Page 52 of The Summer Club
Hugh laughed sadly. “No kidding. When I really think about what Martin is saying, and why he wants to have a family, I realize that I’m not against the idea of having kids. I just don’t want to race into it. It’s a big deal.”
Hearing Hugh admit that made Andi smile. “It is.” She’d been careful to keep her mouth shut, but she could see he and Martin with a child. In fact, it was easy to picture. “Sounds like you guys are making progress.”
Hugh shrugged. “I thought so too. But then this damn family secret came out.” His voice fell away. “It makes me doubt everything again.”
“How so?”
“About parenting. About what your responsibilities to your children really are.” He shook his head. “I don’t even know my biological father. How can I think of being a father myself when everything I thought I knew about my dad was a lie?”
Andi leaned against her twin. It had made her wonder too. About loyalty. And honesty. And blood.
About how doing something you thought was protecting your child might actually have the opposite effect. “Well, I’ll tell you what Tish once told me, before I got pregnant with Molly. ‘There’s never a good time. And it’s never easy.’?”
Hugh looked at her incredulously. “Tish? The least maternal person on the planet gave you parenting advice?”
Andi laughed out loud. “I couldn’t believe it either. But she sure loves Dad, even if the way she shows it is screwed up.”
“So you’re still going to call him that?”
It took Andi a moment to realize what he was getting at. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s who he is.”
Hugh nodded, leaving it at that. And she let him.
“For what it means, I see the love you and Martin have. I envy it, even. And I think you two would make great fathers, if that’s what you both decide.”
Her twin looked away, but she could see the faintest smile on his face before he did. “All right,” he said, “you’re being too nice and you need to shut up, or I may have a turn crying.” He hopped to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
Andi looked down. “First, I should probably wash the pavement off my feet.” She lifted one foot so he could see its tar-colored sole.
“God help the first guy who drives off with your daughter on a date.”
Andi cocked her head. “Speaking of guys.”
It had been an emotional day. Saying goodbye to Molly. Seeing her ex. Now a family dinner with all of the tensions still rippling. “I was thinking about what you said earlier. Why should George and Camilla have all the fun?”
Hugh raised one eyebrow. She didn’t need to tell her twin what she was thinking.
“I’ll call him right now,” he said.
She was halfway up the stairs when the call went through. “Nate, it’s Hugh. Say, what’re you doing tonight?”
Tish
She has no choice; Tish must extend her stay at Chatham Bars Inn. It’s not easy, being back on the Cape surrounded by memories of Morty. It’s also not easy during high summer season. That sweet young receptionist in the main lobby tells her that her cottage is already reserved for the coming week by another guest, but not to worry—they can find her a vacant room in the main inn! This is not what she wants to hear. Tish has grown fond of her cottage by the sea. It has the harbor view. It is oh-so-private. And the longer she stays, the longer the unrest and unease in her bones seems to dissipate. Is it the ocean air? Or the Cape Cod memories of her dear Morty? She suspects a bit of both. Whatever it is, for the first time in decades Tish feels a lightening of some invisible burden across her shoulders. She does not possess the usual pressing urge to flee from the family. No, it is certainly not easy being back on the Cape surrounded by ghosts and old hauntings. But something about it feels necessary. She wants to see it through. And besides, Charley still needs her, even if he does not know it.
As such, Tish needs to keep the Mooncusser Cottage. If not, they will have to drag her out by her ankles. Inexplicable as it may be, since she’s arrived, something has happened within the walls of this cottage. She sleeps through the night. She has a voracious appetite. Most of all, she can think of Morty for the first time without the searing pain that filled her limbs whenever he crossed her mind. Her whole life as a widow, she has steered hard away from memories, lest she come undone by the suffering they brought. Now she climbs into bed, slips beneath the crisp hotel sheets, and waits for the dreams to come. With moonlight glinting off the bay outside, she lies ready and willing. Her old heart is finally opening again, like the petals of a flower unfolding.
If she were to uproot herself now, she fears the connection she feels to her past may be lost. She tries to explain this to the young receptionist without sounding like a crazy old bat or getting personal—two things she will not do. But alas, it does no good. The cottage is already spoken for. As a last resort, Tish asks to speak to the hotel manager. An impeccably mannered gentleman named Ross with a soothing lilt to his voice. Ross wears a linen suit sporting a bright lavender pocket square. Dapper, she thinks when he strolls across the lobby to greet her. Men today are such slobs; they could learn a thing or two from Ross.
Tish has a situation on her hands. But there are two things on her side: born a first-generation American with little means, that fighting spirit still flickers within. As does the influence of the family name she married into. Both possess the power to assuage a situation, though the balance is delicate. Tish smiles as she takes Ross’s hand in her own and employs both. A quick sweep of the reservation board later, and voilà! The Mooncusser Cottage is available, after all. She thanks him and takes him up on the suggestion to enjoy lunch at the Sacred Cod, just off the lobby. She hears the tuna tartare is delightful.
It’s quiet in the Sacred Cod, the light dim, and Tish takes a seat in one of the tavern’s plush leather dining chairs at a corner table. She orders the chowder and the tuna, along with a Hendrick’s and tonic. So what if it’s midday? She’s at the shore.
An old man at the bar is watching her. Tish guesses he is in his eighties, the old codger, and then laughs at herself. She is old too. As old as dirt! Though she always forgets it. The man raises his glass—something amber-colored, probably bourbon—Morty loved bourbon. Reluctantly she raises hers, then looks away. Don’t you dare come over here, she thinks to herself. It’s always been a problem and who would think it would still be so in her early nineties, but it is! No matter her world travels, they are the same everywhere, these old men; they can’t help themselves. She supposes it is because they don’t know how to be alone. They’ve probably depended their whole lives on a woman. And they are lost without one. She supposes others might find that sympathetic, but not her—they are insufferable, these men. Who totter over uninvited and introduce themselves. Who pepper her peace of mind with unsolicited accounts of their dead wives and pesky grandkids, as if she will find this to be fascinating conversation. Who do they think they are? Tish was an exquisite beauty in her youth; she’s not arrogant, it’s just true. She has long had an effect on men, something that made her uncomfortable in her own skin as a young woman; something she since learned to yield as she’s wizened. Even at ninety, there are still hints of that beauty. She can thank her mother’s elegant bone structure for that. Classic beauty cannot be eroded by time, her hairdresser once told her. Though she was pretty sure he was not hitting on her; he was gay. Like Hugh. Oh, Hugh… and the rest of the grandchildren.
Tish had not come to the Cape to stir up trouble. It’s no secret to the whole family that she and Cora are not fans of each other and, though she regrets the tension it may have caused the children and Charley, the fault is not hers. Cora had swept into Charley’s carefully orchestrated world and dismantled it. A world that Tish herself had spent years cultivating and fostering, all the while protecting Charley from the expectations and pressure from his side of the family. It was a high-wire act she’d perfected out of necessity, but it never got easier. Morty’s parents, while he was alive, were cold people. And after his death, they never warmed as she’d foolishly hoped they might, but rather set up a fortress of rules they saw as opportunities for young, fatherless Charley, but that Tish knew were a strategic set of controls.
Like her, who’d loved medicine and longed to use her Columbia nursing degree, Charley took an interest in medicine. Tish saw a light. If she could just withstand his grandparents long enough, the education he had and the circles they lived in could certainly help secure a future in medical school. Charley was a bright student, but soft and sweet. Easily distracted by others. Tish needed to make him tougher if he were to grow into the man who could free himself from the Darlings and forge his own path. Then, and only then, would she be free of them herself. Her work as a mother would be done, her child raised and poised on the precipice of a bright future, and she could escape the talons of her mother-in-law and live however and wherever she wished. Vassar was a good enough school, yes, but the fall of his senior year when they learned he got into Yale medical school? Aside from marrying Morty, it was the best day of Tish Darling’s life. She would tell Matilda Darling the good news: Charley would not be working for the family foundation, after all. No, he’d gotten into an Ivy League school! His future was wholly his own.