by Jane Green
“What kind of difficult?”
Julia checks that no one is coming into the room. “Her mother was a big social climber. Huge. I’m not supposed to know this, but she was totally from the wrong side of the tracks. She thought my dad had fortunes, didn’t realize it was all tied up in trusts, and I guess by the time she discovered she wasn’t going to be living a life of luxury with homes on Nantucket and in Boston and on St. Barth’s, it was time to leave.”
“She sounds ruthless. Ellie was a baby, you said?”
“Yes. And the mother, Lily, was on a mission to find another wealthy husband. She found one almost immediately, so Ellie was whisked into this life of luxury, but I know deep down she’s terrified people might discover she doesn’t actually deserve it.”
“It sounds like the dream life.”
“Ellie got lavished with everything she wanted, except love and attention. Except when she was here. Lily’s now on her fifth husband. Every time she gets married she focuses all her attention on the man, nothing on her child, or the children that came after Ellie. Ellie always used to say when she was with her mom she felt unwanted. Pretty much the only place she felt safe, and loved, was here with my dad.”
I think about my own childhood. “I can definitely relate to the feeling unwanted,” I say.
“I’m sorry. The awful thing is the older she gets, the more like her mom she is. I mean, not here so much. When she’s here she’s usually able to let go of the superficial shit. My dad would give her such a hard time if she turned up filled with airs and graces, but she’s married to a banker, and they have this huge life with a huge house in New York, and, like Lily, it’s all about seeing and being seen at the right functions. She has a closet that, I’m not kidding, is bigger than my bedroom here.”
I turn and look at the kitchen, this house that she is staying in for the summer, that she stays in every summer, and I know that even though every fiber in my body is recoiling at what I’m hearing about Ellie, I also know she can’t be all bad, not if she stays here.
This house is cozy, and worn, and comfortable. The kitchen hasn’t been redone in at least thirty years. The table is scrubbed with years of use; cookbooks fill the shelves on either side of the range, and not one looks like it was printed after 1984.
This is not a house that a precious princess would stay in unless she has a very different side.
“Yet she loves it here,” I say, turning back to Julia and taking a plate.
“She does. Which is bizarre because she’s never walked into a hotel room without complaining and asking for an upgrade. Let me tell you, it’s Four Seasons all the way for her. But that’s also her insecurity. Strip away the armor and she’s incredibly loyal. And strong. And a doer. She never talks about doing stuff, she just gets it done.”
“That’s good to hear. I have to be honest, she’s so pretty it completely intimidates me. And she’s been kind of … cool with me.”
“That’s Ellie. She always takes time to trust people. But once she’s won over, she’s yours for life. And it’s worth it.”
“Good to know.” I smile at her, wondering how on earth I am ever going to manage to win Ellie over, because right now it doesn’t seem like she trusts me at all.
Aidan walks in, brandishing a bottle of whiskey. “Who’ll crack open this bottle with me? Julia? Cat?”
Julia makes a face. “I hate whiskey.”
“I’m fine,” I say, because the truth is I have never particularly liked whisky either. “Although if you were talking vodka, that would be another story entirely.”
His face falls. “Well, that’s no fun. The only other person who’ll drink it is Brooks, and last time he finished the entire bottle himself.” His face lights up. “Tell you what! How about we go to Ropewalk for a drink instead?” He checks his watch. “Come on, Cat! We’ll show you a bit of what we call nightlife here on Nantucket!”
I don’t want to be the killjoy here, but I realize I am suddenly exhausted. The emotion of the day, the travel, the time difference, all of it has caught up with me, and I am so tired I can hardly speak.
“Ah, but you’re suffering from the jet lag.” Aidan’s voice is all concern. “Here, give me that cloth and I’ll finish up the drying. You go and get yourself off to bed. We’ll do the nightlife tomorrow. Maybe everyone will come to the restaurant for dinner, then we young’uns will go out after?”
“That sounds great. Thank you.” After hugging everyone good night, I walk down the path, stopping only to breathe in the night air, letting myself into the guest cottage and trying not to think of what time it must be in England right now.
Thirteen
I sleep the sleep of the dead. A sleep so deep that when I wake up I have absolutely no idea where I am. I lie for a while, blinking, drifting back into consciousness before remembering the events of the day before.
My family. The dinner. The laughter. The feeling of belonging. Champagne. I remember there was champagne. Oh God. It must have led to something bad, but as I lie quietly playing over the events, searching for some embarrassing thing I must have said or done, I realize there was nothing.
Shame is not here to greet me at the start of this beautiful new day.
I didn’t draw the blinds, and light is streaming through onto the bed. I sit up slightly and look down to the water, as a feeling of absolute happiness washes over me.
I have found my place in the world.
Bounding out of bed, into the shower, I brush my teeth, discard all my clothes, and resolve to go shopping today. I pull on yesterday’s jeans and a simple white T-shirt, sliding my feet into flat Indian sandals, and pull my hair into a ponytail, literally bouncing out the guest cottage and up the garden path.
* * *
“Where is everyone?” I was expecting the house to be filled, as it was last night, with people, with noise, with coffee, but it is spectacularly quiet.
Brooks, sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee, holds a hand to his lips. “All sleeping.”
“Sorry,” I whisper. “What time is it?”
“Six a.m.”
“Six a.m.!” I yelp, then apologize again. “I thought it was practically lunchtime.”
“It probably is where you come from.” He smiles. “I’m up at this time a lot. One of the problems of old age—you stop sleeping. I figure this is my peaceful time. I make myself coffee, then go for a walk.”
“Oh God! I’m so sorry!” I start to back out of the room. “I didn’t mean to disturb your peaceful time. I’ll go. Sorry.”
“Stop! I’m thrilled you’re up. I barely spoke to you last night with everyone here. How about you grab yourself a cup of coffee and come on my walk with me?” He gestures to the coffeepot on the counter, and I help myself, pouring into one of the carry cups I find in a cupboard.
“Will I be okay in these shoes?” I point out the flimsy sandals, thinking I really ought to go back and put on sneakers.
“We’ll do an amble today. And we’ll take it slow. You’ll be fine.”
* * *
I am, as it turns out, fine. It helps that I don’t have to do much of the talking. Brooks is a wonderful storyteller. He tells me stories of his childhood, his parents, his life. He fills in all the blanks.
After a while he asks about me, but I’m not used to telling stories about my life, nor downloading my résumé, as it were, so I tell him a little, with an uncomfortable shrug, and turn the subject back to him. It’s not that I don’t want him to know me, I do, but there’s so much I want to know about him.
I feel like my brain is a computer, trying to slot all the pieces together, and it still feels surreal, that I have this father, this family, and if I can get all the pieces straight, figure out how they do in fact all fit together, then I will know how I belong, and I so, so want to belong. I want to be just like them.
Brooks (and a part of me so badly wants to call him Dad, although even as I think this I picture Ellie’s eyes narrowing in disdain, and I kno
w it’s too early, realize it might never be comfortable for me to call him Dad) offers to drive me around and show off the island.
We get home, I grab my purse and climb into the big old wagon, and we take off, down to Sconset, then all the way to the other end of the island, to Madaket, where we park the car and walk, marveling at the prettiness of the fishing boats bobbing on the water.
We head back to Main Street, and he drops me off, disappearing round the corner to do some errands while I take pictures of the old wagon selling gorgeous bunches of huge hydrangeas and roses on the corner, the shops that are far more enticing than Oxford Street could ever even hope to be.
I take careful note of what everyone is wearing. I worry my chameleon tendencies display a lack of sense of self, that I am always willing and able to change myself into whoever I need to be. I marvel at people like Poppy, who is always herself, who dresses only ever to please herself, who never feels the need to change her clothes or hair or voice in order to fit in.
Clearly this London girl does not fit in here, not yet, and I am desperate to do so. Part of my romanticizing my life includes the false assumption that if I look right, then I will be right. Despite the twenty-nine years of experience proving otherwise, I still naively believe that this might actually be true.
I find shorts and strappy white tank tops in one of the tourist shops, and colorful tunics a little farther down the road that I know are perfect, pink and green, orange and turquoise, shimmery beads glinting sunlight around the neckline. I find white cutoff cargo pants that are almost exactly like the ones Ellie was wearing yesterday, and exotic leather sandals that have tiny gold and turquoise starfish sprinkled all over them.
In London I wear makeup. A lot. I have always loved makeup, loved the way it can transform a blank canvas into a thing of beauty. I do not think I have ever left my house in my adult life without a full face of makeup. With makeup, I can be very attractive. People have said pretty, although that has always been hard for me to believe. Ellie is pretty. I am not. Without makeup I detest what I look like. I have always been terrified of the morning after the night before, largely because I am convinced that should whoever I am with see me without the benefit of artfully applied eye shadow and contour-creating blusher, he will shrink in horror at my plain face.
But no one here wears makeup, or at least not makeup that is noticeable. They hide their unmade-up eyes behind sunglasses, and I find a cheap pair of excellent Ray-Ban copies in a store next to the bike shop down by the water. I almost laugh as I put them on, already wearing one of the new tanks and the new flip-flops.
If you didn’t know better, if you didn’t hear me speak, you would look at me and think that I belong here. You would think that I had been here all my life. And indeed, within a few short days, I feel as at home as if I had been born here.
* * *
The days pass, sleepy when everyone is out at work or at the beach, doing what they normally do, and riotous when they are all here at the house, crammed in, everyone jumping in to lend a hand with cooking, cleaning up, setting tables.
I fit right in. I fit as if I have always belonged here. The only person who hasn’t accepted me is Ellie. I have tried and tried, but at best she is coldly polite. Julia’s warmth, Aidan’s kindness, and my own father’s attention, however, more than make up for it.
Early morning walks with Brooks have become part of the daily routine. We wander to the beach, then finish up at the Hub for coffee and the papers, Brooks stopping every few feet on Main Street to greet people he knows. And to introduce me, his daughter, to everyone’s surprise and delight. A third daughter they never knew about, but look at me! So clearly a Mayhew if ever there was one! And with an accent! Welcome to Nantucket, they say. You will never want to leave.
They may be right, all these strangers. The longer I stay here, the more I think I don’t want to leave. I know it’s a holiday, I know people don’t really live like this the entire year, except … I think that maybe they do here. They work really hard, but they play hard.
Which is the hardest part for me. How can I possibly stay sober when everyone around me drinks as if it were nothing? And maybe it is nothing. Sobriety suddenly seems like a really bad idea. I’m on holiday, for God’s sake. On Nantucket, where I am supposed to be having fun.
* * *
“Look at you!” Aidan lets out a long whistle as I walk into the kitchen in one of my new outfits, bought the other day. White capri pants and a turquoise tunic top, beaded prettily around the neckline. “Is that outfit new? You look like you’ve done some serious damage in town.”
“Does it still count as new if it’s five days old?” I grin, hiding my slight worry at the amount I have been spending, although given the exchange rate it really isn’t that bad at all. At least that is what I will continue to tell myself. “What do you think?”
“You finally look like an islander!” he says, walking over to the fridge and pulling out two beers, cracking them open and handing me one.
“Isn’t it a bit early?” I take the beer, for it would have been rude not to, but I have always tried not to drink before lunchtime.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” he says with a shrug and a grin, clinking his bottle with mine and a hearty “Slainte,” so what else am I supposed to do other than drink up?
* * *
Everyone is out, Brooks at his studio, Ellie with her children and nanny at the beach, Julia visiting a friend. It is just Aidan and I, and the more beer we both drink, the better time I find myself having.
He, like Brooks, is a storyteller, but this time the drink loosens my tongue, and we try to outdo each other with stories of our outrageous drinking behavior.
“Well, I once woke up on a ferry on the way to Ios in Greece, with absolutely no idea how I got there,” Aidan says. “The last I remember I was in a nightclub in London. The next I was in my underwear on the deck of a bloody great boat.”
“You win!” I shout, as we both collapse in giggles.
“No more bloody beer.” Aidan peers into the fridge. “Shall we make a start on the vodka?”
“Yes!” I stumble ever so slightly on my way to get glasses as Aidan goes to get the vodka, and for a second, just a second, the disappointed, disapproving face of Jason flits into my mind. And for a second, just a second, the church hall flits into my mind, the chairs pulled into a circle, the eager, earnest faces of the people who all talk of the hell of their former lives, and how they have found happiness, and peace, in these rooms.
But I push those thoughts aside with a loud, internal “fuck it.” I’m on holiday. If a girl can’t drink on holiday, what the hell is the world coming to? I drain that glass of vodka in about two seconds, to loud cheering from Aidan, who follows suit, and we both refill, both equally delighted at having found a partner in crime.
* * *
“Jesus!” I open my eyes, taking a while to focus on a stern-looking Ellie, who is shaking me with a look of abject disgust on her face.
“Wha?” I try to sit up, dizzy, drunk, knowing that I cannot let her know how drunk I am. That whatever I do now, my future depends on it. I have to do everything in my power to hide quite how much we have had to drink.
Her face contorts into a sneer. She turns. “Summer?” I see her daughter behind her. Oh God! Her daughter! Of course. “Go upstairs. You can play in Mommy’s room. There are toys under Trudy’s crib.” Cheering, Summer thunders upstairs as Ellie turns back to me with a sneer. “You’re drunk,” she says, and I find myself squinting, then opening my eyes wide, in a bid to get her face into focus.
“I’m not drunk.” I sit up. “I’m just a bit tipsy. I took some headache pills, and I think they reacted with the beer.”
She reaches behind her and picks up a vodka bottle that looks like it’s just about empty. “That’s not beer,” she says.
“Oh, leave her alone!” I am relieved that Aidan has now swum into my focus, leaning on the doorjamb of the kitchen. “We had a few
drinks, that’s all.” I register that Aidan does not seem to be as drunk as I am, which is a good thing. Perhaps it means that I did not drink as much as I fear, that I just don’t hold it as well. “She’s on holiday,” he continues.
“And she’s a guest in our house,” says Ellie, her voice icy. “As in fact are you, even though you’re not actually staying here. This is unacceptable, Aidan. Where the hell is Julia? How can you have spent the entire day getting drunk? Both of you. I’m just appalled.” She turns back to me, shaking her head in disgust, and I am so filled with shame I want the ground to open and swallow me up.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, trying to stand up, except the floor starts swimming, and even though I am desperate to get away from the grand inquisitioner, it doesn’t seem that it’s a very likely proposition right now. It’s far easier to slump back down on the sofa. As soon as I do, my eyes start to close, which is one way, I suppose, to turn down the noise.
“Wake up!” hisses Ellie, shaking me awake. “You need to get to your bed.”
“Right,” I agree, although my body doesn’t seem able to move.
She hoists me up by my arms, and once I am up, I narrow my eyes to stop the room dancing and walk, very purposefully, and in as straight a line as I can manage, to what I think is the door, which unfortunately, once I get there and search for the handle, turns out to be the fireplace.
“The door’s over there,” says the wicked witch disguised as Audrey Hepburn.
“I knew that,” I say, in as imperious a way as I can manage, stopping as another person walks into the room, this time Julia. I steel myself for more criticism and judgment, but Julia just starts to laugh.