The Summer Hideaway

by Susan Wiggs

  “I’m afraid…” The doctor—Bancroft was his name—Dr. Bancroft cleared his throat and started again. “Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid it’s the worst possible news,” he said. There was a pause, filled with the sounds of George’s parents, still weeping.

  “It’s polio.”

  Ten

  “George has a list,” Claire said to Ross. “Did you know that?” They were on the porch, waiting for George to wake up from his nap. She had just collected the mail from the main lodge. George had friends all over the globe, and had already received a couple of cards and letters. It was a day of soft breezes and sunshine coaxing new blooms from the lilac bushes and inviting the wildflowers to open up. George had slept most of the day, and Ross had been on the phone with—she assumed—various family members.

  Claire was seated on the cushioned swing, listening to the clack of the chains as she moved. Ross sat nearby in a wicker armchair. Despite the relaxing setting, he seemed tense and restive.

  “What kind of list?” asked Ross.

  “It’s a kind of…I guess you’d call it a list of things he’d like to accomplish in the time he has left.” She watched Ross’s shoulders stiffen, and it hurt her to look at him. He was still so far from accepting the situation. She wished she could comfort him with a gentle touch or soothing word, but she sensed he didn’t want that from her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “Like finding his long-lost brother,” said Ross.

  “That’s on the list.”

  “Today?”

  “Let’s see how he feels when he wakes up.”

  When he’d told her about his boyhood summers at Camp Kioga, giving her a glimpse of the vanished past, she could picture the two brothers exploring together, never knowing one day they’d be enemies, looking back on the long-ago time of their youth. She could picture him and his little brother, Charles, and the girl named Jane Gordon playing at Three Musketeers, deep in their fantasy world.

  She’d wanted to tell him he was an idiot. A man who didn’t contact his brother for five decades needed to have his head examined. But…no. She couldn’t allow herself to project her own issues on her patient.

  And so she’d listened. That was a huge part of her job. Exploring the events of the past and reconnecting with family tended to bring a sense of peace. She hoped this would be the case for George.

  Like a dark fairy tale, the golden summer had turned shadowy with the Gordons’ tragic loss of their son and George’s diagnosis of polio.

  Claire had only a passing knowledge of the disease from a unit in an advanced practice course in nursing school. Like every other doctor and nurse she knew, she’d never seen an acute case. There were a few known late effects, and now she saw them in George’s muscle and joint fatigue. The atrophied muscle at the base of his right thumb was a classic presentation, yet she hadn’t connected the dots until he told her.

  “Did your grandfather tell you he’s a polio survivor?” she asked Ross.

  He spun around to face her. Sunlight slashed across his face. “Granddad had polio?”

  “You didn’t know.” She swallowed, feeling guilty. “My apologies, then. I thought he might have told you.”

  “Jesus,” Ross said. “Polio. Okay, I had no idea.”

  “I’ve been reading up on something called post-polio syndrome—PPS. Later in life, it can be the cause of joint and muscle pain.”

  “He’s in pain?” Ross asked. “How much pain?”

  “I ask him that every day, and he says it’s manageable.”

  “Polio,” Ross said again. “He never told me.”

  “You should ask him about it. He came down with the disease right here at Camp Kioga in 1944. He’s a wonderful storyteller, as I’m sure you know, and these days, stories of polio are incredibly rare.”

  “If he can live through polio, then why won’t he fight now?” Ross demanded. “He was saved by medical science, sixty-something years ago—”

  “He was saved by a damned miracle,” she said. “There was no cure for polio. There still isn’t, just a vaccine.”

  “Oh, so we should just sit around in the wilderness, waiting for a miracle? Is that what we should do?”

  “What we should do is what George wishes.” Claire’s heart ached for Ross, because his eyes were full of everything he would not say. Being here in this beautiful place was lovely, but she knew every moment Ross and George spent together was bittersweet, tinged by the shadow of George’s illness.

  In her profession, grieving relatives came with the territory. She had seen a whole range of reactions, from open hysteria to stoic acceptance, and everything in between, including those who tried everything to stave off death. People wrung hands and offered prayers, reminisced and baked and wept and comforted each other. They also fought, showing her everything from bickering to rage. Her least favorite were the ones who pretended to care when in reality, they were desperate to claim their piece of the inheritance pie.

  Ross was still processing the raw shock of reality, she could tell, even from the way he held his hands, flexing and unflexing them.

  “Shit,” he said, watching a hummingbird dart in and out of the hanging plants.

  “That’s not on the list,” she said.

  “What the hell good is a list?” he demanded. “Was this your idea? What are you, some kind of bad fairy, feeding an old man’s fantasies?”

  She didn’t let herself get mad. This was not about her. “We all have goals,” she pointed out, “whether or not they’re written down. Some part of us wants to keep track, you know?”

  “Bullshit.”

  She could already read his moods. Maybe, she thought, that was one of the reasons she felt drawn to him. He was—or seemed to be—entirely honest and let his feelings hover close to the surface. She understood that he didn’t trust her, and had decided not to fight it. She could never be fully honest with anyone. Sometimes the urge to explain everything was unbearable, building with painful intensity in her chest. She was desperate for someone to know her, not just her circumstances the way Mel Reno did, but her. She yearned for someone to affirm that she mattered.

  Clearing her throat, she asked, “So are you willing to help your grandfather reconnect with his brother?”

  “Suppose I said I’m not,” said Ross.

  “Then you’re not the person he told me about, with such pride. But I think you are,” she said simply. She held out a slip of paper. “This is Charles Bellamy’s contact information.”

  He grabbed the note from her and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “He’s going to be so grateful, Ross.”

  Ross ran his hand back and forth over his cropped hair. She wondered what it would look like when the military crew cut grew in. She would probably never know. And how pathetic was that, having relationships that were shorter than an army haircut?

  “His freaking brother,” Ross muttered. “They haven’t talked in an entire lifetime. Now suddenly there has to be some phony reunion thing.”

  Claire thought about what George had told her about that long-ago summer. “I don’t think it’ll be phony.”

  “Okay, but doesn’t he get it? The time to act like brothers is when they’re living, not dying. When being together and knowing each other and being close could do him some good, instead of just depressing him.”

  “There’s no reason to assume he’ll be depressed. It’s what he wants,” Claire said. “When you get to the place he is, you quit worrying about what’s needed and you do what you want.”

  Ross was quiet for a time. Then he asked, “So what else is on the list?”

  “Everything from serious talks with family members—not just his brother—to small gestures, like reading a special novel or playing a round of golf, to big thrills.”

  He turned to her, cracked a smile. “What kind of big thrills?”

  “Actually the biggest one of all is something you might be able to help him with, in your capacity as a pilot.”
>
  “What, he wants to fly a chopper? I guess I could arrange it.”

  “Not fly it,” she said. “Jump out of it. Out of a plane, actually. You know, skydiving.”

  “Skydiving,” Ross said, glaring at her. “Are you kidding me?”

  “You know me,” said George, stepping out on the porch to join them. “I wouldn’t kid about something like this.”

  “George,” Claire said, stopping the swing with her foot. “I didn’t hear you get up.” She did a quick visual assessment. He looked somewhat refreshed by his nap, and he was moving well, his eyes alert behind the glasses.

  “I’m pleased to find you discussing my list,” he said.

  “Among other things,” said Ross. “I never knew you were a polio survivor. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “It happened so long ago,” George said. “It hardly matters. Did you know the greatest strides in rehabilitating polio patients came from a nurse?”

  “Sister Elizabeth Kenny,” said Claire. “She demonstrated that polio patients who underwent physical therapy had a better chance of recovery than those kept immobilized. Is that how you recovered?”

  George nodded. “Eventually. I was in an iron lung at first.”

  Her heart lurched as she recalled seeing all the old black-and-white photos of encased children, rows and rows of them in special hospital wards. How trapped they must have felt, how helpless.

  “My brother, Charles, used to read to me,” George said quietly. “Patients with acute signs of the disease aren’t contagious, so he was allowed to visit. And the majority of people can be exposed and never come down with polio. Charles was probably one of those. They would let him come to the ward, and he would read books to me.” His eyes turned distant with memories. “When you’re confined to an iron lung, you live for the moments that take you away. Books did that for me. And Charles in particular. Although he was quite young, he was a remarkably good reader. He would entertain the entire ward. I recall him reading The Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Hardy Boys mysteries.”

  She glanced at Ross and could tell he was warming up to the idea of approaching Charles Bellamy.

  “Books were marvelous companions for me,” George said. “But it was hard to count one’s blessings from inside an iron lung.”

  Her heart lurched, and she met Ross’s gaze. He looked amazed to learn this whole new part of his grandfather’s history. In college, Claire had studied the history of epidemiology. It was one thing to read about the polio epidemic, to study the statistics and patterns of contagion, the progression of the disease and the race to develop a vaccine. But until George, she’d never met someone who had the disease.

  “I should have been more appreciative,” George added. “In many cases, too many cases, a diagnosis of polio was a death sentence.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t die, George.”

  With a wink at Ross, he said, “I’m certain my grandson would say the same. In later years, I was always self-conscious about having a lame leg. I spent too much time brooding about what the disease took from me. But I was young, and couldn’t help feeling robbed. I gave up on any sort of sport or physical activity.”

  “I didn’t realize the leg still troubled you,” Claire said. “It’s much less apparent than you think.”

  “At this point in my life, I’m past worrying about other people’s opinions. It’s remarkable how easy things are becoming now that I’ve stopped worrying about what people think. Should have done it a long time ago. I’m sure I’ll say the same of skydiving—”

  “Yeah, about that,” said Ross. “I’m not so sure you need to be jumping out of an airplane.”

  “That’s why I waited so long to try it,” said George.

  “Come on, Granddad. Seriously?”

  “Serious as a heart attack,” George assured him. “It’s not very original, I admit. Everyone mentions skydiving as something they’d like to do before they die. I think it’s a universal yearning to fly. We all want that freedom.”

  “Trust me,” Ross said, “it’s overrated.”

  “You’re lying,” said George.

  “Okay, it’s a kick in the ass,” Ross admitted with a hint of a smile. “But only if you’ve had major training and preparation.”

  “I don’t have time for that,” said George, matter-of-factly.

  “How about I take you flying. Do a couple of stunts—”

  “Skydiving,” Granddad insisted. “Nothing else will do. I want the freedom. The long fall. What are you afraid of, Ross? That I’ll get hurt? That I’ll die?” He leaned back, folded his hands behind his head. “Look at it this way. If the skydiving kills me, you won’t need to worry about helping me with anything else on my list.”

  “The list is bullshit. It was your idea,” Ross accused Claire.

  “I was hoping to find the two of you getting along better,” George said. “You’ve only just met, and you’re bickering like newlyweds.”

  Claire flushed. “Ross is very concerned about you. He wants you to go back to the city. He wants you to keep pursuing treatment.”

  Ross looked startled; clearly he’d been regarding her as the enemy. “It’s true, Granddad,” he said. “I want you to fight this thing.”

  “Of course you do, my boy. You’re a fighter. Always have been.”

  “You do have that option,” said Claire.

  “You know what I think of that option.”

  She nodded. Folded her arms in front of her. “You can change your mind anytime you want. There will be no questions asked. This isn’t a competition or test of any sort. You get instant compliance with what you want.”

  “I won’t change my mind.” He took a seat next to Ross. “Don’t you think if there was a chance—any chance—to stay with you, I would?” he asked softly.

  Claire had to look away from the expression in Ross’s eyes.

  George, bless him, managed to summon a smile. “Take me skydiving, Ross. I’ve always wondered what it was like.”

  “But—”

  “I know it’s dangerous, son. I don’t care. If I die in the attempt, I’ve only done myself out of a few weeks, right? Months, at the most. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s my thinking on the matter.”

  “And I’m supposed to help you with this?” Ross said, incredulous.

  “We were thinking you could make the arrangements,” said Claire.

  “You’re certified in tandem jumping,” George said. “We could do it together.”

  “Sorry, give me a minute with this visual. You want to jump out of a plane, strapped to me?”

  “That’s correct,” said George. “I would consider it a complete privilege.”

  Ross clenched his jaw and glared at Claire. “I’ll think about it. Maybe make a few calls.”

  She knew then that he would do it. He had a reluctant-but-willing look on his face. “Speaking of your list,” she said, “this came in today’s mail.” She handed George an express mail packet.

  He turned the packet over in his hands, checking the return address. “Penguin Group publishing,” he said, and his eyes lit with delight. “Young lady, is this what I think it is?”

  “Why don’t you open it and see?”

  His hand trembled a little as he opened the parcel. Out slipped a book, bound in plain card stock, labeled Advance Reading Copy—Not For Sale. There was a worldwide publication date of September 28.

  “Fall of Giants by Ken Follett,” said George. “This is top secret stuff, Claire. The most hotly anticipated novel since that vampire craze. How on earth did you get a copy?”

  “I have my ways,” she said. She almost never stayed in touch with families of former patients, but in this case, she’d made an exception. She’d looked after the mother of a production intern at a publisher, and he was so grateful for her help that he’d offered her any book on the company’s list, at any stage of production. For George’s sake, she’d called in the favor.

  “I shall enjoy this immensely. Thank you,
Claire.” George turned to Ross. “She’s extremely thoughtful.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ross clearly didn’t want to hear about her thoughtfulness. “So, let’s talk a little more about the list, Granddad.”

  He tapped his breast pocket. “The main reason I’m here is to try to make amends with my brother, if that’s possible. I need to see if there is anything left after fifty-five years of silence.”

  “With all due respect,” said Ross, “why haven’t you called him yet?”

  George smiled. “I confess, I’m hesitant to disrupt other people’s lives. My own—well, that was thoroughly disrupted by this confounded diagnosis. Still, that doesn’t give me the right to barge in on unsuspecting people.”

  Claire watched them both closely, noting the strong family resemblance. In Ross, she could see the young man George might have been at one time. And in George, she could see the mature man Ross might become one day.

  Sometimes she wondered about her own background, though she tried not to dwell on unanswered questions. She’d never met any of her grandparents. She knew of exactly four photographs of her mother, but was in possession of none of them. Even now, it was too dangerous to carry any connection to the past. The photos—one Polaroid and three snapshots—were being safeguarded by Mel, but Claire had memorized each one. Yet when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t know if she could see her face in her mother’s face, or if there had ever been a time when her mother had looked at her and seen something familiar.

  There was a slight tremor in George’s hand as he took the small leather-bound volume from his pocket containing his list. “When I first heard my diagnosis, and my prognosis, I did pick up the phone. Many times. Such a simple thing, picking up the phone and placing a call. But between the time I held the phone in my hand and looked at the number I had tracked down for Charles, I could see the passing of a lifetime. I’ll just say it—I turned cowardly. This is too important for a simple telephone conversation. I didn’t want to ruin my one chance. I want to get it right, so I need to come up with the best way to go about this.”