A rich woman with a blue butter bag, a woman who moved through the world so easily—though she was technically a local, this was every summer person Mary Brown had been brought up to dislike. (“Thinks she walks on water,” Vivienne would say, even though, if Eliza Sargent showed up at the salon, she’d treat her like royalty, give her one of those hand massages while her color set, expect a twenty percent tip.)
But Mary didn’t dislike this woman, as much as she wanted to. In fact, it was the opposite. This, she realized, was exactly the kind of person, exactly the kind of mother, Mary Brown wanted to be.
4
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
Rob was gazing into the depths of the refrigerator. A midrange Viking. He’d wanted to get the professional version, which cost north of ten grand, but Eliza had put her foot down, hard. She said she’d be embarrassed to have a professional-grade refrigerator when she wasn’t a professional chef, when she wasn’t a professional anything. “You’re my professional favorite person,” said Rob, but she wouldn’t bend. She was embarrassed even to have the midrange, she would have been more than happy with a Frigidaire, but that time Rob had put his foot down.
“Are you cooking dinner?” Zoe asked suspiciously. She was so sneaky and quiet, like a cat. Rob turned. Zoe looked so tall. Had she grown since yesterday? Since this morning?
“Yes!” Rob said confidently. “I am going to make a frittata.”
Normally, if Eliza went out of town, she’d prep a couple of meals for them, but of course the thing with her dad had been sudden and there’d been no time. Besides, Rob could cook for his children! He wasn’t completely useless in the kitchen. He’d designed enough kitchens; he should be able to maneuver around one without too much trouble.
“Do you know how?”
“Zoe,” he said sternly. “Of course I know how to make a frittata.”
“You do?”
Not really.
“Yes,” said Rob. “Now, why don’t you go out in the garden and see if anything is growing yet.” Eliza planted a killer garden every year.
“Like what?”
“Tomatoes.”
Zoe looked at him. “I’m pretty sure it’s too early for tomatoes. Don’t those come in, like, August?”
“Go look anyway,” he said. “Just in case.”
While she was gone he nipped into the downstairs bathroom and quickly googled frittata recipes on his phone, committing the steps as much to memory as was possible. It seemed easy enough.
Zoe came in holding a bunch of freshly harvested rhubarb and held it out to him. “Um,” said Rob, “I’m not sure rhubarb would go in a frittata.”
Zoe shrugged and put the stalks on a counter. “That’s what was growing.”
“I thought you watched all of those cooking shows,” he said. “Didn’t you look for something that made sense, frittata-wise?”
“That’s Evie,” said Zoe.
“That’s me what?” asked Evie, entering from who-knows-where. She was wearing a pair of too-small shoes from the dress-up box and a dress that once upon a time had been Eliza’s. It came down to Evie’s ankles.
“It’s you who watches the cooking shows.”
Evie nodded. “I mostly watch MasterChef Junior.”
“Can you go find me something to put in this frittata, in that case?”
“Sure.” Evie was always up for anything.
“Maybe lose the heels first?”
“Okay.” She kicked off the shoes like a bridesmaid about to cut loose to “Twist and Shout” at the end of the reception and headed out the slider that led to the deck. She came back a few minutes later with a handful of basil, a bunch of parsley, and a few fava beans. “Better,” said Rob, and Zoe rolled her eyes. Rob could work with this. He’d use the herbs in the frittata and serve the fava beans on the side, if he had time to google how to cook fava beans.
It was hard, being a mom.
The frittata was too dark on the bottom and slightly underdone on top but both girls had the grace not to mention it. The fava beans were a loss: he overcooked them into mush and shuttled them into the disposal when nobody was looking.
“When is Mom coming back?” asked Zoe, taking a long pull of her milk. Chocolate, the girls had made it themselves. He knew they were taking advantage of him but he let it slide. It was just for a couple of days.
“Soon,” said Rob. “Day after tomorrow, I think.”
“You have a funny look on your face,” said Evie.
“I do? Sorry. Just thinking about work.”
Evie nodded knowingly. “Cabot Lodge, right?”
“That’s right. Cabot Lodge.” Cabot Lodge was a gargantuan project, a second home for Christine and Jonathan Cabot, dear friends of Rob’s mother. It was the biggest (in truth, the only) project Rob had taken on since hanging out his own shingle after leaving the architecture firm of his mentor, Mo Francis, the previous year. And Christine Cabot, future proprietor of Cabot Lodge, was driving him out of his mind.
Cabot Lodge was going up in Naples, Maine, on the shores of Long Lake, which was far enough from Rob’s typical work area in Massachusetts to be sufficiently maddening. He didn’t have access to his usual guys; Mrs. Cabot had hired a general contractor who was unknown to him and who was also sort of scary. Mark Ruggman.
“It’s funny,” said Evie, taking a large bite of the improperly cooked frittata. “Ever since you stopped working for Mo Francis, you’re here more. But you’re here less.” She made little air quotes over the word here and raised an eyebrow at him.
Rob coughed. The girl was perceptive. He said, “That’s very astute of you, Evie.”
Evie nodded and said, “I don’t know what that word means. And also, Zoe’s on her phone.”
Rob saw that Zoe’s iPhone was tucked discreetly into the folds of her napkin and she was looking down at her lap and tapping away at it.
“Zoe! Put that away,” said Rob. Zoe kept tapping at the screen until Rob said, “Zoe!” again and she said, “Sorry,” rolled her eyes, and put the phone on the island. Then she said, “Jackie Rackley is so annoying on Instagram.”
“Can I get Instagram?” asked Evie.
“No,” said Rob and Zoe together.
At bedtime, Evie said, “Oh! I forgot. You’re supposed to check me for lice. A girl in my class had it at the end of the year. I forgot to tell Mommy, we were all supposed to get checked.”
“They don’t check you at school?”
“It was the last day. They just told us to get checked at home.”
He looked at her head. Evie had Eliza’s hair: massively thick and dark and curly. A battalion of lice could hide in there, remaining undetected for days, weeks, months, multiplying, dividing.
He took a deep breath and peered at her part. “Looks good,” he said after a moment.
“That’s not how Mommy does it,” she said. “She takes this lice comb and she really gets in there…”
He took a comb from Evie’s nightstand and moved it around a little bit on her scalp. You couldn’t comb through those curls without a lot of prior planning.
“That’s not a lice comb.”
“What’s the difference?”
Evie sighed patiently and said, “Believe me, there’s a big difference. Call Deirdre. She knows how to do it.”
“I don’t need to call Deirdre!”
Deirdre was the closest of Eliza’s friends. She was, like all of the Barton women, fit, tan, and busy busy busy. The women of Barton traveled in a great perfume-misted herd and were always planning things that did not include their husbands. What did women talk about, over all those drinks at the club, those girls’ weekends, the occasional spa day in Boston? What secrets did they spill about the men in their lives? Frankly, it made Rob nervous to think about it.
Eliza, who did not trust everyone, said Deirdre had a solid heart under the tan and the Pilates muscles. Deirdre had one child, Sofia (“the European spelling, no ph”), and a husband named
Brock, with whom Rob occasionally went out sailing and sometimes for a drink after.
Deirdre was putting on a gigantic gala at the end of the summer to benefit African children, which mystified Eliza. (“Why not find a cause closer to home?”) Rob had grown up among aggressive fund-raisers, competitive do-gooders, cutthroat gala creators. He got it.
Despite all of this, Rob had had a strange feeling about Deirdre ever since last year’s holiday party at the Colemans’. There was something about that night he couldn’t put his finger on. Actually there was a lot about that night Rob couldn’t put his finger on—Rob and everyone else in town. Jennifer Coleman had discovered a new cocktail, the Angel’s Delight, and it had gone down easier than a penguin on an ice slide.
No, he didn’t need to call Deirdre. Eliza would be home soon; he could manage. “I can find the lice in my own family, thank you very much,” he told Evie. He made a few more casual swipes through her hair and said, “All clear.”
“Are you sure?” Evie looked up at him, her small brow furrowed. “That didn’t feel very thorough.”
“Positive.”
Evie sighed and got up from her bed and turned to face Rob. She was wearing a long white summer nightgown of the type favored by maiden aunts in old movies; she looked, standing there in the middle of her bedroom, like the Ghost of Christmas Adorable.
She pursed her cute little lips together and asked, “Is Grandpa hurt badly?”
“No, not too badly. He bumped his head on his boat. Not a big deal. He had to get a few stitches.” Eliza’s father was an honest-to-God lobsterman, the real deal, with orange overalls and a genuine Down East accent. He used hilarious, inscrutable expressions like “all stove up,” for sick or injured or broken, and “being awful spleeny,” for complaining a lot.
“So Mommy’ll be home soon?”
“Yes. Mommy will be home soon.” Rob folded down her sheet and comforter and gestured to the bed. Evie climbed in, and Rob pulled the sheet and comforter to her chin, the way she liked it, even in the summer.
“If she’s not, will you make another frittata?”
He felt cheered: here was an endorsement of his dubious cooking skills. “I will if you’ll pick some more of that kick-ass basil.”
Evie made a disapproving face. “That’s a bad word.”
“Basil?”
She shook her head and smiled. “No. Kick-ass.”
“Watch your language,” he said sternly. She smiled wider. Evie’s smile could knock a hurricane right off its track. Rob said, “You’re right. Sorry. That fantastic basil.”
“Okay. I will.” Evie nodded and laid her head on her pillow. Sometimes she still slept as she had as a toddler; every now and then Rob looked in on her and she was on her stomach with her little bottom sticking up in the air, like it was floating on a cloud. When he saw that he wanted to freeze-frame her entire life.
“Can you do me a favor, Evie?” he whispered.
“What?” Her voice was already sleepy.
“Can you avoid becoming a teenager?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll try.”
Downstairs, after he’d poured himself two fingers of Scotch, Rob opened the door that led to the garage. His car was gone, and Eliza’s Pilot was in its usual spot. That made sense, of course; her car was the family car, and should remain with the family. But he felt a small spasm of loss at the sight of the empty garage space. He loved his car. He loved his boat too, a Hinckley Sou’wester 52, a fortieth-birthday gift from his mother.
You weren’t supposed to love material things so ardently, but when he was standing on the deck of A Family Affair, with everything exactly where he wanted it, each knob, each instrument, each rope, Robert Barnes II couldn’t help but think that a Hinckley Sou’wester 52 didn’t seem completely material. There was something about it that bumped against the celestial.
Once he closed the garage door an unnamed bleakness descended on Rob like a duvet. He didn’t like having Eliza gone. He missed her! And he didn’t like the fact that they’d left the Phineas Tarbox situation unresolved. He wasn’t accustomed to having anything unresolved between them.
One or two days, though: that was nothing. Just a blink, and she’d be back.
5
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
“Hey, Dad,” Eliza called from the kitchen. “Your fridge was empty, what’ve you been eating?”
She stepped into the living room. Her father was in his recliner. The remote rested in his hand, though the screen was quiet and dark and his eyes were closed. When he opened them his face took on the discomfited expression of a person caught in the act of something shameful. He rubbed at his eyes in a way that reminded her of Evie.
“Oh, sorry,” whispered Eliza. “I didn’t know you had dozed off. I was just saying, thank goodness I went shopping, you have nothing here. You’re like Old Father Hubbard.” She spoke with a levity she didn’t feel.
Eliza reached for the hair elastic around her wrist—the de facto jewelry of the busy mother—and wrapped it around a makeshift bun before she began to unload the groceries. She’d gone to Ellsworth, to the new Hannaford, which, in her childhood, was a grim and stalwart Dave’s Shop ’n’ Save. (Who was this mysterious Dave? She never knew.) Now, at the Hannaford, you could buy kombucha and quinoa and hemp seed; you could buy organic strawberries and mangoes, natural cures for urinary tract infections, gluten-free bagels. Although Eliza had bought none of these things: the first rule of cooking, she knew, was to know your audience. She bought two bags of white rice, a box of cornflakes, two packages of chicken cutlets, coffee, milk, bananas, a dozen eggs.
She took the desiccated sponge from its perch on the edge of the sink, wet it, squirted soap onto it, and went at the fridge’s grimy shelves.
“I don’t like to waste groceries. I eat at Val’s most days.”
“Val’s isn’t open for dinner. What do you eat for dinner?”
He shifted. “I manage.”
“You go to the new place, The Cup?”
He snorted. “Right. Yuh, that’s exactly what I do, I go over to The Cup and pay fifteen dollars for a sandwich.”
“They’re not fifteen dollars. And, anyway, I have it on good authority that you like the lobster cookies they sell there.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. Little bird.”
“The coffees are five.”
“Not five, Dad.” Just that morning, admittedly, Eliza had paid four twenty-five for a large cappuccino. (Worth it.) The same girl, Vivienne’s daughter, had made it for her. She was sweet, too, taking great care with the frothing of the milk. She even made a lobster claw design with the foam in the top of the cup.
Eliza’s phone, which she’d set on the coffee table, announced a text message. Evie, from her iPad Mini. I FOUND OUR NEXT DOG. There was a link that brought Eliza to a photo. Since they’d put Fred, their beloved golden retriever, down the year before, Evie had been on the hunt for a dog to rescue. She tended to be attracted to the scrappiest of the scrappy, the neediest of the needy. Eliza took comfort in the knowledge that this exhibited Evie’s rock-solid heart and charitable leanings, but some of the dogs really forced a person to be generous with the word pet. The current offering was named Maisy. She was a sorry sight, with patches of fur missing from her back and shoulders, and a desperate look in her eyes. A tip of one ear appeared to be absent. Eliza texted back, I DON’T THINK SO HONEY, and set to work on the chicken cutlets.
Eliza broke an egg, mixed it with water, and dipped the cutlets first in the egg and then in some crushed cornflakes. She never made chicken cutlets at home. It simply wouldn’t occur to her to introduce this very basic component of her childhood cuisine to her own children. Zoe didn’t like cornflakes, and Evie disapproved of the way chickens were treated; she’d accept a free-range egg, but that was her limit. Making them now, though, especially in this kitchen, was soothing and familiar. For the longest time this was the only meal Eliz
a knew how to make for her father. Sometimes she’d add a very simple green salad, sometimes a bowl of buttered noodles.
At the kitchen table, which was so small her knees and her father’s knees bumped up against each other, Eliza tried to keep the conversation moving. She caught Charlie up on the Barnes family summer: Evie’s theater camp, Zoe’s science camp, Rob’s plans to take his outrageously expensive boat A Family Affair on an extended cruise to the Caribbean the next spring if he could find a couple of buddies to go with him. She was fully aware of what a privileged idiot she sounded like, but when she wasn’t talking, the silence encroached.
She described Rob’s first project on his own after leaving Mo Francis’s firm. “We thought he’d be home all the time!” she said. “But he’s working more.” She told her dad about Cabot Lodge, and about how Mrs. Cabot had decided that she didn’t like the plans Rob had drawn up based on her specifications and had him start all over.
“Rich people,” said Charlie, shaking his head.
“Right?” said Eliza agreeably. “They are such a conundrum.”
Charlie gave her a look.
“I know,” said Eliza. “I know.”
When Eliza was growing up, the richest people she knew were the McPhersons, who had a gorgeous house on the Point, and who came up every summer from Philadelphia.
“Remember the McPhersons?” she asked Charlie now. “That lobster bake?”
“I do,” he said. “Hell of a time.”
“Do they still have that house?”
“I believe they do. Only sandy beachfront in the town.”
Eliza remembered a Saturday, midsummer, a fog draping itself around the Point like a blanket. She was thirteen, slightly sunburned, her hair untamed, the pain and grief after her mother died still floating along the surface like a lily pad. Charlie was hired to be cook and entertainer both; he and Eliza had been there all afternoon, while Charlie dug the hole, laid the rocks, built the fire, tended it for hours. Then, when the fire was ready, he moved the rocks to the side with a shovel. He had a pile of seaweed ready to place over the pit, and pieces of tarp he would lay over the pans once they were on the pit. “Much easier,” he told Eliza, sweating over the shovel, “to cook the whole damn thing in the kitchen. But they want it authentic, so authentic is what they get.”
The Captain's Daughter Page 4