The Summer We Lost Her

by Tish Cohen

  Matt had already bombed out on the former.

  Partnership and a good marriage, two or three kids—these goals might seem amateurish and “picket fence” lined up next to his wife’s, but there you have it. By age fifty, you’re a partner. It’s not too much to hope for.

  Everyone in the firm would understand, given Elise’s success. They’d all give him the high fives, the pats on the back. They’d all go home to rave to their own spouses. But would even one of them trade places?

  Anyway. This choice was not about Elise. Nor was it about himself. It was about Gracie.

  He supposed he could speak to Barrans, talk about delaying the offer. But there would always be another competition. Elise was never going to lose her ambition. Even if they never had another child, it would be years before Gracie could stay alone after school.

  Elise was at the end of the dock with a towel when he returned. With a mighty kick, he pulled himself out of the water, dripping all over the weathered boards. She wrapped the towel around his shoulders. “Happy Father’s Day.”

  “Oh, hey. Right. Forgot all about it.”

  “Best father on earth.” She kissed his wet cheek. “You’re up early. It’s not even six thirty.”

  Was it called being up early if you really didn’t sleep? The partnership hadn’t been the only trigger for his wakefulness. The bed they’d all shared was the same one upon which Matt had lost his virginity to Cass. And after watching the way her body undulated beneath that dress last night, definitely without a bra and possibly without panties . . . was it crazy to think she wanted him to notice? A few times he’d caught her giving him the same look of teasing invitation he remembered from years past.

  Stop it. You’re happily married.

  Pretty happily.

  “I love the lake at this hour. So calm and still.” He scrubbed his hair, then patted his face dry. Movement up by the house caught his eye. Lyman had arrived early and was setting up tarps in the bushes below his ladder. Matt waved his thanks—to very little response on Lyman’s end.

  “Gracie up yet?” Matt asked his wife.

  “Still asleep. Curled up like a little shrimp. So . . . I have an idea about the rest of our time here. A way I don’t have to leave early. Or at least I can leave less early.”

  He sat on the arm of an ancient wooden chair, put an ankle on one knee, and dried his foot. Wiggled a finger in his ear to shake out the water. “Okay.”

  “We ship Indie and Poppins here. The show grounds will be out of the question right now, but we could maybe board them at a local barn. I can Skype with Ronnie—maybe the odd time you or Gracie film my rides and I share with him. It buys the three of us time together. It alleviates my guilt. Then, as we already discussed, you guys come up to Canada.”

  “That’ll cost a fortune. Shipping Indie—and the donkey—all the way up here, plus board for the two of them. Not to mention Camp Imagine. Where’s all this money coming from?”

  Elise looked at him as if he were slow. She waved around the property. “This place, obviously. You heard what Garth said. We’re going to be fine.”

  “You’re counting chickens here. And we won’t have our hands on any real cash until closing.”

  “So we use a credit card in the meantime. We know everything’s going to be good.”

  He slid his feet into leather flip-flops and started along the rocky beachfront for Cass’s boathouse, with Elise following. “I don’t understand,” he said. “We had a plan for this holiday, and you come back and flip it all on its head. I understand the Pan Ams; go back Friday and train without guilt. But sending Gracie to camp was never part of the deal. We haven’t even seen the place.”

  “Cass adores it. You think she’d send her son anyplace that wasn’t terrific?”

  It was true. That and the fact that he’d known Jeannie nearly all his life were the only reasons Matt hadn’t put the brakes on the whole idea. “If she wakes up today and still wants to go, fine. She can go till Tuesday. But if she doesn’t, we wave the bus driver on.”

  “Guys!” a female voice called out from the house. In a short black robe, Cass waved to them from her back deck. “I’ve got breakfast up here. And coffee. Bring Grace up, we’ll get her fed before the bus arrives.”

  “On our way,” Matt called as they stepped up to the wooden deck that wrapped around the boathouse. Cass waved again and disappeared inside. He turned to Elise. “I don’t want to bring the horse here. Let this holiday be about Gracie, not about dressage. Please?”

  She stared at him in silence. Then started up the creaky plank stairs. “Fine. I’ll go back Friday on my own.”

  * * *

  MATT HAD NEVER seen a raccoon like this one.

  They stood on their back porch after breakfast, a steady, rhythmic bang, bang, bang overhead, and peered through the kitchen door. There, on the counter, fur sprouting from between the wires of the cage, crouched one very large, very black raccoon. It watched them, dark eyes peering through the bandit mask, twitching nose covered in flakes of tuna.

  Matt held Gracie close as she pointed. “Look, he has no tail.”

  “It’s why I thought he was a bear,” said Elise, clearly thrilled to have been right. Or at least less wrong.

  “Just like there are albino raccoons, there are melanistic ones.” Paulie pulled on elbow-length gloves and picked up the cage. “Born with more melanin. Funny thing is, these black animals are more adaptive. They tend to live longer and reproduce more because they’re less conspicuous at night.”

  “Why can’t we keep him?” Gracie whined.

  “Wouldn’t be fair,” said Paulie. He held the cage to his face and addressed the animal. “You like to roam free, don’t you, big guy? You don’t know how to walk on a leash or beg for treats. And forget pooping outside only. That’s just never gonna happen.”

  Gracie put a finger to the cage around the animal’s hind end and stroked the protruding fur. The cage was too tight for the raccoon to turn around, but still. Matt pulled her back. “Hey, hey. That’s a wild animal.”

  “Can’t he stay for today at least?”

  “You’re not even going to be here,” said Elise. “The camp bus comes in forty-five minutes.”

  “How about this?” said Paulie, setting the cage on the table. “You stand beside him and your dad can take a picture. That way you’ll always remember him.”

  “Yes!” Gracie said. “No one will believe a black raccoon.”

  Matt pulled out his phone. “Okay, but keep a safe distance, please.”

  Gracie sidled over to the cage, nervous but exhilarated. Paulie came around to stand behind her and grin, one hand on her shoulder, like they were going to prom. All that was missing was the wrist corsage and a fake palm tree backdrop. “How about we just, you know, give Gracie a little space?” Matt said.

  “I want Paulie in the picture.”

  “It’s okay, Matt,” Elise said, poking him. “It’s cute.”

  Matt snapped a few quick photos, then filled out a check and handed it over. “Thanks again for squeezing us in.”

  “No worries. I’m glad to help the family who helped mine. It’s how the world should work.”

  Outside, Gracie followed the raccoon cage and Paulie out to his truck, doing a happy little twist every time she planted her crutches. “Where are you going now?”

  He swung the cage up into the back of the truck and set it gently on a folded moving blanket. “I’m going to release this fellow and then pick up another trespasser: a six-inch red-eared turtle in a laundry room.”

  “Who on earth calls about a turtle?” Elise asked.

  “That little fella’s a rescue project. He’s got a bum front leg, which is not a good thing for a turtle,” said Paulie. “Probably had a scrap with a cat. Or a raccoon. He needs to strengthen himself by walking around, then swimming in very shallow water. We don’t want him going back into the lake until we’re sure he can handle it.”

  Andy came around the front of t
he house with an industrial garbage bag, and Matt moved to let him pass. It was day two of the roofing job, which meant Kostick would be writing up his bill. Matt had thought ahead, pulled on the KOSTICK & SONS FISHING LODGE T-shirt. Couldn’t hurt to keep the marketing angle top of mind as the man made his decision about local or weekender pricing. Matt stepped out from behind Paulie’s truck.

  “Excuse me, folks.” Andy shimmied between Matt and Paulie’s open door without so much as a glance at the shirt. “Coming through.”

  “I love turtles so much,” Gracie said.

  Andy’s bag split open on the driveway, and he swore quietly as he stooped to gather up the pile of bent nails, paper towels, scraps of wood and shingles, and the heavy-duty plastic wrap the shingles arrived in.

  “What will you do with him?” Gracie asked.

  “What I do with every rescue. Post a notice on the wall at the gas station. And until someone adopts him, I’ll keep him in my room. Hidden from my mom and dad.”

  Gracie turned to her parents. “Can I please have the turtle? I would take such good care of him.”

  “No,” said Matt.

  Elise nudged Matt. “It’s not a bad idea. She’s dying for a pet. Besides . . .” She lowered her voice. “The injured leg. Learning to strengthen himself. Kind of parallel, don’t you think?”

  “Turtles are covered in salmonella,” Matt said. “Totally unhealthy. People have died, I’ve heard. And I don’t think keeping turtles is even legal anymore.”

  “Ugh,” Gracie groaned, slumping over her crutches dramatically. “Why does everything have to be legal?”

  “Gracie, aquariums are a pain in the neck. They get murky, they smell—”

  “But Mom will help clean when she visits.”

  Matt stared at his daughter. This was how Gracie perceived their lives together? That her mother didn’t even live with them? That she had a drop-in mother? He felt his blood pressure rise.

  Elise cupped the back of Gracie’s head. “Honey, I’m not visiting you when I come back. I’m home.”

  “Please. Paulie’s going to leave.”

  “Daddy and I will talk about it, okay?” Elise turned to Paulie. “Can we get back to you? Sorry. I promise we’re not always deadlocked like this.”

  “Absolutely.” Paulie shot them both an apologetic grin. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to open a can of trouble.” He climbed into the cabin and started the engine, began to back out of the driveway, tipping a hand out the window in goodbye. “You get in touch when you figure it out.”

  Gracie watched him go, toeing the gravel with one sneaker.

  Matt pulled his wife back a few steps, out of Gracie’s earshot. “Why do we have to go through this every time? All I ask is for a subtler power shift when you come back into the fold. Like, give me some credit for all the weeks and months I’ve handled on my own. I do know what’s good for her. Yesterday at Eagle Gas, then camp. Come on. Kick it back a notch.”

  “There’s a danger to coddling her too much, Matt. She has to make mistakes, fail, discover. . . . It’s how she’ll get strong. If we hold an umbrella over her head every time it storms, she’s never going to know how it feels to have rain fall on her face.”

  Somewhere across the lake, a motorboat fired up. Matt’s gaze traveled from his wife’s pleading eyes to her set chin. She was so resolute and driven in every way. Even her ponytail couldn’t just be. It took the sunlight from behind her head and shattered it into a million pieces.

  “No turtle,” he said, and turned away.

  – CHAPTER 14 –

  Fifteen minutes later, Elise was on hands and knees, digging up prickly weeds from a garden at the base of an ancient oak, aware she should be wearing gloves. At the road’s edge, Gracie—in denim shorts and sun hat, a T-shirt that read DON’T WORRY, NOTHING IS UNDER CONTROL—waited for the camp bus in Matt’s old shelter. It wasn’t much bigger than a phone booth, a weathered and mossy A-frame wooden structure that resembled an upended half canoe. Tucked inside was a cracked vinyl bus seat.

  “Did you remember it was Father’s Day, Gracie?” Elise said. “When you get home, you can make Daddy a card.”

  A vintage pickup bounced along the road, kicking up a cloud of dust. On the driver’s door were stick-on letters: LAKE PLACID GOODS AND PROVISIONS, with a phone number. Under that, in italics, WE DELIVER. The old man driving gave them both a relaxed two-fingered salute as he passed.

  Gracie waved. Her skin shimmered with a generous application of sunscreen, and her fingers and toes had been freshly done the night before in navy polish, to match her mother’s. It was Elise’s latest offense against Thumb’s thirst for domination. And subsequent failure, as her daughter’s thumb was already in her mouth.

  Elise had sought advice from doctors, naturopaths, dentists, parents in chat rooms, and former thumb-suckers. There was no deterrent that was going to break this relationship.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t about prevention at all. Elise stood up as a couple pedaled past on matching rented bikes. “What about a fifty-dollar bill if you stop sucking your thumb for a month?”

  Gracie regarded her thumb with new interest, the way you might suddenly look at your dog if he was offered a starring role on Broadway.

  “Think about it.” Elise tugged on a dandelion, but the upper plant broke off in her hand, leaving the root spike deep in the grass. She went at a few more, digging with her trowel to free the roots, experiencing a vague sense of nausea.

  “I’m not the kind of person who’s motivated by money.”

  “Okay. Interesting. What kind of thing motivates—”

  “Mom?”

  Bang, bang, bang went the hammers on the roof. A small black car cruised past. “Yes?”

  “You know I love you, right?”

  Elise sat back on her heels, completely overwhelmed. Never, ever had her daughter just blurted out an “I love you.”

  “Sweetness, that makes me unbelievably happy. And you know I love y—”

  “Can you go inside? I don’t want the kids on the bus to see you.”

  Reality check. Elise looked at her watch. It was only 8:15. The bus was due at 8:40. She moved closer to the split rail fence behind the bus shelter. Pale pink ambling roses used to cover the old wood, but they’d been choked out by invasive English ivy and very few roses were in bloom. Elise started to carefully separate vines from delicate rose stems. “You’ve got at least twenty minutes before you risk any sort of public ridicule.”

  * * *

  FROM THE FIRST of Elise’s Thursday afternoon riding lessons at Grange Road Farms, Rosamunde had arranged her lunch break so she could stand at the end of Ronnie’s indoor arena or sit on the bench alongside his outdoor ring and watch her daughter, the same frozen smile always on her face.

  Elise didn’t want to splay open her life to these rich kids. It was embarrassing enough that Ronnie was plucking her out of the group to have her demonstrate a sitting trot or a transition from walk to canter. She didn’t need her mother squeezing her fists and holding them up in a silent cheer. Rosamunde’s constant attention on her had become suffocating.

  About five or six weeks into the lessons, while they were driving home together in Rosamunde’s old silver Tercel, Elise blurted out a cruel lie, telling her mother that Ronnie had laid down a new rule: no spectators during lessons. Rosamunde nodded in silence.

  But the very next Thursday, there she was again.

  “How I adored, when you were born, knowing how much you needed me. It gave me such purpose. Such reason for being,” Rosamunde explained to her solemn daughter that night as they gazed at the stars. This ritual too was getting old. Elise was a teenager. She no longer wanted to be tucked into bed by her mother. “It still does.”

  “Mom, maybe you should go back to school for something. Nursing maybe. Or ask Dr. Nadal if you could work full-time. It would give you a purpose.”

  Rosamunde gave her daughter’s arm a squeeze, smiled through moist eyes. “You, precious, are my
purpose.”

  * * *

  MATT CAME AROUND from the backyard now, his face grizzled from not shaving all weekend. His right hand gripped the neck of a long ax. “Blade’s dull.” He pressed his thumb to the edge, as if to offer proof. “I’m going into town, get this thing sharpened. Oh, and Garth was just here—I signed with him.”

  Elise had never seen her husband with an ax in his life. “What do you need a sharpened ax for?”

  “Chopping down the dead birch in the backyard.”

  “But that’s a big tree.”

  “You start from the top. Climb up there and take out one branch at a time as you move down. Then back up to take out the trunk in two-foot pieces.”

  “Why not rent a chain saw? Even better, a guy with a chain saw.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that guy-with-a-chain-saw scenario’s never gone wrong.” He glanced at the roses on the fence. “You shouldn’t be working without gloves. You’ll shred your hands; go get the leather pair from the shed.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Gracie folded her arms in front of her chest. “You people are ruining my reputation.”

  A stronger wave of nausea made Elise crawl into a patch of shade and sit on her backside. It was the spicy dandelion smell, she realized. It clung to her hands and threatened to bring up the scrambled eggs Cass had served. “Matt,” she called as he headed for his car. “Can you hang on a sec? Just watch her till I’m back.”

  In the upstairs bathroom, Elise scrubbed her hands quickly and leaned over the toilet bowl, forearms on cold porcelain. A feeling of dread pounded in her chest as recognition sunk in. Was it even possible? Could she be pregnant? A baby right now did not fit into her plan right now. She and Matt had barely had sex all year, and the last time shouldn’t even count. It was just before North Carolina, and they were halfheartedly fooling around. He’d been so exhausted, he fell asleep on top of her before they even reached for a condom. She didn’t even think he’d ejaculated. But her breasts had been aching. There was that bubbly feeling. The spotting the day before. It was exactly the same as when she learned she was pregnant with Gracie.