That Summer Place: Island Time / Old Things / Private Paradise
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His first day on the island he had walked past the old boathouse with his pride on his sleeve and a chip on his shoulder. He was on his way to meet a grandfather he’d only heard of the few times his father had talked about his past.
At thirteen Michael had thought the island was just some backward hayseed place stuck out in the tulles. To him his grandfather was a stranger who lived in a strange place, someone he didn’t know, yet who had the power to control his life. The island seemed like Alcatraz. And Michael had been scared.
But now, standing on the dock, he was older and wiser. World-weary. He didn’t have any of those feelings he’d had when he was young. Now he could feel the freedom of the island. He saw the rarity of this place that had never been coldly dissected by freeways.
It was lush and green, surrounded by silver glassy water instead of silver-glassed high-rise buildings. Fir, cedar, maple and hemlock towered along the jagged ridges that rose from the center of the island, and even along the sheer cliffs and quiet inlets where birds wheeled in the clean air.
He didn’t move for a minute, but stared out at the sharp blue sky above Cutters Cove where a large dark bird floated overhead. He did a sudden double-take. The bird had a majestic white head. With one hand, he shielded his eyes from the sun and stood there watching the eagle fly.
When the bird was out of sight, he shoved his hands back in his pockets and took a deep breath of cool, damp mid-morning air. The things that had been plaguing his mind suddenly fell into perspective in a way that was humbling and strangely welcome.
He had no idea how long he stood there, and it didn’t matter because there was no plane to catch. No meeting to get to. No stockholders to appease. No do-or-die deal to close. Here he could just…be.
When he finally did move, it was slowly and with purpose. He opened the boathouse door, which creaked loudly and scared away the black crows perched on the old shingled roof. He ducked down and stepped inside.
The late afternoon sun slipped though the panes of rustic time- and weather-frosted windows and cast shafts of milky light on the floor in a checkered pattern that looked like an oversized circuit board. Spiderwebs drifted in the light. He could smell the metallic and wet scent of algae that always grew on the wood in the Northwest.
He stepped over a few teak oars and tossed aside an old orange life vest that water, air, and the seasons had turned hard as concrete. He took a few more steps and ran his hand over the old boards along the windows. He leaned closer, squinting at the wood siding because he’d left his glasses in the cabin sitting next to his cell phone, electronic daytimer and briefcase.
He ran his hand over the old cedar boards carefully and more tentatively than any of his business associates would have thought possible. He was certain they thought he never did anything tentatively.
Yet his hands moved with care, the same way he’d wiped away her tears almost thirty years before. He stopped suddenly, his hand freezing in one splintered spot.
There, in the boards, were the ragged letters: M P + C W.
Summer, 1960
The first time he’d ever seen her he was fourteen and she was eleven. He was on an errand for his grandfather, walking down the gravel path that cut from his grandfather’s cabin, through the forest, and on to the old summer place.
She was hanging upside-down from an old pine tree, her skinned knees hooked over a low thick branch. She was swinging back and forth, so her long blond braids dangled like Tarzan’s jungle ropes. The whole time she hummed “Alley Oop” while she blew the biggest pink bubble he’d ever seen.
He didn’t know you could hum and blow bubble gum at the same time. As he walked past her, there was a loud pop!
“Who are you?” She swung up so she was straddling the branch with one leg, while the other dangled down. Her palms propped up her body and she stared down at him.
Needles and pine dust fell all over him and scowling he wiped off his face and head. On the same level as his nose was a pair of red canvas shoes with no shoelaces and the word Keds on the scuffed rubber tips. He slowly looked upward along her gangly freckled legs and scabbed-over knees to her small indignant face, which looked like a troll doll.
“I asked you who you were,” she repeated as if she were the queen of the island.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Wardwell.”
“Oh.” She blew another bubble, sucked in and popped it in an obnoxious way, then asked, “Why are ya lookin’ for him?”
“None of your business, Squirt.” Michael turned his back on her and started to walk down the gravel path that led toward the old house.
She jumped out of the tree and appeared beside him. “My name’s not Squirt. It’s Catherine.”
He grunted some response and kept walking.
“Hey! What’s your name?” she called out after him.
“It’s Mr. Packard,” he said to annoy her.
“You’re not Mr. Packard,” she said, skipping alongside of him. “Mr. Packard is taller and older and he has gray hair and a dog named King Crab.”
Michael ignored her.
“And he’s not a grump. Like you.”
He stopped and looked down her.
Her expression dared him to ignore her again.
“He’s my grandfather,” he told her and started walking away again.
She kept up with him, not saying anything, but he could feel her studying him. He looked at her finally. All he saw was an expressive face and a pair of frowning brown eyes that were the same color as root beer.
They were on the narrowest section of the sea cliff trail where it paralleled the water. He slowed his steps. “Watch it there, Squirt.” He grabbed her arm. “There’s a cliff on that side of the path. Fall down it and you’ll land in the water. Really cold water.”
She frowned down at his hand gripping her arm, then wriggled free with a stubborn independence and looked up at him. She stared for the longest time. “We come here every summer. I’ve never seen you here before.”
He wasn’t going to tell some kid why he had to live here.
But she wouldn’t shut up. “Where’d you come from anyway?”
“The stork dropped me down the chimney.”
“Funny.” She called him a dork under her breath.
He almost laughed then.
When he said nothing she piped up, “I’m not a baby, you know.”
He snorted and walked on.
“I know all about things like why the ocean is blue.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I know how planes fly and why engines need oil—” She paused as if she were waiting for him to make her prove it.
After a moment she announced, “And I know all about sex.”
He stopped and looked down at her. Then he did laugh. Loud and long, because she was so silly.
She planted her hands on her boyish hips, raised her chin, and said, “I do.”
He just shook his head and moved farther down the path. He could hear her running after him.
“Go ahead. Ask me something.”
“No.”
“But I know…” Her voice suddenly changed to a scream.
Michael turned.
One instant she was wobbling on the edge of the path, and before he could reach out, she tumbled down the hillside toward the water, hollering all the way.
Michael swore under his breath and went after her, sliding down the steep hillside feet-first.
She was still screaming. Below him he saw her hit the water. Rock and dirt and mud tumbled down ahead of him. The whole time he was watching for her silly head to pop up out of the glassy surface.
It didn’t.
He panicked and shoved off the hill in a half-dive. He hit the water just a foot away from where she’d sank. He dove down deeper.
The water was deep here and icy cold. She was frantic, kicking out and waving her arms like someone who couldn’t swim.
He clamped his arm around her wiggling, scrawny body and pushed upward. She stopped kicking and he felt her small hands tightly grip his forearm as they rose through the water.
Their heads broke the surface and he heard her gasp for breath. He swam through the water, pulling her with him to a rocky beach. He crawled onshore with her hanging limply under one arm.
Once they were safely on the gravel beach she stiffened and rolled away from him. She just lay there. She had her face buried in her folded arms, and her back rose with each gasp for breath. He knew she was going to be all right when she began to cough.
He sat up, resting his arms on his knees, and watched her. After a minute he could see one brown eye peeking out from her arms. He shook his head and gave her a stern look. “You need to watch where you walk, Squirt.”
She buried her head deeper in her arms and muttered something.
“What did you say?”
She scowled over at him. “I said I fell on purpose.” Her chin jutted out like a mule he’d seen once. “I wanted to see how cold the water was.”
They both knew she was lying.
She was too proud to admit she’d slipped and fallen in.
He stood, then looked down at her wet face staring up at him with a look that dared him to argue with her. He could have called her bluff. But he didn’t. Pride was something he understood. He turned away and started to walk toward the cove just beyond the rocky beach.
Behind him he heard her mumble that she wasn’t some squirty kid, that she was Catherine Wardwell and she did know all about sex.
He stopped and turned back around. “Hey, Squirt.”
She was standing now, looking right at him.
“If I were you, I’d stop trying to learn ‘all about sex’ and just learn how to swim.”
Three
Summer, 1963
The Wardwells were coming back to Spruce Island. For the past three years they had returned every June, and each year Catherine Wardwell spent most of the month bugging him. He’d discovered she had an annoying habit of popping up at the worst possible moment, like when he was in the woods drinking the beers he’d found in a boat his grandfather had loaned to some sportmen. Or when he was making out with a girl named Kristy behind the old well house near the cove where her parents had moored their boat.
It was June again, and like Dylan had sung, the times they were-a-changing. The Coca-Cola Company made a major move in packaging, from bottle containers to aluminum cans. The Beach Boys hit number one on the pop charts, and Dr. Strangelove or Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opened in theaters with My Fair Lady.
But for Michael, June was hell month. Catherine Wardwell was back.
She was fourteen now, and she wore something called Erase for lipstick; it made her look too pale. She’d cut her hair short like some Seventeen magazine cover model. She looked pudgy and awkward and silly, as if she were trying too hard to be older.
He told her she wore too much makeup and looked half-dead. She told him his oxford shirt was buttoned too high and made him look like a geek.
It didn’t take long for her to get in his hair again. During that first week he woke up one morning and caught her peeking in the cabin window. He slipped outside and turned the hose on her.
The second week she stole a pack of cigarettes from him and had broken them all in two. He hadn’t cared much about smoking, just carried them to be cool, but to spite her he smoked all the stubs and blew the smoke in her face. She was so pig-headed she stood there and refused to run away.
But the worst incident was the afternoon he’d found a letter his dad had written to his grandfather on the day he was born, a letter that was filled with a father’s pride and dreams, things that only reminded Michael of the family he had lost.
No one had ever seen him cry; his pride would not let him show that he hurt.
But she saw him cry that day, when he was seventeen and sitting on a rock in a deserted section of the island. He thought he was alone when he sat there and sobbed in his knees.
That day she had walked right up to him and picked up the letter.
He cursed at her and tried to grab it away from her, but he could only see blurred images through his wet eyes.
She quickly stuffed it in her bra and ran away.
He didn’t have the energy to chase after her, so he just stared off into the distance, trying hard to picture his dad’s face and seeing nothing but the shadow of a tall man.
In a few minutes she came back, walking quietly.
From her tentative steps and her somber manner he could tell she’d read the letter.
She sat down next to him and handed him the crumpled paper.
He didn’t take it. Didn’t look at her. He only wanted to be left alone.
She began to smooth the paper against a rock, a lame effort to try to flatten it back to the way it had been.
It was a stupid thing to do. Like not having his dad anymore would hurt less if the letter weren’t creased.
She stopped after a minute and said nothing. Time passed in awkward and tense seconds that seemed to last an hour, one of those moments where you want to run away and hide from everything.
But she just sat there right next to him, so close that he could feel the warmth from her where their shoulders almost touched. She folded her hands in her lap and hung her head. Then she did the one thing he’d never expected.
She cried with him.
Summer, 1966
For the first time since 1963, the Wardwells had come back to the island. It was the same day he got his draft notice.
Dear Mr. Packard,
Greetings from the President of the United States…
There was no doubt the letter would change his future. The draft situation had newspapers and television stations full of protests and debates where activists argued against war, declaring the draft was archaic and unfair. Claiming you couldn’t buy beer, but you could die for your country. You couldn’t vote for the president of the United States, but you had to kill if he ordered you to.
Some who got the same letter went off to war. Some ran to Canada. But Michael just read the notice and set it down. He didn’t know how he felt about any of it. To him war seemed so far away, farther away than Vietnam. He went off into the woods to work so he wouldn’t have to think.
He hadn’t known the Wardwells were back this year. They hadn’t been back for two years so there was no reason to expect them. The moment Michael saw her leave the old house and walk down the beach toward the dock, he forgot all about the draft notice.
He was hidden in a group of cedar and maple trees that circled the cove. He was cutting wood from a tree that had fallen during the winter when he heard the hinges squeak and a screen door slam. He cast a quick glance toward the old Victorian rental house where a girl in a bright pink bikini came down the front porch steps and crossed the lawn.
He leaned a shoulder against a tree and just watched her. She had a body that was better than last month’s centerfold.
Then he recognized her face.
Gone was the pudgy and awkward blonde teen who wore too much makeup and followed him everywhere. She was taller now, a good three inches, and her shape blew him away. He remembered a poster he’d seen in Seattle, one of a soaking wet Ursula Andress dressed in a wet skin-colored bikini, her hair slicked back and her face and body guaranteed to make a man wake up in one helluva sweat.
He shook his head in disbelief. Gawky little Catherine Wardwell—the pest who knew all about sex, spied on him through windows, and had seen him cry—could have put the sexy Ursula to shame.
He felt a stab of something earthy and carnal go clear through the center of him. The ax slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a dull thud. He swore under his breath and shifted slightly.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. And he didn’t want to.
Her hair was lighter, longer and straighter; it brushed her shoulders as she walked down to the end of the dock where a red and blue nautical beach towel lay spread out and a transistor radio with a tall silver antenna played the Lovin’ Spoonful.
He leaned against the tree and crossed his arms, then blew out a breath slowly, kind of a half whistle of amazement that a girl could be put together that way.
She bent over and tossed something on the towel.
He groaned and closed his eyes. He heard the music throbbing through the air with the same beat that his heart pounded. He opened his eyes because he couldn’t hide any longer. He had to see her.
She was standing with her toes curled over the edge of the dock, her stance stiff and straight, her arms raised high, ready to dive.
He shoved off from the tree and moved down toward her. This year things had changed; he was following her.
She dove in.
When she hit the water, his breath caught and held as if he had to hold his own breath along with her. He walked faster, down the dock toward the water. But when he reached the towel, he stopped. He stood there staring at the rings of water she left behind, while the music from the radio blared out over the cove.
Her head broke through the surface, sleek and golden and wet. He bent and flicked down the volume on the radio, then he straightened and waited until she turned in the water.
She froze the instant she saw him. “Michael?”
Her voice was older and throaty. It made him think of things like smooth soft skin. Hot deep kisses. And Trojans.
He took two steps to the edge of the dock and squatted down, resting a hand on his thigh. He just looked at her and enjoyed the view. The air grew hotter and tighter and felt heavy.
She swam toward him.
He reached out a hand to her. “Hi, Squirt.”
She put her hand in his and he straightened, pulling her up with him while he watched the water run down her body.
She stood close to him, so close that all he had to do was lean forward and their bodies would touch. Chest to chest. Hip to hip. Mouth to mouth. He had a strange and laughable vision of them touching and steam suddenly fogging up the air around them.
She was five foot ten or so. No longer a little squirt. But it didn’t matter because she still had to look up at him. He was six foot two.
She slid her hand from his grip, turned away and grabbed the towel. She used it to cover herself while she awkwardly pretended to dry off.
He hadn’t moved, only watched her. He said nothing until she finally glanced up at him. He gave her a long look she’d have to be blind not to understand.
She got it. Her face flushed and she looked down quickly, rubbing the hell out of her legs so she missed the grin he had to bite to hide. She straightened then, still holding the towel. She raised her chin a little, defiant and challenging, the Catherine he remembered.
A moment passed. A minute maybe two. Neither said anything. They just stood on the dock and looked at each other under the warm and unpredictable sunshine. He felt like a thirsty man staring at an icy cold beer.
She dropped the act and returned his look, then whispered his name in that raspy grown-up voice he felt go all the way through him. “Michael.”
Just Michael.
And he was lost.
Time seemed to pass quickly after that. On days when it rained that misty rain that sometimes clouded the islands, they walked on the beach together, not minding the moodiness of the weather. The sunsets grew later and later as summer crept into the Northwest, and they fell in love.
They swam in the cove where the water was shallow and warm enough to enjoy. He taught her to sail. The first time a heavy summer rain hit, they moored and took shelter inside the sailboat’s small cabin, laughing at the foolish weather and eating a lunch of egg-salad sandwiches and barbecued potato chips she’d brought along.
The flavor of salt and barbecue spices lingered on her lips. Years later he could still not eat barbecued potato chips without thinking of that day, where a six-foot by six-foot sailboat cabin was too small and things quickly grew intense, so much so that they ended up moored to an old buoy and necking for most of the afternoon.
After that day, whenever they took the boat out he silently prayed for rain. Finally, rain or not, they spent afternoons in the cabin of his boat, where things got hot and heavy, where they would steam up the small mirror above the hard bunk and leave the sloop with their lips swollen and their bodies tense with need.
Michael learned the true meaning of wanting a woman that month. He learned the dark side of sex: the forbidden guilt and hunger that was teenage love. He would lie awake at night so hard from the mere thought of her that he couldn’t sleep. And when she would look at him in that way she had, as if he knew the answers to all the questions in the world, he felt real and alive, as if he could take on the world just for her. He learned that when you were young, nothing else mattered but the girl you loved.
One day he oiled the hinges on the old screen door because it gave him an excuse to be near her. She slipped out of the old house for the first time that night and met him walking in the woods where he pinned her against a tree and kissed the hell out of her, unhooked her bra and felt her up.
All he had to do was touch Catherine and both of them burned up. But they didn’t just touch and kiss and steam up the glass. Sometimes they would sit, hidden by those big old gray rocks near the cove, and watch the night drift by them.
And they would talk. About her hometown. About the war. About the poetry she loved. About the music he loved. About how Bob Dylan and Paul Simon were both poets and musicians. They talked about life and death and dreams.
She taught him the names of the stars because she said when he touched her and kissed her she always felt as if he took her clear up to those stars.
He didn’t care that she was seventeen and he was almost twenty. He didn’t care that the world thought he was a man who was ready to go to war, while she had one more year of high school and was jailbait.
He didn’t care because when he kissed Catherine Wardwell, nothing else in the whole goddamned screwed-up world mattered. Until the night they couldn’t stop and went all the way, the same night he’d carved their initials in the wood.
The same night her father caught them in the boathouse.
Four
San Francisco, 1997
Catherine slipped off her glasses and sagged back in her chair, staring out at the pink Victorian across the street from her office. It was four o’clock and almost every ten minutes there had been an urgent call.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and saw stars. When her vision cleared, she was looking at her desktop, where a cluster of silver-framed images of her daughters Alyson and Dana were grinning back at her.
In a frame with delicate ballet shoes decorating the corners was a photograph of Dana, her oldest daughter, dressed in a pink tutu, her blonde hair scraped back off her small heart-shaped face. She had been six then and had no front teeth. Her gummy smile looked almost too big for her face. There was another shot next to it of her sitting on Santa’s knee, her eyes turned up to him in complete awe. And the last photo was taken only a few months ago when Dana went to the Sadie Hawkins dance.
She turned to Alyson’s pictures. There was her second-grade photo taken the day after she’d tried to cut her own bangs; she looked like she’d had a fight with a lawnmower. Every time Catherine saw that photo she smiled.
There was no picture of Aly on Santa’s knee. Aly had always preferred animals to humans. She had liked Disney’s Robin Hood better than Sleeping Beauty. She wouldn’t go near Santa because when she was three the older kids at her preschool had told her there was no such thing as Santa Claus. After that day, Santa meant nothing to her.
Now the Easter Bunny, well, that was different. Those kids hadn’t said anything about the Easter Bunny. So instead of a Santa photo, there was one of Aly sitting on top of the Easter Bunny’s furry knee, her hands cupping his pink fuzzy cheeks while she demanded to know how he got around to all the houses in the world and managed to hide all those eggs in only one night. One of Aly’s typical questions—the kind that were hard to answer.