“There’s nothing to say about Miranda,” Coop told her. “We dated, and now we’re not together anymore. And we won’t be together again.”
“Why not?”
Coop shrugged. “We were never serious. She’s a beautiful, fascinating woman, but we just don’t have that much in common. I want to live full-time on Nantucket, and she doesn’t. So I broke up with her.”
Charlotte frowned as his words conflicted with her memory of the conversation she’d overheard. I thought Miranda broke it off, she almost said. I heard you two arguing one day, and Miranda was in a fury because you’d slept with someone else during the winter. Oh, don’t be such a nitpicking priss, Charlotte ordered herself. After all, she had overheard only part of what was obviously an ongoing and complicated disagreement.
“Come on.” Coop held out his hand. “Let’s go ashore.”
Charlotte took his hand. He steadied her as she dropped over the side of the boat into the cool thigh-high water. He grabbed the cooler, jumped over the side, and together they waded to dry land. They walked up the sandy beach, through the low wild bushes, across his lawn, and onto his patio. He set the cooler on a low table and turned to Charlotte.
“Will you come in tonight?”
He was standing very close to her, his arms at his side. He wasn’t touching her, but the attraction between them was intense. The last two times he’d taken her sailing, she had gone right home after the sail, but tonight she wanted to enter his house.
“Coop.” Her voice was shaking. “I’m not—I haven’t been with a man for a long time. Months. Okay, three years. I’m kind of old-fashioned, I guess. I’m not asking for a commitment or anything, I just want you to know….”
Coop lifted his hand and gently touched her cheek. “We’ll go as slow as you want, Charlotte.”
“But I mean—” How did people talk about this? It was so awkward! Moving away from him, she leaned on the back of a lawn chair, feeling a bit more in charge with the chair between her and Coop’s extraordinary magnetism. “I heard you were—seeing—someone else, too. This winter.” A slut, actually, she wanted to say. Miranda called her a slut, and that kind of scares me. But she didn’t want to let him know she’d overheard their argument.
Coop grinned. “Well, Charlotte, I did see another woman this winter. Saw several, in fact. But I’m not seeing her anymore. I’m not seeing anyone else. And I’m capable of being monogamous, if that’s what you’re asking. For the right woman, I could be monogamous. And if you’re worried about STDs, I’ve got a report in the house. I usually get tested every six months. Want to see it?”
“Oh, dear.” Charlotte tried to laugh, but her voice was shaking. “Here we are on this beautiful soft night with the moon and stars, and I’m asking about STDs. I’m sorry, Coop. This is so un-romantic.”
“Come inside, Charlotte,” Coop said. “I think I can get you in a romantic mood pretty fast.”
Charlotte sat up with a gasp, her heart pounding as if she were in danger. Looking around, she realized she was in a strange room, and then she heard Coop’s rumbling snore and fell back against her pillows, smiling at herself. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 4:29. Good for you, she told her brain. She was glad she was so used to waking at this time that she did it without an alarm clock, but she wasn’t very pleased about waking in a fright. It had been three years since she’d slept anywhere except her bed in her parents’ home in Boston or her sweet private attic room at Nona’s, but that was no reason to get neurotic.
She’d certainly fallen asleep easily enough.
She and Coop had made love—he was slow and gentle with her as he’d promised. Afterward, he’d served her pancakes and bacon, they’d gone back to bed and made love again, and sometime around midnight they’d fallen asleep. Coop was still sleeping, lying on his stomach, spread-eagled over the mattress, his pillow pulled over his head. Maybe she snored, too, Charlotte thought with a grin, and that wasn’t a habit but a way to shut out sounds.
Morning light was beginning to illuminate the room. She had to get up, get dressed, and get out to her garden. She could tell it was going to be another hot day, and she didn’t want to have to labor in the afternoon blaze. She scanned the floor, searching for her Speedo. Rex and Regina, his fat old labs, lay on their sides, snuffling and grunting, deeply asleep. Discarded clothing lay in heaps and mounds all around the room, and she remembered from last night how gritty the floor was with sand, and the sheets, as well. He had a cleaning woman in once a week, Coop told her, and she dealt with the laundry, putting clean sheets on the bed, and so on. Sandy sheets didn’t bother him. Not much bothered him, Charlotte decided. The kitchen counters were piled with dishes and pots and pans waiting to be washed, and his living room was littered with CDs, DVDs, and video games, newspapers, and magazines.
Stepping quietly, Charlotte slipped from the bed, grabbed up her Speedo, and with a look over her shoulder, left the room. Coop continued to snore. She pulled on her bathing suit in the kitchen and looked around for a paper and pen. She settled for the side of a brown grocery bag and a fat marker.
She wrote: I had a wonderful time. She thought of adding: I’ll be in my garden, but he knew that. He’d find her if he wanted to. She put the note on the table, weighted it down with the salt and pepper shakers, opened the sliding glass door to the patio, and stepped out into the morning.
She took a moment just to be in the day. Her body felt well used and content, like a racehorse that had been corralled for too long and finally allowed to run free. She wasn’t tired, even though she’d gotten so little sleep.
A small forest of evergreens and brush divided Coop’s land from Nona’s, giving them both privacy. Charlotte walked down to the beach, across to Nona’s beach, and up to her house. The mudroom door was unlocked. Doors were never locked on the island, there was no need. As quietly as she could, she hurried up to the attic, showered and shampooed her hair, and dressed. She went back down to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of orange juice, and drank it down, savoring the sweet brightness. Then she went out to her garden to make bouquets.
All around her, the world glowed with the freshness of morning. With each passing day, she understood that her self-imposed exile had turned into a kind of blessing. She loved her garden; she loved the work of it. As for romance—love—whatever she had going on with Coop was only lighthearted, nothing serious. She believed she could allow herself this much pleasure.
By eight o’clock, she was starving. The farm stand was always busy in July so she left Jorge in charge and ran back to the house to grab a bite of nourishment. Jorge was a hard worker, but his English was difficult to understand and he often replied to any statement by smiling, nodding his head, and saying, lispily “Yes.” She decided to fill a thermos with orange juice and grab some of the oatmeal cookies Glorious had made.
She didn’t bother to stop to unlace her boots. She was in a hurry, and the ground was dry today, she wouldn’t track in mud. The only person in the kitchen was Suzette, just sitting at the table, her feet propped up on a chair.
“Good morning!” Charlotte pealed brightly.
“Morning.” Suzette risked a quick glance at her.
“I saw Teddy drive off to work,” Charlotte observed, as she leaned into the refrigerator. “And I guess Mom and Aunt Grace and Mandy are taking the little ones to the yacht club for swimming and sailing. Are you going with them?”
Suzette shrugged. “I guess.”
Impulsively, Charlotte said, “Suzette, are you bored?”
Suzette didn’t speak. She just looked apprehensive and trapped.
“For heaven’s sake, that was not a pass/fail question! I’m not criticizing you. I’m just honestly curious. You don’t seem to read, and I’ll bet you aren’t swimming, and I can tell you haven’t been learning to play tennis.” She plopped down in a chair across from Suzette. “Tell me. Have you ever had a job?”
Suzette lifted her chin defiantly. “Of course. I waitr
essed for a while. And I worked at Donny’s Coffee in Tucson. It’s like Starbucks, only better.”
Charlotte squinted at Suzette as an idea hit her. “So you can make change. You can deal with money.” She grinned. “Suzette, want to try working for me? You could run my farm stand.”
Suzette’s face brightened. “Will you pay me?”
“Absolutely. Ten dollars an hour. And I’ll take a chair out there so you’re off your feet.” Charlotte jumped up. “Come on.”
The day went much more smoothly with someone at the farm stand. Charlotte made her deliveries to the three restaurants she supplied and still had time to weed and plant more lettuce. At six, Jorge’s buddies clattered up in their ancient Chevy, Jorge went off, and Charlotte walked up to the farm stand to close it for the day.
“How did we do?” she asked Suzette.
“Damn, I can’t believe how much people spend on a head of lettuce. And the flowers! Are these people crazy?”
Charlotte laughed. She’d never seen Suzette so animated. “Not crazy, Suzette, just very very rich and insisting on the best. You know, if I tried to sell that pot of asters and daisies for seven dollars, no one would buy it. But with some wildflowers and beach grass cleverly added, it’s a real Nantucket arrangement, and at seventy dollars they snap it up.”
“That’s just wrong.”
“No, Suzette, that’s just the way it is. Besides, the vegetables are worth it. My farm is organic, and that means people aren’t eating pesticides and fungicides along with my produce.” As she talked, she picked up the cash from the basket, thumbed through it, and stuck it in her money belt. She saw Suzette watching her. “I’ll bet you’d like to be paid right now.”
Suzette just looked expectant.
“Seven hours, right?” Charlotte peeled off seventy dollars and handed over the money.
“Thank you.” Suzette stared down at the money with an expression close to awe.
“Would you like to work again tomorrow?” Charlotte asked.
“Could I?” Suzette looked at Charlotte with such hope that suddenly the sullenness that had informed her features vanished, and she was pretty and cheerful and young.
“Suzette, you can work as much as you want,” Charlotte told her. “This is my busy season, and things will be crazy until November. I can use you in bits and pieces like today, but I’d prefer to use you regularly, and put you on the payroll, and pay you as part-time agricultural help like I pay Jorge. That means you might have to pay taxes on what you earn, but since you’re starting so late in the year, and since Teddy hasn’t been working a lot, your annual income will be so low you two probably won’t owe the IRS anything.” She smiled. “Unless Teddy was raking in the dough out there in Tucson.”
“I’d like to work regularly” Suzette said eagerly. She was almost animated. She gestured to the farm stand. “This wasn’t really working, anyway. I mean, a lot of the time I was just sitting there; are you sure you want to pay me for it? I mean, I’m getting free room and board from your grandmother.”
“Beach Grass Garden is independent of that. And if you’re afraid you’re not working hard enough, don’t worry. I’ll find more for you to do. For example, I close the farm stand around six—people come by early in the day for fresh produce for dinner that night. If it’s rained all day or I’m backed up, I spend some of the evening hours out in the shed, potting and arranging flower vases for the next morning.”
Suzette smiled. “Oh, I’d love to do that!”
“Then we’ll do it.” Charlotte almost linked her arm through the young woman’s but had second thoughts—she didn’t want to startle her, and she didn’t want to be too friendly, either. It was possible that Suzette would turn out to be slow, or sloppy, or unreliable. If she didn’t turn out to be right for Beach Grass Garden, Charlotte still wanted to be able to establish a relationship with her as a family member—the mother of an expected niece or nephew.
Suzette smoothed the money with her hands. She said, “I’ll be able to buy some things for my baby.”
“Oh, Suzette!” Charlotte’s heart twinged. “I’m sure Mom’s dying to take you shopping for baby things.”
“I guess. But still. It will be nice to buy something for my baby from me.”
“I get you completely,” Charlotte said. “Let’s go have dinner, then maybe we can work in the shed for a while.”
Coop had phoned Charlotte that morning, when he woke up. His voice was warm and lazy; he admitted he was still in bed. He had made plans to go over to the separate and smaller island called Tuckernuck for a couple of days with an old friend, an old male friend, he hastened to add. He suggested they have a real date night Saturday; he wanted to take her out to dinner and perhaps to one of the local theater productions.
Over the next few days, Charlotte worked in the garden, and Suzette proved to be a quick and willing assistant. The thought crossed her mind that Suzette might be trying to prove herself in some way, to Charlotte and to the entire family, and she was very pleased by the idea of providing a way to impress the family.
Still, she should be careful. She didn’t want to work pregnant Suzette too hard. Early one afternoon she showed Suzette how to use the Dutch hoe to slice off the weeds at ground level, carefully, without disturbing the plants.
“Are you sure you want to work outside in this heat?” she asked.
“This heat? This heat is nothing,” Suzette told her, bragging slightly. “I grew up in Arizona. It reaches one hundred degrees and more in the summer. This is just a spring day for me.”
The third evening, after they’d finished dinner, Charlotte and Suzette went out to the shed to prepare the flower vases for sale the next morning. They worked side by side, companionably, in silence, except for Charlotte’s occasional suggestion or Suzette’s question. Suzette learned quickly and had a knack for arranging flowers in unusual combinations. She focused intensely on her work, and Charlotte noticed with amusement how the young woman sucked her upper lip down with her lower teeth as she concentrated.
The door to the shed opened, and Teddy strolled in. “Hey, ladies.” He’d changed out of the light linen Brooks Brothers blazer he wore to work at the antiques shop and wore only his swim trunks with a T-shirt. “So,” he said to Charlotte, “I see you’ve turned my wife into a little factory girl.”
Charlotte snorted. “Factory? Hardly.” She gestured with her hands. The shed was full of flowers, picked fresh that evening and sitting in buckets of water while they waited to be arranged. The air was sweet and warm and moist.
“Stop it, Teddy,” Suzette said, tossing him a glance. “I told you how much I like this work. Don’t be a pest.”
Teddy put his palms on the worktable and levered himself up to sit on it, swinging his legs like a kid at a playground. “Yeah, Char. Suzette told me how much you get for your little posies. Highway robbery!”
Charlotte didn’t deign to look at him. “Right, and you know this because you buy so many flower arrangements here.”
“I don’t need to buy flowers,” Teddy argued. “You fill Nona’s house with yours.”
“And this is a problem for you?”
Teddy backed down. “Of course not. They’re great. But I’m saving my money so I can find a place for the two of us to live—well, the three of us, pretty soon.”
“Do you want to stay on the island?” Charlotte asked, as she placed three hydrangea blooms in dreamy hues of periwinkle and sky blue into a milk white pitcher.
“No, thanks,” Teddy said. “I prefer the warmth of the Southwest to the chill of the Northeast.”
“I like it here,” Suzette announced.
Both Teddy and Charlotte stared at the young woman in surprise.
“I thought you’d hate it,” Teddy said.
Suzette snorted. “Is that why you brought me here?”
“I brought you here to meet my family. The entire snot-nosed perfect lot.”
“I don’t think Charlotte’s so perfect!” Suzette
shot back. She looked over at Charlotte, her face red. “Sorry. I meant that as a compliment.”
“I take it as a compliment,” Charlotte told her.
Suzette continued to arrange wild sweet everlasting from Nona’s uncultivated moors in a vase with daisies and phlox. “I keep telling you, Teddy, you go through the world with expectations that are much too high. That’s why you’re always disappointed. Plus you always think the way anyone is is directly aimed at you.”
Charlotte forced herself to stop staring. Suzette was speaking, entire sentences! And she was right. She had Teddy down cold.
Teddy sounded childish as he told Charlotte, “Whereas Suzette has no expectations.”
“That’s right!” Suzette agreed. “I am no one from nowhere. And I’m grateful for every day that I’m not drunk or living with a drunk.”
During the long moment of silence that followed, Charlotte looked from Teddy to Suzette and back again, stunned by the intensity of their mutual gaze and by the current of love flowing between them. They were clearly meant for each other, and they were clearly bound to each other, perhaps by secrets and secret needs and humiliations and mistakes, but also by affection and a kind of acceptance Charlotte thought she’d experienced only with Nona. Her parents were too—not judgmental but hopeful. They were so proud of their children, their handsome, brilliant, capable, superior children, and with that pride came the belief that these children could win the tennis match, and the sailboat race, and get into the best boarding schools and colleges, and marry the best people, and live exemplary lives.
Teddy said to his wife, “You’re trembling.”
“Well, I’m mad,” Suzette told him.
Charlotte spoke up. “You’re probably tired, too. I know I am. Why don’t you go put your feet up, Suzette. I’ll finish in here.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Suzette washed her hands, and as she dried them she said to Charlotte, “Don’t worry because Teddy and I fought. We fight all the time.” Then Teddy put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and ushered her out the door, into the summer night.
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