Summer Beach Reads

by Thayer, Nancy

  The night air was fresh against her skin. The silence of the streets, broken by the occasional honking of a taxi horn or the slamming of a door, seemed like peace. They walked through the Public Gardens and Boston Common, admiring the lush green trees and flower beds, and up and down the rather European-looking residential streets leading away from the Common, past the private clubs and the stately town house residences with their elaborate architectural features in marble and stone. Past Trinity Church and the public library. Past the Arlington Street Church and up Beacon Hill to the State House.

  “So much history here,” Anne murmured, looking up at the golden dome.

  “But we’re here now,” Herb told her. “And I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

  He took her hand.

  They walked and talked, and sometime after midnight they stopped at an all-night diner for coffee and apple pie. Anne took Herb back to her room that night—that morning, the sun was coming up. They didn’t make love. They just lay down, fully clothed, on her narrow bed, and snuggled together and fell asleep. They were tired, but they didn’t want to go their separate ways. They felt at home with each other. And when they did wake up, they made love, and it was Anne’s first time, and it felt just right.

  But she had certainly not set her cap for Herb Wheelwright. She’d had no idea that he was so wealthy or that his family owned a bank in Boston, and when she did find out she didn’t care. Why should she? Her family owned half the stockyards in Kansas City. She knew, if she married him, she’d have to move to Boston after the war, but while that didn’t bother her, it didn’t excite her either. She didn’t care whether they had ten children or none, whether he went into politics like his parents were hoping or not, whether they lived on Beacon Hill or in a tent in the middle of the Public Garden. She just wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with her.

  After two weeks, Herb asked her to marry him. She threw her arms around him and kissed the word yes all over his face. They wanted to marry right away.

  Anne telephoned her parents, who gave her their preoccupied blessing and said they’d try to come east for the wedding, but they couldn’t promise. Anne wasn’t surprised. Her father had turned executive control of the stockyards over to his wife so that he could direct his attention to the management of a factory producing and packaging meat “products” that were compressed in twelve-ounce gold-tone tin cans and shipped to the overseas troops. Augustus—Gus—Anderson was everywhere at once in the factory, working day and night, scrutinizing the quality of production like an eagle—this food was going to the boys fighting overseas. Even on the telephone, Anne could hear the exhaustion in her parents’ voices.

  “Darling girl,” her mother said, “we’re so happy to hear good news during this horrible time. I’m glad you’ve found this man, and I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

  “And we will all meet up as soon as possible, God willing,” her father added.

  Herb also phoned his parents, who were ensconced in their summer home on the island of Nantucket, and today he and Anne had taken the stately old steamer from Woods Hole to Nantucket so that Anne could meet his family. They’ll be aloof, Herb warned Anne. Judgmental. But it was important for the future that Herb and Anne do this, now. It was the right thing to do.

  So here she stood, at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping.

  Not for the first time, Anne missed her own father. If he were with her now, he’d take her arm in his and tap beneath her chin until she lifted her head proudly. He’d sweep into the living room with Anne beside him, and he’d beam his welcoming, expansive, generous, Midwestern smile, and even Herb’s mother would gawk, because Anne’s handsome father, Gus, radiated the natural-born charm of an optimist. Herb’s father would like him, too. Gus would shake Herb’s father’s hand with his own large, muscular work-toughened paw, and Herb would know at once that Gus was an ally.

  Anne had once exuded a similar relaxed and easy charm, but she quickly discovered that here in the East, because she was young and untried, she appeared to people as simply naïve and even a little silly, more like a girl than the woman she was. So here at the Wheelwrights’ summer home, she had to monitor her own wide smile. She had to tamp down her natural enthusiasm. She had to summon up some kind of dignity. She had to act, for heaven’s sake, with decorum, and if Gail knew, she’d fall out of her chair laughing.

  But this was important. Herb’s family was important to him. Anne’s family was important to her too, but they’d recognized her as an adult long ago. They’d turned her loose. She knew that after the war she would be living in Boston with Herb and coming here to this very house in the summers, where Wheelwrights had come every year since the 1800s.

  “You going to turn and run, honey?”

  Anne squeaked with shock as a soft voice sounded just at her shoulder. Herb’s sister Holly stood there with a big grin and one eloquently arched eyebrow. She wore a red wool suit with a Christmas wreath of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on the lapel.

  “I was straightening my seams,” Anne insisted, striving for dignity even though, the one time she’d met Holly, she’d liked her immediately.

  Holly’s glance whisked up and down Anne’s figure. “They’re straight as rulers, Anne. But let me warn you, my mother is a rat terrier disguised as a human. If she can get you by the throat, she’ll shake you till you’re dead, so don’t let her take hold. And don’t look so shocked. I’ve had to live with the woman all my life, remember.” Holly linked her arm through Anne’s. “You’re the first woman my brother has dared to bring home, did you know that? I can tell he loves you, so I would be hugely disappointed if you let the old battle-ax beat you down.”

  “I love Herb, too,” Anne whispered as they descended the stairs.

  “Chin up, then,” Holly ordered.

  The living room swept across the entire side of the house, with a fireplace at one end and, at the other end, windows full of sky and sea in daytime but draped with heavy velvet now. Enthroned in a wing chair by the fire sat Herb’s mother, in a white wool dress and pearls. She looked like she was chewing nails.

  Anne smiled tremulously. “Hello.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Wheelwright?”

  “What?” It was with effort that Nona abandoned her memories. Where was she?

  She was still in the living room of the Nantucket house, but in the present, or what other people thought of as the present. After the war, Holly had married and moved to Montana, where she and her husband raised cattle, horses, and several unruly children. Holly had happily given up all claims to the Nantucket property long ago. She and her family never enjoyed coming east. Nona and Herb had visited them several times over the years, impressed by the spacious, bustling, western life Holly had chosen for herself.

  Now Holly was dead. She’d died—my goodness—fifteen years ago. Holly’s husband had died not long after, and their children remained in the area where they’d grown up. Nona seldom saw them, but they were dutiful in sending cards on her birthday. Nona kept a birthday book and always remembered to send them birthday cards, too.

  And Nona’s beloved husband, Herb, was dead. He had passed away five years ago.

  But Nona wouldn’t allow herself to brood. She was reasonably fit, active, and lucid, and she was not alone. She had Charlotte’s engaging company, and Glorious to brighten her life and take care of her.

  Any moment now her family—her family—her children and their children and all their noise and turbulence and demands and excitements—would scatter into this house like a flock of gabbling geese, and she would have no more time for little voyages into the past.

  Nona had to think of her family, had to think of their comfort and appetites and emotions. She had to focus.

  “Yes.” Her voice, not so often used these days, was dry and croaking. To her Jamaican housekeeper, she said, “Yes, please, Glorious.”

  At that moment the telephone rang and, as Glorious hurried off to answer, Nona heard t
he first automobile pull into the drive.

  Three

  Helen decided she wouldn’t make coffee. She was trying to figure out, without resorting to a visit to her doctor, what was causing her headaches. They troubled her almost daily now, sometimes operating with a fierce viselike action, squeezing her temples, but usually they were mild, weighing down her skull with a kind of bovine heaviness. Today she would go without caffeine and see if that helped.

  Slipping a silk wrapper over her nightgown, she padded barefoot down the hall, down the stairs, and through the quiet house into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sipped it standing at the kitchen sink, gazing out at their long backyard rolling down to the Charles River.

  Today she and Worth were flying down to the island for the weekend, to celebrate Nona’s birthday. Nona was going to be ninety!

  It would be a grand celebration. All spring Worth had plotted with his sister Grace. They rented the yacht club for a party, made out a guest list, sent out handsome invitations. Helen had phoned her sister-in-law twice to assure her she would like to help. We’ll let you know when we need you, Grace had replied. Helen felt more relieved than rejected. Grace and her husband, Kellogg, were methodical and organized. And bossy Grace loved to nitpick and criticize.

  Helen’s headache began its bass note hum. She set her glass in the sink and went into the den. Pulling out her office chair, she settled at her desk and opened her engagement calendar. This small act centered her, smoothed down the ruffled fur of the flustered little beast of her mind.

  She’d known when she married Worth that she was taking on the entire Wheelwright family, but she had been too ferociously in love to worry about it. As an only child, she’d welcomed belonging to a large family, especially a family like the Wheelwrights, so well known and respected. Worth’s parents, Anne and Herb, had a kind of glamour, and they were very much in love with each other. That seemed like a good omen for Helen’s own marriage.

  And who could complain about spending two months every summer in the wonderful old Wheelwright house? Grace and Kellogg played doubles tennis with Helen and Worth, and the four of them joined Anne and Herb for dinner dances at the yacht club. They played badminton and croquet on the neatly mowed lawn, and when the wind was calm they sailed on a rippling silver path in the moonlight.

  It was when their three children—Charlotte, Oliver, and Teddy—were born that Helen truly fell in love with the summer house. There, the long summer days were glorious. Grace’s three daughters—Mandy, Mellie, and Mee—were close in age to Helen’s brood, and the children all tumbled around like puppies in the spacious sunlit rooms in the big old house on the harbor. If it rained, they’d do jigsaw puzzles or play wild games of hide-and-seek and board games. When the sun was out, the hours of the day were like honey.

  Years ago, when Worth and Bobby and Grace were young, their father had had sand delivered to make a small beach where the harbor waters lapped at the grassy shore. Over time, as the wind whipped low dunes along the lawn’s end, beach grass and wild roses found homes there, creating a natural wild seaside garden, which in the summer, when the roses bloomed, filled the air with a sweet perfume. Anne and Herb’s children played on the beach and then, as the years passed, Anne became Nona, and Herb became Grandpa and their grandchildren played there.

  Grace married Kellogg and had three children. Worth married Helen and had three children. Like their parents, the children built elaborate fantastical sand castles or spread their towels on the hot sand and lay soaking in the sun and warming up after a dip in the shimmering blue shallows of the harbor. Later, they learned to sail from the Wheelwrights’ wooden dock and played beach volleyball in the shallows, coming in for dinner drenched and salty, their smiles flashing white against their tanned skin.

  Over the years, Grace’s husband, Kellogg, and Worth stayed in Boston at the bank all week, so Helen and Grace were thrown together without their husbands. This was usually okay, although Grace could be a bit intimidating and officious. Grace had such high standards. Helen didn’t really mind if the children had mac and cheese two nights in a row, but Grace wrote out menus for the week and stuck to them, rain or shine. With her own children, Grace was a bit of a dictator, but while she often made “suggestions” to Helen about how she should raise her children, she was never pushy. She just sort of exuded a smug perfume of superiority.

  Helen had always liked Worth’s family. But she could never be like them. She remembered the time, ten years before, when she told them at Family Meeting she would like to run an art gallery on the island. They’d reacted as if she’d suggested boiling puppies. Wheelwrights were bankers! Their bank had been founded in 1878 by Worth’s great-grandfather. Once simply named The Fourth Bank of Boston, over the years it had changed names and added owners and directors. Worth was co-CEO, sharing duties with his old friend Lew Lowry and Grace’s husband, Kellogg. Grace had chosen to remain in the background, running their home but always keeping informed. The bank was the hub of the Wheelwrights’ lives. No Wheelwright did anything as frivolous as run an art gallery.

  “Well, I think you’re all stuffy and unimaginative,” Worth had told the others at that Family Meeting. “Helen’s got a great eye for art and she’s a wonder at networking. I’ll stake her the start-up money personally, and I’ll bet you I get it all back and more.”

  Helen had been pleased that her husband had championed her, but after that meeting she lost her momentum. Even then she was aware that her children were breaking away from the Wheelwright traditions, and she didn’t want to seem to be widening the breach. And perhaps she didn’t want to risk failure; perhaps that was a small part of her decision.

  Now a small bolt of pain forked through Helen’s head. Could it be nervous tension? Because she was headed for another season on the island?

  She focused on her engagement calendar. When her three children grew up and left home, Helen had joined several volunteer organizations, helping with church fairs, volunteering in libraries both in Boston and on the island, and tutoring students in English as a Second Language. All this work brought her great pleasure, a sense of accomplishment, and—she could never admit this to anyone—a kind of self-awareness she hadn’t even realized she was missing.

  In July the Nantucket library would hold a book sale. She was co-chair. She was also in charge of the auction of the needlepoint quilt for the church. But she wasn’t worried about these responsibilities. She had them well in hand. Her volunteer work was not the cause of her headaches.

  Helen closed her calendar and allowed herself to admit the truth.

  For the first time ever, she was dreading the two months at the summer house. Dreading being around Worth’s sister and her perfect family. Helen’s own children seemed so feckless in comparison.

  All three of Grace’s children had made good marriages with people from Nona’s circle. Mandy and Claus had presented Nona with two healthy great-grandchildren. Mandy and Mellie’s husbands both held prominent positions at the bank.

  But Helen and Worth’s children showed no interest in banking. They were, at the best, eccentric and at the worst—well, the worst didn’t bear considering.

  Charlotte, the eldest child, had tried working at the bank. Charlotte adored her father and wanted to please him. She had put in three years before suddenly handing in her notice. At the next Family Meeting, she’d surprised them all with her naïve little scheme for an organic garden. Helen sympathized with Charlotte, who was trying to save the world, as Worth secretly joked, one head of lettuce at a time. And she thought Charlotte appreciated the fact that the family were all being supportive of her oddball endeavor. Well, they were all comfortable with Charlotte in an oddball endeavor. Charlotte’s enthusiasms were always genuine and passionate but seldom long-lasting. The family could indulge Charlotte one more time. She’d settle down eventually—she was their best hope for being what the family would consider normal. Perhaps she would return to the bank.

&
nbsp; Oliver, Helen’s second-born and secretly her most beloved child, would never work at the bank. Staggeringly handsome, Oliver had always been the most like his mother, interested in art and music, bored with sports and banking, mild-mannered and dreamy. Helen and Worth had not been surprised when, at sixteen, Oliver announced that he was gay. Back then, Worth was still trying to groom Oliver to take over the bank, but Oliver combined his father’s facility for numbers with his mother’s love of art and became an architect. Now, at twenty-eight, he was living and working in San Francisco with his partner, Owen. Oliver and Owen were planning a commitment ceremony this year.

  Their third child, Teddy, was the real problem. He was becoming—could she actually say it?—a drug addict and alcoholic. Harsh words. Painful, frightening words. She wasn’t sure they were accurate. Teddy had always been moody, volatile, and, she had to admit it, spoiled. Possessed of the same charismatic good looks all her children had—the shining maple sugar hair, the sapphire eyes rimmed with thick dark lashes—Teddy was the baby of the family. If Helen had spoiled him, so had everyone else. Helen had often wondered just how much difference it made that Herb, Teddy’s grandfather and the stern commanding patriarch of the Wheelwrights, had died during Teddy’s teenage years. She’d always believed that Herb might have talked some sense into Teddy. She and Worth had not managed to do that, no matter how hard they’d tried.

  Since they couldn’t change Teddy, somehow they had, without conscious agreement, changed themselves. Changed their standards. Teddy hadn’t been subjected to the tongue lashings and groundings they’d imposed on the two older children. But Teddy was so sweet!

  As a child he was simply a mischievous elf, playing pranks. Somehow all that had blurred, until, when he was eleven, he’d sneaked out one night and driven Worth’s Mercedes around the neighborhood and into a wall. That time, they’d been so glad he wasn’t injured that they hadn’t gotten angry. And really it was hard to be angry with Teddy. He had an infectious laugh and a lightning-quick wit. He had the same easy charm Worth and Oliver had, too. He was kindhearted and gentle, never mean. At boarding school he got into trouble for all kinds of silliness, but he was always simply playful, roguish, not destructive, at least not on purpose.