One time, Ari, Eleanor’s three-year-old granddaughter, had terrified them all when she disappeared from the house and never answered their calls. Eleanor’s daughter, Alicia, Ari’s mother, had been at the point of phoning the police when Eleanor opened the kitchen cabinet and discovered the child curled among the baking tins, her baby doll neatly tucked in a bread loaf pan. The doll’s eyes were open, but Ari was sound asleep.
“Ari?” Eleanor had asked gently.
Ari had opened her big blue eyes and smiled. “Hi, Gram,” she’d said, and yawned.
Memories were everywhere. Five generations had summered in this fine old house on the bluff. The house was beloved, and so very old. Eleanor knew she was not keeping up with the repairs on the house. When her parents were alive, her father did most of the maintenance, but Eleanor’s husband, Mortimer, an insurance executive, was very much not DIY, and besides, they were mostly there in the summer, and who wanted to think about power drills and saws in the summer? After her husband died, Eleanor had had a new roof put on the house.
It had always been a tradition for the family to spend summer weekends on the island. Some years the mothers and their children had stayed the entire week and the fathers came down Friday night. After Eleanor’s parents died and Alicia married Phillip, the tradition continued. Mortimer and Eleanor’s son, Cliff, often came, too, and the family was all there, together, sleeping under one roof. Eleanor loved this custom. She was happiest when her family was with her in the summer. She’d delighted in the shouts of Cliff, Phillip, and Mortimer playing tag football in the yard, and the sudden musical splashing of the outdoor shower when someone returned from the beach. And the casual, messy lobster dinners eaten outside on the long wooden table on the deck, where Eleanor put two large bowls at each end of the table, one full of nutcrackers and picks, the other for people to discard the shells. Smaller bowls at each place held melted butter. Or the rainy summer nights when they sat in the dining room, eating clam chowder and hot rolls, drinking a not very good champagne, telling tales on each other, and laughing.
When her husband died three years before, Eleanor had sold her Boston house and moved to the island to live year-round. She already had friends here, and she’d quickly constructed a routine of social events. When she went to church, she sat with Bonnie and Donnie Hamilton, retired year-rounders who’d been bridge partners with Eleanor and Mortimer. After church, the three often went to lunch at the Seagrille, where within the relative privacy of the booths they discussed all the town issues and who was joining what community committee and how delighted they were that Muffy Andover had joined the board of the Hospital Thrift Shop, even though Muffy (that name!) tended to flash her wealth about. Clarissa Lourie was on the board of Ocean Matters with Eleanor, and they had lunch at least once a week to discuss books. Even after Mortimer died, the Andersons and the Andovers and the Hamiltons always invited Eleanor to their cocktail parties, and when Eleanor became brave enough to give a dinner party herself, it was the Hamiltons, Andovers, and Andersons who were her guests.
And, of course, Martha and Al Clark.
The children—she still thought of Alicia and Cliff as “the children”—came down for the weekends and for the entire last week of August, and after Mortimer died, they all came to the island to spend Christmas with Eleanor. Sometimes Ari, Alicia, and Phillip would arrive early, loaded with bags of decorations and presents. Cliff would surprise them with extravagant gifts. He could afford to. He sold real estate in Boston and had no family of his own. Eleanor would throw caution to the winds and turn the thermostat up to a toasty seventy degrees, Cliff would help her bring in the logs, and they’d build a fire in the living and dining room fireplaces while Alicia and Ari twined laurel all around.
This past Christmas had not been quite so much fun, and Eleanor was worried about the summer. About her daughter, specifically.
Alicia had always been such a very girly girl, even though early on Eleanor and her husband tried to go with the wisdom of the times and occasionally dress her in overalls and give her train sets so she wouldn’t be limited by her gender. But by the time she was four, Alicia insisted on clothes with ruffles and frills. She would play only with dolls, and she had so many tantrums when she didn’t have the much-discussed Barbie doll that Eleanor and Mortimer surrendered and gave her a Barbie for Christmas. After that, there was no stopping her. She wanted her bedroom to be all pink, she wanted to wear sparkling bracelets and bows in her hair, and when she was older, she saved her allowance to buy People magazine.
Her daughter was a mystery to Eleanor. Alicia never seemed content. Alicia, fortunate (spoiled?), always wanted more. Eleanor talked it over with her husband and her friends, finally deciding that it was Cliff’s birth, seven years after Alicia was born, that tangled the family’s relationships. Also, twined into Alicia’s life—and gene pool—Eleanor’s own mother had been fluffy and feminine until the moment she passed away. Audrey had worn lace and pastels, sparkling earrings, and several “signature” scents. Alicia had gone to stay with
