Really? Mom’s pace made conversation difficult even as I managed to remain at her side. Maybe that was the point.
There were no roads on Chipmunk, no cars. A hundred houses ringed the island, each with a water view. The boardwalk meandered along the edge, providing access to each house. At one point as we walked, the trees and houses left a gap, and I glimpsed a large central green. I stopped to look and spotted two baseball fields, a basketball court, a playground, two busy tennis courts, and lots of open lawn. Along the side of the green across from my vantage point were two commercial buildings. I made out signs for a general store and a community center.
When I looked up, Mom was fifty feet ahead me. I hurried to catch up. The boardwalk rose steeply and ran along the top of a bluff. I’m not usually bothered by heights, but I had the distinct feeling there should be a guardrail or something on the outside of this stretch of wide, wooden planks. Though Chipmunk Island was technically part of the town of Busman’s Harbor, it was tightly managed by an association of homeowners. I doubted anyone came out from the town to make demands for safety improvements. Thirty feet onward, starting downhill, we plunged back into the trees. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The boardwalk wound downward until we were almost at the level of the shore and then curled toward a curve. A large, gray house was visible ahead. Mom stepped off the boardwalk at the next set of stairs and started toward the house. I followed.
Mom ignored the front door, following a flagstone path past a woodpile toward a narrow set of wooden steps in the back of the house. Through the wavy glass of the big windows, people were visible inside. Mom opened the door without knocking and we entered directly into the kitchen.
There were several women there, all busy as bees in a hive. One of them looked up. “Jacqueline, you’re here. Just in time.”
* * *
The woman’s greeting attracted the attention of the others, who stopped whatever they were doing to stare at us. Then the smallest one, who’d been mixing some kind of bright red punch, cried out. “Jacqueline!” and came around the kitchen peninsula. “You haven’t changed a bit.” She wrapped my mother in a hug. The others began to dry their hands on tea towels or aprons and came forward to hug and greet Mom, too.
There were five of them, all somewhere in age within a few years of my mother’s sixty-six. When the greetings quieted, Mom took my hand. “This is my older daughter, Julia.” I dipped my head and smiled, hoping that would suffice and another round of hugging wouldn’t break out.
The woman who’d spotted Mom first spoke up. “Jacqueline, you’ll remember everyone, of course. Julia, this is Laura, Marian, Amy, and Dianne. I’m Kitty.”
Each woman smiled in turn as she’d said her name, but Kitty spoke so quickly, there was no possibility I’d remember. I groped for a mnemonic: LMAD. Ladies of Maine Are Determined. That would never do. And besides, even if I had the names, I wouldn’t be able to match them to the faces.
“You’re the only person coming from off-island,” Kitty informed my mother. She looked pointedly at me, the uninvited guest.
“Really.” Mom was surprised. “I thought maybe friends or colleagues from Portland, or . . .”
“It’s not a funeral,” Amy or Laura said quickly, dismissing the idea of outsiders.
“Rather like a cold cup of coffee,” Dianne or Marian muttered.
My mother’s good manners never failed her. “Indeed,” she said in a neutral tone. “But other people . . .” She let that hang.
“From the island will be coming certainly,” Kitty assured her. “The memorial will be held in the backyard. We were just about to carry all this out.” Her right hand swept above the countertop, encompassing the punch, along with platters of finger sandwiches, deviled eggs, vegetables and dip, and several plates of fresh-baked cookies, smelling of vanilla and cinnamon and other spices.
Mom nodded, her eyes traveling around the room. It was a spacious kitchen with large, uncurtained windows framing views of the sea on one side and the yard and woods beyond on the other. The walls were white. The counters and countertops, which had been upgraded sometime in the current century, were white as well. My impression was of a pleasant, sunlit place, though austere.
The skin wrinkled over my mother’s nose. Something was bothering her. She strolled casually out of the kitchen into the next room. I didn’t follow but moved to the doorway, where I could observe her. A long, oak table sat at the center of the room with eight chairs around it. There was an oak china cabinet, strangely empty. The room had a deserted feel, like the resident had gone long since, and I supposed she had. But Virginia Merrill had left this house one sunny afternoon five years before, presumably with every intention of returning. Why was it stripped of everything that might have made it her own?
Mom returned to the kitchen, saying nothing, though clearly chewing something over. We were both put to work immediately, ferrying platters, pitchers, plates, and glasses to the backyard. Kitty was in charge, telling us where to put each item on the bright, red-checked cloths of the two picnic tables and straightening items or moving them if we got it wrong.
By the time we were done, a crowd had gathered. They came in twos and fours, walking down the steps from the boardwalk or coming along a path that led to the yard through the little wood that surrounded the houses at the southern end of the island. The Chipmunk Islanders were dressed casually. Two even carried tennis rackets. They milled about, greeting one another comfortably. Everyone knew everyone else. They were older, all retirement age or nearing it, but they were healthy and robust. The wellderly, not the illderly, as my friend Gus would have said. An island is not a good place for the chronically sick. Occasionally, someone glanced at Mom or me, the strangers, but no one approached us.
Kitty took a spot where the lawn ended and the little wood began again. She motioned the other five women to stand with her at the front. The crowd quieted, sensing something was happening and turning toward the women.
“Come stand with us, Jacqueline,” Kitty said. “You should be here, too.”
Mom hesitated for a second, then appeared to judge that refusing would call more attention and take more time than complying. Again, I wondered about Mom’s relationship with Ginny Merrill.
Kitty cleared her throat. “We’re here today to remember Ginny,” she said. “Though it may feel like it’s five years too late. Those of us who lived with her every day, every summer, all our lives have missed her and grieved her long since, but now the State of Maine has declared her dead. Since there never was a funeral, or a body, or an explanation, we, the members of the Wednesday Club, thought it was time to mark her passing publicly.” She paused, scanning the crowd. “Each of us has prepared something to say, and I urge any of you who wish to speak to do so once we are done.”
Kitty stepped forward from the group, still commanding the crowd, as if it was her natural right to speak first. Her hair was white and fine but thick, pinned up in a casual bun. She wore a black polo shirt and skirt, perhaps to mark the sad occasion. Her skin was tanned. I wondered where she spent the rest of the year.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since our Ginny went for a swim on a Thursday afternoon and didn’t come back.” Kitty’s voice was strong and without obvious emotion. The people standing in the back row could hear her for sure. “We warned her again and again, begged her to stop. But even knowing the danger, somehow the mind doesn’t admit the possible consequence of that danger. The probable consequence.” She corrected. “The actual consequence. Now the State of Maine has acknowledged what we’ve all known right along. Our dear Ginny is dead.” Kitty paused until every eye was on her. “But let’s not remember Ginny’s horrific death. Today, let’s remember her life, her friendship, the gatherings at her home. The love we all had for one another.”