Amy loved her routine. Every morning she shared a quiet cup of coffee with Gwen, the only other person in the house yet awake. They would talk about the redecorating, about the new people Gwen was meeting, and about Amy’s workouts. Gwen admitted that she didn’t understand half of what Amy said about her skating, but she hadn’t understood submarines either.
On the way to the rink Amy often stopped and bought doughnuts for the rink staff; after practice she picked up sandwiches so Gwen didn’t have to make lunch. Her practice schedule was common knowledge, and a couple times a week a few retired people would show up to watch her. She stayed at the rink during the Tuesday-Thursday preschool class, helping the tots put their skates on, chatting with the mothers. Emily had been boasting about her famous aunt so much that her teacher arranged to have the class come to the rink as a field trip. Amy couldn’t imagine what a group of first-graders could learn from watching her do the same thing over and over, but Gretchen had some Amy Legend key chains made up, and each kid got one to hang from the zippers of their backpacks, so she was almost as cool as the trip to the fire station.
Travel from Iowa was more difficult than it had been from Denver, but even that was turning into an advantage. She had known for a while that she was involved with some charities that really did not need her. They had so thoroughly developed the potential of their fund-raising base that the presence of a celebrity made little difference in how much money they raised. Amy Legend’s presence at their annual banquet was a lovely reward for a job well done, but the job would have been equally well done without her. The long waits for a connecting flight out of Chicago made her think carefully about each trip. She quit hopping on a plane every time someone breathed her name.
Ian’s new therapist didn’t seem to think much of him living with Hal and Gwen. “It’s important to have shelters and safety nets,” she said, “but what example are you setting for the children?”
“I never quite know what she means,” he said when reporting this conversation to Hal, Gwen, and Amy, “but I’m getting the picture on this one. I need to take responsibility for my children.”
So he rented a house for the rest of the school year. A nice lady from the nearby Mennonite community came two mornings a week to clean and do the laundry, but Ian was still at the schoolyard every afternoon at three-thirty to walk Scott and Emily home. The two of them were still fragile, trembling at any disappointment, but Scott was a star on the third-grade soccer team and Emily was getting to pick out another wallpaper border.
Amy felt as if she should leave too. The best thing she could probably do for Gwen now was give her time alone with Hal.
“But you don’t want to move back to Denver,” Gwen said.
That was true. Amy didn’t want to live in Denver anymore. She wanted to go on working with Oliver. She wanted to retain all her business ties with Tommy and Henry. But she wanted to live near her family. “But I can’t live with you and Dad forever.”
“No, I suppose not,” Gwen agreed. “But you’re gone a lot, and frankly it’s easier for me to have you here than it would be to drive across town and pick up your mail and newspapers.”
That was true. If she got her own place, she would have to figure out how to take care of things when she was gone. She couldn’t recreate her life in Denver; she couldn’t buy a condominium in a high-rise with a doorman, a front desk, and a concierge. The tallest building in Lipton had five floors, and the closest thing any establishment had to a doorman was the cheerful mentally disabled man who helped load groceries at the Safeway.
On the other hand, if she got a place of her own, she might have gutters that needed cleaning.
It was time to make Thanksgiving plans. Ian was trying to negotiate with Joyce so that the children could see her, but Holly and Jack were coming, and Amy had accepted no holiday shows, so there would be eleven of them. Gwen said she was perfectly willing to cook; she was also equally willing to go to Phoebe’s. Phoebe was saying that she was also willing to have it at either place.
“How shall we resolve this?” Phoebe asked.
“Amy, what do you want to do?” Gwen asked.
Amy blinked. “What do I want?” She had not expected that question. “I haven’t given it any thought. It seemed easier to let the two of you decide, and then you can be the ones who are wrong.”
“Amy, if I didn’t love you so much,” Gwen said, “I would say that you sometimes have too much in common with my sister and her daughter, both of whom live to have other people be wrong.”
Gwen’s sister Barbara and her niece Valerie were Nick’s family. “Keeping your mouth shut is so safe,” Amy replied. “Your sister’s smarter than you know. But maybe we should try something completely different.” Last year’s idea of everyone going to a big hotel no longer sounded appealing. She preferred something homier…although in truth as long as Jack was going to be there, she would have gone to Neptune. He was still at the lake, and so they talked to him only when—
“I know.” She suddenly had an idea. “What will the weather be at the lake? Would we freeze to death if we went there?”
“Thanksgiving at the lake?” Phoebe asked. She looked surprised.
“Jack is finishing the garage as a communal kitchen,” Gwen mused. “It might work if the weather isn’t too awful. What’s it like there at Thanksgiving?”
Phoebe didn’t know. They had never needed to know. The family had gone only in the summer. “I imagine it’s cold.”
“But how cold?” Amy asked. “Uncomfortable cold or instant-death cold? How would we find out? If we wait until morning, I could call Gretchen.” Amy had already concluded that if she was going to buy a house in Iowa, she should hire some Gretchen-type person as a housekeeper and assistant. That person could run the errands, collect the mail, and cook some meals…although she would not clean the gutters. That had to be very clear. Amy’s gutters would be far too delicate to be touched by anyone but Jack. “She can find out anything.”
“So can I,” Gwen said. “We’ll call the local radio station right now.” She was already moving to the phone.
Five minutes later, she had an answer. “Guess what? It’s like everywhere else. The weather at Thanksgiving varies. There’s no telling. It could be in the mid-forties with no snow; it could be below zero with three feet of snow. But it’s been a dry fall so far.”
“Which means nothing,” Phoebe said.
They were all quiet for a moment, no one wanting to make the decision. A heavy snowfall could trap them at the lake for days. The road would eventually get plowed, but not immediately. And if it was truly cold, biffy trips would be memorable indeed. On the other hand, to be there, with the last few golden leaves clinging to the branches of birches, with the Norway boughs soft and perhaps snow-filled, with the smoke from the fires curling up from the cabin chimneys through the thin autumn air…
Phoebe threw up her hands. “Oh, why not? The worst that will happen is that we’ll be snowed in for the rest of the winter, but then it will be Amy’s turn to be wrong, and that thought will keep us warm.”
Everyone loved the idea. Ian told Joyce that she had to commit herself absolutely to spending Thanksgiving with her two younger children or he was taking them to the lake.
“I just don’t know why we can’t wait and see if Maggie’s going on this ski trip,” she answered.
“Because Scott and Emily’s plans are as important as hers,” he said, “and they’re in no shape to cope with uncertainty.”
But she was unwilling to make definite plans. “She’s trying to see how much she can get away with,” Ian told the rest of the family. “So we’re coming to the lake. My kids are going to be with people who think they are important, and I’m not going to have to spend the rest of my life listening to what a great time you all had freezing to death.”
The television networks and cable stations had learned that the only programming that could hold its own against holiday-weekend football was figure skating. So throughout November Amy was traveling every week, appearing in the competitions that would be shown over Thanksgiving. Each time she returned, Phoebe and Gwen had done more to plan and prepare for the holiday.
Gwen had decided to fly up the Friday before. “We really don’t have any idea what Jack’s been up to. He says everything is in great shape, and for the most part I do believe him. But he is a man; he will have forgotten something.”
Phoebe clearly wanted to go with her. “But I’m in charge of the Multicultural Thanksgiving feast in Alex’s class on Wednesday. I have to be there.”
The three of them were at Phoebe’s, making pilgrim hats and collars out of black and white construction paper. Gwen and Amy were enjoying the work; Phoebe was grateful for the help.
“I could come,” Amy said. “I leave Detroit Friday afternoon. I could meet you in Minneapolis. I won’t be much help in the kitchen, but I generate body heat.”
“We’re going to need that,” Gwen agreed.
She was going to see Jack again.
Last summer Thanksgiving had seemed so vague and far away. It had loomed as the problem. She and Jack couldn’t remain lovers because of Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s when the family would be together.
But Thanksgiving was finally here, and this time Amy wasn’t coming to see the family. She was already with the family. What difference was that going to make?
She skated horribly in Detroit, landing only one of her triples, doubling all the rest. But no one else skated any better, and so her scores were fine. The skaters’ hotel was close to an upscale grocery store, and when Amy’s luggage was transferred from the Minneapolis-bound flight to the little commuter plane, it included a big cardboard box fill of Belgian chocolates, Spanish oranges, and champagne from France. “I’ve never traveled with provisions before,” she said to Gwen when they met in the Minneapolis airport. “But I have brought all of Europe with me. I’m turning into my sister.”
Jack was meeting them at the airport in Hibbing. It was too small a facility to have jet ways. Stairs were wheeled up to the side of the plane; the passengers climbed down and crossed the runway. Amy had done it often in the summer but never in November. The sharp chill in the air caught at her lungs, froze the inside of her nose.
Gwen gasped at the cold. “Whose idea was this?”
Amy didn’t answer. Jack was waiting.
She and Gwen hurried across the tarmac. The glass of terminal’s windows was tinted against the sun; Amy couldn’t see inside. But the airport was warm, and there Jack was, leaning back against the wall, straightening, stepping forward when he saw them.
Gwen called his name. Amy held back so that he could greet his mother first. They embraced, Gwen patting the back of his shoulder. Then Gwen stepped away, and he turned to Amy. He hesitated, she paused, but it really was wonderful to see him. She had to touch him. She moved forward; his arms closed around her. She felt the soft weave of his shirt against her cheek and the brush of his lips in her hair.
He stepped back. “You’re shivering. I thought you would be used to the cold.”
If she was shivering, it wasn’t from the cold.
He looked great. Once again his thick chestnut hair needed to be cut, but he had on a sage-colored rugby shirt under a plaid wool shirt. The sett of the plaid was shades of green—olive, sage, and moss—while the accent line was rust.
“I love your shirt,” Gwen exclaimed. “The colors are wonderful on you. Did you get it up here?”
Amy knew the answer to that. No, Holly had given it to him. There was no way Jack had picked out that shirt himself. He would have bought navy blue.
“Holly sent it to me,” he said. “I was telling her how cold it was, so she sent up a couple of shirts. She says that she doesn’t care about me being cold, she just can’t stand to be seen in public with me because I dress so badly.”
“You don’t dress badly.” Gwen wanted to be sure that her children were getting along. “You haven’t developed a good sense of color.”
“No, Gwen,” Amy put in. “He dresses badly.”
“I suppose he does.” Gwen sighed, then spoke briskly. “We have a ton of luggage. Hal went over to the chemistry department and got the most gorgeous cardboard boxes you have ever seen, and I filled every single one of them.”
The Hibbing airport did not have automated baggage service. Luggage was taken off the airplane by hand, wheeled into the airport on a cart, and then transferred to the claim area by the same people who processed the tickets. Gwen’s and Amy’s suitcases arrived soon enough, but Gwen’s boxes were the last items off the plane, perhaps because of the boxes’ stern preprinted warnings about the chemicals that had originally been shipped in them.
While they were waiting, several people came over and spoke to Jack. He would introduce them to Gwen and Amy. “This is my mother and her stepdaughter Amy.”
“You know a lot of people,” Amy said to Jack as they carried the luggage out to the curb.
“Not that many. The lumber yard guys and I are real buddies, and people at the airport, I know them.”
“Why?” she asked. As far as she knew, no one had flown up to see him.
“I’ve been taking flying lessons.”
He sprinted across the parking lot to get his truck. Amy urged Gwen to wait inside the warm terminal; Gwen refused. If Amy could wait outside with the luggage, so could she. A minute later Jack’s black truck eased up to the curb. He got out of the cab and went around back to lower the tailgate.
Amy handed him the first box. “You’re learning to fly a helicopter?”
“Not yet. It turns out that helicopters are hard to fly. You’re better off starting on fixed-wing aircraft. So I’m down here a couple days a week, sometimes more.”
Gwen had been listening. She too seemed pleased. “Can I assume that five years from now you are going to be running passenger service to the moon?”
“No. I think I’m out of the business world for a while. I’ve been talking to the Red Cross. They seem to think that once I learn to fly a helicopter, they could probably use me at disaster sites.”
“Jack!” Gwen stared at him, surprised. “The Red Cross? I had no idea you were thinking about anything like that.”
“I wasn’t. It was Amy here.” He jerked his thumb in her direction. “Apparently she can’t stand to be seen in public with me because I perform no public service.”
“That’s true,” Amy agreed. “But I also don’t like the way you dress.”
Gwen was shaking her head, not because she disapproved but because she was surprised.
“I know Dad wanted me to join the navy,” Jack said, “but I don’t think that would have been such a great idea.”
“I know that,” Gwen murmured. “I’ve always known that.”
“But I think this should be okay. Since I don’t need to worry about money for a while, I can stay a volunteer and keep pretty clear of the bureaucracy while still managing to do some good.”
“This might be the thing for you,” Gwen said slowly. “It really might be.” And Amy felt her hand being squeezed surprisingly hard. It was Gwen, thanking her.
They both understood what had happened. Working up here in these silent woods, Jack had laid a ghost to rest. I’ll be doing something that counts, Dad. You’d be proud. I have not let you down.
The drive passed quickly. Even though Jack spent it describing in detail what he had been doing, even though he had said he had had a couple of guys come help him, Amy was still amazed when they got to the lake. The big garage, which had once been storage space for Giles’s boat and ten-year-old cans of unusable paint, Jack had finished into a pleasant, comfortable living space. He had insulated the walls and paneled them with pine. He had enlarged the windows, tiled the floor, and put in two wood-burning stoves, one sleek and efficient, the other an old, hulking cast-iron beast with burner plates on the top and a water tank at the side.
Installed along one wail were the stove, sink, and counters. “The lady at the lumber yard,” Jack said, “laid this out so that two or three people can work at once. She said it will be awful for just one person, but it’s ideal for a crowd.”
Such was the plan. When Hal and Gwen or any other small party was here alone, they would cook and eat in their cabin. But when everyone was together, they would open the garage. Then the cabins would become private, the garage public.
Hal had told Jack to go ahead and get new furniture, which Jack had done by walking into discount furniture shops and pointing. He had ordered two complete “suites” of living room furniture: one had a sofa, two big chairs, and assorted tables; the other had a sofa, love seat, and assorted tables. One was gray, the other an oatmeal tweed. The gray was a stone gray, and the oatmeal blend had more taupe in it than brown, so the two upholstery fabrics looked almost adequate together. Gwen and Amy believed that was simply luck. They could have been pearl gray and tan, and Jack would have bought them.
“Do you think he’s color-blind?” Amy whispered to Gwen.
“No. We had him tested when he was little. He just doesn’t care.”
How ironic that she, of all people, should fall in love with someone who didn’t—
She stopped herself. Fall in love? Why had she thought that?
Because it was true. The flood of joy she felt every time she saw him or spoke to him…if that was just sex, she would have felt the tingling lower down. This sensation started in her chest, spreading quickly down her arms, up the back of her neck. Every hour she spent with him made it clearer and clearer. There would never be another man more important to her than he was. He would always be the one she thought of first, the one she turned to first. She didn’t need to be with him to love him. She only needed to be herself and have him be himself.
So what did this mean? She didn’t know. But the holiday weekend would tell them so much. They should share Thanksgiving with the family and then see. On Sunday when the holiday was over, she would speak. On Sunday they would talk.
The family was two strands of beads that had been joined together by the clasp of Hal and Gwen’s marriage. As the two youngest of their generation, she and Jack had been the last bead on each strand, and the danger had been that the two of them would slip off and roll together into some dusty hidden corner. Then in the case of her family, the other beads might have fallen off as well, Ian staying in California, forever struggling to hold his marriage together, and Phoebe forcing herself to be content with some other lake.
But a necklace is a circle, and this family would become a circle only if the two loose ends met and joined. Amy and Jack were those two ends.
Amy could not think analytically; she knew truth through metaphors. This metaphor told her the opposite of what everyone had said in the summer. She and Jack were not a threat to the family; the family would be stronger, it would endure more as a circle than as a strand.
Jack had certainly turned the garage into a space that was right for this new family, even though at the moment it looked blank and a bit uninviting. There was nothing on any of the surfaces, and Jack, skilled interior designer that he wasn’t, had arranged the furniture precisely as it had been in the discount showroom—gray on one side, oatmeal on the other.
So Gwen and Amy set to work. They moved furniture, blending the two sets. From the upper shelves of the cabin closets, from boxes stored underneath beds, they found lap quilts and extra pillows. From the tops of the bookcases they rescued pretty bits of wood, glittering rocks, and interesting shells that two generations of children had been collecting. They selected the best and arranged them on the tables.
They set up systems, figured out ways of doing things, where people would wash their hands, where they would hang their coats. At night, rather than heat the other cabins, the three of them slept in the garage. Both sofas were sleepers, folding out into queen-size beds, and Amy and Gwen shared one bed while Jack was in the other.
True to her plan, Amy had not told him that she loved him, but he knew. He had realized it on Friday, the first night they were there.
Gwen was already in bed, and Amy was curled up under a quilt on the love seat in front of the airtight stove. The stove didn’t have the romance of an open fireplace, but it put out a comforting heat, and there was a tempered glass door through which she could see the moving flames.
Jack was brushing his teeth at the washstand Amy and Gwen had set up near one of the doors. Amy heard him rinse and spit, followed by some rattling and rustling as he put things away.
Then he came over to the stove and, hooking his foot around the leg of Amy’s love seat, inched it back a bit. He lowered himself to the floor, sitting in front of the fire, his legs pulled up, his elbows on his knees, his back resting against the base of the love seat.
His head, his thick, rumpled, curly, sexually symbolic chestnut hair, was near Amy’s waist. She pulled her hand out from under the quilt and touched his hair.
He went still. His breath caught and held. He understood.
He didn’t move. He was breathless. The floor was disappearing beneath him; he was tumbling, gasping for air and light. Amy knew it as surely as if it were happening to her.
He let his head drop, and his hands made a tent in front of his face. He could have been at prayer.
I don’t deserve this. Amy could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he were speaking. She loves me, and I do not deserve it.
Yes, you do, her thoughts answered. Yes, you do.
He reached back and took her hand, bringing it around. He opened her fingers and kissed her palm.
“Why aren’t you looking at me?” she whispered.
“I’m afraid that I’ll find out that it isn’t true.”
“But it is.”
For the moment that was enough. They both knew, they both believed.
No one else was supposed to arrive until late Wednesday, but Tuesday afternoon they heard a car on the trail. They assumed it was someone from one of the other cabins, but then the car slowed and turned into their drive. Amy and Gwen looked at each other. Who could it be?
It was Hal and little Claire. “I couldn’t keep away,” he said as he hugged Gwen and Amy and took Jack by the shoulder while shaking his hand. “So I taught my eight A.M. class, kidnapped my friend here, and hit the road.”
“We brought milk,” Claire said proudly. “I remembered.”
“That’s wonderful,” Gwen lied. “We would have been in trouble if you hadn’t.”
Of course, the problem with milk now was not keeping it cold, but keeping it from freezing.
Phoebe’s family was leaving Iowa City on Wednesday noon as soon as the second-grade Multicultural Thanksgiving feast was over, and they arrived in the evening with a station wagon so crammed that it was a good thing Claire had come up with her grandfather. There might not have been room even for her slender little body.
No one had had time to admire the garage, much less unload the station wagon when a third car pulled in. It was Ian. He had stopped at the Hibbing airport to pick up Holly.
The lights of his car swept across the garage windows, and everyone dashed outside. Only Gwen had the sense to get her coat, so they all danced up and down, rubbing their hands along their arms, waiting for him to ease into a spot between two Norways. It was dark out, and so they couldn’t see inside the car, but Amy moved toward the passenger side, wanting to be among the first to greet Holly.
Then a shout went up. “Nick!”
There were indeed three adult shapes getting out of the car, Ian, Holly, and—most unexpectedly—Nick.
It was fifteen minutes before the clamor eased. Alex wanted to show Scott the hot-water tank. Gwen had to mop up the resulting puddle. Ian was amazed at the garage; he didn’t know what to look at first. Phoebe and Giles were dying to explore and get ideas for their new cabin. Holly loved, just loved, the new makeup brushes Amy had suggested she buy. Ellie wanted everyone to know that Nick was completely responsible for how great things were going with her new boyfriend. Thomas was toddling around looking for new, interesting ways to injure himself, and Claire was telling people that it was fine if they hadn’t stopped to buy milk because she had remembered to have Grandpa do it.
Eventually those who cared were settled enough to find out why Nick had come.
“Don’t get us wrong,” Gwen assured him. “We’re thrilled, but it is a surprise. I can’t believe that your mother and grandmother let you come.”
“Well…” Nick drawled out the word. “Letting me come…that’s not exactly what happened, but they do know where I am,” he added quickly. “I didn’t run away.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Hal suggested.
“It started when I was here last summer. I decided that I want to know who my father is. I’m sick of not knowing.”
“You don’t know who your father is?” Jack grimaced. “I hated not knowing what Dad was doing, where the boats were going and what their mission was, all that. But at least I knew who he was.”
“So what does this have to do with your being here now?” Giles asked.
“It’s been bugging me more and more, the not knowing. Finally I decided to do something about it. I’m boycotting family holidays until they tell me or at least until they tell a lawyer who will tell me when I’m eighteen. At first I thought I’d just stay in my room, but that’s what I do all the time anyway, so I called Holly to see if I could hitchhike down to New York to see her. She said you were all coming here, and she sent me a plane ticket. So if you’re glad to see me, thank her. It’s her dime.”
Holly waved her hand. “It was nothing really.”
“How long will it take this to work?” Giles asked. “When will they tell you?”
“One Christmas is all it will take.” Nick was confident. “They both make a big deal out of Christmas; they like to do all these crafty-type things to decorate. Gold spray paint and hot glue are our version of glad tidings of comfort and joy. They love doing it, but they don’t admit that to themselves. They pretend that they are doing it for me.”
Amy couldn’t imagine that Nick cared very much about gold pine cones and lace-edged ribbon. “What will you do once you have his name?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think showing up on his doorstep is such a cool idea. He may not have any idea I exist. I can’t even get Val and Barb to tell me if he knew she was pregnant. Also I don’t want anyone thinking I’m after money. Maybe it makes sense to have someone else, a lawyer or something, approach him first.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Giles said. “And given that you’ve got three lawyers and one something among your relatives—”
Jack interrupted. “Why do I think I’m the ‘one something’?”
“It could be me,” Ian pointed out. “I’m not a lawyer.”
“What about me?” Amy was determined to be the Afterthought no longer. “I’m not a lawyer either, and if I call this dad of Nick’s, he’ll call me back.”
“That’s certainly true,” Gwen said. “Trust me. People return Amy’s calls. In fact, I’m willing to put money on it. All three of you put in a call at the same time, I’ll bet anything that Amy’s call is returned first.”
“This is my life we’re talking about here, not a horse race,” Nick said, but he was clearly pleased at people’s interest.
“I can’t say that I recommend the horse-race approach,” Giles said, “but we’ll certainly help you figure out the right thing to do.”
“And if he’s interested in getting to know you,” Hal added, “remember we’re here to help. There’ll always be room at the table for family.”
“He might have seven children,” Nick said.
Hal clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “This is the wonderful part of being a man, Nick. You get to say things like ‘There’ll always be room at the table,’ and then the women have to do all the work.”
Nick grinned. “I may have been underrating family life.”
It was growing late. As reluctant as everyone was to go back out into the cold, Gwen had made it clear that not a single suitcase was to be opened in the garage. People had to sleep in the cabins.
Neither the bunkhouse nor the porch of the log cabin could be heated enough for sleeping, so Amy and Jack had dragged the bunk beds into the main room of the log cabin. Phoebe and Giles were to take one of the bedrooms in the new cabin; Ian was to be in the other. The kids would spread out on the floor of that cabin. Amy and Holly had the bedroom of the log cabin; Ellie was on the sofa, and Nick and Jack were on the bunk beds.
“This will be the last time we have to do all this figuring,” Phoebe said as she was collecting the many things her family had already strewn all over the garage. “Our cabin will be done next summer. Then Ian and his family can have the new cabin and Amy, Holly, and Jack the log cabin.”
“I don’t need the new cabin every year,” Ian said immediately.
“We can still trade.”
“You haven’t seen what a difference Jack’s skylights make in the log cabin.” Phoebe had seen them when she had been up in October. “You may think the new cabin is the short end of the stick.”
Thanksgiving Day dawned cold and clear. Even before they were out of bed, Holly and Ellie were marveling over the skylights. Jack had installed four, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen, and two in the living room. Bright swaths of light spilled downward, sweeping across the floor, sliding up the log walls. This cabin would never have the convenient layout of the new cabin, but it was unquestionably more beautiful.
“I think I could lie here forever,” Holly sighed happily.
“I can’t,” Amy said, even though she loved lying here in the light, knowing why Jack had installed these rooftop windows. He had hoped that they would tell her that he loved her. “I have to pee.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that, Aunt Amy,” Ellie moaned from the living room sofa. “I was trying so hard not to think about that.”
The two of them pulled on their clothes and dashed shrieking to the biffy, the blast of cold air that greeted them when they opened the cabin door making their needs more urgent. But Gwen and Jack had already been up for more than an hour, so the garage was warm and a twenty-cup blue enamel coffeepot, the kind used on the chuck wagons of Western movies, sat in a pan of hot water on top of one of the wood stoves.
Even though it was mind-numbingly cold outside, everything else seemed startlingly easy. Gwen had set out mugs, cream, sugar, and spoons on a little side table so coffee drinkers weren’t always trapising through the kitchen, elbowing cooks away from the stove. The tables were picnic tables with benches, so there was no need to hunt up chairs for every meal. Metal dishpans full of soap water were set on the wood stove, and everyone put their dirty dishes directly in the water. Kids then washed dishes on the picnic table, leaving the sink open for adults to tackle the pots and pans.
The women spent the day cooking, and Amy openly admitted that she enjoyed being the one who knew where things were. “I know it’s not going to last,” she said to Phoebe. “By tomorrow you’ll know everything better than me, but today I’m going to gloat.”
“You may gloat all you want,” Phoebe answered. “But in turn you have to promise not to laugh, because while you’ve been turning into me, I think I’ve been turning into you.”
Ellie leaned back from where she had been chopping celery and pointedly looked at her mother’s rear end. “No, you haven’t, Mom. Not by a long shot.”
“Ellie!” Laughing, Phoebe swatted her across the arm. “What kind of thing was that to say?”
“The truth,” Ellie answered.
“She’s spending too much time with Nick,” Holly said. “He’s not a good influence.” Then she looked at Phoebe. “I have dibs on Amy’s butt. What other part of her are you taking?”
“The clothes part. You know how we decided not to dress up for Thanksgiving dinner?” The family usually wore black-tie for holiday meals, but no one could quite envision stumbling out to the biffy in satin pumps, so orders had gone out not to bring formal clothes. “I realized Tuesday afternoon that I really was going to miss that.”
“I wish you had told me,” Holly said. “I didn’t bring a thing.”
“I know. I thought about calling you, but that would have left Gwen and Amy out.”
“We wouldn’t have minded,” Gwen said.
“I would have,” Amy said. She might be struggling to change her role within her family, but no prospect of enduring happiness would make her give up her “Best Dressed” title. A person had to keep her priorities.
“I know,” Phoebe said. “So I had this idea, and I know it sounds sort of stupid, but Giles egged me on”—it wasn’t like Phoebe to be so hesitant—“and most of the stuff the thrift shop hadn’t been able to get rid of, and they gave me a lot of it, and we had extra room in the car.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Holly said.
“I do.” Amy clapped her hands together. “We’re going to play dress up.”
Indeed they were. Phoebe had gone to the local thrift shops and filled four big trash bags full of gorgeous junk. It was indeed out of character for her.
But it was fun. At first Holly and Ian were merely being cooperative, but within minutes a giddy playfulness captured even them. Only the two younger boys felt incapable of dressing up.
Giles had been warned to bring his tux, and Phoebe had driven over to Lipton to get Hal’s. So the two of them were conventionally dressed except for their shirts. Giles’s was a tied-dyed swirl of yellows and reds, and Hal’s was a seventies monstrosity, Alice blue with black-edged ruffles. The shirt’s collar points were so elongated that Hal was planning to carve the turkey with them. Jack was in his own jeans and one of the earth-toned shirts that Holly had given him, but he had accessorized himself with a pleated red cummerbund from whose folds dangled little plastic Santa Clauses and reindeer. There was a matching bow tie, but generous soul that he was, he was letting two-year-old Thomas wear it. He instead selected neckware that was silk-screened to resemble a bottle of Glenfiddich scotch whisky. Ian was wearing a red-lined black Dracula cape, and Nick had donned a metallic silver Hershey’s Kiss Halloween costume.
The two little girls were safety-pinned into pastel prom dresses. Ellie and Gwen had on matching fifties-style cocktail ensembles, bumblebee yellow skirts slit up the front to reveal black toredo pants. Holly’s gown was trimmed in acid green bugle beads; no one knew exactly what color arsenic was, but the general consensus was that she should be kept away from all food-preparation sites. Phoebe was in a draped, bias-cut oyster satin gown that Hal instantly recognized—or pretended to do so—as a homemade copy of Eleanor Roosevelt’s gown from the First Ladies Hall at the Smithsonian. Amy selected a crinoline-lined, ruffled royal purple taffeta skirt with a big watermark on the hem. She ripped a scarlet paisley shawl in half, wrapped one half around her torso in a mock bustier, even managing to fold the shawl into an interesting V at the front. She then used the other half of the shawl as a sash. Everyone instantly told her that she looked too good, that her outfit was too close to something a human being might actually wear. Since she was already cold, she pulled off the shawl, stole Jack’s camel-and-tobacco-colored wool shirt, and cinched it at her waist with an elasticized silver sequined belt. All agreed she was now more in keeping with the spirit of the evening.
Then Phoebe brought out a worn velvet jewel case and called the two little girls over to her. Amy went too. She wanted to see what Phoebe had brought. A red, white, and blue rhinestone American flag pin would be the perfect thing to finish off her outfit.
But the jewelry was not from the thrift shop. Lying on a bed of ivory satin, glinting sullenly, were Eleanor’s garnets, the ornate, elaborate parure that Amy had admired so much as a child.
They really were ugly.
Claire and Emily squealed. “Oh, can we wear those? Can we? Can we please?”
“If you’re careful,” Phoebe said.
The set was large enough that each girl had a bracelet and a brooch the size of a Campbell’s soup can lid. Neither had pierced ears, so Phoebe had wired the earrings to barrettes, and they were wearing them in their hair. There was only one necklace, but Phoebe told them that they could trade every half hour.
“Is there any chance I can get in on the necklace rotation?” Amy asked. “I always wanted to wear it.”
“They’ll get bored with it halfway through dinner,” Phoebe answered, “and you can do whatever you want. But in the meantime…we need you to sit down and close your eyes.”
“Me? Why?” She noticed that Ellie had joined them, her hands behind her back. “Okay.” She sat down on one of the picnic benches, her purple taffeta billowing up over three spaces.
She felt something cold at her throat and then warm fingers at the back of her neck. “You can open your eyes now,” Ellie said.
Ellie was holding a small hand mirror in front of her. Amy looked at herself. Inside the collar of Jack’s wool shirt, hanging just below her collarbone, was her mother’s opal necklace, five rectangular-cut opals separated from each other by tiny diamonds. Simple and elegant, it had been given to Eleanor’s mother, Amy’s grandmother, when she had made her debut in London. Phoebe was holding the matching earrings.
“I also brought the topazes for you,” Phoebe said, “but they were too good a match with that shirt.”
“Phoebe…” Amy was speechless. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to. She was your mother too.”
Amy could feel her eyes tingle, her mouth start to tighten. She was going to cry. For the last two years Phoebe had hugged Eleanor’s memory to herself as if it were hers and hers alone. She was now sharing the memory, easing her grief.
Hal came over and put one arm around each of his daughters. Apparently Phoebe had told him that she was giving Amy the opals and the topazes. “I’m going to sound like a silly old fool, but the two of you growing closer is a source of tremendous gratification. I always thought of us as a close family because of the lake, that we were close because we had this wonderful place where we spend so much time. Then I got to know Gwen and her children. They didn’t have a special place like this, but they’re closer to each other than we’ve ever been. A place, no matter how special, no matter how sacred it is, wasn’t going to hold people together. It’s the way they feel about each other, and I wish I could say this without sounding like a Hallmark card, but I don’t seem to be able to.”
Amy liked Hallmark cards. “There’s a reason Hallmark sells however many million cards a year; some of them are right. Some of them say things that need to be said.”
“Can I have some help?” Gwen called out from the kitchen side of the room. “From someone other than Nick?”
She was trying to take the turkey out of the oven, and her assistant was standing by uselessly, hampered by his complete ignorance and the probable flammability level of his silver metallic Hershey’s Kiss costume.
True to their sex, all the men were quite ready to help now that everything was almost done. Until it was time to change clothes, they had been worthless, spending the entire day poring over Giles’s blueprints and tramping back and forth between the cabins and the newly cleared site at the Rim.
After dinner they got the plans back out—apparently building plans were almost as satisfying as televised football—and Amy drifted over to look at them. She couldn’t tell a thing from them, but that was all right. Looking at the plans was really only an excuse to come sit by Jack.
Giles explained the cabin’s design to her. It was an A-frame, not big at all, but it had an open kitchen and living space, two little bedrooms in back, and a loft with two more small bedrooms. The lakeside of the cabin would be almost all windows. A broad deck opened out to the beach.
The plans had been professionally drawn, but the table was littered with yellow legal paper that the men had been making notes on. She recognized Jack’s hand on one, so she picked it up. It had a rough hand-drawn site plan of the log cabin lot. She could identify three of the buildings, the cabin, the woodshed, the biffy, but there was a fourth square, much smaller than the cabin but larger than the others, drawn into an empty corner of the lot.
“What’s this?” she asked, and before anyone answered, she picked up the sheet of paper that had been with it. It was obviously a drawing of a very tiny cabin, really only a bedroom. She could now recognize the architectural symbols. The cabin was to have a door, windows on three sides, a small stove, and three gas lights. “What’s this?” she repeated.
Jack glanced over his shoulder. “Mom and Holly don’t know about this yet, only Hal does, but I’d like to build this for my sister. She’s been a good sport about coming up here, and she’ll go on being a good sport, but I’ve been trying to think what would make her want to come here, not just because she’s humoring Mom and me. She’s used to privacy, she’s used to quiet. Giles said that he didn’t feel like he belonged up here until he started working on his boat. I think if Holly has her own little cottage, she’ll come to love the place as much as Mom and I already do.”
Amy looked over her shoulder at Holly, who was at the card table playing double solitaire with Nick. The soft gaslight muted the acid glitter of the bugle beads on her gown.
Amy touched her opals. Everyone had changed since the beginning of the summer. Phoebe was gentler, Giles more willing to put himself first. Ian had stopped living with blinders tied to his eyes. Ellie was more confident; Nick was willing to admit that there were things he cared about. Jack had made peace with his father; Amy had learned to live within the heart of the family. And of course she and Jack had fallen in love.
Everyone had changed except Holly, cool, organized, self-contained Holly. Holly might never change; she might always be the elegant, urbane creature whose natural name and warm coloring had nothing to do with what she was like. But if she ever was going to change, the change would start, Amy knew, at the lake.
“And then, of course,” Giles said slowly, “the log cabin becomes not Amy, Holly, and Jack’s, but Amy and Jack’s.”
Amy’s eyes shot to Jack. But he was folding up his papers, and suddenly he started being very careful about how he was folding them, getting the edges perfectly lined up.
“Do you feel like you need permission?” Giles went on. “You won’t get it from Hal or Gwen. They won’t interfere like that. You can’t have an affair, you know that. In fact, you can’t even have much of a courtship. You can’t be like normal people. You can’t splash around in the shallow end for a year or so. You’ll get the rest of us wet. The two of you, you have to jump straight into the deep end. But if you’re willing to get married, and if you want permission, for what it’s worth, you’ve got mine.” He stood up. “Now, I suppose you have things to talk about.” He faced the room and raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. “Let’s play charades.” And as a parting gesture he poured the rest of his red wine into Jack’s beer. The ruby liquid funneled down and then blended into the amber beer.
“He thinks we should get married,” Amy whispered.
Jack nodded. “I know.”
“It’s probably been our only choice all along, marriage or nothing.”
Jack nodded. “I know.”
“But this summer…I wasn’t ready to talk about marriage.”
Jack nodded. “I know.”
On the other side of the room, the kids were shouting. They loved the idea of charades. Emily jumped up so quickly that she kicked the Parcheesi board by mistake and all the pieces slid off.
“Would you stop saying that you know everything?” Amy kept her voice low. “And tell me what you think.”
Alex had been winning Parcheesi, and now charades didn’t sound so good. He thought they ought to figure out where the pieces had been and finish the game first. “I know where my pieces were.”
“They weren’t there.” His sister Claire snatched them off the board as quickly as he could put them down. “You weren’t that far.”
“I was too.”
“You were not.” The brother and sister were fighting.
Jack glanced over his shoulder at them. Then he bent his head close to Amy’s. “I’ve always assumed that if I ever got married, I’d do it about three days after meeting her. So by my standards we’re been courting nearly forever.”
If they weren’t in the same family, it would be different. But if they weren’t in the same family, they would have never met.
Giles was speaking to the kids. “Emily didn’t mean to knock the board over, Alex. I know you don’t like what’s happened, but you need to accept it and move on. Do you want to play charades or not?”
“I want to play charades,” Alex said, “but I want to finish Parcheesi first.”
Was this the way other couples decided their futures? Yes, there had been imported champagne, but it turned out that Amy’s beloved didn’t like champagne and he was drinking beer, beer that was now mixed with red wine. There was candlelight and a fire, but those were physical necessities; without them everyone would be freezing and bumping into the furniture. The kids were on the floor bickering. Gwen and Hal were sitting on the love seat, the bumblebee yellow satin of her skirt spilling over his knee. Giles was tearing up slips of paper for charades; Phoebe was gathering up pencils; unfortunately Eleanor Roosevelt’s gown had a little train on it, and people kept stepping on her. Ian was showing Ellie how to use the timing feature on his watch. Holly and Nick had finished their game, and they were doing the last few dishes.
“I’m not going to stop skating until I’m ready,” Amy said, “and that means traveling.”
“And I can’t promise I’ll stay in one place or one job for more than a few years.”
She didn’t care about that. “Our kids certainly won’t win any perfect attendance awards.”
But they would travel, they would see Europe, they would ride in limousines, they would live at disaster sites.
Amy put her hand out. Jack covered it with his. So what if they didn’t know exactly where they would be living, what they would be doing, for every minute of the next fifty years? They would share the adventure.
“I would kiss you if I could,” Jack said. “But if anyone saw, Giles would never get this charades game going.”
That was true. “I think everyone’s going to be pleased.”
“I don’t know about everyone, my mom, your dad, yes…Holly, Phoebe, and Ian, them too…but frankly I don’t think Alex and Scott will give a damn one way or another, and if we have a wedding and they’re forced to dress up, they’re going to be pissed off.”
That was certainly true, but Emily and Claire would be thrilled to be junior bridesmaids. “What about you?” Amy asked. “Aren’t you going to be pissed off if we force you to dress up for a wedding?”
“I’m wearing this.” Jack flicked a hand across his cummerbund and set his little plastic Santa Clauses dancing.
Giles had finally succeeded. The kids were dumping the Parcheesi game into the box, ready to play charades. Alex and Scott were shrieking that they wanted to be the captains, they wanted to choose their teams.
“No, no. Jack and Amy will be too humiliated when they are chosen last,” Giles said. “We’ll divide by sex. Men against women.”
People were starting to stand up, the men gathering near Nick, the women near Ellie.
“I’m really bad at charades,” Jack said to Amy, “but I don’t suppose we have much choice.” He got up, took a last swallow of his beer, then grimaced. He had forgotten about the red wine Giles had poured into his glass. “Listen, the ice on the lake is plenty thick. People were out there all day. If I sweep off a patch tomorrow, will you skate for me?”
Since she had come directly from a competition, she had her skates with her. “I’d love to.”
Holly was gesturing to them to get with their teams. Amy let her arm brush against Jack’s and started toward the women’s team. Her royal purple skirt caught against the picnic bench. Jack had to lean down to free her.
They would tell everyone tomorrow. She would skate on the lake, and then they would tell the family that they were getting married.
She wouldn’t be able to skate well. The ice would be rough, and the space small. But that didn’t matter. She would be skating at the lake. After dreading the place for so many summers because she couldn’t skate here, now she was going to be able to.
She sat down with her team. Holly and Phoebe were full of ideas for charade clues; Ellie was scribbling them down as fast as she could. Gwen was helping the two little girls take the garnets out of their hair, but she was still listening, commenting on Holly’s and Phoebe’s ideas. Amy had nothing to add. Jack’s shirt felt warm against her arms, her mother’s opals were a cool, delicate weight, and the water-marked royal purple taffeta rustled when she moved.
Tomorrow she would skate at the lake.