Nancy Thayer

by Summer House (v5)

  Nona’s children weren’t thrilled with this expenditure of money for live-in help, but it was Nona’s money, after all. And after the first year, they had to admit that Nona seemed to do very well indeed, living in that drafty old wooden yacht of a house, even in the winter. She had friends over once a week to play bridge, and she attended lectures, plays, and concerts, driven to all events by Napoleon Posada in his ancient Cadillac taxi, where Nona sat in the front seat and caught up on all the local gossip, for Napoleon knew it all.

  Still, as each year passed, Nona slowed down just a little. Arthritis crippled her, so she needed a cane to walk and could no longer jump up and rush up stairs the way she had all her life. Her hearing and sight were diminished, and more and more she seemed to be forgetful, absentminded. When Glorious had to fly back to Jamaica when her own mother was ill, Nona assured everyone she was fine alone for a few days. But Helen had made a little spur-of-the-moment trip down from Boston and discovered that for three days Nona had pretty much forgotten to eat. When Helen pointed this out, Nona had argued that at her age she didn’t need much to survive.

  Luckily for Charlotte, this was just a month before Family Meeting, and when she submitted her market garden plan, everyone in the family saw at once how helpful it would be to have a member of the family living full-time in the house with Nona.

  The arrangement had worked out nicely for everyone. Or it had, until her relatives learned that she’d actually made a profit on her harebrained scheme.

  Would it be better, somehow, if her garden enterprise failed?

  Carrying a long woven basket piled with weeds for the compost heap, Charlotte headed back through the rows of growing plants to the greenhouse. Her back and arms ached pleasantly. She liked this feeling, liked having worked hard. How different it was from the bank, where she had spent each day with a cramped back and a crashed brain. Now she felt healthy, clear-eyed, well-used.

  And she felt guilty for even this much pleasure.

  Two

  Nona spent much of her day tucked up in a lawn chair in the garden, dozing beneath the sun. If it was stormy, or overcast like today, she settled on a chaise at the window with the tea service on a table by her side and a good book in her lap. She seldom read. More often she napped or looked out at the garden and remembered all that had happened over her ninety years.

  Today she could not seem to get comfortable. She wedged another pillow behind her back and smoothed the mohair throw over her legs, but she was still restless. Well, of course she was; everyone would be arriving at any moment, and the peace she had come to crave in her dotage would be shattered.

  From where she sat now, she could see out into the garden terrace, with its walls of high privet hedge, and just a bit farther through the arched opening onto the white gravel drive. She would spot any arriving vehicle.

  Although the main entrance to Wheelwright House with its pretentious Doric columns faced Polpis Harbor, the descendants of its builder, old Horace Wheelwright, never understood why. It wasn’t as if the mailman, neighbors, or friends regularly arrived at the house by water. When any of the family took a boat out, they set off from the dock at the boathouse on the far side of the property, and they got to the boathouse by leaving the mudroom at the side entrance of the house and following an ancient slate walk carpeted with low-lying mosses and determined periwinkle. The mudroom door was also the entrance for anyone in the family carrying armfuls of groceries or luggage from the garage or the half-circle white shell drive. Guests parked on the drive, walked beneath the arch in the high wall of privet hedge, and followed the path over the slate terrace to the French doors. These opened into the long living room, with its sofas and chairs and piano and fireplace and, at the far end, its expansive view of the harbor.

  Back when she was a new bride and still known by her given name of Anne, she had learned how to keep the hedge healthy and trimmed from her mother-in-law, the ironically christened Charity Wheelwright. Anne would have preferred to allow her three children to play in the garden, but Charity Wheelwright was adamant. Children would spoil the elegance and symmetry, they’d poke holes in the thick green tapestry with their careless games. So Worth and Bobby and Grace were sent out the side door, through the mudroom, with their nanny, to play on the windy moors and in the high lofts of the barn—before it was converted to a garage. Perhaps Nona—Anne—longed to go with them, to jump, shrieking, down into the old piles of hay, to chase them through the slender trunks of the forest behind the barn, to feel the tickle of low wild grasses beneath her own bare feet. But in those days, a woman, a good woman, was responsive to the demands of her mother-in-law. In those days, a good woman put her husband first and her mother-in-law second. And children were tended by others until they were old enough to sit quietly at the dinner table and appreciate adult conversation.

  Still, Nona believed she had been a good mother. An approachable, reasonable, generous-spirited mother-in-law. And an affectionate, adoring, devoted grandmother. It gave her a sense of satisfaction, even smugness, to know that all her family was arriving today to help her celebrate her birthday. That would be fine. She even looked forward to it, although at her age she hated being the center of attention. Still, Grace had arranged a party at the yacht club, and Nona always loved parties.

  No, it was Family Meeting that was making her nervous. Family Meeting was just two weeks away, and she was uncomfortable—anxious, really. Nona shifted her knees beneath the mohair blanket as her thoughts stung at her like tiny insects.

  The silly business about Charlotte’s little garden!

  Three years ago, when Charlotte asked to use the three acres of Nona’s waterfront property that fronted Polpis Road for an organic market garden, Nona had readily agreed. After all, the land was just lying there, fallow, low scrubland with no endangered plant species and all the beauty of a forlorn prairie. You couldn’t even see the land from the first floor of the house because the formal garden, walled in by its high privet hedge, blocked the view. Nona had thought that Charlotte’s business plan was well considered and supported with research and statistics, and the others—Charlotte’s parents, Worth and Helen, Worth’s sister, Grace, and her husband, Kellogg—had thought so, too. When they discussed it at Family Meeting, no one had objected. Not Charlotte’s siblings, not Grace and Kellogg’s three daughters.

  Of course, everyone thought privately that Charlotte wouldn’t really follow through; Charlotte’s enthusiasms were like firecrackers, explosive and brief. Everyone assumed she’d tire of the endless manual labor of gardening, and the land would soon be covered again with wild grasses.

  No one had expected that Charlotte would love the work, that her garden would flourish, that she would, so soon, be making a profit from the place. Oh, Charlotte wasn’t close to making a living off it, not yet, but Grace and Kellogg and their daughters were already mumbling about “balancing out inequalities.” What did they want? Nona thought irritably. Should she give them each a check for a pitiful four thousand dollars or whatever little amount Charlotte netted last year? Would that keep them from becoming jealous, from believing that Charlotte was her favorite and receiving more than the others?

  It was all nonsense. Nona would not be bullied, no matter with what enormous charm. For that matter, she’d gladly write a few checks to Grace and Kellogg’s children. As for Charlotte’s brothers, Teddy might not even show up and Oliver was sweet and easy about everything. Oliver was quite happy in his life out there on the West Coast, and both he and his partner had work they loved, so they didn’t worry about money. Also, they were Dinks. Nona congratulated herself for knowing, at her age, the term Dinks, which meant Dual Income, No Kids. And she was pleased to remember that she had always treated Oliver and Owen with love, acceptance, and unconditional welcome.

  Some days she succeeded better than others. Some days the present rushed toward her like a storm, wild with gale-force winds, rogue lightning strikes, and thundering rain, and she found herself taking refug
e in the past. Not all her memories were easy. No one’s were. Yet over the years time had spun her memories into a kind of nest, a comfortable silken cushion into which her mind fit as tidily as a ring into a jewel box. She felt snug there. She escaped the failures and frustrations of her aging body and was young again. Surely those memories of her youthful passions would help her be a good grandmother to her passionate descendants. She hoped that was the case.

  1943

  “Please. Son. Are you marrying this girl because you have to?”

  “For God’s sake, Mother!” Herb’s voice was low but angry.

  Anne had just that moment paused at the head of the stairs with her hand on the banister as she bent to smooth her stockings, checking that the seam was exactly in the middle, because, from all Herb had told her, his mother would notice that sort of thing. Would care. Her footsteps had been muffled by Persian carpets when she walked from the guest bedroom at the far end of the back wing—Mrs. Wheelwright had sequestered her as far from Herb’s bedroom as possible—so she was standing in shadow at the top of the stairs when she heard their voices.

  “We understand, son. We’re grown-ups here.” His father’s words were lightened by a boys-all-together tone. “With the war, and you shipping out so soon, this—this urgency—is only natural.”

  “But marriage, surely, is not necessary.” Charity Wheelwright moderated her voice. Anne had to hold her breath and strain to hear.

  “I don’t know how the two of you can speak this way!” Herb was angry and hurt. “I explained in my letter to you. I love Anne, and I want to spend my life with her.”

  Anne’s heart knocked in her chest so fiercely she could scarcely breathe. It was a pitiful and demeaning act, eavesdropping in the shadows like this, but she could not move away; she was impaled by her own fascination like a butterfly pinned to a board.

  Now Norman Wheelwright was offering his son a drink: Scotch, the excellent single malt he seldom brought out, but nothing was too good for his son. The family’s words seemed to blur as they moved toward the far end of the living room. Should she go down now? Anne wondered, She had to go down sometime. She couldn’t hide up here for the rest of her life. What could she do to warn them of her approach? Clear her throat loudly when she reached the bottom of the stairs? Something bristled inside her at the thought. Why should she protect them from embarrassment? Her future in-laws did not seem to have taken any measures to secure privacy for this conversation, to shelter Anne from their disdain. They’d left the door open from the living room to the hall. They hadn’t even waited until evening was over and Anne tucked away in bed to assail Herb with their fears. Anne had scarcely said more than hello. She doubted that Herb had even had a chance to unpack; his parents were rushing at him as if Anne had set him on fire and they had to smother the flames.

  This was not completely unexpected. Herb had described his parents in all their haughty snobbery to Anne—he had made fun of them, really—at first. After Anne accepted his proposal, he discussed his family members and their elevated regard for their station in life more seriously. The Wheelwrights were bankers. They had lived in Massachusetts since the late 1700s, and they had always been careful to marry within a small select group whom Herb’s mother, Charity, called Our Kind. Herb’s mother was a Folger by birth. Her mother had been a Cabot. Herb’s father’s mother had been a Saltonstall.

  “But I’m not some hick with straw in my teeth!” Anne had protested.

  “Of course not. I never meant to imply that you were!” Herb had pulled Anne close, caressing her as if she were some kind of little beast with its fur on edge.

  Anne wriggled against his embrace. “And if you want to talk about money, my family could buy and sell your—”

  Herb brought his mouth to hers so she could feel his lips move; his words puffed against her as he said, “But we don’t. Want to talk about money. It’s not done.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Anne shoved him away. Sitting up on the edge of the sofa, she pushed her hair back from her face. They were in the small Back Bay apartment Anne rented with her best friend, Gail. Gail had gone out with her own beau this evening but would be back any moment. Anne didn’t want to get caught with her dress all rumpled and twisted, even though as soon as Herb left, she and Gail would curl up on the sofa with a warm mug of Postum and tell each other every detail of their evenings, giggling and snickering at the ways of men.

  Anne and Gail were both from the Midwest, Anne from Kansas City, Gail from Chicago. They’d met at Radcliffe, where they were majoring in English, and they’d become best friends at once. Anne had intended to go home and teach high school English, but her father, who owned large stockyards in Kansas City, persuaded her to stay in the East for the duration of the war, to lend her considerable energy and organizational know-how as a secretary in the office of the Stangarone Freight Company, the Boston-based shipping company responsible for loading the food products and supplies onto the Liberty Ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in convoys, escorted by U.S. destroyers, carrying necessary goods to the troops. The army, desperate for vessels, couldn’t build cargo ships fast enough and had commandeered the use of just about anything that would float. The office in Stangarone’s shipyard warehouse was always chaotic, frenzied with paperwork, phone calls, and telegrams as they liaised with governmental directives. Anne loved it. It made her feel she was doing her part for the war effort.

  Gail was an energetic, plump little bumblebee of a woman, full of laughter and eager to see new sights, but she missed the wide open spaces of the Midwest and planned to return home when the war was over. She wanted to raise quarter horses and have lots of children, but she hadn’t yet chosen a husband, and she wouldn’t, not now. I’m not going to marry some guy and then lose him to the war, she declared, and Anne admired the way Gail believed she could control her own destiny.

  Anne’s destiny was set the moment she looked into Herb Wheelwright’s eyes.

  They met on a hot September evening at a party on Commonwealth Avenue given by the family of Hilyard Clayton, who had just finished officer training. Gail was dating a nearly cross-eyed reporter for the Boston Globe, Quinn Probst, who’d gone to school with Hilyard, and Gail told Anne to come along, because the party was really one of those wartime crushes where anyone in uniform was welcome to a drink and pretty girls were welcome to two. Gail worked at the Globe as well, as a secretary, with no aspirations to be anything else. She just loved being where so much action was unfolding.

  The Clayton house was enormous, with high ceilings, walls covered with oil paintings of disapproving ancestors, and a great many valuable, breakable, porcelain cachepots and vases set about on heavy furniture.

  “I feel like I’m stepping into a book by Edith Wharton,” Anne said to Gail, as they stood in the front hall taking their bearings.

  “More like Edgar Allan Poe,” Gail quipped.

  Quinn took Gail’s hand and pulled her into the noisy crush of the party. Gail grabbed Anne’s hand and yanked her along. A bar was set up at the far end of the dining room, and waiters moved through the rooms with trays of drinks. Above the babble of the party, a record played a new Benny Goodman song, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”

  Hilyard Clayton and many of his buddies were on leave for a month before shipping out to Arizona for special training. Because of this, his parents and the other older folk had thoughtfully gathered in the father’s den, leaving the larger living and dining rooms for the younger crowd, most of the men in uniform, most of the women adorned with deep red lipstick, all of them smoking Camels and Chesterfields. Smoke spiraled above their heads, drifting up to the crown molding, and to the elaborate plaster rosette around the chandelier sparkling over the dining room table.

  Everyone was drunk or getting there; they were young, excited, sexy, and perhaps just a little bit scared. They all felt very much on the brink. Perhaps, that night, they missed the reassuring presence of the older ones. Perhaps it felt to the young people that th
e mature generation, their parents, were settled comfortably in the well-fortified inner sanctum, while they crowded at the front of a moving vessel, without guide or sage or leader. They did not articulate this. The party was noisy, raucous, explosive, but something was absent—or something unwanted was present. Anne couldn’t help but think, as she looked at the lanky men in their uniforms, leaning against the massive walnut sideboard laden with silver trays, chafing dishes, buckets, and bowls, that those inanimate objects, already heirlooms, might outlast the living heirs.

  Somehow Gail and Quinn had gotten over to the other side of the room. Anne could hear Gail’s bubbling, irrepressible laughter, and she was ticked off at herself for being melancholy in the middle of a party. She was wearing a white dress with red polka dots and round red earrings and high red heels, and she knew she was pretty enough, and several men stopped to chat her up, but she was out of sorts. She decided to go sit on the front steps and cool off.

  She squeezed her way to the front hall, delicately balancing a pink gin. In the wide double doorway between the hall and the living room, a group of men was gathered in a rough noisy circle. In the middle, a short soldier with blazing red hair held a very pale blond waiter by his shirt collar. The soldier was shaking the waiter and yelling at him. It took Anne a moment to understand what he was saying. “Kraut! Damned Kraut! Get out of this house!” The crowd of men around him bellowed agreement.