A Summer Love Affair, page 5
Petra smiled. “And to get a break from the kids?”
“A bit of that, yes. Though I did promise Mom I’d bring Beth the next time I visited. But as you can see, I failed to keep that promise. Beth has the sniffles.”
“What about Ralph?” Petra asked, leading them to the kitchen.
“What about him?” Cam went to the fridge and began to take out the makings of an early lunch.
“I mean, does he mind you staying here overnight? Doesn’t that put more of a burden on him? I mean, I know you have day care and a sitter, but still.” Petra was truly curious; she didn’t mean her questions as a rebuke.
Cam didn’t reply at once, continuing to gather bits from the fridge and take them to the counter. When she did finally speak, her tone was strangely flat. “Ralph probably doesn’t even notice I’m not there.”
Petra laughed. “Cam, come on,” she said. “I’m sure that’s not true. Look, what are you not telling me?”
Again, Cam took time in replying. Finally, she looked up from the sandwich she had just assembled and sighed. “It’s just that lately, over the past three or four months, Ralph’s been—different.”
“What do you mean, different?” Petra pressed. She felt worried now. Her sister was not an alarmist. “Distracted? Worried? Depressed?”
“No, none of that.” Cam sighed and, for a moment, put her hands over her eyes. “Look, the thing is, gosh this is embarrassing, Ralph seems to have developed a crush on his old girlfriend, Lily.”
Petra frowned. “Lily? The Lily I’ve met a few times? The one with the collection of funky glasses? The one who works in fashion?”
“Yes. That’s the one. She and Ralph dated for about a year before she ended things. A few months later Ralph met me. Just about the time we were getting married—that was almost two years later—we ran into Lily in the Old Port in Portland one afternoon. We got chatting, and I liked her immediately. I’m not really sure how it happened, but Lily became a friend to both of us. I never for one minute doubted her intentions, or Ralph’s, in becoming friends.”
“Until now? Wait a minute,” Petra said. “Where does Lily stand in this? I mean, do you think she’s fallen in love again with Ralph?”
“No. As far as I can tell, this is all going on in Ralph’s head.”
“But how do you really know what Ralph is thinking or feeling?” Petra asked. “You couldn’t be imagining things, could you?”
“No. You know how transparent Ralph is. He can’t hide his feelings, and he can’t even tell a white lie. Besides, here’s an example of what’s been going on. About a month ago Lily was in Portland for a meeting with some client or other and after that she came by the house to deliver a book she’d promised to loan me. I guess Ralph didn’t know she was coming, but whether he knew or not, he was visibly agitated. He hovered around the two of us in the kitchen, laughing too loudly at anything that struck him as amusing in our conversation, until finally I couldn’t take it and asked him to please go outside and clean the grill like he’d promised to do.” Cam shook her head. “He didn’t look happy about being dismissed. When he got almost to the doors—you know the glass sliding doors leading out to the backyard—he turned around to look at us, or rather at Lily, and when he turned back he walked right into the glass. He wasn’t hurt, I could see that right away, but honestly, it was like watching a love-struck fourteen-year-old boy in the same room as his crush.”
“Oh,” Petra said. “That’s not cool. I mean, it would be laughable if it weren’t so upsetting.”
“Not to mention pathetic.” Cam sighed. “Lily said nothing about what had happened; it was almost as if she wasn’t even aware that Ralph had been there. We chatted for another few minutes and then she left. Look, even if Ralph never sleeps with Lily again, even if he never kisses her or takes her hand, his being in love with her while he’s married to me is wrong.”
“I’m sure you’re the one Ralph is in love with,” Petra said with the sincere intention of consoling her sister. But did she believe her words? Yes, Petra decided. She did. She knew Ralph. She liked him. At least, she had until now. Now, she just didn’t know.
“How can you be sure?” Cam asked. “I believe that Ralph loves me, but that’s not the same as his being in love with me.”
“Let’s sit down,” Petra said. “Eat your lunch. I’ll make us some tea.” She busied herself with filling the teakettle and putting it on to boil, with fetching tea bags and cups, milk and sugar. The domestic activity helped, she hoped, to hide the fact from her sister that she felt totally out of her depth. What did she know about relationships? Her own experience was woefully thin and unremarkable. Her longest relationship had lasted only five months, and she had been the one to end it for reasons that were still murky to her. There had been nothing wrong with Scott. He was a nice guy, smart, funny, cute. But none of that had been enough. Was that it? She just hadn’t been in love with Scott. That was reason enough to end a relationship, wasn’t it? Maybe the best reason.
Petra joined her sister bearing two cups of steaming hot tea. “Why does tea make so many people feel better? Is it really soothing or have we just convinced ourselves that it is? And why?”
Cam smiled. “It’s no surprise you studied philosophy in college.”
“I think about all sorts of things all the time, but I never seem to make any discoveries or come to any conclusions.” Petra shrugged. “Sometimes I think my studies actually might have gotten in the way of my—”
The landline rang then, and Cam got up to answer it. “It’s Jess,” she told Petra. “What’s up? No, Mom’s not here. Look, let me put you on speaker so that Petra can hear you. Everything okay?”
“Everything is more than okay.” Jess laughed. “We got the funding! Raven, my partner, came through like the powerhouse she is, and we sign the papers in two weeks, maybe three.”
“Congratulations,” Cam said. “I know you’ve worked hard to get to this point.”
“Tell me about it!”
“That’s great news,” Petra said. “But why do you have to wait so long to sign the contract?”
“It’s frustrating,” Jess admitted, “but Raven assured me that’s how business works, slowly at best. She says there’s nothing to worry about. Anyway, be sure to tell Mom the minute she gets in. I know she worries about this venture of mine, leaving the security of a job with a paycheck to run my own business.”
“We will,” Cam promised. “And congratulations again.”
Cam ended the call. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think Jess is a breed apart from you and me. Like she just showed up on the doorstep one day wrapped in swaddling clothes with a note that said: ‘Take me in. Now.’”
“I know what you mean,” Petra said.
“She’s always so sure of things, always in control. I can’t imagine her winding up in my situation, suspecting her husband of being in love with another woman and not having the courage to confront him about it.”
Before Petra could reply to this—and she wasn’t sure what exactly to say—Cam hurried on.
“Look, keep what I’ve told you about Ralph to yourself, okay?” she asked. “I swore I wasn’t going to say anything to anyone, but I guess I just couldn’t keep it all inside.”
Petra nodded. “Of course, I won’t say anything. Don’t worry.”
Cam took her overnight bag up to her room while Petra cleared away the dirty dishes. She felt bothered by what her sister had told her. She had always thought of Cam’s marriage as unassailable, certainly strong enough to make the idea of an affair impossible, even laughable. But that was naïve thinking. Any relationship was potentially vulnerable to damage, from within or from without. Everyone knew that or should know it.
And no matter what Cam thought of Jess’s superhuman qualities, Jess, too, was vulnerable to life’s trials and tribulations. Petra knew there would come a day when Jess would need her family’s support, whether she wanted it or not.
That day would come for everyone.
Chapter 9
Elizabeth had never been interested in formal exercise, by which she meant lifting weights and running on treadmills and doing hundreds of squat thrusts, whatever they were. So far, in her adult life, daily activity had kept her fit. She walked everywhere she could walk and took stairs instead of elevators when there was an option. She carried bags of groceries to and from the car. She had only given up playing tennis the year before, when the enjoyment had taken second place to sore muscles. And she routinely and rigorously cleaned every inch of her house.
Housework was exercise. That was Elizabeth’s story and she was sticking to it. And it could be dangerous. There had been the time many years before when she had been dusting the baseboards in the living room and had crashed her head into the sharp end of a shelf as she stood back up. Luckily, there had been no concussion, but the pain had been awful. And bending wasn’t great for a middle-aged—or old—back. And reaching could be hazardous, too. Still, Elizabeth insisted on doing her own housework, even now when she could afford to hire professional help for the big chores. Hiring a housekeeping service seemed to Elizabeth like the first step in admitting to being defeated by old age.
One day. But not now.
At the moment, alone after Cam had left early that morning to head back home and Petra had gone wherever she had gone, Elizabeth was vacuuming the rug in the den, the loud drone of the machine blocking out the world and allowing her to think about the past few days. For one thing, why had Cam returned to Eliot’s Corner so quickly after her visit earlier in the week? And without Beth. Well, if Beth really did have the sniffles, and Cam had no reason to lie about that, then Elizabeth supposed the best place for the little girl was at home.
For another thing, Petra’s questions about her mother’s wedding dress had gotten her wondering. In all honesty, Elizabeth wasn’t entirely sure the dress was still in the attic. She was sure she hadn’t thrown it out or given it away, but as for any firm idea of what exactly she had done with it when she and Hugh had moved into this house back when Cam was an infant, well, she had none. Things could go missing over time, even things that had once been important, such as wedding dresses and diplomas and cards celebrating milestone birthdays. Even pieces of jewelry inherited from a great-aunt or a grandmother could be inexplicably lost, like the tiny Victorian-era gold and amethyst ring Elizabeth had been given on her twelfth birthday by an elderly relative she now could barely recall. The ring had been in the Primer family for generations, and Elizabeth had kept it safely in her little jewelry box for years and years, through high school and college, only to realize about the time of her wedding to Hugh that it was no longer in the box. What had happened to the heirloom? Could it have been stolen? Had she worn it to a party and lost it there, failing to notice its absence when she snuck back into the house in the small hours of the morning? Elizabeth had racked her brain for an answer but had never found one.
Elizabeth turned off the vacuum, picked up the dust cloth, and went over to the built-in bookcases covering one wall of the den. She liked the spines of the books to be even with one another, just about at the edge of the shelves. Immediately she noted that one of the coffee table books was out of step with its neighbors; Petra, not much concerned with order and symmetry, must have been browsing. Italian Vistas was the book’s title; for the life of her, Elizabeth couldn’t remember where or when she had gotten the volume.
That got her wondering, too. How was it that she had never traveled out of the country? Well, other than to Canada a few times with Hugh who had loved to ski and ice skate and had even tried snowboarding once or twice before reluctantly admitting he didn’t have what it took. She had wanted to visit France and Spain and Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—the four little puppy dogs without their tails—maybe even Russia. But Hugh hadn’t shared her desire, and even though she might have taken a week or two-week vacation with one of her female colleagues, she had never seriously considered the idea. Hugh wouldn’t have protested, much anyway, but . . .
Without the dulling roar of the vacuum, Elizabeth was now able to hear the music streaming from her laptop. Suddenly, she caught her breath. The opening bars of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” sounded through the den. Her eyes began to water, and she reached for the edge of the bookshelf for support.
The song had always made her cry, and clearly, though she hadn’t heard it in years, it still had a hold on her. She had never tried to discover what exactly it was about the song that moved her so deeply—the way Michael Stipe delivered the lyrics, the words themselves, the melody . . . For Elizabeth, all combined to form a perfect evocation of loss, regret, inevitable change. Whether or not that was the songwriter’s intent, she didn’t know. She guessed it didn’t really matter.
What did matter was that the song was so strongly associated with everything that had happened to Elizabeth Quirk in the summer of 1991. That wonderful, terrible summer.
Just a dream. Just a dream.
When the song had faded into silence, Elizabeth crossed the room and slumped onto the cushiony leather sofa Hugh had chosen for the room not long after their wedding. Every room in this house held something of Hugh’s choosing, something Hugh had enjoyed, something he had held, used, broken, or repaired. Maybe she should have gotten rid of the old furnishings, streamlined the accumulation of knick-knacks, sold the house and moved into a far smaller place that might come to feel like hers alone. Maybe it would be easier to ignore the past that way, in an environment that didn’t proclaim the existence of a relationship that while long-lasting had endured a moment of intense challenge and suffering.
The moment on the stairs the other day . . . She had had a sense of Time standing still for a moment, poised before going on....
Elizabeth put her hands over her eyes and sighed heavily. It was too late now to try to ignore any of the past, good or bad, beautiful or dreadful.
Wonderful or terrible or both.
Chapter 10
Petra sighed. She felt momentarily overwhelmed. Why had her mother kept so much stuff? Elizabeth was an orderly person, a good housekeeper, someone who regularly cleaned out cupboards and closets. Well, that was the thing about attics and basements. Out of sight, out of mind. You could put off making a decision whether to keep or to toss something by stowing it away for consideration another day. Of course, for someone like Petra, this tendency people had of putting off today what they could do tomorrow could prove a goldmine. Okay, it hadn’t yet; most of her profit came from reselling items she had bought from other established vintage sources. In fact, the most valuable item she had found in her rummages through the attics of friends and neighbors had been an iron doorstop in the shape of a cat with an arched back. But one day her searches might prove to be worth more than sixty dollars.
The air in the attic was warm and still. Petra wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and realized—too late—that she should have asked her mother if there was a fan she could borrow for her treasure hunt. Next time—if there was a next time—she would try to remember.
The next box Petra opened, coughing at the dust that rose in the process, contained a jumble of books. At first glance, Petra saw nothing of particular interest. But as she rummaged past the first layer she discovered a book that had enchanted her as a child. It was a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans published by the Golden Press way back in 1968. She had often wondered where this book had gotten to; she remembered being convinced that if she just stared hard and long enough at the puppets on the 3-D cover, Elisa and one of her swan brothers would step out of their strange prison and speak to her. This was definitely a treasure to bring into the present. It might well be worth a fair amount of money, but this was an item Petra knew she would not put up for sale.
Maybe that was why she earned so little money. She was always falling in love with her finds!
She was just about to turn away from the box when a sliver of red caught her attention. She moved aside Volume 3 of a set of encyclopedias from the 1950s—where had that come from?—and a paperback thesaurus sans cover, to reveal a small, red leather notebook, possibly a diary or a journal. Carefully, she opened the front cover and saw on the first page, in her mother’s handwriting, the dates 1991-92. Quickly, she closed the little book. Whatever the book contained, it belonged to her mother, not to her.
Petra placed both the copy of The Wild Swans and her mother’s notebook in the canvas L. L. Bean bag she had brought to the attic in order to transport anything interesting she found down to the main part of the house.
She turned to another dusty cardboard box that proved full of old toys. A piano tiny enough for a toddler to bang away on. An old-fashioned set of grooved wooden building blocks that might have once been played with by one of her parents. A plastic yo-yo missing its string.
“Bunny!” she cried.
Unlike Cam, Petra had preferred stuffed toys to dolls; unlike Jess, she had had no interest in sports. Until she was in her teens, Cam’s bed had been decorated with dolls of all description. Before she was five, Jess had been proficient at riding a bike, jumping rope, and roller-skating. Petra, of course, had no memory of the day her mother had discovered that her father had been teaching his four-year-old to roller-skate, but she had heard often enough the story of the massive showdown that had taken place. Elizabeth had thought roller-skating too dangerous for a four-year-old. Hugh disagreed. His opinion won out, though he did promise that from that point on, Jess would always wear a helmet, and knee and elbow pads.
Petra held her childhood companion carefully. Bunny had once been hugely fluffy and pink—Petra had seen the pictures to prove it—but had long ago lost her fur and most of her vibrant color, so that now she was a sorry version of her former self but no less remembered and loved.
But strolling down memory lane wasn’t Petra’s purpose. Finding vintage stuff that she could sell via Past Perfect was the goal of the moment. Petra gently laid Bunny aside and turned to the task at hand. She worked for over an hour, pulling old, no-longer-sticky tape off cardboard boxes and most often finding that the contents of these boxes were not in the greatest shape or of any resale importance. A cheap photo frame whose glass was cracked from top to bottom. Who would want that? One roller skate, the kind with leather ankle straps, the kind that required a key for tightening the toe clamps. That might have once belonged to her mother or her father and been kept for sentimental reasons, but without its mate it was worthless in terms of profit.
