The Family Beach House

by Holly Chamberlin

  Tilda wondered when Bobby had the time to read all that he did, and to work as hard as he did. She suspected that he was far more disciplined than most people.

  “You know that Jennifer went back to Portland,” she said now, suddenly feeling the urgent need to confess.

  Bobby took a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and set it on the kitchen table, next to the bag of books. “Ruth told me.”

  “I feel really bad about not making her feel more welcome. It was nothing about her. She seems very nice. It was all about me. My fears. My insecurities.”

  Bobby put two glasses on the table and poured them both a drink. “I’m sure she understands she did nothing wrong.”

  “I hope so. And I so hope we—Hannah, Adam, and I—haven’t put her off Dad entirely. Craig, of course, was nice to her. I wanted to apologize to her but she was gone before I had the chance.”

  They sat at the table. After a moment, Bobby said: “Things will work out if they’re meant to.”

  “Yes,” Tilda said. But she wasn’t sure she believed that. So, she and Frank had not been meant to grow old together? Who had ordained such a horrible thing?

  It was as if Bobby had read her mind. He looked at her and then up at a framed print on the kitchen wall. It was a copy of a van Gogh painting. “You don’t know this, Matilda,” he said, “but I lost my wife. It was a car accident that did it. Your aunt and your father are the only ones outside of my family who know the truth. And now, you know. And some old-timers, who remember when it happened. But they don’t talk about it. There’s no point in talking.” Bobby looked back at her. His gaze was steady.

  Tilda felt tears prick at her eyes but rapidly blinked them away. “I’m so sorry, Bobby,” she said.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Janet.”

  “It’s a pretty name.”

  “I want you to listen to something, Matilda.” Bobby began to quote something, a prayer or a mantra, Tilda thought. The words were vaguely familiar.

  “All shall be well,

  And all shall be well,

  And all manner of things shall be well.”

  “That’s beautiful, Bobby,” Tilda said, truthfully. “Who wrote it?”

  “A thirteenth-century woman. Dame Julian of Norwich.”

  “Of course. I thought it sounded familiar. I must have come across it in college, medieval literature or history. But I’d almost completely forgotten it.”

  “It’s deceptively simple, that prayer. It bears repeating. It might do you some good. Or not.”

  “Thanks, Bobby,” she said. “I’ll try to keep it in mind. Really.”

  Tilda got up from the table and Bobby followed her to the front door.

  “Thank your aunt for the books,” he said.

  Tilda promised that she would and got into her car. She was profoundly grateful for Bobby’s presence in her life.

  Hannah was in the library. She was paging through an old family photograph album. This one chronicled about two years of the McQueens’ life. Adam looked about ten, which meant that Tilda was about seven, Hannah about four. Yes, and there was Craig, appearing about midway through the book as an infant. But after that…Hannah paged to the end of the album. There were very few pictures of Craig. There weren’t all that many of Hannah, either, at least not compared to those of Tilda and Adam. But maybe that was normal, just the way things went in large families. The thrill of yet another new baby simply wore off. The first baby is a miracle. The second baby makes a cute sidekick. The third child was extraneous. The fourth child was redundant.

  Still, Hannah remembered a happy childhood. Look, the photographs proved something. There she was smiling, laughing, blowing out birthday candles, soaring down a slide in the playground. She certainly didn’t look emotionally deprived or neglected. And maybe she really hadn’t been, not in the early years. Maybe her perception of her mother’s relative indifference to her third child had come only later, when Hannah’s awareness of herself as a real person, an individual, took hold. Adolescence. Yes, that was probably about the time that things changed in her relationship with her mother. At least, that was when she became aware that her relationship with her mother was not what it could have been. It was not what Hannah needed or wanted it to be.

  Was that why she had loved babysitting? Had babysitting given her an opportunity, no matter how limited, to give to another child what she, herself, had wanted so badly? Maybe. She thought now about what Susan had said about her own close family, how they never fought, how they hugged and kissed when they met and departed, how they loved their parents. Maybe truly happy families were real, after all.

  Hannah looked up to see Craig enter the library. She noted immediately that his shirt was tucked into his pants and that he was wearing a belt. In place of his usual worn leather sandals (which he wore until Thanksgiving or so) he was wearing decent brown loafers with socks. Where the hell did he get the loafers? she wondered. They were easily circa 1980.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Nowhere special.”

  She didn’t believe him. “You’re lying. Or being elusive.”

  “I don’t lie. Not when I don’t absolutely have to. Not when it’s not a social obligation.”

  “Okay. But you’re up to something, that’s clear.”

  “You have a suspicious mind, Hannah Banana.”

  He went over to a section of the large bookcases and began to scan the rows of books.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mr. Evasive today!”

  “Sorry. I was wondering if we had a—a book about bees.”

  Another lie. “I have no idea. But if you come over here I’ll show you a very cute picture of you when you were just a few months old.”

  “Strolling down memory lane?” he asked, joining her.

  “More like stumbling. Look.”

  Craig bent to look over his sister’s shoulder. It was a picture of Tilda, age seven, sitting on a couch, and holding baby Craig on her lap. She was smiling into the camera. His eyes shifted to the facing page of the album. There was a similar picture, though in this one it was Hannah holding her new brother.

  “Let me see something,” he said. He flipped back through the earlier pages, and then forward, to the end of the book.

  “What are you looking for?” Hannah asked.

  “There’s not one picture of me with Mom,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Not that I’m surprised.” Craig straightened up. “Well,” he said, “guess I better get out of these clothes. I promised myself I’d clean out the garage today.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. Craig left the library. She felt awful for her brother. Charlotte had not been particularly fond of her younger daughter, but she really had virtually ignored her younger son. And Hannah had had to go and remind Craig of that! Hannah shut the photo album and put it away.

  36

  Friday, July 27

  Charlotte’s memorial service was held at St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea on Shore Road in Cape Neddick. Founded in 1897 by Nannie Dunlap Conarroe, in memory of her husband George, St. Peter’s was an Episcopal chapel for summer residents and visitors. It was a beautiful stone building that sat atop Christian Hill. Per George Conarroe’s wishes its cross was visible to fishermen at sea. Dignified St. Peter’s was one of Maine’s most popular locations for baptisms, weddings, and memorials of all sorts. Charlotte’s funeral had taken place there, too.

  The weather was good, with bright skies and no forecast of rain. At a little before ten o’clock the attendees of the memorial service filed into the church. Tessa Vickes, standing at the door, gave each person a red rose to hold. Not surprisingly, red roses had been Charlotte’s favorite flower. Tilda was touched that Tessa had remembered.

  Tilda wore a lightweight, cream-colored silk pantsuit she had bought years and years before at Talbots. Under it
she wore a dusty blue silk blouse. She was thankful it wasn’t a brutally hot day because she already felt warm in the small, un-air-conditioned church. Maybe, she thought, I should reconsider dresses and skirts. At least my legs could breathe. Had she ever seen her mother look uncomfortable in the heat? She didn’t think that she had. Charlotte had always been self-composed.

  Jon and Jane sat to her right. Jon wore a navy blazer, white shirt, no tie, and chinos. Jane had on a flowery chiffonlike top in pinks and purples and a darker pink skirt that came just above her knees. Adam, sitting in the pew directly across the center isle in a dove gray suit and pale yellow tie, seemed to have abandoned his idea of reading a passage from Ayn Rand’s work. Maybe he had forgotten. He looked distracted. Kat looked grim. In honor of the occasion she had chosen to wear a little sweater over her sundress. She didn’t exactly look modest but Tilda appreciated her effort at looking appropriate.

  Hannah, to Tilda’s left, was wearing a pair of enormous sunglasses. Tilda had not seen them before on her sister. She guessed they were protection against more than the bright sun, which was why she was wearing them in the church. Susan’s crinkly cotton dress was a vibrant pattern of pinks and oranges. She carried a straw clutch with a faux-jeweled clasp. Craig sat alone in the pew behind them. He was wearing his best clothes. His expression was inscrutable. His hands were folded in his lap.

  Sarah, sitting in the row behind Adam and Kat, wore her consciously dorky glasses and four strands of wooden beads around her neck. Cordelia was adorable, also consciously, in a black and white flower print dress and black patent leather shoes. Cody looked massively uncomfortable in a blue Oxford shirt buttoned almost to the neck, and tucked neatly (for now) into pressed jeans. It was good of Sarah to have come. Tilda smiled over at her sister-in-law. She was glad they were still friends of a sort, no thanks to Adam.

  Her father, in a sober suit and tie, sat in the first row, just in front of Adam and Kat. Ruth, also in a sober, well-cut suit, sat to his right. The Vickes and Bobby Taylor were to her right. Bobby had worn a tie for the occasion, but no jacket. Tilda wasn’t sure he owned one.

  Tilda looked behind her. The pews were empty. She wondered why her mother’s special friends weren’t in attendance. Carol Whitehouse, the woman who had been with her when she died, had called with a valid excuse not to be there. But where were—Tilda stopped short. Where were who? She tried hard then to recall her mother’s friends but she couldn’t recall a single one other than Carol. Maybe her memory was bad. Maybe her mother had not really had personal friends, like her father had Bobby and Teddy. For the first time Tilda wondered if Charlotte had even liked Tessa Vickes.

  Tilda looked over at Tessa. Outwardly, she was the antithesis of Charlotte McQueen, in her sensible flat sandals and voluminous sundress that looked as if it dated from the seventies, and her hair in a braid down her back. Charlotte had always been perfectly groomed and coiffed. She had worn tailored clothing. She had not cared for flats. And inwardly? A few moments spent with each woman would prove that Tessa Vickes and Charlotte McQueen had been as unlike as two women could be. Tilda doubted there had been a close friendship between them.

  Tilda tried to pay attention to what the minister was saying but her mind continued to wander. Who had been at her mother’s funeral? Tilda couldn’t remember. She had been in shock. She had nodded and shaken hands and accepted condolence cards and then, mercifully, it was all over. She could ask Ruth about the attendees. She was sure to remember. But Tilda wasn’t sure she wanted to know that her mother had died virtually friendless.

  The minister’s tone changed. He was winding up his talk. Tilda realized she had missed everything he had said about her mother. Had he said that she was loved and popular? Had he said that she was universally missed?

  “Almighty God,” he was saying now, “we entrust all who are dear to us to your never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come….” The words, Tilda thought, were most likely from the Book of Common Prayer. She wasn’t sure that she believed in God, but now she found herself silently repeating those words of entreaty and thinking of her beloved and much lamented Frank.

  The party was held at Larchmere in the early evening. Bill had sent an invitation to everyone he knew, no matter how slightly, in the towns of Ogunquit and Wells and Cape Neddick. Tilda wondered how many of the guests had really known or cared for her mother. She suspected that many if not most people had come for her father’s sake.

  Once again the gazebo was lit with strings of tiny white lights. Food was set up on a long table inside, and on smaller tables on the front porch. Adirondack chairs, painted white, sat in small groups around the lawn. Other chairs, a variety of styles, were stacked against the house for the use of whoever wanted one. In the front hall of the house, on a wooden easel that had once belonged to Charlotte (she had taken up painting for about a month one summer), sat a formal portrait of her, taken the year before she died. Charlotte had liked to have formal portraits taken. In this one she was wearing a crisp, white cotton blouse with the collar upturned. Around her neck was tied a small navy silk scarf. She wore pearl studs in her ears. Her face was captured as if she were gazing off into the distance in contemplation. Her hair was slicked into a classic French twist, showing her firm jawline. The photograph had been retouched, but not by much. The Charlotte of the portrait looked expensive and self-contained and utterly self-satisfied. It was, Tilda thought, a very good picture of her mother.

  Tilda wandered the lawn for a while, drink in hand, listening to her father’s guests in conversation. She passed a very old man, someone whose name she couldn’t immediately recall. He was talking to another very old man. Tilda knew him as Turkey Mike but had no idea why he was called that. “I remember when Bill’s father was still alive,” the nameless old man was saying. “My own father helped him build that guest cottage back in, oh, it must have been 1930 some odd, I’d say.”

  “Lots changed since them days,” Turkey Mike replied, with a shake of his head. “Lots changed.”

  Tilda walked on, determined to ask her aunt how Turkey Mike had come by his name.

  “I don’t see that nice Jennifer Fournier here, do you?”

  “No. That seems a bit strange, don’t you think? With she and Bill such an item.”

  The speakers were the elderly Simmons sisters. Martha and Constance lived together in a tidy white farmhouse that had belonged to their parents. Neither had ever married. They were very nice and, as all “spinsters” were said to be, a bit batty. Both were wearing white cotton gloves and straw hats with silk flowers around the brim.

  Tilda vowed to pay the sisters a visit and moved on.

  “Poor Bill looks a bit worn out. The memorial must have been a strain for him.” That speaker was a longtime member of the zoning board. Tilda couldn’t remember his name, either.

  “I wonder when Matilda is going to find herself a new man. A woman shouldn’t be alone like that. It isn’t right.” And that was Mrs. Reed, who had been married four times and who now was rumored to be looking for husband number five.

  Tilda smiled again, and wondered if Mrs. Reed had ever tried to snag Bill McQueen. That, she thought, would have been a disastrous match!

  “Remember when Charlotte wanted to put that god-awful addition on the house?”

  Tilda paused at the mention of her mother. She was behind the speaker and his friend. She recognized them as more Ogunquit old-timers. One had worked in local construction. The other had been a house painter. She wanted to hear what they would say. She grabbed her cell phone from her pocket and pretended to study it, as if she were reading a text message.

  “She fought the zoning board like a, well, like one cat fights another cat invading his turf. But she lost in the end.”

  The former house painter laughed. “I remember Bill was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. That addition wasn’t his idea, I heard tell. But no one ever blamed Bill for any trouble his wife caused. That time or any other. He nee
dn’t have worried that anybody would turn on him.”

  Tilda snapped the phone shut and hurried away from the men.

  37

  Adam had left Kat sitting by herself near the gazebo. She had been out of sorts all day, cranky when she spoke and sullen-faced when she didn’t. He did not like her this way. He wondered what had happened to change her usually placid, good-natured personality so abruptly. It was probably something hormonal, he decided. Well, if this is how she got from a bad period, there was no way in hell he was going to let her get pregnant!

  He was hunting out his father’s lawyer. He spotted him on the front porch and strode rapidly ahead. He was still in the suit he had worn to the memorial service. He was the only one at the party formally dressed.

  “There you are,” he said, bounding up the porch stairs. “I want to talk to you.”

  Teddy, drink in hand, looked at him with some amusement, which Adam interpreted as confusion. “You do, do you?” Teddy said. “What about?”

  “I want to know the contents of my father’s will.”

  “And I want my hair to grow back but that isn’t going to happen either.”

  Adam frowned. “This is not a joke, Teddy. I need to know before things get further out of hand.”

  “Things seem to be just fine to me. Except,” he said pointedly, “for Jennifer’s not being here, that is.”

  “Forget about her. If she knows what’s good for her, she won’t be coming back.”

  Teddy took a long sip of his drink before saying, “Adam McQueen, your behavior is appalling. I thought your father raised you better.”

  “My father was too busy working to raise anyone. My mother was responsible for everything. But that’s beside the point. Tell me what’s in my father’s will. I have a right to know.”

  “Son,” Teddy said, drawing himself straight and tall, “you aren’t going to get a word out of me about your father’s personal business so you might as well save your breath on trying.”