The Summer Hideaway

by Susan Wiggs

  On the eve of his deployment, Ross had made a promise to his grandfather. “I’m coming back.”

  Granddad had not had the expected reaction. He’d turned his eyes away and said, “That’s what your father told me.” It was a negative thing to say, especially for Granddad. Ross knew the words came from fear that he’d never make it home.

  He paced, feeling constrained by the interminable waiting. Waiting was a way of life in the army; he’d known that going in but he’d never grown used to it. When he’d announced his intention to serve his country, Ross had known the news would hit his grandfather hard, bringing back the hammer-blows of shock and relentless grief of losing Pierce. But it was something Ross had to do. He’d tried to talk himself out of it. Ultimately he felt compelled to go, as though to complete his father’s journey.

  Ross had started adulthood as a spoiled, self-indulgent, overgrown kid with no strong sense of direction. Things came easily to him—grades, women, friends—perhaps too easily. After college, he’d drifted, unable to find his place. He’d attained a pilot’s license. Seduced too many women. Finally realized he’d better find a vocation that actually meant something. At the age of twenty-eight, he walked into a recruitment office. His age raised eyebrows but they’d given him no trouble; he was licensed to fly several types of aircraft and spoke three languages. The army had given him more of a life than he’d found on his own. Flying a helo was the hardest thing in the world, and for that reason, he loved it. But he couldn’t honestly say it had brought him any closer to his father.

  Eventually the first wave of soldiers was taken to the plane. Another hour passed before the bus came back for the rest. Walking onto the transport plane, Ross felt no jubilation; pallets laden with black boxes and duffel bags were still sitting on the tarmac, not yet loaded. This ate up another hour.

  A navy LCDR boarded, settling in across from Ross. She flashed him a smile, then pulled out a glossy fashion magazine stuffed with articles about makeup. Ross tried to focus on his copy of Rolling Stone, but his mind kept straying.

  About an hour into the flight, the LCDR leaned forward to look out the window, cupping her hands around her eyes. “We’re not in Afghanistan anymore.”

  It was too dark to see the ground, but the portal framed a perfect view of the Big Dipper. Ross’s grandfather had taught him about the stars. When Ross was about six or seven, Granddad had taken him boating in Long Island Sound. It had been just the two of them in a sleek catboat. Ross had just earned his Arrow of Light badge in Cub Scouts, and Granddad wanted to celebrate. They had dined on lobster rolls, hot French fries in paper cones and root beer floats from a busy concession stand. Then they’d sailed all evening, until it was nearly dark. “Is that where heaven is?” Ross had asked him, pointing to the sparkling swath of the Milky Way.

  And Granddad had reached over, squeezed his hand and said, “Heaven’s right here, my boy. With you.”

  There was a stopover in Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, where the air was cool and smelled of grass. During the three-hour wait for bags, he tried calling his grandfather, then Ivy, then his mother, with no luck, so he headed to the chow hall to get something to eat. Although it was the middle of the night, the place was bustling. Ross studied the army’s morale, welfare and recreation posters advertising sightseeing tours, golf excursions and spa services, which sounded as exotic as a glass of French brandy. Before he’d enlisted, everyday luxuries had been commonplace in his life, thanks to his grandfather. Ross was returning hardened by the things he’d seen and done. But at least he was keeping the promise he’d made to his grandfather.

  Please be okay, Granddad, he thought. Please be like a wounded soldier who gets patched up and sent back out into battle. At the next layover in Baku, Georgia, he had the urge to bolt and travel like a civilian, but he quelled the impulse and bided his time, waiting for the flight to Shannon Airport, in Ireland. He couldn’t allow himself to veer off track, not now.

  Because now, it seemed his grandfather was acting crazy, giving up on treatment and haring off after a brother he hadn’t bothered to mention before.

  During his deployment, Ross had learned a lot about saving lives—but from shrapnel wounds and traumatic amputations, not brain tumors. There was an image stuck in his head, from that last sortie. He kept thinking about the boy and the wounded old man, trapped in that house, clinging to each other. Everything had been stripped away from those two, yet they’d radiated calm. He’d never found out what became of the two villagers; follow-ups were rare.

  He wished he’d checked on them, though.

  Three

  “Well, now,” said George, buckling his seat belt. “That was exciting.”

  Claire pulled back onto the road, trying to compose herself. “I can do without that kind of excitement.” She drove slowly, with extra caution, as though a thousand eyes were watching her.

  George seemed unperturbed by the encounter with the cop. He had politely pointed out that it was a free country, and just because certain family members were worried didn’t mean any laws had been broken.

  Officer Tolley had asked a number of questions, but to Claire’s relief, most of them were directed at George. The old man’s no-nonsense replies had won the day. “Young man,” he’d said. “Much as I would enjoy being held captive by an attractive woman, it’s not the case.”

  Claire had produced her state license and nursing certificate, trying to appear bland and pleasant, an ordinary woman. She’d had plenty of practice.

  The effort must have succeeded because ultimately, the cop could find no reason to detain them. He sent them on their way with a “Have a nice day, folks.”

  “Still all right?” she asked George, spying a service station up ahead. “Want to stop here?”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “We’re nearly there, eh?”

  She indicated the gizmo on the console between them. “According to the GPS, another eleven-point-seven miles.”

  “When I was a boy,” said George, “we would take the train from Grand Central to Avalon. From there, we’d board an old rattletrap bus waiting at the station to take us up to Camp Kioga.” He paused. “Sorry about that.”

  “About what?”

  “Starting a story with ‘when I was a boy.’ I’m afraid you’re going to be hearing that from me a lot.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “Everybody’s story starts somewhere.”

  “Good point. But to the world at large, my own story is not that interesting.”

  “Everyone’s life is interesting,” she pointed out, “in its own way.”

  “Kind of you to say,” he agreed. “I’m sure you are no exception. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

  Claire said nothing. She kept her eyes on the road—a meandering, little-traveled country road leading to the small lakeside hamlet of Avalon.

  Which Claire would she show him, this kindly, doomed old man? The star nursing student? The single woman who kept no possessions, who lived her life from job to job? She wondered if he would see through her, recognizing the rootless individual hiding behind the thin veneer of a made-up life. Occasionally one of her patients discerned something just a bit “off” with her.

  Which was one reason she worked only with the terminally ill. A grim rationale, but at least she didn’t fool herself about it.

  “Trust me,” she said to George, “I’m not that interesting.”

  “You most certainly are,” he said. “Your career, for example. I find it a fascinating choice for a young woman. How did you get into this line of work, anyway?”

  She had a ready answer. “I’ve always liked taking care of people.”

  “But the dying, Claire? That’s got to get you down sometimes, eh?”

  “Maybe that’s why my clients are rich old bastards,” she said, keeping her expression deadpan.

  “Ha. I deserved that. Still, I’m curious. You’re a lovely, bright young woman. Makes me wonder…”

  She d
idn’t want him to wonder about her. She was a very private person, not as a matter of choice, but as a matter of life and death. She lived a life made up of lies that had no substance, and secrets she could never share. The things that were true about her were the shallow details, cocktail party fare, not that she got invited to cocktail parties. The person she was deep inside stayed hidden, and that was probably for the best. Who would want to know about the endless nights, when her loneliness was so deep and sharp she felt as though she’d been hollowed out? Who would want to know she was so starved for a human touch that sometimes her skin felt as if it were on fire? Who could understand the way she wished to crawl out of her skin and walk away?

  Back when she’d gone underground, she had saved her own life. But it wasn’t until much later that she’d realized the cost. It had been simple and exorbitant; she’d given up everything, even her identity.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “let’s keep the focus on you.”

  “I’ve never been able to resist a woman of mystery,” he declared. “I’ll find out if it kills me. It might just kill me.” His amusement wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Humor had its uses, even in this situation.

  “You have better things to do with your time than pry into my life, George. I’d rather hear about you, anyway. This summer is all about you.”

  “And you don’t find that depressing? Hanging around an old man, waiting for him to die?”

  “All kidding aside,” she said, “things will go a lot better if you decide to make this summer about your life, not about your death.”

  “My family thinks you’re not right for me.”

  “I guessed that when they called the police on us. Maybe I’m not right. We’ll see.”

  “So far, we’re getting along famously.” He paused. “Aren’t we?”

  “You just hired me. We’ve only been together for three days.”

  “Yes, but it’s been an intense three days,” he pointed out. “Including this long drive from the city. You can tell a lot about a person on a car trip. You and I are getting along fine.” Another pause. “You’re silent. You don’t agree?”

  Claire had a policy of trying to be truthful whenever possible. There were so many lies in other areas of her life, this need not be one of them. “Well,” she said almost apologetically, “there was the singing, back in Poughkeepsie.”

  “Everybody sings on car trips,” he said. “It’s the American way.”

  “All right. Forget I said anything.”

  “Was I really that bad?”

  “You were pretty bad, George.”

  “Damn.” He flipped through a few pages of his notebook.

  “Just keeping it real,” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t mind that you hated my singing,” he said. “But you’re making me rethink something on my list. Ah, here it is. I wanted to perform a song for my family.”

  “You could still do that.”

  “What, so they won’t be sad to see me go?”

  “You just need a little backup music for accompaniment, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Are you up for it?” he asked.

  “No way. I can’t sing. I’ll find someone to help you.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Simple, she thought. All she needed to do was find a karaoke place. And get his family to show up. Okay, maybe not so simple.

  “Judging by our encounter with Officer Friendly, your relatives are pretty unhappy with me,” she said. She didn’t much care. As her client, George was her sole concern. Still, it always went better if the family was supportive of the arrangement, because families had a way of complicating things. Sometimes she told herself that the lack of a family was a blessing in disguise. Certainly it was a complication she never had to deal with.

  She often imagined about what it was like to have a family, the way a severe diabetic might think about eating a cake with burnt-sugar icing. It was never going to happen, but a girl could fantasize. Sometimes she covertly attended family gatherings—graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings, even the occasional funeral—just to see what it was like to have a family. She had a fascination with the obituary page of the paper, her attention always drawn to lengthy lists of family members left behind. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of pathetic, but it seemed harmless enough.

  “They’re too quick to judge,” he said. “They haven’t even met you yet.”

  “Well, you did make all these arrangements rather quickly.”

  “If I hadn’t, they would have tried to stop me. They’d say we’re incompatible, that you and I are far too different,” he pointed out.

  “Nonsense,” said Claire. “You’re a blueblood, and I’m blue collar—it’s just a color.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “We’re all in the same race,” she added.

  “I’m closer to the finish line.”

  “I thought we were going to try to keep a positive attitude.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This is going to go well,” she promised him.

  “It’s going to end badly for one of us.”

  “Then let’s not focus on the ending.”

  There were known psychological and clinical end-of-life stages people went through when facing a devastating diagnosis—shock, rage, denial and so forth. Everyone in her field of work had memorized them. In practice, patients expressed their stages in ways that were as different and individual as people themselves.

  Some held despair at bay with denial, or by displaying a smart-alecky attitude about death. George seemed quite happy to be in that phase. His wry sense of humor appealed to her. Of course, he was using humor and sarcasm to keep the darker things at bay—dread and uncertainty, abject fear, regret, despair. In time, those might or might not materialize. It was her job to be there through everything.

  All her previous patients had been in the city, where it was possible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This was the first time she had ventured somewhere like this—small and old-fashioned, more like an illustration in a storybook than a real place. It was like coming to a theme park, overrun by trees and beautiful wilderness areas and dotted with picturesque farms and painted houses.

  “Avalon,” she said as they passed another welcome sign, this one marked with a contrived-looking heraldic shield. “I wonder if it’s named after a place from Arthurian legend.” She’d gone through a teenage obsession with the topic, using books as a refuge from a frightening and uncertain life. One of her foster mothers, an English professor, had taught her how to live deeply in a story, drawing inspiration from its lessons.

  “I imagine that’s what the founders had in mind. Avalon is where Arthur went to die,” George said.

  “Not exactly. It’s the island where Excalibur was forged, and where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle.”

  “Ah, but did he ever recover?”

  She glanced over at him. “Not yet.”

  The first thing she did when arriving at a new place was reconnoiter the area. It had become second nature to plan her escape route. The world had been a dangerous place for her since she was a teenager. Avalon was no exception. To most people, a town like this represented an American ideal, with its scrubbed facades and tranquil natural setting. Tree-lined avenues led to the charming center of town, where people strolled along the swept sidewalks, browsing in shop windows.

  To Claire, the pretty village looked as forbidding as the edge of a cliff. One false step could be her last. She was already sensing that it was going to be harder to hide here, especially now that she’d been welcomed by the law.

  She took note of the train station and main square filled with inviting shops and restaurants, their windows shaded by striped and scalloped awnings. There was a handsome stone building in the middle of a large park—the Avalon Free Library. In the distance was the lake itself, as calm and pristine as a picture on a postcard.

  It was late afternoon
and the slant of the sun’s rays lengthened the shadows, lending the scene a deep, golden tinge of nostalgia. Old brick buildings, some of them with facades of figured stonework, bore the dates of their founding—1890, 1909, 1913. A community bulletin board announced the opening game of a baseball team called the Hornets, to be celebrated with a pregame barbecue.

  “Are you a baseball fan?” she asked.

  “Devotedly. Some of my fondest memories involve going to the Yankee stadium with my father and brother. Saw the Yankees win the World Series over the Phillies there in 1950. Yogi Berra hit an unforgettable homer in that game.” His eyes were glazed by wistful sentiment. “We saw Harry Truman throw out the first pitch of the season one year. He did one with each hand, as I recall. I’ve often fantasized about throwing out the game ball. Never had the chance, though.”

  “Put it on your list, George,” she suggested. “You never know.”

  They passed a bank and the Church of Christ. There were a couple of clothing boutiques, a sporting goods store and a bookstore called Camelot Books. There was a shop called Zuzu’s Petals, and a grand opening banner hung across the entrance of a new-looking establishment—Yolanda’s Bridal Shoppe. Some of the upper floors of the buildings housed offices—a pediatrician, a dentist, a lawyer, a funeral director.

  One-stop shopping, she thought. A person could live and die here without ever leaving.

  The idea of spending one’s entire life in a single place was almost completely unfathomable to Claire.

  She stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a dark-haired boy cross while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. On the corner, a blonde pregnant woman came out of a doctor’s office. The residents of the town resembled people everywhere—young, old, alone, together, all shapes and sizes. It reminded her that folks tended to be the same no matter where she went. They lived their lives, loved each other, fought and laughed and cried, the years adding up to a life. The residents of Avalon were no different. They just did it all in a prettier place.