That Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “I have to go,” she said. “I—I have things to do.”

  Michael looked almost comically crestfallen. If he was a dog, his ears and his tail would all be drooping. “Tell you what,” he said. He bent down and scooped up a handful of shells. “I could ask Maudie—the one with the tomatoes—to sell these at the farmers’ market. When you come back—if you come back—I’ll give you whatever she makes.”

  “Well, Maudie should get some of the money, if she’s doing the selling,” said Diana. “And what about you? Do you want an agent’s cut?”

  “I’ll take an IOU,” he said. “You promise to go on a date with me this weekend.”

  Diana considered. “Deal,” she said, and extended her hand. Gravely, Michael shook it, then he pulled her into another bear hug. Diana leaned into his warmth, feeling safer, more at home than she had in a long, long time.

  11

  Daisy

  The morning after she’d met the other Diana, Daisy slept through the night and woke up after seven o’clock, well-rested for the first time in what felt like months. She always slept more soundly when she had a bed to herself. It was as if she was so attuned to Hal’s moods and his movements that every time he rolled over or sighed in his sleep, part of her would wake up enough to notice.

  She took a long shower in the hotel bathroom, enjoying the selection of bath products. Once she’d checked out, she wheeled her neat suitcase to Petrossian on Fifty-Ninth and Seventh Avenue, where she sat at one of the four tables in the café at the back of the shop. She had smoked salmon eggs Benedict for breakfast and bought a pound of lox to take home before heading to the Pick-a-Bagel across the street. Philadelphia’s bagels were just as good as the ones in New York, but there was no telling Vernon Shoemaker that, and woe betide her if she ever came back from the city without his everything bagels. She bought a dozen for Danny and Jesse, another dozen for her father-in-law.

  Vernon still lived in the apartment in a retirement community in Bryn Mawr where he’d resided back when Daisy had first met him. Hal had called her, desperate for help, and the following afternoon, Daisy cut her last literature class of the year and drove two and a half hours to Bryn Mawr. Her client had turned out to be a scowling gentleman with pale, watery eyes and the most ridiculously elaborate comb-over she’d ever seen.

  “Mr. Shoemaker?” Daisy had said, hand extended. “I’m Diana Rosen.” Back then, she’d still been Diana.

  Instead of returning her greeting, he’d said, in a querulous tone, “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Your son hired me,” Daisy said.

  “Well, I didn’t ask him to,” Vernon pronounced. “I’m doing fine on my own.”

  “How about you show me your kitchen?” Daisy suggested. She’d had half a dozen students by then, and was used to being greeted with everything from cheerful enthusiasm to naked desperation, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, her new student just looked stubborn and aggrieved.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, and stepped aside to let her enter.

  The condo smelled of furniture polish and, faintly, of unwashed male body, and its rooms were crammed with a Tetris puzzle of furniture, coffee tables and armchairs and love seats and couches and highboys occupying almost every inch of space. An enormous television set was the single new addition to what had clearly been the contents of a Main Line mansion.

  The condo had wall-to-wall carpeting, raked with vacuum-cleaner tracks, but Daisy could discern two paths branching away from the recliner. She could picture Vernon Shoemaker sitting in his chair like a king on his throne, leaving only to go to the left, to the kitchen, or to the right, where she guessed there was a bathroom.

  In the kitchen, the sink was full of dirty dishes, and the trash can was overflowing, spilling empty cans, packets of soy sauce and mustard, plastic silverware, and more takeout containers onto the sticky-looking floor. “The girl comes Wednesdays,” Vernon said with a negligent wave. The dining-room table was piled high with newspapers, magazines, and stacks of what looked like children’s clothing. Daisy saw dozens of pairs of pants, shirts, shoes, and sweaters. Vernon saw her looking.

  “Gifts,” he said. “For my grandchildren.” He went to the table and showed her a pile of boys’ T-shirts. “I buy ’em on Senior Day at JC Penney. I get the twenty percent coupons from the paper, and then I go to the clearance racks, and by the time I’m done…” He cackled and pushed the T-shirts toward her. “You see all these? Guess how much. Guess how much I paid?”

  “Hmm. Thirty dollars?”

  “Twelve dollars and thirty-six cents,” Vernon crowed. “They’re practically paying me to take the stuff off their hands!”

  “That’s impressive,” Daisy had said, remembering how her own father liked to say that no people were as cheap as rich people.

  “See, I get it in all the sizes,” Vernon said. “Newborn, and toddler, and…” He paused, appearing stumped about what stage of a child’s growth might come next. “… and what have you.” He waved his hand at one stack. “There’s birthdays.” He pointed at another pile. “That’s Christmas.”

  “How many grandchildren do you have?”

  “Two. A boy and a girl. From my older boy.” He frowned. “None from Hal yet. He’s thirty-two years old and he’s still not married.” He looked at Daisy, who’d been studying his comb-over in helpless fascination. The man appeared to have exactly one lock of gray hair, which had to be long enough to hang down past his shoulders when it was wet. He’d somehow combed it forward and coaxed it sideways, looping it around, pleating it, origami-style, and managing to cover—more or less—the entirety of his scalp. It was like a geometry problem. Is it possible for Elderly Man X with Y amount of hair to cover Z amount of surface area?

  “So?”

  Clearly, she’d missed something. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  Impatiently, Vernon said, “I asked if you think he’s a queer. He signed me up for cooking classes. In my day, you know what they called this? Home ec. And you know who did it? Girls.” He glared at her indignantly.

  Daisy thought of her brother Danny, whom she suspected was gay, even though he’d never said a word to her; Danny, who was charming and funny and ever so slightly wistful. She returned to the kitchen, which beneath layers of trash, had granite counters and a granite breakfast bar, stainless-steel appliances and glass-fronted cabinets. The ample counter space and deep sink were cluttered with empty cartons and bags and more dirty dishes. Daisy went to the sink to wash her hands, hoping to lead by example. “I think the first thing we need to do is get this kitchen up to code.”

  She expected Vernon to argue with her, or tell her that cleaning, like cooking, was women’s work. Instead, he said, “Police this area.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s what they would tell us. In the army. ‘Police this area!’ your lieutenant would say, and woe to you if that area was not spotless. You ever heard of the white glove test? Your commanding officer would come and put on a pair of white gloves and run his finger along a shelf or a doorframe or what have you. You’d be on KP duty if he found any dust.” Vernon bent down to pull a box of trash bags out from underneath the sink. He was wearing nylon track pants and a plain white T-shirt that hung loosely over his narrow chest and stretched to cover the protuberant curve of his belly. “See, back then, sending a man to work in the kitchen was punishment.” His lip curled. “Not a hobby.”

  Diana located a pair of rubber gloves and pulled them on. “If you bag up the trash, I’ll work on the dishes.” Most of the dishes in the sink were covered in layers of spaghetti sauce or lo mein noodles. The bowls contained the dried-up detritus of milk and cold cereal. That, plus takeout pizza, seemed to have comprised the bulk of Vernon Shoemaker’s diet in the wake of his wife’s death. Daisy couldn’t see any evidence of fruits or vegetables—not an apple core or a banana peel, or a hint of anything that had ever been green.

  She had turned the water on as hot as it would go, added detergent,
found a sponge, and started scrubbing as she made a mental list of everything they’d need to do before she felt comfortable enough to start cooking. The floors would need to be swept and mopped, the stovetop and counters sprayed with something disinfecting and scrubbed clean, and the refrigerator… God, she didn’t even want to think about the refrigerator.

  “So you’ve been eating mostly prepared foods and takeout?”

  “You ever go to Wegmans?” Vernon asked. She’d expected him to stand there and watch while she did the work, but, to his credit, he seemed to be doing a decent job of collecting and bagging up the trash. “They’ve got all kinds of ready-to-go stuff. For the working mothers, I guess.” He paused to unfurl another trash bag. “In my day, a mother stayed home with her kids.”

  “Times have changed,” Daisy offered.

  “Not for the better,” Vernon said darkly. “Okay, chief, what’s next?”

  She instructed him to find a broom and a dustpan, while she loaded the dishwasher and ran it on its “sterilize” setting. Vernon started sweeping while she looked for some kind of cleanser to spray on the counters.

  “Sometimes, I eat out,” Vernon said abruptly.

  “Oh?”

  “Yep. In Atlantic City, or at Foxwoods, I get coupons for the restaurants. I go to the diner.” He swept for a few minutes, then said, “Margie—my wife—she’d always want to go to the fancy places. The noodle place and the tappers place and what have you.”

  “Tappers?”

  “You know, the Spanish stuff. Little snacks.”

  “Oh. Tapas.”

  “Like I said. She’d wanted that, or the fancy Chinese place. I never understood paying twenty bucks for a plate of noodles with some kind of mystery meat, but it made her happy.” He tied a garbage bag shut. “Lots of Asians at the casinos, you know.”

  “Mmm.” Daisy wasn’t touching that one. She wondered if Vernon Shoemaker knew that she was Jewish. “Did your wife gamble?”

  “Margie? Oh, no.” Vernon went silent. Daisy finished wiping the counter closest to the stove. She held her breath and pulled open the refrigerator door, revealing the hellscape she’d expected.

  “Can I have a trash bag, please?”

  Vernon handed her a bag, peering over her shoulder as she started to toss half-empty packages of lunch meat. “Hey! Hey, that’s still good!”

  Daisy showed him the package. “It expired three months ago.”

  Vernon scoffed. “That’s a scam. All those expiration dates. It’s just companies wanting to get you to buy more food. Someone sent me an article about it.”

  Daisy unwrapped a block of cheese, revealing a layer of green mold. She showed it to Vernon, who shrugged. “I bet you could just scrape that off.”

  “You could,” she said, and dropped the cheese into the trash. “You won’t.”

  “Fine, fine,” Vernon grumbled, as Daisy threw out Chinese-food containers and a desiccated lemon and poured a pint of curdled half-and-half down the drain.

  “So what did your wife do in the casinos, if she didn’t gamble?”

  “Oh, she’d shop. Watch people.”

  “Did she like to cook?”

  The question seemed to leave Vernon nonplussed. He moved the broom back and forth over a patch of floor he’d already swept, looking puzzled. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “She did it—you know, your steaks and your chops and what have you. Meatloaf. She made a fine meatloaf.” He paused, still sweeping. “I don’t know if she liked it. She didn’t complain.”

  “Well, I love to cook,” said Daisy. “I think it’s fun. And can be an expression of creativity. Like art.”

  “Art,” Vernon said, his upper lip curling. “Art that ends up in the crapper the next morning. Pardon my French.”

  “Preparing a meal,” Daisy continued doggedly, “is a way of showing people that you love them. You’re showing them you care. You’re offering them sustenance.”

  “Money is sustenance. Food is just food,” Vernon said.

  “And, for a single person, cooking a nice meal, setting the table, and taking time to eat can be a way of taking care of yourself.”

  Vernon scowled. “I don’t need taking care of.” The way his lips twisted made Daisy wonder if his sons had proposed some kind of long-term-care arrangement after his wife had died.

  “Hal and Jeremy, they wanted to put me in one of those places,” Vernon said. Bingo, thought Daisy. “ ‘Assisted living,’ they call it. You start out in a house or an apartment, and six months later you’re in an old folks’ home. Well, I don’t need any assistance. I can look after myself.” He gave her a baleful look. “That’s why I said it was okay for you to come. I don’t want Hal thinking I can’t feed myself.” Another glare. “I’ve been getting along fine.”

  Daisy thought of the rotted Chinese food and the chunky milk and kept her mouth shut.

  “What’s wrong with takeout?” Vernon demanded.

  “It’s not the healthiest option.”

  He pursed his lips, like he was tasting something unpleasant. “At my age, I should worry about health?”

  “And,” said Daisy, “it’s not the most economical. I’ve read,” she said, lying glibly, “that a single person who eats out three or four nights a week can save up to five hundred dollars a month by cooking those meals at home.”

  That caught Vernon’s attention, just the way she’d hoped it would. “Really?”

  She put her hand on her heart. “Swear to God.”

  He sucked his dentures, then sighed. “All right,” he said. “Lead on, Macduff. At least it’ll get Hal off my back.”

  Together, they scrubbed the kitchen spotless. She showed him how to operate his coffee maker, and how to set its timer so it would brew coffee for him every morning, and taught him how to make his favorite breakfast of eggs over easy and bacon and his favorite lunch, which was a patty melt, and his favorite dinner, which was steak. She seared his rib eye in a cast-iron pan, and instructed him as he scraped up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, then added butter and flour and red wine and cranked up the heat to a boil. “Once it’s reduced, you can add some fresh herbs and some more butter and you’ve got a sauce.”

  “Huh.” Vernon didn’t exactly look impressed, but he didn’t look unimpressed, either. Daisy pulled the potato she’d baked out of the oven, gave a handful of sugar snap peas a quick blanch in boiling salted water, and mounded them on the plate, next to his steak and potato. “See? Doesn’t that look nice? You’ve got to give a plate a little color.”

  “No,” said Vernon, picking up his knife and fork, “you don’t.”

  At the end of the lesson, Daisy gave him the printouts of menus and recipes that she’d brought with her, and the address of a website where he could buy a cast-iron pan. When the lesson was over, he’d said, gruffly, “You’re a fine young lady,” and pressed a hundred-dollar bill into her hand. Then he’d eyed her carefully, as if she were a horse he was about to bid on at auction. She was ready for him to ask to see her teeth, wondering if he’d proposition her.

  “Are you married?” Vernon asked.

  Oh, here we go, Daisy thought. Vernon smirked at her.

  “Not me. My son. Hal’s an attorney.” Vernon was already heading to his desk, in search of pen and paper. “I bet he’d love to meet a girl who can cook.” He’d handed Daisy a heavy piece of stationery, embossed with his initials, and a phone number written below. “Call him, don’t call him. It’s up to you.”

  Daisy hadn’t decided whether she’d call or not. It had ended up not mattering either way because that night, Hal had called to thank her. “My dad spoke very highly of you.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Daisy said. “I wasn’t sure how much he was enjoying it. He was kind of hard to read.”

  “Hard to read,” Hal had repeated, and laughed a little. “That’s nicely put. I’m sure he was awful. And I would like to take you to dinner to thank you for putting up with him.” Hal’s voice was deep, warmer tha
n when he’d first called. “My dad couldn’t say enough about how great you were.”

  “I think he just liked being spoiled a little. Or maybe he misses having a woman around.” As soon as she’d spoken, Daisy wondered if it had sounded like a criticism, but she was curious to know what kind of woman Vernon’s wife had been; what kind of woman had endured decades of marriage to Vernon Shoemaker and his incredible comb-over.

  “All I can tell you is that he was about the happiest I’ve heard him when he called me.”

  Hal had come to New Jersey to take her to dinner a few weeks later, when the school year was over, then to a play the following weekend, and to his house the weekend after that, where they’d slept together for the first time. By then, Daisy was madly in love with him, and her mom was madly in love with the idea of having Hal as a son-in-law. Six months later, they’d gotten married… and that, Daisy thought, had been that.

  * * *

  From the Trenton train station, it was just twenty minutes by Lyft to the house her brother and his husband shared. Daisy knocked on the door, calling, “I come bearing gifts,” and waited until her brother came to take the bagels and usher her inside.

  The brick single-story ranch home Danny and Jesse had purchased ten years previously didn’t look special from the outside, but inside, thanks to Jesse’s eye, and all of the art and keepsakes the couple had collected over the years, the house was as beautiful, and as welcoming, as any home Daisy had ever visited. Gorgeously patterned rugs, in shades of gold and indigo and deep, glowing scarlet, overlapped each other on the floor, in a way that would have looked chaotic if she’d attempted it. Charming assemblages of paintings and tapestries and mirrors and framed photographs covered the walls, and the mantel was decorated with arrangements of dried flowers, Chinese ginger jars and seashells, and a single vintage postcard of Coney Island on a wooden easel. Small paintings of birds on gold-gilt backgrounds hung along one grass cloth–covered wall; the bookshelves that lined the hallway were filled with books, and antique bookends shaped like terriers, and photographs of Jesse and Danny on their travels. Fresh flowers stood on the table in the entryway, along with a bowl full of chestnuts and an antique nutcracker. The air smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg and smoke from the fire that crackled in the fireplace. Daisy could hear classical piano music—Bach, she thought—and could hear Jesse’s voice, low and calm, from the kitchen. “Okay, now we’re going to pat it until it looks like a circle. You want to try?”