Nantucket Sisters

by Nancy Thayer

  “You’ll have the best-dressed baby on the island.”

  “True.” Maggie’s smile fades. “Mom’s being brave and positive but I know she misses Thaddeus terribly.”

  “Ben must miss him, too.” It pierces Emily’s heart to think of Ben losing his beloved stepfather.

  “He’s destroyed. Truly. He’s living alone in the big old rattling house on the farm. Sometimes he comes to Orange Street for dinner. He’s lost weight, he looks miserable …” Maggie takes a deep breath and faces Emily. “Of course he was devastated when you married someone else.”

  Tears flood Emily’s eyes. “I never wanted to hurt Ben. I care for him enormously, in a way I’ll never stop loving him, but come on, you must remember he broke up with me. Anyway, all we did was fight, there at the end. He’s so stubborn, Maggie. He wouldn’t give an inch, there was no compromising with him.”

  Maggie doesn’t argue but Emily senses how tense they’ve both become. Desperate to prevent an argument, Emily swerves into a new subject. “Maggie, I have my degree. I’ve been volunteering at a conservation agency in New York. I see my parents all the time …”

  “… and your New York friends,” Maggie inserts in a neutral tone.

  “Yes, but most of all, Maggie, Cameron is totally a wonderful husband! I can’t wait for you to meet him. He’s gorgeous, not like Ben, but in a blond, sort of Scandinavian way, and he works on Wall Street and he’s loaded with pots of money—let me make that clear, since I know you think I married for money. But he works hard for his money. He’s always working, or flying somewhere to meet with clients.”

  Maggie holds up her hands. “Stop. Enough about Cameron, okay?”

  Emily sits back in her chair. She did it all wrong; she didn’t steer their conversation toward happier subjects. Reaching for Maggie’s hand, she says, “I’m honestly truly sorry I hurt Ben.”

  Maggie stares steadily at Emily. “I am honestly truly sorry you’re not my sister-in-law.” She withdraws her hand.

  For once a waiter appears at the perfect moment. “Can I bring you ladies anything else?”

  “God, if only,” Emily says. They both laugh, and their laughter bridges the crack in their relationship.

  “No, thanks,” Emily says. The waiter drifts away. “Maggie, we can still stay in touch, can’t we? I want to know about your baby and I want to tell you about mine—it’s a girl.”

  Maggie’s face brightens. “So’s mine! If the ultrasound is right—sometimes they make mistakes.”

  “Are you going to do Lamaze?” Emily asks, then bites her lip. Who would be Maggie’s partner?

  “I am,” Maggie answers, without hesitation. “Mom’s going with me and she’ll be in the labor-delivery room. I’d like to have the baby at home, with a midwife—”

  “No,” Emily interrupts, “don’t. Too risky. You can have a midwife with you at the hospital but if the baby is stuck, or something goes wrong, you need a doctor nearby.”

  “Are you having a spinal?” Maggie asks.

  “You think I’m too much of a princess to endure pain?” Emily arches her eyebrow at her old friend. “No. I’m going the natural way, but at the hospital. I’ll have a midwife, too, Mount Sinai has a great system for women who want midwives.”

  “Are you scared?” Maggie asks, then answers her own question. “I am. Excited, too, of course, but this baby is big”—she runs her hands over her great basketball of a belly—“and really, Emily, the, um, exit is small. I don’t understand how it’s going to work.”

  “I know, right? Who thought of this system?” Emily leans forward. “It’s like squeezing a whale through a bowline knot.”

  Maggie throws her head back and laughs. “Now, there’s a Nantucket metaphor!”

  Emily lowers her voice. “Cameron’s terrified about this. He hates watching the birth videos—I’ve caught him closing his eyes! I don’t know why he’s so squeamish. He’s fabulous in bed, we have the most amazing sex—”

  Maggie shifts uncomfortably in her seat and focuses on her plate, empty of all but crumbs. She wets her fingertip and picks up the crumbs, paying careful attention to them.

  Emily shuts up. She could slap herself. Of course Ben’s sister doesn’t want to hear what great sex Emily’s having with another man.

  “Stretch marks!” Emily blurts. “Do you have stretch marks?”

  Maggie looks ruefully at Emily. She knows exactly why Emily changed the subject. “ ’Course I do.”

  “I’ve bought that expensive vitamin E cream to rub on, and I do it twice a day,” says Emily. “I’m diligent about it, but honestly, I don’t think it’s making a bit of difference.”

  “Do you pee when you sneeze?”

  “I leak like a broken faucet!”

  For a while they’re back together, laughing like the little girls they once were.

  Then Emily says, “Maggie, Cameron’s going to come here for a few weekends in August. Would you like to meet him? I’d really like you to. He’s awfully nice.”

  The air around Maggie seems to shift and chill. “I’m glad he’s so great, Emily,” Maggie says. “I’m happy for you. But I don’t think I could handle meeting Ben’s replacement—”

  “He’s not Ben’s replacement!” Emily objects.

  Maggie takes a few bills from her purse and puts them on the table. “Anyway, no thanks. I’m awfully busy with Clarice and preparing the house for the baby, and I haven’t given up working on my book.”

  Emily puts her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Don’t go yet. Tell me about your book!”

  Maggie gently shakes off Emily’s arm. “Another time, maybe. I really must go.”

  Emily watches Maggie waddle away. She gathers up her own bags and heads out to her Range Rover. As she drives to ’Sconset, a mood of melancholy surrounds her like a summer mist, and regrets torment her heart. If she’d married Ben, she’d be on beautiful Nantucket all the time, she’d see Maggie every day, they could share every humorous and cranky moment of their pregnancies, and she would go to sleep at night at the side of the man she’s loved all her life. The man she will always love.

  It’s ironic—funny, in a terrible, bitter way—how things worked out. If Emily had married Ben, and Thaddeus died, she and Ben would live in the house on the farm, and Emily knows Ben would have had to agree to let her refurnish and redecorate with some of her parents’ money. That ramshackle house would become charming. Plus, then she could carry her daughter down to Shipwreck House, tell her the stories she and Maggie invented. She could … Sorrow overcomes her. Emily pulls the vehicle to the side of the road and sobs.

  After a while, she regains her poise. Remember, she tells herself, her baby could be Cameron’s. She probably is Cameron’s. Their child will be safe, their child will have Emily’s parents’ Nantucket house and the fabulous city of New York.

  She drives back onto Milestone Road, but instead of going directly to the house, she drives down to the beach at ’Sconset. Kicking off her sandals, Emily slowly trudges over the sand to the ocean’s edge. Clusters of sunbathers and swimmers lie on brightly colored towels in the sun. Children build sand castles. In the warm Atlantic water foaming up to the shore, pockets of light flash and gleam, vibrant as beacons. Awkwardly, Emily kneels, placing her hand in the warm summer water, palm up, to feel the glitter on her skin. This will wait for her. This will always be here. She puts her hands on her belly and feels her baby move.

  When she returns to the house on Orange Street, which she still thinks of as Clarice’s house although, remarkably, it belongs to her, Maggie quietly sets the groceries in the kitchen and makes her way up the back stairs to her bedroom. She doesn’t want to tell anyone yet that she ran into Emily. She needs to think about this. Anything she says about Emily will eventually work its way back to Ben, and he’s unhappy these days—she’s worried. He can’t seem to move on. He’s become secretive, hard-eyed, humorless. He used to join them for dinner once a week and stop by for a drink and a good island gossip severa
l evenings, but since Emily married, Ben’s become reclusive and sullen. His bitterness has driven a wedge between Maggie and her brother.

  As for Cameron, she simply doesn’t think about him much. She trained herself not to. She doesn’t want to think unpleasant thoughts when her growing child is curled inside her body. With each passing day, Maggie’s pregnancy works like an opiate. This is something Ben can’t share.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  One early September afternoon Maggie decides to drive out to Thaddeus’s farm to walk the paths she remembers from childhood. The farm is officially Ben’s now, but he won’t mind.

  “Mom? Clarice? I’m going out to visit the farm. Want to come along?”

  “No, thank you, dear.” Clarice looks up from her armchair in the living room. “I’m in the middle of a good book.”

  “I’ll come,” Frances decides. She hasn’t been there since Thaddeus’s death six months ago. “I’d like to see it again.”

  Frances is quiet as they drive out of town and along the Polpis Road. She puts her hands to her heart when they drive onto the land and park in front of the house where she lived with her beloved husband.

  “You okay, Mom?” Maggie asks.

  “I’m fine, dear. Give me a moment. Such memories.”

  They leave the car and walk up the steps. The door isn’t locked; most people on the island never lock their doors.

  They knock anyway, and call out, “Ben?” His car isn’t in the drive, so they know he’s not there. They step inside.

  The kitchen is as messy as it was before Thaddeus married Frances. The dog, an adopted mutt, sleeps under the table. She opens only one eye when they enter, but doesn’t move to greet them.

  Frances murmurs. “It doesn’t look like Ben spends much time with the dog, but of course she probably sleeps all the time …”

  “Mom.” Maggie points to the kitchen table. “Look at this.”

  Spread across the wooden surface, pinned down with salt and pepper shakers, a sugar bowl, and a coffee cup, lies a large map printed with the words: Thaddeus Ramsdale Property. The boundary line is outlined in dark black. The land has been divided several ways in different colors of pencil. In darker pencil, two roads cut through from Polpis Road to the harbor, winding around, and on each bulge of each curve a house is sketched in.

  It’s a plan for a development.

  Frances collapses into a chair. Her skin has gone gray. “No,” she whispers. “He wouldn’t.”

  Maggie takes out her cell phone and punches in Ben’s number. She hasn’t called him in weeks.

  When he answers, she says bluntly, “We’re at the farm. You have to come here now.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. And it’s not the farm. It’s my farm.”

  Maggie holds her anger in and tempers her voice. “Ben, Mom’s here. She saw your map. And no, of course you don’t have to do anything. But you should. Please. I don’t think you ought to make Mom wait now that she knows.”

  “I’m coming.” He clicks off.

  “He’s coming,” Maggie tells her mother. “I’ll make some tea.” In a gentle voice, she suggests, “Why don’t you go up to your room and gather some of your cold weather clothing to take back to Orange Street with you? The other day you were wishing you had your blue cotton sweater.”

  Frances nods numbly and leaves the room like an obedient child.

  Maggie busies herself around the kitchen, making tea, washing cups and dishes, wiping off surfaces. She sees Ben’s truck pull into the drive.

  “Mom? Ben’s here.”

  Frances comes into the kitchen, her arms full of clothing. “Is there a plastic garbage bag here I could put these in?” She seems surprisingly calm.

  Maggie’s holding the bag open while Frances drops in the garments when Ben opens the door and steps inside. For a moment the trio stare at each other in silence. He’s lost weight, looks lean and rather startlingly grown-up in his striped button-down shirt, khakis, and tie.

  Ben says, “I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”

  “When were you going to tell us?” Maggie asks.

  “Is that tea?” Ben acts pleasant, totally fake, and pulls out a chair. “Mom? Want to sit down?”

  Frances sits.

  Maggie sets tea before them and joins her mother and brother at the table. “What’s going on?” she asks Ben.

  He doesn’t flinch, back down, or appear apologetic. He doesn’t hesitate. In his gorgeous blue eyes a kind of darkness gleams that frightens Maggie.

  Ben says, “I’m working with Sedgwick Realty. I’m going to subdivide this property. I’m going to work with a contractor and architect to develop the land. We’ll build a few extremely fine houses here. The best one, Mom, will be yours. You can have a harbor view if you’d like. Or—”

  “Stop.” Frances lifts a hand. “Ben, you can’t subdivide Thaddeus’s land.”

  “I can, you know, Mom.”

  “But why?” The words seem torn from her heart.

  “So I can be rich. So we can all be rich.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t talk like that. You love this land. You love it like Thaddeus loved it. Why, what would Thaddeus think?”

  “Thaddeus is dead.”

  After a beat of silence, Frances says, “You’re still indebted to him, Ben. You still must behave honorably.”

  Ben shrugs. “I think I am behaving honorably. I’m doing what I need to do to secure a prosperous future for all of us.”

  “A prosperous future?” Frances puts her hands to her head, as if it hurts. “What the hell does that mean? We’re all right, Ben! If I need more money, I can work. That’s what people do!”

  “You’re too old—”

  “I’m fifty-three, for God’s sake, I’m hardly decrepit! Don’t sell this land because you think you need to take care of me!”

  “But I do want to take care of you, Mom!” The little boy’s longing rings in the man’s cry. “I want you to be safe. I want you to be secure. I don’t want you to have to sew other women’s clothes—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with work, Ben!” Frances’s eyes blaze.

  “I’m not saying that, I’m saying that this house is a sty about to collapse, it’s a fire trap. I want to give you a beautiful new house, with new appliances, and a cathedral ceiling! I want to hire people to help you clean and maintain it. Landscape it. Give you a water feature. When you grow older, I want to be able to afford more people to assist you if you’re ill so you don’t end up in some old folks’ home. I want to live well. Jesus Christ, Mom, I want to have some power! I’m sick of sucking up to rich people, I want to be rich! If I make enough money, I can control what happens to the future of the island!”

  Maggie snorts. “Yeah, develop it—”

  Frances rises majestically to glower down at her son. “Control the future of the island? Good God, Ben, if you develop this land, you’ll kill it, and you’ll kill part of your soul, you know that.”

  “No, Mom. I’ll be rich.”

  “Rich.” Frances spits the word. Softening, she leans her hands on the table, pleading. “Ben, I don’t understand why you’re changed like this, although I can guess. I think you’ve been badly hurt, I think you’re feeling alone, and I’m afraid you’ve lost your way. You need to take some time to reflect, Ben, before you do anything as crucial as developing this land. Could you do that? Could you take some time, the winter, let’s say, to consider your actions?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Ben’s jaw clenches. His eyes are hot with emotion but his voice is cool when he speaks. “I’ve made up my mind. I need to start this as soon as possible, while the market’s good. You and Maggie are already living happily with Clarice. You’ll want to be together when Maggie has her baby. Mom, I’m going to build a house for you and one for Maggie, near the harbor—”

  “Stop right there.” Frances stands up. Her voice is cold. “Just because you’ve made a pact with the devil doesn’t mean the rest of us have. If you
develop this land, Ben McIntyre, don’t think for a second that I’ll have anything to do with it or with the profit from it.” Frances blazes with anger. “If you develop this land, you’ll betray every value I’ve ever tried to teach you. You’ll betray me, you’ll betray Thaddeus, you’ll betray the land. And I won’t be part of it. If you do this, I will cut you out of my life!”

  Maggie thinks her mother’s magnificent. Expectantly she looks toward Ben, assuming he’ll relent, not all the way, but certainly a little.

  “Fine,” Ben says. His eyes have gone cold. Blank.

  “Oh, Ben.” Frances is trembling. “Maggie. Let’s go.” She walks toward the door.

  Maggie picks up the bag with her mother’s fall clothing. “We’ll have to come back,” she says to Ben. “To pick up our things.”

  “Fine,” Ben repeats. “Whenever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In September, at Mount Sinai, after a long labor concluding with a C-section, Emily gives birth to a baby girl. Her parents are over the moon to have a grandchild.

  When Cameron sees the infant’s thick black hair, he’s not so thrilled.

  “Now, how is it,” he asks, in the hospital room, with the nurse right there, “that I have blond hair, and you have blond hair, Emily, and our child has black hair?”

  Emily’s heart thumps heavily. She’s woozy from the medications and scarcely has the energy to speak. What can she say? Her parents are in the room, too, both blond, although her father’s hair has gone silver. Perhaps, she wonders foggily, one of her grandparents once had black hair.

  Fortunately, the nurse chuckles knowingly. “That’s newborn hair,” she informs them. “It will fall out and then the blond hair will probably come in. Or who knows, perhaps red hair—our genes are complicated, and Mother Nature does love to spin the roulette wheel. I’ve seen babies with blue eyes born to parents with dark brown eyes. My, that caused a fuss!” She continues to chatter as she bustles around the room, checking mother and baby’s vital signs, scribbling on charts. Emily wants to grab the woman and kiss her.