The Family Beach House (7 page)

It was a little after noon and Tilda and Hannah were settling at a table at Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier, in the beautiful, largely rural town of Kittery Point. Tilda had decided, not surprisingly, to order a bucket of steamers, and Hannah wanted a boiled lobster. They had brought a bottle of fizzy water, a bottle of pinot grigio, and a loaf of French bread from Standard bakery. Almost all of the brightly painted picnic tables were occupied. There were several family groups. Four women who looked about Tilda's age had brought for their table a cloth and linen napkins. Two older men had brought their Dachshund, who sat quietly under the table while they ate.

Susan had gone off to spend the afternoon with an old friend in Falmouth. Tilda loved Susan and enjoyed her company. But she wasn't disappointed that it would be just herself and Hannah at lunch.

This was one of the sisters' favorite spots. Across the creek was Cutts Island, its shore thick with pointed firs, birch, and farther inland, oaks and maples. People in kayaks and rowboats and larger pleasure crafts drifted or glided by, often waving at the diners. Teenaged boys, employed by the pound, unloaded wooden crates and equipment from fishing boats moored below the restaurant's deck. Laughter and conversation from the other tables punctuated the air. It was impossible, Tilda and Hannah thought, not to feel privileged at Chauncey Creek, like you had the world at your feet.

The sun was very bright and hot. Tilda reached in her bag for a hat, one of Frank's old baseball caps. She had given most of his clothes to charitable organizations. Some special pieces had gone to Jon, who could just about fit into them; other pieces, like the old sweater, had been adopted by Jane. But Frank's hat collection she had not been able to part with. She didn't like the way she looked in baseball caps, and when Frank was alive she had never worn them. But now, well, there was so little left of her husband….

“You know,” Hannah said suddenly, interrupting the sudden, but not surprising, dark drift of Tilda's thoughts, “Susan and I are still talking about starting a family.”

Tilda was startled. “Oh. You hadn't mentioned anything in so long I guess I thought that maybe you had decided not to….”

“No. It's still on the table.”

“So…”

“So what's holding us back?”

“Yes.”

“Me.” Hannah smiled as if in apology.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Well, why?” Tilda asked. “Are you worried about money? You know that old saying, there's never a right time to have a baby, you just have to do it.”

“No, it's not the money. Though the thought of paying for college in twenty years or so does scare the hell out of me.”

“Loans,” Tilda said. “Scholarships. Work-study programs. Part-time jobs. For the kids, of course.”

“I know, I know. It's not the money.”

“So, have you talked to Susan about why you're reluctant? Or is that a stupid question?”

“It should be a stupid question. If I can't or don't or won't talk to my wife about something so important, who am I going to talk to? But the fact is that I haven't talked to her, not really. I mean, we talk about the idea of a family and about the fact that I'm not ready for one, but I can't really tell her why.”

“Do you know why you're not ready,” Tilda asked, “or is it that you can't articulate the feelings? Or maybe you really don't know your reasons.”

Hannah was silent for a long moment. And then she said, “I don't know.”

Tilda sighed. “I don't mean to preach, Hannah, really, but the most common killer of marriage is emotional distance. You can't shy away from talking to Susan about your fears or hesitations or whatever you want to call them. You owe it to yourself and to Susan.”

“I know.”

“Look, friendships don't last when people drift apart. How can a marriage, the most intimate and peculiar of friendships, be expected to survive?”

“I know. You're right. You are. And I know I brought up this subject, but let's talk about something else now. Like, about how you're doing.”

Tilda smiled. “Besides the disturbing fact that I feel afraid of the future? And that I wish I could go back in time to when my life was wonderful?”

“I assumed as much. For one, you're still wearing your wedding ring.”

Tilda looked down at her left hand. The yellow gold ring shone in the bright sun. “I know. I can't seem to be without it. I've tried a few times to leave it at home while I go to the grocery store or somewhere I might not run into anyone I know. But I can't even do that without feeling all anxious and guilty. It's like the minute I'm seen without my wedding ring I'll be announcing to the world that I'm over Frank. That I don't need him anymore, that I don't love him. I just know I'll feel horribly guilty and judged.”

“Do you still need him?” Hannah asked.

“Yes,” Tilda said. “I think so.”

“How? Or maybe I should ask, why? Or, for what? And don't say, for taking out the garbage.”

“Jon does that. It's been his job since he was twelve.”

“Answer the question.”

Tilda replied promptly. “I need him because I want him. I need him because my marriage was a good one. I miss it. Almost aside from Frank I miss the marriage itself. I don't know if that makes sense.”

“Define ‘good.'”

“Excuse me?”

“No, really. I'm not trying to be annoying or provocative. I'm truly curious. For you and Frank, what was good?”

“It's hard to put into words, exactly,” Tilda said. “I don't know. For one thing, I never, or rarely, felt put upon. Frank really pulled his share of the load. We respected each other. We liked each other. It sounds so simplistic or clichéd but…”

“Yeah, it does. But I know what you mean. It's about partnership. Sharing the burdens and the laughter. I sound like a greeting card.”

The conversation rested a moment while Tilda sipped her plastic cup of wine and Hannah watched a small pleasure boat drift by the dock. She was thinking about her sister's situation. She knew that Tilda felt alone, almost friendless. Some of that wasn't her fault. Some of it was. Hannah and Susan regularly asked her to join their social activities in town. They asked her to movies at the Nickelodeon, to openings at the Portland Museum of Art, where they were members, they asked her to join them at the free summer evening concerts in Monument Square, they asked her to the monthly networking events sponsored by the DownEast Pride Alliance, they asked her to readings and signings at Longfellow Bookstore. Most times, Tilda found an excuse not to go along. Tilda's reluctance to move on with her life was beginning to worry Hannah.

“Hannah,” Tilda said then, breaking into her thoughts. “I don't mean to sound naive, though I suspect I probably will. I was wondering. What's—I mean, what would you say is the main difference between our marriages? Aside from the obvious, of course, and aside from the prejudices gay couples face. How is marriage between two women, or two men for that matter, different than marriage between a woman and a man?”

Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Gay couples can share clothes.”

Tilda was mortified. “I'm sorry. I offended you. I didn't mean to.”

“It's okay. I'm not offended. I'm just still surprised when people ask that sort of question. For me, my life is normal. But for others, I guess it still seems very foreign.”

“I'm sorry,” Tilda said. “Again. Anyway, I suppose we're all strangers to one another. In the end, I mean. No one ever really knows another person's truth.”

“Well, that's a little depressing. What is it with you harshing everyone's buzz?”

“Sorry. Lately I seem to be, I don't know, wallowing.”

“Well, stop it. It's not good for your health. Anyway, I want to say one more thing about our earlier topic, relationships. I don't mean to sound too goopy or sentimental, but I agree with you. I believe any good relationship comes down to respect and friendship. The kind of unglamorous, work-a-day, committed love you won't find in the pages of a romance novel.”

“You haven't read widely in the genre,” Tilda said. “There are plenty of writers who talk about day-to-day love. It's true that not all of them would call themselves romance writers.”

“Well, you know what I mean. I'm not talking about heaving bosoms, though I've got nothing against heaving bosoms.”

Tilda nodded discreetly toward a guy who was coming toward them, dragging a cooler. He was technically gorgeous and perfectly built. Tilda could tell because he wasn't wearing a shirt and his shorts were riding very, very low.

“I know,” she said when he had passed. “And I've got nothing against six-pack abs, though in the end they have nothing to do with love. But they are nice to look at. Even though that guy should be wearing a shirt. This is a restaurant, after all. I think there are sanitary laws about such things.”

“You sound like a mommy.”

“I am. I'm a middle-aged mommy with no partner.”

“Now you're being all self-pitying. Again.”

“I know,” Tilda admitted. “Self-pity comes easily to me. I'm not saying I'm proud of it.”

“Self-pity and wallowing can kill you. Sorry. I meant, figuratively.”

“I know you did.”

“Do you think Dad would ever really consider willing Larchmere out of the family?” Hannah asked suddenly. “I mean, if he and this Jennifer person get married. It seems impossible but stranger things have happened.”

Tilda paused before replying. “I've been thinking and thinking about that. Obsessing, really. I just don't know. I wish I could say with certainty that I did know. Either way, then I could deal with his decision. Maybe we're being Nervous Nellies for nothing. I hope so.”

“Nervous Nellies? I haven't heard that expression in ages. Didn't Mom used to say that?”

Tilda laughed. “Yes. She used to tell me to stop being a Nervous Nellie every time gym class came around. I think my fears annoyed her somehow.”

Of course they did,
Hannah thought. Their mother had not tolerated weakness or vulnerability or anything that might vaguely be considered a nuisance or a disruption to her daily life of self-preservation.
My thoughts about her are so harsh,
Hannah realized. She tried to summon even a shred of positive feeling about Charlotte McQueen and could not.

Hannah, disturbed, wanted to get back to the subject of Larchmere. “Sometimes,” she said, “it seems to me that Larchmere has a personality of its own, or as if it's a being of its own, not just an inanimate object. I feel sometimes that it's something alive and breathing. It makes me uncomfortable somehow, to think that what is essentially a big pile of stones and mortar and glass has a life independent of its inhabitants. A piece of land or a house isn't supposed to have so much power over a person, is it?”

Tilda frowned. “I guess not. I'm not really sure I understand what you mean.”

“It doesn't matter. It's just that I can't deny the power of Larchmere. I feel it now more than ever. Now that I know its future as our home is threatened. I know it's all very romantic of me. You've read
Rebecca,
haven't you?”

“Of course,” Tilda said. “Several times. I even taught it one semester. But in the novel it was a person not a house who wielded a bizarre power over the hero and heroine. It was Rebecca herself, from beyond the grave. At least, it was the memories of her and the stories told about her that wielded the power. Rebecca's legend.”

“You think so? Maybe Rebecca had a hold on the unnamed heroine but not over Max de Winter, at least not entirely. Don't you remember why he stayed in that god-awful marriage to that god-awful woman?” Hannah asked. “Basically so that no taint of unpleasantness would touch his beloved home. When he comes clean to his second wife, about murdering Rebecca, he admits to something like having loved Manderley too much. He says that that kind of one-way love is doomed to fail, or that it can't grow. He says something like that. One-way, unrequited love.”

Tilda nodded. “Yes, I do remember now. His point was that love has to be reciprocal in order to flourish. Do you want the last steamer?”

“No,” Hannah said. “You can have it. But about love for the house, or for things, inanimate objects, I wonder. Doesn't, say, a tree, repay your love—your tending to its needs, feeding it fertilizer, watering it—by thriving? Isn't that a form of reciprocity?”

“Maybe,” Tilda said. “In a way, yes, though the tree isn't sentient. It's alive but it's not making a conscious, thinking choice about its thriving or failing. It's just—reacting, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, but she wasn't so sure a tree was just reacting to its environment rather than also acting upon it.

“And a house, a structure,” Tilda was saying. “What really does it give us in return for our care? In return for repainting its exterior and replacing its old and broken windows and cleaning its chimneys?”

“Shelter,” Hannah said. “Warmth. A sense of comfort and security. Adam would say financial security.”

“But aren't those qualities really the result of human action? I don't know, the people who inhabit a house seem to me to be the source of all that's good—and bad—about the notion of ‘home.' Not the structure around them.”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “So, you believe that home is where the heart is. In other words, that home is an emotional state having little to do with physical realities?”

“Not entirely,” Tilda said, “but largely. Anyway, I guess we're not likely to come to any final agreement on this matter of the life—as it were—of the inanimate objects we say we love. I guess it's not important to agree. Well, I guess one thing we can agree on is the fact that we both love Larchmere.”