After the children had scampered away with Chloe in the lead, I said to Emily, ‘Back in the day, you were fascinated with the word “tush.” You’d even make up songs about it.’ I paused for a moment, remembering. ‘“The wheels on the tush go poop, poop, poop…”’ I sang after I was sure the children were out of earshot.
Emily laughed. ‘Well, it made sense to me at the time,’ she said. ‘Why else would they call that roll hanging on the bathroom wall tushy paper?’
I laughed, too, then added, ‘After “tush” it was “booger.” I thought you’d never outgrow the booger phase.’
‘That must have been high-larious.’ She gave me a quick hug. ‘The bullshit I put you through, Mom. I’m so sorry.’
I don’t think I ever loved my daughter more than at that moment, standing in my new kitchen holding a can of baked beans in one hand, a package of string cheese in the other, tendrils of her fine blonde hair curling softly over her cheeks and forehead. Emily had been responsible for a number of my prematurely gray hairs. Following her graduation with honors from Bryn Mawr College, she’d shocked us by eloping with a college dropout named Daniel (please call me Dante) Shemansky. After a quickie wedding at a chapel in Las Vegas, they’d become dedicated Phish Heads, following the popular rock band all around the southwest before settling down in Colorado where Dante trained as a masseuse and Emily worked in a bookstore.
‘All’s well that ends well,’ I quoted after a moment, thinking about the posh spa they now owned and operated on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis. Spa Paradiso had recently been featured in SpaLife Magazine. Mr and Mrs Shemansky wouldn’t be depending on handouts from us to keep their growing family afloat.
‘Is Chloe reading Winnie the Pooh?’ I asked, wondering what prompted my granddaughter to make the Pooh Corner suggestion.
‘That was ages ago, Mom, but recently she’s been listening to a collection of tunes we downloaded to Timmy’s Kindle Fire. Remember that song, “The House at Pooh Corner?”’
‘Kenny Loggins,’ I said. ‘Popular in the early seventies.’ I hummed the first line of the ballad to demonstrate that my mind, although aging, was a veritable steel trap. ‘They knew how to write songs back then,’ I mused. ‘Girls, fast cars, heartbreak, momma said, hey, a twangy bit of guitar. Sadly, no more. I don’t know what to make of what I hear on the radio these days, Emily. Lady Gaga I can take, but Miley Cyrus? Eminem? And that dreadful rapper – what’s his name?’ The memory was so horrible that I waved it away.
Emily paused, her arm half in half out of the refrigerator. ‘Did you and Dad have a song?’
I looked straight into her astonishing blue eyes, so like my late mother’s. ‘Oh, yes. It’s “Your Song” by Elton John. He still sings it at every concert.’
Emily launched into the oh-so-familiar tune.
‘That one, yes,’ I confirmed, joining in on the word ‘funny.’ At the beginning of the second verse I cut her off at the word ‘no’, my hand raised like a conductor. ‘Drumroll, please!’
Emily waited, one eyebrow raised.
‘We shall name this cottage Our Song. I have spoken.’
‘Perfect!’ my daughter said, grinning.
‘What’s perfect?’ my husband asked, coming in through the kitchen door.
‘Where are the kids?’ Emily asked, sounding alarmed.
‘Not to worry, Em. I’ve set them up with the garden hose and some old rags. They’re washing the kayak.’ He wrapped me in his arms from behind and rested his chin on the top of my head.
‘Emily suggested we name the cottage Our Song after, well, ‘Our Song’. I hope you don’t mind…’ I sang.
I felt his chin move. ‘I like it. Very much.’ He spun me around by my shoulders, took my right hand in his left. Slightly stooped, with his cheek pressed to mine, my husband waltzed me from stove to refrigerator to kitchen sink singing in his gravelly baritone about how wonderful life was with me in his world.
At the kitchen table, he twirled me under his arm and executed a perfect dip, pressing me back against the tablecloth and planting a kiss on my exposed neck.
‘Mom!’ Emily cried, sounding exasperated and breaking the spell.
I glanced at my daughter over Paul’s shoulder. ‘What?’
‘You’re sitting on the grapes.’
SIX
‘I’ve often wish’d that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend, A river at my garden’s end, A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.’
Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book II, Satire VI
On the first long weekend we spent at Our Song, every day was a treasure hunt. While Paul worked out back in the shed, evaluating the rusting tools and deteriorating equipment that Julianna Quinn’s late husband had left behind, I sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor in front of a spacious cabinet, sorting through her pots and pans.
‘Chattels,’ the contract called them. I had to look it up: ‘An item of property other than real estate,’ the dictionary explained.
Fortunately for us, when it came to chattels, Julianna had had good taste. I now owned a complete set of All-Clad stainless-steel cookware, for example. At one hundred and fifty dollars upwards for a saucepan – not including the lid – All-Clad was a luxury I could never manage to afford at home, even with a twenty-percent-off coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Now I was cradling a three-quart steamer to my breast and chanting, You’re mine, all mine!
I’d nested the smaller frying pan into the larger one and was sorting lids, trying them on the saucepans for size, when I heard tires crunch on the gravel outside. I reached up, grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter and pulled myself to my feet, my knees popping. ‘After forty it’s patch, patch, patch,’ I muttered to myself, quoting the embroidery on a decorative pillow I’d also inherited from Julianna.
I leaned over the sink, flipped the curtain aside and peered out the kitchen window. A white Ford pickup with a toolbox in the bed had pulled up out front. By the time I’d reached the side door, opened it and called out, ‘Paul! Someone’s here!’ the truck’s driver was already through the gate and standing at our front door, reaching for the knocker.
‘You must be Dwight Heberling,’ I said stupidly when I opened the door, since Heberling & Son, Construction was painted on the door of his pickup in red block letters at least three inches high.
As I spoke, a younger man roared up behind the pickup on a black Harley chopper. He braked hard and dismounted, then engaged the kickstand.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Heberling whipped his ball cap off to reveal a sensible graying buzz cut, tucked the cap under his arm and extended his hand. He nodded in the direction of the motorcycle. ‘And that there is my son, Rusty.’
Rusty removed his helmet and hooked the strap over one of the handlebars. I guessed immediately where he’d gotten his nickname. His copper hair was drawn back behind his ears and fastened at the nape of his neck in a neat ponytail. He wore a Beatles T-shirt belted into a pair of faded jeans that fit him like a second skin. When he lifted the toolbox out of the Ford, his biceps flexed like an ad on TV for exercise equipment – the ‘after’ view, not the ‘before’ – and his pecs rippled impressively all the way from John to Ringo.
Paul suddenly materialized at my shoulder, wiping grease off his hands with a paper towel. ‘I was just tinkering with an outboard,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute.’