Tyler was easy to talk to. I wouldn’t call our conversation scintillating, but hey, did I need a summer fling to have in-depth conversational skills? I had friends for those. Tyler was funny, and interested, and here. He made me laugh. He made everyone laugh. Soon we had a whole group gathered, laughing and listening as Tyler told one outrageous story after another.
It felt good to have a guy pay attention to me. For his hand to occasionally touch mine. For his eyes to linger on me.
Noah didn’t look over at us again.
I had fun anyway. The other kids weren’t so bad once they weren’t talking about people they knew and gossip I didn’t. A conversation about blockbusters fueled us for half an hour; I brought up the three-cheese debate from earlier this summer, which went over equally well here.
Yet a slow anger simmered within me as the day wore on. Seriously, Noah wasn’t going to talk to me at all? He had invited me. It was rude to invite someone somewhere and ignore them.
By the time we headed back home, late in the afternoon, I was thoroughly pissed off. I nursed a rosé as we sailed across the waters, keeping my gaze fixed on Tyler as he spun story after story. (Rosé was not as good as rum-and-coke, but better than beer.) As soon as we docked, I hopped out of the boat, planning to storm home and sulk.
Except Noah managed to be right in my path. “Hey.”
“Um, hi. Bye, I guess, I’m headed home.” I navigated around him, avoiding his gaze, because I didn’t want him to see the anger in my own.
“Want to get dinner?”
I looked up at him through narrowed eyes. “What?”
“I’m thinking sandwiches from Provisions.”
Tyler climbed off the boat and strolled over. “I could use something to eat.”
Noah transferred his gaze to Tyler, and his expression became distinctly unfriendly. “We’re going over some family stuff.”
“You’re related?” Tyler looked back and forth.
Noah blinked, looked at me, then back at Tyler. “Our grandparents were friends.”
“Ah.”
“Come on,” Noah said to me, picking up my beach bag. “Let’s go.”
For one recalcitrant moment, I considered digging in my heels and refusing. Instead, I sent Tyler a contrite smile. “See you later.”
“Yeah, you too.”
I caught up with Noah, and this time I didn’t bother hiding my irritation. “I didn’t say I’d get dinner with you.”
“What?” He shot me a distracted frown.
“Dinner. I didn’t agree. You just assumed I would.”
He stopped. “Do you not want to get dinner with me?”
I glared at him. No, I almost said, but it turned out, irritated as I was, all I really wanted to do was spend time with Noah Barbanel. “Fine. Let’s go.”
* * *
We picked up food at Provisions, a sandwich shop on the wharf, before hopping in Noah’s car and heading to the lighthouse at Sankaty Head. “They moved it back from the cliffs years ago,” Noah said as we parked and climbed out of the car. “Houses kept falling off the edge.”
I regarded the fence edging the windswept cliff with newfound appreciation. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. The island loses something like three feet a year from erosion.”
“And houses have fallen off?”
“Not great, I know.”
“You seem alarmingly unafraid.”
He laughed, and I realized how much I liked his laughter, how much a single note of appreciation from him could warm my chest. I looked at the lighthouse to distract myself because I was still mad. “Can you climb it?”
“They open it to the public twice a year, I think. I went in a couple times as a kid.”
Wind whipped at us as we crossed the grasses. Noah had brought a flannel picnic blanket from the back of his car, which we laid down at the top of the dune. Behind us, the land stretched in wide, empty plains. Before us, the cliff crumbled away.
When I’d first came to Nantucket, I’d thought it would be all boat shoes and curated wealth. And in town, I could forget how wild nature could be, since humans had shaped the land into something tame. But here, it was impossible not to remember. The wind seared the land, flaying the grass flat and driving whitecaps across the sea and filling my lungs with sharp, crisp air. Before us, a gull glided low on the horizon. You could feel removed from the rest of the world on Nantucket, lifted out of time and space and deposited in another life.
I wondered if my grandmother had ever stood by this lighthouse and gazed out at the waters. Had she thought of how the next land out from here was war-torn Europe? Had she wondered about her parents, the way sailors’ wives wondered about their husbands? “It’s funny,” I said as we settled on the blanket, “how the sea can sometimes be so beautiful and sometimes so terribly, terribly sad. Or I guess it’s always beautiful, whether it’s happy or sad.”
Noah unwrapped his sandwich. “Quien no sabe de mar, no sabe de mal.”
He who knows nothing of the sea, knows nothing of suffering.
“Do you think you know something about suffering?”
“Not real suffering.” He met my gaze. “But I think everyone knows what it’s like to feel sad or alone.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees. “The human condition and all that?”
“And I think when you’re looking at something like the sea—at anything beautiful, really—you can feel your emotions more than usual. Like beauty is a magnifying glass.”
I glanced over at him, surprised. “Noah Barbanel. You really are a romantic.”
His cheeks heightened in color. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not,” I said hurriedly, and because it was important he knew I meant it, I touched his arm, though it made my heartbeat ramp up dangerously. “I’m really not.”
He craned his head back. “I wanted to show you Coatue . . . but I think I messed up.”
I kept my expression serene, afraid sharing any emotion would make him clam up. “Messed up?”
“Well . . . did you have fun today?”
I tilted my head. “Sure. I sort of thought we’d get a chance to hang out, though.”
“Right.” He nodded. “I did, too. I meant for us to. I sort of—so.” He stopped and flushed. “There’s a project on Coatue where you use ground-penetrating radar to look at what’s under the surface, at low-growing trees and underground roots—I volunteered on it last summer, and I thought I’d show it to you, but . . .”
“But what?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, looking at the water, and a small, self-deprecating smile curved his mouth. “It seemed dumb once we were there.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb.” He gave me a skeptical look, and I shook my head vigorously. “I don’t! I wish you had.”
“Well.” He shrugged, though he looked a little happier. “It didn’t seem to fit the day’s vibe. Besides—you seemed busy.”
I stilled. “Excuse me?”
“You were talking with Tyler.” His tone was utterly inoffensive, and yet my hackles rose. I recognized his blank, neutral voice. It wasn’t one he used when he was pleased.
I concentrated on unwrapping my sandwich. “Yeah, because I didn’t know anyone else.”
“Really.”
“And he was friendly.”
“Hm.”
I took a large bite of mozzarella and pesto and tomato and chewed aggressively. “Do you not like him?”
“I just don’t think he’s very smart.”
Ouch. “Well, at least he was inclusive.”
He looked at me sharply. “The others weren’t?”
“They were fine. They just weren’t . . . my people, I guess. And I also sort of thought—it might be just the two of us sailing.”
“Ah.”
I glanced over at him, but his expression was unreadable. He kept his gaze ahead. “So—you wanted it to just be the two of us?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
He looked at me, and I looked at him, and I was scared and nervous and uncertain. Maybe both of us were, hedging our languages in maybes and guesses and buts. So because I was an idiot incapable of letting moments happen, I asked, “Are you going to eat your pickle?”
“What?” He let out a burst of laughter. “No. It’s yours.”
“Thanks.”
He leaned back on his elbows and considered me. “I thought we could go talk to the rabbi.”
I almost choked on the pickle. “What?”
“As our next step. You want to know about your grandmother, right? I think talking to the rabbi is a good idea.”
“I didn’t even know Nantucket had a rabbi.”
“Sort of. During the summer, she comes each Friday. What do you think?”
I thought Noah Barbanel making a plan to help me made me want to swoon. “I did look up if there was a Jewish community before I came, and the congregation was founded in the 1980s, so long after my grandma would have been here.”
“True. But even so, the rabbi might know something we don’t. She might have talked to someone, or know someone we should talk to, or have access to records we haven’t even thought about. In any case, it can’t hurt, right?”
“Good point.” And it would give me more reasons to hang out with Noah. “I’m in.”
Fifteen
I couldn’t recall when the dementia arrived for certain. No distinct line existed in my memory, only moments before and after. Before, O’ma repeated the same stories every time we saw her, about working in New York, about buying lunch at a cafeteria for five cents and sitting on the steps of Trinity Church to eat it. She couldn’t hear out of her right ear, and not well from her left, so if you wanted to talk, you had to lean close. Often, she refused to answer questions. “No, no,” she’d say, waving a skeletal hand covered in paper-thin skin. “Don’t ask me that.”
After, she sat in her armchair in the nursing home. She had a hard time remembering us, but she remembered her routine: hair blown out once a week, nails professionally done, Chanel No. 5 applied. She could still do her lipstick in a car without a mirror. In the nursing home, she’d hung professional portraits of my mom and aunts from when they were little. Mom was maybe eight in hers and glowed with happiness. “Do you know who these are?” O’ma would grip my hand with her frail one. “These are my children.”
Those were the sweet moments. The less sweet were when she didn’t recognize us, when she asked where O’pa was over and over, when Mom shouted, “He’s dead, Mom. He died fifteen years ago!” and O’ma stared at her with her pursed lips and said, “Who are you?”
My parents were terrified of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Everything was a sign. If Dad forgot a word, he spent thirty minutes with a storm cloud embedded in his brow. If Mom put a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the fridge instead of the freezer, it was as good as a professional diagnosis.
Memory was a funny thing. Some people refused to disclose the past; some people recalled the same event differently; some people couldn’t remember anything. Maybe this was why I wanted to study history: if only we could record everything, we wouldn’t forget our pasts, and maybe we wouldn’t be doomed to repeat them. We could turn over the stones of the past even if our own memories failed us, or if our family members shut their mouths.
But how did we record everything accurately? How did we make sure to pass the knowledge from one generation to the next?
How did we decide what deserved to be remembered, and what forgotten?
* * *
“Hey there, bookstore girl.”
I froze on the step stool, my arms filled with sharp-edged children’s books. I’d been arranging and rearranging these shelves for five minutes in order to fit a dozen copies of this title in a face-out. Now I carefully turned on the top of the stool. “Tyler! Hi.”
He grinned up at me. “Need some help?”
“Actually, can you hold these for a second?” I spilled the books into his arms and jumped down. “I’ve been trying to shelve them for ages, but I think I’m going to have to reconfigure three other shelves before it works.”
“Oh.”
Right. Not everyone found the organization of bookshelves enthralling. I took the books back, placing them on the cart where they could wait until I’d made room. “What’s up?”
“Doing some gift shopping. It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow. I’m getting her a book on her list.”
“What a good son. What is it?”
“The new Karin Slaughter. Unless you have other suggestions?”
“You’ve asked my favorite question. What does she like?”
We chattered for a few minutes about books and his mom. Then I rang him up for the new Slaughter and a thriller by a debut author both Maggie and Liz had raved about. When I handed him his bag, his fingers brushed mine, and I was pretty sure it was on purpose.
“When are you done?” he asked. “Want to grab dinner?”
I blinked.
Oh my god. Tyler was asking me out. The hot rich kid was asking out the bookish girl. Even better, I looked great today. (Modesty has a place, but not in my head.) Noah and I planned to meet the rabbi later, so I’d picked out a particularly nice blue dress and added silver jewelry, because even if we weren’t really going to temple, it sort of felt like we were. I’d tamed my flyaway hair with a dime of product and finagled a French twist to keep it off my neck. “Tonight I’m busy, but maybe next week?”
“Sure. What are you doing Monday?”
“Having dinner with you,” I said, then stifled a wince because rom-com phrases sounded ridiculous in real life.
But it worked, because Tyler grinned. “Give me your phone. I’ll put in my number.”
I watched, rapt, as he followed through. As he handed my phone back, the door bells chimed. Tyler caught sight of the newcomer first. His grin froze for a moment, then widened. “Hey, man.”
Oh no.
I turned to find Noah standing inside the shop’s door. Apparently, the punishment for using a rom-com phrase was dealing with situational awkwardness. Noah stared at us, surprise clear on his face, and I stared back. He’d also dressed up, in a blue button-down, and his hair was slightly damp, as though he’d recently showered. He managed a curt nod. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I tried to push up my glasses, though of course today I wore contacts. “You’re early.”
He didn’t deign to respond, which, fair.
“How’s it going?” Tyler asked him.
Noah’s gaze passed over him, cool and expressionless. “Good.”
Cooool, I loved this. “I’ll let Maggie know I’m leaving and we can go.” I turned to Tyler. “See you later.”
He held my eyes a bit too long. “See you Monday.”
I tried for a smile, which might have come out more like a grimace, then darted away.
When I came back out, Tyler had left, and Noah lounged against one of the armchairs, paging through a Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook. Because, sure. Why not. I approached him with my bag slung over my shoulder, weirdly nervous after the scene with Tyler. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” He put the book down and gave me his full attention. “You look nice.”
A compliment. On my appearance. I was dead. “Thank you.”
“I like your earrings.”
I almost fell over, and I wasn’t even moving. Good lord. Was it so easy to make me swoon, a boy complimenting my earrings?
Yes. Yes, it was.
We walked outside, into the glaringly bright day. In unison, we put on our sunglasses. It was hot, but not horrifically so, just blazingly bright, sun reflecting off every surface. “Want to get ice cr
eam first?” Noah said. “We have some time before meeting the rabbi.”
“Let’s.”
We made our way toward Jack and Charlie’s on Straight Wharf, a gray-slated creamery with a white fence enclosing their redbrick patio. Seagulls hopped about, seducing crumbs from weak-willed tourists. Noah ordered watermelon sorbet, and I ordered a S’mores Brownie Batter sundae, because you only live once.
“That wasn’t blandishment, was it?” I asked as we settled at the small wooden table we’d managed to snag from a family moving out. You had to be a like a vulture to get a seat sometimes. “You didn’t have some secret motive for liking my earrings?”
God, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I let a nice thing be a nice thing?
“Blandishment?”
“Oh.” Ergh. Sometimes I swallowed uncommon words before they tripped off my tongue (unnecessary, adults had told me, just be yourself—but easy for them to say and less easy for me to believe). Still, I’d never felt the need to censor myself around Noah. “It means—”
“I know what it means. I was impressed. Great SAT word.”
“Thanks.” Now I beamed at him. “I got an 800 on the reading comp portion.”
He snorted a laugh. “You worked your score in very subtly.”
“You should feel lucky I’m comfortable enough with you not to pretend false modesty.”
“False modesty would have been if your score came up and you pretended to be humble. This was straight-up bragging.”
“True.” I grinned and crafted a perfectly proportioned spoonful of ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream. “It is impressive though, isn’t it?”
“Not as impressive as my ability to tie a cherry’s stem into a knot.”
I licked some stubborn fudge from my spoon. “That’s still just hearsay.”
“Oh. Shots fired.” He got up and headed to the ice cream counter. When he returned, he dangled a bright red cherry from its stem. “Prepare to be blown away.” He popped the whole thing in his mouth, and I watched in stunned fascination as his cheeks moved.
The Summer of Lost Letters Page 17