Smiling, she remembered Alan’s expression when she’d bought the paint. “I can understand if you want to paint the place pink, but, sweetheart, you’ve bought five different shades of pink. Didn’t those men at the store help you?”
Alan was a great believer in men taking care of women, whether it was at home or in a paint store.
At that time Leslie had been five months pregnant with Rebecca and she was already showing. She didn’t know it then, but Rebecca was going to be early in everything, from letting her mother know she was there to . . . well, letting the world know she was there.
Laughing, Leslie had told Alan that she planned to paint the summerhouse using all five shades of pink. Now, fifteen and a half years later, she could still remember the look on his face. Leslie’s mother had said that Alan didn’t have a creative bone in his body, and, over the years, Leslie had found out that that was true. But, back then, when they were both so young and so happy to be on their own, the colors she wanted to paint the falling down old summerhouse had been cause for laughter.
It had been Leslie who’d persuaded Alan to buy the big Victorian house that was in an old, unfashionable neighborhood. Alan had wanted something new, something that was white on the outside and white on the inside. But Leslie couldn’t stand any of the houses that Alan had liked: perfectly square boxes set inside a bigger perfectly square box. “But that’s what I like about them,” Alan had said, not understanding her complaint.
It was Leslie’s mother who had given her the strength to stand up to her new husband. “The house belongs to the woman,” her mother had said. “It’s where you spend most of your time and it’s where you raise your children. It’s worth a fight.” In her family, her mother had been the fighter. Leslie was like her father and liked to let things find their own solutions.
Later Leslie said that it was having Rebecca’s fierce spirit inside her that had given her the courage. She played her trump card: “Alan, dear, we are buying the house with money my father left to me.” Alan didn’t say anything, but the look on his face made her never, ever again say anything like that.
But then she’d never before or since wanted anything as much as she’d wanted that big, rambling old house that needed so very much work. Since her father had been a building contractor, she knew what needed to be done and how to go about getting it done.
“That has to go,” Alan had said when he’d seen the old summerhouse, hidden under fifty-year-old trees, nearly obscured by wisteria vines.
“But that’s the most beautiful part of the house,” Leslie had said.
Alan had opened his mouth to say something, but Rebecca had chosen that moment to give her first kick, and the argument about the fate of the summerhouse was never completed. Later, whenever Alan had said anything about the house, Leslie had said, “Trust me,” so he’d left it to her. After all, Alan had just started selling insurance and he was ambitious, very, very ambitious. He worked from early to late. He joined clubs and attended meetings. He was quite happy when he found out that the most fashionable church in town was within walking distance of the horrible old house that Leslie had persuaded him to purchase.
And it was at church that he found out that people were pleased with him for having the foresight to buy “the old Belville place” and restore it. “Sound invest, that,” some old man said as he clapped Alan on the shoulder. “It’s unusual that a man as young as you would have that much wisdom.” Later the man bought a big policy from Alan. After that, Alan took as much interest in the house as Leslie did. And when Leslie had her hands full with two babies under the age of three, Alan took over supervising the restoration of the house.
At first there had been fights. “It isn’t a museum!” Leslie had said in exasperation. “It’s a home and it should look like one. Joe’s going to ruin that expensive table with his trucks. And Rebecca will draw on that silk wallpaper.”
“Then you’ll just have to keep them under control,” Alan had snapped.
And Leslie had backed down, as she always did at a confrontation. Like her father, she’d rather retreat than fight. Which is why her mother had ruled her childhood home and Alan ruled their home. So Alan had filled the wonderful old house with too many antiques that no one could sit on or even touch. There were three rooms in the house that were kept tightly closed all year, only being opened for cleaning and for Alan’s huge Christmas party
for all his clients.
The kitchen had been the final holdout, but last year Alan had had his way on that room too.
Leslie finished her tea, rinsed out her cup, then looked back at the summerhouse. That was to have been hers. It was to have been her retreat from the world, a place where she could keep up with her dancing, or curl up and read on rainy afternoons.
Now, looking at the building, she smiled. Before she had children, a woman thought of what she wanted to do on rainy afternoons, but afterward, her hours filled with “must” instead of “want.” She must do the laundry, must get the groceries, must pull Rebecca back from the heater.
Somehow, Leslie had lost the summerhouse. Somehow, it had gone from being hers to being “theirs.” She knew exactly when it had started. She had been eight months pregnant and so big she’d had to walk with her hand under her belly to support Rebecca’s constant kicks and punches.
They’d just torn out the living room in the house and there was a leak in the roof. Alan had invited his brother and three college friends over for beer and football but it was raining that day, so there was nowhere for them to sit and watch the game on TV. When Alan had suggested that he set the TV up in the summerhouse for “this one afternoon,” she’d been too grateful for the peace and quiet to protest. She’d been dreading a house full of men and smoke and the smell of beer, so she was glad when he said he’d take the men elsewhere.
On the next weekend, Alan had taken two clients into the summerhouse to discuss new life policies. It made sense, as the living room was still torn up. “We need a place to sit and talk,” he’d said, looking at Leslie as though it were her fault that the roofing materials still hadn’t arrived.
Two weeks after that, Rebecca was born, and for the next year, Leslie hadn’t been able to take a breath. Rebecca was insatiable in her demands for attention from her tired mother. It was three months before Leslie could get herself together enough to get her squalling baby out of her pajamas. By the time Rebecca started walking at ten months, Leslie was pregnant again.
When she was three months pregnant with Joe, Leslie made the trek out to the summerhouse. In the months since Alan had first set up a TV in the place, Leslie had almost forgotten that her retreat still existed. But from the first day, Joe was an easier pregnancy than Rebecca, and Leslie’s mother had started taking her granddaughter on short jaunts about town. “There’s nothing more uninteresting than a nursing baby,” her mother had said in her usual forthright style. “When she starts walking and looking at something besides her mother’s bosom, then I’ll take an interest in her.”
So, on her first afternoon of freedom, for that’s the way it felt, Leslie had made her way out to the summerhouse. Maybe this time, she’d be able to stretch out on the wicker chaise lounge she’d found in an antique shop and read a book.
But when Leslie pushed open the door, her breath stopped. Vaguely, she’d wondered why Alan had used the summerhouse only a few times, then never said anything about it again.
Someone had left the doors open and it had rained in on her furniture. Before she was first pregnant, she’d made the slipcovers for the little couch and the two chairs. She’d made the matching curtains and hung them herself. But now mice were nesting in the stuffing of the couch, and it looked as if a neighboring cat had clawed the arms of the chairs.
Turning away, she felt tears come to her eyes. She didn’t even bother to close the door as she ran back to the house.
Later, she’d tried to have a confrontation with Alan, but he’d expressed such concern that her anger was going to harm the baby, that Leslie had calmed down. “We’ll fix it up after you’ve had the baby,” he said. “I promise. Scout’s honor.” He’d kissed her then and helped her with Rebecca and later, he’d made sweet love to her. But he didn’t fix the summerhouse.
After that, Leslie had been so busy with children and helping Alan establish himself within the community that she wouldn’t have had time to get away even if she’d had a place to go. And as the years followed each other, the summerhouse became a storage shed.