Summer at Willow Lake

Four

August 1977

“Philip, what are you doing?” asked Mariska Majesky, stepping into the bungalow.

He stopped pacing and turned, his heart lifting at the sight of her in a beautiful chiffon cocktail dress and platform shoes, her dark, wavy hair swept up off suntanned shoulders.

“Rehearsing,” he confessed, his chest filled with joy and dread, the intense emotions waging an undeclared war.

She tilted her head to one side in that adorable way she had of conveying curiosity. “Rehearsing what?”

“I’m practicing what I’m going to say to Pamela when she gets back from Europe,” he explained. “Trying to figure out how to end our engagement.” Since his fiancée had gone overseas, there had been only a few brief, unsatisfactory phone conversations, a hasty flurry of postcards and aerograms. The Italian telephone system was famously unreliable, and destroying her dreams over a crackling transatlantic wire or in a letter didn’t cut it.

Next week, she would return and then he’d tell her in person. It was going to turn him into the heel of the century.

The only thing worse was spending the rest of his life with someone who didn’t own his heart the way Mariska did.

Now Mariska grew serious, her full mouth forming a sad smile. Philip hugged her. She smelled fantastic, a heady mixture of flowers and fruit, and she fit just right in his arms, as though heaven itself had made her for him, exactly like the song said. Her nearness made him forget his worries about Pamela.

“I picked these up at the one-hour-photo place today.” Mariska took an envelope out of her purse. “There’s a shot of us. I ordered double prints, so you can keep a copy.” Flipping through the snapshots of the day’s sporting events at the camp, she pulled out one of her and Philip, laughing in triumph as he held a bright silver trophy cup aloft.

His heart constricted. He looked so damn happy. In that moment, he had been happy. Taking the tennis trophy down from the luggage rack, he put the snapshot inside it and replaced the lid. “Thank you,” he said.

She crossed the room and kissed him. “We should go. It’s the last dance of the summer, and you know how I love dancing.” Each summer, the season ended with a series of rituals. Yesterday, the campers had all gone home. Today was the staff’s farewell, a dinner dance that would end at midnight. By this time tomorrow, nearly everyone else would be gone, the college-age counselors all heading back to school.

“Let’s go,” she urged him, pulling back and taking his hand. “I don’t want to muss my hair.” She eyed him with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Not yet, anyway.”

Even that oblique promise was enough to send him into overdrive. As they left the bungalow, he buttoned his sports coat and hoped his physical reaction to her nearness wasn’t too obvious. As he had since the beginning of summer, he cast a furtive glance around the area to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Kioga had strict rules about fraternizing among counselors and other workers, and just because his parents owned the place didn’t mean he was exempt.

Mariska wasn’t a counselor, but she was supposed to be off-limits, too. She and her mother, Helen, supplied the baked goods to the camp. From the age of fourteen, Mariska had driven the white panel van up the mountain every morning at dawn, bringing bread, pastries, muffins and cookies to the dining hall. The local police looked the other way when the delivery truck lumbered past. Mariska’s mother, a Polish immigrant, had never learned to drive. Her father was on swing shift at the glassworks down in Kingston. They were a working-class family and the authorities were sympathetic to their plight. They weren’t about to ticket an underage girl for helping out with the family business.

As Philip and Mariska strolled through the forest at twilight, he couldn’t resist slipping his arm around her. She tucked herself against his shoulder. “Careful,” she said softly, “someone might see.”

“I hate all this sneaking around.” A sick guilt flurried in his gut. It was definitely not cool, falling in love with another girl while your fiancée was overseas. He couldn’t help himself, though. He had been helpless to resist Mariska, even though he wasn’t free to be with her. She was so understanding, complicit in the secrecy, but he suspected she was as eager as he was to stop hiding it. The moment Pamela returned, he’d end it with her and then he could finally show the world what was in his heart.

“You’re looking at me funny,” Mariska said. “What’s that look?”

“I’m trying to figure out the exact moment I fell in love with you.”

“That’s easy. It was that night back in June after Founders’ Day.”

He couldn’t help smiling at the memory, even though she was wrong. “That was the first time we had sex. I fell in love with you way before that.”

They reached the end of the gravel path and, out of habit, separated, keeping their distance. In the pavilion across the field, the farewell dance was already in full swing. A disco ball spun slowly from the center, its facets creating a strobelike effect on the crowded dance floor. People seemed more frenetic than usual, at least they did to Philip. But perhaps that was his imagination.

Outside the pavilion, he stopped walking.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Dance with me. Right here, right now.”

“These shoes aren’t doing so well in the grass,” she protested.

“Then take them off. I want to dance with you in private where no one can see, so I can hold you exactly the way I want.” Once they made an appearance at the pavilion, they would have to go their separate ways, pretending they were just friends. For now, he wanted to dance with her like a lover.

With a silky laugh, she kicked off her shoes and slipped into his arms. The house band was playing a passable rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” and they danced in the dark, where no one could see them. She felt wonderful in his arms, and his heart soared at the thought that, very soon, the whole world would know she was his.

Pulling her close and swaying to the music, he bent and whispered in her ear, “It didn’t happen all at once. Me, falling in love with you. I think it started four years ago, when you first started delivering stuff to the dining hall.” He could still picture her, sun browned and serious, a hardworking girl who couldn’t quite hide her envy of the privileged city kids whose parents could afford to send them to summer camp. She had moved him then, a beautiful girl wanting something she couldn’t have. And she moved him now, a beautiful woman whose dreams were finally within reach.

“Each summer when I came here,” he said, “I was more and more into you.”

“You never did anything about it until this summer,” she pointed out, a note of gentle chiding in her voice.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“Oh, I did. I wanted you to sweep me off my feet.”

He laughed and did exactly that, scooping her up with one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders. “Like this?”

She made a sound of surprise and clung to his neck. “Exactly.”

He kissed her then, slowly and hungrily, and wished he had acted on his feelings long before this summer. What an idiot he’d been, thinking those feelings weren’t real, expecting each summer that the attraction would be gone. Maybe he’d spent a little too much time with his father’s parents, the redoubtable Grandmother and Grandfather Bellamy, who claimed it was impossible to love someone from a different class. They were fond of reminding Philip that he was a young man of sophistication, with a first-class education and the brightest of prospects for his future. A girl like Mariska, who attended a smalltown high school, who worked at her family’s bakery and part-time at the local jewelry store, would be considered an unfortunate mismatch for him.

Pamela Lightsey, on the other hand, seemed to have been created just for him. She had everything a man in his position wanted in a wife—brains, beauty, heart, social status. Her parents were best friends with his own. The Lightsey fortune came from a jewelry empire, and they had given their daughter all the same advantages Philip enjoyed—private school, personal coaches, foreign travel, Ivy League college. She was blond and beautiful and accomplished, having mastered two languages and piano. This summer she was in Positano, perfecting her Italian.

Yet Philip had discovered one missing ingredient. When he looked into Pamela’s eyes, he didn’t get dizzy with love. That only happened with Mariska.

He forced himself to stop kissing her and set her down. “We should get a move on,” he said. “People will start to wonder where we are.”

By people, he meant his fellow counselors and staff. Most were guys like him who had spent their childhood summers at Kioga, guys who were jealous of Philip because he was going to marry Pamela Lightsey. Or so they thought. It was comforting—just a little—to know so many of them would be willing to catch her on the rebound.

His stomach churned every time he thought of breaking their engagement. He didn’t have a choice, though. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone—not to Pamela, nor to Mariska—to pretend nothing had changed over the summer. It wouldn’t be fair to the children he and Pamela had talked about having one day; kids deserved to grow up in a house full of love.

He should never have proposed to her last spring, on her birthday. But she had wanted him to, so much. One of the designers who worked for Lightsey Gold & Gem had created a one-of-a-kind ring, a 1.3 carat marquise-cut solitaire in a free-form setting of gold. He had knelt down before her in the middle of New Haven Green on campus—and in that starry-eyed moment, he could have sworn he loved her.

He was a fool. It had taken Mariska Majesky to finally show him what love was.

Outside the pavilion, he paused and squeezed her hand, then leaned down to say, “I love you.”

She rewarded him with a smile, then freed her hand. They walked into the dance side by side, like a couple of old friends.

The party was in full swing. His parents were circulating among the guests, always the perfect hosts. Even more perfect, he observed, trying not to cringe—the Lightseys were here. Pamela’s parents and his own were lifelong friends, another factor that complicated Philip’s plans. They went way, way back. Mr. Lightsey had been the best man at the Bellamys’ wedding, and the couples had been close ever since. It was almost as if a match between Philip and Pamela had been preordained. Each year, Pamela’s family came up at season’s end to help close up the camp and steal a few final days of summer before heading back to the city.

With the Lightseys around, he had to be extra careful. He had to be the one to tell Pamela, face-to-face. If she heard the news from her parents … He didn’t even want to think about that. And just to complicate matters, Mariska’s mother stood behind the buffet table, keeping the dessert trays filled. Helen Majesky’s berry pies and kolaches were legendary, and they didn’t last long.

Spying Mariska, Helen waved, though her smile appeared forced. Philip was pretty sure Helen suspected something was going on between him and Mariska, and disapproved. Of course she did. She knew he was engaged to Pamela and undoubtedly feared he’d break her daughter’s heart.

He wanted to reassure Helen, let her know he meant to spend the rest of his life making Mariska happy. Soon, he thought. I’ll straighten everything out soon.