No Home Like Nantucket

by Grace Palmer

  Only then did she cry.

  Her tears surprised her. It felt like they came out of nowhere. But they weren’t the blubbery, wailing tears she might’ve expected. They were more like movie starlet, dab-at-her-eyes-with-a-handkerchief kind of tears. Mae almost laughed. If Henry was here now, he’d be making fun of her for crying so melodramatically. Where are my big, fat tears? he would’ve joked, probably. Can’t even let loose one “Why, God?!” on my behalf? Jeez Louise, Mae, it’s the least ya could do for me. He would’ve winked then, and pulled her into a Happy Henry hug, and kissed the top of her head and made it all feel just a little less heavy.

  She walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down. The thought of Henry had dried up the tears, mostly. Just a sniffle here and there left in their wake. She surveyed the room around her, the one she’d shared with her husband for so many, many years. The closet was open. His plaid shirts hung in there. His work boots were on the floor, one keeled over, the other standing tall and upright. He’d left his watch on the nightstand.

  Mae stood up and went over to the closet. Taking one of his shirts in her hand, she pressed it against her nose and inhaled deeply. Ah, that Henry scent, that cologne and man-musk and woodsy, fragrant saltiness that was so utterly and completely him. She had always had a sharp nose and she could tell when Henry had just vacated a room by the lingering scent of him alone. This, now, was like aloe on a burn. To smell him was to have him here with her. It felt like he was about to walk right back in the door and keep right on loving her.

  She would’ve really liked that.

  16

  Mae

  Three Days Later

  Henry Howard Benson was buried on a Sunday.

  The whole day was a blur to Mae. The pews at First Congregational Church in Nantucket were full to bursting. People of all ages, creeds, and colors came streaming in to pay their respects and bid farewell to the Nantucket Cowboy. Never before had it been so clear that Henry was as lovable a man as had ever graced the earth.

  In fact, the words spoken at the service and reception were gushing almost to the point of ridiculousness. Mae wanted to grab the microphone from the preacher and let everyone know that, for all that he was warm and generous and quick to lend a shoulder to cry on to just about anyone who’d ever needed it, Henry Benson was far from perfect. He sometimes used an online bookie service in the Cayman Islands to place illegal bets on football games. He ran red lights if there was no one else on the road late at night. Once, she’d caught him painting Brent’s toenails while he was sleeping as a prank, and when Brent had woken up and cried, her husband had framed his own daughters for the crime.

  But those memories just made her laugh and tear up instead. Maybe it was better that she kept them to herself, actually. Those were the things that made Henry her Henry. If she was the only one who had those little treasures tucked away in the back of her mind, so much the better. She felt intensely selfish that Sunday, in a way she never could have predicted. She’d heard all the usual things from well-wishers—“Mourn in your own way,” “Take all the time you need,” “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Little of it was helpful, though all of it was offered with good intentions.

  Mae had spent the better part of a century living by the Golden Rule. Her father and her grandfather before him had always harped on the value of being a good neighbor in a time of need, and Mae had done her best to be the best neighbor she knew how to be. She made marshmallow fudge for Lola, she helped Cindy MacMillan down the street clean out her attic, she volunteered alongside Trisha Brady knitting hats for the overseas troops down at Purls Before Swine, the sewing club that met at her house on the first and third Tuesday of every month. She’d done all those things for years and years because it was the right thing to do. Besides, she liked staying busy and she liked being helpful.

  Perhaps that was why she was having such a hard time being on the receiving end of her neighbors’ graces. Her kitchen was full to bursting with casseroles and lasagnas wrapped in tinfoil. She had wine bottles stacked in the garage fridge and fruit baskets arriving daily. Everyone meant well; Mae knew that. But she wouldn’t be too upset if it all stopped.

  And yet, it didn’t stop. It was a never-ending day, seemingly. The service lasted an eternity, or so she thought, though her wristwatch said it was only twenty-three minutes long. That, too, was a blur. If she was being honest, she couldn’t remember a single word that anyone had said. She’d requested the most expedited service possible, and the preacher was agreeable to that. She wanted to remember her Henry. Let the others remember who Henry had been to them; that was all well and good. But let her keep some parts of him to herself. That seemed so very important.

  Afterwards, the burial was to take place in the church graveyard. The members of the crowd who hadn’t been invited to that filed past Mae to touch her hand and offer teary-eyed condolences. Mae’s eyes had remained dry so far—how exactly that happened was a miracle, but it did make things somewhat easier.

  Mae noticed Toni, Henry’s sister, lingering at the back of the church. “Excuse me,” she said to Mr. Arthur Fleming, an elderly man who volunteered as the organist at the church sometimes. He didn’t hear so well anymore, so Mae had spent the last five minutes having the same conversation several times over. Mr. Arthur tottered along, nodding and mumbling somberly under his breath. Mae went over to Toni and touched her on the shoulder.

  “Hi, love,” she said. Toni turned to her. Mae had always thought that Toni was a striking woman. She was tall, like her brother, though much more petite. She had the same blonde hair, similarly turned to gray with the passing of the years, and the same blue eyes that had such depth to them. It warmed Mae’s heart to see Henry’s eyes in another person. It felt like she was looking at him again.

  “Come here,” Toni murmured. The two women embraced and stayed there for longer than Mae could ever remember hugging anyone before. Nothing needed to be said. They each had lost a version of Henry that only they knew best, and so it felt good to just hold each other and let the obvious truths hang around. That all could wait until later. There would be plenty of time for “I miss him” and “He was a good man.” They both knew that. This, right here and right now, was about slowing down this blur of the day and finding little memories to hold onto, like breadcrumbs that would lead them through this mourning period and back towards something that resembled normality.

  Finally, they pulled apart, though they stayed close. Mae started to ask, “How are you?” and then thought better of it. It seemed like a silly question, given the circumstances. She settled instead on, “I’ve never felt quite so useless.”

  Toni laughed at that. She dabbed at her eyes. “You can say that again, sister.”

  “What are we going to do with ourselves, Toni?”

  Her sister-in-law sighed. Both women were dressed similarly, in black felt dresses with high collars. Mae had decided against a veil. It felt too stiff and formal. Henry would’ve poked fun at her for wearing it. My old whaling wife! He would’ve cackled. Gone to see me off to sea!

  “I can’t stay here,” Toni said finally. “I need some time away, I think.”

  Mae nodded. That certainly made sense, and she couldn’t fault her for it. “Where will you go?”

  “A cruise, maybe, if I can tolerate all the old fogies. Then again, I guess I could count myself as one of them these days.”

  They chuckled together. “You and me both,” Mae joked. “But what will you do with the inn?”

  Toni opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated and fell quiet again. She rubbed her chin between thumb and forefinger—just like Henry—no, stop it, woman! Mae scolded herself. “That’s funny you should ask,” she said. “I thought I might ask you a favor.”

  “Uh-oh. Should I be worried?” Mae grinned through her sadness. Toni was a schemer, just like her brother. She clearly had something cooked up.

  “Well, I just know how busy you like to stay. And I can’t im
agine wanting to be in that house right now. So I thought that perhaps you’d be interested in running the inn for a bit while I’m gone.”

  Running the inn. Now there was a proposition. It seemed like an idea out of left field, and yet the more Mae thought about it, the more attractive it became. Sure, she’d be busy, but wasn’t that a good thing, all things considered? Idleness was the enemy she was staring it in the eye right now. She hadn’t been idle in nearly fifty years, and if she started now, she’d be tearing her hair out within the week. She had the skills, didn’t she? Mae’s Marvels had prepped her for that. She could cook and clean, and she knew this island like the back of her hand.

  “I’ll run all the business end of things while I’m gone. The ads and the bookings and all that, you won’t have to worry about it at all. The power of the internet, you know?”

  Mae nodded slowly, letting the whole idea sink in.

  Toni went on, “So you’d be my woman on the ground. Handle the guests and the rooms, do the cooking—all the stuff you’re so talented at. To be honest, I’m kicking myself for not trying to lure you into my trap earlier. You’re a natural fit, Mae.”

  Mae had never been one to toot her own horn, but she had to agree with Toni. She’d been groomed for this role by her children and husband and her own love for all things food, wine, and Nantucket. This could be perfect. It was like the chicken nuggets for Grady had been on the night of the accident—something simple and straightforward and uncomplicated that she could focus on. Her own version of one step at a time, leading away from this sadness and into—well, she didn’t know quite where this would take her, but it was somewhere different than where she was currently, and from where she was standing, that seemed like the only thing that mattered.

  “Let me think about it,” she decided. “It’s a lot to take in. But I think it could be just the right thing. And you do deserve a break. You just have to promise to send me a postcard or two, okay? I’ve always loved the way the French Riviera looks in pictures.”

  Toni smiled warmly and squeezed Mae’s hand again. “You’re a good woman, Mae,” she said. “Henry loved you with all his heart.”

  Mae bit back tears as the two women hugged once more.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Benson?” came a timid voice. Mae pulled away from the hug to see the preacher standing at the end of the aisle with his hands folded. He was looking down respectfully. “As soon as you’re ready, we can perform the final piece of the service.”

  Mae swallowed and nodded. Toni held onto her hand as they followed the preacher out of the church.

  The burial was quick. The casket went into the earth. Mae stood next to Sara, Eliza, and Holly as the first bits of dirt were shoveled on top. Her daughters held her close while she cried.

  Brent was nowhere to be found.

  Part II

  Summer

  17

  Brent

  Four Months Later

  It had been four months since … since what happened. It had been a hard four months. Maybe the hardest of Brent’s life. What else would count? What else would even be in the running for such a hard, horrible stretch of sleepless nights and drunken days? Brent had had his fair share of troubles. The alcoholism had beaten him down for a while, but just when it seemed like he’d shaken that monkey off his back, this happened.

  Life had been good for a little while, hadn’t it? It had been fulfilling. Working alongside his father in the sun, ending up tired enough to sleep soundly through the night with nary a nightmare to bother him … Yeah, that was the good life.

  But not anymore. Now, the nightmares had returned with a vengeance. He and his sisters had always been vivid dreamers. The whole Benson family was like that. He remembered days—younger days, better days—when they used to sit around the breakfast table and swap dream stories. Mom, Holly, and Sara’s dreams always made perfect sense. Henry, Brent, and Eliza were at the opposite end of the spectrum. They were more of what he called “slideshow dreamers.” Their dreams were a series of disconnected images, or at least, that’s all he remembered of them.

  So, when he shot up in bed on the morning of August 1st, panting like he’d just run a marathon or hauled in a sailfish as big as a house, all he had to point to as the source of his panic was a single image: Pour Decisions, tied to the dock, dripping seaweed like a bad hair day, and spewing saltwater from places it ought not to be spewing from.

  He didn’t linger in bed. Grumbling and groaning—his head hurt terribly—he thumped his way over to the bathroom of his crummy apartment and flicked the light on. It took a second to get going. But when it finally shimmied to life and decided to stick around for a while, Brent reconsidered whether turning the light on was a good idea at all.

  He looked like something the cat dragged in. No—he looked like something the cat had decided was far too gross to drag in. There was a purple lump on the left side of his forehead, and the fading shiner on his eye to match. His bottom lip was split and twisted with something scabby. The bags under his eyes would keep the Stop & Shop grocery store stocked for weeks. And the eyes themselves were bloodshot. Panicked. Glazed.

  He was hungover; that much was beyond doubt. He briefly considered trying to make himself throw up just to rid his body of all the poison he’d consumed last night, then decided against it. Better just to brush his teeth real quick and crack open a cold beer. Treat last night’s damage with the hair of the dog.

  He’d doubled down on the drinking, big-time. He was worse than he’d ever been. He knew that. He sure didn’t need anyone telling him, least of all the wide variety of people who’d tried telling him that in some form or another over the last four months. Roger, Sara, Eliza, Holly, Marshall, random people he’d never met or never remembered meeting.

  Whoa, slow down, buddy!

  Take it easy there, pal.

  Why don’t you have some water—throttle back for a bit?

  No, I won’t, and no thank you, were his responses in order. In Brent’s eyes, it wasn’t the drinking that was the real issue at hand. It was what the drinking brought out of him—a mean, aggressive drunk he never remembered being before. Since when did he, Brent Benson, fight strangers? Since when did he get ornery if some out-of-towner eyeballed him the wrong way down at the bar? He could recount on two hands the number of times he’d been in a real fight in twenty-two years, and half of those were with Marshall, meaning it had been over just as soon as it began and ended with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, saying stuff like, “You caught me with a good one there, amigo.”

  But these days, he was ready to throw fists at the drop of a hat. A doubled-up song at the jukebox, someone cutting in when the bar was busy, a spilled drink—he’d brawled for all of that and more over the last days and weeks. If he could remember correctly—and that was a fuzzy proposition at best—last night’s brawl had begun when someone elbowed him in the back on accident while passing by. A few choice words later, and he was out in the parking lot, getting his face ground into the cement by someone bigger and angrier than he was.

  It never felt good to fight. It sure as heck didn’t feel good to get beat up. But Brent was losing these ruffle-ups at least as often as he was winning them, and that didn’t seem to slow him down at all. Winning wasn’t the purpose. Maybe he just needed to feel something knocked into that thick skull of his.

  Hardheaded. Husky dog. Gotta make him see the purpose, or he won’t change anything at all. All the things his dad had seen in him and said over and over throughout his childhood turned out to be truer than either of them had realized. He was fighting and he wasn’t gonna stop, because there didn’t seem to be any reason. Same went for the drinking. As far as he was concerned, he could live out the rest of his days like this. Just another angry drunk on this godforsaken island.

  Brent heard a buzzing that interrupted his thoughts. He thought about ignoring his vibrating cell phone, but decided he’d be generous enough to the caller to answer and tell them to leave him a
lone. He was just about done looking in the mirror, anyway. There was nothing in there he wanted to see.

  He jammed a dry toothbrush in his mouth, killed the light, and stomped over to his bedside table. He grabbed the cell phone off the charger. “Yeah?” he grumbled around the toothbrush.

  “Brent. Get dressed.” It was Eliza. She had her no-BS voice on. She’d been good at that tone practically since the cradle. She was a no-BS kind of woman; Brent knew that. She had her own fair share of problems these days, too—a baby on the way with no man in sight, life all turned upside down—but Brent didn’t have time for anyone else’s troubles but his own. Sometimes not even that.

  “What for?”

  “We’re going out. You, me, and Sara. Gonna go down to the bar. If you’re gonna be drinking, you might as well drink with family.” Her tone was firm.

  “To the bar? Little early for that, sis.”

  She laughed hollowly. “Early? It’s almost six in the evening, Brent.”

  Brent furrowed his brow and held the phone away from his ear to check the time. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She was right. He’d slept the whole day away. He didn’t feel rested at all. Felt like death warmed over, actually, but that was mostly par for the course this summer. No better or worse than normal. He’d pretty much gotten used to it.

  Well, if Eliza insisted, he’d be amenable to getting a dinnertime beer. Maybe he’d be able to scarf down some wings or oysters to get a little substance in his stomach before returning home to down another twelve-pack or two on the couch alone.