The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “How did you know to do that?” Susannah was impressed.

  “Dad showed me,” he said.

  The phrase hung there for a few seconds. Susannah could just imagine it—Charlie, Mr. Fix-It, explaining how the circuit breakers worked, Jack nodding seriously, taking it all in—and her eyes welled. But all she said was, “You saved the day. Or night.” Jack smiled. His deep-set brown eyes and long lashes (how he hated them, thinking they made him look like a girl) came from her, but she had not passed on her small, neat chin or her sun-loving olive skin and dark brown hair. Jack had lighter hair and his father’s freckles. And his smile—tremulous and heartbreaking—was pure Charlie.

  Cally came into the room. “I want to go to bed.”

  “Let’s all go up,” said Susannah. “The movers will be here first thing.” She headed up and they followed. At least things were ready for them up here. Susannah helped Cally settle in the bedroom with the rose-sprigged wallpaper and brass bed where she had stayed that long-ago summer. Jack took the room that had been her mother’s study—her father had been relegated to the porch—and Susannah decamped to the largest bedroom, the one where her parents had slept.

  Alone for the first time in hours, she felt herself sagging under the weight of the day she’d just spent and the knowledge that the next day would be no easier. But she had gotten them here safely, hadn’t she? They were okay. Sort of. She walked over to the window. Through the parted curtains, she could see the pond, illuminated by the cool, silvery light of a winter moon.

  Susannah had been seventeen when her mother announced she wanted to spend the summer in New Hampshire. Yes, she had known about the house, but her parents had always kept it rented out and neither one had ever expressed any interest in going there. So everything had been brand-new for her, the pond most of all. She was raised a Jersey girl; her experience of water meant pounding surf and a seemingly unending shoreline.

  By contrast, this finite, tranquil body of water had seemed dull. But gradually she grew to appreciate it. Instead of waves, there were subtle ripples or eddies. Instead of stinging salt, there was liquid so pure she could have bathed in it. There were frogs and toads that lived at its perimeters, silvery minnows that rose to its surface in search of bread. Loons swam and hunted in the pond and geese used the wooden rafts to congregate. The ocean, with its potentially treacherous tides and mercurial changes, was exciting, but not to be trusted. The pond, in comparison, laid all its secrets bare.

  Susannah got into the bed that Mabel had made up with flannel sheets and a down quilt. Yet, as tired as she was, she found she could not sleep. The energy of the house, or the spirits of the people who’d lived here—her parents; the younger, innocent version of herself—were too present, too noisy even. The internal clamor was keeping her awake.

  That had been a strange, intense summer. Her mother had been even more moody than usual, crying a lot, or awash in a kind of manic joy; her normally even-tempered father had seemed preoccupied and, at times, morose. Swimming in the clear, cool water of the pond, Susannah was relieved to escape the drama of whatever her parents were going through; the pond had been her refuge. She hoped it would still be true, and that she hadn’t made a huge mistake in uprooting her kids and dragging them up here.

  Yanking back the covers, she got out of bed and padded down the hall. Quietly, she opened the door to Cally’s room. Her daughter was on her side, curled in on herself; even in sleep she was guarded. The magazines she’d bought earlier were splayed on the floor. Susannah knew that she was largely indifferent to the features and bodies of the models who cavorted across the pages; instead, she was mentally ripping apart the garments, trying to understand their inner architecture, the scaffolding that held them together. Cally’s face had lost its habitual scowl, the one she’d assumed when Charlie was killed and that had not faded since. Her red hair was fanned out on the pillow around her. Susannah had the urge to kiss that smooth, untroubled forehead but did not want to run the risk of waking her, so she stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  When she went to check on Jack, she found him flat on his back, arms stretched out and one leg hanging off the bed. His clarinet case was propped in a corner; he would not trust it to the movers. Susannah stood there listening to the light rasp of his snoring. He slept like his father—with complete abandon.

  • • •

  Susannah and Charlie had met when she was sixteen and he was eighteen; they had both been working at a summer camp in the Poconos. There had been no romance between them, but they’d become instant best friends and spent hours dissecting everyone at the camp, from the director to the littlest kids. They remained friends too, and would get together a few times a year in Philly. It wasn’t until they had graduated from college—she from Vassar, he from Bard—and were trying to make their way in New York that things between them changed.

  Charlie had a job doing merchandise display for Macy’s and Susannah worked at a small educational publisher where she typed, filed, answered phones, and obsessed about an on-again-off-again romance she was having with an older, and tantalizingly elusive, coworker. She had a standing once-a-month date with Charlie when they caught up on each other’s lives.

  One of these dates took place at a noodle shop they favored in the East Village, where, over tiny cups of sake, Susannah was lamenting her romantic situation—yet again. Charlie listened for a time, nodding or offering the occasional comment. But after about fifteen minutes, he put down his cup, leaned across the table, and took both her hands in his. “Forget that guy,” he said. “He doesn’t appreciate you and he doesn’t deserve you. I’m the guy who loves you. The guy you’re going to marry.” Then he kissed her. Susannah’s eyes did not close, but opened very wide. This was Charlie, her familiar, adorable, loyal best friend forever. But the kiss—it was totally brand-new and more wonderful than she could have imagined.

  They had a giddy dating spree—so much lost time to make up for—and within a year they were married. Charlie retained his boyish charm even through marriage, two kids, the ups and downs of their respective careers, a couple of health scares, the deaths of parents and, in his case, an older brother. And now he was gone.

  After a few seconds, the memories subsided, and Susannah stood, breathing hard, in the hallway. Then she trudged back to bed, where she prayed she could salvage at least a couple of hours from what promised to be a ruined minefield of sleep.

  THREE

  A scant few hours later, Susannah was jolted awake by the insistent chime of the doorbell. Hastily grabbing the flannel bathrobe that had been Charlie’s—try as she might, she could no longer detect his scent in the soft plaid folds—she flew down the stairs to find a young bearded guy in a ski cap and down vest. Behind him, a huge red truck with the word SCHLEPPERS emblazoned across the side hulked like some enormous animal.

  “Morning,” he said. “We’ll start moving it in whenever you’re ready.”

  Damn. She’d overslept. Now the movers were here, the kids were still asleep, and she hadn’t showered, dressed, or had so much as a sip of coffee. “Come on in.” She stepped back to give him access. “I’ll just run up and throw something on.” When she returned, dressed but still frazzled, a few boxes had already been unloaded and carried into the house.

  “You’re sure you’re going to have room for everything?” He seemed doubtful.

  The room was already furnished in an amiable if generic fashion—a beige sofa and two matching chairs around the fireplace, faux Navajo rug on the floor, various end tables topped with various lamps and vases. Susannah did not remember any of this stuff; it looked like it had been purchased from a catalog, and all on the same day. Sometime after that summer they’d spent here, her mother had come through and taken almost everything of theirs out, replacing it with these characterless pieces.

  “Most of this stuff downstairs is going. And upstairs there’s a lot less.” The bedrooms
, sparsely furnished as they were, contained pieces Susannah did remember, like the brass bed and the maple four-poster in her parents’ room.

  Ski Cap looked around. “Do you need any help getting rid of it? I know some people in Brooklyn who were flooded a couple of months ago and lost most of their furniture. We could load anything you can’t use back onto the truck and take it down to them.” Susannah had planned to call the Salvation Army to cart off what she did not want, but he was saving her a step. And she was glad the stuff would go to people who could really use it. “Sounds good to me.”

  Ski Cap smiled and inclined his head; his big beard touched his down-clad chest. For the next several hours, the crew unloaded furniture and lugged boxes. Cally and Jack emerged from their respective rooms; Susannah just hoped Cally could keep it together while the movers were here, and so far she was getting her wish.

  When everything was in the house, Ski Cap, whose name was Sean, asked the guys to take all the beige-and-bland pieces out and to set up Susannah’s own eclectic assortment of furniture—the wing chair covered with a gaudily patterned curtain panel from the 1940s; the midcentury sofa and coffee table, the latter shaped like a kidney bean—in the newly emptied space.

  “It looks good.” Jack settled into the sofa.

  “Not exactly good,” said Cally. “But better.”

  “We’ll make it ours,” Susannah said. “You’ll see.” She tipped the movers generously and stood waving in the open doorway as the Schleppers truck rumbled off.

  Once they had gone, Susannah turned and went back into the house. From the living room she could see the porch, and beyond that the pond. It had been such a big part of her life that summer. Except when it rained, she was in that water every single morning, wading out until she was waist deep and then diving in. Then she would swim a steady path along a shoreline that was ringed in pines and birches, past the same eight or ten houses and back again. She passed several wooden floats tethered to weights below the surface, warped, weathered things coated in slime and moss. She had liked to stop at each of them in turn, hoisting herself onto the surface and plunging cleanly back into the water again. During these long swims, she almost never saw another soul. The people who lived there year-round had no kids, and she never mingled much with the people who came for only a week or two. The pond had seemed hers, and hers alone.

  After her solitary morning swims, Susannah would spend the day hanging out with the crew of kids she’d met, like Trevor Bailey. Sometimes they went boating, but mostly they lolled on the floats or the pebbly strip fronting the water. Susannah’s place within the group was not well established, which was why she’d so quickly paired off with Trevor: he was her ticket in. He was nice enough, but she secretly found him dull, and his hand on her thigh or under her shirt—overtures she had rejected—elicited no response in her at all. He’d had a brother, though. Corbin. Now he was interesting, but he was three years older, a gap that at the time had seemed enormous.

  A small crash brought her back to the present and she went hurrying in the direction of the sound. “What broke?” she asked, standing in the kitchen.

  “I dropped a glass,” Jack said. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “No biggie,” she said, hunting for a broom and dustpan. There was still so much to do; taking the contents of one life and fitting it into a new vessel was not going to be easy. Susannah helped Jack with the broken glass, lifting the jagged bits from the floor. Then she went upstairs to begin unpacking some of the boxes that now lined her bedroom.

  The first box contained summer clothes. She wouldn’t need them for a while. Same with all her sandals, the round hat box containing her straw panama, and her two black bathing suits. Unlike her Brooklyn home, this house had an attic—the perfect place to store her out-of-season wardrobe. She mounted the flight of bare wooden boards that were concealed behind a door adjacent to the bathroom. When she pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling, a single bulb lit the room.

  The attic was a pretty raw space: wide-plank floors, a pair of windows at one end, and a circular window at the other. Exposed beams bisected the ceiling. There were three large boxes stacked against one wall and an old iron bed on the other. Also a harp with several shot strings—one of her father’s crazy finds that summer—and, sitting alongside the boxes, a black Singer sewing machine that Susannah did not recognize but may have belonged to her mother.

  Depositing the clothing on the bed, she walked over and put her hand on its dusty surface. Cally had been asking for a sewing machine. Then she turned to the boxes, whose contents were unknown to her. When her mother died, she had just given birth to Jack and she couldn’t deal with the house; her father had died the year before, and so her mother’s best friend, Linda Jacobsmeyer, had kindly packed up whatever personal effects had been left and brought them up here.

  The first box was crammed with yards and yards of fabric. All of it was old.

  Had it belonged to her mother? She had no idea. She found spools of trimming tucked between the folds—velvet and satin ribbon, lace, and rickrack. There was a bag filled with embroidered appliqués, another bag of buttons, and still another of beads. The more she pawed through the box, the more puzzled she became. As far as Susannah knew, Claire had never used anything here. But Cally would love this stuff, and Susannah badly wanted to find something about this house, and the life they would be leading in it, for Cally to love.

  She turned to the next box. Inside it she found papers belonging to her father; he’d been an economics professor, first at the University of New Hampshire and later at Rutgers, in New Jersey. There were also a few small oil paintings, mostly of the pond, house, and the surrounding woods. Susannah remembered how her father had had a sudden urge to try his hand at painting that summer, and she’d driven with him to an art supply store in Concord to pick out materials. “Your mother always says I have no appreciation of the arts. But I’m going to surprise her!” He’d kept his project hidden at first, clearly hoping to surprise and delight her. That was how it had been between them: her quiet, bookish father perpetually amazed that he’d captured—and married—his beautiful bird of paradise. It seemed like he’d always been trying to appease and charm her, a process of wooing that never ended. What she had seen in him Susannah had never really known.

  She took the paintings out and laid them on the floor like a patchwork quilt. The last one was not a landscape, but a portrait of her mother, painted from a photograph of her as a young woman. The photo was in the family album; Susannah had seen it many times. Her mother had indeed been surprised by her father’s artistic output. She’d exclaimed over the paintings of the house and pond, praising the colors and the composition. But when she saw the portrait, she’d seemed upset.

  “Something’s off about the expression,” she had said. “I look dazed. Or terrified.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father said. “I used a beautiful photograph of a beautiful woman. That’s what I saw. That’s what I painted. Or tried to.”

  Nothing more was said, but the painting went up to the attic and, as far as Susannah knew, her father had never painted again. Nice try, Dad, she had thought at the time. Too bad it didn’t work out.

  The last box was heavy and, when opened, looked to contain books, mostly on economics, with a few biographies and historical books in the mix. But here was an anomaly: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Had this belonged to her father? She doubted it. And when she turned to the flyleaf, it was her mother’s name she saw there. So Claire read Yeats? Who knew? And from the look of this tattered volume, with its loosened spine and torn cover, she had read him often.

  Susannah brought the book over to the bed and moved the clothes aside so she could sit. Here were poems her mother had wanted to single out, tiny penciled checkmarks near the titles. Occasionally a word or phrase was lightly underlined. In one instance, three exclamation marks stood at attention in the m
argin. Not only had Claire read Yeats, she had clearly been engaged by what she read. Susannah turned another page and a piece of paper, folded in thirds, slipped out of the book and into her lap. She opened it. There was no date and no signature, only these lines:

  I know it’s crazy, I know it’s wrong, I know we shouldn’t. You don’t want to hurt him and I don’t want to hurt her. But, Claire, you are “my lovely lizard/my lively writher” and I can no more give you up than cut out my own hot, beating heart. Please “say yes.”

  Susannah read the note over several times without fully understanding it. Or rather, she understood it, but only in the most literal way. This was a love letter, and although it was clearly written to her mother, it was not from her father; she knew his careful, tidy penmanship as well as she’d known his patient, perpetually resigned face. So these bold, looping lines had been written by someone else. Who? There was passion in them. And guilt. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s wrong, I know we shouldn’t. Could her mother have had a lover? An affair? If so, when? And if it had happened during her parents’ marriage, had her father known? Oh God. Oh. God.

  She remained on the bed for several minutes and then abruptly got up. She stacked the paintings in a neat pile, repacked the box of fabric and trimmings, and pushed it, along with the other boxes, back against the wall. The only thing she took was the Yeats, and the note, which she tucked between its pages once more. Then she pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling and went back down the stairs.

  FOUR

  All the while that she was cracking the eggs and frying the bacon, Susannah thought about the note. Even though she had read it only a few times, the words were fairly pulsating—tiny, hot points of light—in her mind. Lovely lizard/lively writher. That came from Theodore Roethke, a poet she had studied in a modern poetry course. I don’t want to hurt her. So he was married too. Please say yes. Yes to what? Loving him back? Leaving her husband? Clearly that had not happened.