Page 9 of The Summer Club

“It’s a coastal New England tradition. The houses have names. Kind of like boats.”

“So what have you got in mind?” She knew darn well he’d already thought of something.

“We’ll call her Riptide!”

Tish squinted out the freshly polished window. “Because of the ocean?”

“Because of you,” he said, planting a kiss on her flushed cheek. “You pulled me in, hard. And never let me go.”

Together they spent many heavenly summers at that cottage.

Riptide was cleaned out and fixed up and renovated. And then expanded. Over the years she quadrupled in size and a second story was added to the first. But the original box of the cottage bones remained at its center; as Morty said, the heart of the house. Despite work and travel and family obligations, not one summer did they miss on the Cape, especially once Charley was born. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, and even into October when the falls were mild, they made the trip (six hours!) from New York as often as they could. Morty had been right from the beginning, the day he first laid eyes on it. It was the place they were happiest.

It was nothing like the wild and sprawling Hudson estate of his grandparents in New York, completely unlike the hedged and shorn expanse of his parents’ summer house in Sag Harbor. Riptide remained rustic and simple. Warm and welcoming. It was not lost on Tish that not once did her in-laws come to visit them there, despite the many invitations over the years. No matter. It was their own little haven and they loved it as such.

By then, some of Tish’s suspicions had proven true. Things she had not realized would be lasting and therefore unchangeable: that Morty’s parents did not entirely approve of their son’s choice of wife, polite as they behaved around her. That she did not fit into their Protestant white-collar world, despite the wafting sense of postwar relief and relaxation felt by many across the country during the 1950s. Despite the fact that she’d been educated at the same fine institution as their son. Notwithstanding the fact that she’d worked so hard to acclimate, to memorize, and to adopt their societal nuances and behaviors to better fit in. The truth was, in their eyes she never would. They wished her to stay home: to start rearing grandchildren. That sentiment was the only commonality the Darlings shared with Tish’s own parents.

Now, as the town car surges north up the Mid-Cape Highway toward Riptide, that long-ago memory and others like it washed over Tish Darling in the backseat. This summer she is ninety years old and lately the past has begun to shadow her, catching her off guard in quiet moments. The white lace veil her mother had set on her head the morning of her wedding, and the way the tissue paper crinkled as she unwrapped it from her hope chest, brought all the way from Dublin. The flushed look of wonder on his face after she and Morty made love for the first time, the night of their wedding. An image of their son, Charley, all blonde curls and rosy cheeks, dressed in his seersucker jumper that first summer they’d brought him to Riptide. How crystalized the colors were on the beach that day: the blue swath of sea and sky, the green-fingered dune grass blowing against Charley’s chubby legs as he stared wide-eyed at the surf. All the memories that made up her perfectly happy new life, until Morty died, and there were to be no more.

Since then, Tish had had no choice but to reach back and dig deep. She’d reverted to her old Irish-American Yonkers self, perhaps her real self, and done what she’d had to. Just as she is doing today. Heading to Riptide for the first time in over five decades. She glances at the manila envelope resting on the buttery leather seat beside her. At the name written across it in black ink: “Sydney.” Her beautiful, starry-eyed granddaughter, soon to be married. The third and youngest of her son Charley’s brood. And the only true heir.

Tish stares out the town car window at the blue ribbon of sky. In another half hour she’ll be at Riptide. The house of memories. The house she has stayed away from all these years. Until today. Because the whole family is there, and there was something she has to do before it was too late.

Despite her ninety years, Tish’s mind remains as sharp as a tack. Neither age nor romanticism will have their way with her; she knows the task at hand will not be well received by the rest of them. But Tish Darling is used to doing things others found unpleasant. Pragmatism. It is the only gift her childhood has afforded her.

Cora

“Oh God. It’s almost six o’clock.” Cora Darling twisted her ruby ring back and forth on her finger. It was only the first day of their family reunion, but it wasn’t over yet.

In the doorway behind her, Charley let out a conflicted sigh. “Anytime now.”

They were paralyzed, all of them, awaiting her mother-in-law’s arrival. It should have been expected. After all, Sydney was getting married in the coming weeks, so it was perfectly reasonable that the bride’s grandmother would visit for the joyous occasion. Only the Darling family matriarch was not known for being at all grandmotherly. Or particularly joyous. In fact, Cora’s mother-in-law, Tish, had not been to the family’s Cape Cod summer house in over fifty years. And not once since Cora had married into the family. There was no coincidence in that.

Of course, over the years there had been suggestions of such a visit from her mother-in-law. Threats, Cora preferred to think of them. To which her grown children chuckled and shook their heads. But despite their adult ages, they were still children when it came to this matter. They had never been privy to all the ups and downs of being Tish Darling’s daughter-in-law. They couldn’t possibly understand. To be sure, they barely knew her themselves.

For Charley’s sake, who was nothing like his mother, thank God, and for the sake of their children, Cora had made diligent efforts to shield the children from the truth of their grandmother over the years. And Tish had made it very easy for her by staying away. The woman was no doting grandma figure, no! Far be it from her to help with the children in any way over the years, to make herself available, or even knowable, to her grandkids. No, Tish kept everyone at arm’s length, as was her M.O. She did not ingratiate herself to anyone within the family or out, nor did she allow anyone to attempt to do so to her.

When it came down to it, Tish Darling showed up for only three occasions: baptisms, funerals, and the occasional wedding. Yes, she occasionally dropped in at their Connecticut home for the odd holiday, though she “dropped in” in the most literal sense. There was the Christmas three years ago when she landed at JFK airport that morning, took a limo to their family home in Connecticut, and knocked on the door just as piping-hot Hollandaise sauce was being spooned over eggs Benedict. She’d called ahead to warn them: she was coming for brunch, alone. And she’d kept her promise. Before the remnants of the Hollandaise sauce had cooled in the pan, her limo had already pulled out of the snow-covered driveway. Tish Darling didn’t stick around long enough for a present to be unwrapped.

Cora couldn’t lie; over the years she’d been as relieved as she was outraged by her mother-in-law’s behavior. Her current outrage was not new. But she had good reason for it! Motherless herself most of her life, she’d long held on to hope that Tish would somehow step in and step up, as some form of maternal figure to Andi, Hugh, and Sydney. But after years of enduring her withering looks and almost inaudible sniffs (almost), Cora had come to understand that those wishes would never come to fruition. In the end, when it came to Tish Darling, it was best to keep both the visits, and thereby Cora’s suffering, to a minimum.

As for her own children, Cora wanted them to have a relationship with their only grandparent. What kind of mother would she be to deny them that? But the truth was, even though they thought they knew her, none of them did. She never stuck around long enough for them to.

But one thing was for sure: Tish was memorable if not available. She swept in draped in fur coats (appalling!) and doled out large sums of money with reckless abandon. “Yes! I can get my own car!” Sydney had shrieked the year Tish again “dropped in” for her sixteenth birthday, depositing a lipstick-stained peck on the cheek and a five-thousand-dollar check.

“No!” Charley and Cora had cried in unison, at the same moment Tish proclaimed “Why not?” just before the door swished shut behind her.

To that end, Tish seemed to view Cora’s attempts to corral her rare but concentrated influence as both a wicked and laughable challenge. Though Tish was rarely present, when she was the house veritably vibrated. No gift was too big. No rule of propriety applied. Martinis were shaken and exotic stories of her travels spilled in the time it took Cora to carry in a cheese platter. Only Tish never stayed for the cheese. Nor did she eat. She swooped in and out with a flicker of her gemstone baubles and an echo of her throaty laugh, the prints of her trademark Dior 999 lipstick on the empty martini rim the only proof she’d been there at all. Of course the children liked her!

“I’m sure she won’t stay long,” Charley said in the doorway now, as if reading his wife’s mind. He came to place his hands gently on her shoulders, which had already begun to stiffen and complain. Cora leaned back into her husband’s steady embrace.

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said.

But why? Why was Tish coming now? The wedding was three weeks away. And they’d not even been sure she’d come for that. If she were coming now, something was amiss. Or about to be.

Cora turned and forced a smile, and Charley’s gentle eyes softened gratefully. He knew this was hard for her. And Cora felt bad for him always being in the middle. She loved her husband, in spite of his awful mother and her glaring looks and downturned mouth. And she had never fully grasped just what it was about her that Tish so obviously loathed. Cora had never been anything but a faithful and loving companion to Charley. A good mother, at least a mother who tried every day to be mostly good. She’d stayed home to raise the children when they were very young, then gone back to work as an elementary school librarian when they were school age. Dinners were homemade. The house neatly kept. Like all the other invested parents, she’d done her time carpooling to soccer and dance class and softball. As far as she was concerned, Cora had always kept a happy home; a home where all the kids’ friends felt comfortable to stop by, wander in, join the family for dinner. Whatever she had done to deserve the bottomless ire Tish Darling held out for her, and her alone, was beyond her.

“Relax, Mom,” Hugh had once told her as a teenager. “You take everything so personally. Tish can be a little sarcastic.”

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