by Ann Leary
“Yes,” he would say, “the hills around the lake create a giant amphitheater effect. Wonderful what it does acoustically!”
It wasn’t just that Whit created a racket in the shed. He was a large man and a stomper. The sound of his work boots on the old wooden stairs could be heard throughout the house as he came and went. He liked to sing. He sang to the dog, he sang to Joanie, he sang to himself in the mirror. And then there was the incessant banter—on the phone, in the driveway, down by the lake. People loved to stop to chat with Whit. There were men hanging around the shed year-round, “shooting the shit,” as Joan liked to say. The guys on the town’s road crew would always stop for coffee if they drove by and saw Norm Hungerford’s car. (Norm was Whit’s childhood friend, and his car in the driveway always meant coffee in the pot.) Sailors and rowers in the summer, skaters and cross-country skiers in the winter—everybody who traveled across the lake stopped to catch up with Whit.
“You know, it was the silence that caught me so off guard those first few times I came home after Whit died,” Sally said to me. “You were here all the time, so maybe you didn’t notice it, but the atmosphere felt completely different here after that.”
“I noticed it,” I said. I would walk outside and listen for a song from Whit’s shed, and when it didn’t come, I’d suddenly have to hold on to a wall to steady myself. It would be hard to breathe sometimes.
I tried to talk to Joan about it once.
“Sometimes I find myself having actual conversations with him,” I said to her not long after the funeral. Sally had gone back to the city, but I had decided to stay here at Lakeside with Joan. “When I walked in the house today, I almost called out to him.”
“Did you, dear?” Joan asked, glancing at her watch. It was a Saturday. She had a tennis tournament.
“I guess it’s because it’s so quiet. If he hadn’t been so noisy before, the quiet wouldn’t be so … strange. How can you stand the quiet?”
“I keep busy. I don’t really notice,” Joan said.
“Have you been able to go into his shed yet?” I asked her one day.
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to open the door to Whit’s shed since the funeral. When he was alive, I had rarely opened the door without finding Whit on the other side, covered in sawdust, humming or singing along with the music on the old boom box there. He always gave me a big grin. Sometimes, he’d give me a new instrument to try out. I imagined it would be too much for our mother to go inside the shed as well, but Joan had replied, “Oh yes, I was in there this morning looking for a broom and dustpan, and sure enough, there they were. He was always taking things from the house and leaving them in that damn shed.”
ELEVEN
We had just removed the last of the storm windows from Spin’s room when the cars pulled up. I grabbed Sally by the wrist and peered around the front edge of the house and down at the driveway. Spin’s Jeep was in front; Perry had pulled up behind him in his shiny black Range Rover. I squatted down low on the porch roof and pulled Sally down next to me.
“Don’t let them see us,” I said.
“Why not?” Sally asked.
“I don’t want to see anybody yet.”
Perry’s voice came from below. “Joan’s car isn’t here.”
I heard the voices of his children, Emma and Jake. Jake was saying, “Where’s Nana Joan?”
“Maybe nobody’s home,” Perry said. “Jesus, look at this place. Still a total mess.”
“It’s like Grey Gardens,” we heard Catherine say.
Sally clutched my wrist too tight. “What the fuck?” she hissed.
“Was it more … kept up when your dad was alive?” That was Laurel.
“Um, no,” said Perry. “But for some reason I thought that was Bud Hastings’s fault. I thought Everett would start fixing things up once his dad retired. He’s supposed to be the groundskeeper now, but things are as bad as ever.”
“The groundskeeper,” Sally whispered. “As if we live on grounds. As if Everett were a servant. Everett, who’s known Perry since they were kids.”
“Shhhh,” I said.
Now we heard them walking along the porch, just below us.
“I think we should wait outside until Joan gets home,” said Spin. “Let’s take the kids down to see the lake.”
“Why?” Laurel asked. “Why don’t we just go in?”
“Well, at least let’s knock, give them a little heads-up.”
“Really, Spin? You knock now?” Perry asked.
“Yeah, ever since Dad died. I knock, and then go in.”
“That’s weird,” said Perry.
“I thought it was weird, too,” said Laurel.
“I know, I just feel that it’s the right thing. I don’t think she’s here, anyway.”
We stayed perched on the roof of the porch. I saw that the rain gutter was filled with leaves from last fall. Nobody had cleaned the gutters in who knows how long. They were dark with mildew and had started to decompose. No wonder there was rain rot all along the edge of the porch floor.
“She’s not there, so just go in,” Perry said.
“Wait, I do want to see the rest of the property,” said Laurel. “I haven’t seen the whole place, just the house and the dock.”
We heard them walking down the porch steps. We heard Catherine say, “Is there some way to get this cleaning maniac to break into this house?” We heard them all laugh, even Spin. Sally had her hand on my wrist and she squeezed it tight.
A moment later, they were down on the lawn, facing the lake. Little Jake had found a stick and was chasing Emma around in circles. Riley, our dog, was trying to get the stick from Jake, and Catherine cried out, “Spin, grab that dog. He’s trying to bite.”
“He doesn’t bite,” Spin laughed. “C’mere, Riley.”
“We can’t stay up here all day,” Sally whispered.
“I know. Let’s just wait until Joan comes,” I replied. We sat back against the house. The lake was calm and a slight breeze moved the clouds across the sky, creating panels of shadow that shifted across the water’s surface. Near our shore, two geese glided along behind a family of ducks, who complained loudly about this pair of oversized tagalongs. Out beyond our float, old Ethel Garner was sailing her Sunfish. She sailed past the float once, then tacked and sailed past it again, this time waving to Spin and the others.
“Hi, Mrs. Garner!” Spin called out to her.
“Hi, dear. OH, HI, SALLY! HI, CHARLOTTE!” Mrs. Garner shouted, and Sally and I watched in horror as the group on the lawn turned around and gazed up to where Ethel had been waving. Sally stood and pretended she was moving one of the storm windows. I smiled and gave them all a feeble wave.
“Sally! Charlotte!” Spin cried out happily. “There you are! Didn’t you hear us knocking?”
“No,” Sally replied. “No, we didn’t.”
They were shielding their eyes with their hands so they could see us better.
“What the hell are you two doing up there?” Perry asked.
“We’re trying to swap out the storm windows. What does it look like we’re doing?” said Sally. “We’re taking care of this old house of yours.”
“The shingles are loose; you’d better be careful,” said Spin. “Here, let me come up and help you.”
“Where’s Everett?” Perry called to us. “Isn’t he supposed to do this stuff? Isn’t that his job?”
Spin had been correct about the loose shingles; the one beneath my foot was almost completely dislodged, and I enjoyed the fleeting image of it leaving my hand like a boomerang, slicing Perry’s prematurely balding scalp from his tanned forehead, and then returning to me.
“No, don’t come up, we’ll come down,” Sally said, but we could hear that they were already in the house.
“You should have let me do that,” Spin said as he helped us with the last window.
“Well, you can do the others. You two are staying here, right?” Sally asked.
“We we
re planning to, but if it’s a problem, we can always stay at Perry’s,” Spin said.
“Of course it’s not a problem. This is your house, too,” Sally said, and I caught Laurel shoot a quick glance at Spin. I knew Sally saw it, too. Her cheeks had turned pink. She and I both sensed that they had misunderstood; that they thought Sally felt some kind of ownership, which, of course, was ridiculous. It was our mom’s house. Hers, Perry’s, and Spin’s.
Laurel said, “Let’s get our stuff, Phil, and then maybe Sally and Charlotte can show us around. I’ve never walked around the property, or even seen the entire house.”
Again, we were momentarily confused. Yes. Phil. It was his real name. She liked calling him that. Never mind that nobody called him that—not his friends, not his colleagues, not even his own mother, who had given him the name. It seemed that Laurel wanted her own name to call him. I wasn’t sure why this irked me, but it did.
We met up with Perry and Catherine downstairs. After Spin’s car was unloaded, we all went on a little tour of Lakeside.
* * *
Sally loves showing off the property; she’s done it many times. She was always fascinated with the history of Lake Marinac and all the Vandemeer cottages. She devoted many hours one childhood summer to reading about them at the Harwich library. When our family used to participate in the annual garden tour of the Vandemeer homes, Sally was always the tour guide. She started right in now, telling Laurel about how the house came to be situated there on the point. It was because of Holden Academy, she explained. In the early years of the school, in the mid-1800s, Holden boys used to hike the four miles from the school’s campus to a campsite on Lake Marinac. The campsite was on the point of land where we now stood.
“This used to be called Point Bliss,” Perry interjected. “My great-grandfather had the name changed to Whitman’s Point.”
“Well, technically, according to town records and maps, it still is Point Bliss,” Sally corrected him. “But everyone in the area has called it Whitman’s Point for generations.”
“They call it Whitman’s Point because it is Whitman’s Point,” Perry laughed. “It was legally changed by my great-grandfather.”
“That’s not actually true,” Sally said, “but who cares? Anyway, it was 1904 when your and Spin’s great-great-grandfather George Perry Whitman decided to have his classmate Karl Vandemeer build Lakeside Cottage. He had loved Holden Academy, and his fondest memories involved the days and nights camping on Point Bliss. The school abandoned the tradition of camping on the lake sometime around the turn of the century, after one of the kids drowned in a canoe accident. So George bought the whole point from the school and had the trail along the lake—really not much more than a cow path at the time—improved up to right about there, where the driveway begins. Later the state widened the carriage road for automobiles all the way around the lake.”
“My grandfather paid for the original road, so he had it curve inland just before the point,” Perry said. “When it eventually was extended, it curved back alongside the lake about a quarter mile past our property. That’s why Lakeside is one of the only houses that has any considerable amount of acreage right on the lake. The other cabins and houses were all built across the street from the lake. Now you can’t build anything on the lake. The few areas that haven’t been developed are protected by the wetlands commission or are part of the state forest.”
“Yep,” Sally said. “The Whitman estate once consisted of thirty acres, most of Point Bliss, or if you prefer, Whitman’s Point, and the land leading up to it. Over the years, as property taxes rose, the property was pared down to just over eight acres, just the point itself. The rest was deeded over to the town’s land trust.”
“That’s the old carriage house, Laurel,” Spin said, moving on. He explained that Everett’s parents had moved into it during the 1960s, that they retired to Florida a few years ago. “Everett stayed on here. It doesn’t look like he’s home now. We grew up with him; he’s like the third brother.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Perry. “We hung out with him when we were kids because there was nobody else to hang out with.”
“He’s the closest friend I have,” said Spin. His loyalty to Everett made me want to tackle him to the ground and smother him with kisses and tickles, just like we used to do to him when he was little.
Sally explained to Laurel that there had once been a stable attached to the carriage house and that was why it was a little distance from the main house and situated so much closer to the road. She then led the way down the sloping lawn behind the main house to the boathouse.
“Downstairs is mostly water. You can motor or paddle a boat right into the place and tie it up in the little bay down there,” Sally said.
“We used to have a great old motorboat—a Chris Craft—but the boat died sometime in the eighties,” Perry said. “It was a real classic, that boat. All wood.”
The boat was before our time. Sally and I smiled politely.
“It was named Marissa,” Perry explained. “After our mother.”
* * *
Perry and Catherine didn’t stay long; they had plans that night in the Hamptons, so they just sat down for a quick iced tea and a chat on the porch once Joan arrived home. Spin and I played with Jake and Emma. Though we don’t see them often, I always pay a lot of attention to Perry’s kids. Jake was almost three at the time and Emma was six. My blog kids are about the same age, and I like to observe Jake’s and Emma’s behavior so that I can write more accurately about children that age. But also, I love children, and for all that we like to carry on about their fancy house and their hired help, Perry and Catherine must be good parents, because their kids are so smart and sweet.
Spin was helping Emma stand up on a paddleboard in the lake and I was chasing Jake around on the lawn next to the porch when I heard the conversation turn to the wedding plans.
“Have you and Spin set a date yet, dear?” Joan asked Laurel.
“Yes, August twenty-second. We’re going to Paris for our honeymoon, and that way we’ll have a couple of weeks before the school year starts,” said Laurel.
“We have friends who run a very boutique-y holiday villa and flat rental business in Europe and we’ve arranged for them to stay in the most charming apartment right in Montmartre,” said Catherine.
“I’m so excited,” said Laurel.
“Have you been to Paris before?” Joan asked.
“No, never. I’ve been to France, but I was in the Alps, skiing. I’ve always wanted to go. I can’t wait.”
Perry was anxious to get on the road; the kids get cranky when they’re stuck in traffic. We saw them off, and after Spin and Laurel unpacked their stuff in Spin’s room, they came downstairs and joined Sally and me in the music room. Sally was working on her piece. I was listening to it and thinking about little Jake and Emma and things they had said that I could use in my blog.
“Oh good, Spin, I need your help,” Sally said when they walked in. “This is what I was telling you about, this is where I need you.”
“Okay. What is it?” he asked. “Let’s hear what you have.”
Sally tucked her violin under her chin and played the basic melody. It really was such a pretty song, sort of haunting and sad, though. Spin was intrigued. He sat at the piano and played a few chords.
“Wait,” Sally said. “Go back, go back. What was that minor chord? That was it.”
Spin played the chord again. Sally wove a new line through the chord, and then Spin followed with another clever chord change. Now they were in it, playing the phrase over and over. Suddenly, Spin pulled his hands away from the keys and said, “This isn’t fair to Laurel. It’s so boring. We can do this later.”
“No, babe,” Laurel said. “You guys play. I want to check things out. I still feel like I could get lost in this place. Charlotte, can you show me around the house?”
“Sure,” I said. I followed her out of the room.
“I think you’ve
seen most of the house—that was the music room we were just in. It used to be called the sunroom when Whit was little. His sister and cousins used to call it the conservatory. It was more of a greenhouse then, with lots more plants. Whit’s grandmother was really into flowers.”
“I love all the windows, but it must get awfully hot in there in the summer.”
“Oh, it does,” I said. “We rarely go in during the summer—at least not in the daytime. But it’s really beautiful in the winter. You’ll see. Spin spends Christmas Eve here with us. He always has, so I hope you’ll both keep doing that. We put the Christmas tree in the music room, and it’s beautiful with all the windows. You can see the snow falling all around you. It feels like you’re outside, but you’re nice and warm. And the frozen lake, well, you’ll see, it’s nice. This is the living room; we don’t spend a lot of time in here.”
We paused for a moment and she looked at the enormous fireplace and all the old overstuffed upholstered furniture. I motioned for her to follow me.
“So here, we’re back in the main hallway.”
We walked through the wide hall and into the family room on the other side.
“The TV’s in here,” I said, pointing to the small TV that sat on an old wooden trunk. “We only have basic cable; I hope you’re not into any regular series on HBO or anything like that. Joan will only pay for basic. I watch everything on my computer.”
“I do, too. I don’t really watch much TV,” said Laurel.
She wandered over to the bookshelves that run from floor to ceiling on the long interior wall. The shelves hold hundreds of books, many of which are rare first-edition volumes of great classics. Joan’s uncle Hunt, Hunter Garrison, once owned one of the largest collections of rare books in the United States. Joan had been his favorite among his nieces and nephews. He was gay, childless, and had left her a large part of his collection in his will. The rest are at the Smithsonian Institution. The books should be in a climate-controlled vault someplace, but instead, they sit on our shelves, and each year the humid summers and dry, heated winters take their toll.