The Goodbye Summer

  “And another thing,” she felt bold enough to admit. “I’m not sure I’d be any good as an animal handler anyway. To tell you the truth, dogs never do what I say. I’m not forceful. They ignore me.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Turn around and look the other way?”

  “They turn their backs on me.”

  “It must hurt your feelings.”

  “It’s devastating.”

  The light from the streetlamp cast interesting shadows on his broad, reassuring, Midwestern face. She smiled at him, feeling safe and accepted, not judged. He was so easy to talk to. She didn’t want this to end yet, she wanted to sit in the close, ticking car and talk and talk, establish herself in his mind as a viable person, someone he might be interested in.

  But he was turning away, unbuckling his seat belt, unlocking his door. “You haven’t met the right dogs, that’s your problem. You don’t know how easy this could be if you were paired with the right animal.”

  He got out of the car and came around, opened her door for her. They ambled up the walk, and she forgot to be embarrassed about the sculptures when he suddenly said, “What are you doing Saturday afternoon?”

  “Oh, I have lessons. All day. Saturday’s my longest day.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Sunday. Sunday I’m not doing anything.”

  “Meet me in the park. About two o’clock, is that a good time?”

  “Two, yes, two is great.”

  “If it doesn’t rain, you’ll see King in action.”

  She took her bag off her shoulder to fumble in it for the key, and also to hide her expression, which she imagined was confused. Even now, when it was almost over, she couldn’t be sure what sort of evening they were having, business or social. About dogs or about them. “Thanks so much for dinner,” she said, trying for a breezy tone to cover all the possibilities. “I really enjoyed hearing about what you do, what your job is like.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “What?”

  “That I monopolized the conversation.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I’m not really like this. Your fault, you’re too good a listener.”

  She’d heard that before. She never felt especially complimented by it, since people who were good listeners usually weren’t very good talkers.

  “Next time,” Christopher said. He brushed the backs of her fingers with his. “I’ll shut up and you can tell me all about yourself.”

  “Oh, well. I’m not that interesting.”

  “I disagree.” He caught her hand and swung it between them—a chummy, lighthearted gesture, she thought, until he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Then everything fell into place. Like playing computer solitaire, you put the last king up and all the cards flapped down in triumphant spirals. The end. Want to play again?

  She moved into his open arms. They exchanged the lightest of kisses, more of a caress with their mouths than a kiss, but they lingered over it, drawing the moment out. Caddie felt dizzy, disembodied. “Night,” Christopher said, and she whispered it back.

  She put her key in the lock, and that was the end of romance. Finney went berserk—he must’ve had his ear to the door, listening for metal on metal.

  Christopher chuckled and stepped back. They waved, and she went in the house, closing the door fast so the dog couldn’t escape.

  If she did what she wanted to do, which was dance around the living room, Finney would never stop barking, so she sat on the second-to-last step of the staircase in the dim hall and petted him until he settled down, got over his frantic gladness. “That’s Christopher, yes,” she told him while he sniffed her shoes, her hands, her face. “Yes, Christopher. You like him, don’t you? Me, too. We like Christopher, don’t we? Yes, we do.”

  And he liked them. Christopher Dalton Fox. What a wonderful name. She felt euphoric. Very likely things would not work out, he’d realize they weren’t meant to be, or she’d find out he had a wife in Youngstown, something would happen to spoil it. But even so, she’d always remember this moment, when he was just a memory and she could contemplate all that had been and might be. “It’s perfect right now,” she told the dog, “right this minute. Even if it’s as good as it’s going to get.”

  7

  “One and two and one and two—that’s it—one and two and one and whooo!”

  Claudette, the activities director, bent over and slapped the floor with her palms, miming that she was winded. She wasn’t, Claudette was tireless, a machine, but she had worked herself into quite a sweat disco dancing to Madonna.

  The men of Wake House never joined in the exercise class she led on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Blue Room, but they never missed it. Even if they were late, they always came slinking in eventually—as Thea Barnes said, like cats hearing the can opener. It wasn’t the music that drew them, and Caddie didn’t think it was the sight of a lot of old ladies hopping around in their socks, waving their arms in time to “Like a Virgin.” It was Claudette.

  Nana cackled, taking it all in from her wheelchair by the wall, wriggling her toes at the end of her new canvas cast in time to the beat. Her red toes: Claudette had painted her nails for her in arts and crafts. “Look at Cornel,” she said to Caddie over the music. “Is that drool on his chin?”

  She peered over at Cornel in alarm. “No, I don’t—oh, ha.” Good joke. Grouchy old Cornel, who complained about everything, wasn’t complaining about Claudette in her skintight bicycle shorts and one of those tank tops with the bra built in. He was spellbound. So was Bernie, his roommate, a burly, sad sack of a man who usually looked like a basset hound. Right now he looked like a basset hound on point.

  Thea Barnes, who was doing slow stretching exercises by herself in the corner, heard Nana’s crack and laughed, “Ha!” the same uninhibited belt of laughter Caddie had heard from the window on the day Thea arrived.

  “I should be doing those with you,” Caddie said, moving closer. “You’re so limber. Do you do yoga?”

  “I used to dance—ballet. But I’ve got terrible arthritis in my big toe, so now I just stretch.” She looked like a dancer in her black leotard under a full, calf-length skirt. The gold scarf she’d tied around her head drifted over her shoulders when she bent or swayed, following her graceful movements.

  “I know I should jog or something,” Caddie persisted. “I don’t really do anything.”

  “You don’t need to, you’re so slim.”

  “Well, I do walk the dog a lot…” She winced. Sore subject.

  Thea grinned, waving her hand. “All healed. Look, not even a bruise.”

  “You were so nice about that.”

  “It was nothing! Forget it.”

  “I didn’t tell you—I took Finney to a dog trainer. He said he’s beyond hope.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “His name is Christopher Fox—the trainer. He works in town.” Caddie ran her sandal along the edge of the rug. “He’s very nice.”

  Thea lifted her dark, expressive eyebrows.

  “Actually.” Caddie laughed, self-conscious, keeping her eyes down. “We’ve started going out.”

  “Oh, how lovely.”

  “It is,” she agreed.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s…oh…”

  Thea clapped her hands, delighted. “She’s speechless. You’ll have to bring this man over so we can get a look at him.”

  “I was thinking I would.” How funny to be telling Thea about Christopher when she hadn’t even told Nana yet. “He’s got a beautiful dog, a perfect dog, much better than Finney.”

  “Well, you know, it’s not really the dog we want to meet.”

  Caddie grinned and examined her cuticles.

  “Are you blushing? I’m sorry,” Thea said, laughing, “I shouldn’t tease. Poor Caddie, I’m afraid you’re our designated élan vital.”

  “Your what?”

  “Our vital spirit. We’re too ol
d for lives of our own, so we have to live through you.”

  She made a face. “Oh, boy. You’re in big trouble, then.”

  “No, you’re our heartbeat, we’re counting on you.”

  “I think you should get a new vital spirit.”

  “Too late, you’re it!” Thea’s gray eyes danced with a warm, knowing fondness that startled Caddie and set her at ease at the same time. It was so nice to be teased with affection; it felt like a friendly touch or a compliment. For some reason she felt closer to Thea than their brief acquaintances warranted, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Thea felt the same.

  “Okay, people,” Claudette called out, “let’s slow it down a little! How about something from the olden days? Pair up!”

  “Well,” Thea said from the side of her mouth. “I think she could’ve phrased that a little more tactfully.”

  Caddie held out her hand. “Want to dance?” Claudette had put on “Don’t Be Cruel,” and the Copes sisters, Bea and Edgie, were doing a creaky, slow-motion jitterbug.

  “Not me.” Thea wriggled her foot in its black ballet slipper. “Damn toe.” She lowered her voice. “Uh-oh. Caddie, look.”

  “What? Oh.” Bea and Edgie had paired up, but the Harris wives, the only ladies left on the floor, had not. In fact, they’d turned their backs on each other, and now the second Mrs. Harris, a regal, silvery-haired lady whose first name was Doré—“as in do, re, mi, fa,” Nana liked to say—was leaving, striding out of the room in her mauve warm-up suit, not a hair out of place after all that exercising.

  Thea rolled her eyes. “It’s so tiresome. I have to sit between them in the dining room.”

  “I got stuck between them once, and it was awful. They really can’t stand each other.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  One day, after Nana had been at Wake House for about a week, Caddie had come out on the front porch and found Mrs. and Mrs. Harris sitting in two chairs, with a third, empty chair between them. Without thinking, she’d taken the middle chair. At first it seemed as if they were having a normal conversation, but that was because it took her so long to notice that the Harrises only spoke to her, never to each other. She’d heard that about them, of course, but it didn’t seem possible; she hadn’t quite believed it. Maxine, the original Mrs. Harris, said something about Caddie being a music teacher and how much she, Maxine, had always loved music. “It surely does soothe the savage beast,” she said with a sniffing laugh, “and there’s times in my life I’d’ve been a beast without it.”

  Mrs. Doré Harris was a sharp, careful dresser; she always wore out-fits, slacks and sweaters that matched, necklaces that went with her earrings. That morning she’d had on a filmy white blouse with a black bow at the throat, a wide, droopy bow as big as a telephone, a real fashion statement. She was from the South, and she had a low, buttery accent that didn’t always sound perfectly sincere.

  “Now that’s a frightenin’ thought,” she’d leaned closer to Caddie to say, putting a finger in her Good Housekeeping magazine to hold her place. “Imagine the beastliness o’ some people if they didn’t have music.” She gave a tinkly, ladylike laugh. “But of co- us, the correct quote is savage breast, not beast.”

  Maxine started a light drumming with her heels on the floor. She was older than Doré, heavyset, with graying, bowl-cut hair and squared-off bangs like Mamie Eisenhower. “Of co- us,” she said—Caddie had flinched, realizing she was mocking Doré’s accent—“of co- us, some people can only say ‘breast’ because they’ve never had any breasts and are flat as pancakes.”

  Doré might or might not be flat-chested, it was hard to tell because of the black bow. But what a thing to say! Caddie waited, horrified and fascinated, to hear how she would answer.

  “Id’n it funny, Caddie, how some people who’ve let themselves go can’t resist makin’ fun o’ people who’ve kept themselves up. Or it would be funny if it wadden so pathetic.”

  “What’s funny, Caddie, is people who don’t know they’re pathetic.”

  “Now that is certainly the truth,” Doré said, forgetting to be indirect. When she remembered, she reached over and patted Caddie on the arm, to indicate she’d been speaking only to her. “The ones who don’t know they’re pathetic ah truly the most pathetic of all.”

  “My goodness, I’d better go get Nana ready for our drive,” Caddie had said, and she ran for her life.

  “Claudette should’ve known better,” Thea said now, watching the exercise class break up early—not enough dancers.

  “Caddie?” Nana called over, fanning her chest with a pinch of her “Oh my God, I forgot to have children!” T-shirt. “Bring me a glass of water, would you? Watching all that jumping around’s made me thirsty.”

  “How about you?” Caddie asked Thea.

  “No, thanks, I’m fine.”

  Coming back from the kitchen, Caddie paused in the high-ceilinged hall to gaze around at the church pew benches along the wall, the shaggy ferns on pedestals, the dusty chandelier overhead. Gone-to-seed Victorian genteel, that’s what Wake House was. J. P. Morgan, if he was slumming, could be standing on the dark staircase landing, blocking the rose light from the stained-glass window, jingling change in his pocket. All the floors slanted and the doors closed by themselves, because there were no right angles anymore. The outside was still imposing, with its black mansard roof and puffy, three-story brick tower on one side, and at least it had never been “modernized” like some of its neighbors on Calvert Street. The best feature, everybody agreed, was the porch stretching across the whole front and one side, a wide, airy, perfect porch, lined with rocking chairs and gliders, exactly the sort of porch an old folks’ home ought to have.

  Caddie paused to look at the line of framed black-and-white photos on the wall—including the one Magill had broken on Nana’s first day, now repaired. Three generations of Wakes posed in formal and informal groups on the lawn and front steps of the family mansion. Old man Wake was always at the center, growing whiter, plumper, and more distinguished as time went by. Then the Wakes were gone, and the other photos were of more recent, less grand incarnations, as the house became a boarders’ hotel, law offices, a school for therapeutic massage, a day spa, and back to a boarding-house. And now, “elder care and convalescence.” Caddie didn’t care for the lesson, the perspective on time the photographs conveyed. She’d have liked Wake House, this Wake House, to last forever, and it wasn’t going to. Nothing did, and here was the proof on the wall.

  “Caddie!” Bea Copes called from the couch in the Blue Room, where she and Edgie had collapsed on the sofa, fanning their faces with their handkerchiefs. “Caddie, come and see us!” She should’ve brought them glasses of water. She brought Nana hers and went to see what the Copes sisters wanted.

  They didn’t look alike. Edgie was fluffier, a more feminine sort of woman than Bea, who reminded Caddie of the farmer’s wife in the Grant Wood painting. And yet she’d have guessed they were sisters without being told, if only because their voices had the same cadence, and they spoke with the same rural Maryland accent. And something else, too, a deference in their postures, the way their bodies inclined toward each other to talk or to listen.

  “Sit!” Edgie urged, patting the place next to her on the sofa. She looked like a wilted flower in her damp, light green shirtwaist and her cottony yellow hair. She was the flighty, fidgety younger sister in Caddie’s mental shorthand, the decorative one, while Bea was older and more serious and practical, the one who took care of business.

  “We want to ask you a question,” Bea said, taking off her glasses to polish them on her sleeve. Her eyes had that pale, whitish ring around the irises that old people got sometimes, but they were still handsome eyes. She was tall and rawboned, with long limbs and knotty joints. Caddie loved to watch her walk. She threw out her legs in a funny, jerky way that was graceful and ungainly at the same time.

  “We loved the history you made of your grandmother,” Edgie leaned toward her to say.

&
nbsp; Uh-oh. Were they going to ask her about the seven body fluids? Cornel had, and so had Mrs. Brill, and she couldn’t tell them. “Ask Nana,” she’d said. She just couldn’t bring herself to say the word “semen” or “urine” to these nice old people. And certainly not “vaginal secretions.”

  “I can’t write anymore, you know,” Bea said.

  “Arthritis,” Edgie explained. “She used to be able to type a hundred words a minute. Taught her self.”

  “Plus I can’t see. So we—”

  “Whereas I’ve got all my faculties and I still can’t write,” Edgie said.

  “You can write, you just can’t spell,” Bea said. “Now, Caddie, we need to ask you a big favor. We’re so old, we’re the last ones to go—”

  “In our generation.”

  “In our generation; all our brothers are gone, we were the youngest of the six, and now there’s nothing left but nieces and nephews.”

  “But plenty of them,” Edgie said, counting on her fingers. “There’s four of Edward’s, three of Jack’s, three of David’s, and Bernard’s one.”

  “And don’t even start on the greats.”

  “They don’t keep up, the greats, although David’s girl Sarah does visit once in a while, as does Buster, Bernard’s boy. Say what you will about Buster, he never forgets us at Christmas.”

  “Anyway,” Bea said. “Point is, they don’t really know us, these young ones. And not that we’re all that interesting—”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “But someday they might want to know about their family, things the boys didn’t pass on because they didn’t know, being too old—”

  “Or didn’t care about, being boys.”

  “And so—we were wondering—if you might have time to write down a little history of us if we told it to you, Edgie and me. For ‘We Remember,’ and for our kin.”

  “It wouldn’t be very long,” Edgie cautioned.

  “Oh, no, it would be short. Just the highlights.”