Noah’s great-grandmother. Edward’s mother. I hadn’t thought about her before, but she’d raised O’ma, hadn’t she? She’d taken her in along with her own children. I studied the picture. Did they look like mother and daughter? Had they felt like mother and daughter?
We kept turning pages, pausing every time we found one of O’ma so I could record it on my phone. Most of the photos in the scrapbook were family shots, meals or gatherings on the beach. Sometimes I caught half a profile of O’ma, or her face in the background. She didn’t show up often, but she showed up consistently.
I wished I knew what the dynamic had been like. Had she felt like one of the family, or not at all? Surely if she’d liked living with the Barbanels, she would have talked about them. If she’d seen Noah’s great-grandmother as a mother figure, how could she not have mentioned her?
Here she was again, older this time, sitting on a porch chair with her lips pursed flirtatiously. Maybe Edward had taken the photo. I glanced at Noah, struck by parallel of us sitting here decades after our grandparents. History repeats itself, the saying went, but why? Were humans so predictable in our reactions and emotions? Were some patterns easier to fall into than others? Why were we so bad at learning from the past?
I looked back at the picture, then sucked in a breath. “Look at this!”
Noah leaned ever closer to me. “What?”
“She’s wearing the necklace.” It rested high on her clavicle, the central pendant—a giant, clear sparkler—resting in the hollow of her neck. Smaller rectangle pendants connected with each other to form the band. It was vaguely art deco and gorgeous, glitzy and glittering.
“So?”
“I told you. My grandmother had a necklace, and your grandfather refused to give it back.”
He removed his gaze from the photo to me. “What do you mean ‘refused’?”
Oops. We’d been getting along so well, I’d forgotten we were on different sides. “Well—she asked for it back, and he wouldn’t give it.”
“Why did she think she should get it?”
“What?” I stared at him. “It was her necklace.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you mean how do I know? Why else would she ask for it back?”
“Why wouldn’t he give it to her if it was hers?”
“That’s my question.”
“And you haven’t answered it. He probably had a good reason.”
“Or maybe he was just being a jerk.”
We glared at each other.
He finally sighed. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Are you sure they weren’t basically siblings?”
“God, Noah. Read the freaking letters.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my photos of the letters until I found the right one. I cleared my throat.
“‘Sometimes I feel as though I’m grasping for something bigger than myself. Some people find it in religion and others in war, but for me it is you, it is this all-encompassing feeling you stir in me. You are bright and the world blurred, sharp and the world soft.’”
I looked back up to see Noah looking at me with wide, surprised eyes. “‘For me it is you,’” I repeated. “Not exactly sibling feels.”
He swallowed. “No.”
We sat there in silence.
“Actually, maybe—”
I sat up, glaring at him. “‘I wish I could see you surrounded by roses, naked and drenched in moonlight.’”
He stared at me. Then his gaze dipped to my lips.
Oh. I probably should have given the context. Red flags scored my cheeks. “It’s from one of the letters.”
“Mm.” His gaze stayed on my mouth.
“I didn’t—” My tongue darted out to lick my lips without permission, and when I realized I’d done so, I sat as straight as possible. It was very hard to breathe. “I didn’t mean—I don’t—”
“Don’t worry, Schoenberg, I get it.” He looked away, then back, wryly amused. “I can’t decide if I’m turned on or grossed out.”
I started giggling, relieved at the break in the tension. “Right?” I scrolled down to another. “They’re our grandparents. It’s terrible!”
“All right.” He braced himself like a man going to war. “Send me the letters.”
“So brave of you.” I texted him a link to the album.
Stretching out on my stomach, I flipped through earlier scrapbooks as Noah looked through the letters. A little girl looked back at me, around four or five, with short hair, no smile, and a heavy coat. I wouldn’t have recognized her as O’ma if I hadn’t slowly gone back in time, seeing her at fourteen, then ten, then eight. But I recognized her now, the shape of her eyes, the curve of her chin. If I’d learned nothing else, I’d learned what she’d looked like.
Every so often Noah would read a portion of the letters aloud. “‘Every time I touch a rose I’m reminded of your skin, soft as the flower, and I stroke the crimson petals between my fingers’—” He broke off, making a strangled noise in his throat. His cheeks turned red, his eyes bright. “My grandfather wrote this.”
“Don’t look at me!” I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, hotly aware of Noah’s gaze. “They were to my grandmother! Why are you reading them out loud?”
“I don’t know!”
We lay there in silence a minute.
“Okay, we have to change the subject,” I finally said. “I’m just thinking about rose petals now.”
He started laughing, and I started laughing, and we curled up on the floor, laughing hysterically.
“Okay, but what happened?” he said, once we’d recovered. “If they were in love, why didn’t they stay together?”
“What do you mean what happened? It didn’t work out.” I thought back to the letters. Don’t do anything crazy. “I’m pretty sure she dumped him.”
He looked stunned. “She dumped him?”
“Hey.” His surprise struck me as slightly insulting. “Yeah, she turned him down. He begged her to come back.”
He scowled. “I don’t believe it.”
I scowled back. “Read the last letters, then.”
He did, his expression fading to a confused frown. “Why didn’t she come back?”
“I don’t know, she probably realized he’d also been seeing some other girl for several years and 1950s morality got to her.”
“Why was he even dating my grandmother, though? If he was so in love with yours?”
“I mean.” I shrugged. I’d done my research on Helen Barbanel (née Danziger, of Danziger Media). In the wedding photo I’d found online in the New York Times archive, she’d looked rich and beautiful, and the article had agreed, as had all the subsequent mentions of her I’d been able to dredge up. “My grandmother was an orphan girl from Germany. Yours was super wealthy and from high society. Checks out.”
“No. It doesn’t.” He frowned again. “Doesn’t this bother you? They were in love, and they didn’t stay together.”
Not really. At least, it didn’t surprise me, not the way it seemed to surprise him. I tilted my head. “Why, Noah. Are you a romantic?”
His face closed. “You think I’m being stupid.”
“No. I think it’s . . . nice.”
“Nice.” He laughed scornfully and pushed his hand through his hair. “Cool.”
I hadn’t been using nice as a pejorative. I meant it. “Yeah. I do think it’s nice. I don’t think it’s realistic to believe people stay together simply because they love each other, but I think—well, I wish I could believe it. I think it’s really nice.”
Our eyes held. Be bold, I could almost hear Niko saying. Get flung, Stella had said. A shiver went down my back. History repeats itself.
A voice sounded down the hall. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Noah froze. “Oh, shit.”
“Who is
that?”
“My mom.” He started shoving the scrapbooks back.
“I thought you said no one would care if we were here,” I hissed.
“I exaggerated. Come on.”
We slipped out of the study and down the hall. If this boy snuck me out the back like a servant, I was going to—
He led me into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom.”
Oh no. I would have vastly preferred to be treated like a servant.
A woman in sleek, chic clothing looked up from where she unpacked grocery bags. Surprise crossed her face. “I didn’t realize you were home, honey.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “This is, uh, Abigail.”
“Oh, Abigail!” She said my name with too much recognition. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Had the great-uncle mentioned me? As the girl locked away with Noah during the party? How awkward.
“What are you two up to?”
“We’re just hanging out,” Noah said. “I thought you had tea at the yacht club?”
“It was boring. I left as soon as I could.” She smiled at me. “Are you staying for brunch? I’m making shakshuka.”
Noah and I exchanged startled glances. Brunch! With a mom! She seemed lovely, but hard pass. Also, it was one o’clock—was it still appropriate to call the meal brunch? “Thanks so much, but I actually have work.”
“Oh, where are you working?”
“The Prose Garden.”
“I love it there. Are you here for the summer, then?”
“Yeah.” Just here to dig into your family history, yup.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you. Maybe you can stay and eat another time.”
“Okay, Mom.” Noah said. “We should get going.”
She gave a light laugh. “I’m always embarrassing him.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Barbanel.”
Noah steered us outside. A bird twittered somewhere above us. “Your mom seems nice.”
“She is.”
“Was it weird we met?”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt like I was lying to her. Since I’m trying to dig into her family past, et cetera. Or her in-laws’ past, I guess.”
“You don’t feel bad making me help you.”
“It’s different with adults. And I felt like I was talking to her under false pretenses.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. She thinks we’re friends.”
“Right. False pretenses, got it.” His voice was unexpectedly cold. “I’ll call you an Uber.”
Wait. Had I offended him? “I can call my own Uber. Are you mad?”
“About what?” He pulled out his phone and stared at it with the abject coolness of someone definitely not doing anything on their phone.
“I wouldn’t think you’d want to be friends.”
He stopped swiping but didn’t look up. “Excuse me?”
“You know. You’re—” Rich and hot. “We’re only spending time together because you don’t feel like you have a choice. I’m forcing you to talk to me.”
“Abigail. Do you really think you could force me to spend time with you if I wasn’t okay with it?”
“. . . Yes?”
“Your manipulation skills aren’t as impressive as you think they are.”
“Oh.” I looked at my orange-pink toenails peeking out from beneath white sandal straps. “So you want to spend time with me?”
He just looked at me.
Okay. Right. Maybe we weren’t friends after all. I flushed all over and tried to switch into professional mode. “Should we get together this weekend and look at the rest of the scrapbooks?” Oh no. Did I sound overly eager? “Or it’s fine if you’re busy. I’m busy. Saturday might not even be good. I might still be recovering from Friday.”
“What’s Friday?”
“I’m going to some beach party. With my roommate.” Oh god, I was pathetic. Screaming subtext of Look at me, I’m popular never sounded convincing. “On Nobadeer Beach.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Why? What?”
“Nothing. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
Ten
“Mom. Mom, you have to tilt the camera more, I can only see your forehead.”
“What do you want to see me for?” The image rocked as Mom moved her computer. This was probably as close to seasick as I’d ever actually get.
“You should be able to see your face in the corner. Make sure you’re centered, okay?”
She tilted the screen so the camera focused on her. I could tell she’d found her image when she finger-brushed her hair. Even though I could only see her face against the white square of the living room wall, I knew she was curled up under our blue fleece blanket, a cup of tea resting on one of our Klimt coasters.
I missed her. Zoom was almost as good as talking in person, but it wasn’t the same as cuddling next to her on the couch.
“I found the family O’ma lived with,” I said, after Dad and Dave had both come by, and we’d caught up on everything else.
“What?”
“Yeah. This family, the Barbanels, the one with the boy who wrote her letters, is actually the one she was placed with when she came here.”
“No, she was with a New York family.”
“I know, and they lived there, but they’re originally from Nantucket and they spent their summers here.”
Mom blinked. “She was placed with the Barbanels? Have you talked to them?”
“Um, yeah.” I pushed my glasses higher on my nose. “There’s a boy my age and we’re sort of . . .” Acquaintances? “. . . friendly.”
Mom’s face transformed. God forbid I solve a huge gap in O’ma’s history; the instant an eligible young man was mentioned, everything else vanished. Especially an eligible young Jewish man. “Is he cute?”
“Mom.”
“Is he? How is that a bad question?”
“He’s fine, I don’t know.” Stunningly gorgeous. “He’s a person, he looks like a person.”
“So he’s not cute?”
“No, he is cute, okay?” I couldn’t say a single thing without Mom mining it a hundred layers deep. “You’re missing the whole point about O’ma.”
She frowned. “Why are you always so reluctant to talk about boys?”
“Probably because you raised me in puritanical Massachusetts.”
She sighed. If I ever wrote a memoir, it would be called Sighs from My Mother and would be a catalog of all the times I disappointed her. “I probably didn’t make relationships seem natural enough growing up, and now I’ve given you these impediments.”
“Oh my god, Mom, it’s fine. You did fine. I’m fine. Okay?” Also astonishing: the speed with which I could go from missing Mom to being fully irritated. “He’s very cute, he has dark curly hair, he’s going to Harvard next year. Are you happy?” Sometimes I felt like a scientist feeding a mouse enough breadcrumbs to keep it alive but no more. “I should go.”
“Are you mad? Don’t hang up on me mad.”
“I’m not mad.” Just severely aggravated. “I’m going to a beach party and I need to get dressed.”
“A beach party!” She practically wiggled in excitement before suddenly and expectedly transitioning into concerned-mom mode. “Don’t go swimming. It’ll be dark and there are sharks.”
The amount I’d heard about sharks since deciding to come to Nantucket. “Mom, you’ve warned me about the sharks approximately fifty billion times, I’ll be fine.”
“And don’t drink and drive!”
“No one drives. There are Ubers.”
“Don’t get in an Uber by yourself! Sharon told me—”
“I know, you’ve told me Sharon’s story be
fore. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with Jane.”
“Good. I looove you.”
I half sighed, half laughed. “I love you, too.”
* * *
The day had been overwhelmingly hot: so hot your face broke into a sweat after thirty seconds in the sun, and breathing in the thick air hadn’t felt substantially different from eating soup. But now, at eleven, the temperature had dropped to the high seventies, and a warm breeze stirred the humidity. The night was lazy and long; a fat moon hung in the dark sky. Occasionally, the low hoot of an owl trailed through the air as Jane and I headed to the beach.
Stella had lent me a faux-leather mini skirt which clung to my butt, and I’d paired it with a green top with a deep keyhole. My body and I were on pretty good terms, but I’d always downplayed my chest: when you developed cleavage at twelve and everyone in seventh grade felt comfortable commenting on (and occasionally feeling) it, it discouraged display. But the kids who’d made fun of me weren’t here, and no one knew I didn’t dress like this all the time. Be bold.
I’d felt a little self-conscious about the tight skirt and the makeup I’d put on, but it faded when we joined the other people on the beach. For once, I felt like I fit in among the pretty people, and maybe it was a shallow, stupid thought, but sometimes relaxing in the shallow end was way more fun than treading water.
“Beer or something else?” Jane eyed the PBR floating around critically.
I still couldn’t get into beer. “Something else.”
“Same.” We wound toward a firepit surrounded by kids I vaguely recognized, casually saying hi before stopping at a blanket with two-liter sodas and bottles half-filled with liquor. “Here we go!” Jane handed me a red Solo cup and added soda, then topped it off with a splash from a large jug. “Rum and coke. Easy to drink.”
Rum. Drink of pirates. I could be a pirate, right?
I took a sip. It had a spiced kick and reminded me of the Fireball shots we’d done before skinny-dipping. Definitely better than the beer.
We squeezed back out of the center and Jane looped her arm through mine. “Okay, back to this convo. Did Noah say ‘Maybe I’ll see you there’ like maybe I’ll see you there or maybe I’ll see you there?”
The Summer of Lost Letters Page 10