Summertime Guests - Wendy Francis Page 0,8
Welcome sign. It’s a tidy enough house, Claire decides, possessing a certain amount of charm, even if a bit worn-looking. The small front yard appears well-tended, and beneath a wide picture window an avalanche of pink Cape roses tumbles to the ground. Attached to the house’s left side sits an odd little room capped by a sloping roof.
Marty could have done worse, Claire thinks. Though somehow, a part of her expected him to do better. Maybe one of those new minimansions that sits on two lots. Or a New England saltbox with a wide yard and breathtaking views of the sea. That her old boyfriend’s house is none of these deflates her spirits unexpectedly. Of course, thirty years ago, when she first imagined Marty’s house, his life, it included her. Marty’s home, their home together, would have reflected Claire’s own eclectic style. Rooms with high ceilings and sunlight spilling onto hardwood floors, hallways that ended in an inviting window seat, a wide front porch with a swing and maybe a rocking chair or two.
The driveway sits empty, the garden hose neatly coiled around its spin handle. When she’d searched for him online, she’d discovered that Marty’s wife, Audrey, had passed away three years ago. Claire met Audrey once during a chance encounter in Boston years ago, the streets gray and slushy with old snow. She and Walt had bumped into them at a Legal Sea Foods downtown, where both couples were waiting to be seated. “What are the odds?” they kidded loosely with each other, but when Marty introduced Audrey as his fiancée, Claire was struck speechless. Somehow, she’d always assumed Marty would seek out her approval before moving on to another woman, past their memories together.
That he was engaged to someone so slight, so waiflike and soft-spoken, someone so much the opposite of Claire, surprised her. During the entire meal, Claire kept snatching furtive glances at the lovebirds while she barely touched her own meal, flitting in and out of conversation with Walt. When Marty reached across the table to clasp Audrey’s hand, Claire quickly excused herself to the ladies’ room, tears stinging her eyes.
Hadn’t Marty told her she’d always be the one for him? And hadn’t she secretly, foolishly believed him? That Marty would never find another girl like her and so would wait for Claire for the rest of his life, even if she married someone else. Even then, staring at her reflection in the washroom mirror, it occurred to her that, yes, she had, on some level, always assumed Marty was hers. And that if life with Walt didn’t pan out (had she suspected it even then?), Marty would always be available. How unfair of her, how presumptuous! How very selfish!
Especially when she was the one who’d broken things off. They’d dated for seven years—two in high school and four in college (Marty at UNH; Claire at Northeastern), plus a bonus year afterward. But somewhere along the way, Claire began to doubt their bond together. When he started tossing around words like marriage and family and kids, she could feel herself shrinking ever so slightly, Marty’s grasp feeling increasingly like a strangle. Because the truth was the life he was proposing didn’t particularly sound like the one she wanted—three kids, two vacations a year, life as a stay-at-home mom. For Claire, motherhood represented the last stepping stone toward full-fledged adulthood—a big white rock that would one day lead her to the solid shore of grown-upness.
A rock she wasn’t quite prepared for.
The more Marty pressed her about getting engaged, the more she distanced herself. When she fell into an editorial-assistant position at the Boston Globe, Claire felt her world expanding, a fledgling planet in full orbit for the first time. It was a chance to establish herself in the writing world, the place where she felt most comfortable, and perhaps to be with a few other men (Marty had been her first and only, which her girlfriends said made her either a hopeless romantic or a prude).
Then, one winter evening, after Marty got off his wait shift in Faneuil Hall, he grabbed her wrist a little too tightly, demanding, “If not now, then when, Claire? When can we get married?” Never one to respond to ultimatums, Claire decided then and there that they were through. “What?” he’d sputtered in disbelief. “What about our plans?”
As if he didn’t quite understand. As if they’d signed a binding contract, sealed in blood.
She shrugged off his question like bad poetry. “People