That Camden Summer

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Her voice held a teasing note as she spoke again. ‘‘What is this new nuisance, transmission bands?’’

  ‘‘Something that can be adjusted pretty simply with a screwdriver. You’ll know when they need it because the pedals will go all the way to the floor.’’

  ‘‘And then will I crash into the next fixed object?’’

  He did laugh this time, at her nonchalance in asking such a question. ‘‘It won’t happen that suddenly. You’ll feel it for a while. The car will start running jerky.’’

  ‘‘I’ll remember that—running jerky, tighten transmission bands.’’ She watched him carefully for his reaction to her next remark. ‘‘I’m beginning to think a horse might have been much better after all.’’

  He turned away and started circling the car so she couldn’t see his face. ‘‘No, ma’am,’’ he said quietly, ‘‘I don’t think so.’’

  Seth returned just then and said, ‘‘There’s nothing like a Ford.’’ While she stood talking to him she remained clearly aware of Gabriel’s progress around the car, touching the braces that held up the leather top, reading the ceramic license plate, opening the far door, getting behind the driver’s wheel and testing its fit in his hands (unobtrusively checking the lever positions, which brought her a secret smile), getting back out, stooping to check the level of the crystals in the carbide container, opening the brass headlamps and closing them again, eventually coming full circle, back to her.

  Her amused smile was still showing when she asked, ‘‘Didn’t you believe me?’’

  ‘‘I . . . um. . . .’’ He rubbed the underside of his nose with a knuckle.

  ‘‘I told you I put them in the up position.’’

  ‘‘I was just looking ’er over. These jitneys are pretty when they’re brand spankin’ new.’’

  ‘‘Yes, they are.’’ She decided to let him off the hook.

  Seth said, ‘‘Well, I got a porch to finish,’’ and went off to do so, leaving Gabe with Roberta, studying the Ford.

  ‘‘You know,’’ he said, ‘‘you told me you couldn’t afford one. I’m just wondering . . . well, it’s none of my business actually.’’

  She grinned and told him, ‘‘I bribed Elfred.’’ His surprised eyes flashed her way. ‘‘Over that incident in the kitchen.’’

  ‘‘You didn’t.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I did. I told him I’d tell Grace if he didn’t lend me one hundred and fifty dollars.’’

  Amusement put crow’s-feet at the corners of Gabe’s eyes. ‘‘So old Elfred’s finally come up against one woman he can’t charm.’’

  ‘‘That’s right. And I would have done it, too, make no mistake about that!’’

  ‘‘I’m sure you would have.’’

  ‘‘He’s gotten by with his flirting for too long, and he’s making such a fool of my sister. I suspect people are laughing at her behind her back.’’

  She respected Gabe for not confirming her suspicion. Instead, his silence did so, bringing them through a muddled backlog of encounters that had shaped their acquaintanceship, starting with its unfortunate beginning when she had overheard his conversation with Elfred, to their standing in the drizzle beside the car he had taught her to drive.

  ‘‘By the way, I never said thank you for rescuing me from Elfred,’’ Roberta said quietly.

  ‘‘Oh . . .’’ He crossed his arms and nudged at the gravel with the toe of his Wellington.

  ‘‘I’m grateful you did.’’

  He looked at her squarely and said, ‘‘This is a mighty uncomfortable subject, Mrs. Jewett, after the remarks I made about you. You know, I’m real sorry about that.’’

  ‘‘Are you? Well, you’ve more than made up for it. You’re forgiven, Mr. Farley.’’

  He stood a moment, meeting her eyes, his face lighting with color. The spring mist put a gloss on his pink cheeks and painted the yard an Irish green. It put seed pearls on the nap of her worn wool jacket and a droop to the hair she’d twisted and gathered up earlier. It enriched the sound of Seth’s renewed hammering, which startled some sparrows and sent them up scolding.

  ‘‘Well, listen’’—Gabe cleared his throat—‘‘better get back to work, too. You let me know if there’s anything I can teach you about the car.’’

  ‘‘I will . . . thanks.’’

  They walked toward the house separately, as if uncomfortable with the turn their friendship had taken, she to climb the fresh steps for the first time and he to help his brother with the railing.

  It took some courage but that afternoon Roberta decided there was no sense in quailing: At five minutes to four she went out to crank the car so she could drive to school and surprise the girls.

  Gabriel stopped working to watch her, and when the engine fired and no bones were broken, he smiled and flagged his hand in approval.

  The girls were boisterous and gay. ‘‘May Isobel and our cousins ride, too? They were going to come over and work on a play.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know if all of you will fit in here.’’

  ‘‘Oh, we’ll sit double . . . won’t we, girls?’’

  So with seven energetic passengers Roberta drove away from school for the first time while the gawking children of everyone in town prepared to carry home the news to their parents. At her house they all tumbled out and scampered up the walk while Gabe witnessed once more what was becoming the normal routine at the Jewett home—a gaggle of girls creating bedlam at four o’clock every afternoon. The porch pleased them twice as much today with the railing all done and the roof shingled. Rebecca did another oration, this one from Shakespeare, then all the girls piled inside and back out again eating raw carrots, with a few slams on the piano keys en route.

  At five o’clock, when Gabe and Seth packed up their tools to leave, Isobel begged, ‘‘Please, Daddy, may I stay just a little longer? We’re having so much fun! And besides, I have to finish writing my part.’’

  He had knocked on the front door and stood talking to her from outside. Behind her he glimpsed the girls all clustered around the piano writing and laughing, then growing curiously quiet as they wrote again.

  ‘‘Well, all right,’’ he agreed. ‘‘But I want you home by six, and you’re eating supper with me.’’

  ‘‘Oh, absolutely!’’ she said with wide-eyed innocence.

  ‘‘And stay out of Mrs. Jewett’s way.’’

  ‘‘Oh, we’re not in her way. She’s helping us!’’

  ‘‘She is?’’

  ‘‘Aha.’’

  He tried to peer past her again but couldn’t see Roberta anywhere. ‘‘Well, just make sure you’re home by six.’’

  ‘‘I will. Thanks, Daddy.’’

  When Gabe got home his mother was in the kitchen leaving some supper on the stove and filling his cookie jar. She was medium height and stocky, with fleshy arms whose undersides waggled when she moved. Her hair was the streaked gray of a mussel shell, parted on the side and rolled up around the rim in back with a rat. The way she moved, it was easy to see how she got carpenters for sons.

  ‘‘Hi, Ma.’’

  ‘‘Brought you some cookies,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Thanks.’’

  ‘‘See the jar was empty.’’

  ‘‘Ayup,’’ he said as he hung up his cap and slicker.

  ‘‘Who’s that woman you’re interested in?’’ she asked, point-blank.

  ‘‘Nobody, Ma.’’

  ‘‘I hear she’s divorced.’’

  ‘‘Ma! What did I just say?’’

  ‘‘I hear you had her out driving your truck.’’

  Gabe rolled his eyes and went to the sink to wash his hands.

  ‘‘She’s been in town what—three days? Four?’’

  ‘‘Seth been blabbing?’’

  ‘‘Sure, Seth’s been blabbing, and everybody else in town. Is it true she bought her own car?’’

  ‘‘What’s wrong with that?’’

  ‘‘I’m not exactly sure. Depends
on what she’s planning to do with it.’’

  ‘‘She’s a public nurse,’’ he told her, drying his hands. ‘‘She needs it to do her job.’’

  ‘‘Oh, you know that already, do you?’’

  ‘‘I’m working for her, Ma. Of course I’d know. So would Seth!’’

  ‘‘I hear she’s got kids.’’

  ‘‘Three of them.’’

  ‘‘Isobel’s been hanging around with ’em and they’re wild as hooligans. That where she was after school today, running with them? I came with the cookies and she wasn’t here. Where is she now?’’

  ‘‘They’re putting on a play.’’

  ‘‘A play! Where?’’

  ‘‘Well, a bunch of them are working on it . . . over at Mrs. Jewett’s house.’’

  ‘‘Ah, so that’s her name now. I think I remember when she got married to some fellow she met when she moved away to Boston. Married him and never came back.’’

  Gabe decided to button his lip.

  ‘‘Well, I can see you’re going to clam up and not tell me a thing, so I’m just going to say one thing. Caroline’s been dead seven years and it’s time you started thinking about another wife. But this one, Gabriel . . . be careful.’’

  Gabe threw up his hands. ‘‘Ma, I’m fixing her porch for cripes’s sake!’’

  ‘‘And teaching her how to drive and sending Isobel over there to eat lobsters.’’

  ‘‘How did you find that out?’’

  ‘‘Gossip.’’

  He snorted and dropped onto a kitchen chair.

  ‘‘Well, don’t get that look on you like the rest of the world’s got a nose like an anteater. How do you think news gets around? There’s new party lines in this town, in case you forgot, and I got one of ’em.’’

  ‘‘Ma, look. I’m not marrying anybody. I’m not interested in anybody, and as far as Isobel goes, she and I are doing just fine. I appreciate your coming over like you do and baking us cookies and doing our laundry, but don’t go telling people I’m interested in Roberta Jewett, ’cause it’s just not true. I’m fixing her house and that’s all.’’

  Maude Farley seemed temporarily mollified. ‘‘Well, all right then . . . so long as it’s true.’’

  ‘‘It is. So . . .’’ He crossed his arms and relaxed. ‘‘What kind of cookies you bring?’’

  ‘‘Sour cream nut with maple frosting.’’

  ‘‘Do I get one, or you going to poke ’em all in the cookie jar and hide ’em?’’

  ‘‘You should eat your supper first. I brought you some meatballs.’’

  ‘‘Later. C’mon, c’mon . . .’’ He gestured impatiently for a cookie and she handed one over. He sat munching while she wiped up a few cookie crumbs and pushed a couple of things against the back of a tall free-standing cupboard with a built-in flour sifter.

  Finally he asked, ‘‘Ma, what do you know about Hiawatha?’’

  ‘‘Hiawatha—who’s he?’’

  ‘‘The Indian in the poem.’’

  ‘‘Poem!’’ She peered at him from beneath beetled brows. ‘‘You taken to reading poems these days?’’

  ‘‘No, the girls are.’’

  ‘‘The girls—you mean yours and Mrs. Jewett’s?’’

  ‘‘Well . . . yes.’’ He cleared his throat and sat up straighter.

  ‘‘Well, I don’t know anything about any Hiawatha. Listen, I changed your sheets, so I’m all done here.’’

  ‘‘Okay . . .’’ He rolled up off the chair. ‘‘Give you a ride home then.’’

  All the way there and back, then off and on for the rest of the evening, just like the evening before, he kept trying to remember those words Rebecca Jewett had spouted yesterday when she was standing on the porch with her arms thrown wide. Something about an Indian bow, and how it was like a man and a woman, and how neither one was much use without the other. What the hell was wrong with him lately? He wasn’t useless without a woman—far from it. He and Isobel had done pretty darned well on their own. Thing was, he had women on the brain too much lately. Oh, well, it was spring, and like he’d told his brother, this was the time of year Caroline had died, besides being a time when restlessness was natural.

  Still, whatever those words had been, they’d been pretty and they’d made him stop and think.

  Roberta loved having the girls around the house. They were terribly noisy and rambunctious, but their spirit brought vivacity and humor into her life. With the addition of Isobel, and now her three nieces, the clan had grown until she hadn’t enough chairs in the front room for them. They didn’t care. They sat on the beds upstairs or on the living room floor, or clustered around the piano or the kitchen table.

  They had decided to do a dramatization of Hiawatha instead of enacting the infamous sketch about Marcelyn’s one-eared great-great-grandfather and were choosing stanzas and writing them out and talking about costumes. Roberta, called upon often to answer questions or provide ideas for sources of feathers and costumes, was easily lured away from whatever she was doing. If one of her daughters called, ‘‘Mother! Come in here!’’ she went gladly and listened to their ideas and answered questions like ‘‘May we push the piano over there so it’ll be closer to the porch?’’ or ‘‘Listen to this! Does this sound like Indian music?’’ or ‘‘Do you think Hiawatha would work as an operetta?’’

  She learned a lot about the Farley household by listening to their chatter. Like all children getting to know one another, they asked questions, and Isobel answered, editing nothing. ‘‘There are a lot of old clothes at our house but my dad wouldn’t let us cut them up because they were my mother’s.’’

  ‘‘My dad hates going to school for programs. He probably wouldn’t come even if we did do it there.’’

  ‘‘On Sundays we eat at my grandma’s, but mostly I cook for my dad.’’

  ‘‘In the evenings? Oh, I don’t know. We do dishes and I study and if it’s summer he goes out and fools with Mother’s roses, and if it’s winter he reads his newspaper. Sometimes I have to help him clean the house.’’

  What Roberta pieced together was the picture of a very lonely young girl with a very boring existence who wasn’t allowed to do much except household chores.

  She began to notice Isobel’s overt response to any sign of affection. Once when Roberta absently touched Isobel’s hair while passing behind her, Isobel looked over her shoulder with an expression of such bald gratitude that Roberta hugged the girl farewell that night as she was leaving.

  Isobel hugged her back very hard, and her eyes lit up as she exclaimed, ‘‘Oh, Mrs. Jewett, I just love it at your house! It’s so much fun here.’’

  ‘‘Well, you’re welcome anytime, Isobel.’’

  Roberta tried to remember if she’d ever seen Gabriel hug his daughter, but she didn’t think so.

  The following morning the weather had lifted and Roberta opened the front door early while the girls were still asleep. She stepped out onto the porch in her nightgown and stretched, feeling very much alive and optimistic. It was going to be a splendid day! And oh, what a sky! Clouds of deep rose fanned up like the fin of a sailfish, edged in gilt, carrying yesterday’s gloom into the sunrise. The sea was tinted allover pink and through its surface the islands of Penobscot Bay seemed to be ascending as if they would lift completely free of the sea and become part of the pattern above. Below, in Camden Harbor, the rocky shoreline met the looking-glass water, and from it a snub-nosed little steamer headed out for somewhere, leaving behind a forest of reflected masts that lay as precise as real ones on the glassy surface. As she watched, those reflections were broken into shorter lengths by the slow-spreading wake from the steamer. Then from another mooring a fisherman pulled away in a double-ender, and as he cleared the other craft lying at anchor, Roberta made out his silhouette, standing in the boat as he pulled at the oars, like a Winslow Homer painting.

  This then was Camden. This, her home and her children’s home, perhaps for the rest of her days. An
d what would it bring? A happy place for the girls, it seemed already. Some strife with her family: This seemed sure. A new job, which she must see about, now that she had her motorcar. And Gabriel Farley . . . a friend or an annoyance?

  The thought of Farley was too perplexing, so she turned inside to prepare for the day.

  His brother didn’t come with him that morning, but Farley was out on the porch with his paintbrush before the girls left for school. Of course, they wanted Roberta to give them a ride in the new Ford, but when she declined, they clattered off, streaming greetings that drifted inside and perked up Roberta’s ears in the kitchen.

  ‘‘Hi, Mr. Farley!’’

  ‘‘Mornin’, Mr. Farley!’’

  ‘‘Hi, Mr. Farley—you painting today?’’

  She backed up a step and peered through the shotgun house out the front door, but wherever he was, he was not visible.

  She heard the deep tone of his voice, but not the words as he returned their greetings. She could see the front end of his truck behind her car, but enough traffic passed on the street that she hadn’t paid attention to the sound of his engine when he’d pulled up.

  She decided to get to work and forgo good mornings.

  The smell of his paint and turpentine, however, was a relentless reminder of his presence. Sometimes the faint thump of a ladder being moved would intrude upon her, and she questioned why she had not gone directly with a greeting as she would have to any other person.

  At midmorning she went out with her pocketbook in hand, wearing her new cream-colored duster over her dress, with her driving goggles looped over her arm. Farley was on the south end of the porch, painting the wall.

  ‘‘Well, good morning,’’ he said, turning with the paintbrush in his hand.

  ‘‘Good morning.’’

  ‘‘Putting the top down this morning, are you?’’

  ‘‘Yes, I’m off to the administrator’s office to get my assignments for next week.’’