Page 55 of The Summer Club

At that moment Imogen returned to the kitchen, pushing through the double doors in her haste. The doors swung ajar, catching the lip of Tish’s ice cream tray and sending it upward.

Imogen shrieked and Tish hopped back. The serving dishes flipped against her chest, before clattering to the floor, spraying their feet in a melted milky mess. “Tish!” Imogen cried. “Oh God, Tish, I’m sorry!”

Even with the band in full swing, guests nearest the kitchen spun around to see what was the commotion, Tish’s mother among them. She shook her head.

Tish swallowed her tears. As Mary and her mother dabbed and swabbed the bodice of her dress, Tish stood obediently at the sink. She stared at the rush of hot water from the faucet, the noxious smell of dish soap and soiled sponge rising on the steam between them.

“There, there,” Mary soothed her, thinking she was upset about her outfit.

Her mother said nothing, scrubbing up and down across Tish’s chest. With each sweep of the rough sponge, another cluck of her tongue. When Tish looked down the velvet was crushed and stained. She did not care.

On the drive home, Morty recounted an evening so different than the one she’d had, she had to wonder if they’d been at the same reception. “Everyone was so friendly, so celebratory!” he remarked. “I have to say, honey, I was beginning to wonder if your family liked me. But I think tonight was a good night, don’t you?” He looked across the seat at her sympathetically. “Aside from your dress, of course. Don’t worry, we can get you another.”

Tish stared out the window; she did not want another dress like it. She never wanted to wear velvet again. “Yes, Morty. It was a good night.”

Cora

When she was restless at heart, she painted. Her medium was oil. Her implement was despair. It had always been that way.

Creative process was a specific thing, as individual to an artist as personality is, Cora had learned. Over the years she’d met many painters. Those who worked professionally and hobbyists like herself who painted at home and kept their work largely among friends and family. There was a common thread among them: they painted when inspired. How she wished the same could be said for her! But for Cora, painting had always been more of a release valve. A way to process and sort through the layers of some personal discomfort, something that kept her awake at night. It began as an adolescent in Ohio, when her mother snuck home a beginner’s set of paints from a craft store for her. Cora had long shown an interest in art as a child, but it had been diminished by her father—considered worthless at best, a sign of arrogance at worst. “Fancy notions,” he called them. “Don’t get to thinkin’ you’re any better than the rest of us.”

The night her mother slipped the paint set into her backpack after dinner, and urged her to go to her room to “do her homework,” Cora realized something had shifted in their house.

“What you got there?” her father had snapped from his living room armchair. Money was tight and even when it was not, her mother was not permitted to make purchases outside of his scrutiny. “Nothing, just a pack of pencils. She needs them for school,” her mother lied, pushing Cora toward her bedroom door. Her father stood and Cora shrank, fearing he’d come see for himself. And what would happen next. But then the football game flickered back on the TV screen and his narrow attention was seized; they were spared.

Quietly, Cora unpacked the paint set behind her closed door. It was a watercolor palette, with one tiny plastic brush. Joy bubbled inside her. This dime store acknowledgment from her mother was everything, roaring with silent applause. From then on, in the seclusion of her room, Cora painted whenever life was hard. Luckily, beautiful things came of all the ugliness; to that day, the evidence was all around the walls of Riptide. And her family was none the wiser.

From the first summers they started coming to Riptide Cora brought along a little wooden easel that Charley had given her. It was a wonky, leggy thing, a portable apparatus that could be unscrewed and folded in upon itself. (Much like she feels these days herself!) But it worked. And eventually, she stopped hauling the easel into and out of the family car and bought one that stayed at the beach house year-round. She had made good use of it. Family reunions, especially this year, she found, provided all kinds of material to work with.

Now she wandered from room to room, inspecting her previous work. In the kitchen there was a small square canvas of a single peach. She still remembered how she came to paint it: Sydney had just been born the fall before and it was her first summer at Riptide. She was teething and unable to be soothed, crying all through the night. As such, so was Cora. And the twins were so much older—wanting to have all their friends over and go swimming at the beach all day, things Cora simply could not do when Sydney was napping all day. Nobody was happy. After a particularly rough night Cora had stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee, her head throbbing and breasts raw from another ceaseless night of nursing. She’d collapsed at the kitchen counter. The peach was the first thing she saw. A bright, blonde-tinged beauty. Ripe and fragrant. Even in her state, it gave Cora hope, and she sent Charley and the kids straight to the beach as soon as they woke and painted right at the kitchen counter until they returned. It was an innocuous piece and yet also her favorite. So different than the large portrait hanging over the fieldstone fireplace in the living room, her most ambitious effort to date. That was painted the year the twins graduated from high school and Cora, fearing an almost-empty nest right down to her bones, had found herself compelled to paint the entire family. Something she never deigned to attempt. She’d seen enough of her colleagues’ work to know how risky it was to paint someone you knew, let alone loved. No matter how skilled your eye or hand, it was daunting to capture their essence. Be it the characteristic turn of mouth or the knowing look in an eye, when it came to replicating life on canvas, family members posed the most risk for disappointment. (There it was again—art imitating life!) But that one summer Cora had had enough of tossing and turning in her upstairs bed, worrying about the twins going off to college and counting down the days until they did, so she’d risen in the dark and gone downstairs. Straight to the old pine hutch in the living room she went and pulled out all the drawers in search of what she was looking for: a family photo of the five of them. In the photo, they were down at the beach for a sunset walk. It was such a stunning event that night, Charley had pulled a beachgoer aside and asked them to please take the picture, just as the setting sun was threatening to tumble into the jetty. The person had captured the whole family right before the pink orb dipped. There they were—her brood—cast in the hopeful glow of one summer Cora wished she could make eternal. Everyone looking at the camera! Everyone smiling! Miracle of miracles. As soon as she found it, she raced to her easel, grabbed a fresh canvas, and set out her oils and turpentine and brushes. By the time Charley and the kids stumbled still half-asleep downstairs the next morning, two of the five family members had made appearances on canvas. It took her all summer to finish, but it was hanging over the fireplace before they left to take the twins to college. And it wasn’t half bad.

Now in the front hall, she stopped at another small oil. An oceanic image, all frothy wave and churning sea, threatening to spill outside the borders of its frame. Andi has always claimed it as her own and each summer as they closed up the house for the season and packed to go home, Cora had to check to make sure it was still on the wall before leaving. That’s how much Andi liked it.

This summer, there’d been plenty of angst to paint with. It made her think back to childhood, and her mother. How she missed her since she’d passed away many years ago. Her mother had only gotten to know her grandchildren through a few short visits during their early years, always without her father. And then she’d fallen ill with cancer and died just a year after. It still felt unfair to Cora, losing her so young. Painting was one way she still felt close to her. But Cora was not liking what she’d produced so far this summer. As she sat in the small sunroom off the kitchen, tapping her dry brush to her lips, she contemplated the raw canvas in front of her. It was another beach scene with two penciled-in people walking by the water. In the foreground was a tumble of beach grass and rosa rugosa. A sea-battered dune fence listing to one side. And an unfinished beach path with no clear direction. The path felt important to the scene. But where did it go? she wondered. She could not paint the rest until she knew.

Maybe she should start a big breakfast, the kind they used to have. But no, Molly was gone for the rest of the week with her father and that curious woman, and the rest of the house was still asleep. The kids had sure had a late night. She could only imagine what they all talked about once she and Charley left the Beach House Grill where they’d all had dinner. The last she knew, they’d headed out to a pub together with Nate Becker. How funny it was seeing them together again. All these years later and sometimes it still felt like they were little kids. She wondered if she’d ever stop worrying about them.

The old saying was so true: you were only as happy as your least happy child. Right now who was most unhappy? Hard to say. Andi was still going through so much with her own family, trying to start a new future, and now she’d been slammed with the news that her past was not what she’d thought. And Hugh. She knew Hugh and Martin were struggling with next steps in their marriage. Martin was ready for a family. Hugh was not quite there yet. And now—with the shock that Charley was not his biological father—well, she could not imagine what damage that had done to any thoughts of fatherhood for himself. Sydney, the baby of the family who had always been so easygoing, should have been happy: a wedding around the corner to a lovely young man they all liked. And now—a wedding gift of the family beach house.

Cora rubbed her temples. Riptide brought such joy to the family. How dare Tish step in and rip it from all of them, regifting it in such an ugly way? Cora knew the old bag was still in town. She had a mind to drive over to the Chatham Bars Inn and unburden herself of some of her more pointed thoughts. But so far she’d restrained herself. For Charley. Sweet, loyal Charley. He’d asked so little of her in their long marriage. She couldn’t very well turn down this one request.

With painting not an option for the moment, Cora turned to her desk in the corner of the living room by the front window. The list of wedding things to do was endless. Resigned, she ticked through it. Sydney had finalized the flowers with Molly and Andi. The dresses were tailored. The band was contracted. The catering menu had yet to be finalized, but that was really up to Sydney and James. She examined the menu selections thus far: roasted corn and tomato salad, lobster bisque, oysters Rockefeller, poached cod in tarragon butter sauce, honey-lavender chicken. Such a simple yet elegant menu and so Sydney. Cora’s mouth watered. Maybe she would make that big breakfast, after all. She’d been trying so hard to be good, to watch her weight so that she could fit into the lilac dress she’d chosen for Sydney’s wedding. But the thought of bacon frying in a skillet was enticing…

The stair treads creaked and she looked up. Charley stood on the bottom step, looking around.

“Kids still asleep?”

“Still asleep.”

He glanced around the kitchen. “Shall I start a pan of bacon?”

Cora smiled. The man was a saint.

She watched as he took the old cast-iron skillet from the cupboard and pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator. They had their routines in their marriage and in this house. How strange to think it was now Sydney’s. “How is the painting going?” he asked.

She sighed. “It’s not, really.”

Charley knew what this meant. “Still stalled?”

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