by Luanne Rice
We landed on a black lake ringed by parasol pines in the heart of the Berkshires. Gently rounded mountains, made velvety green by the thickness of trees, surrounded us. We coasted to a buoy, set in place by Nick’s father the year Nick invested in the seaplane. Already Bart, Nick’s father, was rowing toward us. He held out his hand to help me into the boat. It felt pleasantly rough, a measure of how he was enjoying a rural retirement after years as a hospital administrator in Springfield.
“Hey, Nick, Georgie, how about this weather? Terry bought some fireworks on his way back from Florida, you should be able to see them for miles.”
“Great,” I said, even though we planned to leave before dark.
“How are you, Dad? How’s Mom?” Nick asked, sitting beside me on the boat’s aft seat. Bart rowed fervently, as if lives depended on it. His round face gleamed with sweat and sunburn.
“We’re good. We’re just fine. Your sister Eleanor made it home for the party, and so did you and Terry. But Beth couldn’t come. She has a party to go to on the Cape. Did she tell you she’s renting a house with some girls? They’re having a ball.”
“No, I didn’t know that. I should stay in better touch with the others,” Nick said.
“She sent us a postcard,” I said, leaning against him. “It showed fishing shacks in Provincetown, remember?”
Nick shook his head, laughing quietly. His father rowed and rowed, hardly noticing our joke. Nick had a funny habit of reading his family’s letters and immediately forgetting what they said. He said it was because he knew everything that was going to happen: every summer until Eleanor got married, she had rented a house on Cape Cod, and so would Beth until she got married.
Nick’s parents now lived year-round in what had been their summer retreat. It stood two hundred yards away from Lake Temperance, a modern house with a lot of windows, in an enclave of similar houses. Nick’s mother, Sally, was playing badminton with Eleanor and her husband, Paul.
“Oh, hi, get yourselves a drink or find a racquet,” Sally called, a greeting I thought understated considering we hadn’t seen her since Christmas. Further proof of the worthiness of my family: Honora showered us with hugs and kisses even when she saw us every day.
Bart poured us beers, foamy from the keg. It seemed touching to have a keg capable of serving fifty people, with only six of us there. Light came through the trees, dappling the dry grass. Bart, Nick, and I sat on the picnic table’s hard benches.
“How’s retirement, Dad?” Nick asked. “You chasing that white ball around the course?”
“No, I don’t play much golf. I’m taking care of this place morning, noon, and night. Chopping wood for next winter, weeding the garden, you know. Your mother is the golfer. Cut her handicap by two since last year.”
“But you’re enjoying yourself, right?” Nick said. I knew he was remembering his mother’s fear that Bart would wither without an office to go to, that he would be dead of boredom within six months.
“Nick, I love it,” Bart said earnestly, leaning across the table. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to your mother and me. We feel like lunch in Vermont, we just drive up to Grafton. We feel like a show in the city, we just drive to Boston. Last week we took in a doubleheader at Fenway, spent the night with your sister Eleanor.”
“Who’d they play?”
“Yankees. Yankees killed them. You see the Yankees play much in New York?”
“No, we’ve switched to the National League,” I said. “We follow the Mets now. Isn’t that terrible? Two lifelong Red Sox fans rooting for the Mets.”
Bart shook his head. “You’ll come to your senses one of these days.”
Sally came to stand behind Bart. She bounced her racquet lightly on his head. “He’s not telling you all about the hospital, is he? Because if he is, I’ll brain him. I tell him, the hospital is no longer his problem. Hello, you two.”
“Hello,” we said. I climbed off my bench and walked around the table to kiss her. Nick stayed where he was. She went to him, gave him a crushing hug from behind.
“It’s a crime, the way you don’t visit more. I want to hear everything. Get me a drink, Dad. I want to sit right here and listen to everything that’s happened, from start to finish.”
“I’m working too hard and Georgie has a new job,” Nick said.
“You do, dear?” Sally said, and I thought I saw her eyes narrowing. I know she approved heartily of wives who stayed home, taking care of their husbands. For that reason she had always encouraged me to do my profile of the bay. After Nick had explained the Swift Observatory, she frowned. “I’m not sure I like you telephoning strangers out of the blue,” she said. “With so many nut cases out there.”
“Thank God, or there’d be nothing interesting for her to study,” Nick said.
“That’s not true,” I said. “The more ordinary the better. Ordinary people faced with extraordinary strife. That’s becoming my motto.” I punched Nick playfully on the upper arm.
“He always bruised so easily,” Sally said, staring into space.
Leaning against Nick, I felt him stifle a giggle. He reached around me, hooking his thumb through my belt loop.
“The woman is a terror,” he said. “Just look at her.”
Sally looked at me and smiled. “I know she’s a good girl.”
Everyone decided to swim. They changed into bathing suits, but I stayed dressed. I couldn’t swim in lakes. Fresh water lacked the buoyancy of salt. It felt sinister to me, although it tasted pure as drinking water. Perhaps if the lake contained a spring, or was fed by a waterfall, anything to make it move, I would have swum in it. But I hated thinking of its muddy bottom, nurturing plants that bloomed on the surface. A nickel dropped in that lake would rest in the mud until eternity. A nickel dropped in our bay might turn up in the Outer Hebrides. I felt frightened of freshwater fish, which I found tasteless to eat: trout, pike, bass, none of which I could identify. Snapping turtles. Water bugs. Swamp adders and pit vipers. Frogs. Lily pads. Branches rotting beneath the surface. In the sea, branches would be tossed onto a beach and saved or pulverized by the tides, waves, and currents.
I sat in a mesh lawn chair watching the Symondses tread water. They formed a circle of heads; their voices carried to me, but not their words. Then Nick struck out from the group and came toward me. He walked onto shore, his bare chest dusted with silvery particles of mud.
“This is nice,” he said. “I’m glad we came. Thanks for suggesting it.”
“I’m glad we came too,” I said, thinking of the Point and Pem’s traditional Fourth of July cake, but absurdly happy to be given credit for our visit with his family.
“We’d see my family much less if it weren’t for you,” he said.
“They’re your family. It’s very important to stay close to them.” It was a philosophy I believed with all my heart, even when staying close to Nick’s family interfered with a day of seeing mine.
We cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on a gas grill, but after that first beer Nick, the pilot, refused to drink another. His mother tried to convince us that we should spend the night, partly so that Nick could help drink the keg, but we stood fast to our plan. We said goodbye at six o’clock. Everyone acted disappointed that we wouldn’t stay to watch Terry’s fireworks, but Nick had to go to the office early the next day. Flying home, I watched the clock and wished for the plane to fly faster. Reading my mind, Nick glanced at me, smiling. “The throttle’s opened up. We’re going as fast as we can.” Mountains turned to hills, farmland to suburbs, we followed the highway to the river and the river to the sea, and we landed in our bay at Bennison Point in time to watch Pem cut the Fourth of July cake.
THE FOURTH OF JULY cake was white and gooey with red, blue, yellow, and green squiggles and twirls of icing. Paper flags of all the states flew from toothpick standards, circling Old Glory in the center. Pem had made the cake, or supervised the making of it, every year since I could remember. That night everyone sat on her porch:
Clare and Donald, the little boys in their summer pajamas, Honora and Pem, me and Nick.
“We can’t cut the cake until the fireworks start,” Eugene said, sounding injured.
“That’s the rule,” Honora said. “That’s always been the way it is.” The sun had set, but light reflected in the sky, clinging to the water’s surface, to the trees, to the yards and houses, to everything on earth.
“Come on, let’s cut the cake,” Pem said, a telltale smear of white frosting in the corner of her mouth.
“What do you do to your brows?” Nick asked, peering into her eyes. She laughed merrily, distracted from her sweet tooth, and spun into the story.
“So many people ask me that!” I heard her say, but I was remembering other Fourth of July cakes.
Everyone in Pem’s family would drive from Providence to Black Hall for the Fourth and the days surrounding it. Our cottages were full of her sisters Gert, Nettie, Lil, and Kat and the husbands and children of everyone except Lil, who had never married; her brothers Edward and Henry and their wives and children; her father, Achilles (pronounced “Ash-heel” in the French manner), a big man of noble proportions whose profile fittingly resembled the Indian on the Buffalo nickel. He was half American Indian. Present also were Pem and Damon, whom Clare and I called “Granddamon,” Honora and Timothy, me and Clare. The generations were staggered in such a way that there were no children our age. Honora was the oldest of her cousins. Many of those cousins were still unmarried; two were married with little babies. Clare and I received a lot of attention. Everyone brought us presents: little chamois sacks of marbles; sweatshirts that said “Narragansett Pier” across the front; tin rings with plastic rubies; our great-aunts’ cast-off sunglasses, pointy and trimmed with rhinestones. They brought boxes full of doughnuts, rolls, and cheeseless pizza. The moment they arrived a card game would start—canasta, pinochle, or thirty-one—and not finish until they left.
Clare and I were aware of small intrigues and rivalries. Everyone vied for Lil, the unmarried great-aunt. Everyone sought to please her by letting her sleep late, bringing her lemonade and beer on a cute little silver tray I never saw except when she visited, offering to buy her nail polish. No one could stand Edna, Henry’s wife. Edward, Gert’s husband Buddy, and my father steered clear of Granddamon. Pem and Honora seemed always to be on opposite sides of the room, making sure everyone had what they wanted. Aunt Kat and Uncle Homer were the most fun, constantly swearing, smoking, and gossiping about Lil and her secret beau, Nettie’s son’s dyslexia, and the connections of various well-known politicians to the Providence mafia. Achilles, whom all his great-grandchildren called “Grampa,” would play cards with everyone, sitting in the same place as long as possible to avoid moving his wondrous bulk. He was totally bald. Clare and I would stare admiringly at his shiny scalp for hours.
Pem would wait until the fireworks were in full swing before carrying the Fourth of July cake onto the porch. Everyone would cease watching the show and remark how beautiful her cake was that year. It seemed the most reverent tribute, that anyone could take their eyes away from those explosive fountains and sizzles long enough to look at a cake, but that is the sort of attention Pem commanded. No matter who was speaking, Pem had merely to clear her throat for silence to fall over her family.
“She was a holy terror when she was little,” Aunt Gert told us.
“In fourth grade she got caught passing a note that called the teacher a namby-pamby fat-assed grumble midget,” Lil said.
“Oh, she used to take my dolls and switch their heads,” Nettie said.
“We took her on canoe rides and she always capsized,” Henry and Edward said.
“Ain’t she sweet?” Grampa asked.
Clare and I would hear those stories, and although we didn’t quite believe them, we respected them, for Pem certainly had power over everyone. Part of it came from their affection for her, but part of it came from something else.
Only my father would continue watching the fireworks when Pem brought out her cake. He would sit in his corner, beside Uncle Edward and me or Clare, smoking a cigarette, watching the sky. “Look at the cake,” I said to him one year, when his arm held me tight and kept me from jumping at every crashing boom. “Mmmm,” he had said, gazing skyward.
Pem always noticed that he refused to look. She never said a word, but I could see her lips tighten. Then she would forget to cut him a piece of cake. I’m not sure whether my father ever tasted the Fourth of July cake.
After the fireworks, Clare and I would each have the lap of our father or Granddamon. Cards would shuffle softly. The pitch of Providence accents formidable, stories would commence. The great-aunts and -uncles told about block dances in Thornton, skating on Silver Lake, bonfires on Neuticonkinet Hill, taking the steamers from Providence to Newport. With much screeching they told about Harriet Grady’s quest to do her brother out of the family inheritance. Aunt Gert told us about the origins of belly buttons, of how babies came out of an oven and God tested their soft tummies with his finger, saying, “You’re done, you’re done. . . .” Even then Clare and I had thought it brave of her to tell that story in the presence of two dedicated scientists, although both our parents had laughed at it. Honora was the beloved niece, Clare and I her children, Timothy her brilliant and therefore distant husband. Clare and I adored those gatherings. Every year we saved a piece of Fourth of July cake, precious as wedding cake, and froze it, to keep until the next year.
ALL THE GREAT-AUNTS and great-uncles, Grampa, Granddamon and my father were dead now. Many of them had died in their nineties, but Grampa had lived to be one hundred and Gert, his oldest daughter, one hundred and two. She had died last year. Granddamon had died in his sleep at seventy-one, and my father had died at forty. He was the youngest and the first to die.
The year his oil rig toppled, Clare and I looked forward more than ever to the Fourth of July. Honora quit the New Bedford television station, and we moved from Woods Hole to Black Hall. What had been our summer place was now our home. Pem and Granddamon lived right next door. After school every day I would sit on Pem’s lap in the Boston rocker, my head against her big soft bosom, and tell her how much I hated school. She had hated school too, so she understood. Pem showed me the best trees to climb, and Granddamon shagged fly balls for me when he came home from the bank. Clare and Honora were nearly inseparable, speaking French to each other or making botanical drawings, until a New Haven station picked up Weather Woman for its Saturday morning lineup and Honora went back to work.
Then school was over and it was the Fourth of July. Clare and I had been counting the days. We had even cut new state flags out of a National Geographic and attached them to virgin toothpicks. Wearing red, white, and blue bathing suits, we waited in the yard for the first cars. Edward’s blue Cadillac bearing his family and Grampa arrived first, followed immediately by the others. The great-aunts and -uncles filed up the hill, and we instantly knew something was wrong. How solemn the procession, how silent! Everyone kissed us, cooing about our father, and Clare and I started to cry. Other people could kiss and coo, but not the great-aunts. From them we wanted whoops and shouts, card games and gossip and presents. After everyone hugged Honora things improved, but not much. All the stories seemed to be reverential ones about Timmy. Clare and I had loved our father, but even we could recognize that he was not the proper subject for stories told by Pem’s people. He was too reserved, too quiet, too kind to inspire the sort of malicious joy that infused their customary tales. All that day I sulked on the rocks, feeling angry at everyone for spoiling the tradition. I had expected them to be the same as ever, to save their phony polite restraint for the funerals of people they knew and loved less than us. But it wasn’t phony. Everyone was truly sad.
That night, waiting for the fireworks to start, I sat between Granddamon and Uncle Homer. The sun set fast that year, and the show started right away. I jumped at the first explosion, and my grandfather held my hand. The rockets flew with clashing,
terrible sounds that reminded me of trees crashing, of the worst thunderstorms, of Moby Dick sounding for the last time, dragging Captain Ahab behind him. Oh, I heard the sea crack and part and swallow them both, and I shuddered and began to cry. My grandfather squeezed my hand tighter. “Shh, little one,” he said. “They’re just fireworks.”
“You love fireworks,” Honora said from across the porch, from her safe spot between Aunt Lil and Aunt Nettie. “Remember we told you how they’re just a chemical reaction?”
I remembered, and I stopped crying, but the terror I felt grew and grew. The great-aunts were quiet that year, the big man beside me couldn’t stop my fear with the gentle weight of his arm across my shoulders, and when Pem brought forth the cake, everyone would be watching her.
“OH, THEY’RE WONDERFUL!” Casey called, watching the twinkling blue ash darken and fall into the bay. A red starburst turned green, then gold, then disappeared. Four bright rockets exploded, followed by a gentle silver fountain.
“Pretty,” Pem said. “Did you see that red one?”
“How about a little cake?” Clare asked.
“No, watch the fireworks!” Eugene said.
“The rule is, cake as soon as the show starts,” Honora said sternly. She lifted the silver knife, the same one Pem had always used, and handed it to Pem.
“The show’s nearly over,” I said. “Why don’t we wait?”
“No,” Honora said, nudging Pem’s forearm, but Pem was spellbound. She sat there, her mouth barely open, watching ashes shower the bay. “Mother!” Honora said.
