The Summer House

by Hannah McKinnon

  Soon the backyard was transformed. The hulking white tent that had, until then, sat in the backyard like some kind of alien landing was transformed with the glow of white lights, flowers, and the smartly dressed tables beneath it. Flossy had been right: the all-white arrangement served as the perfect backdrop to the bluff and the ocean. It let the summer evening have center stage, in all its rosy-hued glory.

  “Wow. Looks like a party is about to start.” She turned to Sam. The setup was complete, and now only the servers remained, working on final details as the clink of pots and utensils from the kitchen played backdrop music to the scent of dinner cooking.

  “Mom did a great job,” Paige agreed.

  Richard and Flossy were last to come down. Her father looked like a man of only sixty, Paige thought, as he strode across the yard, Flossy’s arm tucked in his. He’d chosen a beige linen suit and pink dress shirt, neatly adorned with a checkered bowtie. The Merrill children clapped as their father held his arm out and spun Flossy around one time. She radiated in a flowy pale blue dress, and Paige could swear her mother giggled.

  It was then Paige realized they were not the last family members to come down. She scoured the yard and the tent. “Have you seen Em?”

  David shook his head. “She was getting ready up in her room, last I knew.”

  Paige handed him her champagne glass and headed for the house. She was halfway up the porch steps when out of the corner of her eye she spied a young woman in a white dress standing at the far edge of the yard. She realized with a start it was Emma. Paige watched her a moment, the arch of her neck, the strong posture. She swallowed hard.

  “I was looking for you,” she said, as she approached.

  Emma turned, and Paige saw she’d put a little mascara and lipstick on. The lipstick was a shade too dark, and for a beat Paige was tempted to blend it with her thumb, but instead she shoved her hand behind her back. “You look beautiful, honey.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  Paige stood next to her, looking down at the beach. The waves were small, mere ripples moving slowly in and out across the sand. Across the dunes there was a pop of movement and color: it was the Weitzmans walking down the beach path on their way over. Paige watched Mrs. Weitzman bend to remove her shoes, and Fritz took her arm. Mr. Weitzman followed carrying what looked to be a bottle of wine.

  “Guests are starting to arrive. You ready?” Paige asked.

  Emma didn’t answer. Just as Paige was about to turn back to the party, Emma leaned over and rested her head against Paige’s shoulder. She was as tall as her mother, in her heeled sandals, so that she had to bend slightly. Paige turned and pressed her nose to Emma’s hair. She recognized the scent of sun and sand, and something else: the scent of her daughter. Paige closed her eyes and inhaled. “Let’s go.”

  Flossy

  People were having fun. She was almost sure of it, but still she kept watch over the crowd, assessing everyone. The servers were passing plates of clams casino and gravlax and roasted fig crostini. The pink grapefruit gimlets were a hit, according to members of Flossy’s book club, who, to her consternation, already seemed to be on their second round. Richard looked positively at home in the crowd, greeting guests and chatting animatedly among his university colleagues. She was thrilled! But there was still no sign of Judy Broadbent.

  Flossy had confided in Sandy that a guest would be bringing the stuffed oysters. To which Sandy replied, “A guest?” Her composed expression did not crack, but Flossy was sure that an eyelid had twitched slightly. There, she was right! The whole notion was absurd—she had it on culinary authority! The party had started at six. By six-twenty when there was still no sign of Judy, a flash of triumph ran through her. But it was quickly trailed by dread: she’d hoped for those oysters. Who was she kidding? She’d hoped even more to watch Judy teeter in her heels as she carried a tray of them overhead to the serving table. No matter, Flossy would not give Judy or the shellfish any further thought. This was her party.

  Drinks and conversation poured beneath the tent, and everyone commented on the open-air view of the water, the lovely summer evening. She could not have ordered a more perfect night! Flossy kept an eye on the children as she navigated the crowd and welcomed guests. Paige and David were chatting with the Weitzmans, whom she was delighted to see had arrived. The children were circling the food tables. Maddy was holding a dangerously red Shirley Temple drink close to her gingham dress. Emma was holding something pink; Flossy was not above giving it a sniff as she passed.

  “Grammy!” Emma gasped when she did just that.

  She winked at her granddaughter. “Don’t you look lovely.”

  Sam and Evan were seated at a table with Fritz Weitzman and one of the Drake boys, all childhood summer friends. Oh, how it felt like yesterday that those boys were thin wisps of children, tugging at their swimsuits to keep them up as they raced from house to house and up and down the beach trails. Flossy shook her head. The memories were as thick and syrupy as dessert wine, tonight.

  It was almost time for the toast, something she had asked Sam to do. All of her children were eloquent speakers, but she’d chosen Sam. However, he had not shared the contents of his speech, despite the many times she’d inquired over the week. She hoped he’d not forgotten. She decided that she better ask him now, before dinner was announced by Sandy at seven-thirty. Flossy made a beeline for his table, just as there was a flash of silver across the way on the porch.

  Flossy paused. No. It could not be. But it was. Judy Broadbent had arrived with her husband, Percy. Judy stood on the back deck, surveying the crowd. Flossy recognized Sandy and two kitchen staffers behind her, each holding large silver trays. They were not the trays Flossy had asked them to be served on. But indeed, they appeared to be stuffed oysters. The woman had gone and done it.

  Judy caught her in the crowd and her lips parted in a gruesome smile. “Flossy!”

  Richard met her at the deck at the same time. He looked from Judy and her husband to the servers to Flossy. “My word.”

  Flossy struggled to regain composure. “Judy! Percy. Welcome.”

  Judy did not shake her extended hand, but turned instead to the women holding the large, and presumably heavy, trays behind her. “Ta da!”

  Ta da, indeed, Flossy thought.

  “What did you bring?” she asked.

  Judy’s face fell. “Stuffed oysters.” Then, “My favorite recipe.”

  Flossy’s eyes narrowed. Not Ci Ci’s favorite, but Judy’s. “I can see that. Thank you.”

  Richard shook their hands. “Is that my favorite stuffed oyster that I see?”

  Judy fluttered her eyes. “None other!”

  Richard was overjoyed. “What a wonderful treat. You shouldn’t have!”

  “No, you really shouldn’t have,” Flossy echoed. She tried to remind herself that Richard was thrilled. It was his party. And that was her goal. She directed Sandy and the girls to the appetizer table. “These smell amazing,” Sandy said over her shoulder to Judy. “I’d love to know how you prepared them.”

  If she hadn’t been wearing such clunky tacky shoes, Flossy was sure Judy would have floated a little. What Sandy didn’t know was that Judy had likely not prepared them. Flossy hoped that she’d also delivered them in her own car. It gave her pleasure to think of the shellfish sliding across the trays on each turn of the road, the juices seeping into the fabric of the trunk. And the subsequent stench tomorrow, on what was predicted to be a ninety-degree day.

  The oysters were tucked tightly against the clams casino, which Flossy was relieved to see were largely consumed by that point. Judy’s gaze darted disapprovingly between the two trays. “You had clams, as well?”

  It was Flossy’s turn to beam. “Anything for Richard! You know, Judy, you really should try a gimlet. So tart.” Then she sailed off into the crowd.

  As if on cue, there was the clang of butter knife on glass. Evan stood at the opening of the tent and called the guests over. Everyone gath
ered in their summer finery, goblets flashing in the setting sun, laughter echoing. They crowded around him, eyes glistening. Sam got up to speak.

  “I want to welcome you all this evening to celebrate my father, Richard Merrill, on his seventy-fifth birthday.” The guests hushed.

  “Many of you here tonight know Richard as a friend. As a summer neighbor who likes his Manhattans on ice, or as a colleague who stayed late in his office researching for his lectures, eating peanut butter sandwiches that my mother sent with him to work, like a schoolboy.” There was a chorus of light laughter.

  “But I want to share with you what it was like to grow up with him as a father. Here, where we spent our childhood summers, my father enjoyed lively summer gatherings with many of you. Just as much as he liked to sequester himself in his Adirondack chair with books and papers, as he did at Fairfield University. But no matter the setting or the company, I knew him best as an avid observer. My father would awaken us late on a summer night and call us down to the dining room window to peer through the telescope at Jupiter rising. He’d pile us into the car on weekend mornings, and ferry us down to Watch Hill to walk along the harbor wall. He knew the name of each boat moored there and its origin.” Paige and Clem were nodding appreciatively in the crowd, as Sam spoke. Flossy watched their reactions echo the ones in her heart.

  “Dad taught us to walk slowly along the water’s edge, and to abandon the trails of footprints made by others and instead stray to the piles of seaweed left at the high tide mark. He showed us how to get down—close—on our hands and knees and sift through the tangled green stuff. It was slimy, and it smelled. But that’s where the treasures were: the sand dollars, the sea urchins.”

  Maddy squealed in the crowd. “Urchins!”

  “As I grew up, there were times I struggled, as we all do. I struggled to keep good grades. I struggled to make and then break my best times on cross country.” Here his voice broke. “I struggled to fit in.”

  Flossy’s throat went dry. She watched Sam, her eyes welling with love and hurt. She found Clem and Paige, Evan and David. At the edge of the crowd, dead center, was Richard. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

  “I sometimes wondered why my father was so reserved, why he lingered quietly in the background when he could have stepped forward. Why, at times, he remained silent instead of asking questions. We were different in that way. There were times I wondered if he could really see me.” Sam cleared his throat and Flossy felt the guests’ collective intake of breath.

  “But I was mistaken. To this day, whenever I get lost, I think back to the nights he took me fishing down on Napatree Point. It was just us and the roaring sound of the ocean. We cast our lines, and we waited in the dark. Sometimes we caught stripers, sometimes we went home without. But it wasn’t about the catch we brought back to the house (to clean, much to my mother’s dismay).”

  Flossy smiled, as those around her chuckled. Someone put a hand on her back.

  “It was the art of going back out, night after night to cast. Listening to the water, watching the tide, and trying again. My father taught me that there is beauty in silence and there is love in patience. Casting is not a science: there is faith in sometimes letting the tide take your lure, just as, at other times, there is wisdom in keeping your lines taut. Fishing lines, like children, are fickle; they snag, they tangle, sometimes they even break away. But there is an art to casting. The flick of your wrist, the arc of the line, the hissing spin of the reel. And in that, my father is an artist.”

  Flossy did not hear what else Sam said, because as he raised his glass, everyone burst into applause. “To Richard Merrill. Happy seventy-fifth!”

  Paige appeared at her elbow, and hugged her tight. Then Clem. Beside her Cora Weitzman was just about weeping. And Judy—standing a few feet away—was outright blubbering. Flossy made her way to Sam, to Richard, to all of them. It didn’t matter what else happened that night. She’d done it: she’d gotten them all here.

  Sam

  He’d written out his speech by hand the night before on the back deck. All week, he’d tried to think of things to say—eloquent things that the Fairfield University crowd would appreciate, or family things that his sisters and mother would get a kick out of. But he could not get the words down any more than he could peg down the character of his father. Richard Merrill was as elusive to him now as he’d ever been.

  Sam wondered if he’d grasped the truest sense of his father as a child; if his innocent perspective had best focused the lens through which he viewed the man. After all, the very virtue of youth protected one from the outside world, a cottoned buffer from experience and wisdom. Sam was now certain that we did not grow and evolve as we grew older; rather, our truest selves and sense of the world around us came through the eyes of the innocent. And so when it came time to speak of his father, Sam turned to the most visceral and prominent things he could hold: his childhood memories at the summer house.

  In doing so, a speech for a birthday party for a seventy-five-year-old gentleman had been written. But moreover, the early stories of the Merrill family had been offered up to the world once more, for each of the Merrills to hold in their hands and turn over in their palms, tracing the tactile memories with their fingers in the way a little girl traces the petals of a wild beach rose or the striation of a razor clam shell. As Richard had instructed, he spoke from the heart.

  During dinner, Sam had barely been able to eat. His stomach swelled with both nerves and relief, and he sat at the table among his family satiated, if not with Flossy’s carefully articulated menu, then with something else he had long craved: contentment.

  Guests came to offer kind words on his speech, to inquire about work, to ask if they were enjoying their summer stay. Sam visited with them all, and after dessert, which he also did not taste, he mingled. There was music. By then, the sun had given way to dusk, casting a heavenly glow through the white tent and upon the faces that gathered and danced beneath it. Sam watched Richard lead Flossy into a small opening in the tables and dance as the strands of “Moon River” played. He saw David reach for Paige, and Paige accept his hand. At the far end of the tent, he saw Clem standing shoulder to shoulder with Fritz Weitzman, taking it all in. And across his own table his eyes finally rested on Evan, who was also watching the small group of dancers join Flossy and Richard for a slow turn.

  Sam had turned off his phone for the party. He reached in his pocket and felt the hard rectangular pull of the outside world, and he decided to leave it there. There had been no call from Mara when he last checked at four-thirty. But there had been one from the agency, from Malayka. She’d left a voice mail. He’d escaped to the front porch to best hear it.

  “Sam, Evan—it’s Malayka calling. I know you’re still on vacation, but I received word today from Mara.” Sam’s chest had tightened, and he’d pressed the phone hard to his ear. “As you know, the baby is not due for another month, but Mara has come to a decision. She chose the two of you.” Sam had raced upstairs to tell Evan, to replay the message, over and over as they danced around the bedroom. They knew nothing was a done deal. But there was possibility. And with that came hope.

  Afterward, they lay on the bed catching their breath. Sam wasn’t sure if he felt more relief over the fact that Mara had chosen them, or that he had not, in fact, ruined their chance of adoption with his clumsy slip in judgment. Now, he could look Evan in the eye again. To him, that was everything.

  “So, this could really happen,” Sam said, as they’d lain side by side processing the news.

  “It could. And if it doesn’t, we’ll still be okay, right?”

  “Promise.”

  There was something else Sam needed to know. Something that had haunted him since he’d found them on the morning of their arrival in Evan’s duffel bag.

  “Why did you bring the baby slippers here?”

  Evan turned over, nose to nose with Sam. A more open face, Sam had never seen. He knew he would answer honestly. “I do
n’t know. I guess I wanted to bring the hope of a baby here with us.”

  Sam contemplated that answer. It wasn’t so much that Evan was carrying the tiny pink slippers, which Sam had mistakenly assumed was some kind of talisman. It was the destination to which he’d brought them. “You mean specifically here? As in the summer house?”

  Evan reached for his hand. “Yes. We have good memories here. This is a place of family.”

  Sam kissed him and hopped up.

  “Where are you going?” Evan asked.

  “I can’t tell you now, but I will.” He paused in the doorway. “Do you trust me?”

  Evan didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  Sam had gone straight to Richard, who he’d found standing at the spot where the ravaged hedges used to be, watching the landscaper plant and mulch three new hydrangea bushes in their place.

  “Well,” Richard had said, indicating the decimated bed of shrubs. “I think Evan did me a favor.”

  Sam forced a smile. “Dad, there’s something I want to ask you. Can we take a walk?”

  They’d walked across the yard, down the beach path, and out onto the sand. Sam was finally taking that walk his father had been inviting him to take all week. Only they did not fish or hunt for shells. They made a deal.

  Now, he nudged Evan gently under the table. Evan looked up.

  Sam reached into his coat pocket and took out an envelope.

  “What is it?”

  Sam pushed it across the table toward him. “Go on,” he said. “Open it.”

  Evan reached for the thin white envelope, and their fingers brushed. He opened it, withdrew the paper and unfolded it carefully. It was nothing more than lined legal pad paper with a handwritten note scrawled across it. Nothing typed, nothing printed. Two signatures and a date were at the bottom. Sam watched Evan’s brown eyes travel over the note once, then again. He looked up at Sam, mouth open.