“There’s nothing like a road trip with old one-stop Thomas.”
“Two stops since breakfast. He was feeling magnanimous,” said Barb, kissing Helen on the cheek.
Helen bent down to talk to Sally, who had unbuckled herself from her seat in the back and climbed out of the car. She was clinging to her mother’s leg. “Hello, big girl. I’m your Aunt Helen.”
Sally smiled and said a barely audible hello, and then looked over at her brother, who had also disengaged himself from the car and was now holding on to Barb’s other thigh. Peter was not inclined at first to talk to people he didn’t know, according to Barb’s letter. But his initial shyness would wear off quickly. And he was especially excited to meet his older boy cousins. Both Sally and Peter were comfortable with adults, perhaps because Barb and Thomas took them almost everywhere they went, rarely employing babysitters. Helen gave Peter a quick kiss on his forehead before he could back away. “Come inside,” she said. “With any luck, the bathrooms are free.” She showed her niece and nephew the tiny blue and white half bathroom off the kitchen, and then led Barb to the porch to see Charlotte and Pammy. Claire was in her room resting, and the boys had returned to the tennis court after a swim. After watching Todd and Ned win their first match, Charles and Daniel had gone to the beach with them. Helen guessed her husband was still dozing on the raft, as reported by the boys on their way through the kitchen in their wet suits.
“Thomas and Barb are here,” Helen announced in excitement halfway across the living room. She wanted her sisters to get ready, in the next few seconds, to again see their sister-in-law, their relation they had met just twice, at Thomas and Barb’s wedding and at John Thompson’s funeral. Helen knew Pammy would be polite and warm. It was Charlotte, whose relationship with Thomas had been strained for as long as Helen could remember, who was the unpredictable one. Claire said Thomas and Charlotte never got along because they were so close in age. But Helen knew that Charlotte’s being a jerk, Thomas’s favorite word for her, also had something to do with it. Helen remembered that they were closer to one another during Thomas’s last summer at the beach, the summer of 1973, but she thought they had not had much contact since. When Helen and Barb reached the porch, Pammy was standing, and Charlotte, while sitting, was looking expectantly at the doorway. “Hello, Barb,” said Pammy, stepping forward and hugging her.
“It’s so nice to see all of you again,” said Barb. “It’s been too long.”
“Where’s your no-good husband?” asked Charlotte.
“Here I am,” Thomas said, from the living room.
When he walked into the porch, Pammy hugged him, and then held him back at arm’s length to look at him. “You look pretty good for an old guy,” she said.
“Older and wiser, Pammy,” said Thomas, with a smile. “Your turn will come soon enough, little sister.”
“The coming is always the best part.” Charlotte was now standing, Helen suspected, to give her brother and Barb an opportunity to look at her chest.
“Are those new?” asked Thomas, looking at her breasts. “Or did I just sleep through your teenage years?”
Pammy, Helen, and Barb laughed at Thomas’s joke, while Charlotte quipped, “I wish I’d had these babies in my teenage years,” she said. “I’d have been the queen of the beach.”
“If memory serves,” said Thomas, “you were the queen of the beach.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” asked Pammy.
Both Charlotte and Thomas ignored what they individually perceived as a stupid and rhetorical, respectively, question. “Where’s Mom?” asked Thomas instead.
“She’s resting,” said Helen. “And Charles is down at the beach with Daniel.”
“Who’s Daniel?”
“Charlotte’s boyfriend,” said Helen.
“He’s twenty-seven,” said Pammy, crossing her arms over her chest.
“That,” said Thomas, looking at Charlotte, “would explain the breasts.”
“Thomas,” said Barb, giving her husband a look.
“Don’t worry yourself,” said Charlotte. “I can take care of myself.”
“Amen, sister,” said Thomas, nodding his head once.
They were all silent for a moment before Barb said, “I’m just going to run to the bathroom.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Helen. “Run up the stairs, if you’d like. The bathroom is on the left. Don’t worry about waking Claire. She sleeps very soundly.”
“Where are the children?” Pammy asked Barb as she was leaving the porch.
“Around here somewhere,” said Barb. “I’ll round them up in a couple minutes.”
“Are you hungry?” Helen asked Thomas.
“No.” Thomas held his stomach. “Barb packed enough snacks for a cross-country trip.”
“Good,” said Helen. “We all had a chicken embryo feast this morning, and I’m still full.”
“Eggs,” Charlotte said, by way of explanation. “They all had eggs and were disappointed I wouldn’t participate.”
“I thought you ate almost anything for breakfast,” Thomas said to Charlotte, giving her a wink. “Eggs, bacon, wedding attendants.”
“That was seven years ago,” said Charlotte, picking up Thomas’s reference to her behavior at his wedding. Drunk, she offered to peel off her leopard-skin dress and dance naked for Thomas’s ushers, if they stopped by her room after the reception. What she didn’t tell Thomas was that two out of the three of them did.
“Listen,” said Thomas, looking at his watch, “as long as Mom’s resting, and we’ve got some time before the next feeding, I’m going to drive to the motel by the state park and unpack. I’ll be back before you miss me.”
Helen put her hands on her hips. “I thought you were going to stay here. Charles and I are out of your room, and I’ve already moved my things back in with Pammy.”
Thomas held up his hands. “It’s easier this way, Helen. We’re right down the street, and I think the kids will sleep better in a bed.” Helen’s disappointment was evident on her face. Thomas walked the three steps to reach her and put his hand on top of her head. “We’ll see how it goes.”
“How can you get back in that car after ten hours on the road?” asked Pammy.
“Are you kidding?” said Helen, letting it go, teasing Thomas. “He could drive back to Ontario right now, without stopping.”
“Who wants to come with me?” asked Thomas. “Do we need anything in town?”
“We’ve got enough food . . .” Helen started.
“. . . to feed an army.” Pammy finished.
“We may be at the beach when you get back. I’ll see if the kids want anything to eat before we go,” said Helen. “Hurry, Thomas. The water is beautiful today.”
“Don’t go to the raft until I get back. We have been talking about the swim all week. Peter will need his kickboard, but I think Sally can make it the whole way. She takes after her grandmother in the water.”
“God, I hope that’s the only thing they have in common,” said Charlotte.
Sally and Peter walked onto porch just as Thomas was about to leave. He bent down to hug his children. “This,” he said to them, “is your Aunt Pammy and your Aunt Charlotte.”
“Hello,” the children said softly in unison.
“Well, hello,” said Pammy, getting down onto her knees. “I’m happy to see you.”
The children smiled at her, but said nothing.
“And isn’t that a cool shirt you have on, young man,” Charlotte said to Peter, who reached over and wrapped his arms around his father’s leg.
“You guys stay here with Mommy,” he said to Sally and Peter. “I’m going to unload our stuff at the motel. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
“That sounds great.” Barb had returned from her bathroom break. She stood next to Helen.
Helen put her arm, momentarily, around her sister-in-law. Helen hadn’t been sure until they pulled into the driveway that they, that he, would come.
&n
bsp; As Charlotte said, it had been almost seven years. Thomas and Barb were married in August of 1996. All the Thompsons attended the Ontario wedding, but no one had seen him or his wife since, aside from at John Thompson’s funeral. Thomas was very busy with the self-storage business he had started in upstate New York after working in Manhattan for a decade in investment banking. One of his business connections had a business connection across the border. There was a dearth of self-storage places, it turned out, in southern Ontario, and the market was ripe, in the mid-nineties, for development and quick expansion. It was in Toronto, walking out of the elevator with his new Canadian partner, that Thomas saw Barb McNaughton in the lobby of an office building on King Street. He was immediately attracted to her, not only to her blond hair, blue eyes, and petite, fit body, but also because she smiled at him like she knew him, like they were childhood friends meeting for the first time in many years. They walked out of the building at the same time and hesitated, both of them, on the sidewalk. Thomas introduced himself to her and asked her if she had time for coffee, to which she replied yes. They talked in the coffee shop for two hours and were engaged three months later.
Thomas could still not get over his good fortune. He had dated several women over the years; he was forty when he met Barb. But all of the women fell short in one way or another: Ashley talked too much; Chantel spent too much time in front of the mirror; Marion was sweet but uncoordinated. (Thomas loved to hike on the weekends; Marion could walk like a runway model in heels, but hiking boots made her feet look ugly, Marion had protested, and gave her blisters.) They were all temporarily very engaging, Ashley, Chantel, and Marion. But each woman’s peccadilloes eventually worked their way from the back to the front of Thomas’s brain, causing him to lose sight of their good qualities and, shortly afterward, leading to the breakup of the relationship. Barb talked just the right amount. She glanced at herself in the mirror with both the confidence and indifference of someone who knows she’s attractive. And she could beat Thomas at tennis. Barb measured up to every one of Thomas’s expectations, pushing for good the faded image of Anna Santiago out of his head. This was the most convincing reason Thomas knew he was in love.
The summer after Thomas’s first year at Princeton, he did not go to the cottage because he was still not over Anna. She had written him at school a few times his first semester, and he had written back. But then he stopped communicating with her. Writing to her and Amy made him miss her more; he could not, like others were able to do after a breakup, view her as a friend. He immersed himself in his studies, played club baseball, and hung out with the guys on his floor. That summer, he stayed in Stonefield and worked for a landscaping company. He had talked Eddie Kozlowski into spending the summer at the Thompson family home. And together they mowed lawns during the day and drank beer in the evening. Thomas missed his family, but only in the abstract. He was already, at nineteen, pulled in another, more independent direction.
Anna floated in and out of his thoughts over the years, even when he was dating other women. He knew their relationship had come too early. But that didn’t stop him from wondering if they could have worked things out. These musings, imaginings stopped, for the most part, when he met Barb.
When he and Barb were first married, they lived in her condominium on Front Street, not far from the Royal York and Union Station, on the tenth floor of a new building that afforded them a generous view of Lake Ontario. Barb, Thomas found out later, after they were involved and moving toward commitment, had enough personal wealth to purchase a small European country, had it been for sale and had she been inclined. She was grateful for the money she had, for what it had provided in her life, but she was also troubled by it. Savvy suitors had broken her heart in their pursuit of her riches. Aggressive charitable organizations and less fortunate relatives and friends hounded her. Once people knew she had money, came from money—a lot of it—their dispositions around her and their assumptions about her changed. Because Thomas had made his own fortune, he was respectful of hers. They discussed money with their financial advisors and rarely with one another.
When Sally was born, they decided to move out to the country, settling into an old, cold farmhouse in Kingsville, where Barb cheerfully traded suits and low heels for jeans and flats and ran the house as effectively and efficiently as she had the nonprofit in her family’s name based in the city. She stayed involved in the organization via telephone and laptop, but she left the day-to-day operations to her capable assistant. Thomas had an office in Toronto and traveled frequently, but when he was home, he made time for his family. He often drove in the driveway before dinner, and entertained the children while Barb, an accomplished cook, prepared their meal from organic ingredients grown in their garden in the summer. Somehow she’d manage to coax Sally and Peter into trying everything on their plates. Peter’s new favorite vegetable was sautéed kale.
“Do they like peanut butter and jelly?” Helen asked Barb, leading her out of the porch and though the living room.
“Better than anything else. Let me help you.”
In the kitchen, Helen got the peanut butter down from the shelf. “The children are adorable. Your pictures don’t do them justice.”
Barb smiled broadly. “They are so much fun,” she said. “We are able to do more and more with them as they are able to take in and understand more and more. The four of us went to the Ontario Science Centre last week, and Sally was able to tell us five fun facts about rain forests while we were standing in one. Peter almost caught a frog.”
“I remember when Todd and Ned were that age,” said Helen, retrieving the grape jelly from the fridge. “They were into everything—and not always in a good way.”
Barb laughed. “Oh yes,” she said. “Peter decided to make scrambled eggs like Mommy’s one day when I was in the shower, but had more fun standing on the kitchen table and dropping the dozen eggs he’d taken out of the fridge onto the floor. Frankly, I was relieved he hadn’t turned on the burners. The children do some cooking with me, but I don’t have them frying anything in hot oil just yet.” Helen laughed.
Seconds later, Sally and Peter ran into the kitchen, breathless. “Where have you two been?” Barb asked.
“With Aunt Pammy,” said Sally. “She showed us a card trick, and she said she’d show us how to float in the water just like a jellyfish.”
“Can we go to the beach now?” asked Peter.
“Let’s eat,” Barb said. “Then we’ll get our suits on.”
Helen took their sandwiches and glasses of milk out to the picnic table, where she and Barb sat and talked while the children ate. Afterward, they all got their bathing suits on and ran, holding hands, across the road to the beach.
Thomas unzipped his suitcase and took out a short stack of golf shirts. He laid them carefully in the large drawer at the bottom of the dresser. He changed into a pair of shorts and put the other pair next to the shirts. After hanging his traveling pants in the closet, he put away his boxers, socks, and the pajamas he wore around the children, and closed the drawer with his foot. He took his shaving kit into the bathroom and set it down next to the sink. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror, he wondered if strangers would know he was forty-eight. Not likely, he thought. He jogged six miles every morning and, with Barb preparing his meals, ate healthy foods. He had always been measured, disciplined in his habits, however, including eating and drinking. When he first met Barb, she thought he was several years closer to her age than he actually was. She was ten years younger than he, which never seemed to be a problem for them. Thomas sometimes wondered what they would be like, what their life would be like, when he was seventy and she was sixty. But he didn’t dwell on it long. While many in the business world were fond of discussing five-year plans, Thomas knew that a five-day plan was much more likely to meet with success.
Back in the town he hadn’t seen in three decades, Thomas’s thoughts returned to Anna. Where was she, and what was she was doing? And where was Amy, who w
ould now be grown and living her own life? His buried memories of Anna shot to the surface. He said her name aloud, something he hadn’t done since his first year at Princeton. He indulged his thoughts of her now. Did she finish school? Did she go to law school? His heart came alive in his chest. Did she still live here?
He returned to the car to retrieve everyone else’s duffel bags, and then quickly unpacked them in the room. Back in the car, he drove through town, scanning the multitude of storefronts that had appeared since his childhood. By rote, he drove to the corner of Main Street and Summer Avenue and found Hudson and Lambert. He parked his car, walked across the street, and pulled open the glass door. Inside, he recognized the Oriental rug immediately, looking older but every bit as luxurious as it had before. He crossed the room to the large desk, where he had waited for Anna before taking her to lunch that day. A large mug of steaming coffee sat next to the computer, in the space previously occupied by Anna’s typewriter, as did a stack of memos and manila folders. An open nine-by-twelve mahogany box held Hudson and Lambert stationery. Thomas picked up a sheet; Anna’s name did not appear on the masthead. Disappointed, he set the paper back in the box. Had she finished college and law school on schedule, she would have made partner by now. Maybe she never finished.
“May I help you?”
Thomas looked up and saw a middle-aged, efficient-looking woman who was now standing next to the desk. “Yes,” said Thomas. “I was looking for someone who used to work here. Her name was Anna Santiago.”
“Oh, yes,” said the woman, settling into her desk chair. “She did work here. But she’s had her own practice for years.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Her office is just down the street. She and Erin Setta are tax attorneys.”
“Where’s their office? I know it’s Saturday, but I thought I might just drive by.”
“Attorney Santiago usually works on Saturdays. She might be there. It’s just down Main—one, two, three lights,” the woman said looking into the air as if at a map. “It’s on the corner of Main and Plumber.”
The Summer Cottage Page 20