That Camden Summer (12 page)

"Oh, all right, go ahead. But tomorrow you change immediately after school, as usual." The other three shouted a chorus of "Thanks,

Mr. Farley!" and Isobel scurried after them. The last he saw of his daughter she was running to catch up with Lydia, who was skipping down the boulevard with the bushel basket over her head.

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In their wake the yard grew silent except for the snapping fire. Roberta remained in the doorway. Gabe remained by the blaze. They recognized that their children were stirring up a friendship the two of them might not want to foster, but their reasons were selfish and had them feeling even more uncomfortable with each other. She said, "Well, I'd better go find some butter," and disappeared from the doorway.

He continued cleaning up the yard, picking up nails, feeding the fire, keeping some shingles for the girls to burn when they returned. Minutes later Roberta came down the gangplank carrying a bag of the sort used to haul groceries. Her hair had been neatened and her skirt changed. He turned his back to make it easier on both of them, and leaned over to pick up some shingles as she crossed the yard behind him. He knew perfectly well, however, that she was heading downhill to buy groceries and would have to carry them back up in her little mesh bag with the handles. She had only two feet while he had a Ford truck, and his mother had not been lax about drilling manners.

He turned from the fire and called, "Mrs. Jewett?" She stopped in the break of the bridal wreath. "I could run you down the hill in the truck. "

"No " thank you, Mr. Farley," she replied crisply. "I don't think it would do for the two of us to be seen together again in your truck. I'll walk. "

He breathed a sigh of relief as he watched her move off in the direction the girls had gone.

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His inclination was to be gone when she got back, but a responsible man didn't leave coals glowing to send up sparks and set a woman's house afire. So he finished raking the yard, scooped up the trash into a gunnysack and burned up most of the remaining shingles. His tools were in the truck and he was squatting beside a brilliant bed of coals by the time Roberta returned carrying two mesh sacks! The girls were with her and came lugging the bushel basket with their cache covered with seaweed. Their dresses were filthy and their shoes wet. Isobel's hair was hanging like sea grass. Everybody was talking at once.

"Look! They're positively huge!" "Oh, the fire is just right!" "Mother, where's the lobster pot?"

"Come and see them, Daddy! Rebecca knew how to put sticks in their claws so we didn't get pinched! "

There followed an admiring of lobsters with four disheveled girls trotting all over the yard, into the house, back out. Roberta passed behind Gabe with her two weighty sacks.

"You're still here, Mr. Farley. I thought you'd be gone. "

"I didn't think I should leave the fire untended. "

Walking the plank, she called, "You may stay if you'd like, and eat with us. "

Lobsters? He shuddered. Moreover, he remembered Elfred's innuendo. "No thanks. I'll be going home now."

At the top of the plank Roberta set down

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her heavy burden and turned around, rubbing her arms.

"You should have let me drive you," he said, feeling oafish for having let her carry tins and milk bottles up the hill.

She studied him as if deciding whether he was right. "I told you, I'm used to doing for myself. I can see you don't like lobster anyway."

He went home and ate alone. Sardines and soda crackers. Some tinned peaches, straight from the can. Two cups of hot coffee. Three cinnamon jumble cookies his mother had made. The kitchen was orderly and white in the glow of the new electric light. Caramel, the cat, came and nestled in his lap. He kept watching the wall clock, noting the purpling of light at the window, imagining the yard at the Jewetts' with lobsters boiling in a pot. He washed his fork and cup, watered Caroline's houseplant, swept the kitchen floor, shook the rugs and Isobel hadn't shown up yet. He bathed and shaved and still she hadn't come home. He kept imagining those coals and that unpredictable bunch she was with. Hell, for all he knew they'd have her walking barefoot across them pretending she was some Hawaiian volcano goddess.

He had put on clean clothes and decided to get in the truck and go back there to fetch her when she showed up, breathless and flushed.

"Daddy?" she called from downstairs. "Daddy, where are you?"

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"Isobel?" She came bounding up the stairs, taking them

two at a time and tearing around the corner into his bedroom.

"Where in the world have you been this late?"

"Oh, I've been with the Jewetts, and Daddy, they're so much fun!"

"Don't you realize what time it is?" "But you knew where I was."

"Yes, but I didn't think you'd stay this late. "

"It's not even eight o'clock yet, and we were sitting around the fire. Mrs. Jewett got out a copy of Longfellow and she read us the first verse of The Song of Hiawatha, then everybody took turns reading a verse. They know some of them by heart! And they can pronounce all the Indian words. Kabibonokka and Mudjekeewis. An owl came and sat on that big tree in their yard and stared at us as if he were listening, too. And Mrs. Jewett called to it and it cocked its head and turned it clean around till it was looking backwards! She knew what kind of owl it was, too. A great horned, but it flew away without calling back to her, and its wings didn't make a sound. We're going to read the next five verses tomorrow!"

From a girl who was easily bored by everything from school to family visits, such exuberance impressed her father.

"Tomorrow." "Yes, right after school, and Rebecca wants to make costumes and act it out, but I told

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her I don't want to do that. I'm no good at acting."

"How do you know? You've never tried."

"I just know. Besides, I don't like people staring at me. But I love the reading."

She always thought people stared at her ears, but he didn't know how to console her about them, so he asked, "How was the lobster?"

"Messy, but pretty tasty. Mrs. Jewett melted butter and fried rice cakes and we ate them with our fingers, sitting around the fire."

"You look it. Your dress is filthy. Now, why don't you wash up and leave your dirty clothes in the kitchen on the floor? I'm going to be taking the laundry to Grandma's tomorrow."

An hour later, when her room got quiet, he knocked on the door and found her sitting cross-legged on her bed, dressed in a pale blue nightgown, writing. He went in and sat at the foot of the bed, leaning back on one hand.

"What's that?" he asked. "A poem."

"You're writing it?" She turned it facedown on her lap and looked self-conscious. "I thought you didn't like poetry."

"That was in school." "Is it different at home?"

"It's different at their house. Everything's different at their house."

"Isobel," he said gently, "I know you had a good time with the Jewetts today, but they're a lot different than you. Their mother lets them run pretty wild, and I don't want you to get into that habit. You can't be staying out after dark,

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and traipsing off after school without changing your dress and eating around a fire like some savage Indian."

"Why, the Indians aren't savage! Have you read Hiawatha?"

"No, I haven't, Isobel, but the point is 55 "Well, you should, then you'd know. It tells how they love the earth and the sky and everything around them. And I had so much fun with Rebecca and her sisters today. Everybody else in this town is as boring as whey!"

"Isobel,

their mother is divorced.

"Their

mother is more fun than any mother I ever met! And what does that have to do with my being their friend?"

"It's the way she lets them run and do whatever they please. If you start running with them you'll pick up bad habits and get a bad reputation."

She looked stunned. "Why, Father, I'm amazed at you. They've only been in town two days and you're spreading rumors about them?"

"I'm not spreading rumors."

"Yes, you are. And Mother said Seek first, judge second, isn't that what you always said?" "Isobel, I'm only asking you to remember

the manners you5ve always been taught, and the rules we've had in this house."

"I will, Father."

Twice she'd called him Father, which he took as a reprimand.

"May I go to their house tomorrow then?" He had no logical reason to refuse. "If you

change your dress first and act like a lady while you're there.

"I will."

"And you'll ride home to supper with me." "I will."

As he rose and said good night, Isobel looked up at him and tried to remember if he'd ever hugged her th6 way Mrs. Jewett hugged her girls. She'd done it when they came home from school, and several times during the incredible evening. She did it for no reason at all, sometimes only when she'd pass them in the yard. Once when Lydia was reading, Mrs. Jewett reached over and rubbed her head, and Lydia had gone on as if she didn't even notice. I'd notice if my dad ever rubbed my head, Isobel thought. Or if he ever hugged me good night or hugged me good-bye when I left for school.

Suddenly, drawing up her covers, Isobel felt the sharp stab of lorieliness she carefully hid from her father whenever it came. The image of her mother was fading. She used to be able to recall her face so clearly, but now she could only do so when she looked at the photograph Daddy kept on the bureau in his bedroom.

"Mother," she whispered in the dark, "Mother." Sometimes she whispered it that way because she never got a chance to say it aloud the way other children did.

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HEP,E is no real spring in Maine. Roberta had heard it her whole life, and the following morning bore it out. The

rare salubrious weather of the previous day had reverted to form and the skies had darkened to a thick woolly gray. The '_ clouds, heavy with mist, skulked at sea level and dampened everything that moved through them.

Including Roberta.

As soon as the girls were off to school she set out for Boynton's Motor Car Company, buttoned to the throat in a short wool jacket and toting her umbrella. Opening her front door, she found no Gabriel Farley here yet. The plank was slippery and she skated down it, then passed the lumpy black smudge where last night's fire had been. Its sodden charcoal gave off an acrid smell, but the pleasant recollections of the previous evening put a bounce in her step. There were few things Roberta enjoyed more than lollygagging with her girls, and Isobel Farley had been a cheerful addition - a little shy, but an eager disciple.

By all indications, she would see a lot of Isobel around her house. If that meant running into Isobel's father occasionally, Roberta would simply have to grin and bear it.

She put him from her mind as she bobbed down Washington Street in shoes that grew

damper with each step. At the north end of Main she stood under the sign she'd been unable to read the day she arrived. Beneath their names the Boyntons advertised SELLING AGENCY FOR HIGH-GRADE CARS. STORAGE & CARE OF CARS.

Inside, it smelled like rubber but was blessedly dry. The Boyntons had hooked up to electricity, so overhead lights dispelled the gloom. Roberta left her umbrella in the holder beside the door and stamped her feet on the horsehair mat.

"Good morning. May I help you?"

She looked up and encountered the bespectacled face of a heavyset man in his f6rties. He wore a moustache and a pin-striped suit.

"I hope so. I'd like to buy a motorcar." Obviously, he hadn't been expecting this response. It took a beat before he replied, placing his palms flat together and rubbing them twice. "Certainly, madam. Hamlin Young at your service. And you are?"

"Roberta Jewett."

"Mrs. Jewett, right this way." He glanced at the door as he led her away. "Is your husband with you today?"

"I don't have a husband. The car is for me." He paused beside a black Oldsmobile and Puckered his brow. "Jewett ... Jewett ... you wouldn't be the sister-in-law of Elfred Spear, would you?"

"Yes, I would. Grace's sister."

"Ahh - . . " he crooned, tipping his chin up. "Someone told me you were moving to Camden."

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"Yes,

"Have

"Just

Elfred, undoubtedly. He must have happened to mention Roberta was divorced, too, the way Hamlin Young's eyes glinted with new speculation. She'd seen the reaction enough times to predict what would happen next: He'd take the liberty of touching her somewhere.

"I grew up here," she told him.

"Yes, of course. Now, whom did you marry again?"

"You didn't know him. The motorcar, Mr. Young," she reminded him.

"Yes, of course." There it was: He touched her elbow with the tips of his fingers. "Have you ridden in one yet?"

a couple of times." you driven one?" once. "

"You have! Well! That's amazing. I must admit, I haven't sold one to a woman yet. To the best of my knowledge, no woman in Camden has driven one."

"Then I'll be the first. I have some questions for you, Mr. Young, about the cost and the maintenance."

"We'll get to that later. First let me show you what we've got."

He touched her again while presenting the Oldsmobile Runabout, and again as he directed her to an Overland Touring Car. By the time they came to an ordinary Model T Ford she adroitly sidestepped and kept plenty of space between them.

"How much would this one cost?"

"Three hundred and sixty dollars, brand

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spanking new, including a planetary transmission system. "

Only three hundred sixty. Elfred had said six hundred for a roadster.

"Would this one be started and operated like a C-Cab truck?"

"A C-Cab truck?" He peered at her more sharply. "V7hy ... yes, it would. Have you driven a C-Cab truck, Mrs. Jewett?"

She realized her mistake immediately. "Why ... yes ... yes I have, and I managed quite well, I must say. If I buy this and it needs repair, will you do it here?"

"Yes, ma'am. We own the Camden Garage right next door, and in the back of it we operate our own machine shop with a staff of skilled mechanics. Upstairs on our second floor we've got supplies of all kinds and a nice waiting room for our customers. We've even got a telephone connection up there. You mind my asking whose C-Cab truck you drove?"