I park the car on the street and head into the library. I can still feel my mother’s hand holding mine.
What was it she used to always say about Erma Bombeck and librarians? I stop and stare at the library. Oh, yes. My mom told me that Erma once said, “As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.”
“I still do,” my mom would laugh.
The library smells just the same as it did when I was a kid. And it feels the same, too: like a magical place filled with secrets I needed to unearth.
And that’s exactly why you’re here, Adie Lou, I think.
The library has certainly changed since I was a girl who used to read Nancy Drew and Judy Blume. Public computer areas have replaced the soft chairs in which I used to curl up to read. I take a seat at a computer, log in and enter my search: Sadie Collins.
Sadie Robertson from Duck Dynasty appears, followed by Phil Collins and then an endless array of selfies of modern-day Sadie Collinses on Facebook and Instagram.
My, how things have changed.
I narrow my search: Sadie Collins, Saugatuck Michigan. Ancestry.
A few searches catch my eye: there are a couple of pieces from the local paper over the last few decades about the original cottages on Lakeshore Drive, including mine. But there is no later information on Sadie, and I don’t know her married name or what became of her.
There is one common denominator, however: all the articles quote Iris Dragoon, president of the historical society.
“Excuse me,” I say to a librarian who is passing by. “I’m searching for a woman whose father built my cottage. Would the library happen to have any information like that? Or do you have any thoughts on the best way to search for that information?”
The librarian pulls on the readers dangling around her neck, peers at the computer over my shoulder and then gives me the most bemused smile. “I’d go speak with Iris Dragoon,” she says.
“You would?” I ask. The words just fly out of my mouth unexpectedly.
She places her hands on my shoulders and gives them a squeeze. “Well, I wouldn’t,” she says with a laugh. “But it sounds like you need to.”
“I don’t want to,” I say, unable to hide my emotions, like a kid who is told he has to get a needle.
The librarian laughs. “I don’t blame you,” she says, leaving me to my research.
TWENTY-ONE
“See?”
I try to follow Scooter’s mitten as he gestures into the air, but all I can do is laugh.
“Those look great on you,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.
“They do, don’t they?” he says.
Scooter is sporting a pair of sock monkey mittens. I was worried his fingers would get frostbitten during our walk, and made him wear the only pair of gloves I could locate: a pair that Nate “won” years ago during the white elephant Christmas gift exchange my parents so loved. They always held it on Christmas Eve, after a few glasses of champagne. Nate, of course, was aghast and refused to wear the mittens. He thought they were childish, just like the white elephant exchange.
Scooter holds up his hands and wiggles his thumbs, making it appear as if the two sock monkeys are boxing. I laugh.
“Totally age appropriate,” I say.
“If we could live in a world filled with sock monkeys, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots and Lite-Brites, it would be a better place, wouldn’t it?” He stops and looks out over Lake Michigan. “Kids just want to grow up as fast as they can.” He turns and looks at me. “We didn’t know how good we had it, did we?”
Like earlier in the day, the raw emotion and innocence of his words touch me. In a stocking cap and mittens, his cheeks ruddy from the wind, his eyes bright, Scooter still looks like a young man, a kid at heart. And, in a way, he’s right. As adults we’re confronted with life’s often unending cruelty: loss of dreams, death, divorce, aging, health and money issues. I watch Scooter as he kneels near a creek, his reflection staring back. He waves at himself with his mittens, and a boyish smile appears.
He ran from his demons and returned, I think. Innocence intact, despite all of life’s setbacks.
“See?” he asks as he had earlier and gestures broadly again. “This is why I wanted you to come down here. You missed a lot of this as a city girl who spent winters in Chicago.”
I follow his mittens toward the base of the dune where a large culvert is located. There was a washout on Lakeshore Drive decades ago—the road and dune collapsed in the midst of heavy rains, and historic summer cottages disappeared in front of our eyes like a game of Jenga—and the Army Corps of Engineers had to reinforce the dune, reengineer the water flow and rebuild the road. A creek just a short distance from Cozy Cottage’s beach steps has been created, and now flows from the woods, under the dunes, through the culvert and into the lake.
“Snowmelt replenished the creek, and the rushing water uncovered all these stones,” he says. “No one has seen these beauties before. You’re the first.”
I kneel and look into the creek. “It’s like a runway show,” I say, “but for rocks.”
The creek bed is filled with bird eggs, limestone, sandstone and beach pebbles of basalt volcanic rock. Under the ice-cold crystal-clear water and last of the day’s sunlight, the creek bed is filled with color and shape, and its beauty is breathtaking.
I look at Scooter. “Thank you for showing me this,” I say. “And thank you for the Adie Lou. You’re making my dream seem more and more like reality every day.”
I think of the unintended romantic double entendre hidden in those words but am still glad I said them.
“You’re welcome,” Scooter says, after considering the words. Then he stands and shows off his coat as if he were a game show model.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Showing you all the pockets I have,” he says. “Knowing you, I came prepared to be loaded down with about a hundred pounds of extra weight.”
“Are you talking about me or the rocks?” I ask.
Scooter laughs. “Load me down.”
“Do you want to walk for a few minutes maybe?” I ask. “It’s cold, but I have to say it feels refreshing to be out here right now. Maybe head toward Pier Cove and then turn around?”
“That would be nice,” he says.
Pier Cove is a tiny section of public beach just south of Saugatuck-Douglas. While Oval Beach is the gem of the area—named one of the most beautiful beaches in the world by Condé Nast Traveler and Douglas serves as the pretty public beach to the small town’s residents—Pier Cove is but a tiny swath of sand that sits along a curve in the lakeshore featuring another freshwater creek and beautiful homes tucked along the dunes.
Pier Cove was once hailed as “the busiest port between St. Joseph and Muskegon.” Before the Civil War, Pier Cove was a bustling community and a major point for lumber distribution between Chicago and Milwaukee. With the exhaustion of the lumber supply in the late 1880s, a huge fire and the coming of the railroad, the sawmill was moved and Pier Cove diminished. But when fruit became a major shipping commodity in the 1880s, Pier Cove’s economy again grew to contain a warehouse and two piers that revived the villages. In 1899 a freeze killed much of the local harvest, and shipping at Pier Cove was reduced to passenger traffic, with commercial activity ending less than two decades later.
We walk south in silence, little breeze in our faces, no noise save for the whistle of the wind across the icy lake and the creak of barren aspen trees.
“Look,” Scooter finally says, putting his hand on my arm to slow me. “Look at the contrast.”
He points to the lake and then to the shoreline. The frozen lake makes it look as if we might be walking in Antarctica while the dunes make it seem as if we might be in the Southwest.
“Have you ever been to
New Mexico?” Scooter asks, as if he’s reading my mind.
“No,” I say. “You?”
He nods. “When I was on my cross-country journey of discovery,” he says, before looking at me. “Makes being lost sound very sexy, doesn’t it?”
I laugh. “Was it?” I ask. “Not sexy, I mean, but did you find what you were looking for?”
He continues to look at me, thinking, not saying a word, for so long that I begin to feel as if I shouldn’t have asked the question.
“I did,” he finally says. “I found me.”
Scooter’s eyes soften, and he looks toward the shoreline, where large chunks of the dunes have collapsed and then refrozen, leaving breathtakingly intricate sand patterns in the steep banks.
“I think New Mexico is one of the most beautiful states in the US alongside Michigan and California,” he says. “The quick snowmelt and lake wind created these works of art.” Scooter walks toward the shoreline and runs his mitten along the dunes. From my perspective, it appears as if a monkey is scrambling for cover.
“See how these hold their shape due to the freezing temperatures? They remind me of the cliffs in New Mexico,” he says. “I toured a lot of the cliff dwellings that Pueblo people built over seven hundred years ago. Seven hundred years,” Scooter repeats, shaking his head. “We are just babies, Adie Lou, in terms of our society and history. But we think we know it all, have all the answers.” He rubs his hand over the embankment and then suddenly digs into its side, and chunks of sand collapse to the ground. “We really don’t know much of anything.”
Scooter walks back to me and continues, his gray-green eyes glowing. “And as kids in America we think we know it all. We’re told who we should be and what we should do and where we should live before we’ve figured it out ourselves. And that leads to some very...” He stops and cocks his head. “Let me think of a more delicate way to say it... That leads to some very messed-up adults.
“Being lost for a while is a good thing,” he says. “It allowed me to reevaluate my life and where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.”
“And you chose here?”
“So did you,” he says.
“So our parents were right?”
“Our parents and grandparents took great risk to find a place of peace here in Saugatuck,” he says. “We both felt it wasn’t big enough or good enough, didn’t we? What we did, though, was play by everyone else’s rules. You got married. I played football. You got a corporate job in Chicago. Who were we pleasing? And why? Most people sleepwalk through life playing the game. They’re like sheeple.”
“Sheeple?”
“Part people, part sheep,” he says, “following the herd mentality.” Scooter turns around and starts walking back toward the cottage. The north wind slaps our faces. “You’re lost right now, and that’s actually a good thing. It’s good to be scared, excited, alive, isn’t it?”
I slow and look at the patterns in the embankments. “I feel like that right now,” I say, pointing at them, “as though my entire soul is splayed open, and the world can see every scar, laugh line, pockmark, heartache that’s inside me.”
Scooter stops. “And that’s beautiful,” he says. Without warning, Scooter leans in and kisses me, ever so softly and briefly, on the lips.
“I didn’t expect that,” I say.
“I’ve always liked you, Adie Lou,” Scooter says. “Even when we were kids.”
“You were always my friend, Scooter,” I say.
“Isn’t that the best place to start?” he asks.
My eyes widen at his wisdom. I put my hands on his cheeks, rise up on my toes and kiss him again.
What am I doing, I think suddenly as my lips are on his. I’m in my forties. I can’t date again. I can’t go through the endless questions and the unearthing of our embarrassing quirks. Oh, God. I can’t endure the unveiling of my body and the awkward first sex.
I push Scooter away.
“I have to take this slowly,” I say, my mind suddenly filled with images of Sadie Collins and Isabel Archer, and the marriages that seemed to doom us all.
“Oh, she of mixed messages,” Scooter says. He looks at me. “But I understand. Me, too.”
“I’m a little overwhelmed right now,” I say. “I already have a man in my life... Sonny.”
Scooter laughs. “Slow down,” he says. “Let’s just take it one day at a time. That’s all we can do in life. Adie Lou, I want you to find yourself first. Get your inn up and running. Empower women who have been lost, just like us. I want you to know I’d never want to get in the way of your dreams. I want to help fulfill them.”
Scooter grabs my hand, and we walk in silence toward the cottage, my heart beating so loudly in my ears I wonder if he can hear it.
When we reach the little creek near my cottage, we both kneel onto the shoreline, ice pebbles scattered across frozen sandy ripples, a winter Zen garden surrounding us.
I take off my mittens, hike up my coat sleeve and dip my hand into the water.
“Yow!” I exclaim at its iciness, before plucking a lightning stone. As I do, the necklace Scooter had made for me years ago pops free. I plop on my rear on the cold shore and compare the two. “You know, these stones have special properties.” I stop suddenly. “Sorry. Nate said all of this was nonsense and psychobabble.”
Scooter looks at me. “I’m not Nate.”
Our gaze is unbroken for a long time before I nod and continue. “I think it’s why I was always drawn to them,” I say. “The minerals in the stone provide peace and harmony so that you can face daily challenges with confidence and grace. And it’s supposed to make us understand things about our lives that we didn’t understand before.” I stop and hold up the stones in front of my face. “And, they’re also quite effective when you need to make something new out of something old, be it a home, a job...” I hesitate and smile. “Or a relationship.”
“Let’s gather all the stones we can, then!” Scooter laughs.
Together, we pull pretty stones from the icy creek, Scooter filling his pockets until he resembles a kangaroo. As we’re about to leave, Scooter points into the creek. “Look,” he says.
“I can’t believe it,” I say, reaching in to pull out a smooth bluish-gray rock in the shape of a heart. “Just like I used to collect with my parents.” I stand and hold the stone in front of my own heart. “Thank you. I think I needed to find this today.”
“Your heart?” Scooter asks, his voice filled with irony.
I nod.
“Look,” he says again. I at first think he’s talking about another rock, but the sun is setting behind Lake Michigan, slinking slowly into the horizon.
After its glorious departure, Scooter and I head for the steps. We immediately slow on the first one, shocked by how much weight we’ve added to our bodies. “I don’t think I can make it,” Scooter laughs. “I think you added two hundred pounds on me.”
“No,” I say. “These are special rocks. We can’t throw any away.” I get behind him and push, and we take it one step at a time, stopping on each landing to catch our breaths.
“I feel like a pack mule,” Scooter says, slowly trudging up the steps to the cottage.
“Better than a jackass,” I laugh.
“Oh, I can be that, too, sometimes.”
When we reach the top, we’re both panting. I’m drenched in sweat, despite the temperature, and my hair is sticking to my neck and face.
“I think we need to go somewhere very dark to eat,” I say.
“Lots of dark dives in Saugatuck,” he says. “I’m starving.”
“Me, too,” I say, walking onto the screened porch. I head directly to the ledge containing all of the heart rocks my family has collected over the years, adding the newest one to the collection and feeling as if—despite my fears—perhaps, just perhaps, it might have been the one
I’ve been searching for all of these years.
Part Seven
Rule #7:
Dinner Is a Family Activity
TWENTY-TWO
“Mom! I’m here!”
I hear loud honking on Lakeshore Drive, followed by Evan’s voice bellowing out of the car. I can’t help but smile: it’s the same thing I used to do when I arrived here to see my mom and dad.
I rush onto the screened porch. “Stay here,” I tell Sonny, sternly wagging a finger to keep him from barking. “And no bark, okay, buddy? At least give me time to explain.”
Despite the snow, Evan rushes up the steps—taking them two at a time—his body skidding to a stop at the very top.
I shut the door just in time.
“What took you so long?” I ask. “I was starting to get worried. It’s almost five.”
“We had a little party to celebrate the start of spring break last night,” he says.
“A party to celebrate the fact everyone is going to party?” I ask. “Oh, that’s right. It’s college.”
He laughs, and I feel a pang of guilt. “I’m sorry you’re missing Florida with all your friends,” I say.
“I’m not,” Evan says. “This is where I want to be.” He stops and smiles. “Especially since I got to sleep until noon, and the guys had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to drive.”
I laugh and open my arms. Evan hugs me tightly and then releases one long arm from around my back to check the unraveling Nantucket basket on the front door. His face droops.
“No sparklers,” he says, sounding just like a little boy again.
“Sorry, but I’ve been a little busy,” I say, nodding at the front yard, which looks like a construction zone.
“I know,” he says. “Habit.”
Before I can stop him, Evan opens the door, and Sonny is standing there to greet him. Sonny barks, stands on his back legs and then stretches as if he’s trying to give Evan a hug.
The Summer Cottage Page 14