That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  Her mother’s shoulders fell limp and her eyes went soft.

  “Oh, honey,” she said and reached out to hug Hazel.

  With her mother’s arms around her, Hazel’s voice and energy went back to calmness. “Please let me go, Mom. Please. I want to go. I need to go.” She felt a salty tear drip down her cheek. “The school year is ending soon, and when it does, I’ll have nothing! Nothing, Mom! Please let me have this thing!”

  Hazel’s mother wrapped her arms around her tightly. “I understand,” she whispered. “I understand.”

  Hazel could feel, by the weight of her mother’s arms and the tone in her voice, that perhaps she was starting to.

  6

  JANE

  Jane’s hands were shaking as she picked up the phone to call Silas. She had kept his cell phone number all these years even though she’d never really used it. It was not that she meant to never call, or never have Hazel call; there just didn’t seem to be a need for it. And he hadn’t called them. But today, that changed. Jane knew she had to call him even though she didn’t want to.

  She had spent all these years in some ways so far away from Silas; but in other ways he was close. He was in her daughter’s eyes all the time. But he certainly was not in her home, or her life, or her heart. And Jane had never expected that Silas would, at any time, become part of any of those things. For her or for her daughter. She had built her recent life around that premise.

  As she heard Silas’s phone ringing, Jane still wasn’t sure she wanted him to pick up. She wasn’t sure that he deserved her Hazel. But actually, she was sure that he didn’t.

  The phone continued to ring on the other end. After all this time, no outreach—not a single phone call or letter or question or even the slightest indication of interest or curiosity. Silas didn’t deserve to look at their daughter or share space with her or have her in his presence at all. It was scary having to make a decision when Jane didn’t know what anyone deserved. When she didn’t know how everyone would be changed. But she knew she had to make that decision. And she knew what the decision had to be.

  Suddenly, a voice interrupted the rhythm of the ringing.

  “Hello?”

  She was surprised how familiar the voice felt to her. That deep and grumbling and sexy, scratchy voice. But still, his voice sounded far away. Almost as if he was speaking from a place of exile Jane had relegated him to after weeks, months, even years of waiting to hear from him.

  “Hey.” Jane had to take a moment to catch her breath. “Silas.” She exhaled. “This is Jane.”

  There was quiet from the other side of the line.

  “Hazel’s mom,” she added.

  There was another brief moment of quiet before the beginning of a tailspin.

  “Well, I suppose we haven’t broached the whole Hazel topic directly, but I think you’d remember me. We met sixteen years ago at the Grandor Fair. Had a whole summer thing, and, uh, back to Hazel. Hazel’s your daughter. Mostly my daughter, but I guess she’s got your genes. Actually, she definitely does. She has your eyes. Well, eye. What am I even talking about? Oh, god. Well, I guess you know about Hazel now, being that you’re in touch with Eve and all. And I, uh, just wanted to call and talk about the visit for a minute. Being that I am Hazel’s mom.”

  More quiet on the line.

  Even more quiet on the line.

  “Yup. That’s all. This is Jane. Hazel’s mom.”

  “Jane!” Silas replied with feeling and knowing and something like joy. It was an enthusiasm she remembered in Silas from before, back when they spent that summer together. His eyes and cheeks would light up when she would walk through the door of his place or meet him at their go-to spot, Rosco’s, for dinner. But Jane had always sensed he used the act to camouflage his pain or indifference or awkwardness, or something else entirely.

  “It’s been a while! How ya been? Still doing your beadwork? Man, I always loved that beadwork.”

  Just like all those years ago, no matter what it was disguising, Jane felt a tingling warmth as she let his enthusiasm wash over her.

  It was quiet for a moment again as she smiled from her end of the line, and could sense that he was smiling, too. But then Jane felt an inexplicable hollowness. It would have been better if his words, his tone, were filled with sadness or regret or longing, but she could hear how happy he was that he was there and she was here. That he was there and Hazel was here. Jane snapped back into the moment.

  “You know, I haven’t been doing much beadwork lately,” Jane replied, now matching his upbeat energy. “I’ve been kind of busy raising a kid. Three of them actually.” She made sure to keep a levity in her sarcasm, but she hoped it stung Silas at least a little.

  “Mmm, right.”

  Jane could feel Silas slinking back, and she felt pleased.

  “But listen. I’m not going to bullshit you, and I don’t have much to say. I just want this visit of Hazel’s to be a good experience for her, okay? I need it to be. And I need you to help make that happen. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah,” Silas replied. His reply was sincere. She could feel that he wanted to be good to her. And to Hazel, too.

  “And then there’s this Eve character. Have you had much contact with her over the years? Do you know more about her than I do? I’m pretty surprised she exists. Were you? Don’t answer that. I just want to know if you know whether she’ll be kind to my Hazel?”

  “Uh...” Silas instinctively replied, not yet realizing that these questions from Jane were largely rhetorical.

  “I mean, what kinds of things do you even do up there with a fifteen-year-old girl? If I’m accurately remembering my time in Grandor, it isn’t very teenager-friendly,” Jane inquired.

  “It depends what you think of as being teenager-friendly. Eve told me she got the best summer tan she’s ever gotten in her life after spending time here last summer, so there’s that at least.”

  “Very funny, Silas.”

  “I’m not kidding! Eve just lay out in the sun and found pockets of cell phone service so she could text her friends. I got to spend some time in the shop working on a few projects. We cooked meals together. Went out on the boat a few times. The days were pretty simple. It was just...nice.”

  “Well, nice seems pretty okay to me,” Jane responded, finding herself more comfortable more quickly than she expected. It was simple up in Grandor. That was why she had gone there in the first place. Simple and nice was something Jane could get behind. She, of course, had some doubts about Silas’s ability to care for her daughter, but even though he had never been a responsible man, Jane felt sure he could be a good man.

  It was quiet on the line.

  “I have some more questions.”

  “I hope I’ll have more answers.”

  “Where will they sleep?”

  “In beds.”

  “Very funny. Where.”

  “Upstairs. Together in their own room.”

  “And what if one of them gets sick?”

  “Then I will bring them to the hospit—”

  “And what if they get homesick?”

  “Then I will have them—”

  “What will they have for breakfast? And dinner? And lunch? Are you going to tell them stories about me? I sure hope not. And what will you do if they’re bored? And what if the girls aren’t getting along?”

  The words and questions were all just slipping out of her mouth. But this was just minutiae. It wasn’t answering the big questions about what it would mean for the rest of Hazel’s life. About Hazel’s love story. And those were the questions that could not be answered yet.

  Jane knew it.

  Silas knew it.

  “Then, I’ll... Listen, Jane. I know this is a big deal. I know it is.”

  “It is a big deal. It’s a huge deal!”

  “I’ll tr
y not to fuck it up,” Silas added with a little more lightness now. Jane could feel him smiling on the other side of the line.

  “You better not!” Jane said, now smiling, too, then disconnected and placed the phone facedown into her lap.

  “That’s my little girl,” Jane said aloud but quietly, even though the call was ended and the room was empty. “She’s my little girl more than she’s anyone else’s.”

  Jane exhaled and brought her hands to her heart and fell backward onto her bed.

  She felt she knew what she needed to do, what she wanted to do, but couldn’t help the feeling of rubber-banding back to keeping her daughter close.

  She called Cam into their room, and without removing her hands from her eyes or moving her body an inch, Jane said plainly, “I’m thinking of letting Hazel go to meet her biological father.”

  Cam was silent. And then she felt the weight of his body sit down on the mattress next to her. His arm grazed her tummy as he placed his palm gently on her hip.

  “Apparently she’s got a half sister, too, who goes to visit him in the summers. I think I know what to do, and I want to do it, but she is my baby, Cam. She belongs with me.”

  Lying motionless, with her hands still on her eyes, Jane said, “I can’t just let her go.”

  She then sat up abruptly and slapped her hands onto the bed. She explained the whole scenario in panicked and disjointed detail.

  “This whole thing could ruin her life. It really could.” Jane could feel her hysteria begin to ooze out of her. She could feel it beginning to fill up the entire room.

  “Her biological father isn’t exactly the most responsible or fatherlike, you know! He’s the one who let me do this on my own. He’s the one who didn’t call or write or help or anything. He’s a lone wolf. And he’s scarred. Really, deeply scarred in ways even I can only begin to comprehend. He’s been through a lot in his life, more than most men should go through, but the outcome is still the same. He didn’t want me and I felt so sure then that he wouldn’t want Hazel. I didn’t want to put her through discovering that. And now look what I get. He’s the beacon of parenthood in Hazel’s eyes.”

  She looked straight into Cam’s eyes. They were kind eyes. Always calm. She loved that about him.

  Jane opened her eyes wider and lurched forward a bit toward Cam. She wanted something from him. Something big enough to match this big moment. But still he just sat there calmly, a gentle smile across his lips.

  “After all, I am her mother,” she said.

  There was another brief moment of silence that Jane opened her mouth to fill, but then Cam claimed it instead.

  “Honey, do you really think you are that important?”

  Jane lay back, stunned.

  “I am afraid you are terribly mistaken if you think you are. I haven’t been a parent as long as you have, but there is something I have always known about our children, all children. And it’s that their lives are eventually their own. You are here at the beginning, and to usher them through it from time to time, but their lives are ultimately their own.”

  Jane’s shoulders lowered and her cheeks perked up and her heart opened and she listened. Really listened.

  “Somehow parents convince themselves that every little thing we do, every little choice we make, every little word we say, marks our children forever. But that’s ridiculous. They are independent beings.”

  Jane slid her hand onto Cam’s thigh. It was not often he was so convincing. Not often he said things so profound. But it was always a thing Jane knew he had in him. She wanted to hear more. She wanted him to say more. She gave his leg a little squeeze.

  “I love our babies. And I love Hazel. And I want to do everything for them. I want to make their lives good and perfect every day with every decision we make. And I know you do, too. But those are our ideas of perfection, not theirs. Those things we do are fulfilling our desires as parents, not theirs as children. They will pursue their own perfect lives full of their own desires. Hazel is a beautiful, smart, strong, capable girl.”

  Jane didn’t realize it until Cam had stopped talking, but she had been nodding her head up and down.

  “She can do this, honey. And so can you.”

  Jane reached her arms around Cam’s neck and pulled him close.

  “She is becoming her own young woman, just like you once did.”

  “Okay,” Jane said, her voice catching in her throat on her own nervousness.

  “Okay,” she said again, this time with more conviction. It was for herself more than it was for Cam.

  Jane pulled her body away, her arms outstretched with a hand on each of Cam’s shoulders.

  “Well, fine, then,” Jane said.

  It was now a question of how it was all going to work, more than it was a question of if Hazel was going at all.

  7

  HAZEL

  Hazel was sitting quietly in her room when she heard her mother call, “Hazel?”

  Hazel expected she was about to be asked to do some favor or chore involving the twins, and she skulked over toward her mother’s room. “Yeah?” she asked listlessly.

  “I’ve decided, you can go to visit Silas,” her mother said matter-of-factly.

  Hazel’s eyes lit up and she sprung up onto her toes and tackled her mother over onto the bed she was sitting on.

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she yelled wildly. “Thank you!”

  Hazel nestled the crown of her head into the nook of her mother’s neck and slowed down to stillness. “Thank you,” she said again calmly and warmly.

  Hazel’s mother sat up and looked into her eyes. Her lips curled up a bit.

  “But first, before you go we’re going to meet Eve and her parents, and then when you get to Maine, you are going to text me every day, and you are never going to forget who your mother is!”

  “You’re such a loser, Ma.” Hazel sprang up to give her mom a big, sprawling, tight hug and then ran out of the room with a lightness in her stride her mother hadn’t seen in her daughter for a long time.

  Hazel raced to the computer and opened the app to message Eve.

  It’s happening! she typed. It’s really happening, sis.

  Immediately, even though they weren’t leaving for another few weeks, Hazel packed up a duffel and left it in the corner of her room. And from that moment on, every subsequent message that Hazel received from Eve was a supernova. Each text blew everything that once was, wide-open. Started life anew. Illuminated every fiber of her being. And it was all happening in Hazel’s own personal universe.

  For so long, Hazel had felt that her life was duller than it ought to be. Inside she felt alive and dynamic and energized. But outside she was forgotten and lonely and bored. She felt that there was something deep within her that was better than her life allowed for. Her days were thick and sticky with kids at school who knew nothing about her real life. Her evenings were clogged with taking care of the twins and trying to ignore the fact that Cam had become a fixture in her home.

  She was ready for things to flow free and wild. She was ready for the exciting, magnificent life she deserved. She was ready for more family and more love. This was the start of her new life.

  Hazel lay on her bed with her eyes closed, but not trying to sleep. She just let her excitement flow through her. She let the reel of vignettes of her life play in her mind’s eye. Finally, she was on the outside looking in and smiling. It felt as if she were finally part of the real story. And they would hold their hands to their hearts as she fumbled and groped her way there, but they would rejoice when everything gave way to the beautiful ending. She could finally feel the inevitability of her happiness.

  Eve and Silas were her freedom. She felt a warmth emanate at the very thought of them.

  She imagined what real sisterhood and daughterhood and fatherhood would look like.

>   She imagined what the cabin and the lake would feel like. What their room would smell like. What they would talk about and eat for dinner. How they would fill their days. How they would fill their bellies and their spirits. She imagined where they would go. The places they would explore. The feelings that would bloom.

  Hazel considered that she didn’t even have to know Silas and Eve to know them. They were a part of her. She carried them with her every day. She clutched onto her pillow, love and excitement oozing out of her.

  Hazel heard the gentle creak of her door opening. And then the slow pressing of feet into carpet. Hazel knew these sounds well from all those evenings of her mother slipping into her room with ice cream. But she wasn’t in the mood today. She kept her eyes shut and rolled over onto her side so that her back faced her mother as she approached.

  The door clicked shut and without saying a word, Jane crawled into bed with Hazel. She slipped her legs under the covers, curled her body around Hazel’s in perfect contour, and tossed her arm over the flesh of her daughter’s hips. Hazel stayed still and kept her eyes shut. She recognized that this was more for her mother’s comfort than it was for hers. Perhaps it was even an apology. But she wasn’t looking for those things from her mother anymore. It was true that she had been starved of them, but now she had been fueled again from a force that was not inside this house.

  “I love you, Hazel. You know that, right?” Jane said softly into Hazel’s ear, her hot breath cascading over the side of her face.

  Hazel felt her body turn rigid.

  “I know you’re excited to go. I’m excited for you. I just love you so much. It’s hard to imagine you away from home.” Jane gave Hazel a tight squeeze.

  But the words were lost on Hazel. Hazel curled herself into a tighter ball, holding on to her own flesh and her daydreams of life away from here for comfort.

  In perfect timing, Hazel’s phone buzzed and lit up. And Hazel popped her eyes wide open to check her phone. Of course, it was Eve. It was a picture she had taken of herself. One eye was pressed closed; the other one was big and wide and swirling and lined with dark black makeup underneath a perfectly curved eyebrow. She was sticking her tongue out the side of mouth, and her hair, although messy, looked shiny and perfect.