Which was ridiculous; he couldn’t come back. But there was something about the image of him lacing up his sneakers and heading purposefully out their front door that wet spring morning that somehow freed her from the horrific thoughts that had haunted her those first nights alone in their bed. Back then, she’d spent her days wandering the house shrouded in grief, consumed with how to ferry the children and herself from one moment to the next. There had been the immediate details of the service, and later details of Ben’s estate. Always the details of daily life to uphold—so many details that propelled her through the hours and ultimately the weeks. But at night, alone in their king-sized bed with nothing for her hands to do, Clem’s brain shifted into hyper-focus on details of a different kind. She imagined Ben running along the foggy bend on Brattle Street, his muscled legs pumping methodically, the shimmering stretch of gray asphalt ahead of him. Had there been a screech of brakes or slip of tires? Had Ben sensed the car listing over the white line? Worst of all: had he jerked to look over his shoulder in that static unit of time and space before impact and known?

  Reflexively, her legs jerked in the sand. “Stop!” Clem cried, bolting upright. Around her, the beach started to spin.

  “Clem?” Her sister and brother sat up alongside her, staring.

  It had happened again. She’d fallen asleep for mere seconds, and it had happened. She stood unsteadily and lurched toward the water. “I’ve got to check on the kids.”

  Paige pointed in their direction. “They’re fine. I’ve been watching them the whole time.”

  “No!” Clem snapped, spinning around to face her siblings. The startled look on Sam’s face said it all. She tried to take a deep breath. “I need to check.”

  Why was this happening here? This was vacation. Rhode Island was her haven. She needed the orange bottle of pills on her nightstand. She needed to get the kids out of the water.

  The sand was already hot beneath her bare feet as she stalked down to the water’s edge. The waves looked bigger down here. Clem felt like she might throw up as she halted at the shore. “George? Maddy? Come out. Come out and play in the sand now.”

  Evan was standing waist deep in the water, holding onto Maddy’s hands and spinning her around. Up and down she undulated like the waves, shrieking in joy each time her belly skimmed the surface—the surface the gray shade of asphalt. Clem’s stomach turned. “Evan, please,” Clem managed, “bring her back in.”

  Evan obliged, confused. “You look pale. Everything okay?”

  Clem ignored the question, reaching for Maddy’s hands. “Come on, let’s go build sand castles.”

  But Maddy did not want to. “No, Mommy! Uncle Evan is spinning me.” She tugged her hand free from her mother’s. “Come watch.”

  Clem reached for daughter again, her tiny wrist cold and slippery in her hand. She needed them out of the waves. “Madeleine, it’s time for sand castles.” She was aware that a couple with small children next to them was watching her curiously. Her heart quickened. “Now!”

  Maddy shook her head, a spray of salt water whisking off her curls. “Later. I’m spinning now.”

  George rode in on a wave behind Ned, the two boys laughing and wobbling as they struggled against the tide with their boogie boards. Clem held up her free hand.

  “George, let’s go,” she barked.

  Reluctantly, he waded over. “Go where?”

  Maddy was whimpering now, twisting away from her mother’s grip and back toward the waves. Clem turned to glare at the woman behind her, who was now staring openly.

  Thankfully, Evan stepped in, though for whose benefit Clem wasn’t sure. “Come on, Maddy,” he said softly. “I’ll make castles with you and Mommy, too.”

  But Maddy sat down in the sand. “I won’t.”

  Clem’s vision blurred. The din of carousel music and children’s laughter rose up around her like the bile in her throat. The roaring in her ears crested into a screech of tires.

  “Now!” she screamed. She tugged Maddy’s hand and pulled her up the beach. Maddy howled. Parents parted as she plowed through.

  George trotted worriedly alongside her. “Mom, what’s going on?” But he knew. He knew to come and do what she was asking, even if he didn’t understand why.

  Clem tried to adjust her grasp and her voice accordingly. “It’s okay, Maddy. We’ll have fun. You’ll see.” But Maddy had already been having fun in the waves with the boys. And Clem had gone and ruined it. Again.

  Clem gritted her teeth against the chattering that had set in.

  Ahead, Sam and Paige rose from their beach chairs. As she surged up the beach toward them, they halted uncertainly. How many times in the last year had Clem seen people hesitate when they saw her coming? In grocery store aisles. In school hallways. People would freeze, a flush of
concern coloring their faces before they asked how she was. Clem wanted to be invisible.

  Emma materialized at Clem’s shoulder. “Aunt Clem?”

  “Grab the buckets and shovels,” Clem said, forcing her voice into a bright falsetto. “We’re going to make a castle.”

  Clem sank to her knees in the sand, her hands shaking. Buckets magically appeared. Ned joined in, cajoling George to follow. Eventually, Maddy stopped fussing and reached for a pink shovel. The adults followed suit, if with too much enthusiasm, their gazes fixed on the sand.

  Sam cleared his throat. “That’s a great tower, Maddy. Want some more water?”

  “I’ll find some seashells for windows,” Emma offered. She hurried down to the water’s edge with a pail, and Clem sank back on her haunches with relief. The spinning beach began to slow.

  As the sound of wet sand being scooped filled the small space at the center of their huddle, the roaring in her ears diminished. Clem took a ragged breath and looked out over the wet heads of her babies to the foaming gray stretch of water, fighting the tears that had begun to spill. No one dared look at her.

  Clem closed her eyes. If no one ever looked at her again, that would be okay. It would be fucking wonderful.

  Paige

  Her sense of relief when David’s car pulled in was physical. “Dad’s here!” she shouted to the kids, who were outside on the deck stacking a tower of Jenga blocks with their little cousins. She hurried out to meet him. David looked rumpled. His eyes were glassy, as if he had not slept, an affliction he’d been suffering from for some time. Something that usually perplexed Paige, but given her own afflictions here at the summer house, she felt a sudden wave of empathy. “You’re here!” She grabbed both sides of his face and kissed his unshaven cheek. David stepped back, looking unnerved.

  “What?” she asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.” He retrieved his duffel bag from the backseat.

  “So, how’d the interview go?”

  “Pretty well, but I likely won’t hear anything until the end of the week. The department is interviewing two more candidates.”

  Paige felt her insides deflate as she followed him up the shell driveway. “Two more?”

  “So, how is everyone?”

  Paige jammed her hands into her back pockets. How were they? “I don’t know. Emma suddenly wants nothing to do with me. Evan and Sam seem tense.” She paused. “And Clem—well, she kind of had an episode at East Beach this morning. I’m worried about her.” She hadn’t even gotten to the vodka bottle in Ned’s closet.

  David paused on the walkway and looked over his shoulder at her. “So, in other words, it’s been normal.”

  His looseness, which she was trying hard lately to appreciate, exasperated her most at times like this. “You know what I mean, David. I just want everyone to spend some quality family time together. I think they all need this.”

  He chuckled. “They need this, or you do?”

  Paige gave him a look. “We all do.” By day two of any other vacation, they would have rounded up the family for the traditional much-celebrated and hard-fought game of Trivial Pursuit and made the first of many bonfires down by the water, where they’d count shooting stars as the younger ones fell asleep on one of Flossy’s frayed quilts. To her mother’s dismay, they hadn’t even managed to get through the traditional welcome-back lobster dinner the night before. Clem had taken one bite and disappeared upstairs. Sam and Evan, usually the chatterboxes, had eaten mostly in silence. Even Richard had seemed more contemplative than usual.

  But all of that would hopefully change now that David was here. He was so much better at navigating this kind of stuff than she was. “So, you have a good feeling about how the interview went, right?”

  David stopped at the porch steps and turned to face her. “Paige. Will you just let me take off my shoes and grab a cold beer? Maybe say hi to my kids?” He sighed. “I told you everything I know. You need to be patient.”

  She followed him inside. She had been patient. It had been six months since Trinity had let David go. And though she would never tell him this, could never tell him, she’d seen it coming at the faculty holiday party that past winter. David had long been a popular professor among the undergrads, but Paige had wondered if Marcy Shrine, his department head, shared the same buffed affection of the freshman class. Paige had inferred the opposite that night at the president’s house, where she’d found herself standing across the room from her husband but alongside Marcy. Paige had observed Marcy’s eyes narrow to mere slits as the room listened to David, who was holding court by the parlor fireplace, a tumbler of whisky in hand. It was a sight that had caused Paige to whisk yet another glass of champagne off a passing server’s tray and promptly tip it back, while at the other end of the Persian rug David’s cheeks grew rosier and his anecdotes more vivid as glasses emptied and the evening wore on. Paige had tried to raise these concerns with David, softly, across the pillow that night. It wasn’t the first staff gathering at which she’d gleaned these tensions. But David had laughed and rolled over, telling her not to worry, Marcy was loathed by nearly everyone in the department. Besides, rumor had it she was being courted by Smith for a writer-in-residence sabbatical. Yes, it was his tenth year at the university, and he still hadn’t received tenure, but she shouldn’t worry about his teaching trajectory—it was stable, if staid. And his semester calendar allowed him to be home with the kids for holidays and summers. It was a win-win situation for all of them, he reminded her, with a trace of irritation. Why couldn’t she understand that?

  But in the last year, Paige couldn’t ignore the fact that there were things David did not seem to see. While he’d been the one who’d initially chosen their renovated historic farmhouse, quick to point out the merits of the competitive school system and wholesome neighborhoods in the rural western hills of Connecticut, he had recently come to seem disenchanted with it. He complained about the long commute “from the country” to Hartford. The home was too drafty, the acreage too laborious. When the rows of heirloom apple trees he’d once been thrilled to inherit with the farm—and for which he’d spent the entire first winter reading about the intricacies of hand pruning—became overgrown, she wondered if their neglected crop would even be viable for picking that fall. It wasn’t just the property he neglected. She’d noticed that he’d stopped staying up late in the den, which they’d converted from a butler’s pantry, pounding away on the vintage Underwood typewriter that he insisted on working from, choosing instead to flop alongside Ned on the couch in front of ESPN. Or sometimes climbing the stairs and turning in for the night, hours before even the kids had. It worried Paige. But so, too, did the bills. And the kids’ school schedules, and Ned’s travel lacrosse team, and Emma’s ACT prep courses. David was in a funk. He would come around. She was taking care of enough people and pets and details, so David would have to fix this himself.

  Now, she followed him inside the summer house. Ned had come in from the deck, and when he saw his dad, he threw his long arms around David, clapping him on the back in the way that men did to one another, leaving Paige struck by how grown-up their son looked.

  “For you, Flossy.” He extended a robust bundle of sunflowers, their woody green stalks tied with grosgrain ribbon. She hadn’t even noticed he’d been carrying them, but of course he had stopped at the rustic little farm stand he knew Flossy liked at the north end of Airport Road. Paige wanted to reach for his hand and squeeze it. But he would only look at her in the same way he’d looked at her moments earlier when she’d hugged and kissed him by the car, because Paige was not prone to such demonstrations. But why?

  It was something she was aware of, something she’d been meaning to address somehow. She knew her husband needed things from her, things she wanted to give, meant to give, but there was always so much to do. Like now: the kids were coming back inside asking about dinner. Sam and Evan appeared—who wanted to head down to the beach to throw the f
ootball around? Suddenly the house shuddered to life. This! This was what she’d wanted from her family since arriving.

  But Paige found herself frozen in the center of the kitchen as beers were plucked from the fridge and towels thrown over shoulders.

  “Mom, aren’t you coming?” Ned asked, breezing past her.

  Even Richard seemed to be moving purposefully, hunting down the cooler from the pantry and handing it over to Flossy, who tossed snacks inside: grapes, a hunk of Camembert, pita chips. Grilled steak sandwiches were pulled from the fridge—when had her mother made those?

  Arthur rose from his dog bed and scrabbled across the hardwood floors to stand beside her as the screen door slapped open and shut, again and again, until the house was empty. She watched them all traipse across the yard and down the beach path, until the last head disappeared in the dune grass. Paige paused, barefoot, in the doorway. She wanted to follow them. Behind her the ancient Westinghouse refrigerator hummed, the only sound in the house. The sunflowers lay prostrate on the kitchen island. She went to find a vase.

  Flossy

  Joe was back, with eight cans of White Dove paint. After poring over new samples and holding them up to the light in various rooms, Flossy had given up. She’d enlisted the help of all the kids. Paige and Clem had both picked a color called bone, which had made Sam smirk, “Ever the orthopedist.” Though he’d been no help, declaring them all the same. Richard frowned through his bifocals and asked what was wrong with the trim color they had now. Evan had lasted the longest, helping her narrow it down to two new whites. But when Joe had called back, she couldn’t find the strip, couldn’t remember the names, and suddenly remembered that she’d never called the bakery back. “White Dove!” she’d barked into the phone. She hadn’t been in to check his work since he had arrived. At this point, she hardly cared if the dove turned out to be purple.

  She had talked to the caterer, and the menu was almost finalized. She’d made a beverage list that someone would have to go pick up at the liquor store. And she’d checked the tracking information on the gorgeous teak serving table she’d ordered for the backyard, but it was two days late on delivery. Two days! She’d made frantic calls to the furniture store, who assured her it would arrive on time. The table was a last-minute splurge—something Richard did not need to know about. He would’ve asked why they needed outdoor furniture when they were selling the house. Or why they couldn’t just rent one from the tent company, which was already delivering things for serving and guest seating. But Flossy had stumbled across this gorgeous piece on Pinterest a few weeks earlier, and as soon as she set eyes on the advertisement, showing a man and a woman dressed all in white toasting each other at an ocean-side soiree, something just happened, causing her to then click ADD TO CART before she could think twice. Flossy had pictured the evening of the party as sunset drenched, the flash of crystal goblets and splashes of summer pastels of their smartly dressed guests. The new table was a narrow pedestal design, perfect for setting up beneath the arbor just in front of the ocean view. She might even ask the tent company to arrange for paper lanterns to be strung overhead. Oh! Flossy could just picture the bartender standing behind the serving table, pouring sparkling amber glasses of champagne. If only the table would get there in time.