That Summer in Maine

by Brianna Wolfson

  Hazel chuckled and considered which silly face she could send in return. She wiggled out from under her mother’s arm, and without turning over just said, “A little privacy please, Ma.”

  And without saying a word, Jane uncurled herself from around Hazel’s body, slipped out of the covers and then slipped out of the room.

  Hazel turned over just as the door was closing.

  But before it shut, Hazel caught a sliver of her mother’s sunken shoulders. And then she rolled over and held her phone up in front of her face for a photo.

  Hazel held the phone in her hands, waiting for a response from Eve. And when she got it, everything inside of her body went wobbly again.

  8

  JANE

  The ninety-minute drive from their house to the War-ringtons in Connecticut was silent. Just a few days before, Jane had asked Hazel to get Eve’s mother’s phone number. Then Jane made an awkward call to this stranger with whom she unwittingly had something in common.

  Susie sounded warm on the phone. She said she had recently learned about Hazel—and Jane—from her daughter. She immediately invited them all over for a visit.

  When Jane, Hazel and Cam arrived, Jane didn’t even have to knock on the door of the house before it came swinging open. Susie and Parker Warrington came out immaculately dressed. Susie smoothed her skirt over her thighs before pulling Jane, Hazel and then Cam in for hugs in quick succession.

  “Welcome to our home! It’s so lovely to have you.”

  Susie was a lithe, slim-bodied woman with surprisingly pert breasts accentuated by her periwinkle sweater and her sparkling necklace. Parker had his hand soldered to Susie’s back. For such a strapping, handsome man, his eyes were surprisingly timid.

  Susie and Parker had matching vacant smiles. There was a moment of quiet awkwardness.

  “Come in, come in, please,” Susie urged, bulldozing any space for tension.

  Jane locked eyes with her daughter as soon as they stepped through the doorway and into the foyer. It was the nicest home either of them had ever seen. The order of the place was immediately palpable. A home well run. A life predictable. Something Jane never strove for—perhaps even feared as a cherished principle. Jane couldn’t remember if she had yet uttered a single word.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Cam said earnestly, sparing Jane from having to talk first. “Thank you for having us.”

  Jane instinctively removed her shoes, and Hazel followed suit.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Susie said through a chuckle and a dramatic wave of the arm before bending down to align them properly against the shoe rack. “The dining room is this way. Dinner is just about ready.”

  Parker patted his stomach. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” he said as if his words were scripted. A caricature of a dinner party host. “I’ll take you to the dining room while Susie finishes up.”

  Parker removed his hand from Susie’s back for the first time. “Follow me.”

  They moved first through a living room. A modern print—surely straight from the MoMA gift shop, or perhaps the real thing, judging by the signature at the bottom—hung on the wall, strategically aligned behind a modern cuboid sofa. The coffee table sat atop an animal pelt rug and was made of glass. The glass was pristine and didn’t have a single smudge on it, just a neatly stacked pile of coffee table books—Chanel, The Elements of Style, Modern Treehouses. It was the perfect juxtaposition of modern and bucolic. Chic and homespun. The magic of an interior designer’s touch. The reality of not having two babies with drooling mouths and crusty hands to touch the pristine glass-surfaced touch of an interior decorator.

  Jane smiled at the thought of her boys. She imagined them crawling around that room, knocking the Chanel coffee table book right from its stack and then moving to the next lamp or vase or other delicate thing without pause. She loved those little imps. And their cheeks and their hands and their drooling mouths. Jane turned to look toward Hazel.

  Hazel appeared to be in awe, but still comfortable in the space as she glided through it, her head swiveling around, her mouth the slightest bit agape.

  “Susie loves this room. We barely even come in here—don’t want anything to fall out of place, now!” Parker said through a nervous chuckle and then continued. “The dining room is right through here. Have a seat. I’ll go get Eve.”

  As she took her seat at the table, Jane caught a glimpse of the kitchen to the left. She could tell it was well equipped but sufficiently untouched, assuring her that no one spent much time in there. Without much more than a split second’s view, Jane could tell it was a kitchen with a cabinet of unused single-use appliances—pasta makers and fondue sets. A kitchen with a drawer for pens and pads, a drawer for take-out menus ordered alphabetically, a drawer for first aid, and one for tape and scissors and glue. All things in their correct places, and complete. A far cry from the kind of home, and life, she’d created for her family.

  From her chair, Jane searched for any evidence of chaos or enigma. But there was none. Until Eve entered the room.

  Eve ran toward Hazel with excitement and threw her arms around her half sister. Her hair was piled messily atop her head in such a way that revealed her long neck—surprisingly elegant for a fifteen-year-old.

  “Hey, sis!” Eve exploded, placing extra emphasis on the word sis.

  Jane replayed the inflection of greeting back to herself in her head. What was it there underneath those words? Was it sarcasm? Earnestness? Just a teenager’s way?

  “That’s my mom,” Hazel declared nonchalantly. Jane said a warm hello, and Eve smiled back. “And, uh, my dad. I guess. That’s weird.” Hazel blushed a bit and Cam smiled through closed lips and waved.

  Jane placed her hand on Cam’s leg and it immediately relaxed her.

  Eve sat herself next to Hazel and pulled her chair and place mat closer, disrupting the uniformity of the place settings. “I can’t believe you’re here!” Eve declared and rested her head onto her half sister’s shoulder, as if they’d known each other their whole lives.

  That inflection again. But Hazel seemed at peace. Happy even. As if it were only the two of them in the room.

  Susie swiftly moved back and forth from the dining room, laying large bowls of salad, then vegetables, then pasta, and then a large plate of steak in perfect orientation on the table. Jane tried offering to help, but Susie seemed insulted by the inquiry.

  “Go ahead and start without me,” Susie said, near short of breath.

  “No, no,” Parker protested, one hand already curled around his fork and the other around his knife.

  Susie returned to her seat with an exhale. “You really shouldn’t have waited,” she murmured to her husband. Susie’s long fingers fluttered rhythmically from the napkin on her lap, to her dress, and then to her hair, smoothing them compulsively. It was as if she was reassuring herself that structure and tidiness were available to her at any moment.

  Everyone else at the table began passing dishes and scooping mounds of food onto their plates, but Jane found herself too absorbed by this woman to move. She wondered who exactly she was. There was a sense of drama about Susie. She seemed to be on the verge of tears that her overexpressive smile across a freshly lipsticked mouth could not counterbalance. Even though this absorption seemed arduous, Jane couldn’t stop it. Something about the way Susie’s eyes darted anxiously between the two girls, something about the way she rigidly forked her salad, something about her unease made Jane realize exactly who this woman was.

  This was the woman that had ended her relationship with Silas. The woman Silas had slept with that night Jane was waiting to tell him about the baby in her belly. It had to have been her. And he must have gotten her pregnant, too. These girls must have been conceived within weeks of each other. There were so many questions, but none Jane could address now, in this moment. The words of the con
versation swirled around her and then turned into nothing but a hum. Everything in the scene blurred except for Susie’s perfect face and hair and neck.

  Susie looked up from her plate and met Jane’s eyes—Jane hadn’t realized she was staring, or that her grip had tightened on Cam’s pant leg under the table.

  Jane wondered if Susie knew what she had done. She must have understood it now with the two girls in front of her—their faces so alike. It was impossible to ignore. You’d see one in the corner of your eye and mistake her for the other. The same thin shoulders. The same playful cheeks and rounded, delicate nose. The same shining hair. Eve’s lips were glossed and compelling, and her eyes were traced and retraced around the edges with thick eyeliner.

  Jane’s Hazel looked so young next to this girl. Her makeup-less face and lips. The dimple on the right cheek. The nearly invisible scar above the right eyebrow from the time Hazel had fallen into the coffee table when she was just learning to walk. The barely discernible breasts and mismatched eyes.

  But still, these two girls were related. There was no mistaking it.

  Jane could tell that Susie had preempted any silence by leaning the conversation toward logistics. She detailed packing lists and itineraries. Jane could tell Susie wanted to maintain appearances. That she would never appear to acknowledge the awkwardness of things. Or want to discuss any intimate details.

  “The bus is really the most efficient way for the girls to get up to Maine,” Susie said with confidence. It was clear she had done this before and optimized each step of the journey. “I think the nine-thirty bus in the morning would be best. They will still arrive at a reasonable hour.” She’d prepared packing lists for both the girls and read them out to the table. “Can’t forget bathing suits! Or sunblock. Eve would go for the tanning oil if she could but I insist on SPF10.” Eve rolled her eyes as her mother spoke.

  “I do prefer tanning oil, and last summer I got the best tan that I’ve ever had even with the SPF10,” Eve boasted, crossing her arms.

  Jane couldn’t help but grin. She brought her napkin over her face and pretended to wipe something from her mouth so that no one would catch her chuckling to herself. Silas wasn’t kidding about Eve’s tan after all.

  To Jane’s relief, the conversation moved on quickly and Susie described her arrangements for Silas to pick the girls up at the bus station. She’d ensured he had a car she believed to be safe enough for her daughter to sit in the back seat of. “And I think that’s that,” Susie declared, clapping her palms together and then returning them to her lap.

  Jane smiled and said, “You girls are going to have such a nice time over those couple of weeks.”

  Jane spotted the corners of Susie’s mouth turn down. Both Parker and Cam were staring down into their food. Eve and Hazel were snickering as they looked onto the same cell phone sitting in Eve’s lap.

  There was a weight, a thickness, a sense of loss in the room for all four parents. And the two girls were impervious to it. They had formed their own world now. And they were living in it.

  Jane remembered back to when she was this way. Young and carefree. Energized about the life ahead. Happy and present. It felt long ago now. Long before she got the news about her parents. Long before she veered off course. Long before she made the choices she made to become a mother and then a wife and then a mother again.

  She smiled seeing Hazel this way. She realized she had never seen her like this before. The Hazel she knew lately was using a fork to push her vegetables around her dinner plate or off helping to get the twins dressed or locked away in her bedroom quietly.

  Jane’s heart lifted and sank at the same time. Her heart lifted looking at her daughter enjoying herself. Seeking new friendship. Sisterhood. Ready for adventure. But her heart sank realizing that she didn’t know this version of Hazel. She didn’t know this girl who got excited by other girls with messy buns and eyeliner. She didn’t know this girl who wanted to pore over a cell phone while dinner was on the table.

  It was so clear to Jane now. Hazel’s journey to becoming her own woman was underway now.

  The journey was underway for all of them now. There was no stopping it.

  Oh, what a mess she had made. Silas had made. Susie had made. They all had made. And now their daughters would carry the burden of it all the way up to Maine.

  Hazel was ready to go and Jane was just along for the ride.

  * * *

  After making it through another hour of dinner, Jane thanked the Warringtons for the meal with the biggest smile she could muster as Susie held the door open for their exit. Cam and Hazel made their way through the doorway. But before Jane could do the same, she felt Susie’s long fingertips curl around her elbow.

  “I just wanted to say that I know what you’re going through,” Susie said. She kept her eyes locked on Jane’s.

  Jane tried to interpret the look in her eyes. Was it sadness? Empathy? Pity?

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to open up any friendship or understanding of this woman.

  “I’ve been here before. It was only a year ago that this was happening to me for the first time. It was just last summer that Eve told me she had found Silas online and wanted to go see him. So I understand what you’re going through,” Susie repeated, apparently ignorant of Jane’s inner resistance.

  Jane decided to make it more clear where she stood and pulled her elbow out from Susie’s grip. “I’m not sure you do, Susie,” Jane said, still not breaking their eye contact. “Our stories may be intertwined, but that doesn’t mean they are the same.”

  “All mothers’ stories are the same,” Susie responded. “I know you think you messed everything up, I messed up, that we all messed up. But it’s going to be okay. Our girls are going to be okay.”

  “Mom! Come on!” Hazel shouted from the car, breaking the thick tension of the moment.

  “Well. That’s my cue,” Jane said through a closed-lipped smile and raised eyebrows and began to turn and walk toward the car.

  “Wait!” Susie said, a little more frantically than Jane would. “I want you to have something”

  Jane rolled her eyes a little, but something kept her in place, wanting to receive whatever it was. Susie crouched down in a way that restored her air of elegance and pulled a beautiful leather-bound notebook out from a wooden bureau next to the door. “Read it when you find yourself lonely this summer.”

  Susie flattened her skirt and pushed her shoulders back as she stood up. Jane motioned to open it, but Susie pressed down on Jane’s hands and nodded knowingly.

  “Mom! Let’s go!” Hazel shouted again, louder this time.

  Jane took the book and walked briskly out toward the car, then took her place in the passenger seat.

  “What was that about?” Cam asked innocently, like he was indifferent about the answer anyway, and reached over to put his hand on Jane’s thigh.

  “Nothing,” Jane responded and propped her knee up so that the leather notebook was out of Cam and Hazel’s line of sight. She gingerly opened the cover and peeked onto the first page.

  The Mess Your Mother Made, it read in big black carefully written script letters. Letters to my daughter I may never send.

  Jane’s heartbeat came into focus. She could hear her own pulse. She didn’t know if she wanted to read all of it immediately or none of it ever.

  “Doesn’t look like nothing!” Cam said with a smirk and squeezed Jane’s thigh.

  With a tickle running up her leg, Jane burst out with laughter at him tickling her leg. She slammed the notebook shut and shoved it into the passenger-side door.

  As they pulled out of the driveway, Jane’s eyes met Susie’s through the window. Perhaps there was something to learn from this woman after all.

  9

  HAZEL

  A few days later, as Hazel left her mother’s car and approached the bus station
to meet Eve so the girls could ride together, she prepared for her legs and arms and lungs and heart to float away from her and straight into the ether. For Hazel, sitting next to other girls on the bus to school was usually an act in self-vanishing. Just the simple truth that every single piece of her body could evaporate into the air without a single person noticing was enough to set the feeling off.

  She forgot it would be different with Eve. With her sister. As she walked up to the bus, she prepared to be quiet and invisible.

  But then there was a moment of eye contact with Eve, who was at the other end of the parking lot. It pulled Hazel back into her body. Into full, visceral presence, as she remembered she was no longer invisible to her world. She was the sister of Eve. The daughter of Silas. On the way to begin her new life. It emboldened her. Took over her. She waved wildly, excitedly in Eve’s direction, hand swaying vigorously back and forth, eyebrows raised.

  She stopped her arms abruptly. How desperately uncool she must have seemed there for a moment. She pulled her lips together into a much more tempered smile and stood calmly in place even though her heart was beating wildly. She waited for Eve to approach her and resisted the nagging pull to look toward her mother. And then Eve started running. Her backpack bounced on her shoulders. Her strides were constricted and awkward as the weight of her cumbersome luggage swung recklessly from its precarious hinge on her thin shoulder. As soon as she made it to Hazel, Eve dropped her bags dramatically onto the asphalt and threw her long arms around Hazel’s ribs.

  “We’re going, we’re going, we’re going!” Eve celebrated. She jumped up and down, arms still locked around Hazel’s torso.

  “Come on, Hazel. Jump!” Eve whispered into Hazel’s ear. And Hazel joined in. She jumped and shouted and smiled in excitement she still wasn’t sure was real. Hazel could see what others would see from the outside. Two girls, two sisters, two best friends embracing. She liked the way it probably looked. And jumped and shouted once more.