Page 6 of The Summer Club

“What on earth?” she exclaimed, grabbing onto the car door to steady herself.

“Sorry, honey. But you have to see this!” Before she could object, he threw the car in reverse.

Just as he had with her, Morty knew what he needed the moment he laid eyes upon it. “Will you look at that.”

Tish slid her sunglasses down the slope of her nose and squinted down the narrow driveway at the house for sale. “It’s not much to look at.”

She wasn’t wrong. The shingled cottage was small and squat, sitting in a yellowed, treeless yard as if it had dropped from the sky.

Morty threw open his car door and walked around to her side. “Come on. Let’s check her out.”

Reluctantly, she followed her husband down the driveway. “What time are we expected at the hotel?”

But Morty couldn’t hear anything over the hum of his excitement. At the front door, he peered through a smudged window. “Looks like it needs a little love and care.”

Tish sniffed. “It looks abandoned.” Up close, the shutters hung crookedly. The cedar shingles were bleached by sun and sea salt. The only paint the cottage boasted peeled away from the door in faded red curls.

Undeterred, Morty swung around to the back of the house.

He did this sometimes, stumbled across something. Fell in love hard. Like he did with the matted little stray terrier he named Harrison that he’d found cowering behind a restaurant garbage bin one night and brought home with a sheepish smile. By that day, Harrison had been cleaned and fattened up and awaited their return from the cushioned depths of his dog bed, back in their New York apartment. Morty was acting just as he had when they were on their way home from a play last spring and saw contractors tossing the unwanted contents of someone’s apartment into a street dumpster, when something sparkly had caught his eye. Morty had stopped, rolled up the cuffs of his tweed trousers, and climbed right into the dumpster himself. At first Tish was shocked and embarrassed, but a moment later he cried out triumphantly, poked his head over the side of the dumpster, and held up an old chandelier. The light that caught the crystal pendants was no match for the smile on his face. “Reminds me of my grandmother’s! We can polish it up and hang it in the dining room.” And that’s exactly where it hung today; a restored Tiffany chandelier, found for free and brought back to life. It was wholly endearing, Tish’s girlfriends said. Morty was a man of means and yet he loved to rescue unwanted things. Tish couldn’t agree more. But in private moments, it gave her troubled pause. She couldn’t help but wonder: was she included among the unwanted things Morty rescued?

Now as she waited for her husband in someone else’s Cape Cod yard, the sun slanted lazily across the sky signaling the late hour. Tish glanced at her watch. “Honey?” she called. “When are we supposed to check in at the hotel?”

There was no answer.

“Morty?” she called, louder this time.

The grass under her open-toed sandals prickled up against her toes. She thought of the plush hotel slippers she’d grown accustomed to in her recent travels with her new husband and wondered idly if their Cape Cod inn had anything like those.

“Tish!” Morty’s call came from somewhere around the back. “Hurry.”

“Are you all right?” She lurched toward the edge of the house.

But there was no one in the backyard. Her eyes roamed across the overgrown swath of grass: past the picnic table, the clothesline affixed from the back door to a lone pine tree. “Morty?” she cried. “Where are you?”

“Down here!”

She spun around. Behind her the yard gave way to a thin grove of scrubby trees, light flickering through the narrow branches.

Morty appeared at an opening in the trees, a wild look in his eyes. He extended his hand. “You have to see this.”

“I didn’t know where you were. You scared me.” But he was smiling, tugging her breathlessly between the scrubby trees and down a sandy path.

“Wait, my shoes.”

He paused only long enough for her to bend and quickly slip out of them. “Leave them,” he urged, pulling her hand.

She looked up, her breath catching in her chest. The path ended, spilling them into an open sea of green dune grass. So this is where he’d been. “Wait until you see!” he puffed, squeezing her hand in his.

As they crested the dunes the view unfolded before her like a summer postcard. A movie scene. What she’d imagined heaven to look like. The beach spilled out beneath them, a golden blanket of sand that rolled right into the roiling sea.

Morty turned from the view to face her, sunlight illuminating the joy in his own. “It’s heaven, right? Am I right?”

Tish laughed. “Well, yes. This is… incredible.” She was at a loss for words.

“What do you think?” he asked, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her against him.

What did she think? It was unspeakably beautiful, no doubt. The surf rolled in below, lapping at the sand in frothy waves. “The view is lovely, Morty. I’m so glad you showed me. But it is getting late.” She touched his cheek. “Aren’t you the least bit hungry?”

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