Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw
just now.
“She says Jill and Viv are frivolous,” I said in a rather desperate attempt to shift the conversation away from Mom.
“Frivolous,” Claire reflected. ”Hell, they’re just kids yet. How else are they supposed to be?”
“Mom says they don’t consider the important things in life,” I told her.
“But some time is required to decide which things are important,” Aunt Claire countered. ”They need time just to be young women,” she hesitated, “not being forced to make major life decisions so soon. How about you?” she asked then. ”Are you serious or frivolous?”
“I have no idea how to answer that,” I said. ”I’m only ten.”
She laughed then, her crystal laugh sounding like a schoolgirl’s. ”Well put!”
In spite of myself, I found I was laughing too. It seemed the first time since before The Letter had arrived. ”I worry though,” I told her.
“Worry? About what?”
“Now Mom hasn’t got anybody at home with her, just the cat.”
“And how do you suppose your kitty would feel about being called just ‘THE CAT,’” she pronounced. “In any case Moms once in a while need time alone to decide whether they’re really serious or if they’re also frivolous. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” I replied. We went on like this, talking about my school, our neighborhood, fun things I liked to do, fun things she liked to do, and in less time than I could believe, we’d covered all of that distance on the map between Portland and where the ocean was. We stopped for a dinner of chowder, bread, and salad at a small restaurant overlooking the ocean (my first good look at it) then directed our way down along what she called The Coast Road.
The Friendly Beacon
As we worked our way south around bays and inlets along wide stretches of blue water, I noticed the side of the road nearest me was dropping off in increasingly sheer cliffs with dangerous looking rocks below. The air, when Claire bade me roll my window down, had a tanginess about it and something else that smelled a bit like a thing spoiled maybe but new and exciting all the same.
Noting my tendency to edge away from the passenger door yet maintaining a firm grip on the door handle, my aunt remarked, “A bit of a scare the first few times, I know, but I’ve driven this coast so often I must have grooves worn in the roadway. We’ll be all right.”
It didn’t make me feel much better though. The moon was filtering through dense fog, which had been rolling in for the last half hour, and there was a ghostly glimmer in the gray. The T-bird slewed back and forth and around as we skirted the jigsaw coastline.
“What do you generally do with your summers, Ninian?” Claire said presently.
“I don’t know,” I said. ”Read, I guess, hang around with my friends, go to the library, watch TV.”
“No summer camp?” she asked.
“No,” I told her, “though Mom has talked about it sometimes.”
“Well, I’ve got no TV,” she said. Good God, what had I gotten myself into? “But we’ll see what we can do to keep you interested.” Claire slowed the car, and I strained into pitch dark for any sign of a house or a driveway, but one patch of dark for me was like another. ”Bless her heart,” Claire said suddenly. I saw a beam of yellow light come lancing from somewhere on our left hand. Claire swung easily into something that looked more like a track made for goats than anything to drive on. She put down her window. ”Thank you, Monique,” she called, then drove bumpity-bump off the road toward what turned out to be a little inlet or cove across from which a bridge had been built, a bridge we did not cross just then, nor would I have occasion to for several weeks.
“My house,” Claire announced with satisfaction, pulling into a carport next to a structure whose shape I could only guess at in the gloom. We got out, and without a key, my aunt opened a side door in the carport, ushering me into the house. People at my town, even in those days, always locked up when they left home even for short trips, and Claire must’ve been on the road most of the day. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “Nobody bothers us here. We all know one another and strangers don’t tend to stay long. If I lose something, that’s just the more excuse to go shopping!” This bit of glibbery stated, she turned on lights and bade me come into the kitchen and sit down at a little, square, blue-painted table while she put together a snack for us. We didn’t bother with the suitcase, but I had my satchel containing all I’d need until tomorrow at least.
“You must be tired,” Claire said.
Though at ten, going on eleven, I dearly loved staying up as late as possible, this had been a truly unique and quite exhausting day besides having been three hours longer than any other I’d ever lived through. We settled on a piece of gingerbread and a cup of cocoa with a sprig of fresh mint for each of us.
“While the milk heats, I’ll show you your room.”
She ushered me to a hallway from which I could step almost directly from the kitchen to the living room. ”I think you’ll like this,” she said, leading in the other direction.
There was a bathroom on one side and what looked like a linen closet on the other. I stepped into the bedroom at the end of the hall and, flipping on the light, gasped. I’d entered the house on the ground floor but was now peering out what would be my window for the rest of that summer and, as it would turn out, for many after that. I felt as if I’d suddenly been elevated five or six stories into the air. It was like a tower that plunged down the sheer cliff-face to the roiling night-black sea.
“Not much market when I came back here,” Claire remarked, “for real estate perched on the edge of a cliff. There’s an easy enough way down actually, but not easy to find, so you may as well be in a tower up here. It’s the kind of thing young people fancy, I’d think. How do you like it?”
“Wonderful!” I choked out when I’d finally gotten back any use of my voice.
“I’m so glad,” she smiled into her reflection in the windowpane.
“We’d best call your mother,” Claire remarked when our cake and cocoa were finished, “else she’ll skin both of us. I’ll get the phone.”
In a little alcove near the kitchen was a small wooden stand with a teardrop-shaped, princess-style telephone along with the phone book and a writing pad. My aunt picked it up, trailing its long cord into the kitchen, sat it on the table, then turned to the cocoa pan. I picked up the receiver and started to dial but realized I’d never placed a long distance call before. Claire, glancing my way and reading the confusion on my face, advised, “First dial one. Then you’ll want six-one-six, then your phone number.” The line clicked a number of times. Then there was a dial tone sounding somehow muffled and after only two rings …
“Hello! Claire?” Mom’s voice sounded hollow like she was shouting through a drainpipe.
“Hi, Mom. It’s me.”
“Ninian! How are you?”
“Just fine,” I told her.
”Did you have a good flight?”
“Yeah,” I said, though I didn’t really know what the difference between a good and bad flight might be. ”It was fun.”
“You’re sure you’re all right then?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“Your Aunt Claire didn’t have any trouble finding you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, Honey. I know it’s late. You’d better let me talk to Aunt Claire. Then I’ll see you later. You make sure and do what she tells you to.”
“Okay,