Chapter One: Happy Birthday, Summer
It seemed as if a rainbow had burst over our house and grounds. I knew that Daddy had been secretly planning some surprises, but I was not prepared for all that he had done. The moment the morning sun nudged my eyes open, I heard the gentle tinkling notes of "Happy Birthday to You." With sleepy eyes I gazed at a precious and dazzling merry-go-round spinning a menagerie of animals around a ballerina who danced at its center.
"I hope you always wake with a smile like that, Summer," Daddy said.
I looked up and saw Daddy standing there. His face was glowing almost as much as mine. I had his turquoise eyes, but Mommy's ebony hair and a complexion a few shades lighter so anyone could see that I had also clearly inherited Daddy's freckles, especially at the crests of my cheeks.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," he said and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.
Mommy watched from her wheelchair on the opposite side of my bed. For a moment she looked so distant, almost as though she was on the outside of a great glass bubble set around me. I knew she was having one of those Evil Eye thoughts, those fears that whenever she was too happy, something terrible would happen. She seemed to realize it herself and brightened quickly into a smile. I rose to hug her.
"What were the two of you doing?" I cried as the merry-go-round continued. "Sitting here waiting for me to wake up? How long have you been here?"
"We were watching you all night," Daddy joked. "We took turns, didn't we, Rain?"
"Practically," Mommy said. "Your crazy father has been acting as if this was more his birthday than yours." She jokingly put on a look of disapproval. "More and more these days, he acts like a sixteen-year-old."
"You never lose the child within you entirely," Daddy assured us. "I want to blow out candles on my ninetieth birthday and unwrap presents. Don't forget to arrange for that, you two," he ordered, sounding like it was just around the corner.
Mommy shook her head and smiled at me as if the two of us were allies forced to tolerate another foolish man. Daddy could never be a foolish man to me, never, ever, I thought.
"It's a beautiful merry-go-round," I said as it stopped.
"That," my mother said, "is not even the tip of the iceberg. Look out the window," she urged me.
My room overlooked the lake. Grandmother Megan told me it had once been her room, and Mommy said she used it when she had first arrived. Now, she and Daddy used what was Grandmother Hudson's room, only they had changed the decor and replaced all the furniture. The bathroom had been updated to provide for Mommy's special needs.
In the beginning Mommy didn't want to make dramatic changes in the house. She said she felt an obligation to Grandmother Hudson's memory to keep it close to how it had been, but in time rugs wore, walls had to be repainted, fixtures replaced, appliances changed, and Daddy brought in a decorator to give it all what they called a more eclectic style.
The hallways still had the spirit of the nineteenth century with some Federal antiques, like a White and Dogswell clock that hung across from a circular mirror of that period. Mommy was very proud of all the antiques left by my Grandmother Hudson. Mommy had loved her very much, so much that I was jealous and wished I had been able to know her, too.
Grandfather Hudson's office was the same as it had always been, but much of the rest of the house -- the living room, the kitchen, my bedroom and Daddy and Mommy's -- had been modernized with lighter colors and softer fabrics. Recently my parents had redone the maid's quarters, covering the floor with a thick white shag rug and replacing what had been a hospital bed with a queen-size cherry wood one; this pleased Mrs. Geary very much.
After Glenda had married Uncle Roy and she and Harley had moved out of the main house, Mommy and Daddy hired Mrs. Geary through an agency. She was in her early forties at the time and had come from Ireland to live and work in America when she was in her late twenties. Now streaked with gray, her hair had once been almost as red as Daddy's. She had been working for her distant American relatives who she said treated her as badly as Cinderella's stepmother treated Cinderella.
"There was no respect. Everything I did was simply expected, too. Not an ounce of gratitude! I was glad to get out of there," she told me.
Daddy said he liked her because she had an inner strength and confidence he thought would make her an asset in a household where the mistress was disabled. Mommy and she took to each other immediately, and by now it was impossible for me to think of her as anything less than a member of our family. She was often a second mother to me, ordering me to dress more warmly or eat better. She even had something to say about where I would go and with whom I would go. A mother hen didn't hover over an egg as much as Mrs. Geary hovered over me as I grew up under both her and Mommy's wings.
"I spent almost as much time and energy as your mother keeping you growing healthy and strong, and I'm not about to see my investment go sour," she told me if I complained. She loved to find words and expressions to avoid expressing her true feelings for me. It was as if she believed that the moment you told someone you loved her, you lost her. I would learn that her own early childhood and teenage years were filled with enough loss to make her think this way.
Nevertheless, I teased her whenever I could, especially about her endless ongoing romance with Clarence Lynch, the librarian at the municipal library. Like her, he was in his late fifties. They had been seeing each other socially for as long as I could remember.
Once, when I asked her why she had never married him, her reply was, "Why would I want to ruin a perfectly good relationship?"
It confused me, of course, and I ran to Mommy with questions. She simply smiled and said, "Summer, not everyone fits so neatly into the little boxes society has created. As long as they're happy, why ask them to change?"
In Mommy's mind, and I now think mine too, happiness and health were two sides of the same coin, the most important and valuable coin. People who were happy had more hope of being healthy; of course, people who were healthy were happy. Smiles and laughter were the best medications for the illnesses of the spirit.
No one illustrated this better than Daddy, I thought. He loved Mommy and me so much and was so happy that anyone could see him and feel him radiating with warmth and well-being. He was still a highly respected physical therapist who had assumed his uncle's therapy business and then had created a chain of unique health clubs that combined regular exercise with therapeutic programs. They were known as rejuvenation clubs; their theme was that through exercise and meditation aging could be slowed down and even in some cases reversed. National health and exercise magazines had even featured Daddy in articles. I was very proud of him and so was Mommy.
Yes, happiness and health were truly the twin sisters my family had adopted to live beside me. They nurtured wisdom and wove a protective wall around our house. Nothing terrible from the outside could hurt us, I thought. But what I also knew was trouble loomed nearby in Uncle Roy's sad and dour world, and it also came riding into our fortress in the form of a Trojan horse named Alison, my Aunt Alison.
"People who don't like themselves can't like anyone else," Mommy once told me. "Your aunt Alison hates herself. She just doesn't know it or want to know it. I feel more pity for her than I do anger, and you will, too," Mommy predicted.
Aunt Alison, as well as Grandmother Megan and my stepgrandfather Grant Randolph would all be here today for my birthday party.
Now in the morning light, I stood by the window a
