Sunday Morning
Sleep is a tough pursuit in a house about to slide down a bluff.
It’s always been too drafty, that home, or too stuffy and warm. Central air was never contemplated, and so the family made do with ceiling fans and coastal breezes. But now, with each of these “breezes,” Bess swears the house shifts, that she can hear the plink of patio bricks. When dawn at last noses its way through the shutters, Bess says a quick thank-you to the heavens, genuinely surprised to have survived the night.
“Good morning, Cis,” she says, strolling into the dining room.
It’s just before six and her mother has been up for at least an hour. Bess’s dad used to joke that when the kids were newborns, Cissy woke them up in the wee hours instead of the other way around. “I like to keep busy,” she’d say, in her own defense.
“Morning, love…”
“Whoa,” Bess says, craning, peering over the flood of cardboard in the room. Cissy is standing but Bess can only see the top of her face, that curly and wild hair. “Dad wasn’t kidding. He did send over a ‘few’ boxes. It looks like a recycling facility in here.”
“What he sent were movers,” Cissy says. “Which I refused. But they graciously left behind their supplies.”
“Well, this is a mess,” Bess says as she kicks a path through the room. Most of the boxes are gallingly weightless.
She leans in to give her mother a kiss.
“Should I ask them to come back?” Bess asks. “The movers? This is a pretty big job for a couple of unskilled gals.”
Bess thinks of the rest of the home. Five thousand square feet filled with nearly a century’s accumulation of knickknacks and personal effects. It’d been decades since Cliff House opened and closed with the seasons. This is a year-round place now.
“Who are you calling unskilled?” Cissy balks. “I was on the committee to move the lighthouse, you know.”
“Yes. I know. We all do.”
“And movers? Please. I’m not letting a bunch of strangers manhandle my belongings. Since when are you afraid of a little elbow grease? You’re losing your good New England hardiness and it’s breaking my heart.”
Cissy flings a box into the corner.
“So,” she says. “How did you sleep?”
“Great!” Bess chirps, on reflex, though it’s a lie.
The bluff might’ve diminished but not the power of Cliff House, it seems. Something about the musty-salt scent of the rooms causes the magic to stick to Bess as surely as grains of sand are perpetually glued to her feet and toes. The place can make you forget what’s really going on. Why didn’t Bess return before now? Before it was almost too late?
“See?” her mom says. “Cliff House is as safe and peaceful as it’s always been.”
“But Cissy…”
“Not to fret, though! I’ve already begun packing, like the dutiful girl that I am.”
“Major red flag. You haven’t been dutiful a day in your life.”
“You kids never give your old mom any credit.”
Bess shakes her head.
“So where should I start?” she asks, hands on hips. Bess scans the room and within seconds spots a familiar object just out of reach. “Hey! Is that…”
As she leans, a sharp pain rockets up Bess’s side. She pushes through it in order to get her mitts on a scrapbook perched at the far end of the table. Cramps surge through Bess’s midsection as she lifts the book. It must weigh twenty pounds at least.
“The Book of Summer!” she says with a grin.
Bess rubs the crocodile-embossed cover. Dust sticks to her fingers.
“Hello, you wonderful relic.”
The Book of Summer is as old as Cliff House itself. From the first day of the first season, Sarah Young asked visitors and family members to record an entry, tell a brief tale of their Cliff House stay. It’s a tradition as important as the view, or the once-great lawn, or the bunk rooms upstairs. As a girl, Bess loved combing through the paragraphs and photographs and the mementos tucked inside. Most people only signed their names, but even now, whenever Bess misses Grandma Ruby, she knows she can find her in the pages of summer.
“Ah, yes,” Cissy says, wrapping a set of blue-and-white ginger jars. “The book, the book. The famous book.”
Bess peels back the brown and crackled cover to find the inaugural entry, dated July 11, 1914, penned by Sarah Young herself. Bess’s eyes scour the page, though she does not need to read the words. She memorized them long ago.
Even my wildest dreams didn’t dare look like this.
Never could I have pictured the shingled, rambling novel of a home or me, reclined on its veranda, belly big as a stove. As massive as I’ve grown I am but a speck on the wide expanse of patio, to speak nothing of the yawning lawn behind it, or the boundless ocean beyond. The great Atlantic reaches farther than my imagination ever could. At the horizon the heavens bow to meet it, as if to say “you take it from here.” This must be what forever feels like.
Philip says Cliff House is for me but I see it otherwise. The home is not mine but a gift, to me and all who follow. We will hand it down to the next generation, and they the generation after. Our memories, our marks, our moments, they will linger for a while and eventually fade away, to make room for the new, just as it should be.
We will greet each summer with expectant delight, Cliff House the reward for the winter and the toiling away. The deed bears Philip’s name but it belongs to us all. We’ll invite friends, we’ll invite family, and the friends of family. We will throw open the doors and shout, “All of you! Come stay a night or three! Leave your shoes in the basket, your worries outside the door. Together now, let’s pour ourselves a drink.”
In lieu of rent we will ask our guests to make payment via words in this, the Book of Summer. We’ll do this so the memories will stick and so those who follow appreciate what came before.
Bess looks up from the book and toward her mother, who is aggressively boxing silver, slamming the forks and knives as if they’ve committed some great offense.
“‘And so I say,’” Bess reads out loud, “‘warm greetings, you beautiful Cliff House. So nice to finally meet you. Together we’ll have a grand old time.’”
With a sniffle, Bess sets the book back down.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asks. “Take it back to Boston?”
Bess must convince Cissy that she should be the rightful owner of the Book of Summer. She’ll need to get through Lala and Clay first, but they won’t mind. What do they need with it? Lala doesn’t even have a permanent address.
“Boston?” Cissy says. “Who mentioned Boston? Truth be told, I’m thinking of doing something with it for the Cliff House Centennial Celebration.”
Bess sees the capitalization and bold print as her mother speaks.
“The Cliff House Centennial Celebration,” Bess repeats. “That sounds like a proper title. Will there be T-shirts?”
“Elisabeth.” Cissy peers over her glasses. “There are always T-shirts.”
Cissy is right then wearing a Young Family Reunion 1984 windbreaker.
“So what, exactly, do you plan to do with it for the capital-‘c’ Celebration?” Bess asks.
“I’m not sure. The Book of Summer belongs to the people who’ve made memories here. I’d love to package up sections for those who’ve stayed, or their relatives.”
“You mean tear out pages?” Bess says, heart galloping. “You can’t deface the Book of Summer!”
“Oh, Elisabeth,” Cissy chuckles. “What do you propose, then?”
“Let me take it home.”
Cissy pivots her gaze in Bess’s direction.
“Beg pardon?”
“I want to keep it. I’ll check with Lala and Clay, of course, but I’m sure they won’t mind.”
“Let me get this straight. You want the Book of Summer to live in Cal-i-for-nia?” Cissy drags out the syllables, top lip curled as if she were talking about a venereal disease, or a Republican. “You honestly think that’s a good idea?”
“Well, it’s certainly preferable to have it stay within the family versus getting ripped up and distributed to a bunch of randoms. Grandma Ruby would roll over in her grave!”
“Most definitely,” Cissy says. “But my mother has been in a constant state of rolling over for years.”
“She wasn’t that prim, or judgmental.”
“Please. You know Ruby Packard’s favorite adage. ‘A woman’s name should only be in print when she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies.’ The past few years I’ve been in the local rag more than Bill Belichick.”
“I should have it,” Bess insists again, flicking through the pages. “You can cut me out of the will entirely, but leave the book to me.”
“Who says you’re even in my will?”
She stops on a page, her eyes watering with one glance at Grandma Ruby’s telltale boxy scrawl. How Bess loves that woman, strongly and still, despite the twenty years that have slipped by since she died. Bess attended one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the nation—for a time, anyway—and her most salient memory of Choate was when Cissy called to say Ruby Packard was no more.
It wasn’t until that moment, or perhaps even later, that Bess realized she admired her grandmother. Ruby was so different from Cissy, a much-needed balance to her hell-and-fire mom. Bess loves Cissy greatly, but she’s exhausting. Ruby was an antidote, a counterpoint. Of course, this was the least of her.
“Let me tell you something about your mother,” Grandma Ruby said oh so many times. “Whenever the young people gathered for a football game, Cissy was picked first, before any of those Kennedy schlubs. She is infinitely more Kennedy-like, too, smarter and sportier than all of them combined. They’re more teeth than brains anyhow.”
The party line was that Cissy should’ve been a Kennedy. Never mind her penchant for rabble-rousing; she actually looked like one, with the hair and the smile and, yes, all those teeth. The “Cissy Kennedy” quip was never quite a commendation, though, coming from Grandma. Ruby appreciated their grit, but was largely “not a fan.” Their patriarchal nature needled her. The men in that family called the shots.
“This is a house of women,” she used to say. “Cliff House is ours.”
Ruby Packard, an early feminist in her quiet, iron-walled way.
“Here’s one of my favorites,” Bess says, turning to an entry from the summer of 1939.
She clears her throat, trying to dislodge Grandma Ruby’s Boston Brahmin, Thurston Howell the Third, delightfully snooty Katharine Hepburn inflection.
“‘Lahst night,’” Bess reads, giving it a try, “‘when Sam and I were on the beach.’”
“What is that voice?” Cissy narrows her eyes. “Are you mocking your grandmother?”
“No, it’s just…”
Bess shakes her head. She’s never had a flair for accents. At Choate they gave her a dialect coach for the one line she had in the spring production of Pride and Prejudice. She truly was that wretched. So instead of trying to re-create Ruby’s cadence, Bess reads on in her ordinary, unremarkable, untrainable voice.