Being Mrs. Alcott

by Nancy Geary

  Grace avoided Hank’s gaze. Bain’s comment—his distinct use of the singular—had registered with her, too, but she didn’t need her son reminding her of that.

  “The decision is shortsighted.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “We’ve grown up here,” Hank insisted. “Chatham’s been our home our entire lives. It’s been central in our children’s lives.”

  His sentimentality surprised Grace, and made her wonder if she’d underestimated him. Perhaps she’d been wrong in thinking that his anger stemmed from a missed opportunity to sell the house. Perhaps he had formed an attachment born of history, memories, and a sense of family.

  “You can’t just decide on your own to dump this place.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Bain replied.

  “So why sell?” Then, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, he added, “Are you in financial trouble? Is that the problem?”

  Bain was silent.

  “If that’s the case, if you can’t afford this place, we really need to talk, because . . . well . . . Erin and I feel that there’s been some serious miscommunication.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Look, Dad, let’s cut to the chase. I’ve seen the listing. You’re selling at what is arguably way below market price. You’re virtually giving the property away. If you’re under that kind of pressure, you have an obligation to disclose that to us.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that. I am not a publicly traded company issuing an annual report. I have no disclosure obligations—to use your phrase. I have no obligations whatsoever to you or your brother.” Bain’s face reddened.

  “You’re not being fair to us,” Hank said. His voice bordered on shrill. “This is our inheritance.”

  The word seemed to echo.

  Bain leaned forward. When he spoke his voice was low and controlled. “I can do whatever I damn well please.”

  Grace felt dizzy and drained her coffee in the hope that the caffeine would stabilize her senses. Hank had found Bain’s Achilles’ heel and driven in the sword. Whether or not it was fatal, the family relationship could never be the same. She knew that. They all knew that.

  “I mean . . . this house is your legacy. You know . . . to pass on.” Hank stammered. “Erin and I appreciate that. We really do. It’s an incredible asset.”

  “Let me give you one piece of advice,” Bain interrupted. “It’s one thing you may want to remember, a lesson I learned and took to heart years ago, years ago when I decided to go to work as a financial analyst. It was an important lesson, one that has stood me in good stead.” Bain paused for a moment as if to collect his thoughts. “Don’t sit around waiting for your parents to die to make money. It’s both unattractive and impractical.”

  It was the second time in as many days that Bain had alluded to that fateful decision from years before, his decision to abandon his artistic dreams for money and for the ability it gave him to provide for his family. He’d done that job, and done it well. They’d all been the beneficiaries until this moment when, needing to provide for himself in the last years of his life, he’d ordered a fire sale of the family home. Despite his rage at Hank and his frustration at the situation, Grace realized how deeply Bain meant the advice he offered. It was a lesson that came from a man who wanted to spare his son the shame that he’d experienced, and the humiliation she knew he’d felt when he’d accepted the Marxes’ offer.

  “Dad, this isn’t about waiting for anyone to die. All I’m saying is that you’re being impulsive and . . . frankly . . . stupid. This house is a one-of-a-kind property.”

  “Then I suggest you get to work so you can buy it back.” Bain struggled to maintain composure.

  “It is ours. That’s the point,” Hank continued. “Save it for us. We shouldn’t have to buy anything back.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The house is already sold. We’ll be out by the middle of July. You and your brother can come down, pick over our belongings, and grab as much as you can of all that won’t be coming with us. Maybe that can satisfy your appetite for a few years, while you give me a chance to grow really old.” Bain pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I have no intention of leaving this fine earth anytime soon, so I’d advise you to find another source of revenue. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had quite enough of this gathering.”

  Grace watched him turn and walk out of the room at a slower pace than she would have expected given the conversation. His shoulders stooped slightly. She realized that he’d lost weight, and his pants sagged.

  Hank didn’t move. She, too, remained in the last place she wanted to be: at the table, across from her son, and without her husband.

  “Is this what you wanted?” he asked after a few minutes. His voice had softened; he no longer spoke with an accusatory tone.

  “It . . . it makes sense for us. This house is too big, too much to manage.” Grace struggled to parrot Bain’s excuses.

  “But it’s your home, too, our home. Don’t memories mean anything? Isn’t a family’s history important? You were the one who always talked to us about rituals.”

  “That’s true. I did.” She paused, thinking. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that rituals only matter if everyone is invested equally in them, in the tradition, in the spirit of a gathering. Rituals for rituals’ sake—for the routine—are hollow, meaningless.”

  “So what are you saying? That what we did together as a family in this house didn’t matter?”

  She looked at him not knowing how to respond. Her eyes welled with tears. This pain, this ending, was not what she’d intended for any of them. Now she desperately wanted to change their destiny. She wanted Hank to be small again, small enough that she could take him into her lap and explain to him what was important. She wanted to be able to redo his history, to nurture him and help shape him into a different man, a man who would never have to ask that question, a man who would harbor no doubts about the meaning of his family, a man who wouldn’t count his inheritance dollars before his parents were in their graves.

  But she couldn’t pretend or imagine or wish any longer. The family of her dreams wasn’t the Alcotts. The argument with Bain couldn’t be undone or the words taken back. Hank and Bain had both revealed themselves. And in Erin’s silent absence, he had, too.

  “I wish I knew,” she replied, mumbling more to herself than to her son.

  Bain and Grace sat on stools at The Squire. The local restaurant with its plaid carpeting and clunky wooden tables was crowded. Through the wall, Grace could hear the bass guitar of the band next door. Live music marked the start of the season at The Squire’s adjacent bar, a boisterous watering hole decorated with license plates, a jukebox, several pool tables, and bouncers with biceps popping from their green golf shirts.

  At the adjacent table, a toddler screamed. Not wanting to further embarrass the family, Grace didn’t turn around, but she couldn’t help listening. She heard a woman, presumably the child’s mother, provide comfort by offering more ketchup for the french fries and the promise of dessert. Then a boy’s voice, an older sibling, asked if he could have more, too. The mother told him he’d had enough. Ketchup was a condiment, not a food group. It was to be used in moderation. The boy protested. Tomatoes were vegetables. Didn’t that count? Then he appealed to his father, but the man refused to come to his aid. “Look, Sam, I don’t care what you eat, but your mother just said no so that’s that. Next time you’ll learn to ask me first.”

  The waiter set bowls of steaming clam chowder on the acrylic place mats in front of them.

  Bain ordered another Bloody Mary and some more bread.

  Grace opened the bag of oyster crackers and stirred them into her soup, but she couldn’t bring herself to taste it. She put down her spoon.

  With his gaze fixed on the window, Bain reached for her hand and clasped her fingers in his. The gesture surprised her, but his palm felt wa
rm and inviting.

  “What’s happened to us?” he asked. “How did we get to this place?” He still didn’t look at her, but he squeezed her fingers a bit tighter. “It’s not just finances, the sale of the house. I’m talking about our sons. I thought I’d raised men who would flank my side as I charged into battle. Instead, well, I’m not sure I even want them in the vicinity when the going gets tough.”

  “It’s not so bad. They mean well.” Grace couldn’t help herself. Although she’d harbored similar thoughts, somehow it seemed as though agreeing with him would make all the disappointment too real.

  “Sweet Gracie, the eternal optimist. How dearly I love that about you.” He squeezed her hand. “I told myself that if I ever became a parent, I just wanted to raise children who were hardworking, independent, and honest, but that what they did with their lives, their professions, their choice of spouses, all that stuff about where and how they chose to live, was up to them. I told myself I’d support them in those decisions. But it’s much harder than I expected—harder to be supportive, I mean, harder not to be critical. It never occurred to me that I might be responsible for a person who lacked fundamental decency.”

  “Maybe it’s our fault. Maybe we did something wrong.”

  Bain was silent. He took a sip of soup and ripped a roll in two. Grace waited, patiently. He was no doubt formulating his thoughts, and she didn’t want to rush the conversation that she needed to have with him more than he even realized. Despite the context, she appreciated his candor. It relieved her of the doubts she’d had, the wondering she’d done, over whether her husband had lost any capacity to feel.

  Bain opened a small plastic tub of butter and spread the contents on half the roll. “I don’t think so. What could we have possibly done that wasn’t right for them?”

  Chapter Twenty

  The early-morning light glittered on the surface of the water. A breeze rustled the long beach grass, and four piping plovers ran back and forth at the waterline, their movement so delicate that they left no trace of their presence imprinted in the sand. It wasn’t yet six, but Grace had been awake for hours. This walk was her reward for the more taxing job that lay ahead: the organization of the attic in preparation for her yard sale.

  “You’re crazy,” Bain had said when she suggested the idea. “Why do you want to spend some of our last days in this house sitting in the front yard selling stuff we don’t want?”

  “It’s a waste to throw out perfectly good, usable objects. And we might make some money,” she’d said, defending her plan. “The Warrens made several thousand dollars when they had one over Memorial Day,” she’d added, remembering somebody’s comment on the recent success.

  Bain had shrugged. “It’s your time.”

  Now she needed to sort through, throw out, pack to save, or plan to sell the contents of myriad boxes, trunks, cartons, and unidentifiable objects that they’d amassed over the last thirty years.

  The plovers seemed to follow her, quickening their awkward scamper as her stride lengthened. She loved these particular birds. Other than the puffins that arrived on Mill Pond each December, there was no other creature that seemed to embody the Cape in the same way. They represented the fragility and beauty of this environment. That they now required protection to stave off extinction seemed emblematic of the destruction of natural resources everywhere on this exquisite elbow of land—the overfishing, the overbuilding.

  She chuckled. Bain would have quite a time if he heard her soapbox tirade on the disasters occurring in their midst. A good distraction, though. Focusing on the problems and devastations in the external world was certainly easier than facing the carnage in her personal one.

  She stopped and stared in disbelief. There, bent over, with a clam rake and a bucket, was Prissy. She couldn’t see her face, but she knew the lean body, the baggy canvas coat, and the rubber boots. Until two months ago, she’d seen the same image framed by the same ocean backdrop nearly every day.

  Her heartbeat quickened. She’d told herself again and again that she wanted this moment, this encounter. She wanted to know what had transpired between her friend and her brother. Prissy no doubt knew fears and dreams and fantasies that belonged to Ferris, and rightfully should be told to his sister. Only she knew what had happened during their final conversation. Only she could confess to having smuggled in the alcohol that had turned lethal.

  But now that the moment was here, Grace felt helpless. Maybe none of it mattered. Nothing could bring Ferris back. And could anyone, even his adoring sister, ever truly understand what drove him to such a place of pain that he couldn’t go on? As she stood in the sand, overwhelmed by emotion, she silently prayed that Prissy would approach her first, would break the ice by acknowledging their distance and the destruction she’d caused, would offer up tidy explanations wrapped in twine that could ameliorate the hurt.

  She stood still, watching, as the woman was consumed with her work. She raked and raked, reached down with her free hand and dug out clams, and threw them into the wire bucket without once straightening up to alleviate the strain on her back.

  Grace moved closer, gathering her courage. She took a few more steps. As her shadow cast darkness on the wet sand, the clammer detected her presence and looked up.

  “Oh no!” Grace exclaimed. The shock and surprise caused the exclamation quite unwittingly. The face was young, pretty, with a nose dotted with freckles, bright blue eyes, and plump lips that formed a natural pout.

  “Are you okay?” the unfamiliar woman asked.

  “Yes . . . yes,” Grace stammered. She forced a smile. “I beg your pardon. Here I am, sneaking up on you. I thought you were someone else.”

  “No problem.” The woman turned back to her work.

  Grace hesitated for a moment before adding, “A friend of mine, an old friend, clams in this spot, and I haven’t seen her in quite a while. I mistook you for her.”

  “Are you talking about Prissy?” the woman asked, reading her mind.

  Grace nodded.

  “I’d better get a new life if this one is aging me that fast. She’s old enough to be my mother.”

  From their close proximity, it was readily apparent that the woman was no more than twenty. She had no lines on her forehead, and no crow’s-feet around her eyes. The sun hadn’t leathered her skin in the slightest. And Prissy was her own peer, a middle-aged woman. No wonder the girl was taken aback.

  “So you know her?” Grace asked.

  “For as long as I can remember.”

  “How?”

  The clammer laughed. “She’s been as much a part of my life as the roll of paper towels my mother kept in her kitchen. Prissy and Kody rented the cottage in the back of my parents’ house. They were there before I was born. Probably because the place was so dilapidated, they were outside in the yard a lot. And they’d have meals with us when their oven gave out or the refrigerator was on the blink.”

  Grace didn’t reply. Although Prissy had mentioned several times that she had a place in West Chatham, she’d never been invited to the house. She’d spent more time wondering about Kody than her friend’s home, and hearing that it was a run-down rental fit with the image that she had conjured of a couple living close to the margin. It was the image that explained some of Prissy’s attraction, her deviance, her betrayal. Ferris must have seemed very affluent. Despite his own modest means, he no doubt offered considerable luxury to his lover. She wondered how much of his last savings he’d squandered on hotel rooms or gifts. The thought made her shudder.

  “My parents moved into an apartment a couple of years ago. You know that retirement place—or should I say assisted-living facility? Just at the intersection of Route Twenty-eight and Crowell Road?”

  Grace nodded. When she’d first seen the advertisements, she’d briefly contemplated the possibility of making a home there for her and Bain. They could grow old with twenty-four-hour nursing and meals prepared in a common dining space. They’d have someone to care for th
em. But the last thing she wanted was to be surrounded by other elderly, infirm people. She didn’t need such obvious reminders of the passage of time.

  “When they moved into a unit there, they gave me the house, and Prissy and Kody stayed on as my tenants. A bit irregular with the rent, but it helped me out.” She laughed, throwing her head back. “Prissy was the one who suggested I take up clamming. Said the work was steady so long as nature cooperated.”

  “I see.”

  “Prissy had a way of talking about it as though it was better than it is, you know, she romanticized it. She spoke about a life on the ocean, a life living off the land, being self-employed, the independence. For a kid who hated school and dreaded the idea of getting dressed for an office every day, it seemed like a pretty good way to earn a living. And true to her word, she taught me almost everything I know, all the ins and outs of dealing with the retail markets, that sort of thing, kind of like a mentor. But then again, I think Prissy could have talked anyone into anything. She seemed so self-possessed, so much her own person. I really admire her.”

  This woman was remarkably perceptive and articulate. Perhaps her self-reliance had given her a particular kind of maturity. Grace felt inadequate by comparison. “She and I spent a lot of time in this very spot. She taught me to clam, too. I helped her,” Grace said.

  “Did she give you a cut?” The clammer eyed her suspiciously.

  “Oh no, nothing like that. We just enjoyed each other’s company.”

  “Oh.” She wiped her hands on her waders, and then extended a hand. “I’m Emily, Emily Crocker.”

  Grace smiled and introduced herself.

  “Grace Alcott, yeah. Prissy talked so much about you. You live in the gray house up there,” she said, tilting her head in the right direction. “It’s a very nice place you’ve got.”

  “Yes,” she replied, without confessing that it was only hers for a few weeks longer. “She’s . . . Prissy’s my son’s godmother.”

  Emily laughed. “Oh yeah? I never thought of Prissy and religion walking hand in hand.” A moment of silence passed, but she didn’t return to her work.