Being Mrs. Alcott

by Nancy Geary

  Two hours later, the list of imperfections completed, Bain sat on the bottom steps of the sweeping staircase. With an adding machine, he calculated the enormity of his investment and what it still might cost to bring his home up to his standards. His pencil marks and scribbles soon covered her pad.

  Finally, she’d watched long enough. His stress was palpable. If he wanted to ruin the day buried in practicalities, it was his choice. The beach beckoned. Leaving him to his own concerns, she slipped outside.

  The wind off the ocean had picked up, and whitecaps specked the harbor. The salty air was chilly. Scattered splotches of dark brown seaweed and dried sea grass covered much of the sand along the tidewater line. Grace left her sandals by the steps, wrapped a scarf around her head, and hugged herself as she walked toward the ocean. Then she stopped and turned west, her gaze following the setting sun. Never in her life had she seen such a beautiful spot.

  A wiry-framed man in an oversize canvas shirt, rubber boots, and a large hat stood in about six inches of water. Bent over, he raked the mucky ocean floor. Grace watched as he dug, found specimens, measured the smallest ones against a tool that he had strapped to his belt, and dumped the clams in a wire basket.

  Living off the land, thought Grace. There was something majestic about the fishing industry.

  “This is private property.”

  It was Bain’s voice, loud and stern behind her. Startled, Grace turned to face him.

  “This is my property,” he repeated.

  The clammer didn’t look up.

  “I own this beach and you are trespassing. If you don’t leave at once, I will call the authorities.”

  Grace’s heart pounded. She couldn’t bear a confrontation, let alone one on the first day. For all she knew, the clammer didn’t realize the house had been sold. Maybe the prior owners had given him permission. Besides, what difference did it make? They would be driving back to Boston in a few hours. Despite her suggestion, Bain refused to camp out in the empty house. They wouldn’t be at the beach. And with the work that Bain wanted done on the house, it might be weeks before either of them had another moment by the sea. She’d be too busy consulting with contractors and electricians and plumbers.

  Bain had moved forward to where the tide began to recede. In his khaki trousers, blazer, tasseled loafers, and socks, he looked ridiculous. He belonged back in their apartment on Louisburg Square. She wished at least that he’d taken off his shoes and rolled up his pants.

  “Don’t make me call the police,” he said.

  At that the clammer straightened up, removed the hat, and allowed the long brown curls to tumble down over her shoulders. Grace had been wrong. The clammer was a woman and, judging from her face, not much older than Grace. She was attractive with a slight tan and rugged features.

  Still holding her small rake, she rested her hands on her hips. “You may own this house, but your property extends only to the mean waterline, no farther. I’m below that—and have been since I got here. Besides, if you knew the law instead of spouting idle threats, you’d know that people are not trespassing if they use the beach for fishing, fowling, or navigation. Clamming—for which I have a license—is considered fishing for these purposes. The courts have come to the same conclusion time and time again around here. So go ahead, try and arrest me.”

  With that, she bent back over and jabbed her rake into the sand.

  Grace looked at Bain, who stood speechless. His face reddened as he studied the clammer. She’d never before seen him stymied, and she struggled not to laugh.

  “We’ll see what my lawyer has to say about that,” he mumbled as he retreated to the house.

  Chapter Five

  Neither of them had expected the Friday-night traffic, the congestion as Route 128 and the Southeast Expressway merged at Braintree, the bumper-to-bumper drive down past Hingham, and then the dead stop more than a mile before the Sagamore Bridge. But the lost hours were worth it. It was their first weekend in “Horizons.”

  The name had come with the house. Grace wasn’t sure whether it exactly suited the place, nor did she like the idea that it forever associated the place with its prior owners, but Bain didn’t want to mess with history. Besides, they’d have to come up with a replacement. “What else would you call a house on a bluff looking out to sea?” Grace’s lack of an immediate response sealed its fate.

  “Horizons, Horizons,” Grace murmured as they had pulled in the drive just as night was settling over the landscape. She wanted to get used to the sound.

  Hyannis Bedding had taken her order over the telephone and delivered the full-size mattress, box spring, and Harvard bed, leaving them all on the back porch. Grace had brought a few stray hangers, sheets and towels, a bar of soap, a Revere Ware frying pan, a coffeemaker, and a teapot, along with the essentials to get them through breakfast on Saturday morning. She’d even remembered a mattress pad for Bain’s sensitive skin.

  They quickly went to work, lugging the bed upstairs and assembling its frame. Grace wanted the bed to face the window so that they could gaze out to sea in the morning. She envisioned sitting with an old-fashioned breakfast tray on her lap, sipping English breakfast tea, smelling a single rose in a bud vase, and staring at the lighthouse, the channel, and the boats beyond. Bain disagreed with that location. The furniture would fit better if the headboard—which had yet to be purchased—backed up to the window. “You won’t be able to enjoy any view at night, when we’ll be in here. The ocean is nothing but blackness.”

  Grace wanted Bain to be comfortable and acquiesced. Still, as she crawled between the butter-yellow sheets she’d purchased two days before from Bloomingdale’s, she thought what a shame it would be not to begin her day with the sight of the sun reflecting off the water.

  Bain slept fitfully, arose with the first light of morning, dressed without showering, and drove off in search of a Wall Street Journal and a Globe. She didn’t have the heart to remind him that most shops wouldn’t be open before nine on a Saturday morning. Left behind, Grace drank a cup of tea standing by the stove. She knew that the entourage of tradesmen with whom Bain had scheduled appointments would begin arriving shortly after ten. With any luck, she could take a brisk walk before Bain’s return. She threw on a loose sweater and a pair of blue jeans and headed down to the beach.

  The sand under her bare feet was cold and hard. She swung her arms, quickening her pace as she took in the morning. An egret at the shoreline gazed out to sea. Spindly-legged piping plovers scurried through the foam. Several seagulls picked at the remnants of a dead seal that had washed ashore. In the distance, she heard the rumble of a motorboat heading for the channel.

  And then she spotted the clammer. She knew it was the same woman. She could tell by the floppy hat that reminded her of Paddington Bear. A red Ford pickup was the only car parked at the town landing. She’d never known a woman who drove a truck.

  As she approached, the clammer glanced up from her raking, paused for a moment, and then waved in recognition. Such friendliness under the circumstances was surprising. Perhaps Cape Codders were a more forgiving breed than Bostonians, or at least more forgiving than she would have expected.

  “Hello,” Grace called out. She pushed her jeans up over her knees and stepped into the water. The cold temperature was a shock.

  The woman laughed. “The air temperature doesn’t heat this ocean into the sixties until late August. It’s better to swim around here in October than June.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.” Grace watched a small fish explore her ankle as she gathered her courage. “I’ve been meaning to apologize for my husband and what he said to you the other day. He didn’t mean to be rude,” she blurted. “It really wasn’t his intent. It’s just . . . well, it’s hard to describe. You see, we live in Boston, and Bain—he’s my husband—is very busy. He works incredibly hard, long hours, that sort of thing. He bought this place as a sanctuary, to escape the city.” She looked at the clammer, who stared at her with a blank
expression. Perhaps she should have left the topic well enough alone, but now she was in too deep not to finish whatever it was she was trying to explain. She wasn’t at all sure she knew herself. “All he wants is peace and quiet. That’s why we came to Chatham in the first place instead of Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. Boston is such a social place, wonderfully busy, but it can be too much, and he just wants to be left alone. And so, I think seeing you right here, so close to our house sort of . . . well . . . upset him. But it will pass. I know it will. As soon as he can start enjoying our new home, relaxing a bit and taking in the scenery, I know he’ll calm down. He just wants his privacy respected.” She forced a smile, hoping the clammer would join her. “And he didn’t know the law,” she added.

  “You’re the one who has to be married to him,” the woman replied, dismissively.

  The remark took Grace aback. She wanted to be married to Bain; it wasn’t something she had to do. Plus she was just trying to make the woman understand why Bain had been upset. She wanted this woman to empathize, to not feel bad about them.

  “I’m sorry, that was out of line. It’s none of my business. What I should have said is No apologies necessary. I wasn’t the politest person myself the other day.” The woman smiled. “My name’s Prissy Nickerson.”

  “I’m Grace Alcott.” Grace extended her hand, but Prissy already had returned to her work and didn’t shake it. “Prissy, that’s a rather unusual name.”

  “It’s Patricia, really. But who in hell wants to be called Pat? I get a bad feeling about that name. Must be the flat A sound.”

  Grace nodded. She didn’t want to admit she knew several Pats, but they had bouffant hairdos, red nails, and wore Jack Rogers sandals. She felt quite confident that none of them knew how to dig for clams or would ever take an interest in learning. Clam chowder could be bought ready-made at most of the good fish markets and was on every menu in Boston.

  Thinking to change the subject, Grace remarked, “Did you ever see Gone with the Wind? There was a Prissy in that, a young slave girl.” She remembered all the characters in the David O. Selznick classic. If it wasn’t her favorite movie, it certainly made her top two or three. Although she, like Melanie, preferred the stability of Ashley Wilkes—and was proud that in real life she’d ended up with his counterpart—there was something awfully alluring about Rhett Butler. Perhaps if she’d been Scarlett O’Hara, she would have been happy to be spoiled by such a seductive man. It wasn’t such a bad fate.

  Prissy’s eyes lit up. “I can’t believe you remembered that. That’s why I chose the name! Prissy was my favorite character.” She stood back up and took several steps toward Grace. When she spoke again, her voice was animated and she gesticulated with her rake. “Do you remember the scene where Dr. Meade asks her to help deliver Melanie Wilkes’s baby? She’s got her hair tied back in a kerchief and wears a plum-colored dress. Anyway, she says yes, absolutely, she can do it. But when Melanie goes into labor and Scarlett tells her to help, Prissy becomes hysterical. She’s scared about having lied, but she’s more terrified about the baby, so she confesses.”

  “Yes, yes,” Grace interrupted. “I do remember. She’s crying, and she says, ‘I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies.’”

  “That’s it! That’s the line.”

  Both women laughed.

  Then Prissy added, “That’s me. I don’t know anything, and I don’t want to know.”

  “About babies? You don’t?” Grace asked. “You don’t want a child?”

  Prissy shook her head. “Life is plenty complicated enough. I’m glad my mother did it, but that’s about all I can say.” With that, she stabbed the sand with her rake.

  Grace watched in silence for several minutes. She couldn’t imagine sharing that sentiment. For the past three years, she’d hoped every month. That a woman would choose to be childless was alien; for a moment, she wondered if Prissy was a transvestite. Or maybe a lesbian. Who else would ignore her maternal instincts? “Are you married?”

  “Yeah, although quite frankly I can’t quite figure that one out, either. I was perfectly content to live together, but he’s old-fashioned. He’s never said as much, but I think he thought that having a marriage license would make us care more about each other. It always seemed to me, though, that you either do or you don’t. All the official paperwork in the world doesn’t keep a lot of folks together.”

  This was a curious woman. Even if Grace had such thoughts, she couldn’t imagine sharing them with a virtual stranger.

  After a while, Prissy paused in her work and extended the rake in Grace’s direction. “Do you want to try?”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know. I don’t know the first thing about how to clam.”

  “It’s not hard, except for the strain on your back. But you can deal with that problem tomorrow. Come here.”

  Grace moved to where she’d been working. The two women stood side by side. This close, Grace realized that Prissy was several inches taller. Her height gave her a regal quality.

  “First you look for airholes in the sand. They can be crabs or something else, but they’re your best indicator. When you see them, start to dig. You need a rhythm, keep it gentle. You don’t want to break the shell with your rake. When you think you’ve got something, dig in with your hands. Feel around with your fingers. You’re looking for a round shape, ideally a couple of inches in diameter. Too small and you’ve got to throw it back. Fortunately, unlike lobster, bigger isn’t bad. You definitely want to keep the jumbos.”

  Grace nodded, indicating she understood the instructions. She leaned over and began to claw, hesitantly at first, then gradually with more confidence, digging up darker sand as she went. The wet sand was heavy, and she found the work more difficult than she’d imagined. She raked and raked, finding nothing, pausing, looking for airholes, and moving on, all the while listening to the gritty sound her rake made against the ocean floor. Then, after what must have been several minutes, she touched something hard. “Oh, oh,” she exclaimed as she kneeled down, feeling the cold water seep into her jeans. She dug with her hands for a few seconds before her fingers grasped a round shell. She pulled it up. There it was: a perfect clam of adequate size.

  “Look! Look!” she exclaimed.

  Prissy smiled. “That’s the one. You did it. Your first Chatham clam.” She pointed to the wire bucket positioned half in the water.

  Grace walked over and gently added her treasure to Prissy’s catch. It sat on top of the pile, seemingly bigger and fresher than all the others.

  “You want to keep digging? I have another rake in the truck.”

  Yes, she thought. She wanted to stay and dig all day and then invite Prissy back to make clam chowder in her kitchen for supper. Prissy could shuck the shells while she sautéed onions and peeled potatoes. They could share a glass of white wine and nibble Wheat Thin crackers. Clam chowder would never taste the same again.

  But she couldn’t. She had to get home. Alone. There was so much to do, and Bain would chastise her for being irresponsible.

  “I can’t,” she said to Prissy. “Not today. But thank you.” It had been a magical morning.

  “Anytime.”

  “Are you here often?”

  “Yeah. I like this area. The spot’s pretty and the clams tend to be plentiful. Must be something about the currents. I used to know how all that stuff worked. But the short answer is that, yes, you’re likely to find me here just about every day of the season.”

  “I’ll see you soon, then.” Grace reached for Prissy’s shoulder and gently touched the rough canvas of her jacket. Her first Chatham friend. She needed to be sure the woman was real.

  Back at the house, she found Bain upstairs. Their bed had been turned; it now faced the window. She could look out to sea after all.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I thought I might bring you breakfast. But you were already up and about. So instead I rearranged the room. You’re right about the be
d. It is better to face the sea.” He gazed into the paper bag. “This one is supposed to be a Chatham specialty,” he said, handing her a sugarcoated muffin that smelled of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. “It’s called French spice.”

  “French spice in Chatham?”

  “You know the French came into Chatham through Stage Harbor. They landed here and fought the Indians right over on Champlain Road. I guess they left their muffin recipe behind.”

  Grace laughed. Bain did, too.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the crumbled muffin from his hand.

  Together they sat on the bed. She broke off pieces of the sweet cake and handed them to him. He ate some and fed her others, while she spoke of re-meeting Prissy and the joy of finding her first clam. As he listened, he exhibited none of his earlier hostility toward the local woman, and instead seemed genuinely pleased that she’d connected with Prissy. She’d been right; his temper had been an aberration.

  They devoured the French spice, then a blueberry, and then a cranberry. When they were done, she wiped the crumbs from his lap onto the floor.

  “Breakfast with a view,” he said, sighing. “I can think of only one thing finer.”

  But she couldn’t ask what. At that moment, the doorbell rang announcing the arrival of the contractors.

  1973-1974

  Chapter Six

  Sarah Eleanor Alcott was born October 26, 1973. If Bain regretted that their first child was a girl, he kept the thought to himself. That she had long legs and longer lashes, blue eyes, and pale smooth skin no doubt worked to her advantage with her father. Physical beauty in women mattered to him. The dark hair that shocked both her parents when they saw it matted against her newborn face quickly fell out. Within a month, blond curls replaced her baldness. By six weeks, she resembled a doll.