The Summer Cottage Read Online Free

her chair. “Do you want to walk or shall I put you in your chair?”
    “The chair, I think. I’m a bit unsteady on my feet.”
    Helen grabbed the walker that was resting against the wall and positioned it in front of her mother’s wicker chair. Claire grabbed on to the handles and slowly lifted herself until she was vertical. Helen, who had her right arm behind her mother’s back to stop her from falling, knew better than to touch her. There was so little Claire could do herself. It was a daily discussion: how much she used to be able to do just a few short years ago compared with how little she could do now. And then there were the days that Claire wanted to talk about how strong she had been as a young woman—a couple times a week, it seemed to surface. Helen, who could have told her mother’s story probably better than her mother could at this point, routinely listened attentively. Being her caregiver was more tolerable when Claire was in a good mood and chatted joyfully about her accomplishments. It was less so when she was achy and morose. On those days, she was tough on herself. Helen could do little to appease her at these times, Claire’s agitation ending only with sleep.
    “Let’s head to the back door, for your chair, and then we’ll go to the beach.” Helen walked several steps behind her mother as Claire rolled and pushed her way toward the kitchen; Helen resisted the urge to walk in front, to set a pace her mother could not match. Once they reached the kitchen, it took Helen and Claire a few minutes to transfer from one transportation device inside the house to the other that Helen had placed just outside the back door. Claire sat down heavily. “There,” said Helen, to ward off any complaints. “We’re all set.”
    “You’re all set,” said Claire, looking up at her daughter. “I haven’t been all damn set for three damn years.”
    “Mom,” said Helen.
    It had been three years and two months since Claire’s diagnosis: Her breast cancer had returned. She’d had a lumpectomy and radiation therapy in 1992 and had been diligent about her follow-up visits, always complying with the requests of her medical team, a word that she found ludicrous in this usage, and the wishes of her husband John, a pediatrician, even though she felt fine. And for eight years she had been fine—until the morning she noticed some bruising on her left breast. And when she inspected it with her fingers, she felt the mass under the skin. A month later, both breasts were gone. Two months after that, bald from chemotherapy and weak from the cancer’s progression, she knew she would not recover. Those burdened with the unhappy diagnosis of secondary angiosarcoma had less than a one in five chance of survival. As a swimmer, she’d once considered twenty percent as fairly good odds in the pool. As a sick old woman, she knew better. “What day is it, Helen? Tuesday?”
    “Exactly.”
    “And when is everyone coming?” They were rumbling along the grassy right-of-way now toward the beach. Claire’s chair was what she jokingly called an all-terrain vehicle, with large nubby tires that traversed uneven ground almost as easily though certainly less steadily than flat pavement.
    “They’re coming in stages, Mom,” said Helen, trying to be patient with this the fourth or fifth run-through of the weekend itinerary. “Pammy will be here tomorrow, and Charlotte is scheduled to arrive on Thursday afternoon. Thomas, if he does come, will be here on Saturday.”
    “We don’t know if he’s coming? I thought you said he was coming, Helen.”
    “You know Thomas, Mom. He never commits.”
    “He’ll be here,” said Claire as Helen stopped the chair several feet from the top of the seawall and set the brakes. “I do, indeed, know Thomas. He’ll be here.”
    Helen nodded. “Do you want to stand?”
    “Yes,” said Claire. Helen held out her arm, and Claire held on to it as she lifted herself out of the chair. The cancer,