Belonging

by Nancy Thayer

  It was too late to call Tory. Oh, Tory wouldn’t mind; she’d probably even get dressed and rush over, arms loaded with hot bagels and onions and cream cheese—comfort food. But Joanna couldn’t call Tory without waking up John, too, and although she knew John was fond of her, Joanna also knew he disapproved of her. Specifically of her affair with Carter. The Randalls were that rare thing, an intact and happy family, and they didn’t like seeing other members of the same species endangered. God, when they found out everything, they’d be furious! Joanna moaned aloud at the very thought.

  Oh, what was she going to do, what was she going to do? Joanna threw back her covers and jumped out of bed. Sliding her feet into slippers, she stalked through the bedroom and into the living room, which at this time of night always glowed an eerie orange from the lights on the street. She went to the window and looked out. Snow was still sifting down, falling onto the black trash bags piled at the curb. An ambulance screamed past. She was exhausted and yet unable to rest; her mind was racing. Things were just too unsettled, too messy. She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this place, this room so bare and so neglected, necessities unsoftened by any whimsical human touch. To this age, forty years old this year. To this bizarre state of beleaguered loneliness, with so many people wanting bits and pieces of her, and no one wanting all.

  It seemed that she had made the wrong decisions at several significant crossroads in her life. Now she was facing the most overwhelming question of all. She knew what the normal, brusque, competent, no-nonsense Joanna would do. But if she had learned anything at all from this dreadful night, perhaps it was to seriously consider her options—all her options. Perhaps she should give up competence and logic and reach for her dreams.

  It was time to claim what belonged to her, to take what love had given.

  Part Two

  Five

  All through the night after the accident, the traffic hummed and whispered like a restless wind. At six it billowed into a powerful storm of noise, rising, around eight-thirty, to a crescendo of horns and squealing brakes.

  Joanna woke exhausted and elated. She studied her body carefully: she was nauseous, and groggy from staying up all night, but otherwise healthy and intact.

  No blood from anywhere, no bruises.

  She didn’t think she needed to have a doctor check her over. Her stomach heaved with reassuring authority; she knelt over the toilet and vomited as wretchedly as she had the past three weeks. Then she made her way back to bed and slept.

  When she awoke again, it was afternoon. She wanted breakfast food, starches, nursery food, so she called a local bakery and had them deliver juice and milk and a variety of muffins. She sat in bed, eating and scribbling figures on a notepad.

  No one called her.

  By Sunday she was determined. She knew Nantucket’s area code from calling Tory’s summer house. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she dialed.

  “Information? I’d like the number for the Robert Hoover Real Estate Agency, please.”

  She scribbled the number on the notepad on her bedside table, and dialed again. Her heart was thudding with excitement and it plummeted inside her when an answering machine came on with its electronic message. Frustrated, she slammed down the phone. She’d have to wait until Monday to make the appointment, which meant waiting until Tuesday to see the house. Picking up the phone again, she dialed information once more and asked for Bob Hoover’s residential phone number. Then she dialed.

  A woman answered.

  “Could I speak to Mr. Hoover, please?”

  “Certainly. Who shall I say is calling?”

  She had thought about this. “Ms. Jay Jones.”

  “He’ll be right here.”

  “This is Bob Hoover. How can I help you?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I’d like to inquire about a house you have on the market. The Farthingale house.” The man was silent. Joanna’s heart stopped. “Is it still available?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course.” He seemed bemused.

  “Could you tell me the price?”

  “Seven hundred ninety-five thousand.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot.”

  “Actually, that’s under its assessed value. It’s waterfront property.”

  “And the house itself? What kind of shape is it in?”

  “Well, it’s livable—it’s got heat, electricity, and so on, but I’ll admit it could use some cosmetic work. It’s a solid house, though. Substantial. Built over a hundred and fifty years ago by a sea captain, and they built their homes to last.”

  “When could I see it?”

  “When would you like to see it?”

  “I’m in New York right now. How about tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon?” He cleared his throat. “Of course I could show it to you then, but you know the house won’t be at its best. I mean, with this weather. It’s a terrific summer house, but—”

  “You said it had heat.”

  “Yes. It does. And it’s insulated. But out there in Squam so near the water, it’s pretty exposed. I mean only that it won’t show to its best advantage, and if you’re thinking of it as a summer place, then I’d rather show it to you on a sunny day when you can really appreciate it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t want it as a summer home. I’d want it as my permanent residence.”

  “Year round, as we say here.”

  “Right.”

  “Then by all means let me show it to you tomorrow. I assume you’ll be flying in. Can I pick you up at the airport?”

  “I’d appreciate that. I have to make my plane reservations …”

  “Just call my secretary in the morning and let her know what time you’ll be arriving and I’ll be there to meet you, Ms. Jones.” Another pause, and then he said, “Be sure to dress warmly. It’s still winter here. So you’ll know who I am, I’ll be wearing a red down parka.”

  Some protective instinct made Joanna reply, “I’ll be wearing a fur, one that’s about the same brown as my hair.” She would wear her wig.

  Joanna made reservations for a round-trip flight to the island, then she lay back in bed, eyes closed, not quite sleeping, but drifting through a thick mist of memories.

  Nantucket had been one of the watering holes in her mother’s odd, irresponsible, irrationally optimistic life. Over the course of her childhood Joanna and Erica had been guests in quite a few houses on different parts of the island.

  Joanna recalled picking blueberries on the moors in a pink-checked sundress, her fingers stained indigo, the sun hot on her back, birds calling, other children nearby laughing, chasing butterflies.

  Running, shrieking with glee, into the cool frothy ocean on a hot August day, hand held tightly by another child.

  Picnicking on a blanket while her mother and another woman laughed and talked and stretched their tan slim legs.

  Curling up next to her mother in the twin bed they shared in someone’s attic, her mother smelling of roses and gin, her mother’s tears slipping silently down her face, wetting Joanna’s shoulders through her thin nightgown.

  Good memories and bad memories, laughter and tears, hope and disappointment, and always, always the houses, with so many rooms, and the clean and shining windows enormous and full of blue and golden light and the kitchens fragrant with cinnamon rolls and berry pies, and the lawns gay with flowers, badminton nets, croquet wickets, wraparound porches littered with buckets of smelly, salty, decomposing horseshoe crabs or pearly shells, flags snapping smartly in the Fourth of July breeze, swimsuits and striped beach towels flapping from the line by the outdoor shower. The houses were always full of people who dwelt among their families without a thought, who never were outsiders, or lonely, or abashed, or forgotten. More than anywhere else, the families on Nantucket were an enchanted breed.

  Perhaps that was why that house, that spot of land, called out to her so powerfully. But Joanna knew she was not being frivolous to succumb to its spell. She’d never been li
ke her mother, drifting on whatever current came her way. She’d always known she would have to take care of herself. And she had taken care of herself, at least of the professional side of herself—and the financial side, too; she mustn’t forget that. Not every woman at forty can afford to buy a waterfront dream house by herself, but she could, because over the past twenty years she’d squirreled away her money instead of squandering it on frivolities.

  Almost as if she’d suspected all along that this day would come, and she would be alone when it came to her.

  And what a gift it was that she’d found something that claimed her, that she in turn could claim.

  Monday morning Joanna heated up coffee in her microwave as she dialed her office. Her ambitious young assistant answered on the first ring.

  “Gloria, listen, I’m not going to make it in today,” she said, working hoarseness into her voice.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish I were. I’ve got a hellish flu.”

  “Are you sure it’s flu? You should check. I mean, I heard about the accident. And I don’t think you’ve been sick in the three years I’ve worked here.” Gloria’s voice was eager, smug.

  “Listen, Gloria, just take care of things, okay? I have to go. I’m going to throw up.” This was not quite a lie; she had, she might again.

  “Poor baby. Shall I call you if—”

  “No. I’m taking the phone off the hook. Bye.” Clicking off, Joanna threw the portable phone across the room. It landed in a box of papers. Gloria was the smartest, hardest-working assistant Joanna had ever had. She also had the morals of a barracuda. She’d be the last person Joanna would confide in, ever. Joanna thought about that for a moment, about the network and the people she worked with, and then she shook her head and crossed the room to retrieve the phone. Bending over made her stomach heave again, so she just leaned against the wall. It felt like the entire contents of her body and mind were drifting back down into place with the rocking, lilting motion of snowflakes in a paperweight.

  When she could open her eyes, she dressed for her trip. She pulled on thick wool trousers and a cashmere sweater and tied a heavy silk scarf around her neck and was so completely warm and cozy she dozed off in the cab on the way to La Guardia.

  The island airlines were stuck off all by themselves in a rather temporary-looking little terminal, but she was too hormonally drugged to be nervous during this trip. She was grateful for her fur; it worked like a blanket against the cold, and she sat on the small plane that couldn’t quite heat its interior, and leaned her head against the window, taking comfort from the gentle reverberations as the plane hummed its way over Long Island and out to the ocean and Nantucket.

  It was another cold, windy March day, but blazingly clear. The tip of Long Island disappeared from her vision, replaced by the vast, glittering, dark blue expanse of the sea. Then, finally, she saw the curving green and brown island, rimmed in golden sand. The plane waltzed liltingly down to the runway and sputtered to a stop. The pilot detached himself from his seat and opened the door that turned into a ramp. Joanna followed the other passengers across the tarmac and into the terminal.

  She spotted Bob Hoover immediately; he was the only man not dressed like a carpenter or fisherman. A short, stocky man about her age, he wore a red down parka over a navy-blue blazer and a tie sprinkled with small white outlines of the island. He approached her with a broad smile and shook her hand.

  “Ms. Jones? Bob Hoover. How was your flight?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “Are you hungry? Would you like a little lunch before we drive out to Squam?”

  “No, thanks. I’d like to go on out.”

  “Of course. My car’s outside.”

  He led the way out of the terminal, across the loading zones to the curb where his Mercedes station wagon waited. Joanna noticed as he drove that his face and hands had the weathered, leathery look of a sailor.

  “I thought I might tell you the house’s history on the way out,” Bob said. Glancing over at her, he added, “In case you didn’t know, we’re fiends for history here.”

  “I’d love to hear about it,” Joanna told him.

  “Great. Well. One hundred and fifty years ago a retired sea captain, Abraham Farthingale, built the house out there on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. At that time it was considered daft to build a house so far away from town. Although I might add that over fifty years before, about the time of the Revolution, Kezia Coffin built a so-called country estate out at Quaise, one of the harbor’s eastern coves, and a long way from the center of the town. But that’s another story.

  “Anyway, Farthingale was an odd man, proud, secretive, cranky. He didn’t care for people, and when he lost part of a leg in a whaling accident, he determined that even though he couldn’t go out to sea anymore, nevertheless he’d live as close to it as he could get. He had plenty of money to buy the necessities of life and cart them out into the lonely countryside. He lived the rest of his life out there, seeing only his wife and children. Two sons. When Farthingale died, his family moved back into Nantucket town; they hadn’t liked being isolated, and the house had been bitterly cold in the winter.” Bob glanced over at Joanna. “Probably still is, at least in the water-side rooms. The wind can be brutal. Even with heat. You should be aware of that.”

  “Thanks for warning me.”

  “Okay. Well. Let’s see. The house remained in the Farthingale family for seventy-five years, but was seldom lived in for all that time—no one wanted to be stuck out in the sticks. I guess now and then when a newlywed couple was saving up the money for their own place, they’d make do out there. But in the early twentieth century a summer visitor saw the possibilities and bought the house as a vacation home.”

  “A vacation home, that long ago?”

  “Oh, yes. Even before the turn of the century, Nantucket was a tourist resort. In the sixties a family named Baxter bought it from the Farthingales and used it as a summer house for quite a while. Put in heat and a modern kitchen and some other amenities. Like a lot of other people, they started coming down during the fall—it’s glorious here then—and then perhaps for Christmas, then early in the spring. Old man Baxter loved the island. When he died, the house passed on to his children, but this last batch of owners, Baxter’s grandchildren, prefer the mountains and don’t like coming here. At least that’s what they say. I have a feeling they’d just rather have the money than the house. Three quarters of a million dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Yes,” Joanna agreed soberly, “it is.”

  “Still,” Bob added, perking up, “you might be the one to find the treasure.”

  “The treasure?”

  They were just turning off the paved Quidnet Road, onto the rough Squam Road. The twigs and branches of the dense bordering thickets were still closed tight against winter, looking sticklike and brittle and gray.

  “The treasure,” Bob repeated, pronouncing the words as if they felt good in his mouth. “Farthingale found a treasure. Or so he said. It was along the beach he walked daily that he found a chest of gold and jewels, washed up on the sand after one of the many shipwrecks caused by fog and Nantucket’s shoals. He brought it home and hid it in his house. At any and all times when he did bless other men with his company, Farthingale boasted of this treasure. A chest of gold and jewels. He promised his sons he’d share it with them, then died before telling them where it was.”

  “So no one else ever saw the treasure.”

  “Right. But you see, Nantucket’s absolutely surrounded by shoals, and those and the fog and storms have caused plenty of shipwrecks over the years. There are written records of such wrecks and of cargo being strewn all across the beaches to be gathered up by whoever got there first. Clothes, linens, jewelry, money. There were also pirates who sailed these waters, capturing ships coming from England or the Far East, and sometimes after a battle the debris from a sinking ship would wash up on our shores.”

  “But I would t
hink anyone who owned the house would have searched it thoroughly.”

  “Of course. Still, it’s a large house, an old house. A lot of house to search, four floors, really. Eight fireplaces. Two main staircases, a front for the family, a back for the servants, plus a third down into the basement and a small enclosed staircase leading up to a large attic. The attic itself’s broken up into several bedrooms, all with angled ceilings—something could be tucked away up there, under the wide-board floors.”

  “Oh, the house sounds so wonderful, I can’t wait to see it,” Joanna exclaimed.

  “Well, then, here we are!” Bob replied as he turned off Squam Road onto a wide white pebble drive. It was bordered with slanted, wind-twisted pines, gnarled scrub oak, and wild berry bushes, all so thick and high and overgrown they obscured the sight of the ocean. The wild greenery scratched and skittered along the sides of the Mercedes. Now the shrubs parted, and there was the house, serene and centered against the sea and sky.

  It looked as charmingly forthright as it had the first time she saw it, two years before, and again last August when she’d crept down the drive for one brief, clandestine, longing look.

  “It’s like something from a storybook,” Joanna observed.

  Bob came around to help her out of the station wagon. “It’s a great old house, no doubt about it.” They stood side by side, looking up at it. “Its architecture combines the best elements of several periods and philosophies. The plain weathered gray shingles and the basic structural design reflect the Quaker belief in simplicity. But about the time Farthingale built his house, the island was changing and architecture was, too. See the framing of the door?” Approaching the house, he ran his hands over two broad, flat, upright boards on either side of the door. “These are called pilasters, and the board that connects them over the top is called the entablature. You can see how it echoes very simply the structure of a Greek temple. This detail is carried on throughout the house, over the eight fireplaces, although as you’ll see, the ones downstairs are more decorative.”