The Summer Hideaway

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

Simple, she thought. All she needed to do was find a karaoke place. And get his family to show up. Okay, maybe not so simple.

“Judging by our encounter with Officer Friendly, your relatives are pretty unhappy with me,” she said. She didn’t much care. As her client, George was her sole concern. Still, it always went better if the family was supportive of the arrangement, because families had a way of complicating things. Sometimes she told herself that the lack of a family was a blessing in disguise. Certainly it was a complication she never had to deal with.

She often imagined about what it was like to have a family, the way a severe diabetic might think about eating a cake with burnt-sugar icing. It was never going to happen, but a girl could fantasize. Sometimes she covertly attended family gatherings—graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings, even the occasional funeral—just to see what it was like to have a family. She had a fascination with the obituary page of the paper, her attention always drawn to lengthy lists of family members left behind. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of pathetic, but it seemed harmless enough.

“They’re too quick to judge,” he said. “They haven’t even met you yet.”

“Well, you did make all these arrangements rather quickly.”

“If I hadn’t, they would have tried to stop me. They’d say we’re incompatible, that you and I are far too different,” he pointed out.

“Nonsense,” said Claire. “You’re a blueblood, and I’m blue collar—it’s just a color.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“We’re all in the same race,” she added.

“I’m closer to the finish line.”

“I thought we were going to try to keep a positive attitude.”

“Sorry.”

“This is going to go well,” she promised him.

“It’s going to end badly for one of us.”

“Then let’s not focus on the ending.”

There were known psychological and clinical end-of-life stages people went through when facing a devastating diagnosis—shock, rage, denial and so forth. Everyone in her field of work had memorized them. In practice, patients expressed their stages in ways that were as different and individual as people themselves.

Some held despair at bay with denial, or by displaying a smart-alecky attitude about death. George seemed quite happy to be in that phase. His wry sense of humor appealed to her. Of course, he was using humor and sarcasm to keep the darker things at bay—dread and uncertainty, abject fear, regret, despair. In time, those might or might not materialize. It was her job to be there through everything.

All her previous patients had been in the city, where it was possible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This was the first time she had ventured somewhere like this—small and old-fashioned, more like an illustration in a storybook than a real place. It was like coming to a theme park, overrun by trees and beautiful wilderness areas and dotted with picturesque farms and painted houses.

“Avalon,” she said as they passed another welcome sign, this one marked with a contrived-looking heraldic shield. “I wonder if it’s named after a place from Arthurian legend.” She’d gone through a teenage obsession with the topic, using books as a refuge from a frightening and uncertain life. One of her foster mothers, an English professor, had taught her how to live deeply in a story, drawing inspiration from its lessons.

“I imagine that’s what the founders had in mind. Avalon is where Arthur went to die,” George said.

“Not exactly. It’s the island where Excalibur was forged, and where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle.”

“Ah, but did he ever recover?”

She glanced over at him. “Not yet.”

The first thing she did when arriving at a new place was reconnoiter the area. It had become second nature to plan her escape route. The world had been a dangerous place for her since she was a teenager. Avalon was no exception. To most people, a town like this represented an American ideal, with its scrubbed façades and tranquil natural setting. Tree-lined avenues led to the charming center of town, where people strolled along the swept sidewalks, browsing in shop windows.

To Claire, the pretty village looked as forbidding as the edge of a cliff. One false step could be her last. She was already sensing that it was going to be harder to hide here, especially now that she’d been welcomed by the law.

She took note of the train station and main square filled with inviting shops and restaurants, their windows shaded by striped and scalloped awnings. There was a handsome stone building in the middle of a large park—the Avalon Free Library. In the distance was the lake itself, as calm and pristine as a picture on a postcard.

It was late afternoon and the slant of the sun’s rays lengthened the shadows, lending the scene a deep, golden tinge of nostalgia. Old brick buildings, some of them with façades of figured stonework, bore the dates of their founding—1890, 1909, 1913. A community bulletin board announced the opening game of a baseball team called the Hornets, to be celebrated with a pre-game barbecue.

“Are you a baseball fan?” she asked.

“Devotedly. Some of my fondest memories involve going to the Yankee stadium with my father and brother. Saw the Yankees win the World Series over the Phillies there in 1950. Yogi Berra hit an unforgettable homer in that game.” His eyes were glazed by wistful sentiment. “We saw Harry Truman throw out the first pitch of the season one year. He did one with each hand, as I recall. I’ve often fantasized about throwing out the game ball. Never had the chance, though.”

“Put it on your list, George,” she suggested. “You never know.”

They passed a bank and the Church of Christ. There were a couple of clothing boutiques, a sporting goods store and a bookstore called Camelot Books. There was a shop called Zuzu’s Petals, and a grand opening banner hung across the entrance of a new-looking establishment—Yolanda’s Bridal Shoppe. Some of the upper floors of the buildings housed offices—a pediatrician, a dentist, a lawyer, a funeral director.

One-stop shopping, she thought. A person could live and die here without ever leaving.

The idea of spending one’s entire life in a single place was almost completely unfathomable to Claire.

She stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a dark-haired boy cross while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. On the corner, a blonde pregnant woman came out of a doctor’s office. The residents of the town resembled people everywhere—young, old, alone, together, all shapes and sizes. It reminded her that folks tended to be the same no matter where she went. They lived their lives, loved each other, fought and laughed and cried, the years adding up to a life. The residents of Avalon were no different. They just did it all in a prettier place.

“Well, George?” she asked. “What do you think? How does it look to you?”

“The town has changed remarkably little since I was last here,” George said. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize anything.” His hands tightened around the notebook he held in his lap. “I think I want to die in Avalon. Yes, I believe this is where I want it to happen.”

“When was the last time you visited?” she asked, deliberately ignoring his statement for the time being.

“It was August twenty-fourth, 1955,” he said without hesitation. “I left on the 4:40 train. I never dreamed another fifty-five years would pass.”

That long, thought Claire. What would bring him back to a place after so much time?

“Would you mind pulling in here?” George asked. “I need to make a stop at this bakery. It was here when I last visited.”

She berthed the van in a big parking spot marked with a disabled symbol. On good days, George could walk fairly well, and today seemed to be a good day. However, they were in a new place and she didn’t want to push their luck.

The Sky River Bakery and Café had a hand-painted sign proclaiming its establishment in 1952. It was a beautiful spring day, and tables with umbrellas sprouted along the sidewalk in front of the place, shading groups of customers as they enjoyed icy drinks and decadent-looking sweets.

She went around to the passenger side of the van to help him. The key to helping a patient, she’d learned from experience, was to take her cues from him. Respect and dignity were her watchwords.

Though she had a wheelchair available, he opted for his cane, an unpretentious one with a rubber-tipped end. She helped him down and they stood together for a moment, looking around. His somewhat cocky persona slipped a little to reveal a face gone soft with uncertainty.

“George?” she asked.

“Do I look…all right?”

She didn’t smile, but her heart melted a little. Everyone had their insecurities. “I was just thinking you look exceptionally good. In fact, it’s kind of nice to tell you the truth instead of having to pretend.”

“You’d do that? You’d pretend I looked well, even if I didn’t?”

“It’s all a matter of perspective. I’ve told people they look like a million bucks when in fact they look like death on a cracker.”