The Summer Cottage

by Viola Shipman

  I pull into the driveway of Cozy Cottage, my SUV struggling for traction to get up the drive. I open my door and instead of my parents’ voices, I imagine I hear the cottage groan in agony. I step out of the car, slip on the snow and have to grasp the car door to stop myself from falling. I grab my bag but leave my luggage in the car for now and move, one baby step at a time, up the steep stairs, my body at a severe angle like the snow to keep myself from being blown over.

  I reach the front porch, my breath coming out in big puffs like steam from a locomotive. I look out at the lake. It is roaring and angry, so loud I can barely hear myself think.

  I rarely came to Saugatuck in the winter, and never on days like this. Cozy Cottage was a summer retreat.

  This, I think, is like The Shining. But way, way worse.

  I turn to face the cottage, little tornadoes of snow lifting off the ground and hurtling into my face. I squint. The cottage’s wood shingles are loose, and a few are now missing on the front. The paint is peeling, there is a crack in the stone foundation, and most of the shutters have come loose and are now banging against the house.

  I manage to find the keys in my purse and unlock the front door. A mouse looks up at me as if I’m a stranger who has burst into its home. I scream. It screams. And then it scurries across the rug in front of me. I scream again, and the mouse stops, shocked, and stands on its hind legs scared out of its wits, before zipping toward the stairs.

  I suddenly remember what Evan told me, and I retreat back out the door.

  I open the Nantucket basket—still on the front door but now worn, the weave loose and unraveled—and I look inside.

  No sparklers, I think, immediately sad remembering my parents. And then it hits me: I reach into my bag and pull out a big smudge wand of sage that I brought to cleanse the cottage and give it a new start. I move my hand around until I find a lighter. I turn my back to the wind, holding the sage close to my body and lighting it.

  “Ready to recite the rules?” I ask myself over the roar of the wind and groans of the cottage. “What’s the first rule of the summer cottage?”

  I raise the sage over my head and yell to the cottage, “Leave your troubles at the door!” The house creaks as if in agreement. I repeat the rule, this time to myself. “Leave your troubles at the door, Adie Lou.”

  I yell again, this time into the winter wind. “To a new start! To a new life for me and you, Cozy Cottage! No regrets!”

  I begin to open the door, but the wind gusts, nearly knocking me off my feet, and the burning sage goes dark. A shutter on the front of the cottage flaps wildly in the gale, making a sound similar to a hundred ducks taking flight from a pond.

  And then, just like that, the shutter is airborne and flying directly toward my head. I move just in time, and it smashes into the ground, clacking down the dune and into the lake.

  Before I run inside, now fearful for my safety, I see the sprawling, wooden trellis in the yard, the one on which my mom and grandma’s knockout pink and red roses climbed for decades. The trellis is bare, trembling in the wind, shaking just as hard as I am, and I swear I can hear Trish say to me very clearly, “The roses, Adie Lou. The roses.”

  Part Two

  Rule #2:

  Soak Up the Sun

  FOUR

  February

  “What time is it?”

  My voice echoes in the guest room.

  The sun is shining directly into my eyes, and I sit straight up in bed, my heart racing. I glance over at the clock on the nightstand.

  It blinks at me in red: 9:39 a.m. I pull the blankets up around my body, feeling both cold and too warm. Worried about money, I refused to set the heat above fifty-eight degrees last night. My face is frozen, but my body feels flushed, nearly hot, and I realize I am embarrassed at having slept so long on my first day as an entrepreneur.

  I glance again at the red numbers on the clock, and my body flushes in shame, as if I’m wearing a scarlet A.

  For Apathetic, I start, before correcting myself. “No, capital A loser,” I say out loud, the echo affirming my declaration.

  I haven’t slept this long in decades, I think. Since I was teenager. In this very room.

  For some reason, I wasn’t able to sleep in my parents’ bedroom or the guest room Nate and I shared for so long. It didn’t seem right. So I chose my childhood bedroom, the one Evan has slept in since he was a baby. I pull the covers around me even tighter and survey the room. Photos of Evan in the cottage and on the beach, from toddler to teen, growing up right in front of my eyes. Photos of me doing the same. The sun glints in my eyes, and I tilt my head and notice a common denominator in all the photos: sunshine. I smile and angle my head back into the light, closing my eyes and letting the sun warm me.

  “Okay, Adie Lou,” I say to myself. “Time to get moving.”

  I’m supposed to be meeting my contractor at 11, and I’ve barely prepared much less made coffee to be halfway coherent.

  I step out of bed and the cold of the house slaps me. “Brrrr!” I yell. I try to recall all of the clothes I have left here—all summery things, I think—and then rifle through my suitcases. Nothing I hurriedly threw in seems warm enough.

  Why did I pack as if I were going on a weekend getaway instead of forever?

  I open a drawer in an old green-gray dresser—that’s been painted probably a dozen different colors in my lifetime—and pull out a pair of Evan’s thermal socks. I open another drawer and yank out a pair of his boyhood sweatpants, and then open the closet, stand on my tiptoes and stretch as far as I can—my knees popping—to pull one of Evan’s old high school hoodies from a shelf with my fingertips. I turn on the bathroom light and look in the mirror. I lean in even closer, examining my face.

  “Who am I?” I ask the mirror, my breath fogging it.

  I feel rested yet exhausted. Excited but depressed. Happy and sad. Alone yet comforted.

  “Essentially you’re a complete mess,” I say to my reflection.

  I run a hand through my hair, which is flying around my head as if I just underwent electroshock therapy. I pull open the cabinet and find an ancient hair tie from a time when Evan grew his hair to his shoulders, and yank my own shoulder-length locks into it, which immediately gives me the look of one of those demented, too-old babysitters in every Lifetime movie.

  I wash my face, grab my overnight bag and pull some moisturizer out of it. I smooth some on my face and neck. I reach back into it and pull out my essential oils, what Nate called my “voodoo potions.”

  There is something about my oils that calms me, centers me, seems to protect me.

  The same feeling I get from being at this cottage, I realize.

  I place three drops of lavender into my palms, rub them together, lift them to my nose and inhale, before rubbing them onto the back of my neck.

  “That’ll do for now,” I say, feeling a bit readier for the day.

  I pad down the stairs, and the house turns even colder. I walk over to the thermostat and begin to turn it up, but I can’t get my finger to actually hit the arrow higher. I stop and instead pull the hoodie over my head.

  “Morning, Darryl,” I say to the moose as I head toward the kitchen.

  The room is sunny and bright. I open the fridge and smile, remembering I’d at least been smart enough to bring a few provisions from the city: coffee, steel cut oats, snacks, a rotisserie chicken and some of my favorite frozen food from Trader Joe’s. I start the coffee in my parents’ ancient coffee maker and sigh as it begins to brew, filling the kitchen with the scent of roasted beans. The smell reminds me of them. I shut my eyes and smile. I can hear my father greet Darryl as I just did.

  I open my eyes, grab a Saugatuck mug from the cabinet and pour myself a cup of coffee. I walk over to the patio door and look at the snow-covered deck—the snow now knee-deep in spots from drifting—and at the decaying f
ish house beyond. This is where—back in the day—they used to clean and store fish. Al Capone supposedly used it as a front for running liquor, and when he’d send out ice trucks filled with fresh Lake Michigan whitefish, most of the white packages were filled with booze.

  I can tell it’s warming a bit after the snowstorm, as the snow is drip, drip, dripping off the roof, leaving sunken spots in the snow around the cottage. A cardinal sits in my mom’s favorite tree—a pine we planted decades ago that has now grown to be nearly twenty feet tall—and the simple beauty of the red in the white and green makes me catch my breath. The cardinal takes flight, and snow falls in dramatic heaves from the pine branches.

  This is such a departure from my life just days ago: waking up at dawn, meetings in the city, working in a skyscraper... I stop.

  Working for someone else.

  For a moment, I feel as if I’m no longer a productive member of society, but I look at the fish house and can hear my grampa as clear as day, as if he’s standing right beside me, his Old Spice overpowering the smell of the coffee.

  “Owning your own business,” I can hear Grampa Otto say in his German accent, “that’s the American dream. It’s up to you to make it happen every day. Dream big, schatzi.”

  I shake my head, pour another cup of coffee and hurry upstairs, toward the turret, the place I used to dream big as a girl.

  My heart races—partly because of the climb and the caffeine, and partly because I haven’t been up here in years—and as I reach the narrow, circular staircase that leads to the turret, I hold my cup above my head and bend over into a comma to reach the top.

  Sunlight overwhelms me as I step into the round space, encircled by windows, making me feel as I have climbed to the top of one of the beautiful Michigan lighthouses that dot the coastline. It’s even colder than I imagined up here, and I can see my breath in front of me. I take a seat on the cushioned bench my dad made to fit the space, sip my coffee and look out at the lake. It looks like it’s frozen for miles. There are large boulders of ice on the snow-covered shore, and waves frozen in midair, big enough for people to walk into, creating mini-glaciers or...

  I stop and actually laugh out loud at the ironic analogy I was about to make.

  Don’t say it, I think, but it’s too late. Ice castles.

  I narrow my eyes and focus my gaze, and I can pinpoint the line in the distance where the lake is no longer frozen. I move my eyes slowly toward the shore, and I can see the ice undulate, the lake ripple below it, life trapped underneath, just waiting for the spring thaw.

  I shut my eyes and can see myself up here as a little girl, dressed as Wonder Woman, standing atop this bench, thinking all it took was a golden lasso and a firm belief in my own abilities to fly as high and as far as I wanted, to change the world. I remember thinking I could soar over the lake, just like one of the gulls that float on the current forever before diving headfirst into the water with a big splash to retrieve a fish.

  Splish!

  I open my eyes at the watery sound and look into my cup, the coffee moving in small waves as if I’d just skipped a rock across its surface.

  Wait! I think to myself. Did I do that?

  I shut my eyes again and picture myself as Wonder Woman soaring like a gull and then diving...

  Splash!

  I open my eyes, and my coffee is, indeed, moving. I feel like—who was that psychic my grandparents said they always used to watch on The Tonight Show?—Uri Geller! I shut my eyes again, bow my head and concentrate.

  Splat!

  This time, water hits the back of my head instead of my coffee, and I can feel a big, cold drop rolling down my back. I look up.

  “Oh, shit,” I say, as another drop falls into my open mouth.

  There is a hole the size of, say, my open mouth in the top of the turret, and melting snow is now falling through it.

  “Shit.” I sputter and cough.

  I look around and, thankfully, don’t see any water damage, so the hole must be a recent development. I zip downstairs, find a pair of my mom’s old snow boots in a closet and trudge through the snow until I can get a vantage point of the turret. I look up, down, all around, and there—in the yard by the cottage—I see it: a huge pine branch. It must have snapped off in the wind during last night’s storm, fallen directly onto the turret and punctured a hole in the roof.

  “Mornin’!”

  I yelp.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Clarke.”

  “It’s Kruger,” I say a bit too abruptly before turning to see Frank Van Til, the contractor whose grandfather and great-grandfather supposedly helped build Cozy Cottage. Frank lifts his arms innocently. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know you’d taken your maiden name again.”

  I haven’t officially. In fact, I don’t know why I just blurted it out. But it just sounds right to me for some reason at this moment.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I say, extending my hand. “You just surprised me. I didn’t hear you pull up. Lost in my own thoughts...and misery.” I nod up at the turret and then down at the branch. “Hole in the roof. I’ve had enough surprises already today.”

  “I’ll get that covered today while it’s nice and sunny,” Franks says softly.

  Nice? I think. Nice in Michigan is thirties and sunshine in February. I wouldn’t be surprised to see kids playing basketball in shorts and tank tops later.

  “But let’s take a look at your plans for the cottage first,” Frank continues.

  “Sure,” I say, walking Frank inside and kicking off my boots. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven,” he says. “Isn’t that the time we agreed on?”

  I shake my head. “I overslept. By about three hours. My first day as an entrepreneur isn’t going as well as I’d imagined,” I say, forcing a smile. “Coffee?”

  Frank nods, and I lead him into the kitchen, pour two cups of coffee and then spread out my drawings for the cottage renovations. Frank sets down the case he is holding and actually giggles, an odd sound to emanate from a burly, bearded Dutch man.

  “What?” I ask. “Is there a problem?”

  “I take it you’re not working with an architect?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “You asked for some drawings when we talked a while back, remember? I did some renderings.”

  Frank nods. “I see, I see. Well, these drawings are...” Frank stops, searching for the right words. “More like the ones my daughter used to draw.”

  “I admit my advertising experience is in copywriting and not design, but these aren’t that bad,” I say, leaning in to study them closely. “Are they?”

  “They’re...” Again, he stops. “Very sweet.”

  “Okay, Frank, I’m about to be offended here,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, chuckling a little this time. “But they are sweet. Look,” he says, pointing to a bedroom I’ve named Soak Up the Sun.

  The room has its own bathroom and views of the lake, but it needs new windows and a design makeover. I want to add a pretty board and batten wall, and sunny yellow paint to the bedroom and its attached bath.

  “I want each room to be based on one of my family’s summer cottage rules,” I say, taking a sip of coffee. “This room—Boat Rides Are a Shore Thing—will have a nautical theme and vintage photos of the Adie Lou, and the Rock Hunting Room will be beach-glass blue and feature all of the beautiful stones that my family has collected over the decades.”

  Frank turns to me and smiles. “It sounds beautiful, Mrs. Clarke...Kruger...Miss Kruger...Ms. Kruger.”

  I laugh. “I didn’t mean to make you so nervous, Frank,” I say.

  “Let me get down to brass tacks here,” he says. He pulls a pen and a stapled sheet of papers entitled Cozy Cottage RENO BID from the case on the floor. “I think this inn has the potential to be beautiful and unique,” he says patiently. “And your willingn
ess to save this cottage, preserve its history and honor your family is admirable. But...” He stops and begins to move his pen alongside the bulleted items on the sheet. “You not only need the turret roof repaired now, you likely need a new roof altogether. The shutters are shot. The house needs a lot of new shake shingles, and the whole cottage needs to be restained. There are some issues with the foundation we need to address, and I’ll need plumbing and sewer out to check all the pipes and your existing tank. This cottage won’t have ever seen the type of water and waste usage you’ll get when running an inn. And the staircase to the beach needs to be reinforced, and you’ll likely need to bring in some earth and piering to stop any further erosion on the dune leading to the beach.” He stops and starts writing again. “And that’s not including your renovation—Updating all the rooms, turning the attic into additional bedroom space and adding baths to each guest room, renovating the fish house into a honeymoon suite.” He stops and surveys the kitchen. “And updating the kitchen since you’ll be cooking for so many now.”

  He turns the page and tries to smile, although it looks like more of a wince.

  “And now for the not-so-fun part,” he says.

  “That was the fun part?” I ask.

  “I’ll apply for all the permits, but there are a lot of specific rules you need to abide by to obtain a license,” Frank says.

  “I’ve read up on them and already applied for a license,” I say, pulling out my phone. “The state license office has already become my go-to app, along with Tinder,” I say, trying to make a joke.

  “What’s that?” Frank asks.

  I think of explaining my joke but stop. “It’s a heartwarming music station,” I say. “The music is very...tender.”

  Frank cocks his head. “Sounds nice.”

  I pull up the state site on my phone and begin to paraphrase as I read the legalese. “So, according to law, if a Michigan B and B has eight or fewer rooms, a full breakfast can be served without a food service license as long as it is a packaged deal. Any more than that, and I’m going to have to jump through some hoops, it sounds like.” I hand Frank my phone. “I need some backup this morning,” I say with a laugh as he reads. When he looks at me, I ask, “So, I’m good, keeping the inn at eight, right?”