The Summer of Good Intentions Page 6

  3. There was something sacred about the Cape house. All those memories. Bringing Jackson there would be like granting him access to her family’s personal Narnia, a wardrobe transformed into their own magical world. Did she want him to know her that well so soon?

  4. And what if—though it seemed impossible—Jackson didn’t like it? What if he didn’t adore the summer house the way she did? She didn’t think she could love a man who didn’t grasp the charm of the house’s pocked wooden floors, its slightly cracked plaster ceilings, and creaky beds. She felt like a mother, oddly protective of it.

  No, it was better if Jackson didn’t see the house yet. Besides, she needed to warm her sisters up; they hardly knew the first thing about him. She’d only mentioned him in passing to Maggie when they were confirming the details of her arrival the other night. “I’ve met someone new,” she said.

  “Really!” Maggie sounded happy for her, not at all surprised. “Is he coming with you?” That was a typical Maggie comment, focused on the practicalities, what needed to be done. Virgie could almost hear the wheels spinning in her sister’s mind on the other end: Would she need to put Virgie in the guest room now, as opposed to bunking her with the kids? Did the summer house have enough sheets? Would they be grilling for one more?

  “Don’t worry, Mags,” she said. “It’s only me this time.”

  “Oh, okay.” Maggie sounded almost disappointed, and Virgie imagined her crossing off Extra sheets? on her list. “Another time then.”

  “Yes,” agreed Virgie. “I’d love for you to meet him. Assuming it lasts.” She heard her sister’s light, good-natured laugh on the other end.

  “Fair enough.” And then they quickly moved on to her flight information, when she’d be touching down in Boston and was Virgie sure she didn’t want one of them to drive up to get her at the airport?

  “No, thanks. Not necessary. I’m renting a car. I’m a big girl, remember?” When Maggie relented at last, Virgie was glad. It was easier this way.

  She eased her seat backward. When she removed her thumb from the button, though, a sticky residue clung to it. She dug into her purse for antibacterial lotion and rubbed it into her hands. Whenever traveling on assignment, Virgie carried a tube of it with her, and she was grateful for it now. There were so many gooey, germ-infested places where a girl could put her hands. If journalism had taught her one thing, it was that the world was not a safe place, and Virgie did her best to guard against whatever it chose to throw her way.

  Gradually, the release of a much-needed vacation began to settle over her, like a gentle fog softening the edges of her discontent. Maybe Miss-No-Smiles had taken pity on her and slipped something into her soda. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle, she told herself. That is, right before the girl sitting beside her shifted in her seat and accidentally smacked Virgie in the calf with her foot, sending a spiral of pain up her leg.

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh! Sorry,” the girl said.

  “That’s okay. These seats are awful.” Virgie rubbed her leg and forced a smile. The girl gave her a look, but Virgie couldn’t tell if it was because she was interested in talking or because she thought Virgie was a nutcase.

  “Are you from Boston?” Virgie tried.

  “Not exactly,” She removed an earbud. “I go to school outside of the city.”

  “Oh? Whereabouts?” Virgie thought she looked awfully young to be flying out for college.

  “Exeter.” The girl was nothing if succinct. “I’m helping with summer school.”

  “That’s supposed to be a great prep school. Do you like it?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I’m from Maine, but I went to Vassar.” Virgie paused to see if there was any response. “In Poughkeepsie,” she added. “New York.”

  “Cool.” The girl turned back to her magazine and replaced her earbud. But Virgie felt distinctly uncool. Her seatmate clearly wasn’t interested in striking up a conversation. Shouldn’t she be pumping Virgie for information about college? But, then again, Virgie hadn’t thought that far ahead when she was in high school either. All she’d cared about was boys, one boy, in particular. Seth Laraby, a soccer player who spoke fluent French. His parents had worked abroad when he was young, and Seth had gone to private school outside of Paris. She hadn’t thought about Seth in years.

  She stared out the window and twirled the ice in her soda. She wondered if Sal would be around this summer. Of course, he’d be working at the store, but would he be dropping by the house like last summer, bringing her small treats? They’d had on-again, off-again flings over the summers, but they were getting a little old for that. Virgie had Jackson now—she couldn’t exactly be cavorting around with another guy on another coast. Maybe Sal had met someone serious, too.

  She readjusted her shoulder pillow (another item she never traveled without) and closed her eyes. This would be the summer of relaxation, not romance. At least for her. If anyone needed romance, it was her dad. Each Sunday night when she checked in with him, she would ask if there were someone new in his life, perhaps a dinner partner? But Arthur just laughed. “Honey, you know I’m too old to get back out there,” he said.

  “But, Dad, you’re not.” Virgie recalled their conversation last week. “There are tons of senior women out there, online even, who are looking for someone. You should check out the dating sites. You don’t have to get married. Just go out to dinner!”

  Her father let out a heavy sigh. “Senior women,” he said. “That has an appealing ring, doesn’t it?”

  “You know what I mean,” she chided. “Don’t knock it before you try it.”

  “Perhaps I will one of these days.” But they both knew that he didn’t really mean it.

  It would be good to see Arthur in person. It had been too long since she’d laid eyes on her dad last Christmas, when they’d all gathered at Maggie’s house in Windsor. Even then, he’d seemed smaller to her, as if his clothes had outgrown him. She worried about him, asked him if he was eating well and asked her sisters if Dad didn’t seem lonely, maybe a little depressed? But Maggie and Jess told her she was being silly. Dad was the same as he ever was. A lovable curmudgeon till the very end.

  The thing was, Virgie loved Arthur like crazy. And she was pretty sure he felt the same way about her. She’d always been her daddy’s little girl, while Jess and Maggie had insisted on forging their own paths. Everything Virgie did was meant to impress Arthur, even her career in journalism. When she won an Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting, Arthur was the first person she called. When she got promoted to doing the personal interest stories, Verbatim with V (which Virgie closed every Tuesday and Thursday night with “And there you have it, word for word, with Virginia Herington”), Arthur had flown out to treat her to dinner and toast her as the “daughter most like me.” Virgie had nearly burst with pride. She thought back on that moment, how special it had been, how much she still wanted to make Arthur beam.

  Before long, the flight attendant’s voice came back on over the intercom, announcing they would be landing soon. Virgie shook the fog from her head. She must have drifted off to sleep. She glanced down at her empty glass and crumpled bag of pretzels and passed them over to the aisle. Earbuds Girl was still reading her magazine. Virgie righted her tray and pulled out her phone to double-check her car reservation. Sweet. The black Mini Cooper convertible she’d ordered was waiting for her.

  She imagined herself racing down Route 3, tunes blasting, her long hair blowing in the wind. On how many trips to the Cape in the family station wagon, wedged between her sisters in the back, had she imagined her grown-up self traveling along the same route? Being able to do this one delicious thing was a bold check mark off her bucket list. As the plane began its descent, she felt her stomach plunge and she gripped the armrests, digging her fingers in for support. Soon the whoosh of air and the sound of luggage tumbling overhead made her squeeze her eyes shut, as it did every time.

  “Ouch!” crie
d the young woman sitting next to her. Virgie opened her eyes as the plane came to a halt. When she glanced down, she saw that she was clutching the poor girl’s hand in a vise, her knuckles a bright pink. As with so many things in Virgie’s life lately, she’d had no idea.

  Arthur

  On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, Arthur set out for the local library, a tan building that sat on a craggy ledge overlooking the water. He could walk to it, a fact that appealed to him immensely. Aside from his house, the library was, perhaps, his favorite place on earth. Unlike his house, it was orderly, books meticulously arranged by category and then alphabetically by author’s last name. Theoretically, he was here to man the front desk. He checked out patrons’ selections, answered the rare question, and shelved the returns. But, in reality, there was little for him to do in the afternoons, at least until the rush of schoolchildren broke through the doors at three-thirty. Then they would race through the main entrance, pulling off their backpacks, and fling themselves onto the beanbags in the children’s section. As much as Arthur loved to see a youngster pick up a book, the children’s section with its noise and bustle was not for him. He found it unnerving.

  But now, in the summer months, not even the schoolchildren broke the quiet. He had lived in this small coastal town most of his married life, and so the majority of patrons were, at the very least, acquaintances. It pleased him that he could greet people by their first names before they handed him their cards. He made a point of it. Lately, though, some of the names escaped him, people’s faces that he’d known for twenty years. He blamed it on the fact that he was occupied with the new book he was writing and that all he could think of were its main characters—Inspector Larson, Claire Dooley, and Rita Wigglesworth.

  Sometimes when he peered into a patron’s face, Arthur would see flashes of his characters. His old pal, Eleanor, for instance, had a hawk-like, pointed face, not unlike that of Rita Wigglesworth. And the bulbous nose of Hank Sellers, a regular who checked out every Agatha Christie novel and penciled editorial suggestions in the margins (Arthur knew this because he checked the books before and after Hank borrowed them), reminded him of Claire Dooley’s nose. Arthur wondered if his patrons influenced the physical attributes and mannerisms of his characters or was it the other way around?

  Often he would scribble notes on the little sheets of paper meant for writing down call numbers. He detailed things he wished to include in his new book. Sometimes he would become so immersed in his note-taking that he forgot where he was, and a patron would have to clear his throat a few times before getting Arthur’s attention. He was always quick to apologize. But everyone knew that he volunteered at this job. He couldn’t be expected to take it too seriously. For that, they would need to ply him with free whiskey.

  On this Wednesday before the Fourth, the library was particularly quiet. Arthur felt as if he was working in a velvet-lined jewelry box, the very kind that housed the diamond ring he’d presented to Gloria on bended knee forty-six years ago. It was three-carat, and he’d saved diligently until he could afford it. It was exactly what Gloria wanted. They’d gone window-shopping in the diamond district in Boston, a street of stores now called Downtown Crossing that had once housed places where a person had to ring a buzzer to gain entrance to a vaulted store at the top of the stairs. There, a helpful but aloof salesman waited, as if the purchase of a diamond that day made little difference to him.

  Arthur remembered the day like it was yesterday. It was a December afternoon, and a light snow fell on the Boston Common while he and Gloria idled along, admiring the Christmas lights that were draped like colorful scarves across the trees. They held hands, Gloria’s snug in her mittens, hand-knitted blue things with little strings attached at the ends. He’d teased her that they were like a schoolgirl’s, until she told him that her mother had given them to her last Christmas and that he’d better be quiet if he knew what was good for him. He’d always liked that about her. She could give him a hard time and he’d just love her more. Their futures were ripe with possibility then. Arthur planned to finish grad school and then teach American literature. Gloria couldn’t wait to have children. They debated how many children were enough. How many were too many? They agreed that three seemed the perfect number.

  When they turned down Washington Street, the dancing Christmas Bears in the Jordan Marsh window greeted them. They pointed out sweaters and hats that might make good gifts for friends. When they crossed the street to the jewelers’ side, Arthur suggested they climb the stairs to the diamond shop to look at rings “just for the hell of it.” He was trying to act glib, but he was as nervous as a kid suited up for his first football game. Arthur knew his soon-to-be fiancée well enough to understand that the only ring that would suit her finger would be one that she’d have a say in.

  In truth, he was itching to propose. There was no other girl for him. They giggled when the buzzer let them in and a pale salesman welcomed them at the top of the stairs only to point them through another locked door. Arthur joked it was like entering a jail cell, but Gloria shushed him. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Marriage isn’t that bad, Arthur, is it?” And she squeezed his hand before they crossed into a room that quite literally sparkled with diamonds.

  As soon as she saw it, Gloria knew the exact ring she wanted: a bright, twinkling diamond, nearly translucent with dazzling blue sapphires on either side, sitting in a gold band. Arthur had to hand it to her. The ring was exquisite.

  “That’s the best of the bunch, no question,” he agreed. “Here, try it on for fun, why don’t you?” he said, ignoring the annoyed look of the salesclerk behind the counter, who had to unlock the case to reach the ring. But he did so, if a bit grudgingly. Did the man really think he was bluffing here? Arthur wondered.

  When she slipped the ring on, small Oh!s escaped from them both. Not only because it dazzled so elegantly on her slim finger but also, Arthur suspected, because of all that it suggested. A life for two people, for them, forever. Arthur grew light-headed and went to grab a seat. The jeweler, suddenly kind, fetched him a glass of water and joked that it happened all the time. Grooms got sticker shock while the women started planning the wedding in their heads.

  When they left the store, Gloria teased him that if they ever did get married, Arthur would need a stiff drink before heading into the chapel. But she didn’t understand. For Arthur, it was exactly the opposite. It wasn’t that he was getting cold feet or felt sick about paying such a princely sum for a ring. Rather, a vision of him with Gloria, her long blond hair tied up in a loose bun, holding hands in a row with their children—and this he had envisioned quite clearly, though Gloria would never believe it—three girls, twins and a younger daughter, swept across his field of vision.

  And he was floored. Floored by the sheer gorgeousness of that image, as if it were a premonition of all the good that his life ahead held. It had momentarily blinded him, struck him off his feet.

  Of course, they’d had a good laugh about it. Gloria joked he didn’t need to get her that exact ring if it was too expensive. Something similar would be fine, so long as it meant she was tied to him. It was, perhaps, the kindest thing she ever said to him.

  When he opened the velvet box at Anthony’s Pier 4 over raspberry cheesecake and coffees, it housed the very ring she’d slipped on. “Yes!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him, and Arthur was filled with a certainty that his life was proceeding precisely as it should.

  Gloria, he thought now, with a pang.

  He checked the books on the to-be-shelved cart and saw only a handful. Circulation always fell during the first weeks of summer, when the entire town was either hosting company or traveling. Arthur picked up a few titles, mostly gardening books and a weight-loss book promising results in one week. He hadn’t seen Gloria since Christmas, when the whole family had gathered at Maggie’s house. His ex-wife had burst through the front door, stomping snow from her boots, and an image of her on the day that they’d gone ring shopping, the sn
ow drifting down, had flashed before him unexpectedly. He’d actually bent over and clutched the back of a chair.

  Her hair was different now, cut into a bob that swept just above the shoulder, and she’d gone lighter, a blond color that still managed to look natural. She wore a sharp lavender suit. Arthur had always admired that Gloria never stooped to wearing holiday sweaters or pins like so many older women did. That frigid Christmas Day, she carried bags stuffed with presents that she let fall to the floor when the grandchildren ran to hug her. She smiled at Arthur and he smiled back while Mac helped remove her coat. The scent of gardenias, Gloria’s signature perfume, floated through the room. Arthur hoped that perhaps the smile meant something, perhaps she wanted him back. But as the evening unfolded and he and Gloria made small talk, he came to understand that it was nothing more than a friendly smile.

  Gloria wished him well. That was all.

  His memory was interrupted. “Excuse me, Arthur, but I can’t seem to find the new Danielle Steel novel. Could you help?”

  Standing before him was Florence Arbitrage. Florence, as she would tell anyone who would listen, was from Charleston, South Carolina. Every sentence that came out of the woman’s mouth got stretched to its utmost length.

  Arthur didn’t particularly like Florence, but when it came right down to it, he didn’t like many people outside his immediate family. It had been this way for as long as he could remember. Maggie and Jess teased that he was a modern-day misanthrope, but Arthur knew better. He liked people in general, just not in particular. There was a difference. A subtle distinction, but a distinction nonetheless.

  “Sure, Eleanor. Do you know the title?”

  She regarded him strangely for a minute. Did he just call her Eleanor? “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, her voice twanging on know. “Something about friends, I think?” People’s inability to remember titles always amazed him, which was why he spent countless hours coming up with memorable ones for his own books.