Return to Summerhouse

  “At least you kept your talent.”

  “I don’t think I had it before the accident.”

  “You don’t think? What did your family tell you?” Amy asked.

  “My parents are dead. I only have a sister and she hates me.”

  Faith gave a little grunt. “From my observation, I think all sisters hate each other. Pure jealousy. I think that if one sister is homeless and the other lives in a McMansion on Long Island, if the homeless one has curly hair, the other sister will be jealous and hate her.”

  Both Amy and Zoë were looking at her in astonishment.

  “Just my personal opinion,” Faith said, putting her drink up to cover her mouth.

  “When I first saw you,” Zoë said, “I thought you were the most boring person I’d ever met, but I’m beginning to change my mind.”

  “Is there a compliment in there?” Faith asked.

  “If there was one, I didn’t hear it,” Amy said, but she was smiling.

  “I suggest that we spread dinner out here on the table,” Zoë said, “and that Faith entertain us with her life story. I want to hear the part where you were born on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  Amy looked at Faith with interest. “Is that true?”

  “More or less, but I married the son of the richest man in town.”

  “Is that why you wear a twenty-thousand-dollar watch?” Zoë asked.

  Faith put her hand over the watch, then made herself remove it. “Eddie bought this for me five years ago. I told him not to and I wanted to take it back to the store but he’d had it engraved so I couldn’t.”

  “Why are you frowning?” Zoë asked. “Not good memories?”

  “From Eddie yes, but his mother threw a fit about the watch. You see, no matter that I went to college and got a degree, no matter that I dedicated fifteen years of my life to caring for her son, to Ruth Wellman I was never anything but poor white trash. The lowest of the low. Scum.”

  “So tell us,” Amy said. “We have nothing else to do except listen.”

  “There isn’t anything to tell. I grew up in a small town, fell in love with the son of the richest family in town, and we got married.”

  “Big wedding?” Zoë asked.

  “Tiny, but nice.”

  “Was that because of the mothers?” Amy asked quietly.

  “Yes and no. Actually, mostly yes. Mrs. Wellman, who was, is, an extremely rich widow, insisted that the bride’s family pay for the wedding. My mother was also a widow but her husband, my father, died in debt. My mother worked sixty hours a week just to feed, shelter, and clothe us.”

  “Yet your mother-in-law made her pay for the wedding,” Amy said.

  “And I assume this was to keep you from marrying her son,” Zoë said.

  Faith nodded.

  Amy got up and went into the kitchen to get the carryout food she and Faith had bought that afternoon. She hadn’t planned to spend any time with these other women who had been labeled as “trauma victims,” but the day spent with Faith had been fun. Faith said she had no people to buy gifts for and that had made Amy give a shiver of horror, but then Faith had asked so many questions about Amy’s family that the tension disappeared.

  Since Amy tended to stay with people she knew, she didn’t often have the opportunity to talk about her family. First, she told Faith about her sons, mentioning how smart they were and how good they were at sports. “I’m sorry, I’m bragging,” she said.

  “Go ahead. It sounds wonderful. Tell me more.”

  Amy did most of the talking and Faith helped her choose gifts for both her boys. It was when they sat down to lunch that Faith said that Amy hadn’t even mentioned her husband. There was a tone in her voice that suggested she thought all was not well between Amy and her husband.

  Amy reached into her handbag and pulled out a little photo album, flipped to a picture, then handed it to Faith.

  “My goodness,” Faith said, eyes wide. “Does he really look like that or it is just a good photo?”

  “He looks better in person,” Amy said, then showed the other pictures of her handsome sons.

  “They are all as beautiful as movie stars,” Faith said, smiling. “One time—”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Faith said, looking at her menu.

  “No, tell me,” Amy encouraged.

  “Last night Zoë said some things to me and—”

  “Hateful things?

  “Of course. She’s Zoë,” Faith said with a smile that Amy didn’t return.

  “What happened?”

  “Zoë reminded me of some things that happened a long time ago, and now, seeing your husband brought it all back.”

  Before she could say anything else, the waitress came to take their orders. They both got the lobster salads. When the waitress was gone, Amy leaned toward Faith. “What were you going to say?”

  “Nothing important. When I was a kid I was in love with a young man who looked a bit like your husband, except he had dark hair and eyes.”

  “Really?” Amy said in disbelief.

  “Yes, really,” Faith said. “But I get the idea your husband comes from a good family, and—”

  “Good is how you look at it. Sometimes the wrong people are put into families. My husband has a father and three older brothers who are as primitive as they come. They think tractor pulls are high art. But Stephen is at ease in a tuxedo.”

  “Tyler was more of a tractor-pull person,” Faith said. “He didn’t even finish high school. He usually had grease on him from some car he was overhauling, and he rarely ate anything that wasn’t wrapped in paper. He really was the most crude, most…” Trailing off, she looked down and was silent.

  “Were you in love with him?” Amy asked softly.

  “With all my heart.”

  Amy reached across the table and put her hand on Faith’s wrist. “So what happened to him?”

  Faith laughed and the faraway look in her eyes disappeared. “I don’t know. Nothing. Ran away, I guess. Who knows? When you get down to it, you don’t actually marry the Tylers of the world, now do you?”

  “I guess not,” Amy said with a sigh. “I was lucky that the man I loved had everything going for him. He’s smart and funny and considerate and a hard worker. He’s perfect.”

  As the waitress put their salads in front of them, Faith said, “Come on, there has to be something about him that you don’t like. Even if it’s a small thing.”

  “No, nothing,” Amy said honestly. “I wanted to throw the pots and pans at him when he told me he wanted me to go on this trip, but I’m coming to think that he was right.”

  “You aren’t going to tell him that, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Amy said. “He may be perfect, but I am not.”

  The two women laughed together and finished their lunches. The rest of the afternoon they spent chatting about their lives, but neither of them told anything revealing.

  Now, Amy put the food and plates on a tray and carried them outside. Faith and Zoë were sitting in silence, sipping their drinks, both staring off into nothing.

  This is ridiculous, Amy thought. We can’t spend our time like this. “Zoë,” she said sharply, “go make a big pitcher of iced tea. Faith, help Zoë, then get the knives and forks and napkins and bring them out here.” When neither of the women moved, Amy said, “When we get everything out here, Faith is going to tell us a story about a man named Tyler.”

  “Her husband?” Zoë asked, her voice bored.

  “No. Tyler is the blindingly handsome young man who she let slip through her fingers. It’s a love that haunts her and pulls her back into time. It is the chain that binds her to the past. It is the love that was to be but never happened.”

  Both Faith and Zoë were looking at Amy with their mouths open in astonishment.

  Go!” Amy said as though she were speaking to her young children. They scurried into the kitchen with the urgency of schoolkids. As Amy set out the food, she smil
ed. Maybe this time here in Maine wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Four

  “Will you two stop looking at me like I’m the village storyteller,” Faith said as she took a sip of her wine. They’d finished dinner, cleared up, and moved inside to the living room. Zoë had opened a bottle of chardonnay, poured glasses full, and they were seated and looking at Faith in expectation. “I really don’t have anything to tell.” She gave Amy a look that let her know she’d betrayed a confidence and Faith didn’t like it. It was one thing to tell something to a normal person, but to Zoë? No, thank you!

  “Aren’t we supposed to talk about our traumatic lives and do Jeanne’s work for her?” Zoë asked.

  “All right, then you tell us about you,” Faith said.

  “Fine,” Zoë answered. “I woke up one day in a hospital with most of my body in bandages, and casts on both my legs. I didn’t remember what happened to me and I still don’t.”

  “Who visited you in the hospital?” Faith asked, smiling sweetly.

  “Jeanne has a big mouth,” Zoë said.

  “What did I miss?” Amy asked, looking from one to the other.

  “All Jeanne said was that an entire town was angry at Zoë. What I want to know is why.”

  “I have no idea,” Zoë said.

  “You asked them, didn’t you?” Amy said.

  “No.”

  Faith and Amy looked at each other.

  “You mean that you have family and friends, they’re all angry at you, you don’t remember why, but you’ve never asked them what you did to make them hate you?” Amy asked.

  “Strong words,” Zoë said. “Hate. Anger. No, I never asked anybody anything. When I didn’t remember a big part of my life, the court assigned me to Jeanne. I’ve been seeing her for over a year. Really boring.”

  “But what about where you grew up? Do you have parents? Siblings?” Amy asked.

  “I have a sister, but she wants nothing to do with me, so I want nothing to do with her. Could we stop this? I’d rather hear Faith’s story about love being lost.”

  “What about a boyfriend?” Amy asked.

  “That is another question I don’t know. I didn’t have one at the high school prom and that’s the last thing I remember. But then, there are a whole lot of years that I don’t remember. I woke up in a hospital with my head stapled together, and didn’t remember anything of the years after my prom.”

  “Why—?” Amy began, but Zoë gave her such a hard look that she closed her mouth.

  “Faith,” Zoë said, “you’re on. You entertain us while I make a few sketches.”

  She picked up a big sketch pad and a pencil, drew up her knees, and looked at Amy as though she meant to start drawing her.

  Amy jumped up, got her little photo album from her handbag, and handed it to Zoë. “Can you draw from photos?”

  “Sure,” Zoë said, then her eyes widened as she looked at the pictures. “Is this your family?”

  Amy smiled.

  “They make Hollywood families look ugly. I’m not sure I can capture such perfection on paper.”

  “Zoë, I might be able to find some things to like about you after all.”

  Zoë groaned. “Oh no! Don’t say that. My reputation will be ruined. And don’t tell Jeanne that. She’ll raise her prices and take the credit for making me into a better person.”

  Amy settled down on the chintz sofa and looked at Faith. “I think you should tell us your story.”

  “Really,” Faith said, “there isn’t a story. The love of my life was my husband. Now if you’d like to hear about him I’ll tell you, but—”

  “I want to hear about the gorgeous hunk that got away,” Amy said. “What about you, Zoë?”

  “I want to hear about your sex life with this man,” she said as she looked at Stephen’s photo.

  “Hold your breath,” Amy said, making the women smile. “Faith?”

  “Okay, where do I begin?” she said as she looked down at her wineglass. “Maybe I should start when I got home from college. Ty and I had been buddies all our lives, all through grade school.”

  “That’s like Stephen and me,” Amy said. “Even when we were kids we knew that someday we’d get married.” She looked at Faith. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “I bet you had family problems,” Zoë said, not looking up from her sketch pad.

  “No, not really,” Amy began. “Oh, sorry again. Faith, did you have family problems?”

  “Did we! I lived alone with my mother who did everything she could to give me the best life possible. She worked long hours at her job, which meant I was unsupervised a lot. I was supposed to stay at home and study, which I did most of the time. I made mostly As in school. I was always well dressed and I never got into trouble. Until high school, that is.”

  “What about Tyler?” Amy asked.

  “Redneck heaven,” Faith said. “I never knew how many kids were in his family, and Ty would never tell me. When we were little, I only saw his house once. It was set back in what I thought was a forest. I lived where the houses were close together and we had sidewalks, but Ty’s run-down old house was surrounded by trees, old cars, and dogs that were chained to steel stakes.”

  “What did your mother think of you and Ty being friends?” Amy asked.

  “About like you can imagine.” Faith gave a sigh. “My mother was a social climber. She used to tell me that she took a step down when she married my father. Then he did a low-class thing like die and leave us with no insurance money. She never forgave him.”

  “What did she do to support you?” Zoë asked.

  “Beauty treatments. She went to the house of any rich woman within fifty miles of our little town and did hair, nails, faces. She plucked eyebrows, gave permanents, did body wraps. I think that half of our problems were caused by my mother spending all her time surrounded by luxury. She’d go to the house of some woman who had a maid to open the door, a cook to make lunch, and my mother felt that that was where she belonged. I don’t think there was a day when she didn’t tell me that her big mistake was in marrying for love.”

  “Ah,” Zoë said.

  “What does that mean?” Faith asked.

  “That’s why you married the richest man in town.”

  “I married for love,” Faith said stiffly. “My husband, Eddie, was the love of my life. The trauma I experienced came from losing him. He was my world.”

  Amy gave Zoë a hard look, but she didn’t look up to see it. “Let’s keep this light, shall we?”

  “In that case, we should hear your story,” Zoë said to Amy. “From what I can see, you’ve never had so much as a hangnail in your life. Married to Mr. Beautiful, two gorgeous kids. I bet you live in a brand-new house with granite countertops in the kitchen. And one of those six-burner stoves. I bet every bedroom has its own bathroom.”

  Amy didn’t answer because Zoë was a hundred percent right. “And I’ll wager that you didn’t do just one horrible thing to the people in your hometown but hundreds. I bet they just used your accident as a time to break away from you forever.”

  Zoë laughed. “You’re probably right.”

  “Faith,” Amy said, “I apologize for the interruption. Please continue with your story. What happened when you returned from college?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I mean, I do know, but at the same time I don’t know. I’ve never been able to figure it out. My mother found out where Eddie was going to college so she sent me there too.”

  Zoë gave Amy an I-told-you-so look.

  “It wasn’t like that!” Faith said. “Eddie and I were as much friends as Ty and I were. In fact, all through elementary school we were a threesome, even if we were a bit odd. Ty said that we covered all the ground from rich to poor. Whatever we were, it worked in spite of all Eddie’s mother could do to break us up. She used to give big birthday parties for Eddie and not invite Ty or me.”

  Pausing, Faith smiled. “On Eddie’s sixth bir
thday he was so angry that his mother wouldn’t let him invite us, that he sneaked into the kitchen, opened the door for Ty and me, and we stole the birthday cake. Eddie’s mother was so upset they had to call the doctor to give her a sedative. While she was down, he slipped out and joined us. We ate so much cake we were sick. After that his mother had the parties at restaurants.”

  Faith smiled in memory. “But it all changed when we entered high school. Eddie was in the debating society and head of the math club, while Ty had to work after school, and he missed a lot of days because his father often needed him for something or other—we never knew what and Ty never said.”

  “And what about you?” Amy asked.

  “I’m afraid that I sowed a few wild oats. Mostly with Tyler. He had a souped-up convertible and I had red hair. It was a dangerous combination.”

  Amy looked at Faith and had trouble seeing her like that. Now her hair was pulled tightly back, her dress hanging below her knees, and her spine was bent. She looked as though she’d never done anything even remotely interesting in her entire life.

  Faith laughed at Amy’s expression. “I was only wild for a while, just the last two years of high school, really. I was sick of being locked inside my house with my mother who never stopped complaining, and, well, I’d learned a bit from all her beauty work.”

  Zoë looked up from her sketch. “You’re telling us that you were a knockout.”

  “More or less,” Faith said. “I was certainly the best-looking thing in that town.”

  “Good for you!” Amy said.

  “I calmed down after high school—I had to. I went to the same college as Eddie and that’s where we really got to know each other. We were pinned by the second year and we knew we were going to be married. We didn’t make it official because we both dreaded telling his mother. She’d already picked out Eddie’s bride, a third cousin of his who looked like the horses she loved.”

  “So you chose Eddie over Ty,” Amy said softly.

  “Riches over love,” Zoë said.