The Summer Cottage

by Viola Shipman

  Another theme in the novel is friendship and how hard women can often be on one another. Adie Lou has a best friend in Trish and a rival in Iris. Who is your best friend? Share some stories. Who is or has been your rival? Why were they your rival? Did you ever make amends or come to an understanding?

  Paralleling the author’s own life, Adie Lou quits her secure full-time job to become an entrepreneur. The author quit a secure job with benefits to become an author. Are you an entrepreneur? What do you do? How did you do it? If not, have you ever considered becoming an entrepreneur? What would you do? What is driving you toward that goal, or what is hindering you from making it happen?

  The Summer Cottage is about believing in yourself and giving yourself second chances in life, be it in love, at work or at home. Do you believe in yourself? Why or why not? Have you given yourself a second chance at something in life? Are you thinking of “restarting” your life or your dreams? How and why?

  Running themes in the author’s novels are respecting and sharing our family histories, honoring our elders, holding on to our heirlooms and cherishing our past, pain and all. Are we losing those connections today? Why or why not? What are ways you share your family history, honor your elders, utilize heirlooms or cherish your past? Discuss.

  What are your favorite beach reads? Which authors seem to capture summer for you?

  Keep reading for a special preview of

  Viola Shipman’s upcoming novel

  The Heirloom Garden

  Coming soon from Graydon House

  The Heirloom Garden

  by Viola Shipman

  Iris

  Late Summer 1944

  We are an army, too.

  I stop, lean against my hoe and watch the other women working the earth. We are all dressed in the same outfits—overalls and hats—all in uniforms just like our husbands and sons overseas.

  Fighting for the same cause, just in different ways.

  A soft summer breeze wafts down Lake Avenue in Grand Haven, gently rustling rows of tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, beets and peas. I analyze my tiny plot of earth at the end of my boots in our neighborhood’s little victory garden, admiring the simple beauty of the red arteries running through the Swiss chard’s bright green leaves and the kale-like leaves sprouting from the bulbs of kohlrabi. I nod my head at their bounty and my own ingenuity. I had suggested our little victory garden utilize these vegetables, since they are easy-to-grow staples.

  “Easier to grow without the weeds.”

  I look up, and Betty Wiggins is standing before me.

  If you put a gray wig on Winston Churchill, you’d have Betty Wiggins, the undesignated commander of our victory garden.

  “Just thinking,” I say.

  “You can do that at home,” she says with a frown.

  I pick up my hoe and dig at a weed. “Yes, Betty,” I say.

  She stares at me, before eyeing my overalls. “Nice rose,” Betty says, her face drooping even further. “Do we think we’re Vivien Leigh today?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “Just wanted to lift my spirits.”

  “Lift them at home,” she says, a glower on her face.

  As she walks away, I hear stifled laughter. I look over to see my friend Shirley mimicking Betty’s ample behind and lumbering gait. The women around her titter.

  “‘Do we think we’re Vivien Leigh today?’” Shirley mimics in Betty’s baritone. “She wishes.”

  “Stop it,” I say.

  “It’s true, Iris,” Shirley continues in a Shakespearean whisper. “The back ends of the horses in Gone with the Wind are prettier than Betty.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “I’m not paying enough attention today.”

  I suddenly grab the rose I had plucked from my garden this morning and tucked into the front pocket of my overalls, and I toss it into the air. Shirley leaps, stomping a tomato plant in front of her, and grabs the rose midair.

  “Stop it,” she says. “Don’t you listen to her.”

  She sniffs the rose before tucking the peach-colored petals into my pocket again.

  “Nice catch,” I say.

  “Remember?” Shirley asks with a wink.

  The sunlight glints through leaves and limbs of the thick oaks and pretty sugar maples that line the small plot that once served as our cottage association’s baseball diamond in our beachfront park. I am standing roughly where third base used to be, the place I first locked eyes with John. He had caught a towering pop fly right in front of the makeshift bleachers and tossed it to me after making the catch.

  “Wasn’t the sunlight that blinded me,” he had said with a wink. “It was your beauty.”

  I’d thought he was full of beans, but Shirley gave him my number. I was home from college at Michigan State, he was still in high school and the last thing I needed was a boyfriend, much less one younger than me. But I can still remember his face in the sunlight, perfect skin and light fuzz on his cheeks that resembled a summer peach.

  In the light, soft white floaties dance in the air like miniature clouds. I follow their flight. My daughter, Mary, is holding a handful of dandelions and blowing their seeds into the air.

  For one brief moment, my mind is as clear as the sky. There is no war, only summer, and a little girl playing.

  “You know more about plants than anybody here,” Shirley continues, knocking me from my thoughts. “You should be in charge here, not Betty. You’re the one who had us grow all these strange plants.”

  “Flowers,” I say. “Not plants. My specialty is really flowers.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy, Iris,” Shirley says. “You’re the only woman I know who went to college. You should be using that flower degree.”

  “It’s botany. Actually, plant biology with a specialty in botanical gardens and nurseries,” I say. I stop, feeling guilty. “I need to be at home,” I say, changing course. “I need to be here.”

  Shirley stops hoeing and looks at me, her eyes blazing. She looks around to ensure the coast is clear and then whispers, “Snap your cap, Iris. I know you think that’s what you should be saying and doing, but we all know better.” She stares at me for a long time. “War will be over soon. These war gardens will go away, too. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Use your brain. That’s why God gave it to you.” She laughs. “I mean, your own garden looks like a lab experiment.” She stops and laughs even harder. “You’re not only wearing one of your own flowers, you’re even named after one! It’s in your genes.”

  I smile. Shirley is right. I have been obsessed with flowers for as long as I can remember. My grandma Myrtle was a gifted gardener as was my mom, Violet. I had wanted to name my own daughter after a flower to keep that legacy, but that seemed downright wild to most folks. But my garden was now filled with their legacy. Nearly every perennial I now grew originally began in my mom’s and grandma’s gardens. My grandma taught me to garden on her little piece of heaven in Highland Park overlooking Lake Michigan. And much of my childhood was spent with my mom and grandma in their cottage gardens, the daylilies and bee balm towering over my head. When it got too hot, I would lie on the cool ground in the middle of my grandma’s woodland hydrangeas, my back pressed against her old black mutt, Midnight, and we’d listen to the bees and hummingbirds buzzing overhead. My grandma would grab my leg when I was fast asleep and pretend that I was a weed she was plucking. “That’s why you have to weed,” she’d say with a laugh, tugging on my ankle as I giggled. “They’ll pop up anywhere.”

  My mom and I would walk her gardens, and she’d always say the same thing as she watered and weeded, deadheaded and cut flowers for arrangements. “The world is filled with too much ugliness—death, war, poverty, people just being plain mean to one another. But these flowers remind us there’s beauty all around us, if we just slow down to nurture and appreciate it.”
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  Grandma Myrtle would take her pruners and point around her gardens. “Just look around, Iris. The daisies remind you to be happy. The hydrangeas inspire you to be colorful. The lilacs urge us to breathe deeply. The pansies reflect our own images back at us. The hollyhocks remind us to stand tall in this world. And the roses—oh, the roses! They remind us that beauty is always present even among the thorns.”

  The perfumed scent of the rose lingers in front of my nose, and I pluck it free and raise it to my eyes.

  My beautiful Jonathan Rose.

  I’d been unable to sleep the last year or so, and—to keep my mind occupied—I’d been hybridizing roses and daylilies, cross-pollinating different varieties, experimenting to get new colors or lusher foliage. I had read about a peace rose that was to be introduced in America—a rose to celebrate the Nazis leaving France, which was just occurring—and I sought to re-create my own version to celebrate my husband’s return home. It was a beautiful mix of white, pink, yellow and red roses, which had resulted in a perfect peach.

  I remember John again, as a young man, before war, and I again focus my mind on my garden, willing myself not to cry.

  My garden is marked by stakes of my experiments, flags denoting what flowers I have mixed with others. And Shirley says my dining room looks like the hosiery aisle at Woolworths. Because of the war, no one throws anything away, so I use my old nylons to capture my flower’s seeds. I tie them around my daylily stalks and after they bloom, I break off the stem and capture and count the seeds, which I plant in my little greenhouse. I track how many grow. If I’m pleased with a result, I continue. If I’m not, I give them away to my neighbors.

  I fill my Big Chief tablets like a banker fills his ledger:

  1943—Yellow Crosses

  Little Bo Beep = June Bug x Beautiful Morning

  (12 seeds/5 planted)

  Purple Plum = Magnifique x Moon over Zanadu

  (8 seeds/4 planted)

  I shut my eyes and can see my daylilies and roses in bloom. Shirley once asked me how I had the patience to wait three years to discover how many of my lilies actually bloomed. I looked at her and said, “Hope.”

  And it’s true: we have no idea how things are going to turn out. All we can do is hope that something beautiful will spring to life at any time.

  I open my eyes and look at Shirley. She is right about the war. She is right about my life. But that life seems like a world away, just like my husband.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  Mary races up holding a handful of dandelions with white tops.

  “What do you have?” I ask.

  “Just a bunch of weeds.”

  I stop, lean against my hoe and look at my daughter. In the summer sunlight, her eyes are the same violet color as Elizabeth Taylor’s in National Velvet.

  “Those aren’t weeds,” I say.

  “Yes, they are!” Mary says. She puts her hands on her hips. With her father gone, she has become a different person. She is openly defiant and much too independent for a girl of six. “Teacher said so.”

  I lean down until I’m in front of her face. “Technically, yes, but we can’t just label something that easily.” I take a dandelion from her hand. “What color are these when they bloom?”

  “Yellow,” she says.

  “And what do you do with them?” I ask.

  “I make chains out of them, I put them in my hair, I tuck them behind my ears...” she says, her excitement making her sound out of breath.

  “Exactly,” I say. “And what do we do with them now, after they’ve bloomed?”

  “Make wishes,” she says. Mary holds up her bouquet of dandelions and blows as hard as she can, sending white floaties into the air.

  “What did you wish for?” I ask.

  “That Daddy would come home today,” she says.

  “Good wish,” I say. “Want to help me garden?”

  “I don’t want to get my hands dirty!”

  “But you were just on the ground playing with your friends,” I say. “Ring-around-the-rosy.”

  Mary puts her hands on her hips.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt has a victory garden,” I say.

  She looks at me and stands even taller, hooking her thumbs behind the straps of her overalls, which are just like mine.

  “I don’t want to get dirty,” she says again.

  “Don’t you want to do it for your father?” I ask. “He’s at war, keeping us safe. This victory garden is helping to feed our neighbors.”

  Mary leans toward me, her eyes blazing. “War is dumb.” She stops. “Gardens are dumb.” She stops. I know she wants to say something she will regret, but she is considering her options. Then she glares at me and yells, “Fat head!”

  Before I can react, Mary takes off, sprinting across the lot, jumping over plants as if she’s a hurdler. “Mary!” I yell. “Come back here!”

  “She’s a handful,” Shirley clucks. “Reminds me of someone.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say.

  Mary rejoins her friends, jumping back into the circle to play ring-around-the-rosy, turning around to look at me on occasion, her violet eyes already filled with remorse.

  Ring around the rosy.

  A pocket full of posies.

  Ashes! Ashes!

  We all fall down.

  “I hate that game,” I say to Shirley. “It’s about the plague.”

  I return to hoeing, lost in the dirt, moving in sync with my army of gardeners, when I hear, “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  I look up, and Mary is before me, her cheeks quivering, lashes wet, fat tears vibrating in the rims of her eyes. “I didn’t mean to call you a fat head. I didn’t mean to get into a rhubarb with you.”

  Fat head. Rhubarb. Where is she picking up this language already?

  From behind her back, she produces another bouquet of dandelions that have gone to seed.

  “I accept your apology,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Make a wish,” she says.

  I shut my eyes and blow. As I inhale, the scent of my Jonathan Rose fills my senses. When I open my eyes, I see our minister approaching, a man beside him, both of their faces solemn.

  “Iris,” our minister says softly.

  “Ma’am,” the other man says, holding out a Western Union telegram.

  The world begins to spin.

  Mrs. Maynard,

  The Secretary of War desires me to express his deepest regrets that your husband, First Lieutenant Jonathan Maynard, has been killed...

  The last thing I see before I fall to the ground are a million white puffs of dandelion floating in the air, the wind carrying them toward heaven.

  Abby

  May 2003

  “This is the house I was telling you about.”

  I twist and look out of the open car window. A smile overtakes my face as soon as I see a rambling bungalow with a wide front porch. A warm summer breeze shakes the porch swing before making the American flag on a corner pillar flap.

  Our Realtor, Pam, parks her Audi on the narrow street, barely wide enough for one car to pass at a time, which sits at the top of a very steep hill. The street reminds me of the time I visited San Francisco, only in miniature. Pam rushes around to open our doors.

  “Did Daddy put the flag there?”

  “Yes,” Pam lies to my daughter, Lily. “He’s a war hero!”

  I can feel my heart split, as if it’s been cleaved in two by a butcher.

  Pam and I are roughly the same age, early thirties, but Pam is somehow still filled with the same unbridled enthusiasm as Chance, the Irish setter we had growing up. I am filled only with a dull ache brought on by silent rage due to a confusing war that has stolen the husband I once knew.

  Pam salutes Lily, who mimics the patriotic gesture. Pam turns to me and salutes.
r />   “Don’t,” I say.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Peterson,” she says, quickly lowering her arm. Her blond bob trembles in the breeze, just like her lips, which are slathered in pink gloss.

  “Abby,” I say.

  “I understand, Mrs.... Abby. It’s okay. You must be so nervous about your husband all the time.”

  I force a smile. “I am,” I say. “Didn’t mean to be so short.”

  She turns toward the house, and her Chance-like enthusiasm returns as she reenters agent mode. “This is a Sears kit home,” Pam says as my daughter sprints for the front porch and jumps into the swing.

  “A what?” I ask.

  “A Sears kit home,” she continues. “Oh, my goodness, Abby. They’re historic now! Sears homes were shipped via boxcar and came with a seventy-five-page instruction manual. Most homes were sent via the railroad, and each kit contained thousands of pieces of the house, which were marked for construction. You can still find lumber that is numbered throughout the house. They did lots of different styles, from bungalows to Colonials.”

  “This house and the one next door were both Sears homes,” she says, before nervously beginning to babble, “but...but...but...the two homes are nothing alike.”

  I look at Pam, whose face is registering absolute panic, and then turn to look for the first time at the neighboring house.

  “That’s an understatement,” I say. “It looks like a prison.”

  An imposing wooden fence, which is—no exaggeration—at least ten feet tall surrounds the property. The second story of the home, which looks to be identical to this one, despite what Pam has just said, is all peeling paint. The roof’s shingles are buckled, and moss is growing on a shady patch under a towering tree whose first leaves are blush red.

  “What’s the story?” I ask.

  Pam’s face turns the color of the tree. She takes a deep breath.

  “A very old woman lives next door,” Pam says. “Rumors in town are that she lost her husband in World War II and then her young daughter died, too.” Pam glances back at the house and then whispers, “Went crazy and has lived alone for years.” She stops and resumes speaking in a normal tone and nods at the house for rent. “This is her house, too. Used to be her mom’s...or her grandma’s... No one really knows anymore. I heard she has to rent it now for money.”