The Summer of Good Intentions

by Wendy Francis

  “Where is it now?” he asked. He heard a shuffle in the background—Gloria, he presumed, going to peek out the window again.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s not there anymore. Do you suppose it ran off into someone else’s yard?”

  “It’s probably rabid if it’s out in daylight,” agreed Arthur. “You should call animal control to give them a heads-up. I wouldn’t go outside till they get there.”

  “Right, that’s exactly what I was thinking.” He could hear Gloria’s nails clicking on the kitchen countertop, as if she was right there in their, rather his, kitchen.

  “All right then. I guess I better get going?” he said, though he regretted the way it came out sounding like a question, as if he were seeking Gloria’s permission to hang up.

  “Yes, I wouldn’t want to keep you,” she said hurriedly. “Thank you, Arthur. Toodle-oo!” The phone went silent in his hands.

  Arthur placed the receiver back on the hook and wondered if he shouldn’t have been more assertive about the whole coyotes-can-be-dangerous idea. He didn’t think Gloria would try to outfox the animal, but the woman could be bold, recklessly so. For a moment, he considered calling her back and telling her he was serious about staying inside until they’d caught the predator. But then he shook his head at his own foolishness. They were divorced, for Pete’s sake! Gloria could handle things on her own now.

  Wasn’t that what she’d been trying to tell him when she first slid the divorce papers across the dinner table one night, one line signed, the other still awaiting a signature? His.

  He crossed the kitchen and pulled the eggs out of the fridge. The shuffle of his slippers on the floor rang in his ears. It was a discouragingly familiar sound. He could now admit to himself that his days and nights were lonely without Gloria. Five hundred and fifty days without her by his side. That she had up and left him still took him by surprise, as if someone had shaken him and hung him upside down, then righted him and demanded he walk a straight line that he couldn’t quite discern. Some mornings he rolled over in bed to fold an arm around her warm body, only to remember that she was no longer his, no longer slept beside him. He didn’t need to worry about his sour morning breath making her turn away.

  Whenever she called, she sounded breathless, as if she couldn’t possibly talk fast enough to cover all her exciting news. When she finally paused to ask how Arthur was, it felt only partly sincere. She might make the obligatory inquiry about his new book, but he surmised that she thought his life’s work—writing—to be one big joke. It pained him to think she’d never expected him to amount to much in the first place. He had always thought—or was the right word assumed?—that Gloria was as content as he was in their small coastal town, that she loved Maine’s rocky beaches and its small-town feel. That she anticipated spending their retirement years doing pleasant things together, such as reading, and gardening, and hiking.

  All those years of being mistaken. It tired him just to contemplate it. He cracked the eggs in the pan, poured in the milk, and with his knife, speared the yellow, shiny yolks that reminded him of melting suns.

  Gloria always filled him in on the girls and the grandkids—in that way, at least, she was good. The twins were busy with sports, a fact that made him proud, and Luke was always saying something funny to make him laugh. His ex-wife made a point of writing down the grandkids’ little quotes so she could remember to tell Arthur. Things like Teddy saying “the trees are leaking” on a rainy day, or Grace wanting to know if God and Santa were friends.

  Well, he would see his grandkids soon enough. On Saturday! He couldn’t wait to get to the summer house and wrestle with them, maybe shoot some hoops with the boys. He enjoyed kicking back a few beers with Mac, who’d always struck Arthur as a stand-up guy, a good match for Maggie. Jess’s husband, on the other hand, was a different story. If anyone asked Arthur, his middle daughter had married a bit of a nincompoop.

  But, of course, no one ever did. Except for Virgie, his baby.

  She cared what her old man thought, and at the idea of her, Arthur’s heart performed a little pirouette in his chest. His girl. Funny how he thought of only Virgie that way. She was so much like her mother in personality, all color and flash, but she’d followed in Arthur’s footsteps by becoming a journalist, a writer, and that made him exceedingly proud. He wasn’t supposed to have favorites, but damn it, Virginia was a good kid.

  He pushed the runny scrambled eggs onto a plate and carried them out to the deck to cool, then returned to pour himself another cup of coffee. He leaned against the counter and sipped. It seemed he was forgetting something, but he couldn’t recall what. Had he talked to Maggie last night? He thought that he had, a conversation skimming the edges of his memory. But it hadn’t been about next week. What was it again? He searched his mind, turned back to the phone as if it might offer a clue. Then he saw it: the sketch of a window on the notepad sitting on the counter. The broken window. He was supposed to call Jay to get it fixed. Or was it Maggie? It didn’t matter. He picked up the phone and dialed, waiting until the answering machine clicked on.

  “Hullo, Jaybird. It’s Arthur here.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Listen. Maggie and the kids are down at the house, and there’s a broken window in the downstairs bathroom. It would be super if you could stop by and fix it. I’ll be there on Saturday and will pay you back in beers.” The machine cut him off before “beers,” but he knew Jay would understand. It was their standard barter.

  It irked him that he’d let such a thing go. As he walked back to the deck with his coffee and paper, he tried to remember what he’d been doing at the summer house. When he sat down, the fork suspended over his plate, he was struck with instant recall. A small scar snaked across his right hand, starting at the fleshy, soft indent below the index finger and traveling down around his thumb. The skin had caught on the glass when it cracked. Arthur had been trying to let in fresh air, but the next thing he knew, his hand was bleeding like crazy. No wonder he’d forgotten to call about the window! He’d cut the hell out of his hand and had to go search for bandages in the upstairs cabinet. He’d been so focused on cleaning up the blood in the upstairs sink that he’d completely forgotten about the window. At the time, he had worried he might need a stitch, but the wound healed up okay.

  He took a bite of his eggs, soggy and lukewarm. It was hard to make good eggs, he reflected. Gloria must have had a secret recipe, where she got the ratio of eggs to milk just right. He swallowed, dissatisfied. The weather stain he’d applied a few years ago was wearing thin on the deck railings, light specks of wood poking through the varnish, as if the deck had a bad case of eczema. He was struck with a pang, almost physical in his side, by a single word: ephemeral. Everything was so goddamned ephemeral.

  He lifted his eyes above the railing and could see the morning light playing on the water, small waves lapping at the shore. Corpulent clouds tumbled across a radiant sky. He didn’t understand how Gloria could abandon such beauty. Hadn’t she looked forward to more mornings like this, discussing the day’s headlines, going for walks on the beach to a breakfast shanty where they could enjoy egg sandwiches still warm in their tinfoil? He sipped his coffee and thought to himself with a hint of bitterness: Apparently not.

  When he replayed it in his mind, though, he couldn’t honestly say why his wife had left. Perhaps he could have been more attentive, but it was strange to think that this had become an issue after forty-some years, the kids grown. No, he thought that Gloria had become a different person in the last year and a half, that she was going through a belated midlife crisis at sixty-five. He’d read about such things in the paper, heard about them at the store or the library when he bumped into friends. Jack Connelly had bought himself a Mercedes convertible and gotten hair plugs. A few years back, Keith Jefferson sold his car dealership and moved his whole family to Arizona. These things happened. He just never expected they would happen to him, by proxy.

  He glanced at the newspaper headlines, then looked
out on the water again, where the morning light frolicked on the waves as if in an Impressionist painting, perhaps a Monet or a Renoir. If Gloria were here, he thought with a small smile, they could debate it together. A gull swooped down to grab a fish and sailed off, the thing squirming in its beak, and Arthur felt momentarily sorry for it. The thought ephemeral seized him again. He took a few more sips of coffee, got up, tucked his paper under his elbow, and carried his half-eaten eggs back to the kitchen as he followed a path through the maze of piles lining his living room. It was hell without Gloria to pick up after him. Carefully, he smoothed out his paper atop the large stack that already stood by the front door. Someday one of the stories would make good fodder for his writing, a plot line lurking in the headlines.

  As he turned, he spied his trash gator leaning against the couch. When he’d first seen the contraption online, he’d been struck by its apparent genius. A tool that allowed a person to pick up litter without having to bend over—Imagine! By pressing a slick little handle at the top, he could control the small pincher claws at the bottom. He’d even paid for the expedited two-day delivery. When the new toy arrived, Arthur had traveled all over the house, practicing picking up socks, a stray Kleenex, the TV Guide.

  But its real purpose was to help him rid the beach of its litter on his morning walks. Each day Arthur would set out and find the sand littered with junk. It annoyed him that people felt free to sully such splendor. Most days there were abandoned beer bottles, chip bags, candy bar wrappers, even a spoiled condom. But every so often he stumbled upon a forgotten sweater, a discarded wallet with a few damp bills tucked inside, a necklace with a broken clasp, a left-behind leather sandal. Precious things worth saving. Maybe the owners of the various objects would return one day, he reasoned, and tell him how grateful they were that Arthur had saved what others might consider trash.

  He grabbed his wide-brimmed hat from the closet and ambled down to the beach. Already he could feel the heat on his back. The bitter taste of coffee and eggs lingered in his mouth, and he momentarily regretted not having gargled with mouthwash. He’d stop further down the beach and reward himself with something sweet, maybe a Danish and a cool lemonade, at one of the kiosks. It was just the carrot to entice him along for the distance.

  Arthur dug the gator into the sand, using it as his walking stick for balance, and looked ahead. Always put your eyes on your destination, he used to tell the girls. It will help you remember where you’re going and why. It was sound advice, he thought.

  Then he set off, imagining a stranger’s gratitude as he began his search for treasure, eyes wide open.

  Maggie

  “Hello?” Jess’s voice rang through the hallway. “Anybody home?”

  Maggie was in the kitchen fixing sandwiches for lunch while the kids played Monopoly, biding their time till their cousins arrived. Even though Maggie had begged them to hold off swimming until after lunch, both Lexie and Sophie were already in their swimsuits. Putting the dock in the first day of summer was a tradition, as was the kids’ sticking their toes in the water at the same time.

  Luke and the twins beat her to the door. “Aunt Jessie!” the girls yelled while Luke tackled his cousin in a bear hug.

  “Hiya, Sis.” Maggie embraced her twin. “Girls, give your poor aunt a break,” she warned as each tugged on Jess’s arms. Maggie bent down to kiss her niece and nephew. “I swear you guys have gotten bigger since the last time I saw you. When was it? Two weeks ago?”

  “Something like that,” Jess said. “Same goes for you three.” She hugged the girls and Luke. “But not you, of course.” She turned to Maggie. “You look exactly the same.”

  “Thank goodness,” Maggie said, and they shared a laugh.

  A minute later, Tim came up the front steps, bags hanging off his shoulders and a large cooler in his hands.

  “Where’s Mac when I need him?” he joked. “Hi, everyone. You got the place all set up for us?” He leaned in to peck Maggie on the cheek.

  “Mac went for a quick run. He should be back any minute.” Maggie held the door open for her brother-in-law. “Here, come on in. Girls, help the kids with their bags upstairs. You, too, Luke.”

  “Then can we go swimming?” Lexie pleaded. Maggie eyed Jess to gauge whether she was ready to let the kids go in the water so soon, but Jess just shrugged.

  “After you eat lunch, I don’t see why not.”

  “Yay!” The kids bounded up the stairs with their backpacks and suitcases. Maggie pointed Tim toward the kitchen and helped her sister with the bags.

  “Come on,” she said, as she showed Jess upstairs. “There are fresh sheets on all the beds. The towels are washed and in the linen closet, so help yourselves. The water has been a little touch and go, but I think the pump is working now. Let me know if you guys have any problems with it, okay?”

  When they reached the guest room, Jess smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” Maggie demanded.

  “I love how you play house here, as if we’re the boarders coming to stay at your bed-and-breakfast. You know we’ve been here a few times ourselves, right?”

  Maggie felt her cheeks color. Here she was prattling on about things her sister already knew. “I’m sorry. I just want to make sure everyone feels at home.”

  “And we do,” said Jess. “Thank you. The place looks great.” Maggie watched as her sister scanned the guest room. A vase of pink roses that she’d clipped from the backyard this morning rested on a small side table. On top of the bed lay a crisp white comforter, capped with oversize pillows. On either side of it were built-in bookcases, filled with titles like Gift from the Sea and A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore. Maggie flopped down on the comforter and watched as her sister transferred clothes from her suitcase.

  “Ooh, that’s pretty,” she said when Jess went to hang up a light blue sundress with delicate white daisies twirling across it. “When can I borrow it?”

  “Don’t even,” Jess teased. Fortunately, Maggie reflected, Jess’s sense of style had evolved for the better over the years. When they were growing up, she’d always wanted to borrow Maggie’s clothes. Not because she liked them more, but simply because Jess never took the time to shop for herself. She was too busy saving the world with Habitat for Humanity or some other humanitarian group. Funny how the tables had turned, Maggie thought. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d gone clothes shopping. For herself, that is.

  “Hey, I forgot to mention,” she said now. “We’ve closed off the downstairs bathroom till Jay can fix the window.”

  “What?” Jess stopped and turned.

  “The window in the downstairs bathroom is shattered,” Maggie explained. “We thought someone had broken in, but when I called Dad, he fessed up to it. Cracked the glass trying to open it. He forgot to ask Jay to fix it when he was down in May.”

  “Was Dad okay?”

  “He claimed to be. Said he grazed his hand on the glass.”

  “Huh.” Jess seemed to consider this while she resumed unpacking, arranging multiple tubes of sunscreen on the bureau in a neat little row. “Did you get Dad the iPad?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, unable to hide the quiver of excitement in her voice. She was quite proud that she’d thought of this particular gift for their father, who had turned seventy-two a few weeks ago. Though Arthur had said he didn’t want any presents, Maggie thought he’d protested a bit too much. Which was why she’d rallied her sisters to chip in on this newest electronic gadget. It was a useful present for a writer, she thought—one that even her father, so difficult to please, might actually like.

  “That’s great. Thanks. Dad will love it.”

  Maggie sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “Well, I’ll let you get settled while I finish up the sandwiches. I’m sure the kids are eager to go swimming.”

  Back in the kitchen, Tim sat at the table, eating a turkey and cheese sandwich. His green eyes peered out from behind little wire-rim glasses. He was, Maggie decided, looking more
and more like an accountant every year.

  “Oh, I was saving those for the kids,” she said without thinking.

  “Oops.” Tim got out through a mouthful of bread. “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right.” Maggie backpedaled. “I can make some more. In fact, that’s what I came to do!” She reached for the butter knife and slathered mayonnaise onto a slice of whole wheat. There was no need to start off on the wrong foot with her brother-in-law. Initially, Maggie had thought Tim a good match for her more tightly wound sister. But in recent months, Jess had hinted that things had gotten tense at home. When Maggie inquired about what was going on, Jess had said, Nothing. That’s the problem. Apparently, Tim had “checked out” from the family. Maggie couldn’t say she was entirely surprised (to her eyes, Jess did all the work), but if it was true, she was sad for her sister. All marriages go through stages, she counseled. Jess and Tim would work things out, and life would get back to normal.

  Just then, the kids breezed into the kitchen, their beach towels draped over their shoulders, looking like little conquerors. “Look at you all,” Maggie exclaimed and clapped her hands together. “So grown up.” She felt tears spring to her eyes, but Lexie stopped her in her tracks. “Mom, don’t start. It’s so embarrassing,” she said before dropping into a chair.

  “Sorry.” Maggie turned to Tim. “Sometimes I feel like time is getting away from us, you know? Our babies growing up so fast?” She glanced at him for corroboration, but her brother-in-law stared at her, clueless. She sighed and had just begun passing out sandwiches when Mac arrived, soaked in sweat.

  “Hey, there! How you doing, man? Sorry about the sweaty paw.” He went over to shake Tim’s hand. Mac’s face was ruddy, his hair matted on his forehead. At six foot four, her husband was a big guy, barrel-chested, and looked the part of a cop. But he’d added a few pounds over the years, and she knew he was trying to shake them this summer.