The Family Beach House

by Holly Chamberlin

  Tilda turned to her sister. Maybe admitting to her unworthy feelings might help her get past them. Maybe Hannah could somehow absolve her. “I thought I was a more sophisticated person,” she said. “But I can’t help but feel it’s an insult to Mom’s memory somehow, Dad’s dating this much younger woman…. And her being around while we’re all gathered for the memorial service…I know it’s been ten years since Mom’s death but somehow it just doesn’t seem right.”

  Hannah raised an eyebrow. “You’re a tradition-bound person, aren’t you? Everything by the book, everything the way it’s always been done. You’re a lot like Mom in that way.”

  “So what if I am? Aren’t you even a little bit…upset about this relationship of Dad’s?”

  “Yeah,” Hannah said. “I’ll admit that it…concerns me. Not the fact of the age difference, though. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, not at this point in their lives.”

  “So, what then?”

  Hannah was thoughtful for a moment before saying, “I don’t really know.”

  “The status quo is changing,” Susan said. “That upsets everyone initially. Give yourself time to get used to the idea, that’s all.”

  Craig’s ancient red van pulled up to the house then, and a moment later he joined his siblings on the front porch.

  “What are you doing back so early?” Hannah asked. “I thought you’d be gone all night.”

  “Me? No way. I’m a one-beer sort of guy when I’m driving. Besides, Kirk had to meet someone else later. What did I miss?”

  “Uh—” Tilda said.

  “Not much,” Hannah lied.

  “Actually—” Susan began, but Adam’s loudly voiced question interrupted her.

  “Is everything all set for Mom’s memorial service?”

  “Pretty much. I think Ruth handled most of the details.” I certainly didn’t participate, Hannah added silently. Not that anyone asked me to help. She wondered if she should have volunteered, for her father’s sake. She felt slightly guilty.

  “What about the party?” Adam was asking.

  “The caterer is booked,” Tilda said. “I guess Ruth handled the party planning, too.”

  Adam nodded. “I thought I’d read something from Ayn Rand at the service. You know she was Mom’s favorite writer.”

  Of course she was, Hannah thought. Hadn’t Rand said, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me”? And hadn’t she said something about evil requiring the permission or sanction of the victim? Hannah didn’t claim to be an expert on the work and teachings of Ayn Rand but what little she did know she didn’t much like. Charlotte McQueen’s role model had certainly not been Mother Teresa.

  “Mom wasn’t as good a sailor as she liked to think she was,” Hannah said abruptly. “I don’t mean that to sound harsh, but it’s the truth. Frankly, I wasn’t entirely surprised when we got the news that she’d had an accident.”

  “Hannah!” Susan looked appalled.

  “What? I’m just being honest. Mom had a large opinion of herself and her talents.” Much like Adam, she added silently. “Not that she deserved to die as she did…”

  “What are you talking about?” Adam said. “Mom was a fantastic sailor. I’ve always thought there might have been foul play.”

  Craig barely controlled a grin. “Then why didn’t you say anything at the time? I don’t remember you demanding an investigation. Hercule Poirot over here.”

  Adam made no answer.

  “Besides,” Hannah said, “she was with a friend when the accident occurred. Carol Whitehouse had absolutely no reason to want Mom dead. Really, Adam, since when have you had an imagination?”

  Tilda rose abruptly from her chair. “I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  “And we know you like to be on the beach at dawn. I don’t know how you do it.”

  Tilda just shrugged and went upstairs to her room. The truth was that the critical talk about her mother had upset her. On some level she knew that her mother had not been the warmest or most obliging person but she didn’t really want to dwell on that knowledge. She preferred to follow the words of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.” And, Tilda would add, one does not judge. At least, one should try not to judge.

  Still, she wondered about emotional cowardice. Selective memory could be a good thing—it was a survival tactic—but it could also be a bad thing, especially when it blocked out a truth that might help you evolve to learn a new and better survival tactic.

  Tilda brushed her teeth in the hall bathroom and returned to her room. The only windows looked out on the side lawn. If you leaned out you could see the ocean to the left, but Tilda never bothered. It was enough to know the ocean was there, fully and spectacularly visible from the front rooms and porch.

  It was not the best bedroom in the house—that was reserved for her father, of course, who had shared the room with his wife—but it was Tilda’s favorite because it was the room in which she and Frank had always stayed when visiting her parents. At first, Jon and Jane had joined them, sleeping on air mattresses or in sleeping bags on the floor. Later, the kids had moved to their own rooms, sometimes to the library couch.

  Charlotte had decorated each bedroom in keeping with clean and casual beachfront style, reserving formality and elegance for the dining room and, in a more English country house vein, the library. The walls in Tilda’s—and Frank’s—room, for example, were painted white, as were the replacement wide pine floorboards. A braided rug in tones of peach, green, and yellow sat on either side of the bed. The sheets, pillowcases, and lightweight summer blankets were white, trimmed with a peach-colored border. The two wooden dressers were painted the color of bells of Ireland. On the wall were hung three small watercolor seascapes done by a local artist Charlotte had patronized until her interest had waned. The room felt airy and light and peaceful. Frank had always been afraid of somehow dirtying it beyond repair. He wouldn’t even bring a cup of coffee upstairs after breakfast. Tilda thought he had been a bit afraid of her mother. Well, a lot of people had been a bit afraid of or intimidated by Charlotte McQueen. But Tilda had only learned about this after her mother’s death.

  She opened the dresser drawer in which she kept her nightgowns and underwear, and pulled out a thin flannel nightgown. Something came with it and dropped to the floor. Tilda turned on the small lamp atop the dresser and squatted. It was probably a stray penny. But she saw nothing so she reached under the dresser and felt around. (The floor, she noted, was dust free. Ruth and a team of professional housekeepers kept Larchmere in an immaculate state.) Her fingers found the unknown object, something small and round, but thicker than a coin and decorated with raised scrolling. She stood and looked at it. Her heart beat painfully. It was the missing button she and Frank had searched for so diligently. How had it gotten into her drawer? How had it escaped their notice?

  Tilda slumped on the edge of the bed, the metal button in her palm. It had fallen off a sweater Frank had inherited from his father. It was the last of the original buttons; all the others had been lost while the sweater was still in the possession of the elder O’Connell.

  She closed her fingers over the button. That sweater had meant so much to Frank. When they couldn’t find this last original button she had replaced it with one matching the other, newer buttons. And she still had the sweater. It was one of the things she would never throw out or give away. Jane sometimes wore it around the house. It probably made her feel close to her father.

  Tilda opened her fingers and looked again at the button. She wondered if it could be a sign from Frank. It wasn’t an eagle, it wasn’t the sign she had asked for, but it was odd that it had so suddenly appeared after all this time missing. Tilda tried to believe that the button itself meant something. But it was no use. If this was a message from Frank she failed to understand it. She got up and put the button back in the drawer with the other nightclothes. She turned out the light and went to be
d.

  8

  Wednesday, July 18

  It was the newlywed couple again. Tilda, on Ogunquit Beach for her morning walk after a restless, dream-filled night, was momentarily surprised at their presence so early in the day. It was barely seven o’clock. She wondered why they weren’t sleeping in after the big celebration. But young love had boundless energy. She did remember that.

  The woman’s hair was now in a simple ponytail; gone were the flowers and curls. She was wearing a pink sundress and white, flat sandals. Her husband was in khaki shorts and a bright, Hawaiian style shirt. They looked clean and neat and happy. They were holding hands.

  They must be staying in town, Tilda thought. So this is where they’re spending their honeymoon, pretty little Ogunquit. No doubt their suite looked out over the ocean. Maybe they would return here every year on their anniversary. Maybe someday they would come with their children. It was a pleasant thought and it made Tilda feel sick with loss.

  She remembered a line from The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl. She had read the book while Frank was ill. The line had struck her forcefully then and had come back to her time and again since Frank’s death. A character is confronted with the murder of her husband and, in the author’s words, the woman “knew in an instant what it meant to be a widow, what an ungodly jealousy it produced.”

  How right that was! Through no fault or desire of her own she had been kicked out of the enviable club of married people, and relegated to the club in which no one wanted to be a member—widow.

  Gone were all the “companionable endeavors” she and Frank had enjoyed—those comfortable habits every couple shared. Doing them alone seemed unbearably sad. For a while Tilda thought she would have to find some new habits or go mad. Ordering a pizza from the small, old-fashioned shop down the block, and eating it in the living room, sitting crossed-legged on the floor at the coffee table, while watching a Will Ferrell movie (they’d seen Anchorman three times) was no longer possible. Without Frank, it was a miserable experience. The rug chafed her legs, the pizza was too chewy, and the movies weren’t funny.

  The thing was that she still loved Frank. But could you love a dead person, someone who has died? Could she say, legitimately, that she still loved Frank? Or was it the memory she loved, the memory of Frank, not the actuality, which was a scattered handful of ash…. Tilda blinked hard. What a macabre thought! How disgusting, revolting, really. But the question remained. Just because Frank had died, must her love for him be dead, too?

  Of course not, she thought, almost angrily. Let the philosophers determine the fine points of expression. She loved Frank and she always would, whether he was present in body or in spirit. Tilda looked up into the early morning sun. No eagle.

  She looked back at the newlywed couple. They had stopped and were hugging. The bride rested her head on her husband’s chest and he kissed her hair. The last thing on that young bride’s mind, Tilda knew, was the thought of her husband’s dying and of her being left alone.

  Somewhere she had read that every year around eight hundred thousand women in the United States were widowed. That was an awfully big number but only the year before had there been the first national conference addressing the state of widowhood. Tilda had not gone to the conference though she sometimes wondered what would be different now if she had. Anyway, why hadn’t anyone been paying attention to all of those women until now? All of those sad and lonely women.

  The newlywed couple was walking again. The husband, keeping stride, bent down to pick up a rock or a shell. And suddenly, Tilda had an overwhelming desire to rush up to them, to grab their hands and warn them that their happiness would not, could not last. She wanted to urge them to cherish each other while they could. She wanted to help them and she wanted to hurt them. She wanted to be a memento mori, a reminder of death. She wanted to force them to share some of her pain by confronting them with the dark fact of ending, of nothingness, of being alone and bereft.

  Of course, she did not rush over to the newlyweds, to congratulate or to warn or to admonish. Instead, she cut her walk short and headed back to Larchmere, ashamed of the urge to blight the happiness of an innocent young couple, ashamed of her “ungodly jealousy.”

  9

  It was a little after noon and Tilda and Hannah were settling at a table at Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier, in the beautiful, largely rural town of Kittery Point. Tilda had decided, not surprisingly, to order a bucket of steamers, and Hannah wanted a boiled lobster. They had brought a bottle of fizzy water, a bottle of pinot grigio, and a loaf of French bread from Standard bakery. Almost all of the brightly painted picnic tables were occupied. There were several family groups. Four women who looked about Tilda’s age had brought for their table a cloth and linen napkins. Two older men had brought their Dachshund, who sat quietly under the table while they ate.

  Susan had gone off to spend the afternoon with an old friend in Falmouth. Tilda loved Susan and enjoyed her company. But she wasn’t disappointed that it would be just herself and Hannah at lunch.

  This was one of the sisters’ favorite spots. Across the creek was Cutts Island, its shore thick with pointed firs, birch, and farther inland, oaks and maples. People in kayaks and rowboats and larger pleasure crafts drifted or glided by, often waving at the diners. Teenaged boys, employed by the pound, unloaded wooden crates and equipment from fishing boats moored below the restaurant’s deck. Laughter and conversation from the other tables punctuated the air. It was impossible, Tilda and Hannah thought, not to feel privileged at Chauncey Creek, like you had the world at your feet.

  The sun was very bright and hot. Tilda reached in her bag for a hat, one of Frank’s old baseball caps. She had given most of his clothes to charitable organizations. Some special pieces had gone to Jon, who could just about fit into them; other pieces, like the old sweater, had been adopted by Jane. But Frank’s hat collection she had not been able to part with. She didn’t like the way she looked in baseball caps, and when Frank was alive she had never worn them. But now, well, there was so little left of her husband….

  “You know,” Hannah said suddenly, interrupting the sudden, but not surprising, dark drift of Tilda’s thoughts, “Susan and I are still talking about starting a family.”

  Tilda was startled. “Oh. You hadn’t mentioned anything in so long I guess I thought that maybe you had decided not to….”

  “No. It’s still on the table.”

  “So…”

  “So what’s holding us back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me.” Hannah smiled as if in apology.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  “Well, why?” Tilda asked. “Are you worried about money? You know that old saying, there’s never a right time to have a baby, you just have to do it.”

  “No, it’s not the money. Though the thought of paying for college in twenty years or so does scare the hell out of me.”

  “Loans,” Tilda said. “Scholarships. Work-study programs. Part-time jobs. For the kids, of course.”

  “I know, I know. It’s not the money.”

  “So, have you talked to Susan about why you’re reluctant? Or is that a stupid question?”

  “It should be a stupid question. If I can’t or don’t or won’t talk to my wife about something so important, who am I going to talk to? But the fact is that I haven’t talked to her, not really. I mean, we talk about the idea of a family and about the fact that I’m not ready for one, but I can’t really tell her why.”

  “Do you know why you’re not ready,” Tilda asked, “or is it that you can’t articulate the feelings? Or maybe you really don’t know your reasons.”

  Hannah was silent for a long moment. And then she said, “I don’t know.”

  Tilda sighed. “I don’t mean to preach, Hannah, really, but the most common killer of marriage is emotional distance. You can’t shy away from talking to Susan about your fears or hesitations or whatever you want to call them. You owe it to yourself and to Su
san.”

  “I know.”

  “Look, friendships don’t last when people drift apart. How can a marriage, the most intimate and peculiar of friendships, be expected to survive?”

  “I know. You’re right. You are. And I know I brought up this subject, but let’s talk about something else now. Like, about how you’re doing.”

  Tilda smiled. “Besides the disturbing fact that I feel afraid of the future? And that I wish I could go back in time to when my life was wonderful?”

  “I assumed as much. For one, you’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

  Tilda looked down at her left hand. The yellow gold ring shone in the bright sun. “I know. I can’t seem to be without it. I’ve tried a few times to leave it at home while I go to the grocery store or somewhere I might not run into anyone I know. But I can’t even do that without feeling all anxious and guilty. It’s like the minute I’m seen without my wedding ring I’ll be announcing to the world that I’m over Frank. That I don’t need him anymore, that I don’t love him. I just know I’ll feel horribly guilty and judged.”

  “Do you still need him?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes,” Tilda said. “I think so.”

  “How? Or maybe I should ask, why? Or, for what? And don’t say, for taking out the garbage.”

  “Jon does that. It’s been his job since he was twelve.”

  “Answer the question.”

  Tilda replied promptly. “I need him because I want him. I need him because my marriage was a good one. I miss it. Almost aside from Frank I miss the marriage itself. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

  “Define ‘good.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, really. I’m not trying to be annoying or provocative. I’m truly curious. For you and Frank, what was good?”

  “It’s hard to put into words, exactly,” Tilda said. “I don’t know. For one thing, I never, or rarely, felt put upon. Frank really pulled his share of the load. We respected each other. We liked each other. It sounds so simplistic or clichéd but…”