The Summer Cottage

by Susan Kietzman

Genres: Family Life; Siblings; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A summer cottage on the Long Island Sound holds memories, secrets, and a chance for a scattered family to come together in this heartfelt novel.

Helen Street spent every summer of her childhood at her family’s cedar-shake cottage on the North Shore of Long Island. The youngest of four, she shared her mother’s athletic genes and relished the outdoor games that filled those warm, endless days. Unlike her older siblings—fiery Charlotte, ambitious Thomas, middle-child Pammy—Helen rarely felt the pressure of her mother’s high expectations.

Thirty years later, with her brother and sisters scattered, Helen is the sole caregiver for her terminally ill mother. But now her mother has made a dramatic pronouncement: she will leave everything, including the cottage, to Helen when she dies—unless everyone comes to the shore for a long weekend over the Fourth of July. During this time Helen, Charlotte, Pammy, and Thomas will revisit the fateful choices of their shared history. And they will face new challenges that could shatter their fragile kinship—or reveal a family’s extraordinary power to remember, to forgive, and to grow.

Release date: June 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

JULY 2003

Helen Street pulled her gray Volvo station wagon off the road and onto the patch of dead grass that had always served as the driveway for her mother’s shoreline cottage. As she turned off the car, Helen glanced at her mother, who was buckled into the seat beside her. Claire was asleep, her head in an uncomfortable-looking position against the window, her mouth open but silent. Helen opened the driver’s side door, stepped out, and stretched her arms to the sky, breathing in the familiar salted air that confirmed she had arrived. As it always did, the seaside air filled her with an urgent longing to shed her shoes and run across the street to the beach, through the warm sand, and into the cool waters of Long Island Sound. Instead, she walked to the house, fishing the cottage key out of her pocket on the way, and then pulled open the squeaky screen door to unlock the wood door that opened into the kitchen. Met by a musty scent, Helen walked swiftly through the downstairs rooms, opening every window that would. She then climbed the stairs to the narrow hallway leading to the four bedrooms, constructed like the rest of the cottage with vertical pine paneling, darkened by close to a century of sun. Helen tugged at the bedroom window shades, whose quick retreat left her squinting in the sudden brightness. Energized by the light, Helen rushed through the rooms, opening windows and holding them in place with the worn wood props that rested in the sills when not in use. Her father had purchased the dowels at the long-gone hardware store in town, and Helen, at ten, had helped him cut them and then coat them with shellac. Successful in opening fourteen of sixteen windows, Helen dashed down the stairs, as quickly as she had every summer morning of her childhood, and back outside into the sunshine. A quick look at the car revealed that her mother was still asleep, unaware still of the house and the sense of optimism it evoked, or had once evoked, in every member of the Thompson family.

Helen and her three siblings had spent their summers at the cottage that had been in their mother’s family for three generations. Claire, at seventy-nine and widowed for five years, had always used the name Gaines, her maiden name, for herself, but everyone at the beach referred to the house as the Thompson cottage, a head nod to those who lived there, to those they knew. Claire was the only one who called it the Gaines cottage, but she did so less and less frequently, as it was never acknowledged, and, obviously, never took.

Helen grabbed the collapsible, aluminum wheelchair from the back of the car and placed it next to the rear passenger door. She pushed and pulled it into shape and then set its brakes. She then gently opened the door that held Claire’s heavy head and twig-like body. “Mother,” she said quietly. “Mother, we’re here.”

Claire opened her eyes and blinked several times before speaking. “Where,” she said, eyes closed again.

“At the cottage.” Helen supported her mother’s body with one hand while she opened the door wide with the other. “We’re at the cottage.”

“I must have dozed off,” said Claire, opening her eyes wide, and then, after a moment, wiping the saliva from her chin with the back of her thumb.

“Yes,” said Helen, reaching over her mother to unbuckle the seatbelt.

Slowly, together—Claire insisting she do it herself and Helen offering encouragement and balance support—they moved from the passenger seat to the wheelchair. Claire landed with a thud. “I’m so tired of this.”

“I know you are,” said Helen, pushing her toward the house. “Let’s get you settled on the porch. There’s a lovely sea breeze.”

Once in the kitchen—Helen had run back to the car for her mother’s walker—Claire was able to maneuver her way through the dining room and living room and onto the screened-in porch. Helen helped Claire into her favorite spot, an old wicker armchair with faded floral fabric covering the back and seat cushions. Helen then pulled the cracked leather ottoman into place underneath her mother’s frail legs. “There,” said Helen.

“It is a glorious day,” said Claire, breathing heavily from Helen’s exertion. “Have you seen the beach yet?”

“No,” said Helen. “Perhaps I’ll run down before I unload the car.”

“Do that,” said her mother, closing her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll just be a minute then.”

“Take your time, Helen. I’m not going anywhere.”

Helen walked outside with the blue and white-checked cotton throw that had spent the winter on the back of the couch and shook the dust from it. She returned to the porch and draped it over her mother’s lap. “Are you settled?”

“Yes,” said Claire. “Go to the beach.”

Helen stepped back outside and eased the screen door shut behind her. She sat on the front steps, removed her running shoes and white ankle socks, and set them down on the slate paving stones at her feet. She walked gingerly across the hot street, along the grassy right-of-way, and down the dozen cement steps to the beach. As a child, she had routinely leaped off the seawall to the sand, a shortcut taught to her by her brother, Thomas. At forty, Helen was content to jump from the second step up from the beach, her feet sinking into the warm sand on impact. Feeling more like a liquid than a solid, the sand filled the gaps between her toes. Helen shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand and looked at the horizon, taking in the familiar islands, rocks, wood pilings, and boats moored in the inlet. The raft bobbed in the distance, waiting for eager swimmers to climb its ladder and sun themselves on its deck, to jump from its diving board. Helen looked down the beach to the left, then to the right. She spun around to check out the houses atop the wall, with their rectangular screened-in porches facing the water. Many were built in the 1920s—the Thompson cottage was one of the first in a neighborhood that had managed to withstand the 1938 hurricane and every other tropical storm that had made its way up the Eastern seaboard since.

The cottages bore the marks of bad weather and of cold, salty winters: peeling paint, rotting window sashes, curved, discolored wood shingles. Sitting on beachfront property, the cottages, if in top condition, would have been worth more than most people could afford. The lots alone would fetch more than a million dollars apiece. But the long-time residents weren’t selling, even when offered twice the going rate by New York bankers and Internet entrepreneurs. This was not a tear-down neighborhood like Rocky Point, where the turn-of-the-last-century cottages had been razed and replaced by gleaming glass, shiny steel, and plumbed walls. The cottages at Little Crescent Beach were comfortable cottages, full of sand from the beach and hearty families from New England, who did their own maintenance on their houses and knew their neighbors, breezily lending tools and advice and sharing stories and their favorite warm weather recipes. Many of them had family money that was securely tucked away for retirement or into savings accounts for the children, who were now grown-ups themselves. Their everyday money, the husbands’ salaries, had been used over the years on the same things—upgrades to their “city” homes, the houses they lived in ten months of the year, orthodontia, boarding school and college tuition, secondhand cars their offspring had driven to their summer jobs. Whatever was leftover had gone, still went, to the grocery store that had supplied the hamburgers and hotdogs, barbequed chicken, watermelon, marshmallows, and tonic water to the summer community and all its weekend guests for fifty years, and to the drive-in theater that featured family movies every weeknight in July and August.

Helen again faced the water and then strode toward it. She winced as her tender feet moved from the soft sand over the rounded pebbles at the shoreline. She hesitated for just a few seconds before walking into the water right up to her knees. Placing her hands on her hips in a tacit, unconscious display of satisfaction, she closed her eyes. She was back at the cottage with the entire summer ahead of her. And this year, if her mother got her way, Helen’s three siblings would be arriving over the next several days for the Fourth of July weekend. Helen had not seen her brother, Thomas, or her sister, Charlotte, since their father’s funeral five years before. And her sister, Pammy, while living less than a two-hour drive from Helen’s home in the Connecticut hills, had visited just twice in the last year, in spite of knowing how much her company meant to Helen, in spite of recently being told that their mother would not see 2004. Helen talked to Pammy once a week or so on the phone, but Pammy kept the conversation focused on herself and day-to-day light details rather than larger life issues.

When Helen returned to the house, Claire was again asleep. Concerned, but not alarmed, Helen looked at her mother and was struck, almost matter-of-factly as Helen was sometimes, by the thought that Claire was dying. She slept many hours of the day, as well as the night, exhausted by months of treatment and now by months without it. She was as mentally acute, it seemed, as she always had been, although the pain medication she occasionally let Helen talk her into taking on her bad days made her drowsy. She was increasingly resigned to her imminent fate, a clear indication of her level of battle fatigue. Claire, until mid-March, when her straight-talking oncologist told her the chemotherapy had made no difference, had never before given up, on anything.

She had been an Olympic-quality athlete, Claire had, cut in the final round of the selection process for the 1948 American women’s swim team. Had she been chosen for the team, she would have swum the 100-meter freestyle and 4 x 100-meter freestyle relay in London that summer with the other top female swimmers in the country. But an ill-timed flu and a bad turn at the 50-meter mark in the qualifying round smashed her dreams. Claire had continued to swim in national meets for the following few years, hopeful that she would qualify for the games in 1952. But by then, the younger swimmers were simply faster and better trained than she was in her late twenties. Had the selection process been made on effort or determination alone, Claire would not only have made the team, but also served as its captain.

Helen gently tucked the blanket around Claire’s tiny frame. She then jogged back outside to retrieve their bags and cooler of groceries from the car. After the car was empty, Helen hauled their large cloth duffels upstairs—Claire’s to the front room and Helen’s to the pink room behind her. Helen returned to the kitchen, where she unpacked the cooler and the brown paper grocery bags that held dinner and breakfast materials. She and her mother would go to town the next morning for more food when they had the final count for the upcoming weekend. After folding the bags, which they reused to line the plastic kitchen garbage bin, and placing them in the cupboard closest to the six-burner stove, Helen walked back out to the porch and picked up a copy of The New Yorker magazine from the previous summer. She put her bare feet up on the wicker table and flipped through the pages, waiting for her mother to awaken.

1973

As soon as the bedroom was light, Helen, who had just turned ten, climbed down off the top bunk. She gave her thirteen-year-old sister, Pammy, who slept on the bottom, a nudge. “Wake up,” Helen whispered urgently.

Pammy rubbed her eyes and yawned. “What time is it?”

“Who cares?” said Helen, stripping off her pajamas. “The sun’s out.”

Pammy lifted her head and shoulders off the mattress to look out the window. “Barely, Helen. The sun is barely out. It’s dawn.”

“Let’s go crabbing,” said Helen, still naked. She had the body of a recent graduate of fourth grade, nipples flat on her chest, a slightly protruding stomach, hairless underarms and crotch. She crossed the room and reached into their shared bureau for clean underwear, then grabbed yesterday’s shirt and shorts from the floor. She was dressed in a flash.

“You’re crazy.”

“Come on, Pammy. If we go now, the crabs will still be sleeping. We’ll get millions of them.”

“You go,” said Pammy, lowering her head back onto the pillow. “I’ll come soon.”

Helen put her hands on her nonexistent hips. “You’re going back to sleep. I can tell.”

“Just for a few minutes. Then I’ll meet you at the docks.” Pammy flipped onto her back.

“You’ll miss all the fun, Pammy.”

“I’ll have fun later,” said Pammy, sleep in her voice.

“Promise you’ll come?”

“I promise. I’ll meet you at the docks in”—Pammy squinted at her Timex watch—“twenty minutes.”

Doubtful but fleetingly satisfied, Helen left the bedroom, tiptoed down the hallway and then descended the stairs, carefully avoiding the fifth one from the top, which creaked. She walked quietly through the living room and onto the screened-in porch. She had her hand on the screen door when she heard her mother, another early riser, call from the kitchen. “Helen, is that you?” Helen didn’t answer. She didn’t want orange juice. She didn’t want cereal. She didn’t want to be quizzed about her tennis match with Amanda the day before. Her mother cared who won these friendly, casual games much more than Helen did. Helen hesitated for just a moment, and then she opened the porch door and launched herself out into the day. “Helen?”

Claire heard the door slam and shook her head. Day after summer day her youngest daughter rose with the birds and bolted out into the world without breakfast or as little as a morning greeting. She was a go-getter, her Helen, with energy and drive that would serve her well in life. Claire took the last sip of coffee from her mug and returned to her grocery list. A moment later, she glanced out the kitchen window to watch Helen, with a plastic cleaning bucket containing crabbing line held tightly in her right hand, run barefoot down the road to the docks.

Helen veered off the road at the Tetreau property, carrying her bucket through the itchy beach grass on her way to the breakwater that protected the docks from storm waves and strong currents. It was low tide, as she already knew, so it would be easy to find the mussels she used as bait. They attached themselves, often in clusters, to the granite rocks that had been hauled out of the now-abandoned quarry in town. Within a minute, Helen had two dozen of them in her bucket. On her way back, Helen waded into the water to find a good smashing rock and to feed the whale. The whale was actually a large rock protruding out of the water. It was split right where a real whale’s mouth would be, and Helen routinely fed it, as if it were a living, breathing mammal. On this day, she dumped a half dozen mussels into its mouth, patted its head, and then began her search for the right rock, which, once spotted, she retrieved and put into the bucket alongside the mussels and her line. She ran back to the road and then across the strip of grass that separated it from the first dock. Once she reached the dewy, wide pine planks, Helen slowed to a walk. Her stubbed left big toe, which she had caught on an uneven plank the other day, was still healing. At this leisurely pace Helen was able to listen, for the first time that morning, to the sounds of the shoreline, the water lapping against the dock pilings, the seagulls calling to each other. In her haste to get to her work, to catch as many crabs as she could, she often missed these pleasant reminders of where she was and what she was doing. Helen made a mental note to be more mindful of her surroundings, something her father told them was important to the enjoyment of life. She reached out to touch the pilings with her free hand as she passed them, counting them and the boats and noticing the empty slips that were usually occupied by whalers owned by the Wallaces, Smiths, and Johansons. They were out fishing, the teenage sons with their fathers. Helen had heard and seen them walking down the street past her house when it was still dark, fishing gear in hand, talking in hushed voices that carried up to her bedroom window anyway.

When she reached the end of the dock, Helen lay down on her stomach and peered into the clear water. At first, she saw nothing but a fish head, some green seaweed, and the submerged Coke can she had noticed the day before. But slowly, as her eyes adjusted to the slight ripple on the surface, she could see the crabs on and around the fish head. Some ate voraciously, one bite after another, while others were more cautious, taking a piece of meat and then scurrying off the head and into the relative safety of a nearby clump of eel grass. Prey assessed, Helen transferred the mussels, the smashing rock, and her crabbing line from her bucket to the dock. She gingerly descended the rickety dock ladder to fill her bucket with water. Safely back on the dock, she set the half-filled bucket down, smashed a lone mussel and then pulled away the bits of blue-black shell to expose the orange flesh the crabs adored. Meticulously, she tied the fractured mussel onto the end of her crabbing string, and then dropped it into the water, where it slowly sank to the bottom. Within five seconds, a large fiddler crab was upon it, eating heartily. Ever so gently, Helen inched the mussel and its hungry companion to the surface. In the air and halfway to the confines of Helen’s blue plastic prison, the crab suddenly let go of the bait and dropped with a plop back into the water. “Rats!” she said.

Determined to lure that very crab back, to best him as her mother would say, Helen re-baited her line and threw it into the seaweed where her prey had scampered. In an instant, the same crab crept toward the mussel cautiously. Hearing the hum of a distant engine, Helen glanced up and saw a boat rounding the breakwater and approaching the docks. She waved as it slowed down, in observance of the five-mile-per-hour no-wake zone, to glide into a slip at the other dock. She recognized the men, not by name, but she had seen them many times before. They lived up in the Heights, like most of the boat owners at the second dock. Their dock was newer and easily accessible by cars, which the Heights residents parked along a sandy, unpaved section of the road that wound through the Little Crescent Beach community and ended at their dock. They didn’t linger, the Heights residents, in Helen’s neighborhood. They had their own swimming area, their own dock, their own way of doing things. Many of them lived at the beach throughout the year in neat, well-kept ranch houses, which Helen had observed just once on a long bike ride. When she had asked her older brother, Thomas, about the Heights people when she returned from her ride, he cautioned her to stay away. There were wolves that roamed the wooded areas adjacent to the streets, hungry wolves. And even though Thomas was always kidding around about stuff like that, Helen had never ventured back. From the tracks, when she watched trains, she could see the Heights houses and their occupants, sitting in screened-in porches, gardening, mowing the lawn, doing all the things everyone at her beach did. But mingling with the people who lived on the other side of the tracks was tacitly discouraged. They were winter people, and the Thompsons and their immediate neighbors were summer folk.

Helen looked back down at her bait, which now hosted two crabs, and reached for her bucket. She drew up the line, faster this time, knowing she could lose one, but might keep the other. Out of the water, both crabs continued to snack, seemingly oblivious to their new, drier environment. Helen lowered them into the bucket and gave the line a quick shake, dislodging the crabs from the mussel. Helen watched them as she untied the mussel and tossed it into the bucket. She always gave her guests a meal.

“Hey!” called Pammy, as she walked down the dock an hour later. Helen, in the middle of tying another mussel onto her line, looked up at her sister. “I know,” Pammy said as soon as she reached Helen. “I slept longer than twenty minutes. You know me.”

“Yes, I do,” said Helen, focused on her work. “The snooze queen.”

Pammy walked past her sister and peered over the edge of the dock at the fish head. Fish, dead or alive, reminded her of the Johanson brothers, especially Michael, who was seventeen, blond, and at least six feet tall. He talked to her on the beach sometimes and laughed at her jokes. Once, he smacked at a horsefly that had landed on her back, but he missed it. Pammy liked to think that there had been no horsefly, that he simply wanted to touch her back with his big hands that were rough from yard work and tanned from the summer sun. She pretended she was his girlfriend, instead of big-breasted Tammy Jennings, who lived down the street; Tammy had acknowledged Pammy just once in the last two summers, when she needed to know what time it was. Pammy looked down at her own chest, hoping the padding from the training bra made it look like she had something. That spring, she had pleaded with her mother to replace her undershirts with training bras, insisting that all the thirteen-year-olds wore them. I don’t care what other thirteen-year-olds are doing, her mother had said, warning Pammy about the pitfalls of peer pressure. But Claire had nonetheless acquiesced and taken Pammy to Bell’s Department Store, where they bought a package of three lacy bras, one each in pink, white, and yellow.

“Get the bucket!” shouted Helen. “I got another one!” Pammy brought the bucket to Helen, who lifted the exposed mussel and the small crab that was tearing away at it out of the water. “Slip it underneath, Pammy! I’m going to lose it!” Pammy held the bucket under the crab, which Helen gently shook until it dropped in with the others. Twelve, no thirteen crabs, Pammy counted. She smiled at Helen, who diligently tied another mussel onto her line.

“Keep this up, Helen, and you may get a hundred.”

“They’re really biting today, Pammy. Do you want some of my string? You can catch them with me. We may need another bucket, though.”

“I think I’ll just watch you.” Pammy sat down on the dock, her back against a piling, and tilted her face toward the sun. She closed her eyes and listened to Helen drop her line back into the water.

“You’re not watching, Pammy. You’re sleeping again.”

“I’m imagining. I’m imagining you’re catching a crab right now. Look at your line.”

“There’s nothing there,” said Helen, peering down through the seaweed at her unoccupied mussel.

“Look again, Helen.”

“Hey,” said Helen, “here comes your boyfriend.” Pammy opened her eyes and shielded them from the sun. In the distance, she saw the Johansons’ boat, speeding toward the dock. Pammy ran her fingers through her hair, then tucked her shirt into her shorts. “You’ve got some toothpaste on your cheek,” said Helen, teasing her sister.

“I do not.”

“I’m so glad I don’t like boys yet,” said Helen, looking again into the water. “Charlotte says it will happen any day now.” Charlotte, their seventeen-year-old sister, knew everything about boys.

“Charlotte’s right,” said Pammy, retying the loose laces of one of her Keds sneakers.

“It’s too much trouble,” said Helen, pulling up her line. The large crab that had been circling her bait suddenly snatched it when she wasn’t looking. This time, Helen decided to wrap the line around twice.

“It’s no trouble,” Pammy said, “especially when Tammy Jennings is still in bed asleep. This crabbing idea has its merits, Helen.”

The Johansons backed their boat into the slip, then cut the engine. Pammy waved enthusiastically and walked down the dock to meet them. Dr. Johanson, an orthopedic surgeon, said good morning to Pammy, calling her Miss Thompson as he always did because he didn’t know her first name, and then, addressing his sons, told them he’d see them back at the house. After he left, Pammy, Michael, and his younger brother William, the boys with three large bluefish in their hands, walked back toward Helen. “Hey, Helen,” said Michael. “Catch anything?”

“A few,” Helen replied, not looking up from her task.

“Pammy tells me you have thirteen. That’s not bad. But if I remember correctly, you had sixteen by this time yesterday.”

“That’s because Pammy stayed in bed yesterday,” said Helen, looking up at her sister and smiling.

“I did not,” Pammy retorted. “I got up early and went to the store with Mom.”

“Anyway, I had no distractions,” said Helen, using a word she had heard her mother use to describe Charlotte’s boyfriends.

“It’s a wonder I can catch anything then,” said Michael, turning to leave. “I’ve got more distractions than I can handle.” At that, Michael and William let out loud, quick laughs. Pammy laughed too, more for encouragement for the boys than as an indication of her comprehension. And then the boys were gone, walking briskly to join their father who was walking along the same road Helen traveled to reach the dock. Poles in hand, the doctor seemed to be in no hurry. As soon as the boys caught up with him, however, he quickened his pace, eager perhaps for the bacon and egg breakfast waiting for them at home. Every morning Mrs. Johanson cooked a tummy-filling breakfast for her men. Plus, she was the prettiest and nicest mother in the neighborhood. Helen had once been invited in for French toast, which Mrs. Johanson made with a real baguette. When Helen had shared this tip with her mother, Claire had agreed to try it. But she never did, instead favoring the thin slices of white her husband loved with syrup and powdered sugar on Saturday mornings.

Pammy watched the boys go and then sat down next to Helen. She looked down into the water, head in hands, bent elbows on crisscrossed legs. “You got one,” she said. “Pull it up.”

2003

Helen put the magazine aside when she heard her mother shift in her chair. Claire enjoyed sleeping in the car and in her bed, but recently she did not like to wake up in what she considered to be a strange place, which the other day meant the couch in her own living room, but mostly referred to chairs in medical building waiting areas. And while the cottage that had been the Thompson family summer retreat since before Helen was born was far from strange, it would be vaguely unfamiliar this first visit this year, Helen guessed, due to her mother’s exhaustion. Helen switched chairs to be next to her mother. As soon as Claire opened her eyes, blinking in the afternoon sun that filled the porch with the golden light she loved, Helen laid her hand upon her mother’s shoulder. Claire looked in the direction of her daughter, the medication she had taken to ease her pain that morning still working its way through her system. “Did you have a nice rest?” Helen asked, knowing the sound of her voice brought her mother back faster.

Claire nodded her head then, mentally grounded, placed her hand on top of her daughter’s. “What time is it?”

Helen looked at her watch. “About four.”

“Yes,” said Claire, sounding pleased with Helen’s answer.

“Would you like some tea?”

“I don’t think so.” Claire was now fully awake and looking past her daughter at the giant maple tree across the street. “I’d like to see the beach.”

“Good idea,” said Helen, rising from her chair. “Do you want to walk or shall I put you in your chair?”

“The chair, I think. I’m a bit unsteady on my feet.”

Helen grabbed the walker that was resting against the wall and positioned it in front of her mother’s wicker chair. Claire grabbed on to the handles and slowly lifted herself until she was vertical. Helen, who had her right arm behind her mother’s back to stop her from falling, knew better than to touch her. There was so little Claire could do herself. It was a daily discussion: how much she used to be able to do just a few short years ago compared with how little she could do now. And then there were the days that Claire wanted to talk about how strong she had been as a young woman—a couple times a week, it seemed to surface. Helen, who could have told her mother’s story probably better than her mother could at this point, routinely listened attentively. Being her caregiver was more tolerable when Claire was in a good mood and chatted joyfully about her accomplishments. It was . . .