All Our Summers

by Holly Chamberlin

  Bonnie felt she had no choice but to accept her sister’s less-than-gracious hospitality. She brought the box of gnomes inside and placed it on a small table.

  “I just made a pot of coffee,” Carol said as she made her way to the kitchen.

  Was she offering coffee to her guests? Bonnie took a chance. “Thanks,” she said, following her sister. “I can come by another time when you’re not here to set them up.”

  “Set what up?” Carol asked.

  “The gnomes.”

  Julie appeared then in the kitchen. Bonnie was acutely aware of her daughter’s disheveled appearance.

  “Hello, Julie,” Carol said. “Would you like a coffee?”

  Julie attempted a smile. “Sure. Thanks.”

  “It’s good to finally see you. Though you look distressed. What’s wrong?”

  “Julie was a victim of a hit and run,” Bonnie blurted.

  “Just now? Were you hurt?” Carol asked. She put her hand on Julie’s arm for a moment.

  Bonnie continued to speak for her daughter. “The other day. She wasn’t in the car at the time. It was parked in a lot. Whoever it was drove off and didn’t leave a note.”

  “Bad luck, but at least no one was injured,” Carol said, as she set three cups on the kitchen island. “Hopefully insurance will cover the cost of repairs.”

  Julie took a sip of her coffee. “Of course, this would happen to me,” she said suddenly, with a pained little laugh. “I’m clearly not one of those people meant for success or happiness.”

  Carol took a sip of her own coffee. “Self-pity isn’t attractive, Julie,” she said.

  “Don’t I have the right to self-pity?” Julie retorted, to her mother’s surprise. “Doesn’t everyone have that right at some point in her life?”

  “Yes,” Carol said. “But only for a bit. Other people get tired of a demonstration of self-pity pretty quickly.”

  Bonnie felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Don’t talk to my daughter that way,” she spat.

  “What way?” Carol said calmly. “I’m just trying to help. A year from now, nobody is going to have any time or attention to give to Julie and her woes. There will be new scandals to talk about.”

  “They’ll still care,” Bonnie insisted. “Yorktide will still care that one of its own was betrayed.”

  “It was a case of infidelity, mundane, boring, and unfortunately, all too common,” Carol said. “Yorktide will soon wonder why Julie hasn’t gotten on with her life.”

  “I don’t want Yorktide to be thinking anything about me,” Julie said fiercely. “I hate that my life is so public. The shame and humiliation. . . I feel like they’ll never go away as long as I live here.”

  “But leaving Yorktide is out of the question, I suppose?” Carol asked.

  “Of course, it is,” Bonnie snapped. “This is Julie’s home. It’s where she’s raising her child. She can’t just uproot Sophie and drag her off somewhere foreign to start all over again. Of course, that’s what you expected of your own daughter, that she start over again with—”

  “With her family in a place she’d known since she was a baby,” Carol snapped. She turned to her niece. “Are you thinking about leaving Scott?”

  “I’m not leaving him,” Julie said firmly.

  “Okay, so you’re committed to staying married to Scott and to staying here in Yorktide. Now what?”

  “What do you mean, now what?” Bonnie said.

  “Does Julie just let the depression go on without getting some professional help?” Carol asked. “If she hopes that the marriage is salvageable, the longer she’s miserable, the more difficult it will be to set things right with Scott.”

  Bonnie opened her mouth to reply when suddenly, Julie slammed her cup onto the island.

  “I just want to be left alone, all right? Look, I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll meet you back at the car, Mom.”

  Neither of the older women tried to stop her from leaving.

  Bonnie was furious. “Don’t you have any compassion?” she hissed when Julie was gone. “She’s depressed, Carol. She can’t help herself.”

  “I do have compassion for someone in her situation,” Carol said firmly. “More than you know.”

  “Her marriage was the most important thing in her life. Scott’s betrayal has turned her world upside down. All she wants is to be able to believe in her marriage again.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Carol said. “But the marriage vow shouldn’t be a manacle. When a person is being damaged by the union, she should be free to get out.”

  “So, you want Julie and Scott to divorce?” Bonnie demanded.

  Carol sighed. “You’re putting words into my mouth. All I know is that Julie is my niece and I don’t like seeing her so miserable.”

  Bonnie felt chastened. “All right,” she said. “Fair enough.”

  Carol busied herself fetching a paring knife and an apple. Bonnie cast an eye around the kitchen. Things looked pretty much the same as they had the day Carol Ascher had descended on Yorktide this summer. And Bonnie was relieved to see that the photograph of their parents taken on their honeymoon in Acadia National Park was still on the wall by the old landline. She thought that Carol might have hidden it away in a drawer, her relationship to the past not being one of warmth and affection.

  Unlike Bonnie’s. She watched as her sister took a dainty bite of a skinless apple slice. To this day, she could recall everything about the morning Carol left Yorktide. She could see it all so clearly in her mind’s eye, the stricken look on her mother’s face, the way the clouds dispersed just as Carol stepped onto the bus, the loud cheer that erupted from everyone who had come to see Carol Ascher off on her big adventure.

  “I remember what you wore the day you left us,” Bonnie said suddenly. “It was an orange mini dress with a white Peter Pan collar. I thought you looked so cool. For one crazy minute, I thought of going with you. Not that you would have wanted me to tag along.”

  “And not that Mom and Dad would have let you,” Carol pointed out. She scooped the apple peel into her hand and turned toward the trash bin.

  Bonnie stopped herself from telling Carol that the peels should be put in the compost bin.

  “Do you remember the dress?” she asked instead.

  “No,” Carol said.

  “Do you remember what you said to me just before you boarded the bus?” Bonnie pressed.

  Carol smiled. “I said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do and if you insist upon doing it, keep it a secret.’ ”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “Then it was probably something like it.”

  “You promised you would come home to Yorktide for Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Bonnie swallowed hard. “And for my birthday in January.”

  “I would never had said something so silly,” Carol protested. “Where would I have gotten the money to travel between New York and Maine so frequently? I had less than two hundred dollars to my name when I left Yorktide.”

  “You said it,” Bonnie insisted. “I remember.”

  Carol sighed. “Well, if I did, it was just something people say to make the people they’re leaving behind feel better. I’m sorry you took it so seriously.”

  “Why should I have thought my sister was lying to me?” Bonnie felt her face flush.

  “It was an emotional moment. My intentions were good.” Carol rubbed her temples before going on. “Look, I did nothing wrong by leaving Yorktide, and I’m tired of you trying to make me feel that I did.”

  “You should have come home more often,” Bonnie said, “once you had the money.”

  “Why? Because you wanted me to?”

  “Yes. Mom and Dad, too. We all wanted you to.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to. You could have visited me.”

  “You know Ken and I couldn’t really afford trips to New York,” Bonnie said angrily. “And we didn’t have the time to spare. Not with me taking care of Mom after Dad died and raisi
ng Julie and Ken’s running the shop.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me for help? You could have stayed at my place. I could have paid for your train tickets. I know Ken refused to fly.”

  “I would never have taken money from you.” Other than for Nicola’s care, Bonnie amended silently. But that was different.

  “Fine. But that was your decision, not mine.” Carol shook her head. “Look, this is ridiculous. I think you’d better go now.”

  Bonnie was out of Ferndean in less than thirty seconds, taking the box of garden gnomes with her. She didn’t trust her sister not to throw them away. She felt slightly sick to her stomach. It was very clear to her now that a reconciliation was not possible. Every time she and Carol took a small step toward the old, childhood closeness, something yanked them back. If the relationship continued to degenerate at this pace there would be nothing left of the Ascher sisters by the end of the summer.

  And Bonnie would lose Ferndean. She wasn’t at all sure she would be able to handle visiting the home she loved with her sister in sole residence, watching her tear down walls and who knew what else, witnessing her making changes just for the sake of change.

  Julie was waiting in the car, the windows rolled down.

  Bonnie slid behind the wheel.

  “We shouldn’t have gone in,” Julie said flatly.

  Bonnie nodded. “I know.”

  Chapter 30

  Garden gnomes? Carol shuddered. Creepy. But Bonnie had taken them away with her. Now there was nothing to spoil the serene view of lawn and trees and shrubbery and blooming flowers, still bright in the dying evening light.

  But the lovely scene failed to soothe her. Carol was feeling a bit guilty. Maybe she had been too hard on Julie earlier. That tough love stuff was all well and good with someone who was simply being stubborn or lazy, but it wasn’t so effective with someone who was suffering genuine emotional anguish. If only there was something Carol could do or say to lend support to her niece. What that might be she really didn’t know.

  And that ridiculous argument about Bonnie’s not visiting Carol and Carol’s not visiting Bonnie! Her sister was infuriating. It was as if for Bonnie, time—at least a strand of it—had come to a halt in the summer of 1974.

  Still, what Carol had said about not wanting to visit Yorktide was not entirely true. There had been times when she had longed to be with her family, but something had always stood in the way. Tangible things like deadlines and duties. And intangible things, like fear of being sucked back into a life that wasn’t hers to live.

  Carol sank into her father’s old armchair. She remembered so clearly those final weeks in Yorktide. Her parents had tried to be enthusiastic about their older daughter’s adventure, but Carol was launching herself into the unknown and there was little, if any, substantial help or specific advice they could offer. Neither had ever been to New York City. All they knew of the place was what they read in the papers and very little of that at the time was good, certainly not when you were imagining your nineteen-year-old daughter arriving at Port Authority and coming face-to-face with criminals and drug addicts and prostitutes.

  And yet, neither of her parents attempted to get Carol to change her mind. Why bother? Carol never changed her mind once it was made up; she just didn’t. Shirley’s sister had given it her best shot one afternoon, but her efforts were pathetically inadequate.

  “Your parents are worried about your safety,” Aunt Mary had said.

  “Worrying is a waste of time,” Carol had countered.

  “You don’t know anyone in New York.”

  “I’ll introduce myself.”

  “Bad things happen to young women on their own in a big city.”

  “Like being kidnapped by white slavers?” Carol’s tone was lightly mocking. “I’ll be fine.”

  Aunt Mary had given up after that.

  Absent-mindedly, Carol traced a worn spot on the right arm of her father’s chair. How the chair had become “his” she didn’t know; maybe simply because it was bigger than the others in the living room. That was usually the way. Father got the prominent place and Mother sat at his side. At least, that was how it had been with the Aschers.

  That was one of the many reasons Carol had needed to get out. She dreaded falling into the domestic pattern embodied by her parents and everyone else she knew in Yorktide. But as the day of her departure drew near, she had become ever more afraid that she might lose the nerve to leave home. Underneath the excitement and her flippant dismissal of her family’s concerns lay an awareness of how little she knew of what awaited her, along with an unexpected surge of fondness for all she was leaving behind. Bonnie was unhappy, her parents were anxious, her friends were jealous and admiring at the same time. Not one of them offered to go to New York with her. “I’m bored, but I’m not crazy!” one of them said when Carol casually floated the idea of a traveling companion.

  “I’ve never felt the draw of city life,” Judith, twenty-four at the time, had admitted to Carol. “But I can recognize it when I see it. I think you’re doing the right thing. I think you’re doing what you need to be doing.”

  Carol had appreciated her cousin’s words of support. Judith was someone she admired, and not only because she had the courage to be an openly gay woman in a time and place where many others might hesitate to be so honest. Later, in New York, there were times when Judith’s example helped Carol to stay the path in spite of obstacles tumbling across her way.

  Obstacles and accidents, like the loss of her necklace.

  Carol’s parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday. It was comprised of a thin gold chain from which hung a very small but very bright emerald. She had put it around her neck the morning she was due to leave Yorktide and in an uncharacteristically sentimental moment, promised herself that she would not take it off until she had “made it” in New York. What “made it” meant specifically, Carol didn’t bother to define; she would know it when it happened.

  But only weeks into Carol’s new life in New York City, she realized the necklace was missing. She was at The Atlanta, the residential hotel where she was living, when she noticed its absence; for a moment, she felt hopeful that the necklace might turn up under her narrow bed or in a drawer of the rickety dresser. But a thorough search revealed nothing. Carol knew there was no point in looking elsewhere; if someone had found the necklace she would have kept it. Or maybe it had been crushed underfoot.

  Whatever the case, the necklace was gone and suddenly Carol wanted nothing more than to give up on her foolish dream of a glamorous urban life, to settle safely into domesticity and routine back in Yorktide, and to never, ever think about what might have been.

  But she didn’t run away. And she never told her parents that the necklace was lost.

  With a weary sigh, Carol got up from the armchair and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She was not happy to have these memories dredged up. So much of one’s past was best left forgotten. But coming back to Yorktide, settling in this old house chock-full of lives lived and lost . . . What had she expected to happen?

  Still, the struggle might be worth it if only she could bond with her family so that one day, when her time on this planet was up, there would be someone to genuinely mourn her.

  Carol didn’t think that too selfish a desire.

  Chapter 31

  It had been Nicola’s idea to get together and yet, she wasn’t happy about it.

  Why couldn’t she just sever ties with her mother? Why this need to engage with the one person for whom she felt such a jumble of complicated emotions?

  The stupid mother-child bond! It was enough to make Nicola decide—almost—never to have a child of her own.

  Her mother had responded enthusiastically to Nicola’s invitation. Why? Nicola had nothing that Carol Ascher might want.

  Except love? Affection?

  Ridiculous.

  Nicola looked up as the bell over the door to the diner tinkled. Her mother was dressed as if the
y were meeting at The Plaza in New York City. She probably wished that they were.

  “Hi,” Carol said as she slid into the seat across from Nicola. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

  Nicola shrugged. “It’s fine.” In truth, her mother was exactly on time. Nicola picked up the menu.

  “Have you had the garden salad here?” her mother asked.

  “I’m sure it’s just a normal salad,” she said testily. “You know, lettuce, tomato, cucumber.”

  Her mother just smiled.

  A waitress came over to take their orders. Carol ordered a BLT. Nicola asked for a bowl of chicken noodle soup.

  “I didn’t know you eat bacon,” Nicola said when the waitress had gone off.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” her mother countered.

  Because . . . Nicola realized she had no clear idea why she had made that comment, except that she had meant it to be uncomplimentary in some way.

  “What’s Ana up to these days?” she said instead. Her mother’s right-hand woman. The good daughter, Nicola thought. The kind of daughter her mother had wanted her to be, though she had never said as much. She hadn’t had to.

  “Running the business,” her mother replied, “no doubt making changes to assure she stays afloat for a good many years to come.”

  “What does she think about your leaving New York?” Nicola asked. “I bet she was surprised.”

  “I didn’t tell her about my plans to move back to Yorktide.”

  “Why not?” Nicola asked. “Wouldn’t she want to know?”

  “Maybe,” Carol allowed, “but it’s not as if we’re close friends. We never spent much time together out of work.”

  “Who are your close friends then?” Nicola asked. “I don’t remember people coming to the apartment all those years ago. I don’t remember you spending time with other women unless it was at some business function.”

  “Mostly,” Carol said, “I spend my time with myself. I get invitations to dinners and cocktail parties, but I usually don’t go. I find them boring. And I’ve cut back on my committee work. Too many members are only showing up to get out of the house and away from a spouse they’ve come to despise. People like me get stuck with all the real work.”