They found a large booth where everyone could fit. Marion glared at Barbara, who sent her warning looks trying to convey something. The children were on the inside, Marion and Barbara on one side, and Mr. and Mrs. Whiting on the other side.
Gladys went on and on about how much the children had grown and only stopped when Brian insisted on ordering dinner. While they waited for their food, she continued chattering to the children, ignoring both Marion and Barbara.
“I want to go,” Marion said under her breath to Barbara under the guise of looking around.
“Patience,” Barbara breathed back, knowing they had to play the game, at least for now.
The children soon realized a second dessert wasn’t in the offing and looked disappointed. It wasn’t until the Whitings’ food arrived and the rest of them were given glasses of water that Gladys seemed to remember they had Marion under their thumb, even if only for the moment. Putting her arm around Brenda and hugging her close, she looked up at Marion and asked sweetly, “And what are you doing now in Maine?”
“We’ve been building,” Brian III answered for them all, wanting to be helpful and contribute. Marion wanted to kick him but wasn’t sure he wouldn’t yell and give them away.
“Oh. Building what?” she asked as she took a small bite of her dinner, forking it in delicately in case she needed to swallow quickly to say something. Brian Sr. looked on, interested, willing to let his wife talk.
“We built one cabin to live in and another summer cabin,” Richard contributed, wanting to back up his best friend.
“And what will you be doing with those?” she asked, again in that same sickeningly sweet voice. She must have realized that pumping the children for information was a whole lot easier than getting it out of Marion since she had stopped writing and arguing by mail.
Barbara looked deliberately at her watch as she sipped the cold water, noting that their fresh spring water tasted purer and cooler than this tap water. She smiled to herself when she saw Brenda make a face after she took a drink of her own water.
“We’ll be renting them out,” Brian III told his grandmother proudly. “I learned how to hammer a board in,” he bragged to his grandfather.
“Isn’t it about time?” Marion murmured but not quietly enough.
“Oh, you have other obligations?” Gladys asked, the sugar sweetness of her voice grating on all the adults’ nerves.
“Well, we were hoping to catch you at home later,” Barbara put in, sensing that Marion simply wanted to escape and might not be as tactful at this moment. Also, she didn’t want the children bragging anymore and giving out information they didn’t wish to share with these two. “As I mentioned earlier,” she said, hoping they had heard her, “we could only stop for a while.”
“If you were going to stop at our home later, then you can reschedule that for now,” Gladys answered, clearly certain she held the upper hand. Her sugar-sweet voice was slipping to iron-steel.
Barbara smiled, disarming the old biddy. “Yes, that would make sense except we are expected at a specific time. We will have to catch you later,” she said, rising abruptly from the table right in the middle of Brian’s explanation about digging a hole for a septic tank to his interested grandfather.
Everyone was caught unawares as the sturdy woman stood up. For a second, Marion stared at her, surprised at how rude she was being, then she caught on to the out she was offering them and said sweetly, “Come along, children. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Who?” Richard asked again, but he was not heard over the clamor as Gladys tried to get them to stay and Brian Sr. added to the noise as he automatically stood up in deference to the women.
“It was so nice to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Whiting. We will be sure to stop by again next time we are in town. No, there’s only the one truck, and we share it,” she assured them when they offered to give Marion and the children a ride to ‘their’ appointment. “Come along, Richard. Children, say goodbye to your grandparents,” she said to the others, giving Marion a slight push towards the door.
Amongst the delighted goodbyes from their grandchildren, the Whitings were completely snowed and watched helplessly as the five of them slipped out the diner’s doors and headed for the truck and trailer that awaited them. Fortunately, it was parked at an angle, so they couldn’t see the trailer attached to the women’s truck. The dogs greeted them effusively, relieved to see them return. Taking their leashes, the two women hurried them onto the grass for a pee before returning to the truck. They looked over their shoulders constantly, hoping the in-laws wouldn’t find them out.
“Who do we have to meet?” Richard asked for the third time.
“Never you mind,” his mother shushed him and opened the truck door to get them inside.
“You okay to drive for a while?” she asked Marion, and at her partner’s nod, she slipped into the passenger side.
“How did you manage that, and why did we stay?” Marion asked once they got going. The children were talking a mile a minute between them as they pointed out things they remembered from the town they had been born in. Both dogs were trying to see out the windows of the truck and sitting on the children to accomplish this.
“We appeased their nosiness a little, and you accommodated their need to see their grandchildren for now,” she said in a low voice, so the children wouldn’t overhear. “I’m sure this visit will get back to my mother too. So, if you think about it, we did our duty.”
“You didn’t visit your mother,” she pointed out, not sure about that point.
“Nope, and she wouldn’t have been happy to see me. I’ll invite them both next summer, and that might appease her.”
“Maybe I should invite–” Marion began but Barbara was already shaking her head. “Why not?”
“Because she would find a way to make you feel bad about all we’ve accomplished, and you have nothing to feel bad about. We’ve done a heck of a lot in the time we’ve been there, and we have a lot to do still. Demeaning us or you for a decision that she had no control over isn’t going to make you feel any better. It’s better you don’t invite her, and if my mother and brother come, that will get back to her.”
“You are devious,” Marion said admiringly and pushed a little harder on the accelerator as they left town.
They had to find a hotel again that night, but they were well outside of Boston and on their way north towards Portland when they finally stopped.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They arrived in Franklin late the next day. The roads were already feeling familiar as they had made this trip four times now, back and forth, and they pulled up to their dock feeling confident. The boat was there, so Grady was in town. They began to unload the trailer into the boat, realizing this was going to take several trips. As they were locking up the trailer for the night, Grady made an appearance.
“Heard you was back in town,” she said by way of greeting.
“You did?” Marion asked. She was surprised and looked around. Someone was probably watching them, and party lines meant others heard the latest gossip. “Everything okay?”
“I think someone was out at yer island there,” she reported.
“Did you see something?” Barbara asked, alarmed. She had that feeling....
“No, just a sense of something, and the varmints were all on edge.” She was petting the dogs as she spoke, their wagging tails welcoming her.
They nodded as though they understood her cryptic words.
“You think we should tell the police or something?” Marion asked.
“Who ya gonna tell? They got patrols off the coast, but they are few and far between,” Grady pointed out.
“We thank you for going out to feed the chickens and sheep,” Barbara said, wanting to get out of town before it got too dark. Neither of them liked being out on the water in the dark.
“Oh, wait. I gotcher mail,” she said, pulling a rolled-up piece of cloth from the back of her pants where she had tucke
d it for safekeeping. Unrolling it, she showed them the letters, magazines, and other things they had received.
“You got our mail?” Marion asked, alarmed.
“Well, I tole ‘em I was taking care of the island while you were away. Some saw ya leavin’ town with the trailer and thought you’d given up.”
“We aren’t giving up,” Barbara asserted stoutly.
“That’s what I tole ‘em,” she agreed, smiling. “I took some zucchini from your garden. Hope you don’t mind?”
“Nope, not in the least,” Marion answered, smiling. Zucchini grew lushly on the island. Next year, she wasn’t putting it the garden but was going to plant it and other things in random places about the island to see how it grew. That way, it wouldn’t take up so much room in the limited space of the garden.
They were soon saying their goodbyes and checking that the gas cans were full. They pulled up to the pump to fill the boat before they headed out to the island. They passed their landmark islands, which they had learned sported fanciful names like Amethyst Island and Tourmaline Island, before heading for Fir Island and straight out to sea towards Whimsical Island.
“What’s a tourmaline?” Richard asked over the noise of the wind and the motor.
“It’s a stone found in the mountains of Maine,” Barbara called back.
“Is that island made of it?” he practically yelled.
“I doubt it.” She wanted to laugh but using these random questions as learning opportunities was too precious, and she didn’t want to discourage them.
They got the first load of boxes up to the cabin, but it looked like it was about to rain, and the wind was coming up. Marion and Barbara had the children stay in the cabin as they manhandled some of the larger pieces after covering up the boat and what remained aboard. They hurried to carry their things from the dock and up the steps. They would have beat the rain if the dogs weren’t out and determined to bring the sheep to them. They nearly fell over the large animals in their desire to get to the porch. The rain started just before they got there, and they put their things under the porch overhang before quickly checking on the chickens and putting the sheep in their pen. The dogs followed, but they were all doused as the rain started to come down in earnest.
“Whew, that’s refreshing,” Barbara said as they carried the rocking chair and the small chest of drawers into the house. Her hair was plastered to her head.
“Brian, come here and dry this down with a rag, would you?” Marion asked as she pulled her shirt from her dripping body. “Brenda, can I get a towel please?”
“We’re almost out of lamp oil,” Richard announced.
“That’s not possible. I just bought some a month ago,” Barbara said as she frowned and thanked Brenda for the towel then started rubbing her hair.
“The lamps are nearly out, and the extra is gone. I checked.”
Marion and Barbara exchanged a look, wondering if Grady had been right about someone being here. They dried themselves and let the dogs in from the screened-in porch to dry them a little with the used towels.
“We should install the cabinets tomorrow,” Barbara mentioned, pointing to where they sat haphazardly around their front room, getting in the way and creating an obstacle course.
“I thought we’d work on that second cabin,” Marion stated as she prepared to get supper going on the stove, putting wood in and searching for a match. Brian handed her the box of matches, and she smiled at him.
“This looks like more than just tonight’s rain,” she answered, looking out the window and up at the sky as though she could tell.
“We need to get a barometer to forecast the weather,” Marion muttered.
“I have something better,” Richard nearly shouted excitedly as he scrambled to one of the boxes they had brought up and fumbled, finding a radio.
Barbara smiled as she remembered that fondly. “That was my father’s,” she said quietly. “Careful with it,” she warned the boy, who set it up on a box since the table was full of other things they had to go through.
The noise sounded jarring to their senses, especially now that they were used to the quiet of the island. The static got on all their nerves and they could just faintly hear some sort of music coming through.
“I’ll have to get an antenna and put it up on the roof or in a high tree,” Barbara said as she turned the radio off. It had gotten on her nerves too; she preferred the quiet of the woods.
“Better not create a lightning rod,” Marion warned, laughing at her.
“What’s an antenna?”
“What’s a lightning rod?”
“I’m hungry.”
The children and their outbursts were amusing, but they used their questions to educate them, and the boys were soon interested in finding the books they had about electronics, which would explain the antenna and lightning rod.
“We have to find that set of encyclopedias your father bought,” Barbara told Richard. She knew they had kept them but only because the boy was strangely nostalgic about the large set. Still, it contained a lot of useful information, and she could imagine quiet nights in the cabin reading them this winter. She’d have to build a sturdy bookshelf for the heavy volumes, or maybe Marion would...she was much better at putting things together, and she took the time to sand and polish them, making the wood look so beautiful. She also really enjoyed building things and Barbara didn’t mind letting her.
The rain did continue the next day, and Barbara and Marion took the opportunity to put in their kitchen cabinets since neither wanted to go out into the rain any more than was necessary to do their chores. They got them aligned on the wall, leveled them with shims, and finally bolted them to the logs before they applied the first coat of a beautiful finish on the wood, so they would become highly polished.
“My, isn’t that pretty,” Marion breathed as she stood back and admired their work. She opened a window slightly, hoping to blow out the stench of the finish and dry the cabinets faster.
“I’m just glad that the bottom cabinets match,” Barbara agreed as she panted from all the hard work. Putting in the sink and the countertop had nearly driven her mad. Getting shims in place, so everything was level and up to Marion’s exacting specifications, had been a real pain, and she’d sworn under her breath more than once.
Marion admired the way Barbara looked in her flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the white t-shirt beneath it. She looked very becoming, and the sheen of sweat across her brow had the blonde eagerly anticipating bedtime. It was so nice to wake up in each other’s arms. The children had only knocked on their door a few times, and one of them had sprinted to the other bed to mess it up then look up sleepily as the other answered the door.
The children were studying at the table. The mail had brought a test they all had to pass, and they were reading the assigned books. They would take the test at the grade school in Franklin. One of the teachers who lived in town had agreed to work with the principal and give the children the test to confirm they were current with their grades. She’d also agreed to assign more studies instead of them having to send away to the state for them.
“Did you read this?” Marion asked Barbara as they sat at the kitchen table after dinner when the children had gone to bed. The table was made of slabs of wood Barbara had split herself. Marion and the children had sanded down some of the driftwood to make an attractive and practical table, and they’d also highly polished it.
“What are you reading?” Barbara asked, looking up from the magazine she was studying. American Traveler had some wonderful ideas in it, and their rates were reasonable. She was considering advertising their cabin in the magazine for next summer.
“We were supposed to get that loan back in Massachusetts,” she told her. “According to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, it was created to help veterans by making low interest mortgages available.”
“We aren’t veterans,” she pointed out and then stopped, cocking her head at a noise
and wondering if one of the children were up.
“No, but our husbands were,” she contended. “The loans were for their spouses or widows too. Hell, according to this,” she indicated the pamphlet she was pouring over, “we could have gone back to school to get our degrees.”
“Well, maybe the bankers didn’t know–” she began, trying to defend them. Thinking back though, she was certain they simply didn’t believe women could pay off a mortgage without a man’s help.
“They knew!” Marion said angrily. “Here, read this,” she showed her the passage that applied to them.
The original bill congress had passed to provide for G.I.s coming back from the war applied to their spouses and widows. The maximum amount of guarantee was increased from the original fifty percent of the loan amount, not to exceed four thousand dollars up to sixty percent of the loan amount, not to exceed seventy-five hundred dollars. Secondly, the maximum maturity on the loans was increased from twenty-five to thirty years.
“Hey, with seventy-five hundred dollars we could do everything we wanted on the island,” she pointed out as she read.
Marion nodded. “Read on. You are going to get angry about this.”
Third, if they didn’t remarry, widows of veterans who had died in service or a result of service-related injury or disease were given the same loan privileges as veterans. There were seven sections to what she read, and when she looked up, she said, “They really snowed us!”
“Told you it would make you angry. We were entitled to that loan, and I think we should sue the bank manager. Meanwhile, I think when we go in for the kids’ testing, we should stop by the bank and see what’s the holdup. We aren’t asking for seventy-five hundred dollars. Hell, we could have asked for seventy-five hundred each!”
“We’ll do that,” Barbara agreed, hoping it would stop raining tomorrow. She glanced at their nearly finished kitchen. It was small, but it was beautiful, and she eagerly anticipated putting a second coat on the cabinets before they applied a sealant to keep it glossy. She looked around the cabin. It might be small by most everyone’s standards, but it was theirs, and they were nearly finished with it. She was certain there would always be little details, like pictures and wall hangings or minor repairs and upgrades, but it was a labor of love.
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