Fritz looked her way and grinned. “That’d be great.”
Wordlessly, Clem led him inside. Clem was suddenly aware of her old cutoff shorts and ratty T-shirt. “Come in,” she said, holding the screen door open behind her.
Fritz took off his sunglasses and looked around. “Wow, the place hasn’t changed at all. Feels like I’m ten years old again.”
Clem poured them both glasses of iced tea from the pitcher on the island. She thought about adding a slice of the lemon that Flossy had left on the cutting board, but decided against it. Too fussy. “Don’t let my mother hear you say that. She’s turned the place upside down just for this party.”
She handed Fritz a glass and flinched when their fingers brushed as he took it from her. Had she ever found a man’s hands attractive before? What was wrong with her?
“No, no, everything looks great,” he explained. “I meant that it looks familiar. It’s nice when things you remember fondly don’t change.” He looked at her over the rim of his glass. Damn, he had nice eyes, too.
Clem took a big swallow of iced tea and looked away. “Yeah, well my mother would have to agree with you.”
Overhead the kids were thumping around, and Fritz glanced at the ceiling. “Remember when we used to play hide-and-seek in the bunkroom?”
Clem didn’t, at least not with Fritz. “I remember playing dolls up there with your sister.”
“No, we used to play hide-and-seek. All of us. Sam always picked the best hiding places. Once he pulled down the attic stairs and climbed up there to hide, but somehow the pull-down stairs snapped back up and he got stuck.”
Clem put her hand to her mouth as it all came back to her. “Oh my God! I’d forgotten all about that! Didn’t we give up looking for him and go down to the beach?”
“That we did.” Fritz shook his head, chuckling.
“It must’ve been a hundred degrees up there! My mother reamed us out when we came back hours later.” She laughed at the memory, reaching for Fritz’s arm. “It seemed so funny to me at the time. I couldn’t understand why she was so upset.” Fritz looked down at her hand resting on his forearm, and she quickly withdrew it. “It doesn’t seem so funny now. Guess we should’ve looked a little harder.”
Fritz set his glass down on the island top. “I would’ve kept looking if it had been you.”
Clem ignored this and grabbed his glass. “Want another?” What was Fritz doing?
“No thanks, I should go,” he said. But he didn’t make a move to. “Remember how we used to play flashlight tag in the dunes?” he asked suddenly.
She smiled at the memory. They’d run up and down the narrow paths they made in the dune grass, trying not to scratch their legs on the rough green blades as they ducked in and around the deep sandy grooves beneath the highest point. “You guys always used to spy on us from the highest point, and then when we tried to hide in the basin you’d jump down and scare us.”
Fritz laughed. “The best was when the moon was out. Actually, there’s going to be a full moon this weekend.”
“Really?”
“My father got a telescope for the house this summer. I was thinking of taking it up on the dunes.” Fritz looked earnest. Was this an invitation?
Clem took their glasses over to the sink, making a show of running the water. What was he expecting, standing here in her mother’s kitchen? She was always happy to see him on the beach. If she was honest, she was thrilled to have run into him the other night in the dunes—a moment her mind had been wandering back to ever since. But now, in full daylight in Flossy’s kitchen, with her family outside and her kids playing upstairs and his eyes on her back, their interaction felt strange. Illicit, even. Feeling his gaze, she turned around. “Look, Fritz . . .”
“I’d better get back,” he said quickly. “I’ve got an interview to prepare for.” He jammed his hands in his shorts pockets and took two hurried steps backward toward the door. “Thanks for the tea.”
Clem faltered. There were words tumbling around in her head, but she couldn’t seem to articulate them. She’d wanted him to go. But now she didn’t.
“Wait,” she said, finally. But the screen door was already swinging on its hinges and Fritz was through it.
She watched him stop to say something to her father. It seemed Evan and Sam had already gotten three of the table legs on. Fritz picked up the last table leg and said something that made them all laugh. Clem went to the window, trying to hear. She wanted to know what he’d said. She wanted him to turn around and come back in the kitchen. She shook the thought from her head in frustration, and went back to the sink. Fritz was ten years younger. His law school degree was so fresh she bet he hadn’t even framed it yet. All she really knew of him was from the past, when he was the youngest Weitzman they’d all outrun. And if she were completely honest with herself, no amount of years, college degrees, or catching up to adulthood made up for the differences between them. Fritz had barely begun living. And as for her, she’d already embraced death.
The screen door creaked again, and she spun around expectantly.
It was just Flossy. She looked out of sorts: still wearing her silver polish gloves and her cheeks were bright pink. “Well, thank goodness for Fritz! The table is done.”
Clem looked past her mother and out through the window. Indeed, the teak table was finally assembled. The men were positioning it beneath the arbor now. Fritz had one end of the table and Evan had the other.
“How generous of him to carry that heavy box all the way up through the dunes.” Flossy peeled off her work gloves and reached for the iced tea pitcher. “I invited him to the birthday party.”
Clem exhaled, her eyes following Fritz’s retreat as he waved good-bye and headed for the beach path. He jogged lightly on the balls of his feet in the same way her nephew, Ned, did. Reminding her how young and untroubled his life was, how different. A fact that suddenly filled her with dread. “Did you, now?”
“Well, his parents are already coming, of course. I haven’t seen much of the Weitzman kids in years, but whoever is at the shore is always welcome.” She paused. “Fritzy certainly isn’t the baby anymore. So handsome, don’t you think?”
Suddenly Clem felt an urge to get out of there. “I thought you said we should refer to him as Fritz.” She grabbed Flossy’s gloves from the countertop and headed into the dining room, away from mother.
“Poor Cora,” Flossy went on, absently following her from the kitchen.
“Why do you say that?” Clem asked.
Flossy swirled her glass of iced tea in her hand. “No reason, just that it’s not easy to watch your baby grow up. It wasn’t easy with you, either, though that seems like a long time ago.”
Clem scoffed. “Well, Fritz does have his law degree, Mom. He’s not that young.”
“Yes, of course. But I wasn’t referring to that. Schools and jobs are one thing. I was referring to letting Fritzy go.”
“Go?”
Flossy seemed lost in thought. “Yes, poor Cora. She’s going to have an awful time letting him go when some girl comes along and snaps Fritzy up.”
Clem jammed her gloved hand in the pot of sticky silver polish and grabbed a candlestick from the table. Wordlessly, she scrubbed at the silver, flecks of pink goo flying.
Flossy watched in consternation. “Clem, dear. You’re making a mess.”
Flossy
Judy Broadbent’s house was less than a mile up Sea Spray, set on the other side of the street from Flossy and Richard’s. Not beach front, as Flossy’s was. But any chance she got, Judy loved to remind everyone that she had the best of both worlds in her Rhode Island summer home: she was on the ‘safer’ side of the street, away from the pounding surf during storm season, but she still had full view of the ocean. “It’s marvelous, really. I wake up to water views but I never have to worry my house will float away!”
As compared to Flossy, whose house was set back privately on a low bluff overlooking the water—poor thing! As if
.
Flossy snatched her to-do list off the ancient green refrigerator and ticked through it. In three days sixty people would be seated in their backyard to toast Richard’s seventy-fifth birthday, and there was still so much to be done. So far, all the RSVPs had been affirmative, with the exception of the Mandevilles who were in Nantucket, and Richard’s former Fairfield University history department colleague Noah Barnes, who often came to Rhode Island for a weekend visit, but was visiting his grandchildren in Maine. They had yet to hear from Richard’s college roommate, Hank. Flossy had asked Richard to call him no fewer than four times.
Still, she was thrilled that almost everyone was coming. Though Richard knew about the party, she’d not let him in entirely on the guest list, at least not the out-of-towners. She couldn’t wait to see his face when some of the university crowd showed up. Which reminded her, she had better call the Inn at Watch Hill and check on their reservations. It was nearly impossible in the summer season to get a room anywhere near the village, but she’d managed to book a few rooms and the Weitzmans had offered their guest rooms to any extras. Luckily, most of the guests were summer people, as well.
Their landscaper, Lucas, was scheduled to come in to mow so that the backyard would be a fresh carpet of neatly trimmed green. She’d wanted to ask him to remove the hedges and replace them with some spike grass and sea lavender, but Richard said that was going hog wild, that they’d spent enough already, and he would trim the hedges himself. Flossy had given Sam and Evan the dull clippers to bring into the hardware store in town to be sharpened that morning, as a little reminder.
Outside the kitchen window, the teak bar table was assembled and tucked beneath the arbor. She was very pleased with how it came out after the missing legs incident. She and Clem had been pulling down table toppers from the attic and the deep recesses of the old china cabinet in the dining room that no one ever used. But it had proven a much-needed trip down the memory lane of their family summers. She’d had the chance to handle some of Richard’s mother’s vintage fiesta ware (too bright), and the Irish crystal (too mismatched and broken over the years), and had finally settled on the silver candlesticks and heirloom linen table runners that had been stored away since she couldn’t remember when.
“Remember these?” she’d asked Clem, holding up a baby’s cup-and-bowl set adorned with white bunnies. There was a chip on the cup handle, and the glaze on both had cracked, but her chest swelled just looking at them.
“Weren’t they mine?” Clem asked. For a moment, guilt filled her, and Flossy wondered if she and Richard were doing the right thing by not telling the kids about the sale of the house.
Flossy smiled sadly. “You all used that set at one time or another when you were babies. Goodness, the high chair you ate from is still in the attic, too.” Flossy wondered briefly if she should offer any of the baby items to Sam and Evan, then immediately dismissed the thought. No, those boys already have enough burden of expectation on their shoulders. She studied the faded orange carrot on the bowl and sighed.
Flossy had known it would be hard, but selling the summer house was much more than just letting go of the building and the beach. There were so many invisible things her fingers ached to grasp onto that she had not anticipated. As she cleaned out the house and readied it for the party, material reminders kept popping up, harbingers of fleeting images that lingered here: a baby’s sun bonnet found tucked in the back of a closet brought to mind an image of Sam in diapers, standing at the shore. A mason jar of sand discovered in the attic took her back to that frightening afternoon when three-year-old Paige toddled off down the beach path when she and Richard weren’t looking, setting off a flurry of panic and searching. They’d found her half an hour later sitting in the dunes, fists full of sand, laughing. Flossy swiped at her eyes and set the baby cup back in its wilted cardboard box. When Clem pulled it back out, Flossy watched as she ran her index finger over the chipped handle. It was as if she’d touched some unseen crack in Flossy’s very being. She could not put words to the relief she felt when Clem asked if she could take the set back to Boston and keep it.
At least the house was starting to come together. Joe had finished painting the trim upstairs and downstairs the day before, but then, in a fit of panic, Flossy had taken a closer look at the front porch where guests would enter and decided that touch-ups were needed.
Sea air was rough on a house exterior, she knew, but she’d always thought a little bit of chipped paint simply added to the coastal character. Oh, how wrong she was. It looked downright shabby, she decided. The entire family had been summoned outside to line up and weigh in, but to her surprise none of them seemed very concerned.
“Look at the railings!” she directed. “Can’t you see the strips of missing paint on the posts?”
At least Evan made a show of squinting at the balusters; her own kids shrugged and wandered back inside. Richard looked defeated when she told him her plan. “We’ll just dab a little paint here and there on the bald spots. It won’t take a minute!” she tried to reassure him.
“We’ve already done so much to get the house in order. Surely that’s something the new owners can do,” Richard replied. “They’ll probably want to change the colors to suit their own tastes, anyway.”
Flossy did not like the thought of the new owners, but she especially did not like the thought of the new owners changing her paint colors. The summer house was beautifully done. These colors were timeless! In that mindset, she decided that she would repaint the porch. The new people would be less inclined to change it if it was freshly painted.
“It’ll be fine,” she told Richard, again. “A little dab here, a little dollop there.”
But when she’d summoned Joe outside, he did not get on board. Joe calmly informed her that paint could not be dolloped or dabbed on to chipped areas. First, the porch railings and balusters had to be scraped down and sanded. Then primed. That would take several days. And only then could it be painted: two coats. There was a right way and a wrong way. Flossy knew which category her way fell into.
They didn’t have several days. Surely there was another way?
Joe had just looked at her, the brim of his painter’s cap firm over his unmoving gaze. Joe did things the right way. But she had at least managed to convince him to paint the hand railings. Those were the first things people would see—would, in fact, touch—as they entered the house. She’d just have to jazz up the cast iron planters on either side of the front door to keep the guests’ eyes from sliding left or right to the chipped balusters. That would be something the new owners would have to address. Oh, the new owners.
Flummoxed, she pulled out her list. Flowers for planters! she scrawled. Which left only one item that needed to be dealt with immediately: the stuffed oyster recipe. Sandy, the caterer, had called one last time to suggest that they use her recipe. It was a good recipe, she said, requested many times after by those who’d enjoyed it. Flossy considered Sandy’s offer. She was tired of dwelling on the stuffed oyster recipe. Apparently, so was everyone else.
“Mom,” Sam had scolded. “There’s too much else going on. Ditch the oysters for clams. No one will care.”
To which Evan had replied, “I’m sure the caterer knows what she’s talking about. Keep the oysters, but go with her recipe.”
But they were all missing the point. Flossy didn’t give a flying cat’s tail if she served oysters or clams. Sure, Richard had loved that recipe from Ci Ci. But, more than that, it was the principle. Judy Broadbent did not own the right to that recipe. Ci Ci had intended to pass it down to Flossy, not to her!
Flossy picked up the phone and dialed Sandy. “I’ll have the recipe for you today,” she promised the caterer.
Twenty-five minutes and one swipe of Chanel Ever Red lipstick later, Flossy found herself taking inventory of the contents of the shed. Richard had taken their car into town. Paige and Clem were out with the kids in the Volvo. It was too hot to walk at that hour, and she’d be darne
d if she was going to attempt to drive Sam’s sports car, what with its keyless ignition and all those lit-up buttons on the dashboard (though she would’ve loved to show up in style at Judy’s). No. She’d have to bike it over there.
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and selected a faded blue Schwinn with a wicker basket—the only one that had mostly filled tires, as far as she could tell. She eyed the row of cobweb-covered helmets hanging on wooden pegs on the wall. No, she would not risk tangling with an arachnid on this already hot and frustrating venture. Judy lived just up the street. She wasn’t biking to Newport, for God’s sake.
Flossy wheeled the bike out into the driveway, swung her leg shakily over the seat and pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. Heavens knew when the last time was that she’d done this. No matter, there was a reason for the phrase “just like riding a bike,” and she was going with that. She placed foot to pedal and pushed off. A little wobbling and a swift jerk of the handlebars to the left, and she was sailing up the street toward Judy’s. How glorious the wind felt in her hair! If she weren’t afraid of tipping, she would’ve taken one hand off the handlebars to salute the neighbors.
It had been a day since she’d left Judy that message about stopping by to retrieve the recipe. She imagined Judy having stayed away from the house all day, just to spite Flossy. Or better yet, sitting behind drawn drapes and peeking out the window at the herbs she couldn’t water lest Flossy catch her outside—a prisoner in her own summer home. Flossy smiled. By now Judy would surely be pent up and assume she’d dropped the matter. Flossy might even find her unaware in the garden, windows and doors thrown open. Flossy pedaled faster.
Judy’s house was not unlike the others on Sea Spray. Stately gray-shingled cottages of varying sizes set along the narrow beach road that led up to the Weekapaug Inn. Flossy admired the pillars at the end of some of the driveways: they were cone-shaped amalgamations of round beach stones and had always reminded her of the dribble castles the kids used to make on the beach when they were little. Judy’s was not the most impressive on the street, but it was well situated at the end, neatly among manicured hydrangea rows. Flossy slowed her bike and eased into the driveway, the slow crunch of seashell satisfying beneath her tires—best to surprise Judy.
The Summer House Page 14
