The Goodbye Summer

“We have a lost and found.”

  “Yeah, but nothing of mine’s ever in it.”

  Watching them bicker reminded Caddie of Nana’s first day at Wake House. They’d argued about the hot-water supply right here, under this chandelier. And then a barefooted Magill had come around the corner, bumped into the wall, and broken the glass in one of the picture frames.

  Here he came—around the corner.

  Not barefooted. He had on hiking boots and corduroy trousers, a denim jacket over a T-shirt, and a bulging backpack on his shoulder.

  “Is that it?” Cornel demanded. “That’s all you’re taking?”

  “Sure. It’s just for one night, isn’t it? Hi,” he said, smiling at Caddie. “Sorry I’m late, I got a phone call at the last second. Hey, look at your hair. What did you do?”

  Thank goodness somebody noticed. “Highlights,” she said, patting her head, shy. “Subtle, right? Supposed to look like the sun did it.”

  “It’s great.”

  “Thanks.” She was so glad to see him. Among other things, the thought of two days on the road with nobody but Cornel and Finney had started to take time off her life. “I was afraid you were sick, or you’d changed your mind or something.”

  “No way, I’m feeling terrific. Will you miss me?” he asked Brenda, surprising her with a smacking kiss on her cheek.

  She laughed; she might’ve blushed. “Somebody’s feeling his oats. Watch yourself with this one, Caddie. Where’s your cane?” she asked him.

  “Don’t need it.”

  “Sure?”

  “Abso—” He lurched forward, stopping just short of head-butting her.

  “Funny,” Brenda said. “Cornel, have you got your blood pressure pills?”

  At eleven o’clock, they finally got on the road.

  Magill had to sit in front by the open window or he might get carsick. In the back, Cornel commandeered the map and announced he was the navigator. He took the job seriously, so Caddie kept it to herself that she already knew the way. Finney couldn’t decide which man’s lap he wanted to sit in, so he jumped back and forth, annoying both of them, front seat, backseat, front seat, backseat. Caddie explained all the things on her car that didn’t work. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” In spite of the somber purpose of their trip, she was in almost as good a mood as Magill. It felt fine to be flying down the interstate at seventy miles an hour with her two good friends and her dog. They had no particular schedule, just an easy half-day’s drive to Delaware, where they’d catch the ferry in Lewes to Cape May. They didn’t even know where they’d stay when they got there. She caught Magill’s eye; the wind mussed his hair and put pink color in his cheeks. They grinned at each other. This was going to be fun.

  They talked about inconsequential things, not the reason for the trip, until the Baltimore beltway, when Cornel mumbled something from the backseat.

  “What?”

  “Said, I wrote something down. It’s a poem.”

  “A poem?”

  “For Thea.”

  “Oh, Cornel.” Caddie looked at him in the rearview mirror. “That’s wonderful. She’d’ve loved that.”

  “It’s not finished.” He fished a piece of notebook paper out of his jacket pocket.

  “Can we hear it?”

  “Heck, no, it’s personal.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Read it,” said Magill.

  “Out loud? Naw.”

  “Let’s hear it. I bet it’s good.”

  “Nah, I don’t wanna read it.”

  “Let me, then.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll read it.” Magill held out his hand.

  “You can’t read.”

  “Come on, Cornel.” Like Magill, Caddie could tell he wanted them to hear his poem, he just didn’t want to admit it.

  More coaxing and cajoling. Finally, “Oh, all right, read it if it means that much to you,” and he handed the paper up to Magill. “But it’s not finished, I’m telling you. It’s a rough draft.”

  Crabbed handwriting covered both sides of the paper, Caddie saw from the corner of her eye. A long poem. She hoped reading it in the moving car wouldn’t make Magill sick.

  He squinted his eyes, holding the paper close.

  There once was a hard and a crooked old man,

  With stones in his pockets and sticks in his hand.

  He didn’t like folks and they didn’t like him.

  His heart was like flint, that crooked old man.

  He lived in a house full of good folks and cheer,

  But he had on a blindfold, just saw darkness and drear.

  He cursed his long life, wished it’d be over soon,

  Couldn’t see any purpose, just boredom and gloom.

  Then one day a lady, like a rare beam of light,

  Shone a lamp in the dark and he recovered his sight.

  She came unexpected, for the old man had thought

  All his races were run and all his battles were fought.

  It’s a pretty rare thing that a man like that fellow,

  All ready to end it, gets a glimpse of tomorrow.

  “Gift of the goddess,” that’s what her name meant.

  Dorothea, Dorothea, to him heaven-sent.

  Well, it’s hard now and dark, life’s gone back to before.

  It’d be easy to quit, say goodbye and close the door.

  But she wouldn’t approve, that wasn’t her style,

  So he’ll try to be patient and he’ll bide here a while.

  And meanwhile there’s memories to warm him at night

  When loneliness pains him and no friend’s in sight.

  He’ll never forget her, never could, never can.

  Without her he’d still be that crooked old man.

  Caddie couldn’t think of anything to say. Magill either; he kept his head down, as if rereading parts of the poem to himself. She didn’t want to gush, it would embarrass Cornel to death, but she was moved. He’d sat stony and silent through the funeral and Thea’s interment in the Wake family plot in Michaelstown, not shedding a tear. Caddie had thought this trip to Cape May was as far as he could go, that he was capable of honoring Thea with action but nothing else.

  And it turned out she was completely wrong.

  “Well, I told you it was just a draft,” he said in a shaky, defiant voice, and somehow that freed her to tell him what she thought: that she loved his poem, Thea would’ve been so touched and so glad, it was a lovely poem—how did he know how to write poetry?

  Magill said the best thing, though. “I never thought you were all that crooked, myself. I know it’s not the same, but any time you feel like you need straightening out, you can come to me. You know that, right?”

  “Why,” said Cornel, taking his poem back, “because it takes one to know one?” He said it with a smirk, trying to be cool now, probably half sorry he’d revealed so much of himself.

  “Yes,” Magill answered, looking into his eyes.

  Cornel’s turtle lips curved into a genuine smile before he ducked his head and mumbled, “Okay, deal. Likewise.”

  A pleasantly self-conscious silence settled over them.

  “She used to say I oughta write my own biography,” Cornel broke it to say. “Make it turn out any way I wanted.”

  “She told me that, too,” Magill said.

  “Me, too,” Caddie said.

  They looked at one another, then away, smiling. They crested a hill, and all the colors of autumn unfolded like a carpet rolling away to the horizon. Red horses grazed by a stream in a leafy, faraway meadow, and the clouds rolled high in the sky, casting shadows like moving mountains on the highway.

  “But,” Cornel said, “I get mad at her sometimes. I feel like telling her off.”

  “What for?”

  “Lying.”

  Caddie didn’t like that word applied to Thea. “Don’t say that.”

  “What else do you call it? Why couldn’t she at least tell us who she was? Why keep it a se
cret?”

  “Why not keep it a secret?” Magill said. “What good would telling it have done?”

  “At least she coulda told me she was sick. We talked about things like that. I told her things.” He sounded cheated.

  “What would you have done if she had told you?” Magill asked.

  “I would’ve…”

  “Not loved her?”

  “Maybe I would’ve held back some. If you go to the pet store and they sell you a sick dog, you…”

  Magill turned around in his seat.

  “You feel like suing ’em,” Cornel finished weakly. “You got cheated. Hip dysplasia. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I know how you feel,” Caddie admitted. “I’ve felt the same way, angry with her for not telling, not trusting. But Cornel, we can’t hold back. We don’t want to get our hearts broken, but we can’t just—love the healthy dogs.”

  “Hell, I know that.”

  “I know you do.”

  Magill looked like he wasn’t so sure.

  What a relief to be able to talk about Thea this way. At Wake House some kind of niceness or reticence had come over people, they could only say the most conventional things about her and about their sorrow over losing her. Maybe that’s how it always was when they lost one of their own—maybe it came too close, they could say only the kinds of things they’d want said, when the time came, about themselves. But today, the three of them in this car, the ones who had loved Thea the best, could tell one another the truth, and it didn’t have to sound pretty or dignified, it could be as confused as they felt. They could admit what they didn’t understand about her and not worry about anybody mistaking it for dis-loyalty or bad faith.

  “Hey, guys?” Caddie said. “I’ve made up my mind about something.” Was this the right time to tell them? It felt right. “Thea helped me decide. Not directly, because we didn’t talk about it all that much, not really, and she was pretty careful not to give me advice, as in do this, don’t do that.” She glanced around. She had their attention, although Cornel was starting to look impatient.

  “I’ve decided to keep the baby.”

  She knew they’d be glad. Cornel leaned over and smacked her hard on both shoulders, crying, “Good! Good!” Magill laughed out loud. “That’s…” He shook his head. “Great. It’s great, Caddie. Finally, some good news.”

  “I know—that’s what I thought, too, finally some good news. And I know it’s a selfish decision—”

  “No, it’s not,” they said in unison.

  “No, but you should see these people who register at the agency, they’re perfect. They’d be much better parents than me, they have money, they have each other—they have everything.”

  “Eh,” said Magill. “Who wants perfect parents.”

  “Anyway,” said Cornel, “there’s no such thing.”

  “Well, that’s kind of what I thought.” She laughed and let it go. The biggest decision of her life had been a little more complicated than that, but it wasn’t the right time to explain.

  “What are you now, four months? When is it due?” Magill asked.

  “Three and a half. She’s due in late March, which is perfect. Because then it’s spring, and then summer. So she can go outside.”

  “She?”

  “No question. That’s what we have.”

  “You Winger women.”

  She told them about her doctor, who looked like Patty Duke. “She says I can gain thirty or forty pounds if I want to, because of my height. Can you imagine?”

  Magill looked at her as if he were trying to imagine it.

  “I’ll have to get another car, something newer and safer. But I’ll be able to keep working the whole time, and I can start back right away, too.” She kept on, aware that she was babbling. Poor men, they were the first, after Nana, to hear about her decision, and she had a lot stored up. She wasn’t nauseated anymore, she told them, but she couldn’t even be in the same room with cooking meat. Being pregnant took a lot of mopey, empty-headed energy, so she was tired a lot. It made time slow down, too; she did a lot of staring into space and thinking about nothing, because nothing seemed to matter very much. Except gestating.

  She didn’t tell them how ashamed she felt for once thinking she could give her baby away. I apologize, she told it all the time. I’ll never tell you. I hope you don’t know anyway, through blood or enzymes or something. She didn’t tell them how primitive her love was. She’d been like a kite with a snapped string, floating loose high in the air, and now there was somebody to keep the line taut, to pull back when she tugged. Now that she knew she could keep her, she was letting herself love this baby so hard.

  “I’m hungry,” Cornel said. “When do we eat?”

  They hadn’t even gotten to the Bay Bridge yet. Fast food wouldn’t do; he had to have a sit-down restaurant with waiters and silverware and water glasses. “Okay, okay,” Magill agreed, and Caddie joined in quickly, “Fine, no problem.” They were in league, humoring Cornel so that he couldn’t work up a head of steam. Fast-food restaurants would set him off, and from there it would be litter, concrete, cars, graffiti, moral decay—then immigrants and people on welfare, smog, lines, rap, and MTV. And then how comparatively wonderful everything had been in his day. It was easier to just find a sit-down restaurant.

  He brought his map with him into a place on Route 50 called the Pig and Hen. “I got some scenic routes in mind.” He spread the map on the table, covering up the menus, knocking over the salt shaker.

  “Scenic routes?” Caddie looked at her watch.

  “Look here.” He put his horny forefinger on Talbot County. “Sure you can go 404 if all you want to do is get there. But why not take some of these byways, see the real country, your vanishing America.”

  “It’s the Delmarva,” Magill said. “It’s flat farmland.”

  “I don’t mind,” Caddie said, “as long as we catch the ferry early so we can find a place to stay in Cape May while it’s still light.” They should’ve made reservations, she knew it.

  “No problem,” Cornel said breezily. “Look, we just go along here instead of here, and we see more. It’s more civilized.”

  “You can’t see anything without your glasses,” Magill pointed out, “so what do you care?”

  That set them off on one of their eternal, needling arguments. Caddie glanced idly at the map, and a name jumped out at her. Clover. It was on one of Cornel’s byways.

  She ordered a tuna fish sandwich and a vanilla milkshake and withdrew from the conversation. Let the men decide on the route. She agreed with everything. It’s out of my hands. Then Cornel said this way it was more like a pilgrimage, seeing more of the countryside where Thea used to live (which wasn’t even true; she and Will had lived in Maryland, down by Berlin, nowhere near Clover, Delaware), and after that Caddie had no grounds at all to protest the scenic route. Who could be against a pilgrimage?

  So it was fate.

  And anyway, all they were going to do was drive through.

  24

  Magill was right, Talbot County was mostly flat farmland. So was Caroline County. But it was ripe, golden autumn, and the wide fields of brown, foot-high cornstalks stretched far away to forests of changing oaks and sycamores and scruffy pine trees. Geese honked overhead in formation or strutted in gray-and-white hordes on the low-lying grasses. Pumpkins lolled for acres, and the air was dusty and mellow. The fields, the infrequent houses, even the changing trees had a drowsy, bedraggled look, as if they were pleasantly tired and passively waiting for winter.

  “Turn here,” Cornel said.

  “Wait, now.” Signs on the road they’d turned off of a while ago had designated it a “Scenic Byway”; this new detour would be a scenic byway times three.

  “Turn.”

  She turned. “Why? What’s up here?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  Magill chuckled, but Caddie wasn’t amused. What about fate? What about driving through Clover? If Cornel was g
oing to alter the scenic route whenever the spirit moved him, they’d miss it. That wasn’t fate, that was—childish. “This road doesn’t even have a number,” she complained. “Cornel, there’s scenic and then there’s just…”

  “Nothing.” Magill had Finney on his sharp thighs, holding him steady when the car shot around curves. The dog stared straight ahead with wide eyes and cocked ears, stiff as a hood ornament.

  Farmer John’s Market, white wooden benches under an open tent canopy, was closed for the season. A house on cinder blocks had a satellite dish on the roof and a lone black goat in the garden. Farmland, farmland. Plastic-covered greenhouses, chicken coops, a tiny graveyard in the middle of nowhere.

  “You never know what you might find,” Cornel explained. “That’s the point. When I was a kid I used to take my bike and a penny or a nickel, and every corner I came to I’d flip the coin. Right, heads, left, tails. It’s an adventure.”

  “So you could never go straight,” Magill noticed.

  “No, sometimes I’d say head, straight, tails—what have you. The point is—”

  “But that would be cheating.”

  “The point—No, it wouldn’t.”

  “How far ahead of time would you decide heads was straight?”

  “How the hell do I know? A block.”

  “So you’d see what was coming and change the rules if you knew you wanted to go one way instead of the other.”

  “I did not. Anyway, I still only had a fifty-fifty chance, I wasn’t changing any rules. Would you shut up? I was ten years old, for—Why are we stopping?”

  Caddie wanted to know the same thing. The accelerator didn’t work. One minute they were sailing along fine, and the next the car didn’t have any power. “Look—nothing.” She showed them by beating the pedal with her foot. “It won’t go!”

  “Turn the wheel, get off the road,” Magill said. “Hurry.”

  Too late. With alarming speed the car rolled to a stop, leaving the back end stuck out four feet over the faded white side line.

  “Put it in neutral and steer. Do the lights work? Put on the blinkers. Come on,” he said to Cornel, opening the door, “let’s push.”

  Luckily no cars were coming. Luckily they weren’t on a hill. They pushed and she steered, over the verge onto the strip of grass between the road and a ditch. Beyond the ditch lay a broad, dusty cornfield and nothing else. Same thing on the other side.