The Summer of Good Intentions

by Wendy Francis

  “No.” He dropped his eyes. “It doesn’t.”

  She ran her hands through his hair. “It’s not like we have to make up our minds today. Besides, we still have to get approved.”

  He exhaled. “Right. Thank you.”

  He leaned toward her and rested his head on her stomach. “I just don’t want to disappoint you. And with everything that’s been happening lately . . .”

  “Shh.” She didn’t know what else to say. “We can discuss it later.” She felt a sliver of something—disappointment? anger?—but it was dulled by her own increasing weariness. “Keep an eye on Luke, okay? I’m going to throw in a load of laundry.” She pulled away from him and headed downstairs.

  In the laundry room, six piles of dirty clothes greeted her. Even though she could have sworn she’d washed four loads before leaving the summer house. Had the kids simply dumped their suitcases here without any regard to what was clean, what was dirty? She picked up a T-shirt and sniffed, the fresh scent of fabric softener wafting up.

  “Sophie, Lexie!” she called out. “Report to the laundry room, please!”

  She heard groans from the family room, then dragging feet. “What is it, Mom?” Sophie poked her head around the doorway.

  “Did you girls even check to see what’s clean and what’s not before emptying your suitcases on the floor?”

  They exchanged looks. “I thought it was all dirty,” said Lexie.

  “No!” Maggie understood her anger was disproportionate to the crime, but she couldn’t help herself. Honestly, how much more could she be expected to do around here? “I told you girls that your clean clothes were folded on your beds before we packed at the summer house. Obviously, no one listened.”

  “Here.” She threw them all back into the laundry basket. “Take these upstairs and sort the clean from the dirty.”

  “But, Mom,” Sophie whined. “How can we tell?”

  “Do the smell test,” Maggie advised. “If it smells fresh, like fabric softener, odds are it’s clean and I don’t want to see it again until it’s been worn.”

  They lumbered up the stairs, baskets in hand, while she began to sort a load of darks for herself and Mac. She tossed in sweatshirts, Mac’s boxers, sweaty T-shirts, towels that still carried the smell of the ocean. So, Mac didn’t want another child in their lives. Possibly didn’t want another child, she reminded herself. Okay, she thought. Breathe. That didn’t mean he wasn’t happy with the life they’d created. To the contrary, he was content with three kids and didn’t want to tip the scales further. “We’re already playing zone defense,” he’d told her one night at the summer house, referencing the fact that, as parents, they were outnumbered in the Herington family. Two to three. Add another child in the mix and the ratio would be four kids to two adults.

  Then why did Maggie feel so certain that this was the next step for her? That helping another child who might not otherwise have a home was what she was meant to do? She drew in a long breath and sighed. Maybe Mac was right. Their lives were crazy enough right now. Maybe she was nuts to think about signing up for more. Right now, she needed to help Virgie and get Arthur’s affairs in order. The rest could wait.

  As she neared the end of the dirty laundry pile, she spied a single sock at the bottom. It wasn’t one of Mac’s tube socks, and it was too big to be one of the kids’. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands. Maybe it was Tim’s? It looked familiar. Then she realized where she’d seen another one like it. In Arthur’s suitcase at the summer house. It was thick and woolly, and she’d remarked on it when she’d gone through his suitcase. What had he been thinking bringing such warm socks out in the hazy, humid days of July? She’d tossed it, along with almost all the other stuff that had been crammed into his suitcase and car. And now, here was its match.

  She sank to the floor and kneaded the sock between her fingers. She lifted its scratchy texture to her face and ran it along her cheek. It was clean, but it still carried a scent, something else familiar. Then she realized what it was. Her dad’s favorite aftershave that he wore on occasion. Old Spice. It had pervaded every item in his suitcase. And at the scent of her father, Maggie’s eyes filled with tears. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stanch them.

  Virgie

  Virgie sat on a bench in the Boston Public Garden, watching the swan boats drift by in the shimmering heat. It was a sticky, humid August day, and parents squirted their kids with water guns in an effort to keep them cool. It was Tuesday and Maggie was on her way up to Maine. But she’d persuaded Virgie to stay one more day in Boston, to take some time to think things through and spend the night at Jess’s house before the two of them headed up tomorrow. On her way to Jess’s, Virgie hopped off the train at Park Street. She wanted to walk through the Common, take a few minutes to get her head straight and figure out what she was going to do.

  Even before the diagnosis, she’d suspected MS. After her fall on the Cape, she had googled enough to see that her symptoms aligned with multiple sclerosis. Balance problems: check. Vision impairment: check. Tingling sensation along the extremities. Slurred speech: check and check. She’d read until she couldn’t bear to read any more and had slammed her laptop shut.

  “What do you think, Daddy?” she’d asked Arthur in their last talk, before he hinted that he thought the teakettle was burning again. Before she knew that he wasn’t quite right. She wanted his opinion on whether he thought Maggie and Gloria were ridiculous to insist that she see a specialist in Boston. Virgie counted on Arthur, as she always had, to be her voice of reason. She felt as if she were seven again, writing her homemade newspaper, eager to make her dad proud and nervous about what he might say.

  Arthur regarded her carefully. “I think it would be wise to get it checked out, honey. You’ve got some of the best doctors in Boston. Take advantage of them. Work can wait.”

  Virgie pulled her knees up to her chest and tried not to cry. If her father was urging her to follow up, then he thought whatever was going on with her body was serious.

  “You know my grandmother, your great-grandmother . . .” His voice trailed off and Virgie waited for him to continue. He lifted his eyes. “Well, she had MS.”

  Virgie inhaled sharply and Arthur held up his hand. “Not that I’m saying that’s what’s causing your problems. It’s probably nothing. But they have drugs for all sorts of things these days. It’s better to find out sooner than later if there’s anything the matter. I think you can even take shots these days, you know, like a diabetic.”

  She nodded numbly. “Uh-huh. Okay. That’s what I’ll do.” She couldn’t argue with her dad. She didn’t want to.

  “Good, I’m glad,” he said and patted her hand, as if that settled it. That had been only minutes before a look of alarm fell over his face and he told her he needed to take the kettle off the stove.

  Of course, with everything that had happened since, Virgie had no choice but to go ahead with the appointment. She felt as if she’d promised Arthur. She sensed that he’d be looking out for her, whatever the news might be.

  Daddy, what should I do now? she thought. For the first time in her life, Virgie was scared. The thought of going back to Seattle, of being on her own and coping with an illness without her sisters nearby, was daunting. The doctor seemed to think she might be fine for a long time, but what if she weren’t? The extra stress of her job couldn’t be good for a body that was already attacking itself. And she had no idea, really, how her diagnosis might change things between her and Jackson. Last night, she’d quickly shared the results with him over the phone. He’d been supportive, caring: “Okay, we’ll get through this.” But Virgie secretly wondered if he would see her now as a patient instead of a girlfriend. He probably couldn’t fairly say himself.

  A part of her—a really big part of her—wanted to ignore her diagnosis, pretend as if nothing had changed. But she knew that would be wrong, cowardly. Her life had changed. She needed to take medicine now. She wasn’t so much angry about her diagnos
is as she was exhausted and scared. And while relieved wasn’t the right word, she felt some small peace in knowing that she hadn’t been losing her mind, that the symptoms she’d been feeling were, in fact, very real. Yesterday, she’d watched while the nurse inserted the needle into her fleshy upper thigh, injecting the Avonex and explaining how it worked. Virgie flinched only slightly. Could she, Virgie wondered, do this to herself every week?

  Well, she didn’t have much choice, did she?

  She watched while two men with a guitar and a violin set up in the shade of a weeping willow. They arranged their folding chairs and pulled their instruments from their cases. The guitarist, a round-faced guy with a beard, laid out his case for coins, and then proceeded to fine-tune his instrument. The violinist, a curtain of dark bangs falling over his eyes, plucked at his strings. They were an unlikely pairing—guitar and violin—but once they’d settled into playing, Virgie was struck by the music, an ethereal classical piece.

  Her dad had loved classical music. Sometimes he’d switch on the radio just to have it playing in the background while he wrote. When Virgie asked how he could concentrate, he explained, “It inspires me to do better.” She was only twelve or thirteen at the time. “Listen to it. Isn’t it incredible? Listen to all the different instruments that come together to create one magnificent sound. Knowing that an artist, a composer, could produce that”—and he poked the air emphatically with his forefinger—“pushes me to reach higher, to do better.”

  Virgie hadn’t really understood at the time, but now she thought back to it. Perhaps Arthur was sending her his own small signal of strength right here, in the form of a scruffy guitarist and violinist. Reminding her that there was beauty in the world. That no matter what life handed her, there was still so much to be awed by, inspired by. “Listen for the different melodies,” he would coach, and try as she might, she could never detect the thread of a new melody when Arthur held up his finger in anticipation. She only heard the piece in its entirety rather than as separate strains of music.

  Perhaps Arthur had been coaching her for this moment all along. Life was made up of individual lines of music, a person’s lifetime a mere collection of moments. But it was what a person did with those moments, those discoveries, how she wove them together, that made for the symphony. MS was but one melody playing in Virgie’s life at the moment. In fact, it had probably been playing for some time. She just hadn’t been listening.

  Well, now she was. Now she had to figure out how to weave it into her own story.

  For so long, an anchor spot on Seattle’s news station had been all that she’d wanted, she could barely remember wishing for anything else. Could she recalibrate her life without losing the identity she’d worked so long and hard to create for herself? She wasn’t sure—and it petrified her.

  She kept her eyes closed, feeling the warm sun on her cheeks. She wanted to believe that the injections would help, that her symptoms would fade and she would start to feel “normal” again. Thousands of people dealt with an MS diagnosis each year. She saw herself joining yet another subgroup on a pie chart, a negligible piece of the pie, perhaps, but a significant one. A tiny yellow wedge.

  And she realized one startling fact: she didn’t want to be alone. For the first time she could she recall, she doubted her ability to take care of herself. The thought of diving back into work and negotiating office politics struck her as laughably petty now. Perhaps, she thought, this was what her dad had meant when he once told her she needed to “get some perspective.” She’d been hurt by those words, but maybe Arthur had known all along. Well, MS was a pretty crappy way for the universe to dole out perspective, she thought now. Why did something so valuable have to be so hard-won?

  Daddy, can’t you help me here? Please? she whispered.

  When her cell rang, she opened her eyes and picked up. “Hello?” Her voice sounded small and tired, even to her.

  “Hi, it’s me. Jackson. I’m coming out there,” he said. “And don’t tell me no.”

  Maggie

  When Maggie pulled up to Arthur’s house, it seemed to let out a heavy sigh, as if it had been awaiting her arrival. She climbed out of the car and stretched her legs. It was only early afternoon, but already a chill threaded the air. She hadn’t visited since last Thanksgiving, and now the gambrel home appeared to list to one side, as if part of it had sunk deeper into the ground over the winter. The gray shingles were peeling in places, lending it an air of distinguished neglect. While the grass appeared freshly cut (Arthur hired a local boy to cut it each week), the rhododendron bushes lining the front of the house were exploding, in desperate need of a trim. Maggie approached and noticed the curtains were drawn in the front room. Quite frankly, it looked as if no one had lived here in ages.

  On the front steps, she searched under the flowerpot where her dad always hid the key but found nothing. Had he moved it to a new spot? She hoisted the terra-cotta pot to one side and searched again until at last her fingers landed on the cool metal. She pulled out the key and blew off the remnants of potting soil. When she cracked open the door, the scent of mildew, rotting trash, and dust overwhelmed her in a malodorous rush. A month’s worth of mail had piled up through the mail slot and now blocked the door, as if the house itself were wary of granting her entry. Maggie gave the door a shove with her shoulder and barged in. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, but packed to the rafters was the expression that jumped to mind, followed soon after by Oh. She felt as if she’d been punched. Arthur’s house was overflowing. With stuff. Junk. All kinds of it.

  She held a hand to her mouth and made her way past piles of what appeared to be old newspapers. To reach the windows, she had to climb around a tower of boxes. As soon as she threw back the curtains, thousands of tiny dust motes went flying through the air. Maggie struggled to push the window open, but the sash wouldn’t budge. She thought back to the broken transom at the summer house, the speckled blood on the floor.

  “Damn it!” she yelled and pounded on the sash. “Can’t you at least give me some fresh air?” At that moment, as if the house had been listening, the window unstuck, the sash rising up. A blast of fresh air blew in, momentarily reviving her. Slowly, Maggie made her way around the tower of boxes and back through what could only be described as a passageway in the living room. The mess was incredible, the smell nearly intolerable. Stacks of papers, magazines, random pizza boxes and KFC buckets were stacked around the perimeter of the room. Her dad, it seemed, had carved out a small space that allowed him to travel from the front door across the living room to his leather chair, which was still worn in all the familiar places. There was also a small square area, probably eight feet by eight, that remained free of debris and provided a clear path to the television.

  It was in this space that Maggie stood now, hands on her hips, breathing through her mouth. “Dad, what happened here?” she asked aloud, her voice shaking. Because she couldn’t believe the disarray, the sheer mess of what his living room had become. When Gloria lived here, the house was always immaculate. Was this her father’s small act of rebellion against her? His way of giving his ex-wife the proverbial middle finger?

  Surely her dad had friends over, but how had he entertained anyone? It hadn’t been like this last Thanksgiving. Or had it? She tried to think back. But then it dawned on her: her dad had been waiting for them in the front yard when they pulled up to the house. He’d never invited them inside. Maggie didn’t think much of it at the time, only that he was upset with them for being late and didn’t want to miss the buffet at the restaurant. But perhaps his waiting outside had been intentional all along. A chill brushed over her. Was it possible he’d been living this way for nearly a year? More than a year?

  She made her way from the living room to the kitchen, where a similar living area had been cleared amid piles of junk. There was the old maple table, where she and her sisters had shared countless meals. Except now, it was covered in stacks of papers and books, a few ran
dom ice cube trays. Only one corner was free of clutter. A place mat with a complete setting—plate, glass, silverware—sat on the cleared space, a chair tucked in neatly as if waiting for Arthur to arrive any minute for supper.

  Maggie stepped over to the sink, where piles of dirty dishes spilled onto the counter. When she poked at them, a cockroach scurried out, sending her reeling backward. “Jesus!” she yelled and grabbed a magazine from the table, swatting madly at the counter, where the roach disappeared into a crack.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “How could you?” Big black trash bags lined one side of room, and when she peeked inside one, she realized it contained more dirty dishes. It appeared that Arthur had simply been throwing away plates once they’d been used, the ones not in the sink, that is. It was some of her mother’s best china. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t run out of dinnerware. But then she realized that paper plates, plastic forks and knives, were also mixed in with the clutter. An odd nostalgia swept over her as she regarded so much that was familiar and comforting, like the family dinner table, her mother’s china.

  How had it come to this? Because she had three kids, it had always been easier for her dad to make the short trip to their house in Windsor rather than vice versa. Or so she’d told herself.

  She braced herself to go upstairs. Could there possibly be more wreckage? The living room and kitchen alone would take them a couple of days to clean out. She would need to buy about a thousand trash bags, rubber gloves, dust masks so they could breathe. And a professional cleaner. There was no way they’d be able to cart out the rubble and clean the house in a week, which had been Maggie’s original plan. She’d assumed it would be a matter of packing up Arthur’s clothing and furniture for Goodwill and divvying up his books among them. Then they’d roll up their sleeves and start cleaning, readying the house for sale. But she could never have anticipated the hovel that would welcome her. Not in a million years.