To his surprise, Jeff enjoys the water park. The three boys require little supervision. They dart from water slide to waterfall bright with rainbows. They jump into the largest swimming pool, shouting with joy, and he follows after them sharing their exuberance, balancing each boy in turn on his shoulders and tossing them into the clear blue water. He challenges them to race after him as he swims in lane, slicing easily from one end of the pool to another, then sliding beneath the water, reversing his stroke to surface first beneath one boy and then another. They giggle excitedly and flail their arms and legs, evading his underwater pursuit.
He remembers how he and Susan, during the distant days of their courtship, had raced against each other in ocean and pool, both of them accomplished swimmers, delighting in their half-naked bodies, their sunlit limbs sleekly wet. With startling clarity, he recalls how, on one such day, at a favorite beach, he had pulled Susan down beneath the gentle waves and kissed her hard, then held her weightless body close, so that they moved in tandem, entwined as one. They had surfaced, spewing out the saltwater, choking with laughter, holding hands loosely as they raced back to their blanket. Susan wore her hair long then and sea salt had sparkled in her curls like bright bits of mica that vanished beneath his stroking fingers.
He yearns for her now with a piercing desire sharpened by memory.
He will not allow all that they have shared to vanish because he has been so weary, because he has allowed himself to be numbed by domestic routine and overwhelmed with sadness, which he knows to be peculiar to surgeons who have all too many encounters with death. Andrew, a colleague, has spoken to him of burnout, an exhaustion that followed him from the operating room to his home and eventually resulted in his divorce. ‘I will not let that happen to us,’ Jeff vows silently.
The mischievous laughter of the three boys, the rainbow prisms in the waterfall and fountains, the breathless fun of it all, has revitalized him. He and Susan will talk tonight, really talk. About her work and his. About their children. About their separate fears and all that has come between them. They will seize these last days of August, these wistful waning weeks of summer, and use them to build battlements against the demands of the seasons to come, the chill of autumn, the icy thrust of winter.
‘Hey, guys,’ he calls to the boys. ‘Time to get dry, get dressed. They’re waiting for us at the park.’
The youngsters shout their protests, swim away, swim back and, still laughing, emerge from the water, stand beside him beneath the frigid outdoor shower, towel themselves dry and swiftly dress, eager to sprint off to the next adventure. They sing nonsense songs as Jeff drives to Granite Creek Park, a sylvan clearing carved into the foothills of the White Mountains. Jeff parks in a shaded area and is surprised to note that there are so few cars in this popular family destination. The boys tumble out and a state trooper approaches.
‘A rough current in the creek today,’ he says. ‘Keep an eye on your kids.’
‘Hey, we’re good swimmers,’ Cary calls out.
‘Great swimmers,’ Donny adds.
‘I’m Mark Spitz. Want to see my medals?’ Matt laughs and the trooper grins.
‘I guess you’ve got your work cut out for you,’ the trooper tells Jeff.
‘I guess I do. Thanks, Officer.’
Jeff wonders where the others are. He had expected Richie and his passengers to be late. The Epstein kids are notorious for never being on time. But it surprises him that Wendy and Liane have not arrived, nor has Evan shown up with their picnic lunch. He shrugs and spreads a blanket across a huge flat boulder that overlooks the roiling white waters of the creek below. Turbulent waves break against the rock formations that jut their way out of the stream, jagged stepping stones across the narrow waterway. Daring youngsters, their wet hair plastered against faces bright with sunlight and excitement, leap across the stony parapets, shouting triumphantly as they negotiate their way across and back again. A freckled boy, making his way across a sharp crag, lifts his foot high and his orange water shoe soars through the air and down into the water. Within seconds it is swept away. The boy shrugs and leaps onto the next flinty outcropping.
‘Hey, Dad, can we go down there?’ Matt asks. ‘We want to climb the rocks like we did last year.’
‘The current wasn’t this strong last year,’ Jeff says.
‘We’ll be really careful, Dr Edwards.’ Donny adds his plea to Matt’s, his voice respectful, hopeful. ‘We won’t climb any of the really big rocks and we won’t go near the water. Honest.’
Jeff smiles. He likes Donny, the boy who has no father of his own to cajole.
‘We’ll stay together,’ Cary adds. ‘We’ll be buddies like when we swim at day camp. It’s safest that way. That’s what our counselors said.’
‘All right,’ he agrees at last. ‘I’ll be watching. But stay close. No jumping into the water and be sure to watch your footing. Wear your sneakers.’
‘But they’ll get wet,’ Cary protests. His sneakers are new. His mother impressed upon him how expensive they were and how it was important to keep them clean.
‘They’ll dry off. If your mother gets mad blame me,’ Jeff tells Cary. ‘I’ll explain.’
Neither he nor Susan has ever really liked Liane Curran.
‘Showy,’ Susan has called her. ‘Superficial. All those stupid matching outfits and brand names. Materialistic.’
But Liane has changed over these past several days. She is softer, Jeff thinks, as though she is ready to discard some of the defensive armor she has always worn during their shared vacation weeks. Her self-protective silence is much diminished. She is newly open, newly relaxed. He has the feeling she will not be unduly upset if Cary’s sneakers are sullied.
‘And make sure the laces are tightly tied,’ he cautions them severely.
They toss their T-shirts on to the blanket and dash off. It pleases him to see that Matt is the tallest of the trio and that he runs the fastest, his laughter ricocheting back to his father. All to the good, Jeff thinks. He has been worried about his younger son, so sensitive to his parents’ tensions, so newly isolated by his older siblings’ rush into adolescence, their quarrels and their bickering. But here at Mount Haven, among his friends, Matt’s latent sadness has all but vanished.
Jeff watches as the three boys reach the water’s edge, as they plan their ascent, carefully, and then as a team, leap from rock to rock.
He glances at his watch. Where the hell are all the others? He is not concerned that Liane and Wendy are late. Women at a craft show linger, examining one display after another, hesitating over each purchase. He and his brother-in-law Greg have often downed at least two beers while Susan and Helene wandered through malls or antique stores. He wonders if Greg and Helene are planning to join them for the picnic lunch. If so, they too are late. But now he is really worried about the older kids. He never should have agreed to let Jeremy and Annette go off in Richie’s roadster, too crowded, too unsafe. He turns away from the creek and stands and trains his gaze upon the parking area as though his stare will summon the missing vehicle.
‘Dr Edwards! Dr Edwards!’ Donny and Cary shout in unison, their shrill voices tremulous with terror.
He wheels around and sees them waving frantically, pointing down to the stream. His heart stops. Matt is caught in the current, a captive of the rushing waves; he flails his arms desperately, kicks wildly and still the current carries him inexorably further downstream. Jeff rushes forward, his heart pounding. He straddles the precipices that lead downward but suddenly his foot is wedged tightly between two rocks. He struggles to break loose, his eyes fixed on his son who is no longer fighting the current but is being tossed, rising and falling, his body now submerged, his head barely rising to the surface.
‘Oh, God!’ shouts Jeff. ‘Matt! Matt!’ His throat grows hoarse with terror, his heart beats in wild tympanic rhythm.
He wrenches his foot free, ready now to rush to his boy, but even as he sprints forward he sees a slender woman dive fro
m a long rocky parapet. Her descent is swift; her body, like a carefully aimed jackknife, slices through the foaming waves below and she splashes into the water only millimeters away from the struggling boy. She swims with swiftness and power toward Matt, grasping him beneath his chin, pulling him free of the current, and then with steady stroke carries him to the safety of the pale-pebbled shore. She sets the boy gently down and brushes her rose-gold hair from her eyes. She looks up and Jeff, weak with relief, sees that it is Polly, mysteriously and improbably arrived from Mount Haven Inn, who has saved his son’s life.
He hurries forward, breaking through the small crowd that has gathered. A woman drapes a towel about Polly’s shoulders but Matt lies inert, his eyes closed, his lips a deathly blue. The blond father of three small girls rushes over and kneels beside him, his arms pounding the boy’s chest, breathing into his mouth, each motion rhythmic, each breath measured. The crowd is silent, as though a single word, a single untoward movement will break the lifesaving momentum. The three small girls weep silently. Their mother fingers her cross, her lips moving soundlessly. Jeff thinks that his heart will split open and then suddenly Matt’s lips part and he spews forth a spray of water followed by a green froth of vomit.
‘Good,’ says the tall man who speaks with a guttural accent. ‘He lives. The boy is OK.’
He turns then to his own daughters and it is Jeff who kneels beside his son, wiping his face clean, smoothing his hair, murmuring his name in a mantra of gratitude.
‘Matt! Matt! Matt!’
Donny and Cary hover close by, trembling children, stripped of gaiety and bravado, the innocence and joy of the earlier hours shattered by their friend’s dangerously close brush with death.
‘Will he be all right, Dr Edwards?’
‘Is he really OK?’
Their voices are tremulous.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Jeff assures them.
‘I’m OK,’ Matt says in a hoarse whisper, forcing himself to smile. He is a child whose rueful apologies have always been accompanied by a smile.
Jeff passes his hands across his son’s torso, his legs, his arms; his touch is that of a father-surgeon, sensitive to any bruise, any irregularity of bone and muscle on that lithe young body he has cared for from the very moment of Matt’s birth. He fears that he will weep but instead he smiles. He turns to Polly. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
Polly blushes. ‘I’m just glad I was here.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ Matt says. ‘I didn’t mean to go near the water. I thought I could make the jump between those rocks.’
‘It’s OK,’ Jeff says. ‘Next time you’ll think again.’
He lifts his son and carries him in his arms to the huge flat boulder still spread with the faded blanket that had once draped his marriage bed, trailed by Polly and the other boys. Jeremy and Annette, who have finally arrived, hurry toward them.
‘What happened, Dad?’ Annette asks, but before he can answer them, Wendy and Liane, ashen with anxiety, race up to join them.
‘We heard there was an accident, a drowning,’ Wendy gasps. ‘That’s what they were saying at the car park.’
But even as she speaks Donny rushes into her arms and she encircles him into the safety of her embrace.
‘Mommy.’ Cary thrusts himself at Liane, burying his head between her breasts.
Suddenly, inexplicably, he bursts into tears.
‘A near accident, Matt. No drowning and he’ll be fine,’ Jeff assures them. ‘Thanks to Polly.’
She blushes and Jeff sees that she is shivering. He shrugs out of his own sweatshirt and bundles her into it.
‘I’m OK, I’m fine.’
Still shivering, she points to a copse of spruce saplings.
‘The picnic hamper should be there. That’s where I set it down when I couldn’t find you. I hope no one’s taken it.’
She is once again the concerned employee worrying about the needs of the guests of August. Paul and Richie retrieve it and carry it triumphantly back to the blanket.
‘There’s a cooler in the van up there in the parking lot. Mrs Abbot sent drinks and fruit and stuff.’
Jeremy and Annette scurry off and return, balancing the Styrofoam cooler between them as Liane and Wendy distribute the sandwiches and salads. They discover, much to their surprise, that they are ravenously hungry. They eat with an astonishing rapidity, each taste life-affirming. They laugh as a bottle of orange juice is spilled, as a canister of coleslaw is overturned. They have cheated death and can mock the messier vagaries of life.
The boys describe Polly’s daring dive. They draw close to her. They are, all three of them, in love with her at this golden moment. They will not soon relinquish the memory of her amazing mid-air grace, her fearless dive into the menacing rapids.
Polly explains that Louise Abbot had counted on Evan to deliver the picnic lunch.
‘When he didn’t show up she asked me to drive out here with it.’
‘A good thing she did,’ Wendy says.
‘A damn good thing,’ Jeff agrees.
‘What’s with that Evan?’ Liane wonders. ‘He’s hardly been around lately.’
‘He’s weird. He’s always been weird,’ Tracy Epstein says. ‘My dad always said so. And Daniel can’t stand him.’
Tracy, they all know, is a third generation Mount Haven Inn vacationer. Her grandparents, like Daniel Goldner’s parents, and then her parents, Simon and Charlotte, spent all their Augusts there. Tracy finds it oddly comforting that her father chooses to return to the inn with Nessa and Paul. It gives her a sense of continuity. Her parents’ divorce has not exiled her from the summer landscape of her childhood, from the anecdotes scavenged during late-night eavesdropping and squirreled away for future processing. All the nuances of the Abbots’ lives are familiar to her. She knows about Louise’s teenage pregnancy and about the stillborn babies. She can understand why her father and his friend Daniel hold Evan and his phony pastel-colored crew-neck sweaters in such contempt.
Still, Tracy’s words make the others uncomfortable. There are things that should not be discussed in front of Polly who is, after all, Evan Abbot’s employee. But Polly is indifferent to Tracy’s revelations. She knows where Evan Abbot spends his time and with whom. She has seen him often enough on the UNH Durham campus and he is seldom alone. But she says nothing and snuggles deeper into Jeff Edwards’ sweatshirt, inhaling the scent of his body, running her fingers across the ragged cuff of the sleeve.
She wonders if she should mend it before returning it to him.
They clear the remnants of the picnic away and Polly murmurs that she should be getting back to the inn.
‘Mrs Abbot needs me to set up for dinner,’ she says sleepily, aware for the first time of how the plunge into the creek exhausted her. She rubs her neck, murmurs something about a pain in her back.
‘A muscle strain,’ Jeff says. ‘I’ll call the inn and explain. You should rest for a while.’
He calls Louise on his cell phone, leaning against the spruce. He tells her what happened.
‘But don’t tell my wife,’ he cautions. ‘Matt is fine but I don’t want her to worry.’
‘Of course.’ Louise’s reply is vague, and Jeff knows that she is now wondering where she can find another waitress to help her that afternoon.
He returns to the blanket where both Polly and Matt have fallen asleep. Wendy and Liane are reading, looking up now and again at their sons who are gathering branches to construct yet another fort. Richie has produced a Scrabble board and a lazy game is in progress. Jeff too stretches out on the blanket. They luxuriate in the lassitude of this late-summer afternoon. All danger has passed and the sun, having reached its zenith, is bright upon their faces.
Susan Edwards sighs with relief, snaps her laptop shut and closes her dictionary. The chapter is complete and she is satisfied with her translation. She struggled with the cadences of Pierre’s voice as he confronted his wife, Jacqueline, his long-smoldering resentment boiling
over into a barely contained fury. Susan wrote and rewrote. LeBec’s lyrical tone was stubbornly resistant to an English rendering but at last she had gotten it right. That was what marriage was sometimes like, she thought. Slights and moods, words unspoken, angers contained, toxic combinations that inevitably simmer and overflow. But it is also inevitable, she assures herself, that heat cools, that even caustic stains fade and are wiped away, leaving only the palest of scars. LeBec is pessimistic but Susan, her translator, is optimistic. She pities Pierre and Jacqueline but she does not pity herself or Jeff. All that has been constrained between them will be remedied. She glances at her watch and sees that she will have time to shower and wash her hair before everyone returns from the day’s outing. She decides that she and Jeff will not have dinner at the inn but will drive instead to their favorite restaurant in Portsmouth where pale-green linen cloths cover the tables and the narrow room is candle lit.
‘Wine, a really good Sauvignon,’ she decides as she shampoos her hair, using the expensive lavender conditioner that Jeff is partial to.
‘Sole almondine,’ she thinks as she towels herself dry and contemplates her scant vacation wardrobe, selecting at last the one dressy outfit. ‘Casual chic,’ the salesperson had called the pale-blue silk trousers and matching top. She slips it on, loving the feel of the fabric against her skin, loving the way the long string of faux pearls dangles so elegantly against the Grecian folds of the loosely cut tunic. How fortunate that she remembered to bring her high-heeled white sandals. How fortunate that her ankles have remained slender. She applies her make-up carefully, even adding eye shadow, closing her lightly colored lids against the memory of Jeff’s angry stare when she declined to join him at the water park. But this is vacation. There is always time during vacations to banish harsh angers, to soothe small irritations, small disappointments. She was, of course, foolish – foolish and stupid – to speak so sharply to Polly, but that is a mistake she will not make again. Helene was right about that.
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