A Month at the Shore

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Jane was sorry, too, though for a split second she wasn't quite sure why. Because I want someone else to be there, she decided as she shook Phillip Harrow's hand good-bye. I want someone else to care.

  Harrow began walking out, then stopped suddenly and turned. "Will you be staying on Nantucket past tomorrow?"

  Jane smiled and lifted her shoulders. "I don't know ... maybe a day or two."

  His blue eyes — piercingly, hauntingly blue — settled on her for a long, long moment. And then he, too, smiled and shrugged. "Well, good-bye, then."

  There were seven people huddling under seven umbrellas at the funeral. Jane knew only one of them: her mother. Gwendolyn Drew had flown from London to Boston, caught an air shuttle, and much to Jane's astonishment, arrived at Prospect Hill Cemetery right in the nick of time.

  "I had to come back to the States early and it wasn't that out of the way," her mother whispered over the eulogy. "And after all," she added with a sigh, "Sylvia was family."

  The morning was wet and cold; Jane felt pierced through to her bones. But her mother faced down the weather with a kind of noble indifference, as if she were waiting in her BMW at a red light in her beloved San Francisco.

  How does she do it? Jane wondered, not for the first time. Her mother couldn't possibly have got more than a couple of hours' sleep, even in first-class. And yet here she was, fresh and poised and uncomplaining. Every highlighted hair was in place; the belt of her trench coat was tied exactly so. The makeup she wore was perfectly applied and unstained by tears.

  Jane's eyes, on the other hand, were puffy from weeping, her nose bright pink from blowing. She'd forgotten to open her umbrella at one point, and now her long auburn hair was plastered to her face in dark wet ringlets. Yesterday it hadn't sunk in, but sometime during the night she realized it: Aunt Sylvia — funny, eccentric, shrewd Aunt Sylvia — was gone.

  The minister finished with a short prayer and offered his condolences. The service was over; the small gathering began breaking up. Gwendolyn Drew took her daughter aside with a look of loving horror.

  "Darling, you look positively awful," she said, peeling a wet strand of hair from Jane's forehead. "Would you rather skip lunch and go to bed, and I'll be on my way?"

  "No," Jane said quickly. She flapped open her big wet hanky and blew one more time. "I'll be all right. I don't know what's come over me ... I knew Aunt Sylvia was ready to ... but I never knew she cared enough about me .... Oh, mother ... she left me Lilac Cottage!"

  Gwendolyn's eyes opened wide. "She did? That is a surprise. I assumed the house would go to an animal shelter or some such. Well!" she said, lowering her voice in deference to the one other mourner who remained. "That really is a surprise."

  The mourner, whose back was to them both, was a solidly built man with shaggy hair. In one hand he held a big black umbrella; the other was jammed into the pocket of his canvas jacket. As they watched, he took something from his pocket and tossed it into the open, still-empty grave. His profile was grim as he turned and left without acknowledging them.

  There was a finality in the man's gesture that made Jane say, "I guess we should go."

  She touched her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss gently in the direction of her aunt, then fell in alongside her mother. But at the grave's opening she stopped, attracted by a small red spot of color in the dirt at the bottom. It was a rose, tiny and exquisite and impossibly out of place in February, in a grave.

  The two women moved on.

  ****

  They had lunch in town at the Crowninshield Saloon, a casual bar and restaurant with a scrubbed wood floor that was popular with the locals and one of the few that remained open all year long. At her mother's insistence that she eat something, Jane forced down a bowl of hot kale soup, a Portuguese specialty that took away some of the chill that had plagued her since the night before.

  Her mother had a chicken salad and a glass of Perrier. Her mother always had a chicken salad and a glass of Perrier whenever she was in what she called "a place like this."

  "Nantucket. What a desolate place to live," Gwendolyn said, staring out at the rain pounding the bare windows. "Fog ... rain ... penetrating cold ...."

  "Mother, you live in San Francisco," Jane said, recovering her sense of irony. "You have fog and rain and penetrating cold."

  Gwendolyn Drew gave her daughter a good-natured grimace. "Yes, but we're open all year. We also have compensations: opera and ballet, museums and theaters, not to mention charity balls for all of them. But here! What does one do on this ... this rock?"

  "One sits by the fire, just as we're doing now, and warms one's buns."

  "One gets rock fever."

  "I wouldn't."

  "Jane. If you're thinking what I think you're thinking — don't. You couldn't possibly afford to keep Lilac Cottage as a weekend retreat. You have no job. The property taxes alone —"

  "I didn't say I was keeping it," Jane answered defensively. She hated when her mother acted like her father.

  "I should hope not. This inheritance is an absolute godsend. You've been living on your savings for six months now; how long could you have gone on? The mortgage on your condo alone — and what about your father?" she said suddenly. "When he learns about the inheritance, of course he'll want you to sell." She brightened. "You can go back to school and retrain; law school maybe —"

  "Mother, I'm not going to become a lawyer just because Dad's one. And I like being a graphic designer. This downturn can't last forever. I'll get another job. Eventually." She spread a hard pat of butter so viciously onto her slice of bread that it fell apart in her hand.

  Her mother circled her daughter's wrist and said soothingly, "Don't blame me, darling. Blame the economy. Blame the advertising sector. Or better yet — blame your father," she said with a smile. "He's not here; he'll never know."

  "Oh no, Mother, I blame you," Jane said, only half kidding. "You stopped having kids one boy short. Think how much easier my life would be if Dad didn't look to me to carry on his tradition of workaholism. If you'd had a Neal Drew, Jr., he could've been the lawyer."

  Her mother shrugged and said, "Well, it's too late now. Anyway, we've been all through this. If you don't want to be pressured by your father, you should find yourself a nice rich man and settle down with a family. Like your sister."

  "Those are my choices? Law school or marriage? This is practically medieval," Jane said, throwing her hands up and rolling her eyes. It was an overly dramatic gesture, she knew; but she wanted to irritate her mother, and being melodramatic in a public place was a quick and easy way to do it.

  Her mother gave her a sit-up-properly-and-eat-your-food look. Jane went back to her Earl Grey tea.

  "I feel really guilty about the house. What will Lisa say?" Jane murmured, wrapping her hands around the tea mug to warm them.

  "Your sister is married and financially secure. She won't begrudge you your cottage. Besides, she didn't spend a summer with Sylvia."

  "I only spent a month."

  "And she didn't visit her in the nursing home for the last two years."

  "It wasn't that often," Jane said sadly. "Not often enough. I wish I'd known before then that Aunt Sylvia was willing to see me."

  "Well, what do you want to do? Give it back?" her mother said, exasperated.

  "I'm beginning to think so!" It seemed an incredible act of betrayal, having to sell the cottage her aunt had loved so dearly.

  "Sweetheart." Her mother's smile was meltingly tender, the kind of smile a mother has for a daughter who's tried to tie her shoelaces for the first time. "Before this windfall there was no way you would have survived without your father's help, sooner or later. We know what a fiercely proud brat you are; wouldn't you rather have the help from Aunt Sylvia than from your stubborn, domineering father? Who, incidentally, loves you more than life itself?"

  "Well. Once you put it that way ...." Jane made a little sound of frustration and gazed out the window, chewing on the inside of her lip.


  "It's stopped raining," her mother said, glancing at her watch. "I just have time to make a quick run out with you to see the place —"

  "Look!" Jane said, pointing out the window. "There's the guy who threw the flower in the grave!"

  He was sitting in the driver's seat of a rusty, dark green Ford pickup with J & J LANDSCAPING AND NURSERY painted on the door panel. His expression was as grim as ever, which cast a malevolent shadow over the craggy, weathered features of his fortyish face. He looked like a man capable of anything.

  "It's hard to imagine him carrying a tiny rose in his pocket," Jane murmured, frowning. She was absolutely put off by the man.

  "No mystery about that; Aunt Sylvia must have been a client," her mother said as she dropped her Visa card on top of the tab. "She had to have needed help keeping up the property at the end."

  She signaled for a waiter to square up the bill. "Rain or not, I'm looking forward to seeing your Lilac Cottage. As I recall from an old photo, it's an adorable place with lots of shrubs and flowers. We'll have to be very clever marketing it, especially in this economy ...."

  "Hmmm." But Jane wasn't listening. Her attention was fixed squarely on the driver of the pickup, who'd rolled down his window and was yelling across to someone she couldn't see.

  "I want the burner, you moron!" he shouted. "Bring it over!" He threw the truck into gear and tore off down South Water Street.

  "Charming," Jane's mother remarked, slipping her credit card into her wallet.

  "People never shout in San Francisco?" Jane asked dryly.

  "Not where we live," her mother said without a trace of irony. "That's the trouble with an island: There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, from these types."

  Gwendolyn Drew was of the Miss Manners School of Snobbery. As far as she was concerned, you could be rich, or you could be poor. You could be educated, or you could be not. But you had better behave, or you were nothing at all. Jane smiled to herself, shook her head, and slipped on her coat. "Ready, Mother?"

  Chapter 2

  Lilac Cottage was a shambles. Jane had tried to prepare herself for the inevitable wear and tear that two years without an occupant can mean to a house. But she hadn't taken into account the savagery of Nantucket's storms, or the corrosiveness of its year-round fog. And she hadn't taken into account her aunt's reluctance to spend any of her savings on the property.

  She turned off the key to her rental car and sat, stunned, staring at the tiny two-story Gothic cottage, whose front door was nearly hidden by two massive holly trees flanking either side. Peeling paint, sagging gutters, missing roof shingles, rotted steps ....

  "This isn't the place," Jane said flatly. "I remember a long flagstone path that wandered through a high pergola covered with purple clematis, and there were green shutters all around, and a potter's shed off on the right, and ... and it was all much bigger."

  Her mother was more philosophical. "That was a quarter-century ago, darling. You were little. Things looked big. Still, I must admit it's been far more neglected than I thought. This will be a hard sell." A thought seemed to occur to her for the first time. "Poor Sylvia," she said softly, her hand resting on the car door handle. "She must've had to watch every cent."

  They got out of the car and began picking their way through the front lawn, which had the look of a mowed-down hayfield. Jane edged some of the dead grass aside with her foot.

  "See? Flagstone. I was right. And this," she said, pausing before a six-foot post leaning over what used to be the front path, "this must have been part of the pergola." She tried to push the post upright; it made a dull snapping sound at the base and fell to the ground.

  "Rotten," her mother said, stepping over it. "Do you have the key?"

  But Jane was still riveted to the spot, staring at the post as if it were a soldier felled in some hopeless battle against time. "I climbed up this pergola," she said in an awestruck voice. "I picked a bunch of clematis from the top and wove them into a purple crown for Aunt Sylvia ... and she let me unpin her hair and brush it out ... and I put the crown on her head."

  She looked around, dreamily, and said, "She sat on a wooden chair right there, next to the house, and the sun picked out the red that was left in her hair ... and she told me that hers was once the same color as mine ...."

  "Jane?"

  "I can't believe it's all gone," Jane said, still in a faraway voice.

  "The key?"

  Jane stared at her mother. "To what?"

  "Your future, ninny!" Jane's mother pointed a manicured finger at the front door. "Open it, dreamer," she commanded, laughing. "Before I grow as old as that post."

  Jane searched through the ring for a likely match to the old lock in the door and came up with it on the first try. She turned the tarnished brass knob and, after putting her shoulder to the heavy, sticking door, managed to swing it open. The two women stepped inside to a world of mildew and cobwebs.

  Gwendolyn Drew made a face. "God, it smells awful," she said, flipping a switch. When nothing happened, she went up to one of the low windows and flung open its moldy drapes. Weak, gray light spilled into what must have been a front parlor, revealing a boarded-up fireplace and a dreary collection of budget furniture standing on a carpet remnant of some indeterminate color.

  "Is there a Goodwill dropoff on the island?" was all Gwendolyn could think to say.

  "I don't know. This isn't at all what I remember," Jane said, walking around the room, disappointed that nothing in it reminded her of her aunt. "What happened to Aunt Sylvia's old stuff? She had such nice things."

  "Probably she sold them," her mother remarked, looking at the peeling ceiling with dismay. "What kind of nice things?"

  "Nothing fancy, but just, you know, nice. There was a slant-top desk I used to sit at to write you and Dad that summer ... it had pigeonholes and a secret compartment."

  Jane thought of the desk and sighed. "Well, this is too bad." Somewhere in the middle of the night she'd comforted herself with the thought that she'd haul that desk back to Connecticut and somehow reconnect with Aunt Sylvia.

  She followed her mother into the kitchen, which had little to recommend it: doorless cupboards, worn-out linoleum, a freestanding porcelain sink. In a little pantry adjacent, an ancient Frigidaire and a three-burner stove were crammed side by side under a high, tiny window. It was all as inefficient as could be.

  The two women crossed the hall and peeked into the bathroom.

  "Not as bad as the kitchen," Jane's mother decided. "Black and white deco tiles are a good, classic treatment. And clawfoot tubs are still in."

  Upstairs there were two small bedrooms which had casement windows and a cozy, steep-eaved charm. At the end of the hall was an even smaller room filled with boxes, some broken chairs, and the head and footboards of a small spindle bed.

  "I like the view," Jane said, looking over the top of a huge bare lilac just outside the window. "This would make a nice little office."

  "I think, more of a nursery."

  Jane closed her eyes and began counting to ten. "Mother — don't start."

  "Start what?" Gwendolyn asked blandly. "I wasn't talking about you."

  "Of course you were."

  They began to retrace their steps downstairs. "Well, can you blame me?" her mother asked in a plaintive voice. "Jane, you're thirty-three years old, and I don't see anyone anywhere on the horizon. Your sister — who, I might add, is five years younger than you are — has found herself a nice hard-working doctor and is soon to give birth to her second child."

  "Whereas I am —"

  "Not even dating, are you?"

  "Not in the way you mean."

  They stopped in the middle of the dingy kitchen, and as her mother exhorted her for the umpteenth time to shape up her life, Jane found herself scanning the open cupboards for some bit of crockery, a teapot, anything, to remind her of the summer she'd spent there when she was eight. She wanted so desperately to hold on to the memory of her aunt.

&n
bsp; "Darling, I'm only going on about this because I love you very much, and I don't want —" Her mother sighed, took her by her shoulders, and said, "It's true, what they say: Youth really is wasted on the young. Jane, don't you see? Falling in love takes time. Building a family takes time. You act as if time were some endless resource you have."

  "I haven't met the right man, Mother," Jane said absently. "I'm not going to force a relationship where one doesn't want to grow."

  Gwendolyn Drew sighed again, heavily, and Jane noticed almost for the first time the lines that ran from her finely shaped nose to the corners of her usually animated mouth. And her gray hair, so much more than before. Her mother was no longer young ... fifty-nine? Was it possible?

  Her mother seemed to be reading her mind. "All right, I admit it: Yours isn't the only biological clock I'm worried about. Your father and I are getting on; this is our time for grandchildren. You know how much we adore little Jonathan."

  Grateful at least for her mother's candor, Jane smiled and shook her head. "I need more reason than —"

  "Of course I know that. You can't rush these things; haven't I just said as much? But in the meantime, shouldn't you be doing something more with your life? Being a graphic designer was very nice, but the advertising industry isn't going to bounce back for a long, long time. Aren't you just, well, treading water?"

  She seemed to be choosing her words with infinite care. "I suppose what I'm saying is, it's fine if you take a career track. It's fine if you take the mommy track. Our great fear is that you're not taking either track."

  It began to dawn on Jane why her mother had really detoured to Nantucket: it was to jump-start her daughter's flagging ambition. "Well!" Jane said with a false, bright cheerfulness. "It beats having a heart attack trying to do both tracks at once."

  But her mother was right, and Jane knew it. She'd become so discouraged by the job market in the last few months that she'd stopped looking. If that free-lance assignment hadn't fallen into her lap .... She gave her mother a tremulous smile and put out her arms and hugged her.

  "Anyway, here we are, trying to figure out how to sell this house. Am I on the right track now?"