Chapter 3 Cynthia
Cynthia
“You’re absolutely certain your parents won’t mind me bringing so much stuff with me?
It looks like I plan to move in,” Cynthia said as she wrestled with the zipper on her baby-blue suitcase, willing it to shut.
Halfway closed, it juddered to a stop, a bit of clothing trapped in its metal teeth.
She reminded herself of all the examples she had seen while at Barlow of how differently the very wealthy lived.
On occasion, Pauline had mentioned the parties that her parents threw.
They never sounded in the least like the bridge nights with nibbles that her mother hosted on the last Friday evening of each month.
Pauline had never spoken of snack dishes shaped like playing-card suits, or tiny sandwiches cut into diamonds and hearts.
Rather, she remarked on valet parking and ice sculptures commissioned to keep the shrimp cocktail chilled long into the night.
From the offhand way Pauline described it all, her surname might as well have been Gatsby instead of Mayhew.
Pauline gently pushed Cynthia’s hand aside and deftly coaxed the material from the zipper’s teeth, closing the suitcase effortlessly.
“I’m sure my mother is delighted for me to have a companion from Barlow staying with us. She worries that I’ll spend too much time with the locals,” Pauline said.
“Why would she worry about a thing like that?”
Pauline dropped her gaze and, for the first time since Cynthia had known her, hesitated before answering a question about her family. Then she smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from her shell-pink cashmere cardigan and flashed one of her confident smiles.
“Doesn’t your mother worry about the most unlikely things, too, sometimes?” she asked as she tugged on a pair of gloves in the same pale shade as her sweater. She fiddled with the tiny pearl buttons at the wrists before reaching for a straw hat.
Cynthia’s mother did worry about the most unexpected things.
She had the usual concerns about polio and more ordinary childhood diseases like measles and mumps, but her imagination tended to run wild when it came to the safety of her family.
When Cynthia and her brother were small, she had persistent fears that they would be killed by falling down the attic stairs, by running out in front of a speeding car, or by malnutrition.
She never allowed them to play on the third floor, among the old cedar chests and toys from her parents’ childhoods, lest they take a tumble.
She had insisted on holding their hands with bone-crushing intensity when approaching the street, and she obsessed over feeding them sufficient protein at every meal.
Strangely, she had been far less besieged by such preoccupations during the war years, when so many other women were beset with worry.
If anything, Cynthia’s mother had bloomed during those tumultuous times.
War work and the sense of independence it had brought along with it appeared to agree with her far more than the role of housewife had.
Cynthia remembered her mother singing as she readied herself for her shifts at the textile mill.
She hummed as she swiped on Victory Red lipstick and tucked her long hair up into a turban to keep it safe from the machinery.
Not only did the work seem to agree with her, so did the ability to choose how to spend any extra money she had earned, often on treats or toys for Cynthia and her brother.
It wasn’t until Cynthia’s father returned from serving overseas and announced that he didn’t hold with any wife of his going out to work that she once again began obsessing over the danger everyday life surely posed to her children.
With little success, she tried to appear engrossed in their idle prattle and take pride in other diversions.
She devoted herself to starching and pressing the family’s clothing into crisp perfection, mastering molded gelatin salads, and bottoming out the house twice a year like clockwork.
But everyone who had seen her during those fleeting war years noticed the change, and the most astute of them pulled Cynthia aside to ask if her mother was quite herself.
It was clear to everyone but her own husband that she was not.
By the time Cynthia was thirteen, she had decided she would do whatever it took to create a career for herself that could not be so easily set aside by someone else’s whim.
If heading to Mount Vernon—even if she wasn’t entirely sure of her welcome—was what it would take to reach her goal, then that was what she would do.
She reached for her own gloves, a navy pair that were woefully practical compared with Pauline’s.
“The one thing she doesn’t seem to be worried about is my visit to your lake house. ”
“Perhaps that’s because I phoned her and mentioned all the eligible boys I plan to introduce you to during your visit.”
Cynthia’s stomach squeezed. “You didn’t.”
“Of course I didn’t. I wish to keep the pleasure of meddling in your love life all to myself.” With that, she tucked her hand under Cynthia’s arm and tugged her towards the door. “Now, let’s go before we miss our train. Mother will be in a snit if we do.”
Cynthia looked back over her shoulder, casting what she hoped wouldn’t be her last peek at the inside of a Barlow dorm room. Then she heard Professor Avery’s voice echoing in her ear. She lifted her chin. Surely a clever girl like herself would figure out a way to make it back.
* * *
Cynthia followed Pauline as she descended from the train onto the platform.
In less than two hours’ time, she had made the journey from Barlow College near the coast to the inland Belgrade Lakes region in central Maine.
Men in pale suits and straw hats milled about as the train whistled and chugged, pulling away from the station.
At the far end of the platform, a newsboy waved a paper over his head and added his hawking cries to the clamor.
Pauline lifted a gloved hand to shield her eyes from the sun and looked out at the cars parked nearby.
Suddenly, she raised her other hand in a wave.
A middle-aged man strode up the short set of steps, a broad smile on his face. Pauline moved towards him and wrapped him in an embrace. With his golden-blond hair and large blue eyes, no one would fail to recognize him as Pauline’s father.
As Cynthia noticed the expression of joy on Mr. Mayhew’s face, she felt a pang of envy.
Not only was Pauline wealthier when it came to money, but from the looks of it, she was also richer in love.
Cynthia’s father was not the sort to tolerate public displays of affection.
He wasn’t one to either appreciate or offer them in private either.
Never before had she felt the disparity in their backgrounds so acutely.
She hung back, hesitant to interrupt. Pauline gave her father a peck on the cheek, then released him.
“Mother said she was sending Parker to collect us. She mentioned you would be too busy at the newspaper to get away,” she said.
“I told him not to bother. You know I’m never too busy for my favorite girl.” He turned to Cynthia. “You must be the impressive roommate I’ve heard so much about.”
Cynthia had no idea that her friend had ever mentioned her to her family other than to ask if she might visit. She felt her cheeks pinking at his compliment.
“And now you are lucky enough to meet Cynthia for yourself,” Pauline said.
Mr. Mayhew took a step forward and stretched out a hand.
“It’s a pleasure to put a face to the name. And what a pretty face it is,” he said. Before she had to construct a response, he let go of her hand and turned back to his daughter. “This cannot be all of your luggage.”
He gestured to the train cases each of the girls had carried in the compartment with them.
“Of course not. It’s a good thing you brought the station wagon instead of your convertible,” Pauline said.
Just then, a porter appeared, pushing a luggage rack piled high with Pauline’s set of oyster-gray leather suitcases.
A second porter followed on his heels, guiding Cynthia’s own blue ones.
Mr. Mayhew waved them over and spent the next few moments ensuring that the luggage was properly stowed in or on his wood-paneled station wagon.
Cynthia slid into the back seat, leaving Pauline to sit beside her father.
He pulled the car out onto the main street and soon turned off onto a road that swiftly left the small shops and eateries of Mount Vernon behind.
He pointed out the window of the station wagon as a sliver of sparkling water appeared through a gap in the tree line.
Billowing white clouds drifted overhead, draping shadows over the treetops and across the small islands dotting the lake.
The road bent away from the shoreline, and once again the lake disappeared from view.
“Is that Long Pond?” Cynthia asked.
“It sure is. Our camp is farther along the lake, but it’s the same body of water.”
Cynthia leaned out the window, feeling the wind blow her long hair away from her face.
She felt a surge of excitement, the first in what seemed like ages, as she caught a broader view of Long Pond.
She spied several boats, one pulling a water skier behind it, crisscrossing the lake.
A surge of pride in her home state filled her chest. Long Pond was but one example of Maine’s enduring beauty.
Of lakes, there were aplenty, but then, too, there was the section of the Appalachian Mountains that terminated at Mount Katahdin.
The Great North Woods, with its vast acreage of towering trees and thunderous rivers, offered vistas bold and untamed.
And who could forget the coastline, with its rock-strewn beaches, reeling gulls, and quaint villages?
Truly, Maine in summer left one spoilt for choice.
Pauline had told her that her mother’s family had owned the camp for decades, and that she had spent summers there throughout her entire life.
Most Mainers who had a second home of any sort called it a “camp,” that term covering anything from tar-paper shacks used for hunting weekends to palatial estates designed to host high-society guests.
For Cynthia, though, the word conjured up visions of a wooden structure with an outhouse and an old-fashioned cast-iron cookstove.
She tried to picture her friend inviting her to any place that could be considered the least bit rustic.
Mr. Mayhew turned off Castle Island Road and onto what amounted to barely more than a dirt track wending its way through the pines and descending steadily, tantalizingly, towards the glinting blue of the lake.
Tiny cabins—some of them could charitably be called shacks—lurked in the shadows, well back from the road.
All about them, weathered hammocks sagged between the trees, and loose dogs and overall-clad children tumbled about in piles in the pine needle–strewn dooryards.
Did the Mayhews really enjoy spending the summers in the Rusticator tradition that was so popular with the exorbitantly rich at the end of the last century?
Mr. Mayhew slowed the jouncing car to a funereal pace and leaned over the steering wheel.
“It’s just up ahead, Cynthia,” he said, a lilt of excitement tinging his voice.
He maneuvered the car around another sharp bend, and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
The trees gave way to open lots that ran straight down to the wide expanse of shimmering blue water.
Enormous houses with wide covered porches and private docks with boats tethered to them sat at respectful distances from one another, nary a shack in sight.
Pauline turned in her seat and smiled at Cynthia.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked as her father turned into a graveled driveway flanked by fieldstone pillars.
Cynthia nodded. The house sat nestled beneath a towering cathedral of pines.
As soon as the car eased to a stop, she reached for the door handle.
She pushed it open and stepped out onto the wide front yard.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the slanting sun and spotted a dock floating a hundred yards or so from the shore.
A half dozen tanned bodies were stretched out on the dock, and even from such a distance, Cynthia could tell that they were about her own age.
Almost as a confirmation, one of the shirtless figures shoved another from the dock in a youthful demonstration of horseplay.
Pauline hurried past her and stopped at the top of the steps leading down to the shore below.
She raised both arms above her head and waved them back and forth.
The figure who had shoved his companion into the water raised his own hand and vigorously gestured for her to join the group on the dock.
Pauline nodded before turning back towards Cynthia.
She glanced at her father, who was lifting luggage from the car, and lowered her voice.
“What did I tell you about eligible young men? I’ll bet I can find you a boyfriend before you can find a job.”
Cynthia looked towards the floating dock and fervently hoped that her friend was wrong. If luck was on her side, she’d be gainfully employed by the same time tomorrow.