Nantucket Blue

by Leila Howland

  I rang the doorbell. After a few minutes, no one answered. I opened the door and walked inside.

  “Hello?” I called into the entryway. All the lights were on. And there was no sign of people living here. There were no family photographs, no kid drawings on the fridge, no tiny stray socks. It was a house-hotel. “Hello?”

  A girl in frog pajamas popped up from behind a sofa, clutching a blanket.

  “Hi,” I said, and dropped my bags. “I’m Cricket.”

  “I’m Lucy,” she said, hiding behind her blanket.

  “I’m the new babysitter,” I said.

  “Another one?” she asked, peering at me from behind her blanket. I nodded, smiling. She held the blanket over her nose and mouth and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Are you a robber?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she said, her eyes widening. “I’m going to rob you!”

  “Uh-oh,” I said, and cowered dramatically. She giggled. “Robber, I think we should find your mom so that I can introduce myself.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Come on.” She led me through a palatial kitchen and out to a large, crowded patio with a bar and a live jazz band playing “Moondance.” Nearby, a college-age girl in a Nantucket Catering Company apron grilled shrimp kabobs. A waiter passed a tray of fizzing cocktails, each glass topped with an impaled twist of lime. The ocean sparkled darkly in the distance. The sun was gone now, and a band of deep pink glowed on the horizon. The breeze carried the sweet smell of honeysuckle and beach grass.

  There was a small rectangular pool bordered by eight trim recliners. A group of women sat on them, looking adoringly at a broad-shouldered blond man. His bold hand gestures seemed to be conducting their laughter like an orchestra. Bradley Lucas! I thought. Telling funny stories! Twenty feet away!

  If I’d felt a little messy and underdressed when I stepped off the ferry, I was now officially in Oliver Twist territory. The men wore Nantucket Reds—I recognized the salmon-colored pants because Jules had teased Zack when he wore his to the Spring Dance, even though I think she was secretly proud of him—and the women swished like tropical fish in silky, brightly colored summer dresses.

  “Which one is your mom?” I asked Lucy. The only woman with any mom pudge was the one crooning into the microphone in a fringed vest and scuffed flats. Lucy pointed to a tall woman who stood on coltish legs in a short white dress and very high heels, conversing with a man in seersucker pants and a fedora.

  “Mommy!” Lucy called. Mrs. Lucas’s head turned. Her ponytail, which looked like it had been gathered and fastened by a professional, brushed the air. Her brow furrowed.

  “Lucy, why aren’t you in bed?” Her eyes widened as she took me in and strode toward us. “Caroline Lucas,” she said, and extended a narrow, bejeweled hand. She blinked.

  “Cricket Thompson,” I said, and shook her hand.

  “She’s the new babysitter,” Lucy said. “Another one!” She smacked her head with an open hand like a cartoon character.

  Mrs. Lucas put a hand over her mouth. The band transitioned into “Killing Me Softly.” Usually, I love that song, but for some reason my stomach sank.

  “Let’s go inside, shall we?” She gestured to the sliding glass doors I’d left open. “Come on, Lucy. You need to be in bed.”

  “But it’s not even dark out,” Lucy said, and hopped inside.

  “Who’s your grown-up tonight?” Mrs. Lucas asked.

  “Sharon.”

  “Go find her.”

  “She’s asleep,” Lucy said. “Snoring!”

  “Well, wake her up,” Mrs. Lucas said.

  “I’m so frustrated, Mommy,” Lucy said as she traipsed upstairs, dragging her blanket behind her.

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Mrs. Lucas said to me. I could smell the cocktail on her breath as she exhaled and placed one tan hand on a boney hip and the other on her temple. “I’m completely overstaffed. Mary Ellen was hiring in Boston and I was hiring out here and we didn’t communicate very well and now I’ve got babysitters up to my eyeballs. They’re packed to the rafters in the cottage,” she said, laughing. “I’ve got one on an air mattress above the garage.” Her laughter trailed off as she took in my expression. “Mary Ellen didn’t call you, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I apologize. I’ll talk to her about that. But I can’t keep you. I just don’t need another babysitter. I have backups for the backups.” She tilted her head. “But you can still catch the last ferry back. Those things run until ten o’clock, at least.” She checked her watch and tapped it with her perfect red fingernail. “Oh yeah, you’ve got plenty of time.”

  “But I’d still need to catch a bus back to Providence,” I said. “There won’t be another bus by the time I get back to Hyannis.” As if this were my biggest problem, as if disappointment weren’t hovering over my heart like a bee over a slice of watermelon, as if my dream weren’t fading into nothingness, a Polaroid picture in reverse—there goes Jay in the lifeguard chair, there go my rainy afternoons watching movies with Jules, my morning runs on the beach, my eight hundred dollars a week.

  “Right, how stupid of me,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll need a taxi.” She walked to the kitchen island and opened a drawer. She swayed a little as she counted out some cash. She handed me three stiff hundred-dollar bills. “That ought to get you home with a little extra.” She hiccupped. “Now, do you want me to have someone drop you at the ferry, or can you walk from here?”

  Seven

  I CONSIDERED MY OPTIONS as I left the Lucases’.

  Option one: catch the ten o’clock ferry. I didn’t want to go back home. If I did, Mom would pretend like we were having a great girls’ weekend all summer even though we were both miserable; she because she missed Dad, and I because I wanted to be with other kids. She promised we would go on trips to Newport and Block Island but would always come down with a headache when it came time to get in the car. She would get that look in her eye like I was betraying her every time I went to Dad’s house. It was a soft, pleading look that made me want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her and, at the same time, sprint away from her as fast as I could. I nixed the thought before I’d even reached the end of the driveway. I couldn’t give up yet.

  Option two: go to Jules’s house. “It’s right in town,” she’d told me. “A five-minute walk to the Hub.” The Hub, Jules told me, was a little store where she bought all her magazines. “They also sell postcards, little things, Tic Tacs, gum, Nantucket key chains, crap like that. Oh, and also, there’s no CVS on Nantucket, no Target, no Costco, nothing even close.”

  She went on to tell me that no one locked their doors at night, people left their keys dangling in the ignitions of their Jeeps, and everyone bought their bread from a bakery and their vegetables from a farm, not the supermarket. She’d made Nantucket sound like a foreign land whose customs I might have difficulty comprehending. It bugged me. It was only one state away. My mother had spent a summer here. I’d been to Cape Cod a bunch of times. And there was a farm stand in Tiverton that Mom, Dad, and I used to go to in the summer for blueberries, tomatoes, and Silver Queen corn. I wasn’t a total ignoramus. Still, I’d packed two big boxes of tampons just in case they were scarce out here, or really expensive, like in Russia.

  I had her address memorized, 4 Darling Street, and could picture the house perfectly. The Claytons’ Christmas card every year was of the family standing in front of the blue door with the scallop-shell knocker. A gold “4” hung above them, as if counting the perfect family: mom, dad, sister, brother. In last year’s card, Nina is looking up and laughing. What would the picture be like this year? Would they still stand in front of the door? I felt another kick of sadness, right in the stomach. I was realizing that loss has a kind of violence to it.

  When I got closer to town I took out my map and, straining my eyes in the darkness, found the Claytons’ address. Insects thrummed in the nearby yards as I traced my finger over the route.

&nb
sp; I passed back through town and crossed the busy, cobblestoned Main Street. Jeez, was there a beautiful-people factory out here? A breeding ground for J. Crew models? The older ones walked in close teams of two and four, the younger ones in looser packs of six or eight. The uneven sidewalk was illuminated by glowing, old-fashioned streetlamps. The shop windows were decorated with sea-motif jewelry. Gold starfish earrings lay in pools of green silk, and diamond-crusted anchors hung on velvet necks.

  The windows of the interior-design stores were so warm and inviting I wanted to crawl inside and curl up in one of their nautical tableaus, bury my toes in the knotty rugs, and fall backward into the plump pillows. How funny would that be, I thought, if Jules walked by in the morning and I was sleeping in the bed of a shop window?

  I turned onto Fair Street, about to head toward Jules’s, when I heard my mother’s teacher voice in my head telling me that Jules said I couldn’t stay with her, and I needed to respect that. I couldn’t just drop in unless I had a place to stay for certain. A church bell rang, and I counted the low gongs. It was ten o’clock. I paused, dropped my duffel, and looked at the map. I was four blocks shy of Darling Street, standing in front of an inn. It was white with dark red shutters and a front porch, and had a carved, gold-lettered sign.

  Option three: the Cranberry Inn.

  The door was unlocked. The lobby, with the bookcases, worn oriental rugs, and clusters of sofas and armchairs around a fireplace, looked like a living room. A man with a ponytail and goatee sat behind an antique desk, reading a paperback with one of those dark, manly-man covers. A pair of drugstore glasses sat on the end of his nose. He was sitting cross-legged in an armchair in what looked like pajama bottoms or maybe karate pants. The string of a tea bag hung over his mug. He sipped his tea and turned the page quickly, his eyes darting to the top of the next page.

  “Excuse me, are there any rooms available at the inn?” I asked. Oh god, I was actually saying a line from our fifth-grade Christmas pageant when I played Mary!

  The man jerked his head up, eyes wide, startled for a second, then laughed a little.

  “I didn’t even hear you come in,” he said as if he knew me. He held up the book. “People leave these mysteries behind, and I can’t put them down. They get me every time.” He shook his head, disappointed with himself, and waved me over. “Come on in. I’m Gavin.” He glanced through the open door behind me. “Are you with your parents?”

  I shook my head.

  “A solo traveler,” he said. “Nothing like traveling alone to get to know yourself. Sit down. Have a cookie.” He gestured to a table with a pitcher of water and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I took one. He tilted his head and consulted his reservation book. “We have one room. It’s the Admiral’s Suite.”

  The kitchen door swung open, and a girl walked through with a tray of fresh glasses. She stacked them next to the pitcher of water.

  “Oh, great,” I said, covering my mouth as I swallowed. I was hungrier than I’d realized. “I’ll take it.”

  “It’s three ninety-nine.” He sighed and added, “Plus tax.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I can’t do that. I’m not exactly on vacation, I’m looking for a job.” I needed my three hundred dollars to last at least two or three nights. I sank a little lower in the chair. I was tired for the first time since I’d woken up at five a.m., wired with anticipation.

  “Give her Rebecca’s room,” the girl said in a thick accent. Was she Irish? “Can’t charge more than a hundred for that, can you?” Was she his daughter? She was a little chubby, with pink cheeks and a sunburned nose. She pushed a black curl back behind her ear and gestured to me. “Poor thing looks knackered.”

  “Rebecca won’t mind?” I asked, wondering who Rebecca was.

  “She’s halfway to England by now,” Gavin said.

  “I got my cousin a job on Nantucket, and she quit after a week ’cause she missed her lug of a boyfriend.” I wasn’t sure if this was funny because of her accent, or even if it was meant to be a joke, but I laughed. “And he’s a right wanker.”

  “I’m looking for a job,” I said, sitting up and tapping the table with my palms. “And I need one that comes with housing.”

  “Well, this works out perfectly, then, doesn’t it?” the girl said, a hand on her sturdy hip. “You get a job, Gavin doesn’t have to go on the great chambermaid search, and I don’t have to share a bathroom with a freak of nature. You’re not a freak of nature, are you?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. Chambermaid? It sounded like a job from another century, like a charwoman or a scullery maid. Would I be churning butter, cleaning chimneys, beating rugs with a broom? Who cared? I’d have a job and a place to stay for free on Nantucket.

  “We don’t even know her name,” he said to the girl, then put a hand to his chest and turned to me. “Excuse us, what’s your name?”

  “Cricket,” I said. “Cricket Thompson.”

  “Amazing,” Gavin said. “I was noticing, really noticing the crickets earlier. I thought to myself, Ah, the song of the cricket, the song of summer.”

  “See, it’s a sign,” Liz said. “I’m Liz, by the way. Not Liza, not Lizzy, and”—she shot Gavin a look—“definitely not Lizard.”

  “Nice to meet you, Liz.”

  “What do you say, Gavin?” she asked.

  “I’m interviewing someone tomorrow,” he said. “But I don’t see why I couldn’t interview Cricket as well. Come back in the afternoon, say around three?”

  “Okay,” I said, and shook his hand. “Sounds great.”

  “Wait, who are you interviewing?” Liz asked.

  “Svetlana,” he said.

  “Svetlana…the cow?” Liz asked with a look of horror. She sounded dead serious, so I tried not to laugh.

  “She has good references,” Gavin said.

  “She flirted with Shane in front of my face at The Chicken Box,” Liz said.

  “It’s not your decision, Liz,” Gavin said, now sounding officially annoyed. “See you tomorrow, Cricket?”

  “Yes,” I said, and smiled. I felt too awkward to ask about Rebecca’s room again. “I’ll see you then.”

  I gave him my cell phone number, picked up my duffel bag, and walked out the front door. As soon as I hit Main Street I sat on a bench in front of one of the beautiful shops, wondering where I was going to spend the night now. My phone rang. I prayed it was Jules and that she’d invite me over right away. But it was my mom.

  A part of me didn’t want to pick up. I’d have to tell her that the job didn’t work out and I was considering sleeping on a park bench. It would show that she had been right and Nantucket was a bad idea. It would be evidence that I wasn’t the independent girl I worked so hard to be. But the other part of me, the tired part of me, with a blister forming on my left foot, a growling stomach, and no idea where I was going to sleep tonight, wanted to talk to her.

  “Mom?”

  “Honey? What happened?” She had always been able to tell by the way I said even one word if something was wrong. If Mom had a superpower, it was her hearing. When it came to me, her ears were as keen as a wolf’s. It was no use lying to her.

  “Well, the babysitting job didn’t work out,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be really disappointed.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But do you remember when Andrew pooped in the minivan and you had to clean it up? Or when he insisted you play Transformers…for a week?”

  “Yes. That minivan was disgusting.”

  “So, you hate babysitting, remember?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “So, this is a good thing. That family’s letting you spend the night there, at least?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  Her voice dropped an octave. “What do you mean? Where are you?”

  “Before you freak out, here’s the good news. I have a job interview at an inn tomorrow. And I have a fifty percent chance of getting it. Maybe ev
en like sixty percent.”

  “To be what?” she asked.

  “A chambermaid.”

  “A maid? No, no, no. And where are you staying tonight? It’s late!”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, where are you right now?”

  “I’m in town,” I said, taking in the cobblestones, the misty evening air, the books nestled in the display of the bookstore across the street, the elegant well-dressed couples holding hands, “and it’s perfect.”

  “Here’s what I’m going to do,” she said as if she hadn’t even heard me. “You’re going to sit tight. I‘m going to call around, find a place for you to stay, and pay for a room with my credit card. I wonder if the Jared Coffin House is still there.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I felt cool relief wash through me. With a good night’s sleep and at least another day out here, I knew I could make something work.

  “Then tomorrow morning, first thing, you’ll get on a ferry back to Hyannis. I’ll pick you up, and you’ll spend the summer with me. Just us girls.”

  Now I had wolf ears. I could hear her smile. Her relief laced through my disappointment with delicate, painful stitches. Just as I was about to protest, I got another call. It was a Nantucket number.

  “Mom, hold on one sec,” I said, and switched lines. “Hello?”

  “Cricket, it’s Liz. Where are you, you daft girl? You fled.”

  “I’m in town,” I said. This was good news. I could feel it.

  “Well, come on back! I convinced Gavin to give you a try tomorrow. I told him if you were a disaster, he could hire Svetlana and I wouldn’t say a word about it.”

  “That’s great,” I said, smiling. “That’s so great. Thank you!”

  “So, don’t be a disaster!”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I promise. See you in a sec.”