The Family Beach House (3 page)

What would happen to her if her father remarried and the family home ceased to be the family home? It scared her to think of the house being lost to a stranger. But it also scared her to think about the possibility of her father leaving Larchmere to all four McQueen children. There would be absolute chaos! It would be impossible to negotiate with Adam, who always had to be right, and as for Craig, he would just take off and leave the others to pay his share of the upkeep. Tilda loved her younger brother but she wasn't blind to his faults. As for Hannah…Well, Tilda suddenly realized she had absolutely no idea how her sister felt about the possibility of inheriting Larchmere. Hannah and Bill were very close. There was no reason her sister could not be considered a possible sole heir.

And if Hannah were to inherit Larchmere, would she cherish and protect it the way Tilda knew it deserved? Again, she had absolutely no idea. They had never talked about the house and what it meant to them. They had simply taken it for granted.

An owl hooted. Tilda thought he sounded melancholy. She hugged herself tightly. Was there nothing upon which she could rely? Death took loved ones away. It had stolen her mother and her husband. Time and distance could loosen emotional ties. And now, what if her father remarried and as a result, even Larchmere, her beloved home, was stolen from her?

Life was loss. She knew that. And she had been as prepared as anyone could be for the impending death of a loved one. She had read books and articles in magazines and online. She had bought a copy of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's classic book,
On Death and Dying,
and dutifully read it through.

She knew all about the five stages of grief. First there would be denial. That would be followed by anger, and then by bargaining. Next would come depression and finally, at long last, there would come acceptance.

She also knew that the stages of grief were not distinct. She knew that they sometimes overlapped and nipped at each other's heels. She was prepared to feel numb. She was prepared for the deep yearnings for Frank that would threaten to overwhelm her. She was prepared for the bouts of awful sadness, for the tears, for the withdrawing from friends and family.

She was as prepared as it was possible to be, which meant that when Frank finally died she was hardly prepared at all.

On the AARP Web site (she had turned everywhere for help) she had been told that grief, like life, doesn't proceed in an orderly fashion. “Mourning,” they had said, “cannot happen without your participation.” Too bad, she had thought. Because mourning was exhausting and surprising, no matter how prepared you thought you were.

She was tired now. She got up from her seat by the window and crawled into the bed. She still slept on the right side though she could have slept on the left or diagonally, or right in the middle of the bed if she chose. But she didn't choose.

Monday, July 16

It was early, not quite seven in the morning, and the air was just beginning to warm. Tilda stood gazing out over the water. The beach was almost entirely empty. A few runners, a few solitary strollers, a few hobby fishermen, and Tilda, who had walked Ogunquit Beach more times than she could ever count.

She began now to walk in the direction of Wells, her eyes fixed to the sand in search of the ever elusive, whole sand dollar. She knew people who had found them, albeit very small ones, on Ogunquit Beach. She just had never found one herself.

“Hello, Tilda McQueen O'Connell!”

Tilda looked up and smiled. “Tessa Vickes!” It was Teddy's wife, another early morning walker. She was walking from Wells, down close to the waterline. She was wearing a cotton-candy pink sweatshirt and her thick, beautiful white hair was tied back in a simple braid.

“Beautiful day!” Tessa shouted as she continued to walk.

“Yes, it is!” Tilda waved and walked on, as well.

Tessa and Teddy had been married for almost fifty years. Tilda thought they were adorable together, still affectionate and clearly happy. She had never heard mention of children or grandchildren. Maybe Tessa and Teddy had not had a family. Maybe a child had died. Tilda knew she could ask her aunt about this but she didn't want to. There was something almost sacred about a couple's past, especially the past of a couple who had been together for so long.

Not that Tilda would ever experience such a long marriage, though she knew she should be grateful—and she was—for the twenty-odd years she and Frank had enjoyed. Those twenty-odd, almost perfect years…

Increasingly, Tilda found herself wondering about nostalgia, or, more specifically, about romanticizing her past with Frank. She wondered if the process was inevitable and necessary and if so, she wondered if it had already begun. Was nostalgia destructive if it became extreme? She thought that it might be. Still, at this point, a little over two years after Frank's death, she could barely remember ever arguing with him and what conflict she did remember had no emotional weight.

Like the time a few years back when he had invited his out-of-work cousin, Ben, to stay with them until he got back on his feet—without first asking his wife. Frank had apologized profusely, claiming he had been guilted into making the offer by his aunt. Whatever the reason behind Frank's offer, the reality was that Cousin Ben was entirely ungrateful. He never offered to help with meals, or to clean the bathroom he used. He came home at all hours and more than once he went out while forgetting to lock the front door behind him. Frank had talked to him several times but to no avail. Cousin Ben was with them for almost five months until a friend offered him a better free deal, after which time they had found a few items missing, including a pearl necklace Tilda's mother had given her for her twenty-first birthday.

God, she had been furious with Frank, but now the entire episode seemed unreal, a false memory, meaningless, something that might have happened to strangers.

Tilda passed a group of about seven or eight snowy white and gray seagulls, sitting perfectly still on the sand, looking in the direction of the morning tide. They looked like seven or eight Aladdin's lamps. The thought amused her.

Ogunquit Beach was always alive with animal life—piping plovers, terns, gulls, stranded seals, who were then, mercifully, rescued and rehabilitated by wildlife experts. On occasion, Tilda had even seen an eagle gliding high over the low grassy dunes. But though she searched the sky each time she went down to the beach, she had not seen another eagle since a month before Frank's death.

Tilda heard mad screeching behind her and turned to see the Aladdin's lamps take flight. One had probably spotted a potential meal and the race was on. She turned and continued her walk.

In all the mysteries and ghost stories she had read, contact with the other world seemed to come so easily to the characters. But real people, too, claimed they had communicated with the spirits of the dead and Tilda saw no reason not to believe them. Who was she to say that only what was visible was real? There were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in man's philosophy. Of course, there were cranks among those who swore they had had supernatural experiences. But there were cranks everywhere. You just had to choose to believe and to proceed carefully.

So it made sense that after Frank's passing she half thought that somehow she would be able to contact him, or that he would be able to contact her. Maybe, she thought, they would be able to have actual conversations of a sort. Soon after he died she began to look for signs of otherworldly communication but, to her dismay, found none. But she kept her mind open to possibilities. She talked to Frank in her head and out loud, when she was alone, but it was as if she was talking only to herself. Frank was not hearing her and she was not hearing him. His ghost or his spirit, if such a thing existed—and Tilda believed that it did, though she couldn't say how, exactly—was gone. Tilda was alone, with only the memories.

The silence was deafening. Tilda's soul was stagnant. Of course, she had considered seeking the help of a medium or a psychic. They were in every town. There was one right in Portland's Old Port. But she just didn't trust herself to make an informed decision about who was genuine and who was a fake. She continued to believe, but cautiously.

Then, early in the spring, on the second anniversary of Frank's death and a few months before her mother's memorial, Tilda had made a decision. She decided to believe that Frank would send an eagle to her. It would be his message that it was okay to move on, that it was time to stop mourning and to begin living. He would send it when the time was right. The eagle would be Frank's blessing.

It was a comforting notion. But, Tilda being Tilda, she began to wonder what would happen if Frank failed to send her that blessing. What if she never did see another eagle over Ogunquit Beach? What then? Would she be doomed to live in darkness and sorrow for the rest of her life? Was that what Frank would want?

Tilda shook her head. If Frank could hear her thoughts he would scold her for indulging in unnecessary, negative, superstitious, unproductive thinking. It was true. She did have a dark, even macabre streak, something Frank absolutely had not had. Frank had been deep but he had not been dark. He was a person who could see in the coldest, gloomiest day of winter the opportunity for something good—like gathering the family to learn a new card game or making popcorn and watching a favorite movie.

And, Tilda thought now, there certainly were enough cold and gloomy days in southern Maine, though autumn could be surprisingly warm, at least into early October, when the marshes became golden and sere. Leaf-peeping season was brief but spectacular, usually put to an abrupt end by a violent but majestic thunderstorm that left trees bare and so drenched they felt pulpy to the touch. Bird life was still visible until then. If you watched you could still spot a variety of wild ducks, graceful egrets, loons with their mournful cry, and cormorants, their silhouettes eerily vampirelike when they dried their outstretched wings.

Then came the winters, which were so bad primarily because they were so long, the cold, ice, and snow slowly, slowly evolving into a season of gray, brown, and mud. Most restaurants closed for a month or two, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art went dormant, people left for homes in Key West or Phoenix. It was possible to drive through the entire downtown and then back to Larchmere without seeing one other person, on foot or behind the wheel of a car. It was possible to feel you were going slightly mad. A trip to the Hannaford supermarket in York or Wells, whether or not you needed groceries, became a sanity-saving expedition. People who shunned church during the rest of the year turned up at Sunday services just to hear a voice other than their own.

Of course, there was also a certain charm to winters in Ogunquit. Those who lived there year round had transformed entertaining at home to a fine art. Friends hosted potluck dinners and played board games and cards. The open fields, the town itself, the houses, all was picture postcard perfect, New England at one of its most romantic moments, single white candles in a house's every window and pines sugared with glittering snow.

And then it was early spring, March, when everyone was desperate for sun and warmth and got only mud season, when stretches of marshy land (thankfully, protected from development) were under water and even carefully planned developments, with their big, tasteful houses and perfectly groomed landscapes, seemed ugly and sad.

In April, when warmth began to creep into the air and the sun to shine for a few hours every day, the town, as if desperate for celebration, sponsored a Patriots' Day event in the parking lot of the beach. There were craftspeople selling their wares, and hamburgers and hot dogs sold to benefit the fire department, and sometimes even a band to get people dancing.

May, though still fairly chilly, was a gorgeous month in Ogunquit and the surrounding towns. Late spring was Tilda's favorite time of the year, partly because of the enormous contrast it presented to the barren, brownish-gray damp of March and April. Lilacs were suddenly everywhere, the dark purple French variety, the common pale purple, and the creamy white ones Tilda particularly loved. Stretches of Shore Road presented virtual walls of lilac. The scent could be overwhelming, sweet to the point of intoxication, and Tilda loved it, though the lilacs had made poor Frank sneeze.

Yes, Tilda thought now, as she passed and nodded to another early morning walker—a woman in an electric blue sweatshirt with the cartoonish image of a smiling red lobster splashed across the front—living in Maine, an official Vacationland, was an interesting, sometimes annoying, sometimes exhilarating experience. Living in Ogunquit intensified or concentrated that experience because Ogunquit was, in many ways, the perfect vacation destination.

There was the venerable Harbor Candy Shop on Maine Street, and fantastic bakeries like Bread and Roses, which made, in Tilda's opinion, the best white toasting bread she had ever eaten. There were fine dining restaurants, such as Arrows on Berwick Road, and 98 Provence on Shore Road. There were more casual eateries, like the Cape Neddick Lobster Pound in Cape Neddick, and Barnacle Billy's in Perkins Cove, where George and Barbara Bush had often been spotted, and down in Wells, there was Mike's Clam Shack on Route 1, which made the juiciest fried mushrooms you could want, and Billy's Chowder House right smack in the middle of a marsh, with excellent steamers and onion rings. And of course, on Post Road in Wells, there was the famous Maine Diner, not to be missed by anyone wanting an authentic “small town” diner experience.

There were local golf courses and scenic cruises like those run by Finestkind, and art to be found in galleries like the Van Ward Gallery and the Barn Gallery on Bourne Lane, the birth of which was spearheaded by the actor J. Scott Smart in 1958. The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, a beautiful white building overlooking the ocean, was esteemed for its large and diverse collection of work by artists from all across the country.

And of course there were more quaint pleasures like the trolleys—Polly, Molly, Holly—to shepherd tourists and the occasional local to and from Ogunquit and its neighboring towns. There were no end of guesthouses and bed and breakfast offerings, as well as family-oriented motels like the Anchorage and grander hotels, like the Cliff House.

Tilda had always had a love/hate relationship with the summer visitors to Ogunquit, complicated by the fact that for a long time she herself had been—and to some extent still was!—a summer visitor to the town. The town's population in winter was a mere one thousand people. In summer it swelled to twenty thousand. There was no doubt that tourists were good for the economy. It was just that traffic became a nightmare from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Once it had taken Tilda forty minutes just to get from her favorite farm stand to Larchmere, a drive that usually took less than fifteen minutes. And that had been on a rainy weekend! But people had booked vacations and, come rain or shine, they would be flocking to Ogunquit and Wells for the beach, family accommodations, and miniature golf, and to Kennebunk and Kennebunkport for a bit more upscale vacation experience, or farther up to Booth Bay to visit the botanical gardens or to Bar Harbor to hike the trails in the Acadia National Park, or farther still to Greenville and Moosehead Lake, where you could take a moose cruise and, if you were lucky, actually see one of the gigantic animals in its natural habitat.

The massive cruise ships would be unloading in Portland through the early fall, their passengers flooding the Old Port's pubs, gift and craft shops, then making their way up into the city to visit the L.L. Bean outlet on Congress Street and then to the Portland Museum of Art, and after, maybe to Victoria Mansion. Others would be day-tripping north to Freeport or south to Kittery to shop at the outlets. Others would take a bus (provided by the cruise line) down to Ogunquit for the day, with maybe a stop at a lobster shack for a lobster roll, a red hot dog, and a whoopee pie.

And there would always be shopping. There would always be husbands and boyfriends hunched glumly on small wooden benches outside the shops on Main Street, Ogunquit, or Commercial Street, Portland, waiting while their wives purchased souvenirs for the kids back home or overpriced T-shirts with slogans like “Lobstahs Rule” and “The Way Life Should Be,” and snow globes with plastic mermaids and sand dollars inside. Or they would be pacing nervously outside high-end shops and galleries, the kind that sold one-of-a-kind jewelry, art, and crafts for exorbitant prices, while their wives “treated themselves” for the third time in a week. Tilda herself still wore a gold starfish charm she had “treated herself” to back when she was in college. She had bought it in a shop down in Perkins Cove called Swamp John's. It had been an outrageous purchase for her, but a deliciously satisfying one as most outrageous purchases are.