The Summer of Good Intentions

by Wendy Francis

  Tim gripped his hand and slapped Mac on the shoulder. “Good to see you. You’re looking buff.”

  “Always trying.” Mac high-fived the kids and snuck a sandwich off the tray.

  “Ooh, Daddy, you smell,” cried Lexie as she got up and tossed her water bottle in the trash.

  “Lexie McNeil!” Maggie pointed to the blue recycling box sitting next to the trash can. She was willing to let certain things slide at the summer house, but not the recyclables. With an eye roll (her daughter’s favorite move of late), Lexie transferred the bottle to the blue box. This was the child Maggie was hoping to connect with this vacation? She had promised herself she would try to be patient with Lexie, but things were off to a dismal start.

  “Duly noted,” Mac said now. “I’ll hop in the shower and then we can get the dock in.”

  When he headed for the stairs, he nearly collided with Jess, who had changed into her bathing suit. Black straps peeked out from underneath a pink cover-up. Jess was staring down at her cell phone, tiny frown lines hovering above her nose.

  “Guess what,” she said, looking up. “That was Mom. She wants to come down to the house on Saturday. This Saturday. To the Cape house,” Jess clarified when they all stared at her blankly. “For a week,” she tried again.

  “But she can’t,” Maggie began, then caught herself. The kids were watching. “I mean, we won’t have enough room, at least not until later this month.” Maggie realized this probably sounded cruel, but she and Gloria had already discussed it. Their mother would come down for a day visit when Virgie, the kids, and Jess were all here. Then she’d return and stay for a week at the end of July, when the house had more room. Plus—and it was a big plus—their dad was due at the Cape house on Saturday. There was no way on earth that Maggie was going to have both her parents sleeping under the same roof. She could see it now, her mother constantly nagging Arthur, Arthur taking it in stride. Maggie would climb the walls.

  “That’s the thing,” Jess continued. “Mom is staying at a bed-and-breakfast. She’s already booked the room.”

  “You’re kidding.” Maggie couldn’t hide her surprise. Gloria typically came to her first with such requests, yet she’d performed a neat little balletic twirl around Maggie’s tightly crafted schedule of houseguests. Perhaps that was precisely why her mother hadn’t approached her first. She knew her oldest daughter (because Maggie had been born three minutes and forty-two seconds before Jess) would insist she stay at the summer house while she figured something else out for Arthur. Could it be that her mother was developing an altruistic side, one that put other people before herself? Maggie thought it unlikely.

  “And, get this.” Jess cast around the room. The kids were chattering away again, but Jess whispered anyway. “She’s bringing someone.”

  “Someone? As in a friend or as in a date?” Maggie needed clarification.

  “I think it might be a date.” Jess grinned conspiratorially. “Some guy named Gio. She said she’d met him in her dance class.”

  Maggie burst out laughing. The whole idea was absurd. Their sixty-five-year-old mother hitting on someone named Gio while she danced the tango?

  “Hey, don’t judge. He could be nice. Besides, Mom’s been looking for a companion. Another senior citizen who can dance might be perfect for her.”

  Maggie shook her head. She couldn’t believe it. Her vision of a calm, relaxing time at the summer house was growing hazier by the minute.

  “Good old Gloria,” Tim chimed in. “That woman does not let grass grow under her feet. You gotta love her.” He got up and reached into the fridge for a beer. “Don’t mind me, I’m going to enjoy the view until dock duty calls.”

  Maggie’s head was suddenly in a tailspin, trying to do the math. Could they accommodate everyone here after the Fourth? Virgie would arrive on Wednesday. Her dad would be here on Saturday as well. Already, they had nine people sleeping under the same roof. She planned to put Virgie in the kids’ room, which would fill up all three sets of bunk beds. Tim and Jess were in the guest room; herself and Mac in the master. When her dad came, he would stay on the pullout couch downstairs. He’d always favored that bed for some reason, though Maggie found it stiff as plywood.

  But if Gloria came, that would change the dynamic altogether. Maggie would have to kick Jess and Tim out of the guest room and let Gloria sleep there. But then where to put Gio, assuming he came along? And Jess and Tim? In sleeping bags in the living room next to her dad? That was preposterous. The thought of her friend Gretchen and her sea captain’s mansion flitted through her mind. Surely, Gretchen had some extra space. But Maggie was loath to impose. What kind of friend asked another friend to put up her mother and her mother’s paramour at her house?

  No, her mom was right, Maggie could see that now. There was simply no room for Gloria and her special friend at the summer house. Somehow it surprised her; this house was cozy but had always had ample room for them when they were growing up.

  And what about Arthur? Her dad would be heartbroken if he saw their mother with another man. Should she warn him? Tell him not to come?

  Only one day into vacation, and already it was getting complicated. She felt hot, slightly dizzy, and went upstairs to change into her bathing suit. What she needed, she decided, was to go for a long, soothing swim. She’d help with the dock and then, stroke by stroke, swim away from the chaos. Somehow the right path would reveal itself, effervescent bubbles pointing the way in the cool, refreshing water.

  Jess

  “Can I interest you in a strawberry smoothie?” Maggie snuck up beside Jess with a chilled glass in her hand. She set down a bowl of chips and passed Jess the drink.

  “Oh, yes, please. What’s in it?”

  “Vodka,” Maggie said, sitting down next to her, her hair still wet from her swim. “And a few strawberries, of course.” Jess laughed.

  After a good two hours, the pier was in—and Jess was spent. Their gang wasn’t in its twenties anymore, and putting in the dock was hard work. At one point, Mac had gotten the level, and anyone could see that the last two sections weren’t quite even. But by then, nobody cared. It was good enough. Now when she gazed out at the dock, she could discern the slight crook toward the end, where Teddy and Luke took turns jumping off. In their life jackets, the boys bobbed up and down like plump orange marshmallows in the water, while the girls drifted lazily on their rafts. Ah, summer.

  When they’d pulled up to the house earlier today, Jess felt as if she’d traveled to two continents and back since the last time she’d slept at Pilgrim Lane. She nearly cried to hear the gate creak open and see the cheery daisies on the porch steps, each clump blooming like multiple exclamation points in the terra-cotta pots. “You’re here!” they seemed to shout. It was as if the summer house had stayed frozen in time while her own life had been spinning out of control.

  Tim, of course, had forgotten to place a hold on the mail last night, and Jess was furious. But as soon as she stepped foot in the summer house, she could feel the tremors of anger floating up from her body, hot little orbs of light. Suddenly, it seemed silly to get worked up about a thing as small as holding the mail. Maybe she was overstressed, a point that Tim liked to make whenever she came down on him.

  Jess lowered her drink to the beach table, grabbed a tube of sunblock, and squeezed a dollop into her palm, the scent of coconut rushing over her.

  “Mmm . . . that smells delicious,” said Maggie. “Like I could eat it.”

  Jess smiled. “Be my guest.”

  “I was beginning to think summer would never get here,” Maggie admitted.

  Jess leaned back in her chair. “Me too. This winter felt impossibly long.” They’d had record-breaking snowfall in Boston, and as the snow piled up outside, she’d felt more and more like a prisoner in her own home. Then Cole had arrived, like a tender crocus hiding in the flower beds fronting her porch. The fact that she had kept Cole a secret from Maggie all these months amazed her. And yet where to begin? There w
as so much more she had to explain about her marriage falling apart before she could get to Cole. But she couldn’t be sure that Maggie, her twin, her best friend, would take her side. She thought of describing Cole’s warm laugh, his funny stories, how he surprised her by kissing her at the kitchen sink one night, how soft his lips were and how she could feel actual back muscles through his shirt.

  She considered trying to explain to Maggie how, when your husband becomes a stranger, when he no longer seems interested in talking to you or making things better in your marriage, it is surprisingly easy to fall for someone else. Even now that the fling had run its course (Jess had ended things over lattes in Harvard Square just days before vacation), would her sister understand? Maggie’s moral compass was strong; the mention of Jess’s affair might cause it to crack.

  “So?” Maggie turned to her, as if reading her mind. “Tell me everything. I want to know.” Her voice dropped an octave. “How are things with you and Tim?”

  As much as Jess wanted to tell, she felt slightly ambushed. She couldn’t get into it right now with Tim and the kids in front of them, could she? She would need a few more smoothies for that. “They’ve been better?” She hoped her voice sounded breezy, cavalier.

  “Mommy, watch me!” Teddy called out from the edge of the dock.

  Jess lifted her eyes and watched as he performed a cannonball that ended in a deafening, triumphant splash.

  “I honestly don’t know where to begin,” she said now and waited for Teddy’s head to reappear above the water.

  “Oh, hold that thought,” Maggie said. “I forgot the salsa. I’ll be right back. And when I come back you’ll tell me everything?” She pushed up from her chair.

  “You bet,” said Jess. She gave a thumbs-up as Teddy pulled himself up on the dock and glanced back at her for approval. Summers are so easy, she thought. All she needed to do was make sure the kids were slathered in sunblock.

  By the time Maggie returned, however, Grace and Teddy were begging Jess to come in the water. And she couldn’t say no, not on the first day of vacation. She glanced over at Tim, who appeared to be deep in conversation with Mac. Of course. She grabbed a chip and dipped it in the homemade salsa. “Delicious,” she proclaimed. Then she shook her head and apologized to her sister: “Duty calls.”

  Maggie groaned. “All right. But you’re not off the hook. I’ve got you for days,” she said as she sat back down. “I want to make sure everything is perfect between you two.”

  Jess laughed and tugged off her cover-up before tiptoeing across the hot sand. If only it were that easy, she thought. She waved to the kids, then dove in, swimming away from thoughts of Cole, infidelity, and her broken marriage.

  After a few hours, the children’s skin had turned a bright shade of pink despite multiple applications of sunscreen, and Jess insisted everyone head inside. Grudgingly, the kids tromped upstairs to change out of their bathing suits and then tromped back down to hang them on the deck (it had taken years to teach them this, as opposed to flinging their wet suits on the floor). While Maggie started on dinner preparations, Jess swept up the fresh trail of sand that snaked across the living room floor. Sophie and Grace lay on the couch swapping rubber bands for their bracelet looms. Lexie’s head was bent over a Harry Potter novel. And Luke and Teddy were sprawled across the floor, engrossed in their electronic games.

  In the kitchen, Jess found Maggie shucking the corn that she and Tim had picked up from a roadside stand on the drive down. “How can I help?” she asked.

  “There’s not much to do.” Maggie pushed a stray hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Mac’s grilling the fish. If you wanted to make the caprese salad, you could. Stuff’s in the fridge.”

  Jess pulled out the items from the crisper and shut the fridge door with her knee. She set the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil on the counter and glanced over at her sister, who was dropping the husked corn into boiling water. How did Maggie manage to make everything look so effortless? she wondered. Even in shorts and a T-shirt, her sister was radiant, pulled-together looking. Jess’s hair was full-out frizzy, and she looked exactly how she felt: in desperate need of a shower.

  “Here,” Maggie said, handing over a paring knife without looking up. Her sister was also possessed with a preternatural gift for anticipating everyone’s needs before they even knew they needed anything. Sometimes Jess thought the two of them must have had a tug-of-war in utero in which Maggie had whipped her butt, stealing all the good genes. As a teenager, Jess had hated the fact that she was the “ugly twin.” Jess’s hair was a fine, medium brown like Arthur’s, while Maggie’s was wavy and blond. People found it difficult to believe that they were twins (unlike Sophie and Lexie, who were identical, save for a delicate brown birthmark on Sophie’s neck). Whenever anyone mentioned the two in tandem, they would mention Maggie first, and it had been that way since Jess could remember. Maggie and Jess. And so, Jess was accustomed to thinking of herself in this manner, as if an invisible cord stretched between them, Maggie leading the way.

  Gradually, Jess had come to understand that she wasn’t ugly, just not as beautiful as her twin. She would never be as dazzling as Maggie. That was okay, though. She was Teddy and Grace’s mom. She was a high school principal. She was successful by her own lights. She was, apparently, still attractive enough to win a man’s heart. And at the thought of Cole, she felt a splash of guilt wash over her. Was it possible, she wondered as she cut into the tomatoes, that it wasn’t all her fault? If Tim were invested in their marriage, even one cent, would she have let another man kiss her? She laid out the mozzarella, sprinkled the basil, and then drizzled olive oil over the salad. Would she have continued to let him kiss her?

  But she’d kissed Cole back, fair and square. She’d been eager for his visits. Hell, she’d encouraged him, running her hands up and down his back, through his hair in her kitchen while the kids slept upstairs. She shivered, remembering. No, she couldn’t absolve herself. The only thing she’d done right in the whole mess was to break it off.

  “Fish is ready!” Mac called from the deck, an announcement quickly followed by the scampering of the kids’ feet.

  Jess poured herself a glass of ice water as Maggie plucked the steaming corn from the pot. “Can you grab the butter?” she asked before heading outside with the platter of corn. On the deck, the kids were seated at their own small table, a plastic folding table that she and Maggie had discovered during a Christmas Tree Shops outing several summers ago. The adults were gathered at the main picnic table. Jess hesitated a moment, searching for a place to sit. When she realized there was only one space left, she sat down next to her husband.

  “This smells heavenly.” She held out her plate for Mac, who dropped a generous fillet onto it. “Thank you.” She cut into the flaky white fish and twirled it on her tongue, savoring the pop of lemon, the buttery goodness of it. “Wow,” she said after a moment. “There’s nothing better than the catch of the day, is there?”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Mac.

  For a while, everyone ate in silence, a summery web of contentment spun around them. The sun, with splashes of brilliant pink and orange, was dropping on the horizon in a dazzling display. Then Grace told a knock-knock joke, scattering the quiet, and the kids returned to chattering. Yes, this was summer. This was what she’d been waiting for. It was almost perfect.

  When Tim reached out to hold her hand, Jess instinctively pulled it away. She couldn’t have been more surprised. But after a moment she placed her hand back on top of his. The roughness of his skin, the curvature of his hand, was at once foreign and familiar.

  And she let her hand sit there for a while, as if trying it on for size, only lifting it finally to reach for the butter for her corn.

  Virgie

  Jackson always smelled like soap, clean and inviting. Whenever she got a whiff of a similar scent, Virgie thought of him. It was almost Pavlovian. The teenage girl sitting next to her on the plane must use the sa
me brand. What was it? Ivory? Zest? Virgie guessed her fellow traveler was probably fifteen or sixteen, her earbuds firmly in place while she thumbed through the July issue of Seventeen. Virgie peered over her shoulder, pretending not to. Most of the celebrities in the magazine were people she didn’t even recognize. Damn, she felt old.

  She glanced out the window at large, frothy clouds that reminded her of the foam on a milk shake. It felt good to be leaving the office behind. When the flight attendant stopped the metal cart beside her row, Virgie ordered a Diet Coke with lime.

  “No limes,” the attendant said unapologetically and snapped open a can of soda. “Here you go.” She efficiently handed over the can, a cup of ice, and a package of pretzels.

  “Thanks,” said Virgie, secretly wondering when flight attendants had gotten so snarky. Maybe this one was just having a bad day. Virgie knew the feeling. She sipped her drink and closed her eyes. The Liz Crandle story had aired yesterday, and Virgie was miffed that Thomas had actually done a crackerjack job with it. He’d managed to make Liz sound both wronged and sympathetic. Personally, Virgie doubted she could have done it any better. Whatever, she told herself. When she got back from vacation, she was going to figure out a Plan B. Maybe switch to a new station, where she’d have a more direct route to the anchor desk.

  She was also trying her best not to feel guilty about not inviting Jackson to the summer house with her. Not that he’d acted upset about it when she kissed him good-bye at the airport. But she’d had her reasons. She ticked through them now:

  1. She didn’t want to scare him off. Inviting Jackson to join her on vacation was like inviting him to a family wedding. It had serious written all over it. And they’d been dating only a few weeks.

  2. Meeting the entire Herington clan all at once could be intimidating for even the most devoted of boyfriends. Her father had vetoed several of her high school and college beaus, and it was no secret that Arthur didn’t suffer fools gladly.