Shadows of a Down East Summer

by Lea Wait

  Nettie turned the page. “This is the year I was born, and your grandmother, Kathleen, was married, Carolyn. She’s the tallest girl, over there on the right.”

  Carolyn leaned over the book, clearly fascinated. “I’ve never seen a picture of her before. She has light hair, like mine. Who are the others?”

  “She does look mighty like you. Those are her cousins with her. That little one is your Aunt Susan. Susan’s mother took Kathleen in after her parents died, and then had five little ones for her to look after. I don’t have any pictures of Fred Chase, the man Kathleen married, but I remember people talking about how handsome he was. Wouldn’t surprise me none to think Kathleen was happy when Fred Chase asked her to marry him and go away to New York. But life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it will.”

  She turned a page. “Will, here’s your grandfather, all dressed in his uniform, set to fight in Germany. Next to him is his brother William, who insisted on going too, even though he was a bit younger. He’s the one you’re named for, you know.”

  “I know,” said Will, softly. “He didn’t make it back.”

  “He didn’t. Your grandfather never quite got over it. Said he couldn’t stay here in Waymouth without his brother, so after the war he moved ’way out there to Buffalo in New York State, thinking that would stop the memories. Then he met your grandmother, and that’s how your father and then you ended up being born there.”

  “Who are the two girls in that picture?” Maggie asked, pointing. “Is one of them you?”

  “I’m the baby,” said Aunt Nettie. “A late-life blessing, my mother always said. I hardly remember William, to be truthful. I was so young when he died. That’s my sister Sally, holding me. She married Silas Leary, who took to fishing instead of to war. When you were here last year you met her grandchildren, Maggie.”

  “I remember.” Maggie did remember all of them, although she’d never pass a test on how they were all related. How strange to look at these browned photographs and have met the adult grandchildren of the children pictured.

  What had her own grandparents and great-grandparents looked like as children, she wondered. If there had been photographs, what had happened to them?

  She’d been thinking of adopting. Adopted children would never be able to see their faces in a hundred-year-old photograph album. But, then, she wasn’t adopted, and she’d never seen pictures like these either. And maybe some ancestors were best forgotten. Maybe it was easier to start fresh, without the weight of all these lives to live up to. Or live down.

  She refocused her thoughts as Aunt Nettie turned another page.

  “Carolyn, here’s your grandmother Kathleen, back home visiting your Aunt Susan, during the hard times, in 1931, I think it was. The girl standing between them is your mother, Helen.” She paused. “Your grandfather, Kathleen’s husband, had died by then. Influenza took him in 1918. Your grandmother was working as a waitress, as I remember, but she brought your mother to Waymouth most summers. Helen must have been twelve or thirteen then. I’m the girl with the big bow in my hair. That bow was blue and just matched my eyes. I was right proud of that bow, and insisted I wear it in the picture.”

  “So you knew my mother and grandmother as well as Aunt Susan?” asked Carolyn quietly. “You knew my mother when she was a child?”

  “There weren’t that many children to play with. We all knew each other, even when some lived away and came only in the summers. That’s why I have photographs of your family as well as mine.”

  “You never told me that before!”

  “You never asked,” said Aunt Nettie.

  “Mother always said she didn’t spend much time in Waymouth,” Carolyn said in disbelief, staring at the photograph.

  “Well, in truth, she didn’t. Kathleen used to bring Helen up on the train and leave her with her Aunt Sarah, or with my mother, for a month or two. The Newalls and Brewers lived close by each other, and there was always room for one more little one in the summertime. We all knew Kathleen was having a hard time in New York. She never stayed here long herself; said she had to get back to work. For ten years, or maybe twelve, Helen was here for part of the summer.”

  “What was she like as a girl?” Carolyn asked eagerly.

  “Quiet, mostly,” Aunt Nettie answered. “More used to New York City ways than to Waymouth. Shy. She drew some, even then. Spent time at the library. She liked the freedom of walking on the shore, and in the woods. Went for long walks alone.” Aunt Nettie smiled in the remembering. “Drove my mother crazy, that girl did. Never knew exactly where she’d be. Helen always seemed to be on her way somewhere, at least in her mind. She was friendly with all of us, but not real close to anyone but maybe Susan. She wrote to Susan in the wintertime, I think. She wasn’t real handy at berry picking or fishing or gardening—those were things we did a lot of, with jobs and food hard come by. But she was family, and she was welcome.”

  “And then she just stopped coming to Maine?”

  “Exactly that. Don’t know why. Once in a while we’d hear about her. We knew she’d gotten a scholarship to art school. Her family and friends around here were real proud of her for that. Then we heard she’d gotten married, right before the second war. Everyone was so worried, and stirred up about the war, I don’t think we rightly thought a lot about her at that point. She’d been gone from Waymouth so long.”

  “Her husband died in the war.”

  “Many men did. From here in Waymouth, too.”

  Aunt Nettie turned another page, showing a handsome man in uniform standing next to a young woman who was proudly holding his arm. Maggie recognized her immediately.

  “Who’s the man with you, Aunt Nettie?” asked Will.

  “The man I was to marry,” said Aunt Nettie. She looked at the book for a moment more and then firmly closed the cover. “The past is over. And I think I’ve had enough talking for tonight. I’m feeling weary.”

  “And I must be going,” said Carolyn.

  Maggie walked after her, toward the door.

  “What a fascinating evening,” Carolyn said. “I had no idea Nettie knew my mother so well. Do you think she’d loan me a few of those pictures? I’d love to have copies. Perhaps I could even use one in my book.”

  “You could certainly ask her. Another day, of course. And I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Noon, at the Inn,” Carolyn promised.

  Chapter 3

  At the Park, c. 1865. Scene from La Mode Illustrée. By the late 1850s sewing machines were widely available, and magazines for middle- and upper-class women pictured new fashions they could copy themselves, or give pictures of to their dressmakers. In the United States Peterson’s and Godey’s Ladies Book were the standards; in Britain, the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine; but La Mode, published in Paris from 1859-1914, was the queen of fashion engravings. This steel engraving depicts seven elegantly dressed children feeding a family of ducks at a pond in a formal Parisian park. 9 x 14 inches. Price: $250.

  It was a glorious morning. Maggie kissed Will demurely on his cheek and left him with Aunt Nettie discussing the appropriate shade of forest green to paint the shutters.

  She decided not to tell them that in the nineteenth century New England shutters were painted emerald green, which contained arsenic, which reacted to air pollution and darkened to the forest green used as the classic shade for shutters today. Of course, that same arsenic, used to preserve bodies of Civil War soldiers sent home for burial in family graveyards, was still polluting wells all over the north. Decisions made in the past still influenced the present in so many ways.

  Commercial Waymouth was basically two blocks of small businesses on and off Main Street. If you wanted to buy groceries or hardware you’d have to drive ten miles or so to a larger town. The windows of the gift shop were filled with thermometers in the shape of lighthouses, stuffed toy moose, lobsters, and puffins, pine-needle-filled pillows, and souvenir T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps sporting a choi
ce of Red Sox or Sea Dogs logos. Maggie paused, looking at the toys and children’s clothing.

  Last winter she had almost decided to adopt a child. She’d learned adoption took more than love, and now she was having doubts about what was right for her. This summer she’d vowed to focus on herself. And on Will, who didn’t want children.

  Putting off a decision about adoption had seemed very sensible and sane in June. But sometimes a moment as unexpected as looking at children’s T-shirts could bring all her maternal longings back. Maggie shook her head slightly to chase those feelings away, and moved on to the next window.

  An antiques shop featured folk art—samplers, stenciled Boston rockers, a sea chest in the original blue paint, and an iron horse weathervane. Nineteenth-century weathervanes brought high prices today. So high that many New England barns had lost their original weathervanes to thieves, and the market had been filled by modern “aged” weathervanes that looked very much like the originals. The merchandise in this window looked authentic. She wondered if the dealer offered a written guarantee of age with every item. For someone making a major investment in folk art, and that weathervane would be a major investment, buyers would be looking for provenance that told the history of the item, and a guarantee that it was as old as it was represented. Twenty years ago that wouldn’t have been necessary. Today all buyers, including dealers, had to be more cautious.

  The small bookstore on the corner featured an enormous gray Maine coon cat dozing in the window and books on Maine history, cooking, and children’s books featuring lighthouses and lobstering, seals and puffins, blueberries and beaches, by Barbara Cooney, Robert McCloskey, and contemporary Maine authors Cynthia Lord, Lynn Plourde, Toni Buzzeo and Kevin Hawkes. Children again.

  Across the street was the post office, a brewpub she didn’t remember from last summer, and just a block ahead, the Waymouth Inn, across from the library. Built when this street had been on the Boston Stage route in the 1830s, the Inn had sheltered travelers for almost two hundred years. Today it offered a few rooms for overnight stays, but most of the high-ceilinged rooms had been turned into restaurant seating.

  The young waitress, her hair pulled up in a conservative ponytail, but with six piercings in each ear and a nose ring, found a table for two overlooking the village green. Maggie ordered a glass of Diet Pepsi and looked at the menu. Crab cakes and a salad would be perfect for her first Maine lunch of the summer.

  What had Will planned for the afternoon? He hadn’t told her; just said it had nothing to do with art or antiques. She smiled to herself. When she and Will were together they always seemed to end up at antiques shops or shows or auctions. But maybe today they’d drive to Pemaquid, to climb the rocks and see the ocean, or down to Boothbay Harbor and play tourist at the gift shops, or take the ferry to Squirrel Island and back. Will had been here for two days. He’d probably already scouted his favorite buying sites.

  “Maggie!” Carolyn was carrying a large leather bag full of papers as well as her pocketbook. “Apologies for being late. My visit to Aunt Susan turned emotional, and I couldn’t get away before this.”

  “I didn’t even notice you were late,” said Maggie. “I took advantage of the weather and walked here, window-shopping along the way.”

  “Waymouth’s a beautiful little town, isn’t it?” agreed Carolyn. “Lots of places to spend time and money, too, which is just what the locals are hoping we tourists do this summer.”

  “Have you decided what to order?” The waitress was standing, notepad in hand.

  “Another diet soda,” said Maggie, “and the crab cakes with a small salad.”

  Carolyn closed the menu she’d been skimming. “I’ll have the crab cakes, too. But with iced tea.”

  “How is your aunt?” asked Maggie.

  “Weak, but knows her mind. She’s a dear old soul,” said Carolyn. “Like Nettie, but with a harder crust. I spent summers with her when I was growing up. From what we heard last night, I guess the same way my mother did when she was young. I loved Waymouth and learned some of the old ways. Aunt Susan taught me to embroider. I wasn’t too successful, I’ll admit, but the summer I was twelve she actually insisted I produce a sampler of sorts. She walked me to the library once a week. When I was little she read to me, and then when I could read books on my own we had ‘reading time’ in the late afternoon. She served tea, and I felt very grown-up.” Carolyn took a deep drink of the iced tea the waitress had brought. “As I think back, she must have been lonely, and very patient to take me in summer after summer. I wasn’t always easy. Like my mother, I liked to take long walks by myself, and I loved to row on the river, which has a dangerous undertow. She’d worry. I cherish the memory of those summers. Now she’s weakening every day. I never know when I’ll be visiting her for the last time.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful woman. She had no children of her own?”

  “She never married, so, no. Although not being married didn’t stop my mother!”

  Maggie looked at her.

  “No secret! I thought you’d know, since you knew my mother’s work. Mother was married once, just before the Second World War, but her husband was shot down over Europe. She never used his name. After that she had a lot of ‘gentleman admirers,’ but didn’t marry again. I never knew my father. I never even asked who he was. Somehow Mother convinced me it wasn’t important.” She looked out the window for a moment. “Now, as I’m writing about her life, I wish I knew more.”

  “It must have been hard for both of you, not having a husband or father.” Maggie thought about her own hesitation about adopting as a single parent. It couldn’t have been easy to be an unmarried mother in the nineteen-fifties.

  “Perhaps for her. I don’t know. I don’t remember it being a problem. We lived in Greenwich Village, and most of our friends were artists or writers or musicians. A lot of them lived in what the world considered ‘untraditional situations.’ I’ve had fun trying to remember those days and recreating the way we lived for my book. My summers in Maine were an important counterpoint to living in New York City. It was like traveling from one world, maybe even one century, to another each year for two or three months.”

  “From poetry readings in Bleecker Street coffeehouses to embroidering samplers in Waymouth.” Maggie shook her head. “Two worlds indeed.” She took a bite of her crab cake. Delicious, with bits of fresh scallions and parsley.

  “Memories. If you’re interested I’ll share more when we have time. But now I have to tell you what happened this morning at the nursing home. It involves you.”

  “Me?”

  “We’ve just met. So I want you to know that what I did this morning can be undone. ”

  What could Carolyn have committed her to? She’d hardly met the woman, and was looking forward to an uncommitted late summer.

  “Aunt Susan’s lawyer, Brad Pierce, was with her at the nursing home. He’s been her friend for years, as well as helping her with legal issues. It seems he’s been holding a trunk of old papers for her. She’d asked him to keep them until she was ready to, as she put it, ‘cope with the situation.’”

  Maggie put her fork down. Papers. Old papers. This was getting interesting.

  “Aunt Susan said she’d decided to leave her entire estate to me. There’s no one else left in the family she’s close to, and she hoped I’d be able to keep her house as a summer home. Or sell it, if I chose to do that.”

  “How wonderful of her!”

  “To be honest, I’d suspected she might do that. I’d already decided I’d keep the house. She was pleased when I told her. The house will need some work, but will make a wonderful retreat full of memories.”

  “You’re lucky. Not many people today live in a house more than two or three years, much less keep a home in the family for generations.” Maggie wondered for a moment what would happen to Aunt Nettie’s house after her death. One house that had been in the Brewer family for two hundred years had been sold a year ago, and the ensuing compli
cations had not been pleasant.

  Carolyn continued, “Some families don’t seem to break ties to places like Waymouth. Your friend Will, for example. I didn’t catch everything Nettie was saying last night. Was he born here?”

  “No; his grandfather, Aunt Nettie’s brother, was. Will grew up in Buffalo. Like you, Will spent his summers here in Waymouth.” Maggie paused a moment. “Now that I think about it, I suspect he feels Waymouth is more home than Buffalo is.”

  Carolyn nodded. “I understand that completely. It’s good to have roots; to know who your people were, and how they lived. It can give your life structure; make it feel part of a pattern.”

  “I envy you that,” said Maggie. “I know very little about my family.”

  “Then you should do some research! Although that’s harder than I imagined, even when the family comes from one small town. But let me tell you about the trunk of papers.”

  “Yes?”

  “Aunt Susan was the only one of her brothers and sisters who didn’t marry. She inherited the family house.”

  Maggie remembered Will’s family house: always left to the unmarried daughters. Maybe it was a Waymouth tradition. Or just a practical solution.

  “She found a trunk full of papers in the back of the attic, far under the beams. In it was a journal written by my great-grandmother, and letters my grandmother wrote after she moved to New York. Susan’s mother had kept them all.”

  “What wonderful materials for your book!” said Maggie, leaning forward.

  “Exactly what I said! I asked why she hadn’t told me about the trunk before. She’s always known I’m interested in family history, and I’ve been working on my mother’s biography for five years now. But I’ve always felt my mother’s life somehow wasn’t attached to the past. There was the world of Waymouth, where her family had lived and worked and died in the nineteenth century, and there was the world of twentieth-century New York, where my mother and grandmother both struggled as single parents. The connection between the two was a blur.”