The Summer Cottage by Susan Kietzman

Pammy’s athletic failings; she thought her middle daughter simply didn’t try hard enough. And Claire, who had put all the effort she could muster into swimming for more than ten years, had little tolerance for a daughter who gave up before she’d warmed up. It had been this way with Pammy since she was very little. Claire had tossed her into Long Island Sound when she was two, like she had with Thomas and Charlotte, and Pammy was the first Thompson child to sink. “Kick!” Claire had screamed, using the word she had taught Pammy for moving her legs up and down . “Pump your legs!” she had called, running after Pammy, who was wobbling down the street on the tiny two-wheeler her older siblings had both learned to ride when they were four years old. Two bloody knees and two scraped elbows later, John had insisted that Pammy be allowed to ride her own bike, with its pink streamers jutting out of the handles, banana seat, and training wheels.
    “If you coddle her,” Claire said in bed that night, after John had cleaned his daughter’s wounds and covered them with plastic bandages, “she will never succeed.”
    “Claire, she’s five,” said John, turning out the lamp on the bedside table.
    “But then she’ll be six, and ten, and fourteen, and, then you’ll be telling me that ‘she’s just fourteen.’ ”
    “I think she’ll be riding a two-wheeler at fourteen.”
    “I know you think it’s a big joke,” said Claire, rolling on to her side to face her husband. “But she has got to learn about effort and the fact that it’s the key factor to success. Sure, some people are born with abilities and inclinations, but those who put in the effort are the ones who rise to the top.”
    “Not everyone needs to be at the top, Claire.” John put his arm over his wife’s shoulder.
    “Would you rather have her at the bottom?”
    “Of course not. But if you push too hard and she still doesn’t live up to your expectations, she will feel like she’s at the bottom no matter where on the spectrum she sits.”
    “Fine,” said Claire, who could see she was getting nowhere and was tired of the discussion.
    But it wasn’t fine. And Claire continued to push and coax. It wasn’t until several years after Helen was born that Claire eased up on Pammy. This was not because her husband’s gentle lectures were finally getting through, or because Pammy finally upped the amount of effort she put into various athletic activities that her mother had encouraged her to try. No, it was because Helen was a natural athlete. And Claire shifted her attention from a daughter who couldn’t hit a Wiffle ball with a plank of wood to one who could do it every time. Seeking her mother’s shifted attention, Pammy did try harder for a while—and Claire was pleased with her attempts. But Pammy’s results were never as good as Helen’s, who could ride a two-wheeler before her fourth birthday, who ran faster than everyone in her elementary school, including the boys, who won the town tennis tournament the summer she first picked up a racket.
    As soon as darkness descended from the sky and closed in the yard, John called the game. The Poopheads won, even though Thomas had earned a number of outs for his team by booting the ball over the road, just, as he said, so everyone knew he could. Claire picked up the bases, as she always did, and walked them to the garage with her husband, who carried the ball. Helen and Pammy headed for the back door and their mother’s homemade brownies in the kitchen. Thomas said his good-byes and then walked down the street to the duck pond to meet his friend Eddie. Charlotte jogged through the cottage and up the stairs to her room, where she touched up her makeup for her date with Rick. She had her period still—thus the name Tampons for her kickball team—so he would have to be content with just feeling her up. Sometimes she liked that better anyway. She had been more interested in American Graffiti the