That Camden Summer

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Roberta thought, My house might be messy but it’s cleaned as good as I have time for—and it’s certainly not infested! Who is he to criticize the way we keep things when it suits all four of us? I’m a nurse who goes out and teaches others about hygiene, for heaven’s sake! How dare he intimate that I don’t give my children proper care? I won’t have them living in some . . . some museum where nothing is touchable! They’ll have fun in their home, and if it’s a little bit messy, well, what will they remember most when they’re older? The mess or the fun? And if he doesn’t like the way I keep myself, to hell with him. Let him find some fluffy pink pea-brain who lives and breathes only to please him. She can have him!

  Gabriel thought, She’s got one hell of a big mouth for a woman who’s never even seen my house, or how Isobel and I get along together, or how we handle being without Caroline. And for her to think I don’t love my daughter—well, that’s just rubbish! The thought of Isobel growing up and leaving me scares me half to death! Why, this place is like a jail cell without her, and when she leaves for good I don’t know what I’ll do. So maybe I don’t fawn over my girl like Roberta does, but that’s a woman’s way. And maybe I make Isobel take her share of the responsibilities for keeping the place clean and neat, but that’s what good parents do; they don’t let their children run wild as squirrels! Roberta Jewett can raise her kids her way and I’ll raise mine my way, and we’ll see whose make a better impression on people around this town. And if I ever again have any dumb ideas about going over there and spooning with that woman, I hope somebody will knock my brains out for me!

  One night about a week after the clambake Isobel was waiting when Gabriel came home from the shop.

  ‘‘Daddy, guess what!’’ Her face was aglow with excitement. ‘‘We’ve been asked to put on Hiawatha for the whole school assembly!’’

  ‘‘That’s wonderful, Isobel.’’

  ‘‘By the principal herself!’’

  ‘‘Well, it’s a good little production. She should have asked you.’’

  ‘‘Mrs. Roberson and Miss Werm told her about it and said the student body should definitely have a chance to see it because it’s an American classic. And after hearing about it, Miss Abernathy said it would be just perfect as a lyceum program during the last week of school. So we’re going to do it, and I’m so excited! You’ll come, won’t you, Daddy?’’

  He began to say, But I’ve already seen it.

  Roberta’s admonition stopped him, flashing past like quicksilver. We say ‘I love you’ in a thousand ways. If you don’t know how, watch me.

  He found himself answering as she would.

  ‘‘Of course I’ll go. I wouldn’t miss it.’’

  His unexpected acquiescence widened Isobel’s eyes. ‘‘You wouldn’t?’’ Clearly she’d been prepared for excuses. ‘‘You mean it, Daddy? You really wouldn’t?’’

  He chuckled self-consciously, caught by surprise himself. ‘‘I just said I wouldn’t, didn’t I? If I said I’ll be there, I’ll be there.’’

  Overcome, Isobel flung her arms around him and hugged him hard. ‘‘Oh, Daddy, I’m so glad. I never thought you’d agree to see it twice. Thank you so much for saying yes!’’

  Suddenly it seemed as if Roberta was there, like some wide-winged guardian angel, standing over Isobel and looking out for her emotional well-being. When instinct told Gabe to draw back, the specter of Roberta ordered him: Don’t miss this chance. He curled his arms around Isobel and touched his cheek to her hair. He sensed her surprise: a moment of stillness during which his own heart kicked up a flurry and he wondered why it had taken him so long. They remained close while he felt some sentimental cog slipping into place. Then she drew back and looked up at him with a smile of such wondrous amazement he found his reward on the spot.

  The moment of closeness passed, bringing a rebound of shyness. Isobel colored and said, ‘‘Well . . . I have to go call Susan and Lydia and Rebecca. All right, Daddy?’’

  ‘‘All right,’’ he said as his hands slid off her shoulders.

  Watching her hurry away, he felt the afterglow lying deep within him making him into a more whole being than he’d been before. Such a simple thing—a hug, a kind word, a yes—but what complex reactions it evoked. Many years ago, when Isobel was an infant, he’d felt like this whenever he’d look down at her in her cradle, as if he were so full with life that one more drop of goodness would overflow him.

  It astonished Gabe how often he thought about that hug he and Isobel had shared, how warmed it made him feel, and how it touched off remembrances of Caroline. Perhaps Roberta had been right: He’d left the emotional nurturing to his wife, and when she died he hadn’t had the wherewithal to fill her shoes in that department. But had he actually resented Isobel’s intrusion into his grief?

  No . . . no, that was a preposterous accusation, one that still hurt. Why, he loved his daughter—wasn’t this strong reaction the living proof?—and for Roberta to accuse him of resenting her was an emotional bruise that Gabe wouldn’t soon forget.

  The school performance of Hiawatha was held at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in the last week of May. Gabriel had worked all morning in the shop and went home at one o’clock to change clothes and freshen up, shave and comb his hair.

  Roberta was working out on the other side of Bald Mountain, and when she headed in on Barnstown Road she had little time to think of clothes and combs.

  He arrived with ten minutes to spare.

  She arrived ten minutes late.

  He sat in the rear, alone.

  She sat in the third row next to her sister and mother.

  He watched, still as a sleeping gull.

  She moved her mouth along with the words.

  The girls put on a splendid performance and, when it was over, were rousingly applauded. Miss Abernathy thanked and praised them, and after a smattering of final applause, the audience rose and shuffled out of the school auditorium.

  Gabriel went straight outside.

  Roberta headed straight for the stage steps where she met the cast coming down. The girls were talkative, excited, pleased with themselves, accepting many congratulations and being swarmed by the crowd, which moved toward the exit in a shifting mass.

  Roberta managed to hug her own three, and Grace’s girls, and finally, Isobel, who squeezed a little harder and longer than the others.

  ‘‘Mrs. Jewett . . . gosh, it’s good to see you again.’’

  ‘‘I’m so proud of you girls! You all did a splendid job!’’

  ‘‘We really did, didn’t we?’’

  ‘‘Everybody’s saying so.’’

  They drew apart, drank each other in and indulged in another hug that brought thickness to their throats.

  ‘‘I’ve missed you around the house.’’

  ‘‘I’ve missed coming over. But Daddy wants me to stay home more.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I know he does. But you’re always welcome, you know that, don’t you?’’

  ‘‘Yes . . . I know.’’

  Drawing apart, the girl and the woman saw affection in each other’s eyes, and perhaps some withheld tears.

  Gabriel was waiting outside in the sun when Roberta came out with one arm around Susan, the other around Isobel, surrounded by young people and trailed by her mother and sister. He stood out in the front school yard beside a thirty-ton hunk of stone called the Conway Boulder, which commemorated Camden’s war dead. As she came down the schoolhouse steps, their gazes collided, bringing a mix of good memories and bad. If their hearts sent up faint flutters, neither of them revealed it. He stood as unmoving as the boulder itself, and she kept herself in the midst of her entourage. She might have turned aside and taken a different route to her motorcar, but the young people buffeted her along and she could see no graceful way to veer off. As the group moved toward Gabe, Isobel broke free and rushed forward to hug him.

  ‘‘Daddy.’’ She looked up into his face, radiant with triumph. ‘‘Everyone is gettin
g together at the Jewetts’ for lemonade. May I go, please?’’

  Gabe looked up at Roberta, back down at Isobel. He simply couldn’t find the heart to refuse her.

  ‘‘All right. Home by supper though, huh?’’

  ‘‘I promise.’’

  As she scampered off, he watched her rejoin the group.

  Roberta observed the exchange with some surprise as Gabe heartily returned Isobel’s embrace. When he raised his head their eyes met once more, but coolness emanated from them both. The gravity was there, undeniable—a tug on the heart and the will—but pride made its demands, and now was not the time, not in the hubbub of early dismissal with excited first- and second-graders scuttling past, and her mother and sister watching. Their daughters knew how things stood between them, too, and couldn’t help but be curious.

  So they exchanged no smiles, only a curt nod of his head and an answering one from her before she turned away aloofly and moved on.

  Grace clasped Roberta’s elbow and hissed in her ear, ‘‘That’s the first time I’ve seen Gabe Farley at one of these things.’’

  Myra, sour-faced, said, ‘‘You aren’t seeing him anymore, are you, Roberta?’’

  She repressed a caustic reply and answered dutifully, ‘‘No, Mother.’’

  As the group moved away, Gabe found his eyes following the X of apron straps on Roberta’s back. Her white nurse’s cap caught the sun like snow on a mountaintop. Her mahogany hair was rolled up in a coil that had been neat this morning but was tattered now. A stab of loneliness caught him along with a mental image of her house. He wished he could follow her home, sit on her front porch and listen to the young people talk and laugh, visit with Roberta and sip a cool drink.

  They reached her car and all the kids piled in— must’ve been close to a dozen of them, but Roberta didn’t care. She bussed her sister and mother on their cheeks, and just as she was about to crank the engine Elfred appeared and offered to do it for her. Gabe wasn’t sure where Elfred had been: not in the auditorium, he was sure. Apparently he’d come by to collect his wife and mother-in-law and give them a ride home. At any rate, he detoured long enough to offer his usefulness to Roberta, who declined (with pointed distaste) and cranked the car herself. Against his will, Gabriel smiled at her spunkiness. As she walked around and opened the driver’s door, he thought she paused a second to glance over at him. But someone walked between them and cut off his line of vision, and when it cleared, the car was rolling away.

  Two things happened during the lemonade session that afternoon that remained on Roberta’s mind later. Isobel told her, ‘‘My dad says he’s going to hire a woman to do our laundry and take care of the house . . . at last.’’ And Rebecca—fresh from neatening her hair and applying a faint tinge of lip rouge—came out to the porch and sat apart from the other girls, talking and laughing with the boy who gave them the fish he’d been cleaning that day on the rocks. His name was Ethan Ogier and she asked permission to leave the gathering and walk with him uptown to have an ice-cream soda at the drugstore.

  The school year ended on Memorial Day, and summer was officially launched with a grand parade and picnic at which Roberta once again fended off advances from Elfred when Grace and Myra were not looking. He cornered her at her car where she’d gone to get a blanket. His attack was more audacious this time, and she ended up slapping him hard enough to leave a red welt on his cheek before he finally backed off and returned to Grace, flinging a threat over his shoulder. ‘‘I’ll get you yet, you little slut. Don’t think I won’t. You’re giving plenty of it to Farley—you can spare a little for me!’’ He never returned to the picnic after that, and though Roberta wondered how he’d explain the bruise, she never asked, nor did Grace mention it. It would be fifty below zero in July before Grace would admit she was married to the most notorious philanderer in Knox County. Grace was easily the most deluded person Roberta had ever known.

  June arrived, bringing hot days to the little seaside town of Camden, spilling thick green down the mountainside, and silvering Penobscot Bay. Wild daisies tripped in a slanting path down the foothills to the scalloped shore. Bracken ferns paid homage at the feet of white birches. All the berries—blue, straw and choke— bloomed in sheltered patches, while columbine waved, wild and sweet, in the soft summer breeze.

  Summer changed the harbor and the busy quay around it. Racks of salt codfish appeared near the wharfs, redolent as they dried in the sun. The fishing boats went out earlier and returned later. The summer people came, filling the cove with sails and occupying the cottages out along Dillingham’s Point and down by Hosmer Pond. At Laite’s Public Beach swimmers donned their woolen bathing outfits and took to the water by the dozens. The gang from Roberta Jewett’s front porch swam there, too, and spent time rowing and fishing off Negro Island, and taking picnics up on Mount Battie where the cooler breezes gave relief from the mugginess at water level.

  Isobel was often with them, for Gabe had hired a thirty-six-year-old widow named Elise Plowman to do his housekeeping, laundry and some light cooking. His mother remained estranged and his daughter seemed happier than she’d ever been as she once again took up porch sitting and mountaintop exploring with the Jewett crowd. Though Roberta’s house became the official summer hangout for an even larger number of both boys and girls, Rebecca did less with her sisters and more with Ethan Ogier.

  As summer advanced, Roberta grew to love her work more and more. It took her from county line to county line, and kept her out some days till nearly dark. The newly formed field of public nursing, legitimized by the presence of the Red Cross in the continuing war in Europe, gave its nurses the ‘‘freedom to initiate’’ and the ‘‘mandate to educate,’’ so she did. As she crisscrossed the countryside, she began searching out homes that had diapers on the line and stopping at these to check on the welfare of both the babies and their mothers. She gave lessons on infant care, and learned through the county grapevine who was expecting, then called at those homes to give prenatal advice and assign midwives. She initiated a program aimed at the prevention of typhoid fever and other communicable diseases arising from bad sanitation and ignorance. She began an anti-tuberculosis crusade with the help of printed materials supplied by the state and implemented by examination and supervision of the susceptible cases. She gave eye and ear examinations and visited the sick who were newly released from the hospital, and the blind who did not know help existed for them.

  She learned more about running a Model T motorcar than she cared to: how to lift the floorboards, remove the cover of the transmission box and adjust the transmission bands with a screwdriver; how to put rubber patching compound on a cut tire, wrap it with a towel and bind it with wire to go an extra fifty miles; how to back up the steepest hills when the gas level was low, so the gravity feed wouldn’t stall the engine. She even learned how to start the car with the key instead of the crank—tuning her ear to that particular buzz in the ignition coils that said there was gas in the cylinder and the pistons happened to be in the right position, though she never knew (if the key start managed to work) whether the Tin Lizzie would take off forward or backward.

  On the last day of June she had been sent out to do a checkup on a six-week-old infant and its mother, and had climbed some of the worst roads Knox County had to offer. It was a hot, hazy day. From up on Howe Hill, Penobscot Bay appeared to be simmering. Pearly haze hung over it, dulling the water surface along with a layer of filmy clouds that hung with desultory shiftlessness around a murky sun. The wooden steering wheel felt greasy beneath Roberta’s hands as she hurtled down the washed-out roadbed. She hit a rock and bounced high and hard . . . and when she landed, the engine stopped running. She was nosing along a sharp downgrade and kept coasting till she approached the intersection of Hope Road, where she bumped to a halt with the car pitched over sharply in the weeds and rocks of the right-hand verge.

  ‘‘Blasted machine!’’ She thumped the steering wheel and struggled to open the door. With gravity worki
ng against her, it took a hard shove before it budged and she was standing on the gravel road with her hands on her hips, disgusted. She looked around: a T in the road, dust settling behind her, brown-eyed Susans and skunk cabbage bobbing in the ditch, grasshoppers jumping and munching among the the quack grass and dandelions around the car, wild mustard blooming tiredly in the dry-wash ditch and the incessant note of the katydids hidden in the weeds and grasses.

  The clouds shifted away from the sun and the heat pelted down, baking the top of her head while she wondered what to check first. Fan belt? Not likely, since the radiator wasn’t hissing. But she folded back the hood anyway and peered inside. The heat from the engine was horrendous, but the fan belt was in place and things looked the way she remembered. She jiggled the spark plug wires, checked the magneto terminal. They looked okay. So it could be the transmission bands, but even if they needed adjustment, it shouldn’t have stopped the engine this way. As she was removing the front seat to check them she thought about checking the gas. She hauled the seat out and leaned it against the running board, then removed the gas cap from the hole between the floorboards. Using the wooden dipstick, she found her problem—bone dry. Hauling the green-and-white Valvoline gas can out of the backseat, she heard an oncoming engine; she straightened and waited. A black touring car appeared at the crest of the hill from the east and slowed as it rolled down a slight decline and approached her. Even before he pulled to a stop she recognized Elfred.