That Camden Summer

by LaVyrle Spencer

‘‘Well, make your generalizations somewhere else because I don’t care to hear them! He’s a family man with three daughters to consider. How do you think they’ll feel if they find out their father is indiscriminately bedding any woman he takes a fancy to?’’

  He flashed the palms of two dirty gloves. ‘‘Look, I’m sorry I said what I did, all right?’’

  ‘‘Well, you should be because you men live by a double standard without considering what wives and children suffer when you have your innocent affairs. I know, because I had a husband exactly like Elfred!’’

  She spun and disappeared into the house, leaving Gabe to stare at the vacant doorway. Like many men in town, he’d often laughed about Elfred’s adulteries and disparaged his wife for her ignorance. That fat, bossy Grace Spear, everybody called her. No wonder Elfred stepped out on her. Elfred liked to flirt with women while Grace was in the room, and Gabe, like many others, had found it amusing. But watching him use his wiles on Birdy Jewett left Gabe questioning how funny it actually was.

  Stacking shingles for a bonfire, he wondered about Roberta’s husband. How many other women? Did her children know? Obviously, they did. Seemed a pitiful situation for youngsters to know their father was stepping out with a whole bunch of women besides their mother.

  Intent on his thoughts, he was unaware of the children’s return from school until one of them spoke—the little one he’d enjoyed so much yesterday.

  ‘‘Hi, Mr. Farley! Look who’s here!’’

  ‘‘Hi, Daddy!’’

  ‘‘Isobel! Well, for heaven’s sake!’’

  ‘‘Susan and I met at recess,’’ Isobel explained, ‘‘and I told her you were working for her mother so she asked me if I wanted to come home and see where they’re going to live.’’

  Rebecca exclaimed, ‘‘Our porch is gone!’’

  ‘‘I’m just about to burn it up.’’

  ‘‘Oh, can we help you?’’

  ‘‘Oh, yes, can we, please?’’

  Susan took Isobel’s hand. ‘‘Come on, let’s climb in the front door and I’ll show you our room! We can see the mountain from our window! Mother! We’re home!’’

  The four girls went clattering over the shingles and started to boost each other over the doorjamb while Roberta came to stand above them.

  ‘‘How was school? And who is this?’’

  ‘‘This is Isobel!’’ they chorused, while Lydia balanced on her belly at her mother’s feet.

  Gabe picked up a plank and strode across the yard. ‘‘Girls, wait!’’ He angled it like a gangway and they climbed it like sailors, bounced on it, babbling about school, Isobel, their teachers, the bonfire. He, with only one child, was accustomed to quiet and calm. This was mayhem as the girls bombarded the house, teetered on the plank and gabbled about four things at once.

  Somehow amidst the chatter Isobel’s full name got through to Birdy.

  ‘‘Isobel Farley?’’ she repeated.

  ‘‘He’s my dad,’’ Isobel confirmed.

  She met Gabe’s glance from her high vantage point. In the midst of the frenetic scene the two of them exchanged a moment out of context, prompted by four exuberant adolescents who had no idea of the undercurrents between their parents. ‘‘Oh . . . yes, of course. Well, hello, Isobel.’’

  Lydia said, ‘‘He’s going to build a bonfire to burn the shingles. Can we help him, Mother?’’

  ‘‘Yes, please! Can we?’’

  ‘‘We’re hungry! Is there any cake or anything?’’

  ‘‘Ah . . . oh, cake?’’ She prized her attention from Gabe to answer the girls. ‘‘No, I haven’t had time.’’

  ‘‘But we’re starving!’’

  ‘‘I’ve got crackers.’’

  They all trooped upstairs to see the girls’ room, then back down to collect soda crackers before descending the plank and finding Gabe had ignited the stack of shingles. They headed straight for the fire, though none of them had changed out of their school dresses, which Gabe had carefully trained Isobel to do. Instead, they collected shingles and fed the fire while Gabe stood back and tended it with a rake.

  Without preamble, Rebecca began reciting, ‘‘By the shore of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water . . .’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’ Isobel said.

  ‘‘That’s Hiawatha . . . don’t you know Hiawatha?’’ She paused and struck a dramatic pose. ‘‘I am Hiawatha, courageous Indian brave, fasting in the forest in the blithe and pleasant springtime. . . .’’ Without the slightest compunction she began to chant and dance as if she were wearing buckskin and eagle feathers. Her sisters picked up the cue and danced, too . . . around and around the fire, arms extended and bodies undulating while Isobel, as inhibited as her father, stared.

  He watched her struggle to balance her fascination with a natural reluctance to join in. Once she glanced at him, wide-eyed, and he saw even clearer her wish to be like these girls. But she had been born an only child, had spent too many years alone to feel free amidst these irrepressible thespians of Mrs. Jewett’s. He knew immediately they were not showing off for him: They were merely spontaneous.

  Abruptly Rebecca broke off her chant. ‘‘I know!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Lobsters!’’ Her sisters stopped as well. ‘‘We could collect some if the tide is right and cook them in our bonfire!’’ She bounded toward the gangplank. ‘‘I’ll ask Mother! Mother! What time does the tide turn?’’

  Roberta returned to the door above her. ‘‘About an hour ago.’’

  ‘‘Then we’ve got to hurry! Can we go get some lobsters and cook them on the bonfire?’’

  ‘‘The bushel basket’s in my bedroom full of towels.’’ She turned away and her three girls scampered after her. Up the gangplank! Inside, with skirts bouncing! Momentarily they returned with Lydia in the lead, carrying the basket.

  ‘‘Come on, Isobel!’’ she cried. ‘‘You have to show us where Sherman’s Cove is! That’s where Mother says the lobsters are!’’

  Isobel stood rooted and dazed. ‘‘May I?’’ She looked up at Gabe.

  ‘‘Lobsters?’’ Nobody ate lobsters. They washed up on the rocks at high tide and made nuisances of themselves. Those who bothered to pick them up buried them for fertilizer.

  Isobel shrugged.

  He murmured at her ear, ‘‘Are you sure you want to eat lobsters?’’

  ‘‘I want to go along, please, Daddy.’’

  He had his doubts about this wild trio, but Isobel had an eagerness in her eye that had been absent for a long time. Certainly she’d have more fun running off to Sherman’s Cove than going home with him to share their lonely supper for two.

  ‘‘Go ahead,’’ he said, ‘‘but you should change your dress first.’’

  ‘‘But, Daddy, if I do that it’ll be too late!’’ Their house was the opposite direction from Sherman’s Cove, and lobsters didn’t stay in the rocks long once the air hit their backs.

  ‘‘Oh, all right, go ahead. But tomorrow you change immediately after school, as usual.’’

  The other three shouted a chorus of ‘‘Thanks, Mr. Farley!’’ and Isobel scurried after them. The last he saw of his daughter she was running to catch up with Lydia, who was skipping down the boulevard with the bushel basket over her head.

  In their wake the yard grew silent except for the snapping fire. Roberta remained in the doorway. Gabe remained by the blaze. They recognized that their children were stirring up a friendship the two of them might not want to foster, but their reasons were selfish and had them feeling even more uncomfortable with each other. She said, ‘‘Well, I’d better go find some butter,’’ and disappeared from the doorway.

  He continued cleaning up the yard, picking up nails, feeding the fire, keeping some shingles for the girls to burn when they returned. Minutes later Roberta came down the gangplank carrying a bag of the sort used to haul groceries. Her hair had been neatened and her skirt changed. He turned his back to make it easier on both of them, and leaned over to pick u
p some shingles as she crossed the yard behind him. He knew perfectly well, however, that she was heading downhill to buy groceries and would have to carry them back up in her little mesh bag with the handles. She had only two feet while he had a Ford truck, and his mother had not been lax about drilling manners.

  He turned from the fire and called, ‘‘Mrs. Jewett?’’ She stopped in the break of the bridal wreath. ‘‘I could run you down the hill in the truck.’’

  ‘‘No, thank you, Mr. Farley,’’ she replied crisply. ‘‘I don’t think it would do for the two of us to be seen together again in your truck. I’ll walk.’’

  He breathed a sigh of relief as he watched her move off in the direction the girls had gone.

  His inclination was to be gone when she got back, but a responsible man didn’t leave coals glowing to send up sparks and set a woman’s house afire. So he finished raking the yard, scooped up the trash into a gunnysack and burned up most of the remaining shingles. His tools were in the truck and he was squatting beside a brilliant bed of coals by the time Roberta returned carrying two mesh sacks! The girls were with her and came lugging the bushel basket with their cache covered with seaweed. Their dresses were filthy and their shoes wet. Isobel’s hair was hanging like sea grass. Everybody was talking at once.

  ‘‘Look! They’re positively huge!’’

  ‘‘Oh, the fire is just right!’’

  ‘‘Mother, where’s the lobster pot?’’

  ‘‘Come and see them, Daddy! Rebecca knew how to put sticks in their claws so we didn’t get pinched!’’

  There followed an admiring of lobsters with four disheveled girls trotting all over the yard, into the house, back out. Roberta passed behind Gabe with her two weighty sacks.

  ‘‘You’re still here, Mr. Farley. I thought you’d be gone.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t think I should leave the fire untended.’’

  Walking the plank, she called, ‘‘You may stay if you’d like, and eat with us.’’

  Lobsters? He shuddered. Moreover, he remembered Elfred’s innuendo. ‘‘No thanks. I’ll be going home now.’’

  At the top of the plank Roberta set down her heavy burden and turned around, rubbing her arms.

  ‘‘You should have let me drive you,’’ he said, feeling oafish for having let her carry tins and milk bottles up the hill.

  She studied him as if deciding whether he was right. ‘‘I told you, I’m used to doing for myself. I can see you don’t like lobster anyway.’’

  He went home and ate alone. Sardines and soda crackers. Some tinned peaches, straight from the can. Two cups of hot coffee. Three cinnamon jumble cookies his mother had made. The kitchen was orderly and white in the glow of the new electric light. Caramel, the cat, came and nestled in his lap. He kept watching the wall clock, noting the purpling of light at the window, imagining the yard at the Jewetts’ with lobsters boiling in a pot. He washed his fork and cup, watered Caroline’s houseplant, swept the kitchen floor, shook the rugs and Isobel hadn’t shown up yet. He bathed and shaved and still she hadn’t come home. He kept imagining those coals and that unpredictable bunch she was with. Hell, for all he knew they’d have her walking barefoot across them pretending she was some Hawaiian volcano goddess.

  He had put on clean clothes and decided to get in the truck and go back there to fetch her when she showed up, breathless and flushed.

  ‘‘Daddy?’’ she called from downstairs. ‘‘Daddy, where are you?’’

  ‘‘Isobel?’’

  She came bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time and tearing around the corner into his bedroom.

  ‘‘Where in the world have you been this late?’’

  ‘‘Oh, I’ve been with the Jewetts, and Daddy, they’re so much fun!’’

  ‘‘Don’t you realize what time it is?’’

  ‘‘But you knew where I was.’’

  ‘‘Yes, but I didn’t think you’d stay this late.’’

  ‘‘It’s not even eight o’clock yet, and we were sitting around the fire. Mrs. Jewett got out a copy of Longfellow and she read us the first verse of The Song of Hiawatha, then everybody took turns reading a verse. They know some of them by heart! And they can pronounce all the Indian words. Kabibonokka and Mudjekeewis. An owl came and sat on that big tree in their yard and stared at us as if he were listening, too. And Mrs. Jewett called to it and it cocked its head and turned it clean around till it was looking backwards! She knew what kind of owl it was, too. A great horned, but it flew away without calling back to her, and its wings didn’t make a sound. We’re going to read the next five verses tomorrow!’’

  From a girl who was easily bored by everything from school to family visits, such exuberance impressed her father.

  ‘‘Tomorrow.’’

  ‘‘Yes, right after school, and Rebecca wants to make costumes and act it out, but I told her I don’t want to do that. I’m no good at acting.’’

  ‘‘How do you know? You’ve never tried.’’

  ‘‘I just know. Besides, I don’t like people staring at me. But I love the reading.’’

  She always thought people stared at her ears, but he didn’t know how to console her about them, so he asked, ‘‘How was the lobster?’’

  ‘‘Messy, but pretty tasty. Mrs. Jewett melted butter and fried rice cakes and we ate them with our fingers, sitting around the fire.’’

  ‘‘You look it. Your dress is filthy. Now, why don’t you wash up and leave your dirty clothes in the kitchen on the floor? I’m going to be taking the laundry to Grandma’s tomorrow.’’

  An hour later, when her room got quiet, he knocked on the door and found her sitting cross-legged on her bed, dressed in a pale blue nightgown, writing. He went in and sat at the foot of the bed, leaning back on one hand.

  ‘‘What’s that?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘A poem.’’

  ‘‘You’re writing it?’’ She turned it facedown on her lap and looked self-conscious. ‘‘I thought you didn’t like poetry.’’

  ‘‘That was in school.’’

  ‘‘Is it different at home?’’

  ‘‘It’s different at their house. Everything’s different at their house.’’

  ‘‘Isobel,’’ he said gently, ‘‘I know you had a good time with the Jewetts today, but they’re a lot different than you. Their mother lets them run pretty wild, and I don’t want you to get into that habit. You can’t be staying out after dark, and traipsing off after school without changing your dress and eating around a fire like some savage Indian.’’

  ‘‘Why, the Indians aren’t savage! Have you read Hiawatha?’’

  ‘‘No, I haven’t, Isobel, but the point is—’’

  ‘‘Well, you should, then you’d know. It tells how they love the earth and the sky and everything around them. And I had so much fun with Rebecca and her sisters today. Everybody else in this town is as boring as whey!’’

  ‘‘Isobel, their mother is divorced.’’

  ‘‘Their mother is more fun than any mother I ever met! And what does that have to do with my being their friend?’’

  ‘‘It’s the way she lets them run and do whatever they please. If you start running with them you’ll pick up bad habits and get a bad reputation.’’

  She looked stunned. ‘‘Why, Father, I’m amazed at you. They’ve only been in town two days and you’re spreading rumors about them?’’

  ‘‘I’m not spreading rumors.’’

  ‘‘Yes, you are. And Mother said, Seek first, judge second, isn’t that what you always said?’’

  ‘‘Isobel, I’m only asking you to remember the manners you’ve always been taught, and the rules we’ve had in this house.’’

  ‘‘I will, Father.’’

  Twice she’d called him Father, which he took as a reprimand.

  ‘‘May I go to their house tomorrow then?’’

  He had no logical reason to refuse. ‘‘If you change your dress first and act like a lady while you�
�re there.’’

  ‘‘I will.’’

  ‘‘And you’ll ride home to supper with me.’’

  ‘‘I will.’’

  As he rose and said good night, Isobel looked up at him and tried to remember if he’d ever hugged her the way Mrs. Jewett hugged her girls. She’d done it when they came home from school, and several times during the incredible evening. She did it for no reason at all, sometimes only when she’d pass them in the yard. Once when Lydia was reading, Mrs. Jewett reached over and rubbed her head, and Lydia had gone on as if she didn’t even notice. I’d notice if my dad ever rubbed my head, Isobel thought. Or if he ever hugged me good night or hugged me good-bye when I left for school.

  Suddenly, drawing up her covers, Isobel felt the sharp stab of loneliness she carefully hid from her father whenever it came. The image of her mother was fading. She used to be able to recall her face so clearly, but now she could only do so when she looked at the photograph Daddy kept on the bureau in his bedroom.

  ‘‘Mother,’’ she whispered in the dark, ‘‘Mother.’’

  Sometimes she whispered it that way because she never got a chance to say it aloud the way other children did.

  Six

  There is no real spring in Maine. Roberta had heard it her whole life, and the following morning bore it out. The rare salubrious weather of the previous day had reverted to form and the skies had darkened to a thick woolly gray. The clouds, heavy with mist, skulked at sea level and dampened everything that moved through them. Including Roberta.

  As soon as the girls were off to school she set out for Boynton’s Motor Car Company, buttoned to the throat in a short wool jacket and toting her umbrella. Opening her front door, she found no Gabriel Farley here yet. The plank was slippery and she skated down it, then passed the lumpy black smudge where last night’s fire had been. Its sodden charcoal gave off an acrid smell, but the pleasant recollections of the previous evening put a bounce in her step. There were few things Roberta enjoyed more than lollygagging with her girls, and Isobel Farley had been a cheerful addition—a little shy, but an eager disciple.