If Jackie O. and Gidget had a baby, that baby would grow up to look like Kitty Sutherland.
On that same visit, Eliza, who had been dispatched to the guest room, had lain under a heavy quilt, in sheets so soft they felt like butter. This was before she knew the phrase thread count. She’d stared at a black-and-white photograph of a sailboat leaning into the wind. This was before she knew the phrase coming about. The next morning, Judith had called Eliza into the living room, where she and Rob were already standing in front of the picture window.
“The first snowfall!” Judith had said, turning triumphantly to Eliza, as though she had Mother Nature herself on her payroll. Like she was giving them a gift.
So, thought Eliza, pushing her hair away from her face, trying to tame its unruliness. So. This is wealth.
It’s complicated.
Lobster boats didn’t come about, by the way. They just turned.
“Why don’t we ask her?” Rob prodded now. “She’s always saying she wants to be more involved in the girls’ lives.” Eliza thought about Phineas Tarbox and sat down on one of the stools. Rob got up and stood behind her, rubbing the knots in her neck. He always knew just where they were without her having to tell him.
“It’s complicated,” said Eliza.
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Owwwww,” said Eliza.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry!” He whipped his hands away.
“No, don’t you dare stop.”
It was so disorienting, going from that world to this in a few short hours. It felt like the voyage should have taken light-years. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s ask Judith.”
PART TWO
July
13
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
This is going to be a good night, thought Mary. Vivienne was working late at the salon (it was a Thursday) and Josh was coming to pick her up and take her to a movie in Ellsworth. She had stopped avoiding him, and look what had happened! A real date. She was excited. Maybe, before the movie or after it, she’d tell him about the baby. She had the words lined up and ready to go: Baby. Pregnant. Us.
She was waiting by the front door—the movie was at seven, and they were supposed to eat beforehand. Josh was supposed to come at five. It was okay that he was a little late. She’d built some extra time into the plan. Maybe it had taken a while getting back after hauling, turning in the catch at the co-op, settling up.
It was five minutes after five, and then it was five fifteen, and then five twenty.
Doesn’t matter, she told herself. We can eat quickly.
Five twenty-five.
She went outside to sit on the front steps of the house. She picked at a mosquito bite on her knee and looked at the sky: still bright, with a band of clouds that looked like it had been pushed by hand over to the farthest edges. The smells of the harbor reached her, bumping along on the early-evening breeze. She picked at her fingernails and checked her phone.
Five thirty. We don’t have to eat. We can go right to the movie.
Finally: Josh. She got up, ready to get immediately into the car. But Josh got out before she had a chance to get in.
“Let’s go right away,” Mary said.
“Your mom’s not home, is she?”
“No.” Mary looked at her wrist where a watch would have been if she’d had one. “We were going to eat, remember? The movie starts at seven.” She tried to keep her voice easy and friendly. She had prepared the words once again. Baby. Pregnant. She just wasn’t sure when to let them out. Not now, obviously: Josh looked agitated, and they were rushed. Her stomach churned with a brewing disappointment.
“I have to put something inside,” said Josh. “Real quick. Just for a little while.” He was holding a crumpled-up brown bag, the kind you brought your lunch in to elementary school if you didn’t have a lunch box. “Somewhere in your room, okay?”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just something I can’t keep at home right now, it’s not a big deal.”
“Let me see it.”
“Come on, baby, it’s not a big deal.” There was a flash of something across his face. “Let me just go put it in your room.”
He was already past her, and into the house.
“Is it a gun?”
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” She followed him into the house. He was already in her bedroom, looking around. She took the bag to open it, and Josh snatched it out of her hands, rolling the top down more tightly.
“Totally legal. Prescription.”
She blinked and squinted at him. “Whose prescription?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s under control.”
“Josh.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a painkiller, no big deal, not heroin or anything. I just can’t keep it at home.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a few hundred dollars’ worth in here, a little more, even. Just keep it safe, until I ask for it. That’s it, that’s all you have to do.”
She considered this. How hard would that be, really? To put a lunch bag in her closet and forget it was there. But still.
“Why don’t you keep it at your house?”
“Too risky.”
“But…”
She took a deep, uncertain breath. She wanted to say, I don’t want that bag near me. I don’t want anything bad near me. Because of the baby. But instead she just thought it.
“It’ll just be a bag, sitting there, doing nothing. Just a little salt and sugar. What could happen?”
Salt and sugar? thought Mary. What the…?
“Come on, babe. Don’t make everything a big deal.” He smiled at her, and she saw a flash of the old Josh, the charming one, and something inside of her relented. She didn’t want to make everything a big deal, she really didn’t. There were enough things that were a big deal. She opened the closet door. She watched as he found a place for the bag in the back right corner of the closet, behind an old pair of Nikes. He had to get down on his hands and knees to do it, he had to really stuff himself into the closet. She watched as he covered the sneakers with a T-shirt from the previous year’s Lobster Festival.
Then the flash of charm changed to something more sinister as Josh pulled himself back out of the closet, and Mary felt like ice cubes were moving up and down her spine. Then Josh said, “You know I would never do anything to hurt you, right, baby?” and smiled again.
And then his hand was open, palm flat, on her back, pushing her forward, out the door.
“I know,” said Mary hesitantly. She felt like an idiot, because she hadn’t known Josh had anything to do with drugs, taking or selling. How had she not known that? There were probably all sorts of signs that she hadn’t picked up on, but she didn’t even know what signs she could have looked for. Needle marks, chapped nostrils, what? Stupid, naive, plain, pregnant Mary Brown.
A little salt and sugar. What did that even mean?
“It’s just this one time. Once the fishing picks up I won’t need this anymore, I swear. It’s just been shit so far this summer, you know it has. It’s not my fault.”
She said, “Just this once?” Maybe it was true; maybe he didn’t use any drugs, maybe he just had to get himself out of the slump. But nobody else in town seemed to be in a slump. It was shit so far this summer just for Josh, apparently. Red flag.
“On my honor.” He let go of her back and held up his right hand like he was taking an oath.
——
Later, after the movie, after Josh had dropped Mary off, after Vivienne had gone to bed, Mary looked in the brown bag, which held another bag, this one clear plastic, secured with a black twist tie. Inside the plastic bag were dozens and dozens of orange pills. She untied the twist tie, took a pill, and laid it flat on the palm of her hand. The pill had an M on one side, the number 60
on the other. She took up her phone and searched: Salt and sugar. Street names. Drugs.
Google delivered her results, with a picture to match. Morphine. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d had only popcorn for dinner, maybe that was why. They’d barely made it to the movie.
But she knew that it wasn’t the popcorn. Was morphine even a street drug? How little she knew, about drugs, about everything!
From somewhere off in a great distance came that old familiar sound: warning bells, ringing like there was no tomorrow.
14
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Eliza
Eliza was chopping vegetables for a salad while Judith enjoyed her own private happy hour at the kitchen island. Eliza had to go back up to Little Harbor the day after next, but for now she was home, preparing a picnic to take on A Family Affair for the holiday the following day. She was making grilled pork tenderloin and roasted vegetable salad with walnut pesto made from the basil in her herb garden. The idea was that Judith would come with them on the boat and that the next day Eliza would go over some details of the girls’ schedules with her before heading back up to Little Harbor. This would leave Rob free to concentrate on Cabot Lodge.
Immediately after they’d made their plan came the sense of dislocation.
There it was again, the sinister intrusion of Phineas Tarbox, with his tented fingers, his minty breath, his kind, knowing smile. Just sign the papers, Eliza. What are you waiting for?
“Where are the girls?”
Judith had just come from getting her eyebrows threaded. Sixty-five years old, and getting her eyebrows threaded! Did it never end, this quest for beauty? Eliza, for one, was hoping to stop trying by the time she was sixty-five. She was hoping to sit around watching all the television she had missed while her children were small and eating mini Kit Kats purloined from her grandkids’ Halloween bags and speaking with brutal honesty about everything she came across. Brutal honesty was expected of women in their sixties; it was part of their dubious charm, and that was one of the few ways Eliza would unequivocally look to Judith’s example.
“They’re around,” said Eliza. She felt the tiniest trace of irritation creep into her voice. Would it kill Judith to get up from the stool and offer to help? Would it kill her ever to say, You’re doing a good job, Eliza! Eliza knew that nobody could ever replace her own mother, but still. It might be nice if Judith tried to step into the role every now and then. Of course she’d be helping once Eliza returned to Maine, but really, did she have to take herself so blatantly off the clock when Eliza was home?
“You know, Eliza! I forgot to tell you this. I know someone who is summering in Little Harbor! Can you believe it? Gail Byron. No relation to Lord.” Judith laughed at her own joke. “She’s staying in a gigantic place, thirty bathrooms or something. Do you know it?”
“I think I know of it,” said Eliza politely. “But I don’t think it really has thirty bathrooms.”
“Well. Gail Byron has always been known to exaggerate. Perhaps you’ll run into her, though?”
“I’m sure I won’t,” said Eliza. Different social circles, for sure.
When Eliza became a grandmother she wanted to do for her grandchildren all of the things her own mother had never had a chance to do for Evie and Zoe, like dress them in glittery outfits and take them to see The Nutcracker in Boston at Christmas, buying them a whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate afterward.
“Look, here’s Evie!” said Judith lustily. She hopped off the stool and displayed her cheek to Evie. Evie hesitated, looked doubtful, and eventually produced an approximation of an air kiss.
What if Eliza had grandsons, though? She shuddered at the thought of it. She wouldn’t know what to do with boys, she’d never even changed a boy’s diaper. It seemed so complicated, having to tuck the little penis away before it sprayed all over you. And most boys would never want to go to The Nutcracker with Nana, of course. She hoped her grandchildren called her Nana. She would rail against anything else, particularly Granny. Granny implied a kerchief, osteoporosis, a walking cane. Judith had chosen to be called Grandmother. Of course.
Eliza moved on to the carrots and smiled at Evie. She was trying to appreciate every ounce of Evie’s prepubescence, because now that Zoe was in the throes of puberty Eliza realized what was coming. She hadn’t known enough to appreciate it when Zoe was ten, her body still seal-slick and with an adorable bit of pudge around her midsection. Evie stood next to Eliza, and Eliza placed a carrot round on Evie’s tongue the way she imagined Catholic priests did with the wafers at Communion. She’d always wanted to try Communion, but apparently Catholics weren’t open to feeding newcomers; you couldn’t just sidle up and partake. Rob and Judith weren’t Catholic either. They were elbows-off-the-table Protestants. Eliza’s college roommate Francesca had told her that the wafer tasted just like a bit of rice cracker, no big deal. Definitely light on the calories, Francesca had said. Francesca had later been discovered to have an eating disorder.
Evie chomped on the carrot. Evie had always been really good at eating all of her vegetables. Both girls had. Now Zoe was veering away from the vegetables; she wanted to drink four-dollar Starbucks concoctions and eat Cheez-Its all the livelong day.
“What’s up, sweetie?” she asked Evie. It was so, so good to be home, in her own kitchen, making a salad for a sailboat picnic, like it was just a regular day, like nothing was going on. Like her father wasn’t dying. Maybe there would even be sex tonight!
Once, long ago, Eliza had told Deirdre that her sex life with Rob was “robust.” She’d been tipsy on margaritas; if she hadn’t been, she never would have used such a ridiculous word. She’d laughed right after she’d said it, to cover her embarrassment, and she’d assumed Deirdre was laughing with her, but once Eliza stopped laughing she instantly saw a hooded, indefinable look cross Deirdre’s face—was it interest? Disgust? Envy?—and she’d swiftly changed the subject.
It was true, though, if a weird choice of words. But something shifted that year, when Rob was mired in Cabot Lodge, and it shifted again after the meeting with Phineas Tarbox. If Eliza had to put it into words she would have said that Phineas Tarbox had climbed into bed with them, settled himself between them.
She tilted her ear toward Evie like an attentive mother in a television commercial might do.
And Evie said, “Are you going to put Grandpa to sleep?”
Eliza stopped chopping cucumbers. “Evie! Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. Why don’t you jump in the pool or go ride your scooter around the block? It’s a beautiful summer evening.” In fact, it was sort of overcast and uncomfortably humid.
But Evie, bless her heart, wouldn’t put the subject to bed. She cocked her head at Eliza—she looked astonishingly adult when she did this, like a PTO president assessing a report from the treasurer and finding it wanting—and said, “Well, maybe you should.”
“Evie!”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” murmured Judith. She sat up straighter and looked interested.
Eliza squatted down until her eyes were at the same level as Evie’s eyes. She said very, very firmly, “Evie. Please understand. Nobody is putting anybody to sleep. Grandpa has cancer, yes, but he’s going to get treated for it, and he’s going to get better.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “Maybe he’ll even come here, to see some doctors in Boston! Wouldn’t that be fun, to have Grandpa staying with us for a little bit?”
Judith coughed and rattled her ice cubes harder.
“You put Fred to sleep,” said Evie stoutly. Fred had been thirteen and suffering from severe arthritis, and Eliza had stood beside him in the vet’s office, cradling his head when the light went out of his eyes.
“I did not put Fred to sleep.” Eliza took a deep, cleansing breath, the way she’d learned to do at barre class. She never felt cleansed after the breaths, but other people seemed to believe in it, so she kept trying. “The vet put Fred to sleep. Because Fred was a dog. And he was suffering. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” said Evie.
“Of course you remember. His hind legs didn’t work any longer. And he wasn’t eating. He was uncomfortable. He was in pain, Evie, and it would have been cruel of us to let him be in pain when we could have done something to help him.”
“But…” Evie chewed on her lower lip; it was a habit that hung somewhere between adorable and unsanitary, since she was always opening up cuts that took eons to heal. “I heard you telling Daddy. You said his head hurts a lot, and that sometimes he sees two of something when there should be only one.”
Eliza blinked. “Also, like we talked about back then, dogs don’t think of the past and the future the way humans do. They live in the present, only in the present, so when they’re sick, being sick becomes their whole world.”
“Very Zen of them,” said Judith. The ice cubes ticked against each other as she moved toward the bar to pour herself another drink.
———
Lesson Number Three from Eliza’s mother:
Read. Read! You’ll want to read the books about girls with no mother. Anne of Green Gables. The Great Gilly Hopkins. Pippi Longstocking. Bambi! Some of these stories may seem far too young for you by the time Val gives you this letter but I want you to read them anyway. I want you to see that these creatures survive. I want you to understand that having a mother is not as essential as we’ve all been led to believe it is. I hate to think that you can live without me, Eliza, but even more than that I hate to think that you can’t.
———
Would it kill Judith to maybe grab a walnut to chop? Something? If Rob had married his college girlfriend Kitty Sutherland would Judith have offered to help with the cooking? Would Kitty Sutherland be making walnut pesto salad with roasted vegetables, or would she have her Fourth of July party catered?
She would have it catered. No question.
“Mom?” said Evie.
Teachable moment, thought Eliza. Keep going. She looked deep into Evie’s gigantic brown eyes and said, “When we put dogs to sleep, Evie, we’re relieving them of the pain they’re feeling at that moment. They don’t have the same concept of time that we have. They don’t have the same memories that we do. We don’t do that to people.”
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