The Summer House Read online

  “So, are you ready to celebrate the big seven-five next weekend?” Sam asked.

  Richard lifted his hand. “Your mother’s idea. God knows who’s coming or what she’s got planned. I’m just going to show up when I’m told. At my age, any birthday is worth celebrating.”

  “Oh, come on, Pops.” His father, who they all agreed did not seem to age at the same pace as other men of his decade, had always looked strong as an oak. But this summer, Sam couldn’t help but notice his thinning hair, and that its distinguished salt-and-pepper color had surrendered entirely to salt. Still, his father was robust—a man who filled door frames, unlike Sam’s lithe runner’s build. They were similar only in height. Richard Merrill was a man whose stature allowed you to believe that he’d played football, back in his day, as compared to Sam’s years of varsity cross country. “An individual sport,” his father had mused, when Sam told him he’d joined the team. And that had been all.

  Sam regarded his father’s hands still clutching the paper. This they also shared: large, strong hands. Hands that Evan had called capable when he and Sam were first dating.

  “How’s work treating you these days?” Richard asked, turning to face him. It was a relief; Sam half feared he’d ask about the baby. It was too soon.

  But work he could talk about all day. Currently an associate with Interim Bank, Sam was climbing, and quickly, to managing director. In his early days with the bank, he’d worked his way up handling their European clients. Sam was a deal junkie: his colleagues nicknamed him Maverick. High on espresso and hunched over his desk in the open office floor, he’d slide on his noise-canceling Bose headphones and work on financial models for hours, until either his Excel spreadsheets blurred or Adya slipped a bag of takeout between his face and his monitor. But it didn’t matter to him how many companies he acquired, or what kind of numbers he brought in each quarter. In the end it was his father’s recognition he sought most feverishly. A man who took his brown-bag lunch on Fairfield University’s green quad and never had a taste for the acrid pace or posturing of his son’s corporate world.

  “Even with the volatility in recent months, my team identified a target market in China, and now that the financials are in place, we’re working on a time frame to merge.”

  Richard nodded thoughtfully. “Impressive. I know you’ve been working toward this for some time. Are you enjoying it?”

  Sam flinched. Had his father not heard what he’d just told him? The notion of joy had not been something he’d considered. “Well, yeah, the firm’s pretty stoked. It’s our first venture into the Asian market, and so far things are running on time.”

  Richard glanced up at a gull circling overhead, and Sam waited. “How about Evan? I know it’s been a rough spring for you two. If there’s anything your mother and I can do, just say the word.”

  Sam closed his eyes at his father’s words and nodded. The thing was, there was nothing any of them could do.

  They’d been warned in the first meeting with their adoption agent, Malayka, that the process itself was as shifting as the emotions that came with each step. In the end, domestic adoption had seemed like the best fit, and after they’d familiarized themselves with the options and risks, they landed on a private, open adoption. Evan was elated. But to Sam, it was the inverse of finding a needle in a haystack.

  “We’re the needle,” he’d tried to explain to Evan. “It’s the birth parents who are going to be looking for us.”

  “It goes both ways,” Evan had tried to reassure him.

  “But think of the hoops,” Sam continued. They were in the kitchen making dinner, fresh from the adoption agency. Sam had just finished chopping vegetables for a stir-fry; he went to the fridge and pulled out two beers. Evan stood at the range, swirling hot oil in a pan, listening quietly. “We complete the applications, the interviews, take the classes, and then we still have to get through the home studies. And don’t forget the profile we have to make for prospective parents. I’m sorry, but I can’t help but feel like we’re selling ourselves.”

  Evan shrugged. “We are.”

  “And then what? We sit back and wait? I don’t know if I can handle that.” He walked around the island and sank onto one of the Calvin barstools that Evan had insisted on when they’d redesigned. Despite the protest Sam had made when he’d seen the price, Evan had been right about the leather-and-hide seats: they were as comfortable to sit on as they were pleasing to look at. And now, with such important things to worry about, Sam regretted ever having complained about them to begin with. Chairs could be bought, returned, exchanged. Just like his deals at work, they were exchanges between people. Currency. Products demanded were products supplied. Sam understood these things; he weighed the risks involved and exercised his control accordingly. Not so when it came to the role of adoptees. He ran his hands through his cropped hair. “Our role just seems so passive. So damned helpless.”

  Evan pulled the wok off the burner and turned to him. “I know, babe. It’s not in your nature to sit back. But you have to have faith that some mother out there is going to look at our profile and say, ‘That’s them! That’s the couple I want for my baby.’ ” He took a sip of the beer Sam had handed him, his demeanor as composed as it had been two hours earlier sitting in Malayka’s overheated office.

  Now, in the cool, stainless-steel safety of his kitchen, Sam scoffed. “What if no one wants us?” There. He’d said it.

  “Sam, look where we live in this city. We have so much love and opportunity to give a child. We’re young, we’re educated, and we’re professionals.”

  “We’re gay.”

  Evan shook his head. “They will want us.” He leaned back against the granite countertop and crossed his arms, but his expression remained soft. “You want to know how I look at it? There is a mother out there who is carrying our child.” He paused. “That’s her time. But one day that baby will decide it’s ready, and she’ll give birth. And that’s when it will become our time. You hear me, Sam? Our baby is out there.”

  Sam couldn’t help it. A tear spilled from his eye. The certainty with which Evan spoke of them and of their baby moved him immeasurably. “What if it takes a year? Or two?”

  Evan didn’t flinch. “Then we nest. We work on our nest and we wait.” His voice was as steady as his gaze. Sam rose from his seat and went to him.

  He let Evan pull him in tight, and as Sam rested his head on the expanse of his husband’s chest, he imagined a tree—an oak tree, stalwart and irreverent against a gray haze. Its branches turned up toward heaven, the crook of each shadowy limb beckoning all the troubled birds from the sky.

  “Okay,” Sam whispered, pressing his eyelids closed. “We’ll nest.”

  * * *

  Nested they had. Thirteen months later, they had received a call from their attorney. The facts followed like ticker tape: Tania was sixteen and lived in Austin with her mother. She was six months along in a healthy pregnancy, her first one, and the baby girl was due in mid-April. Tania was seeking an open adoption. She’d sifted through the haystack, and she’d chosen them.

  From then on, things read more like a storybook. They’d flown down to Austin to meet. They’d connected. Contracts had been drafted, and hopes ran high. The jubilance that followed in the months until the birth manifested in giddy late-night conversations, setting up a nursery, and sharing their news with friends and family. If the story had ended like the fairy tale it began as, Sam and Evan would be at the summer house with their baby now.

  Now, Sam looked away from his father’s expectant gaze and out over the haze that was rising over the water. “Don’t worry, Dad. Evan and I are doing fine,” he lied.

  Clem

  Clem awoke to the veritable thrum of family vacation: the vibrato of kitchen conversation below, children’s laughter, and the repetitive slap of the screen door. Neither of the kids had crawled into bed with her last night. Curious, she rose and padded down the hall to the bunkroom to check on them. All four beds
were empty, the sheets tossed aside.

  The most prominent feature of the shared room was the sweeping sailcloth curtain, fashioned from an old headsail Flossy had picked up years ago at a boating yard auction, rigged down the middle on mainsheet roping. It was used as a divider between the girls’ side and the boys’. On one side of the sail were the blue-and-white-striped beds of the boys. On the other, the pastel-whale-printed duvets of the girls. Of the four, she noted that only George’s bed was made.

  She headed back down the hall, wondering if the kids had eaten. Then she panicked. Would they have gone down to the beach without her? It was a longstanding house rule instituted in her own childhood by Richard: no beach without an adult. But now that Ned and Emma were older, she doubted it applied to them, and if the older two went, her own would surely try to follow. She tugged one of Ben’s old Columbia sweatshirts over her head and hurried downstairs.

  There, spread across the family room couches in various states of repose, were all four kids. Ned glanced up from his phone. “Hey, Aunt Clem.”

  Maddy and George were nestled on either side of Emma, watching cartoons on the new TV. They’d never had a TV in the summer house growing up; Flossy wouldn’t hear of it. Now, Clem couldn’t help but wonder at the timing of its arrival.

  She perched on the arm of the couch and scrutinized their expressions. “Morning, guys. You sleep okay?”

  “I had a bagel,” Maddy told her, scooching up onto her mother’s lap. Clem pulled her in for a hug.

  “Good girl. George?”

  He shrugged, eyes fixed on the TV screen. “I ate.”

  “Eggs, fruit, and bacon,” Flossy added from the kitchen. Of course. Her mother would have seen to it. “Now, how about you? There’s plenty left.”

  Clem flashed her a tired smile. “Just coffee, thanks.”

  “No eggs?”

  She ignored Flossy’s furrowed brow. No different than the one she’d given her last night when Clem had managed only a few bits of the elaborate lobster dinner her mother had laid out. “I’ll grab a bite later,” she said for good measure.

  Paige had apparently risen early to go for a run and was already back upstairs showering. Sam and Evan were outside on the deck with Richard, sharing bits of the newspaper and chatting. Clem intended to join them all, to make some effort at “integrating,” as Dr. Weston called it, but as soon as she’d stirred milk and sugar into her mug, she found herself heading away from the noisy family room and toward the front door. Outside, the air was already thick with humidity and the scent of salt. She leaned over the front porch railing and inhaled. She’d made it.

  In the weeks leading up to this trip, Clem hadn’t been so sure she would. Flossy had told her not to worry about anything: she’d stocked the summer house with new towels, bedding, even beach toys for the kids. Just bring yourselves! she’d insisted, in a voice so full of hope and longing that Clem already felt suffocated. It was then that her second thoughts had crept in.

  Theoretically, Clem had known it would be hard returning to the house without Ben. But one thing she’d learned in the last year was that she couldn’t predict the ways in which it would be hard. Grief was like an omnipresent bird of prey, always circling. She felt its shadow, but she couldn’t tell when it would strike. Whether it was induced by the logistics of navigating clogged interstate highways with two hungry, exhausted children, or by the smooth, cool surface of a seashell pressed in the palm of her hand by her youngest child, the grief always found her.

  So she’d focused instead on what she did know. Weeks before their departure she’d made lists, bought swimsuits, and plucked suitcases from the recesses of the attic. (They’d traveled exactly nowhere since Ben had left them.) Clem wasn’t sure if she’d packed too much or too little. She agonized over how the kids would react, walking through the front door without their father. For them, memories of Ben were everywhere in this house and along these beaches. Would Maddy set foot on East Beach and recall her father trotting headlong into the waves with her shrieking atop his shoulders? Would George lay eyes on the tattered Trivial Pursuit box tucked on the living room shelf that Ben had reigned over on many a late summer evening and become undone at the memory? Would she?

  And yet, here they were. One uneventful, uninterrupted night of sleep behind them, and two bellies already filled with breakfast. Today, they would go to East Beach, just as they did each summer on the first day of vacation. She took a sip of coffee and forced out a long breath. What had Dr. Weston said to her about focusing on images of comfort? Clem tried to conjure the waves, the relaxed downtown energy of Watch Hill, and the carousel. What she pictured instead was the orange bottle of Xanax upstairs in her purse. The bottle she kept close by. Just in case.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the narrow East Beach entrance by the carousel was already clogged with beachgoers. Situated at the north end of busy Bay Street, adjacent to the historic carousel, the tiny, sandy parking lot was almost full by the time they arrived, crammed together in Clem’s Suburban. Which meant they had to circle around the village center until they found a place to park. Sam nearly had a fit. “I told you guys we should just grab a quick bagel at St. Clair for breakfast,” he said.

  “Flossy would never have allowed it,” Evan reminded him.

  Luckily, Paige spotted an elderly woman backing out of a space. She, Evan, and the older kids loaded themselves up with their gear and headed through the beach entrance to stake out their encampment of beach chairs, coolers, and sand toys. Clem and Sam were left in charge of buying the traditional strawberry lemonades from St. Clair Annex, just up the street. It was a first-day-at-the-shore custom, the same one Richard and Flossy had instituted when they were kids: lemonades, beach, carousel. Clem ushered her kids down the village sidewalk to the takeout window at St. Clair. Sam placed the order.

  It was the first time they’d been alone, and he draped an arm over her shoulders and looked at her over the top of his Ray-Bans. “How are we? Really.”

  Clem smiled, leaning into her big brother. It had been a long time since she’d rested her head on anyone’s shoulder. “So far, so good.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Then tell me what you’re on, because I want some.”

  She smacked him on the chest. “Nothing. And no, you don’t.”

  “You lie.”

  She glanced over at Maddy and George, who were standing at the old-fashioned popcorn cart watching the woman pass out red-and-white-striped bags of the buttery snack. “The doctor gave me a script if I need it. But I’m fine.”

  Sam cocked his head. “Ah, there’s the fine Mom keeps talking about.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Sam tipped the girl at the takeout window and balanced the two trays of lemonades between them.

  “First sip of the summer,” he said, offering one to her.

  Clem plucked one of the tall paper cups out of a tray. It was icy cold, and she could see the dark-red shade of fresh strawberries muddled at the bottom.

  “I forgot how good these are,” Clem said, taking a deep sip of the sweet, lemony drink.

  Sam licked his lips and clucked his tongue. “All it needs is vodka.”

  * * *

  At their beach plot, Clem slathered the kids with sunscreen and eyed the waves. To her relief, the tide was out.

  “Maddy. Please stand still,” she groaned. George had already slipped through her white, greasy fingers twice.

  “Mommy,” Maddy whined, “you’re making me all sandy.” It was true. She’d dropped the sunscreen bottle in the sand at least twice. Now, she was pretty sure she was giving the poor kid more of a microdermabrasion treatment than shielding her fair, freckled skin.

  “Okay, go on.” But Maddy didn’t budge. She stood, arms sticking out from her sides like a scarecrow, and inspected her pasty, streaked belly. Clem realized with a sigh that she’d dumped at least half the bottle on her, along with the sand.

  Sam smirked. “I think yo
u missed a spot.”

  “What? Where?” But Maddy took off toward the waves with her brother and cousins.

  “Stop,” Paige warned, throwing Sam a look. “He’s only teasing,” she told Clem. “Now, please, sit down and relax. You’re making me tired just watching you.”

  “Oh. Right.” Clem flopped down into a beach chair. It was the first time she’d stopped moving all morning.

  Paige held up the sunscreen bottle. “Your kids are probably good until at least next Tuesday, but did you put any lotion on?”

  Had she? Clem, who’d just closed her eyes behind her oversized sunglasses, ran a finger down the curve of her nose, which was sticky—from sweat or sunscreen, she couldn’t say. “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “But can someone please watch the kids? I just need five.”

  Evan, who had been stretched out on a towel with his face shielded by a smart straw cowboy hat, leaned over and plopped the hat over her curly hair. “Take ten.” Then he ambled down to the water’s edge toward the children.

  “I need an Evan,” Paige mused.

  Which struck Clem, because as far as she could tell, Paige already had one.

  “Um, hello?” she said, raising her hand. “Widowed mother of two over here.”

  Despite the humid breeze rolling in off the water, she felt her siblings freeze on either side of her.

  “Oh, Clem. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Stop,” Clem said, before Paige could finish. Enough people back home in Boston felt sorry for her. She couldn’t stand it if her family did as well. “I was joking. Speaking of needing to relax.”

  To her right, Sam let out a nervous chuckle and stretched out with his lemonade. Even he seemed to be reining himself in around her, which was disappointing. She’d been counting on his barefaced humor to ferry her through the first day—at least until cocktail hour. She could certainly count on him to get that going.