Nantucket Blue

by Leila Howland

  “Hi, Dad.” I leaned into his shirt. He wrapped his arms around me and gave me a squeeze. This is what I’d needed. A Dad hug. I couldn’t exactly tell him what had happened (who wants to tell their dad the details of their love life?), but I was hoping he might be able to sense my wound and apply his special Dad Band-Aid. When I was little and I’d fallen down and scraped my knee, he would sweep me into his arms so fast that I’d actually forget to cry. The tears were coming now, so I squeezed him back, hard, hoping to make them stop.

  I hadn’t told Mom I was coming home yet. I couldn’t take her sadness. It was so dark and deep, I was afraid, now more than ever, that it’d pull me in and I wouldn’t be able to get out. What if I was like her? What if I became permanently sad? What if the same cloud was destined to hover over my head?

  Dad ended our hug with three pats on the back and guided me up the walkway. “Come on, the party is in full swing.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Your Aunt Phyllis is here,” he said. “And so is Uncle Rob.” I was about to ask why Aunt Phyllis, who lived in Maine and only visited at Christmas, was here in Providence, when Dad opened the gate to the backyard. There were llamas in my father’s backyard. Llamas! There were other animals, too. There was a sheep, a goat, and a pig—an entire petting zoo. There was one of those jumpy castles. There was a guy in overalls sitting on a bale of hay playing songs for kids. There was a popcorn maker, like the kind they have in movie theaters. And who were all these people? Was that a waitress serving the punch? The only thing that had come close to this was Mom’s fortieth birthday party, and even that hadn’t included a waitress.

  “Oh my god, Dad. This is amazing. What’s all this for?”

  “Alexi’s birthday,” he said. “He’s six!”

  “It’s so cool that you did all this.”

  “Well, it made Polly happy for me to make a big to-do,” Dad said, beaming. “And if Polly’s happy, I’m happy.” There was Polly in a sundress. She did look happy. Her hands were on Alexi’s shoulder. He was watching the guitar guy, riveted. Polly waved to me and I waved back.

  “So, Dad, do you notice anything?” I asked, and twirled around in my new jeans.

  “A haircut?” Dad asked.

  “No! I’m wearing the jeans you got me. My Clovers!”

  “Oh, do you like them?”

  “I love them!”

  “Good. Polly picked them out,” he said. I kept smiling, even as my thoughts were suddenly treading dark pathways. He hadn’t met the Great Birthday Challenge after all. Polly had chosen my present. He had given up on the very last year.

  A woman I didn’t know approached us. She and Dad started talking about the special school Alexi was going to in the fall.

  “Your father is an absolute saint,” the woman said to me. “An angel!”

  “I know,” I said, my cheeks hurting from smiling. One of the goats bleated. Dad didn’t even like zoos. He was allergic to all animals.

  “Go put your bag inside, honey, so you can enjoy the party,” he said, and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

  “Okay.” I headed into the house. I put my bag in the kitchen and looked for a glass to fill with water. I couldn’t find the glasses. I didn’t know where they were kept. So I grabbed a mug and held it under the tap. As it filled, I looked out the kitchen window at Polly and Alexi.

  I watched as Dad brought Polly a drink and put his arm around her. He tussled Alexi’s hair. Polly called Dad her “knight in shining armor,” her “dream guy.” And I got it now. He would do anything for them. He would turn his yard into a zoo. He loves them, I thought as I watched Polly lean on him. He really loves them.

  I took a sip of water and found my hand shaking. Dad had traded Mom and me in for Polly and Alexi. We were out and they were in, and it was just our tough luck. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. Those people, those strangers, stole my family. I drank the water. Then I spotted an open bottle of wine. With a shaky hand, I filled the mug to the top and downed it in just a few swallows. My empty stomach seemed to curl around it. A scream sat at the bottom of my lungs, waiting, like a crocodile.

  “Hey, honey, you find what you needed?” Dad asked as the screen door slammed behind him.

  I turned around and crossed my arms, glaring at him.

  “You okay?” Dad asked.

  “Eighteen is a much bigger birthday than six,” I said. I hated how bratty I sounded, but the wine had gone straight to my head. I was dizzy and warm and certain I was right.

  “Don’t tell me that you wanted a petting zoo, Cricket.” He was smiling, but he looked kind of scared. His eyes searched mine as if to ask, “Are you joking?”

  “You couldn’t pick something out for me, but you got Alexi a…a…farm festival?” My voice was shrill, loud. I could hear it, but I couldn’t stop it, like it was coming from a different person.

  “I thought you liked the jeans.” He put a hand on my back. I recoiled from it like it was a hot iron.

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “Well, what is the point?” he asked.

  “I wanted you to pick them out. Only you.”

  “Well, Polly and I are a team now.”

  A team? Barf. “You know, maybe if you’d done something like this for Mom she wouldn’t have gotten so depressed. But you never even tried.”

  “Yes, I did,” he whispered.

  “Not like this,” I said, pointing to the party outside. Tears sprang to my eyes. “You never tried this hard!”

  “Oh, honey.” He opened his arms, but I took a quick step backward.

  “Why didn’t you fight for her? Why didn’t you fight for us?” I pressed my fingertips to my chest so hard I left a red mark. Tears poured down my cheeks. I couldn’t catch my breath. Dad tried to hug me, but I sidestepped him, turned away, and gripped the counter. “I don’t even know why you love them. Polly’s not that great and Alexi isn’t even your kid. Who knows whose kid he really is.”

  “Cricket, that’s enough,” Dad said. His voice was low and angry.

  I turned around. Polly was standing there, covering her mouth.

  “You need to leave,” Polly said. Dad wrapped his arms around her as if she were a little girl, as if she were his one and only daughter, as if she needed protection from some awful stranger who’d barged into their home.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said to Dad, pleading. My ears were ringing. “It’s not fair. I didn’t know she was there.”

  “Go to your mom’s,” Dad said, shaking his head at me. “Just get your things and go to your mom’s.”

  I grabbed my duffel bag and ran out the back door.

  I was at the Claytons’ house in twenty minutes. Not the Nantucket house, but the real house. The Providence one. I knew where the key was hidden, under the stone mermaid in the backyard, and I knew the alarm code. I let myself in to the peacock-blue vestibule with the rustic coat rack and the dark wood table with the curvy silver bowl on it and the portrait of the woman with the green scarf.

  I climbed the stairs, two at a time, and opened the door to Jules’s room, which was stuffy and hot, familiar and safe. I kicked off my shoes, threw off the quilted coverlet, and crawled under the sheets—the cool, beautiful sheets that Nina had brought back from Italy. Nina, I thought. Nina would’ve known what to say and how to make me feel better. She would’ve given me words to hold on to as the world swung around. “Nina,” I said aloud. “Please be a ghost, please be a ghost.” I kicked my legs against the mattress and waited for the lights to flash. I listened for the house to creek, for footsteps to land, or a window to fly open, for the stereo to blare. I waited for a chill to pass over me, for her presence to be made known, but there was nothing but silence. Dead, empty silence.

  I’m eighteen, I told myself. This divorce stuff wasn’t supposed to bother me anymore. I was leaving for college next year. I’d even found a really nice guy for Mom. So why was I such a wreck? And why was this just sinking in? Why didn’t th
is happen right after the divorce? Or when Dad got remarried?

  Zack. It was sinking in because I had fallen in love. This was the thing about feelings. They find each other. You let one in and others follow. I pulled the sheet over my head, curled myself into a cocoon, and let the tears fall until I was tired and ragged and my eyes were raw and my stomach muscles hurt. An hour passed, and then another, and then I fell asleep.

  It was dusk when I woke up. The light switched on. Mom stood in the doorway.

  “Cricket,” she said. She ran to the bed and opened her arms. “Oh, my sweetheart, I was so worried. Oh, my dear girl, here you are.” She wrapped her arms around me.

  “Mom,” I said, and wept into her sweater. “Mom, I’m so alone.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m right here.” And for the first time in I don’t know how long, I let her hold me. Really hold me. She smelled like Paul Mitchell shampoo and almond soap and a little bit like Cheerios. She smelled like home.

  Forty-two

  “DAD SAID YOU SAID SOMETHING terrible about that child, drank a mug of pinot grigio, and took off through the backyard like a bat out of hell. I didn’t even know you’d left Nantucket. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  I started at the beginning, at the memorial service. I told her about the party and Parker and the mean thing I’d said about Jay and his brother. I told her that Zack and I had started dating secretly, that I hadn’t meant for it to happen, but that our relationship seemed to have a life of its own. I told her that it’d become serious.

  “How serious?” she asked.

  “Serious,” I said.

  “Serious serious?” She closed her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not ready for this,” she said, now covering her entire face with her hands. “Were you safe?”

  “Mom! I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “As your mother, I have to ask. It’s my job. Were you safe?”

  “Fine. Yes.”

  “Good. Are you planning on getting serious again soon? We need to make you a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Mom, not now.”

  “Okay, okay. We can talk about it later.” She cleared her throat. “Are you and Zack still together?”

  I told her about Jay and the picture in The Inquirer and Mirror, and how everyone on Nantucket hated me and I couldn’t go back. I told her that we needed to look into boarding schools for the fall. Boarding schools that were at least two states away.

  “You’re not going to boarding school,” Mom said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you have to face this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you can’t just run away. Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  Mom smiled. “No hesitation there.”

  “I know I love him. But I don’t know what to do.”

  “First we need to get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve broken into the Claytons’ house, that’s why,” she said, a little amused that I couldn’t see this for myself.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “I had a feeling. You love this house.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “You left the door wide open, and all the lights were on, leading right to this room. You may as well have left a trail of bread crumbs. Come on, now. I think we should get some dinner and talk it over.” I shook my head. “I’m craving fried clams.” I moaned. She knows how much I love fried clams. She took my hand and looked me in the eye. “You can handle this.”

  “I can’t go back to Nantucket,” I said.

  “Right now I’m just asking you to get out of bed and splash water on your face. That’s it.” Okay, I thought. Okay. I can do that. “One leg on the ground,” she said. I put one leg on the floor. “Now the other.” Both feet were on the floor. Once I’d done that, it wasn’t as hard to climb out of those soft Italian sheets. I opened the door to Jules’s little bathroom and ran the cold tap. It’d been a long time since I’d heard that take-charge tone in Mom’s voice. It’d been years.

  “I do have some good news,” I said as I brought a handful of water to my face.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Paul Morgan is still in love with you.” I patted my face dry with a hand towel monogrammed with Jules’s loopy initials.

  “What? Who’s Paul Morgan?”

  “Your first love?”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about.” In the bathroom mirror, I watched her make up the bed. It didn’t look like she was lying. She didn’t seem to be having any emotional reaction at all. She was focused on tucking in the sheets.

  “The name Paul Morgan doesn’t ring a single bell?” I asked.

  “Not one,” Mom said. She fluffed the pillows.

  “Maybe this will help.” I dried my hands and pulled the Emily Dickinson book out of my bag. I fanned the pages until I saw the picture of Mom and the guy. I plucked it out. That’s when I saw the boat-shaped birthmark on Lover Boy’s lower back.

  “Oh my god, Paul Morgan wasn’t your first love. Boaty Carmichael was.”

  Forty-three

  WE WENT TO SUE’S CLAM SHACK in Newport. We ordered fried clams, coleslaw, and lemonade, the kind that’s neon yellow and tastes wonderfully fake. We sat on the same side of the picnic bench so that we were both facing the ocean. I told Mom about working for George, and she told me about Boaty.

  She said that they’d been in love. The relationship had only lasted six weeks, but at that time, it was the most exciting, romantic six weeks of her life. She felt like she was the star of her own movie. “He could light up a room with his smile. By our second day together we were making out in the broom closet and pledging our love under the moonlight. We were so happy, but our relationship was a secret.”

  This was because of their jobs. The employees at the Nantucket Beach Club weren’t allowed to date each other. The beach club had two locations. One in ’Sconset and one near town. Mom worked at both. She worked at the one in ’Sconset with Boaty during the week, and the one near town with Paul Morgan on the weekends. Even though Mom didn’t recognize Paul yet, I knew this was true because Paul had talked about working at the club in town and so distinctly remembered her. I guess Mom had just been too gaga for Boaty to notice anyone else. The manager thought that employee dating, even between the two hotels, caused drama and distracted them from their jobs. “I was still in high school, but Boaty needed that money.” Also, what they were doing was technically illegal. Boaty was twenty-two. Mom was seventeen. “But,” she added, “I think the secrecy made it more exciting.” I knew exactly what she meant.

  “So what happened?”

  “Lilly Francis,” Mom said. “I knew her from my one semester at that awful boarding school. She was from one of the wealthiest, most powerful and well-connected families in the country. What Lilly wanted, Lilly got. And she had her eye on Boaty from the minute she saw him.”

  “Did he like her too?”

  “Not at first. He used to call her pig nose because she looked like this.” Mom used her index finger to push her nose up.

  “That’s mean,” I said, laughing.

  Mom shrugged. “But she was persistent, and as he came to understand who she was and the amount of wealth and connections she had…” Mom paused, ate a clam, and shook her head. She wiped her fingers on one of our stack of paper napkins. “Well, he stopped calling her pig nose and started calling her Lilly.”

  “But he was in love with you,” I said.

  “Yes, he was. I cut off his mullet and turned up his collar so that someone like Lilly would notice him in the first place. And I introduced them. I realized later he was dating us at the same time. But I guess the reasons I was so unbelievably attracted to him was the reason he left me: his ambition. When he met Lilly Francis, he found someone who could take him where he w
anted to go, fast. The next time he came to Nantucket, he wasn’t working at the beach club. He was a member, and he was married to Lilly Francis.”

  “You were the first one he stepped on, Mom. You were the first rung on his ladder to the top. You should talk to George.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I can’t believe he left you for pig nose!”

  “Can’t see a pig nose in the dark,” she said, and smiled.

  “So, what happened with you? The journal just stopped.”

  She shook her head. “He stopped talking to me cold. He ignored me. I was so heartbroken. I left Nantucket. I came home. He erased me, so I tried to erase him. I buried it. I told no one. There’s something about that first broken heart. In some ways, it’s the worst one.”

  A father with his two little boys sat down across from us.

  “Dad hates me,” I said. “What I said was terrible.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” she said. “But you do owe him and Polly an apology. He’ll cool down. He loves you, honey. He’s your father. And I love you. We’re your parents. No more pretending that you belong to another family, deal?”

  “On one condition. You make this family better. You go out on a date with Paul Morgan.”

  “I don’t even know who this man is.”

  “You will when you see him. Come on, Mom.”

  “I told you. I’m not ready to date,” she said.

  “And I’m telling you that it’s time. Come on. He’s handsome and nice, and he thinks you’re great. And he has a cool house on Nantucket.” I studied her as I sucked down the last of my neon lemonade. She wasn’t budging. “Will you at least promise to stop watching Real Life Mysteries?”

  “That’s my favorite show.”

  “It’s on Saturday nights and it’s meant for people who are a hundred years old. Or at least fifty-five.”

  “That’s not true,” she said.

  “Then how come all the commercials are for adult diapers and Viagra?” I sighed. “It’s time to get a life, Kate.”