Maggie smiled. “Unsweetened is fine, thank you, Cybel.”
The women chatted about nothing in particular and avoided any mention of Kitty’s illness. Joey was having difficulty getting payment from a new client of his small-appliance repair business. Patrice had heard that the family who had owned and operated one of the gift shops in town was thinking of selling to someone from New York. The news had cost her a sleepless night. Dave Jr. had a new girlfriend of whom Jackie didn’t approve. She must be pretty horrid, Maggie thought, if not even Jackie, who liked everyone, disliked her. That or Jackie was just being an overprotective mother, something Maggie didn’t know an awful lot about.
There was a lull in the chitchat and Maggie nodded toward Kitty. Her eyes were fixated on the screen, her mouth open. “I think we’ve lost her,” Maggie whispered.
“That’s why we’re usually pretty strict about letting her watch TV,” Cybel explained. “They really do get addicted. That’s all some of the kids at my day care talk about, their favorite TV characters. It’s depressing.”
Delphine and Maggie agreed. And then Delphine suggested they leave and let Cybel get back to whatever it was she had been doing when they’d arrived. “Cleaning the kitchen,” she said with a tired laugh. “Joey’s a great husband, but he can’t clean worth a lick.”
“Call me if you want some help,” Delphine offered. “I’m a whiz with a mop.”
They got back into the truck and drove toward Delphine’s house.
“Kitty’s a very nice little girl,” Maggie said.
Delphine nodded. “Joey and Cybel are good parents. I wish Norman was a bit more attentive to his little sister, but the age difference makes it hard. And with his own wife pregnant . . .”
“Maybe once the baby is born things will change,” Maggie suggested. “Kitty will have a new niece or nephew. Maybe she’ll enjoy helping to take care of the baby.”
The thought made Delphine smile. Kitty surviving to be an aunt. Maybe it was a long shot, but she hoped not. She so hoped not.
“You know,” Maggie was saying now, “for a long time I thought I must have done something wrong or hurtful to you. And that was the reason why you didn’t pursue our friendship after you came back here. But it wasn’t about me at all, was it?”
“No,” Delphine replied promptly. But then she reconsidered. “Actually, yes. It was about you in the sense that you had come to represent for me a life I just couldn’t live. I guess in a way it was painful to be around you. That sounds horrible, I know. Even when you came back, this summer, at first I didn’t want you to be here. I was afraid of—of having to remember everything. Afraid that maybe I had made the wrong choice after all, all those years ago, and that seeing you would make me realize it.”
“I had no idea my coming here this summer would be so monumental for you,” Maggie admitted. “And so monumental for me, too. I probably should have.” Maggie paused and then said, “Be honest with me, okay? After college, when you came back to Ogunquit, did you care at all about how I might be feeling? Did you ever think that I might be hurt by your walking away?”
Delphine sighed. “Honestly,” she said, “no. Or not much. I thought you were so strong, far stronger than me. I didn’t think you would suffer just because I moved away.”
“You more than just moved away. It felt like you were abandoning me, and our friendship. I felt . . . devastated.”
“I never really wanted the friendship to end,” Delphine insisted. “That wasn’t my goal.”
“Then why did you shut me out?” Maggie asked. “I’m not angry, really, not anymore. I just want to understand.”
“I was thinking only of what I needed to do to get myself away from—from everything, without losing courage. I knew I had made the right decision in coming back to Ogunquit. I knew it. But it was hard. Sometimes, it was very hard.”
Maggie shook her head. “I wish I had known even that. It would have helped me to cope.”
“I was being selfish.”
“Yes. But sometimes a person needs to be selfish. I know that now, but back then I didn’t quite understand it.”
Delphine pulled into her driveway and parked. “I have some wine,” she said when they had gone inside. “I know it’s good because it’s the same as what you brought that time, the sauvignon blanc. I made a mental note.”
“Yes, please,” Maggie said. “A glass of wine would be perfect right now.”
“We can sit on the porch if you’d like,” Delphine said, but Maggie had already gone back outside and settled in one of the wicker chairs. Delphine fetched the wine and glasses and returned a few minutes later. Melchior watched them through the window from his perch on the back of the couch.
Delphine opened the wine, poured them each a glass, and settled into her own chair with a sigh.
“Okay?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah. Just . . . tired.”
“You have reason to be.”
“Yes. You know, since my—well, my breakdown on the living room floor the other day, I’ve been thinking about friendships. Friendships are habits, aren’t they? At least, they become habits. And habits aren’t neutral; they’re either good or bad. I believe that our habit, this friendship, is a good habit. I didn’t always understand that.”
“Our friendship is a habit of affection. A habit of love.”
“Yes. And no one chooses to break a habit of affection, do they? It sometimes just happens, for any variety of reasons, but a person doesn’t just say, ‘Hey, I think I’ll not love this person anymore.’ So I guess what I’m saying is that maybe all those years when we were out of touch—my fault, I know—I was still really your friend. Maybe the friendship wasn’t dead, it was just . . . dormant. Maybe the love was still there, just . . . sleeping.”
Maggie smiled and took a sip of her wine. “You think too much and I don’t think enough.”
Delphine smiled back. “Do we balance each other out?”
“I think that’s yet to be seen.”
They sat in silence for a while. The air was clear, the humidity low. A hummingbird was feasting at the butterfly bush. Maggie thought she heard the lapping of waves in the distance but realized she might just be imagining that.
“I’ve also been thinking,” Delphine said after some time, “about what happened to me. Or what I let happen to me when I came back home. I realize now that as time went on I seemed to matter less for myself than I once had. What I wanted, the things I didn’t have, the things I hadn’t yet done . . . Everything grew less important. What was in front of me—duties to my family, the demands of daily life—all of that stuff seemed to step forward to obscure my view of myself somehow. Delphine Crandall got increasingly less bright and insistent until she was only a grey, shadowy person. I thought that meant I had grown up. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Yes,” Maggie said carefully. “It can be hard to pay proper attention to yourself, to value yourself, when other people need and rely on you.”
“I became the person everyone needs. Sometimes, that’s not such a great person to be.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever really been that person. I’ve never had to sacrifice my selfhood for anyone. Oh, maybe to some extent when the children were small. But not now, not any longer. And Gregory . . . Well, I don’t think that Gregory needs me, either. I’m not sure he ever has, aside from being someone he could have kids with, someone he could buy a big house with, someone he could travel with. I could probably be substituted with one of a thousand other women!”
“Please, Maggie,” Delphine said gently. “I don’t think you should assume that Gregory doesn’t love you for who you are as an individual. I don’t think you should speak for him. Ask him what he feels.”
“I suppose you’re right. But I think I might be afraid to hear what he has to say.”
Delphine smiled. “That is always a problem with communication, isn’t it? Having to hear what the other person has to say.”
“Oh, yes,” Maggie a
greed. “So, are you thinking that you might want to start paying some attention to yourself? Making sure that some of Delphine Crandall’s needs are finally met?”
“Yes,” Delphine said after a moment. “I think so. I think that maybe I went too far in the direction of service. I think that I want to do more with my knitting. I think that I do good work and I want to share that with more people. I do want to travel a bit, though honestly, I don’t even know where! And the whole thing with Harry . . .”
“The Harry Situation.”
“Yeah. I know now for sure that it’s not right, not fair to me.”
“Good for you. It’ll be hard—change always is—but I believe in you, Delphine. I always have.” Maggie paused for a moment. “Look,” she said then. “I know you don’t like it when I try to give you things.”
Delphine smiled. “If by ‘things’ you mean money, well, yeah. But that’s my issue. I do appreciate the good motives behind your offers. I do now, anyway.”
“Yes, well.” Maggie put down her wineglass and took a rectangular pale blue velvet box out of her bag. She handed it to Delphine.
“What’s this?” Delphine asked.
“Open it.”
Delphine lifted the cover of the hinged velvet box to reveal the aquamarine necklace. “It’s beautiful,” she said, looking back to Maggie. “But I don’t understand.”
“It’s your birthstone. Aquamarine.”
“But it’s not my birthday.”
Maggie took a deep breath. And then she told Delphine about the necklace. She apologized for not having asked Delphine to stand up for her at her wedding. She apologized for not having given her the necklace all those years ago.
“You’ve been carrying this around for twenty-four years?” Delphine asked when Maggie had finished.
“Well, technically it’s been in the back of my lingerie drawer.”
“That’s why the box smells like perfume.”
“Chanel, actually.”
Delphine looked down again at the necklace and then smiled. “It doesn’t exactly go with my T-shirt and jeans.”
“Pooh. Here, let me put it on for you.” Maggie got up and fastened the necklace around Delphine’s neck. She fished a compact mirror out of her bag. “Here. Take a look.”
Delphine peered at her reflection in the compact mirror and smiled again. “It’s perfect,” she said. “I don’t have anything else like it.”
“So,” Maggie said, “you’re not refusing this gift?”
“No.” Delphine reached for her friend’s hand. “I’m accepting it. I can’t fight you anymore, Maggie. I don’t want to. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
Maggie squeezed Delphine’s hand. “You’re very welcome,” she said.
65
“You promise to be in touch?”
The two women were sitting on Delphine’s front porch again. It was about ten on a Sunday morning. The air was fresh, a bit cool, hinting of autumn. Melchior was inside, enjoying a nap. Eating breakfast had really taken it out of him.
Maggie smiled. “I promise. As soon as I get home I’ll send you an e-mail.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Pinky swear.”
“So,” Delphine asked, “what are you going to do now?”
“I still have some vacation time,” Maggie said. “I’m going to go pay my mother a visit. It’s brutal down in Florida at this time of the year, but . . . Well, I’ll survive.”
“Stay inside. Keep the air-conditioning up high.”
“Oh, I will.”
“You know, Maggie,” Delphine said suddenly, “you’re a lot braver than I am.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m very brave at all.”
“You take chances. You always have. You took a chance in coming here this summer.”
Maggie shrugged. “Well, I think you’re just as brave as I am, Delphine, if not more so. How can I say this? I think it can be much harder to choose to value what you have than to pursue what you don’t have, just because it’s out there. Does that make sense?”
Delphine laughed. “Maybe.”
“And you’ll keep me posted about Kitty’s progress?”
“Here’s hoping there is progress.”
“Hey,” Maggie scolded, “you have to stay positive about this, for her sake if not for your own. No, wait, definitely for your own sake. You need to take better care of yourself, Delphine.”
“It will take some learning.”
“You’re smart,” Maggie said. “You can learn if you want to. Oh, on another topic entirely, will you recommend a book for me to read? I’ve so neglected my reading these past few years. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Just one book? I could recommend a reading program for the rest of your life. Why don’t I send you an e-mail with some ideas? Do you want to give me some parameters?”
“Why don’t you choose for me,” Maggie suggested. “I need to break out of this uncomfortable comfort zone I’ve been in for way too long.”
“All right. And please say hello to Gregory for me. Though he doesn’t really know me.”
“He’ll get to know you through me. He already knows you’re important.”
“Do you think he’ll like me?” Delphine asked. “I am pretty rough around the edges these days.”
Maggie smiled. “He’ll love you. Gregory’s a pretty easygoing guy when he’s not wearing his lawyer’s hat. Which isn’t all that often, but maybe we can work on that. Well,” she said, getting up from her chair, “I’d better get on the road.”
Together they walked to Maggie’s car. Instinctively they hugged, and it felt absolutely right.
“Bye, Delphine,” Maggie said, slipping behind the wheel.
“Drive carefully,” Delphine said.
Delphine watched and waved until Maggie’s Lexus was out of sight. “I miss you already,” she said to the air.
Epilogue
A friend is one to whom one can pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
—Arabian proverb
One year later ...
It was early evening, around five o’clock on a Wednesday. Delphine was in her workroom. She had finished at the farm around three and come home to work on a project, a fairly elaborate hat, scarf, and glove set for a client. Around her neck she wore the aquamarine necklace Maggie had given her. She wore it all the time, only taking it off when she showered. Neither of her parents had asked where she had gotten the necklace. Delphine wasn’t really sure they had even noticed it. Jackie, of course, knew the whole story. Jemima eyed it suspiciously. She knew it certainly hadn’t come from Harry, but she refused to ask about it.
Waah. Melchior, who had been sitting at Delphine’s feet, stood and stretched. He had settled at twenty-two pounds and was as imperious and demanding as ever. Delphine didn’t know what she would do without him. “ ‘Waah’ to you, too,” she said. Melchior rewound himself and plopped back onto the floor.
Delphine went back to knitting. It had been almost exactly a year since Maggie had gone home to Massachusetts after her weeks in Ogunquit. Not long after that, Delphine had been browsing the Internet and had come across a quote from Albert Schweitzer. “At times,” he said, “our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
And that’s what Maggie had done. She had rekindled Delphine’s inner spirit when it had been nothing but a pile of cold, stubborn ash. If at times it had seemed an impossible task, Maggie had nevertheless persevered. Maybe she had revived Delphine’s spirit for selfish reasons—she wanted, she needed, her friendship. It didn’t matter. Either way, Delphine felt alive again for the first time in a very long time.
And maybe, just maybe, she had done the same for Maggie. At least, Maggie was admitte
dly happier than she had been last summer. Through therapy and hard work she and Gregory were rejuvenating their marriage. She told Delphine she had learned that if she felt disconnected from others in her life, it was her responsibility to remedy that, and walking away from the most solid relationship in her life, her marriage, was not the way to make repairs. At least, it wasn’t the way in her case. She and Gregory were taking cooking classes together. He had been able to cut down on his business travel. If the success of their reunion seemed a bit of a miracle, then so be it. “I believed in miracles when I was a kid,” Maggie told Delphine. “Why not now as an adult?”
They had even adopted a rescue dog, a small mutt who had been found wandering the streets of Roxbury. Somehow, Maggie had overcome her fear of animals, at least, of animals that could fit in the palm of your hand. When Delphine first saw a picture of Barney on Maggie’s Facebook page she laughed out loud. Melchior was easily three times his size. Gregory, it turned out, was even more devoted to little Barney than his wife was. If Barney was a late-in-life substitution for the human children who were now largely grown, that was fine, too.
As for her relationship with those two largely grown children, Maggie had admitted that she didn’t feel very optimistic about the possibility of becoming best friends with her daughters. But only time would tell. She had twice been to visit her mother since her summer in Ogunquit. She was still church-surfing but reported that she was narrowing in on a particular community. She continued to read the books that Delphine recommended and they discussed the more controversial ones via e-mail or phone. Sharing books was one way toward reestablishing a bond that worked for their present and that they hoped would sustain them in their future. And both Delphine and Maggie wanted a future together.
But if Delphine and Maggie were meant to be together forever, Delphine and Harry were not. Shortly after Maggie had left Ogunquit, Delphine and Harry had officially ended their long relationship. Harry had seemed pretty relieved to be let go. No man wanted to be with a woman who found him disappointing. Harry’s ego had been at stake. Still, Delphine bet he missed her cooking.
Summer Friends Page 29