Decades Ch. 01

Doug had a photograph of Grandma and Aunt Doro on the beach, which he had kept on his desk throughout his four years at Columbia. Snapshots of various buddies and girlfriends had come and gone, and for appearance's sake he had occasionally also displayed a picture of his mother when he could stand to; but Grandma and Aunt Doro were there with him throughout the four years. "That's my grandmother and my great aunt," he would explain to anyone who asked. "I lived with them in high school because I wasn't getting along with my mom and my sister, and I think of them as more like my real parents." That photo was now in storage at his mother's place back in New Jersey along with most of his other belongings, and all spring he'd been missing it nearly as much as he missed New York. As he stared dreamily out at the beach, he once again wished he'd brought that photo up to display on his desk – the perfect contrast of past to present in his beloved Pascatawa Beach. As it was, he had only the present to admire out the window in the hot sunshine and cool waves.

No one needed to know what he had learned from his pissed-off mother that day when he was twelve – that "Aunt" Doro was not really his great aunt, that they weren't blood relatives at all. Doug had opted to keep that to himself as long as he did not know for sure about the true nature of her relationship with his grandmother. Grandma had passed while Doug was halfway through high school and he'd never had the nerve to ask Aunt Doro about it, so it was to remain a mystery. But the photograph – taken shortly after the end of World War II when they were both in their twenties – certainly offered its share of clues. Though it was in black and white, both young women seemed to be bursting with radiance through the tired old paper, the color in their cheeks and eyes and clothes as clear as the joy in their faces as they held each other close and posed for the camera. In the background, out of focus but recognizable to anyone who had been there, was Doug's beloved beach strip at Pascatawa. Probably including the exact spot in which he now sat in his air-conditioned office and admired the women out on the beach.

It was Monday. But it was also a week past Memorial Day, which meant summer had finally arrived on Pascatawa Beach, and Doug was happy. Though he had dreaded the feeling of being cooped up in his beachside office while the bathing beauties frolicked on the beach he had so loved as a teenager, Doug was pleasantly surprised at how much he was now enjoying the view from his tiny office. The first-floor window provided a lovely view of the bikini-clad frolics in the waves, complete with air conditioning and no sunburn. And he got paid for it all, which meant each week brought him closer to having the budget he needed to move back to New York to stay. Doug could hardly wait for that. Though he loved Pascatawa – which had provided a refuge for him when living with his mother and sister had spun out of control back in high school – one couldn't go home again and Doug knew it.

Forced to move back up north at the advanced age of twenty-three last winter when the exorbitant New York rents had proven to be too much for his just-out-of-Columbia resume, Doug had swallowed his pride and let Aunt Doro – he still called her that despite knowing the truth, and always would – pull her strings to land him a plum job in marketing for the new high-end resort that was finally opening. Somewhat less reluctantly, he had moved back in with Aunt Doro on the third floor of her mansion three blocks from the beach, known throughout town as "the old school" because decades' worth of locals had been educated there, ending just around the time Doug had been born. Doug had lived there with his grandmother and Aunt Doro while he was in high school: he'd had the run of the entire third floor as Grandma and Aunt Doro had moved to the second floor after the school had closed down. And for all his teenage angst in those days, he now had fond memories of it all.

He had no such memories of the unwelcome news that the resort would be built. For one thing, he had long been counting the birthdays until he would be able to go have a beer at Bob's By the Bay, the lowbrow but swinging bar that had once stood where the five star hotel and restaurant did now. That day had never come, as he had been just eighteen when it had been torn down. For another, Doug had always treasured the idea that Pascatawa had not changed all that much since Grandma and Aunt Doro had moved into the school mansion back in the forties and started teaching there, and now the real world had begun swallowing up his childhood stomping grounds.

But a job was a job. And, he admitted as he took a break from his latest marketing presentation to admire a couple of young women tossing a beach ball around outside, this was proving to be a good one.

"Enjoying the view?" came the vaguely disapproving voice he had come to enjoy so much.

Kelly, the attractive Greek-American gal from Smith who was also stuck at the club for the summer, was a plus as well. A hectoring, teasing pain in the ass, yes, but a plus nonetheless, for their debates were mostly cordial and fun. Doug turned to see her in his office doorway, dressed as usual in her tight black uniform slacks and crisp white blouse. Pleasantly plump with chestnut curls and a crooked smile, she was a relief to chat with and a joy to look at among their rich and snooty clientele. In the first week of their friendship she had tossed out every subtle warning he knew of that they would never be more than friends, but Doug didn't mind much. Having grown up in two otherwise all-female households, he knew his way around platonic relationships with women. But she did have a lovely figure, and Doug had vowed to at least get a look at her curvy body in a swimsuit before the summer was out.

"Yes," Doug admitted with a sheepish grin. "Yes, I definitely am enjoying the view. Chauvinist pig that I am."

"I never actually said you were," she needled him, "Only that I didn't know you weren't. You know that."

Doug laughed, enjoying as usual her good-natured teasing. "Yes, and I never said you were a hypersensitive politically correct brat either."

"Well, I am, after all." Now they were both laughing comfortably. "Ready to come out and do the final walkthrough on the dining room?"

"Perfect time for that," Doug said, standing up. "And hey, sorry about that," he added, pointing out the window.

"It's perfectly okay to look," Kelly said, though she had needled him several times by then about thinking with his dick. "You think I don't check out the guys out there?"

"Hadn't thought of that," Doug admitted. For all his experience with women and interest in them, his knowledge still consisted mostly of what he knew he didn't know. That, in a way, was what made Kelly's occasional feminist ribbing all the more welcome. "I learn something new from you every day."

"Something your Aunt Darlene never taught you?" Kelly shot back, not sure if he was sincere or not.

"Aunt Doro," he corrected her. "Don't get her name wrong, she's a legend in Pascatawa."

"And she's not really your great aunt, is that what you said?"

"That's right," Doug confirmed as he flipped through his clipboard for the dining room checklist. "I found out when I was about twelve, we're not related at all. She and Grandma were just old friends from way back."

"Just friends?" Kelly asked.

"Probably not," Doug said with a conspiratorial grin. "They lived together for fifty years or so before Grandma died, but no one ever said anything about...you know."

"Of course not, back in the bad old days," Kelly said as she made her last-minute checks on the silverware.

"Not again with the 'bad old days'!" Doug grumbled. "You should have seen Pascatawa back in the fifties, the sixties...I've seen pictures and it was gorgeous."

"You and your nostalgia!" Kelly said. "I've only known you a few weeks, and already I always know when you're going to say a thing like that."

"What can I say?" Doug asked, checking off the table placement on his list. "I'm a cynical child of my own generation, maybe. But yeah, I feel like we missed out on the golden era."

"What golden era?" Kelly asked. "Maybe you should ask your Aunt Doro about that. Heck, Doug, I'd love to hear some of her stories about you when you were younger."

"You're welcome to come over for dinner any night you want," Doug suggested, having hoped for just such an opening for at least a week by then. "You'd love Aunt Doro."

"Yo, college boy," broke in a too-familiar voice, and Doug turned to see Mr. Sanborn standing in the kitchen doorway. Doug still barely recognized him in his oxford shirt and black slacks, replacing the tie-dyed shirt and raggedy khakis that had been his trademark all those years before. His gray ponytail was disheveled as ever, but at least he'd given up on the comb-over. "Less reminiscing, more working, huh?"

"Yes sir," Doug managed to say politely. As soon as Mr. Sanborn had returned to the kitchen, Doug grunted "Asshole" under his breath. "Always was. Used to hassle us kids about not being so apathetic back in high school, and he knew nothing about what we believed in!"

"Is it true what they say about his wife?" Kelly asked, just above a whisper.

"Meg? I mean, Mrs. Sanborn, but she always let us call her Meg. She works at the gift shop just across from the lighthouse," Doug told her. "I used to buy gifts there at Christmas and sometimes she slipped me a candy bar for free when he wasn't looking. She's a sweetheart, nothing like him. But I don't know what 'they' say about her."

"Maybe it's only the women who talk about it, then," Kelly mused. "That makes sense, sort of, in a town like this. Rumor is he beats her."

"Aw, Christ," Doug said as a memory flashed before his eyes: Mrs. Sanborn on his last trip to the shop before he graduated from Janice Payne, to buy a t-shirt for his sister. She'd had a black eye, and told Doug it was a mishap with a box of souvenirs falling off the shelf. "Aw, I can't imagine he'd do that," Doug said now. "Yeah, he's a jerk, but he and Meg were all into the peace and love stuff back in the sixties. Guys like that wouldn't beat their wives, not like what you get today."

"There you go again, Doug!" Kelly snapped. "That's not what I've heard about those days. I'll bet your Aunt Doro will tell you that, too."

She was right. "Jimmy Sanborn?" Aunt Doro recalled that evening over dinner. Kelly listened raptly as the older woman unfurled her tale of their hated supervisor. "Yes," she continued crisply, setting her teacup down. "Class of sixty-one, I think, and he was an arrogant little so-and-so even back then. Yes, I'm sure, sixty-one. Complete smarm, that was Jimmy. I'm not surprised he's no fun to work for, not surprised at all."

"And Mrs. Sanborn?" Kelly asked, sounding unsure if she really wanted to know.

"Meg was a year behind him, so class of sixty-two, and I can remember them flirting even then. This kitchen was the school canteen, and they used to sit over in that corner" – she pointed to where Doug had always known the dishwasher to be – "every chance they got. She was full of ideas about getting out there to change the world, very idealistic. I think Jimmy picked that up from her, really. They got married when he got out of the service and ran off to California somewhere. Gone for three or four years, and when they got back they both looked like something the cat dragged in. Didn't know what he'd done to the poor girl, didn't want to know, but she looked more strung out and depressed every time your grandmother and I saw her at the market. Even then she was still talking about sailing away to see the world on her own. We were always after her to do it, but of course she never did."

"Wow, that's sad," Kelly said, at a loss for anything more profound. Turning to Doug, she added, "So you see, it's true. The good old days aren't always what you think."

"Oh heavens, Kelly," Aunt Doro interjected, "Has he been starting in on that nostalgia crap with you too?"

"Aunt Doro!" Doug protested. "What's wrong with admiring the good things about the past?"

"Absolutely nothing, Douglas," Aunt Doro said. "But that's not what you do, dear. You romanticize the past. You think everything was peaches and cream back in the day, and I'm here to tell you it wasn't." Turning to Kelly, she added, "I've been telling him this since he moved up here when he was fourteen – you've got to take the good with the bad in any era, including your own. There are stories I could tell you both...this house is full of ghosts, actually. I've been hoping Doug would explore them a bit more as long as he's stuck here with me again. But I don't wish to bore you with that, dear."

"Ghosts?" Kelly suppressed a laugh, not wanting to offend the old woman. "I'd like to see Doug talk to some of them too!"

"Well, dear, teaching was my life. Doug's grandmother and me, that was all we did for a long, long time, right in this house. We used to say the lifeblood of Pascatawa ran through our home. Right up until they merged the schools in eighty-six. We could have gotten jobs at Payne High then, Grandma and I, but we agreed it just wouldn't be the same. We'd earned our retirement by then anyway. And some of that lifeblood stayed right here. You can still find it if you're curious."

"So you went to Payne High?" Kelly asked Doug.

"Janice Payne High School," Doug confirmed.

"Class of seventy-five," piped up Aunt Doro. "Lovely girl, but awfully wild."

"The first known AIDS victim from this county," Doug explained to Kelly. "Naming the school after her was supposed to scare us into being responsible, I guess. And it worked!"

"That's morbid," Kelly said. "But yeah, I'll bet it worked."

"Definitely a precautionary tale," Aunt Doro said, pouring herself some more tea. "And Doug, there are many more of those to be found if you need more appreciation of why you shouldn't live in the past."

"Your great aunt is really something else!" Kelly told Doug as the pair settled in his third floor lair for wine and weed, once they were done washing the dishes. "So many great stories! Even if she isn't really your great aunt."

"She sure is," Doug agreed, pouring Kelly some wine from his secret stash in the bookcase in the last bedroom down the hall, which had once ostensibly been Aunt Doro's. He had used the same hiding place back in high school, and had picked up his old habit even though Aunt Doro wouldn't have objected to his drinking now that he was of age. He half-expected Aunt Doro wouldn't care about the marijuana either, but of course that stayed hidden as well.

"So how sure are you really that they were lovers?"

"Can't prove it, but I think so," Doug said. "It wasn't something you ever said out loud back in the fifties, especially if you were a teacher of all things. But they probably were."

"Come on!" Kelly said. "Just because a woman didn't want to get married back then?"

"I know, I know," Doug said. "But...well, you know what they say about the fifties being so repressed, and I'm sure some of that was true. Kind of embarrassed I'd forgotten that. I guess feminism didn't really start until the sixties, with Woodstock and everything."

"Later than that," Kelly said. "You'd be surprised."

"Not that again!" Doug took another drag. "Anyway. I had this picture of them, still do have it actually, taken on the beach right near where the resort is now, back in the forties sometime, and you should see the way they're looking at each other." He paused, then turned back to the bookcase that housed the illicit wine. "In fact," he continued, "I found it in this bookcase. Stuck between a couple of books that probably hadn't been moved in decades before I needed a place to hide my booze. That was the summer after Grandma died. I don't think Aunt Doro even knows I ever found it. This was supposed to be her room back when the school was here, but I've never even seen her come in to get anything."

"Cool," Kelly said dreamily, "A romantic mystery. Yeah, okay, it makes sense they'd want to keep it a secret back then," she admitted. "Hey, speaking of secrets, what did she mean about wishing you'd explore the ghosts more?"

"Oh," Doug sighed. "The reason I moved up here in high school was that I wasn't getting along with my mother or my sister. Those two were pretty close, and Dad was gone just like Mom's father had, and I think they were just conditioned to hate men. At least that's how I looked at it at the time. So I guess I did do a lot of whining at Grandma and Aunt Doro back then about how much better life must have been back when this was a school."

"So you're one of those guys who pines for the nuclear, touchy-feely Father Knows Best type family because you never had one," Kelly said knowingly. "I read all about you guys in Sociology 101. Obviously she did something right for you, though, Doug, since you have a pretty good attitude about women from where I stand."

"So I get the politically correct women's college seal of approval?" Doug made sure she saw he was grinning as he said it.

"That's right, we always pat our pet men on the head before we castrate them," Kelly shot back. "You don't think I hate men just because I go to a school that doesn't have them, do you?"

"No," Doug reassured her. "Just that you seem to think you know a lot about men when by definition you don't spend a lot of time with us."

"Men fascinate me," Kelly admitted. "Especially men who were raised only by women. It makes me wonder just how much you'd understand if you tried. Probably more than most."

"Well, don't quiz me on brands of tampons or anything," Doug said. "They were old women, after all."

It took several minutes for their laughter to die down. When things were once again growing serious, Kelly asked, "So, just where would Aunt Doro have us look for these ghosts of hers?"

"In the cellar," Doug said.

"What a cliché, Doug, in a house this big?"

"I know the whole third floor like the back of my hand," Doug explained. "Remember, I lived on this floor in high school. I only slept in the one room, but I used to come in all the others all the time, to study. Whenever one room got too boring, I'd go to the next. The second floor, that's Aunt Doro's lair. No one else has been there since Grandma died, so she wouldn't tell us to look for anything there. And the first floor, that was totally redone when they closed the school down, that's why it doesn't look anything like a school."

"Which leaves the cellar," Kelly mused.

"Yes, and there's a room down there that I've never set foot in. Grandma and Aunt Doro wouldn't allow us kids anywhere near it, so even when I was older I stayed away just out of habit. My sister got in there once when I was really young, and that didn't go well. They were furious at her, and she would never talk about it afterward."

"Sounds dangerous," Kelly added. "I love it!" She stood up. "I know you're going to drag me down there to look at this door, Doug."

Doug laughed. "Yeah, who could resist?"

They could hear Aunt Doro's television down the hall as they passed the second floor landing, but she either didn't hear them or didn't care what they were up to. The first floor was dark now, and the cellar door creaked as loudly as Doug always remembered. He flipped on the light and gingerly they walked down the wooden steps. "It's over here on the right, he said as their feet touched the safety of the cement floor. "Behind these bookshelves." Kelly was greeted with decades worth of textbooks piled on the shelves along the wall, and she longed to flip through a few to see the lessons of yesteryear. But there was a mystery to unravel first.