Summer Roommates, page 6
Amanda had been engaged once, when she was twenty-five. The engagement ended when she discovered that Sam had cheated on her with a mutual friend. Once she had gotten past the first flush of anger and humiliation, Amanda had moved on without a backward glance. Sam and Sue had gone on to marry, and Amanda had heard through the grapevine that they were still together. She wasn’t happy for Sam and Sue. Why should she be? Neither did she wish them harm. They just didn’t matter.
Then, in her early thirties, there had been Jerry. They had met at a party given by one of Amanda’s colleagues at the school where she was teaching at the time. He was somebody’s cousin, tagging along for something to do. Amanda and Jerry had hit it off. They exchanged numbers, began to date, and quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm.
When they had been living together for four years, Jerry’s company offered him a six-month gig in Los Angeles. It was something he had been hoping for; he had always been open about that.
Jerry had asked Amanda to go with him. That wasn’t quite right. He had expected Amanda to quit her job to go with him. He would take care of them. He would be making big money, after all, and if all went well, the job might turn out to be permanent. Even if the job didn’t last longer than six months, maybe they could stay on in the “city of angels.” They were young. Why not?
Amanda could think of a million reasons why not; leading the list was the fact that she really didn’t love Jerry. Poor Jerry was shocked when she told him that, while she was happy for him, she had no interest in moving to California, and, since long-distance relationships usually didn’t work, there was no reason for them not to end their relationship right then. He could start his life in Los Angeles with a clean slate.
Jerry had pointed out—a bit angrily—that they had talked about getting married. He was right; they had talked, vaguely, about getting married. Why in God’s name was Amanda suggesting they break up?
Things got more complicated as Jerry grew more upset. He said he would turn down the promotion, stay in Boston, because Amanda meant more to him than his career. The last thing Amanda wanted was anyone making such a ridiculous sacrifice for her. She feared that if she allowed him to make such a sacrifice she would owe him marriage, and she didn’t want to marry Jerry.
In the end, because Jerry was so genuinely upset and Amanda not an entirely unfeeling person, she agreed to keep the relationship going for the initial six months of the gig. They would reconsider things when the six months were up. It was postponing the inevitable, Amanda knew that, but it was a way to stop the uncomfortable conversations. Jerry wasn’t thrilled, but he accepted the compromise.
At the end of the six months, having earned the full-time gig, Jerry came back east to fetch Amanda and the rest of his belongings. That was how Amanda felt about it. That Jerry considered her one of his belongings.
Now, there could be no more stalling.
I don’t love you. I won’t uproot my life for you. That was the truth. But Amanda couldn’t quite come out and say it. She was a coward. She had always hated confrontations.
Jerry pressed for answers she couldn’t give—answers she didn’t know how to give—and finally, angry, confused, and wounded, he had washed his hands of her. Amanda stayed with her parents for a few days in order to give Jerry time alone to clear his belongings out of their apartment. Amanda told her parents only that things hadn’t worked out. They had asked no questions.
She hadn’t felt even a sliver of regret, but neither had she felt triumphant. Freed, released? Yes. But not happy.
Now, at the age of fifty-six, Amanda could barely remember the relationship itself, only the messy end. Should she care about what had happened to Jerry in the years since she had last seen him? She had never been tempted to Google him, see if he was still with his company, if he had married, if he had had children. At moments, she couldn’t even recall his last name. Connell or McConnell? No, it was Connelly.
A couple was coming toward Amanda, from a bit further up the beach. She knew they were a couple because they were holding hands. She felt herself frowning. She had never been able to hold hands with anyone and walk at the same time. Her gait was unique; it just didn’t match with that of anyone else, and she was unwilling to alter it.
Both members of the couple smiled at her as they passed. Amanda nodded.
Her next relationship had taken place when she was in her early forties. She hadn’t bothered to tell her parents about Marc. It might only have gotten their hopes up. Maybe their single daughter wouldn’t be single forever. That sort of thing.
Marc, who was separated from his wife at the time of his relationship with Amanda, had kept his own apartment. Though he never talked about plans for a divorce, it hadn’t bothered Amanda, nor had the possibility that Marc might still be sleeping with his not-quite-ex. After all, she had no intention of marrying Marc. And she had never promised to be faithful to him, though in fact she had been. Juggling multiple partners wasn’t Amanda’s cup of tea. It seemed an awful lot of work. She just couldn’t be bothered.
The relationship, lasting about nine months, had just sort of petered out. In the end, Amanda and Marc had agreed to be friends. In fact, they never saw each other after that walk in the park on a spring evening. Not a bad way for things to end. Neat and clean.
Suddenly, Amanda came to a halt. Her breathing had become painful. She leaned forward and put her hands on her knees. After a moment or two, she straightened and turned to walk back to the parking lot.
She hadn’t spent such a long time reviewing her romantic life—well, ever. Had it been worth it? Or had it been a waste of the afternoon?
Amanda, quickening her pace, realized that she couldn’t really say.
Chapter 13
Bending over was not easy, nor was kneeling for any length of time, in spite of the kneepads Sandra wore whenever she was working in the front or the back garden. It was true that she could afford a gardening service for simple tasks like the one she was finishing now—she hired one for the large jobs, like raking up the leaves in late autumn (she refused to allow a noisy leaf blower)—but she was determined to keep up with daily gardening tasks for as long as she possibly could.
Sandra stood slowly and with a groan. She made her way up the stairs to the porch where she sank gratefully into one of the comfortable padded chairs and removed her gardening gloves and the kneepads. Later, she would return the gloves, kneepads, and gardening implements to their proper place in the shed.
Emma had been a keen gardener. For several years in a row she had won or placed in Yorktide’s Summer Garden Spectacle. Sandra recalled her friend’s ever so slightly smug smile as she stood on the makeshift podium to accept yet another engraved plaque. When it came to her gardening skills, Emma didn’t do humility.
That morning, Sandra had called Emma’s daughter for an update, though she knew that any news was likely to be of the negative sort. Millie hadn’t answered, so Sandra had left a message on her voice mail.
When Emma had first gone into the nursing home, Sandra had hoped that Emma would be able to make a friend there, someone with whom she could chat in her lucid moments. But Emma hadn’t made a friend. Now, she seemed to be beyond the conscious need for other people. Surely, some people in care facilities must be able to connect with one another in meaningful ways, Sandra thought. Otherwise, loneliness would be rampant in those places. Maybe it was.
And maybe her idea of creating a genuinely humane and nurturing communal living situation, no matter the physical or mental health of the residents, was all just pie in the sky, like Marcia Livingston, the real estate agent, had declared that it was. After all, it couldn’t be easy living day after day with others who weren’t family or friends. You couldn’t compel compliance to a system without a legal contract. Even prior, long-term friendships could be strained by living together. What about exit strategies? What if one of the members of the household decided to leave or suddenly died; how would that affect the others financially? How would they choose a replacement member for their community?
Certainly, advanced dementia couldn’t be handled in the sort of community Sandra had been thinking about. That was another big question: How did you legislate regarding illnesses that were not pre-existing, and how could you declare some pre-existing illnesses as “not allowed” while accepting other illnesses? What if a longtime member of the group developed dementia, how could you possibly tell her to leave, even if the best thing for her was to go into a care facility?
There was just so much to consider! One thing was for sure, there was nothing romantic about constructing a successful living community. How many of the communities that had been hatched actually succeeded in the long term? If a community did succeed in surviving over the course of several decades, how far had it traveled from the original bright and shining idea that had given it birth?
Sandra sighed. Maybe the idea of communal living was too big for her to get her head around.
If only Emma was sitting by her side at that moment!
Emma Nelson was fifty-five years old when her husband, a brilliant math professor and the love of her life, died. Those first few years after Steven’s passing were very difficult for Emma. He had handled the business of their marriage—the bills, investments, home repairs—and, faced with those challenges, Emma had suffered a crisis of confidence. But John had helped her get a handle on the paperwork, and it wasn’t long before she began to feel competent enough to know what decisions needed immediate attention and what could be set aside for a time. All the while Sandra focused on being an emotional support to her friend and to Emma’s daughter, as well.
The two women also had shared good times over the years. Twelve years back they had taken a trip to London, during which they had caught a glimpse of the queen, a definite highlight; booked a side trip to Stratford-upon-Avon where they saw a performance of Romeo and Juliet; and had taken another side trip to Oxford where they had toured the Bodleian Library. They had drunk more cups of tea in those ten days than they had in the previous five years, and had eaten scones with clotted cream until they groaned.
And then, five years ago, Emma had helped Sandra deal with the practical as well as the emotional aspects of John’s passing. Emma had organized the catering for the gathering after the funeral. She had shared with Sandra lessons from her own experience on how to adjust to living alone in the house once shared with a spouse. Mostly, she had sat quietly and listened as Sandra talked of John, revisited memories of their years together, or simply cried.
A friendship of more than fifty years was now reduced to a memory in the mind of only one person, even though both friends were living. The situation created a particular sort of grief for Sandra. Emma had left her friend and had no idea that she had. At moments, Sandra’s sadness felt unbearable. There was anger, too, anger at an unfair world in which there was no such thing as justice for the good and punishment for the bad. Instead, everything was so random. Not that it had ever been otherwise.
But you couldn’t let that sort of thinking destroy you, and it easily could. Dwelling on the negative could prevent all possibility of joy in the present as well as the future.
Sandra, always alert to what was happing on Spruce Street, spotted a car just turning onto the road. A moment later she saw that it was Amanda’s car. As her summer roommate drew closer to the house, Sandra waved. Sometimes all it took to raise one’s spirits was the physical presence of another person.
Pretty simple, really.
Chapter 14
The day was warm, but Mary had dressed for the weather in lightweight cottons and a sun hat that made her look downright goofy. Still, it protected not only her head but also her forehead and the back of her neck. Sunblock covered every inch of visible skin. She wore her white cotton socks over her pant legs in an effort to prevent ticks from clamping on to her ankles. She had read somewhere that ticks had been found in Central Park. The countryside was encroaching upon the city. What next?
Sandra had told her about a system of trails about an hour north of Yorktide. At the visitor’s center, Mary got herself a map and chose the trail marked “easiest.” When she got to the trail’s starting point she noted that it looked well-groomed, but that it was not without protruding roots and jagged rocks and all that other inconvenient stuff you found in Nature. She would have to step carefully. She had not come to Maine to break a limb.
Mary began her walk.
The scenery was beautiful. The path wound its way atop a rocky cliff, far below which was a narrow strip of beach. On the other side of the path was a wooded area, not so dense that sunlight was prevented from penetrating through the branches of trees, allowing for the rich growth of mosses and ferns. Occasional birdsong pierced the air, though Mary was unable to spot the singers in the dense greenery. Every once in a while, another hiker came along going in the opposite direction. Mary appreciated the fact that she wasn’t entirely alone in this little patch of wilderness.
As Mary tramped along, she found herself thinking again about the somewhat startling fact that she had chosen to retire from a career that had meant so very much to her. Perhaps the decision had been ill considered. Maybe she should have just taken a sabbatical rather than give up her partnership. But there had been a few years of nonstop high-stress cases, the lawsuit against the firm, and then her old friend being suddenly killed. The combination of it all had crushed Mary badly enough that she had felt the need to take a giant step away from the world.
After the death of her parents, Mary had never lost anyone close to her. Until Judy, one of her dear childhood friends, had been killed in a hit-and-run while on her way to visit her brand-new grandchild in the hospital. Mary had tried hard to get over the grief in a timely manner. Life was random. Bad things happened to good people. No one was guaranteed a happy ending. Death was inevitable.
But none of the platitudes meant to convince a person that death was to be accepted calmly helped in the least. The grief would not budge, and, for a while, Mary wondered if she was having a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. Eventually, time worked its magic, and Mary’s grief, while not disappearing completely, became manageable. Mostly.
It was a fact that after the funeral, Mary and her other childhood friends had never talked with one another about their grieving experiences. Their mutual reticence was a result of the way they had been raised, children of lower-middle class Irish and German Catholics, many of whom were first generation Americans. Sentiment was for the weak. Life was tough, and there was nothing to do but to get on with it. Overt expressions of emotion were not allowed. Maybe if the women had felt free to talk honestly with one another, each would find the grief more bearable.
Maybe.
Like Mary, Maureen, Barbara, and Sheila still lived in New York, though they had moved out of the Queens neighborhood in which they had all been raised. Barbara was married to a man seven years her junior. Sheila was married to a man her own age and had five children. Maureen was married to a man fifteen years older, a priest in a former life. Judy, of course, had been married to Joe. Mary was the only one of the old gang who hadn’t been able to make a marriage work. It was no surprise to anyone when her youthful marriage failed. There had been nothing wrong with Fred. It was Mary who was fundamentally unsuited to marriage. For a few years after the divorce, she and Fred had tried to keep in touch with each other, but that, too, hadn’t lasted. Mary hadn’t heard from Fred for about twenty-five years.
Later, there had been a few other relationships with men, nothing long-lasting, nothing important. In fact, Mary hadn’t had sex in more than ten years and didn’t miss it one little bit. If that made her odd in the eyes of some people, so be it. She considered herself lucky to be free of the demon called lust. It was nothing but trouble.
A woman rounded a bend in the path ahead of Mary, coming the opposite way. A large, fluffy white dog paced at her side, tongue lolling.
“Beautiful dog,” Mary said with a smile as the women passed each other.
The woman beamed. “Thanks! I think so, too!”
Mary snuck a look over her shoulder at the retreating pair. Since retiring, she had given the thought of getting a dog some consideration. Animals were wonderful companions. Take Sandra’s cat, Clovis. Clovis was a great comfort to Sandra, that was easy to see. But the same reason that had always stopped Mary from going ahead with the notion of adopting a dog continued to stop her now. Animals didn’t live as long as human beings. It was likely that any dog Mary took in would die before she would; he might even need to be sent to Heaven, and Mary just knew she didn’t have it in her to make that monumentally difficult decision. She was a coward in no other way but in this way. The death of a human loved one was disastrous enough. The death of an animal companion . . .
Mary stepped off the path and into a small clearing that allowed a view of the water and a heavily wooded island in the distance. The view was beautifully calming. Overhead, a large bird seemed to drift along the coastline. A bird of prey? A seabird? Mary didn’t know. She knew next to nothing about wildlife. Whatever sort of bird it was, it was magnificent.
After a moment, she continued along the path, and before long she had come full circle, back to the parking lot. It had been about a forty-minute trek, and she had enjoyed it very much. She would be sure to thank Sandra for the suggestion.
As Mary climbed into her car, her phone pinged, announcing a text. It was from a former colleague.
Surviving life in Maine? Hope you haven’t been attacked by a moose or a bear.
Or a tick, Mary thought grimly, glancing down at her ankles, hidden beneath socks and pants. A tick check would be the first order of business when she got back to Sandra’s house.
