The Book of Summer

by Michelle Gable

  “Precisely, dear sister,” Topper said with a wink. “You’ve been too good, too protected, too damned cloistered in your ivory tower. You need someone to pitch a curveball atcha.”

  He demonstrated with the ball in his hand, which thwacked against a ladies’ tennis trophy sitting on a high shelf.

  “Ivory tower?” Ruby barked. “Hardly! Look around. The toilets at Cliff House only work half the time.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re quite roughing it in your summer home. I’ll ask Mummy to take up a collection at church.”

  “You’re a real gagster. Golly, it’ll be a nice change to live with a well-mannered gentleman for once.”

  Ruby’s thoughts drifted back outside, where glassware clinked and groups of men bustled about the grounds. Her eyes flicked down to the long, white table that divided the lawn in two. Three dozen small, round tables flanked it, their umbrellas spinning and dancing in the wind.

  “Here’s the thing,” Topper said as Ruby glanced back toward her dress. “Sam’s a swell guy but it’s like he’s following a script. You need someone more … his own man.”

  “Sam is very much his own man,” Ruby said, though did not strictly know.

  “Ruby!” said a voice from the hallway, a caw followed by three sharp pecks on the door.

  “Oh brother,” Ruby muttered.

  It was P.J.’s new wife, Mary. A real cold fish that one, an utter snore.

  “Ruby!” Mary warbled again. “Mama Young sent me to check on you.”

  “I’m fine. Almost ready.”

  “Lovely! Have you seen Robert?”

  Topper pressed a finger to his lips, all the while chortling behind it.

  “Yes, he’s in here,” Ruby said. “Helping me get dressed.”

  “Ruby Genevieve!” Mary screeched. “That is sickeningly inappropriate. I just … I don’t even…”

  “Then don’t.”

  “I can’t!”

  Mary huffed and stomped several more times before turning on her toes and marching back to “Mama Young.”

  “That woman,” Ruby growled.

  “Oh she’s not so bad.”

  “Actually, she is the very worst.”

  With a sigh, Ruby slipped her wedding frock off its hanger and tried to wade through the froth to find its center.

  “I’m sure Mother wants to help you with that,” Topper said. “You being her only daughter and all.”

  “Probably.”

  Ruby wiggled it up toward her chest, then over her shoulders.

  “We are a sorry lot.” Topper tossed the ball one final time. “This family. Poor manners. No decorum. Thank God money covers most ills.”

  11

  Monday Morning

  For the second day in a row, Bess wakes up in a blind panic. And her first thoughts aren’t even about the cliff.

  Not that the rapidly eroding bluff isn’t terrifying. It is and very much so. On some mornings, the fog is too dense to see the veranda. As a little girl, Bess would sit in her window and gaze into the white, pretending she was a princess in a cloud. And while the haze is thick this morning, the very best of princess dreams, Bess can see straight past the edge of the yard and down to the shoreline. There is no space left for make-believe.

  Alas, it is not impending doom that brings Bess the initial wave of heart-knocking nausea but the date itself, glaring up from her phone.

  Monday, May 20.

  Cissy’s meeting is tomorrow; Flick’s wedding in a week. In between, two women must move the contents of a house. Bess is a damned good procrastinator, a near-expert embracer of denial. But even she has to acknowledge that there won’t be a return trip to California. Which means Bess must address Wednesday through Saturday, and the meetings and appointments waiting for her back in the Bay.

  “Crap,” she says, scrolling through her calendar. “What am I going to do?”

  The question applies to so many things.

  Suddenly, the door pops open and claps the far wall.

  “Cissy!” Bess yelps.

  She socks the phone against her chest, as if Cissy might see the screen.

  “How about some privacy?!” Bess says as Cissy hard charges in, an empty box between her hands.

  “Gimme a break. What do you need to be so private about? I pushed you out of me, tore myself from stern to bow.”

  “That’s lovely.…”

  “So your flimsy getup is hardly worth noting. You look great, by the way.”

  Bess glances down at her camisole and underwear. Great? She doesn’t feel the least bit so.

  “Thanks,” she mumbles nonetheless.

  “Let me know if there’s anything in this bedroom you’d like to keep,” Cissy says, yanking open the door to the pink wardrobe, which, come to think of it, has been in that same corner Bess’s entire life. “Let’s see. What relics has Bess Codman abandoned in here? Cap and gown … letterman jacket … wedding dress.”

  “Ha!” Bess yaps. “Feel free to let the dress fall over the cliff.”

  “Don’t be so negative. Maybe you’ll have a daughter one day who’ll want to wear it. Vintage, you know.”

  “Too true. Who doesn’t love the nostalgia of a failed marriage?”

  “What about these?” Cissy asks, reaching for the top shelf.

  She removes four yearbooks, two from Choate, and two from Nantucket High.

  “You can ditch those, too,” Bess says.

  “You know what?” Cissy flings them onto the floor, where they land with a thud. “I’m going to hang on to them. Just in case. It’s not like you could ever get them back.”

  Cissy roots around the wardrobe for several more minutes, casting a flurry of apparel, scarves, and questionable forms of millinery across the scuffed wood floors. Evidently Bess wore a fedora at some juncture. She doesn’t remember it at all.

  “Oh!” Cissy exclaims in a burst and without warning.

  She twirls around to face Bess.

  “You will not believe what happened earlier this morning!”

  “All right…” Bess says, cautiously.

  Cissy’s “you will not believe” could be anything from spilling her coffee to accidentally rescuing a seal pup from the jaws of a shark.

  “Chappy Mayhew,” her mom says. “The bastard encroached upon my property!”

  “Um … er … what?”

  “He claims he was just fetching the paper. That it was thrown onto my driveway by mistake. Likely story! Benji Folger is the paperboy and he’s a Little League pitcher, a stellar one at that. I’ve watched three and a half of his games. There’s no way he’d miss his target.”

  “Okay…”

  Bess walks over to her suitcase and extracts a pair of sweatpants. She’d gone to unpack last night but decided not to bother. They’ll be moving on soon. Bess can’t fathom that she’ll never unpack at Cliff House again.

  “That Chappy Mayhew,” Cissy says, still at full rant. “The nerve of him! If only his balls were actually as big as he pretends they are.”

  “Mother! Enough! And unless he did something wrong, I’m sure it’s well within his purview to wander across the road.”

  “I saw him hock a loogie onto my roses.”

  “Cis, I get that he rankles you. That family’s always been unnaturally egotistical.…”

  “They’re a bunch of smartasses, is what they are.”

  “Agreed,” Bess says with a nod. “And I appreciate all you’re trying to accomplish with the beaches and the revetments, but the man has his own concerns. Chappy is worried about his livelihood. You can’t fault him for that.”

  “Actually I can fault him for that because it’s a bunch of horseshit. As long as there are tourists on Nantucket, Chappy Mayhew will have a steady stream of income.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Our entire restaurant industry thrives on the lore of the last remaining fisherman. They’d dump a boatload of bass into the Yacht Club swimming pool, just to be able to say the fish is locally caught.
That man isn’t worried about his job. He just likes to piss me off. Chapman Mayhew can smooch my flat, white, wrinkled fanny.”

  “All right, Cis,” Bess says with a sigh. “I haven’t had the coffee yet to deal with that mental picture.”

  Bess slides one leg into her sweatpants (red, faded, Boston College; fifteen years old), and then the other. She hoists them over her hips, loosening the drawstring as she goes.

  “Speaking of,” Cissy says. “I need a favor.”

  “A favor? Related to your fanny? Thanks, but I see enough derrières at work.”

  “Stop with the jokes, Dr. Codman. Are you helping me or not?”

  “Always, Cissy. I’m forever at your disposal.”

  “Exactly what I’d hoped. All right, my dear. Here’s what I need you to do.”

  12

  Monday Morning

  Bess must be suffering some off-brand, New England version of island fever, because she’s inexplicably agreed to play accomplice in one of Cissy’s harebrained schemes.

  “Sure, Cis,” she idiotically said. “Whatever you need.”

  Sometimes Bess forgets that hers is not an ordinary mom.

  As she crosses Baxter Road, Bess tries to script an introduction that doesn’t sound batshit insane. Chappy Mayhew is insufferable by nature but she’s about to hand him a blank check for mocking.

  Why? Why is it so damned hard to tell Cissy no?

  With an inhale, Bess nudges open the gate and walks toward the front door. She is at once charmed by the quaint fishing shack. The place is all Sconset enchantment with its weather-beaten, splintered face, the picket fence, and the roses, which are just beginning to bloom. By summer’s end, the cottage itself will be blanketed in bright pink flowers. It will also have a panoramic ocean view, once Cliff House falls out of sight. Some bastards have all the luck.

  Bess knocks, quickly, with a rat-a-tat-tat. It’s feasible that no one is home (oh please, oh please) and she can crawl back into bed. Alas, to her great dismay, clomping footsteps answer Bess’s call. The door opens before she can escape.

  “Listen, Chappy, I’m sorry to bother you, but you know how Cissy is. Here’s the thing…”

  Bess releases every last molecule of oxygen from her lungs and glances up, face flaming. But it is not Chappy Mayhew standing before her. It’s worse.

  “What the hell?” she squawks, with unnecessary volume.

  Bess clears her throat and lets it fall to a whisper.

  “Do you live here?” She drops the question from the side of her mouth, as if it’s a secret and there are curious ears nearby. “You live with your dad? Still? Or did someone kick you out? Oh, this is sad.”

  As the man belts out an all-too-familiar laugh, Bess blushes ever more furiously. Of course. Of course he’d answer the door. Tall and tanned and sandy and perpetually unbothered: Evan f’ing Mayhew, in the radiant, windburned flesh.

  “I see you’ve inherited your mother’s social graces,” he says with a grin.

  “I didn’t mean to…”

  “I’m here to build a bookshelf for my dad. Oh man.” He chuckles again. “I can hear Cissy now. Chappy Mayhew knows how to read? I walked right into that one, didn’t I? It’s great to see you, Bess. Please. Come in.”

  Evan steps out of the doorway and makes a sweeping motion with his hand.

  “Thanks,” she mumbles.

  Bess fiddles with her hair as she skulks through the entryway. She really should’ve done more than whip it back into a ponytail and flat-iron the hell out of her bangs. She also should’ve worn contacts, or at least something other than glasses so old they make Bess seem like she’s going for that hipster, “pre-cool” look typically associated with unicycles and twisty mustaches.

  “Well, good to see you and everything,” she says, following Evan into the kitchen.

  God bless it, she is wearing sweatpants. Purchased in the late nineties.

  “‘Good to see you and everything,’” Evan says, never missing a thing.

  He opens the fridge.

  “Oh, Codman, I miss that mushy streak of yours. Beer?”

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “Light beer?”

  “Tempting, but no.”

  “So…”

  Evan rests his back against the counter. He crosses one disturbingly muscled arm over the other and gives Bess a thoroughly invasive visual head-to-toe. Meanwhile, Bess wants to shrink into the corner, or disappear behind her bangs, which is the exact point of them.

  “Let me apologize in advance,” she starts.

  “No apology necessary, but I am curious as to what errand of mischief brings you to my father’s doorstep. Given your apparent shock in seeing me, I can’t really flatter myself into thinking you’ve come to pay me a visit.”

  “Uh, no.”

  Bess snorts, eyes glued to the floor. Staring at Evan Mayhew is like looking directly into the sun: awful, beautiful, and damaging at the same time.

  “I’m an emissary of my mother’s,” she explains.

  “Emissary or adversary. When it comes to Cissy Codman, a person can only be one of the two.”

  “Oh, come on, she’s not that bad.”

  “Bess, your mother is terrifying.”

  “She’s not terrifying.”

  Bess looks up and feels the burn of Evan’s dark brown eyes. He surely knows about the divorce. He probably cackles about it behind her back. Then he goes to bed with some sort of wife or girlfriend or a rotation of models.

  Then again, the more likely scenario is that he doesn’t think of her at all.

  “Cissy is … spunky?” Bess says. “A go-getter.”

  “Didn’t she once shoot Michael Kennedy in the kneecap?”

  “It was RFK Junior and it was an accident. She said he deserved it.”

  As Evan laughs, Bess stiffens. No. Uh-uh. No way. She will not allow herself to relax into that easy, distant sound.

  “Yeah, so my mother issued a TRO against your dad,” Bess says, murmuring, letting her voice get lost in the light streaming through the kitchen window.

  “Beg pardon?” Evan leans toward her. “She issued a what?”

  “Temporary restraining order,” she says, louder this time. “I’m supposed to make sure Chappy received it.”

  “Oh yeah.” Evan laughs. Again. Again and again. “He got it all right, as your mother is well aware. She watched the whole thing from the captain’s walk.”

  “The captain’s walk?” Bess says with a quack. “It doesn’t even have stairs anymore. How’d she get up there?” She shakes her head. “Forget it. I don’t want to know. Good God, Cliff House is going to be the death of me.”

  “Only if you’re not careful. So, why are you here? When your mother already knows about the TRO?”

  Bess sighs.

  “The thing is … the problem, you see. Chappy violated it this morning. Allegedly.”

  Bess holds up air quotes long after the word has been spoken.

  “Allegedly.” Evan smirks. “How so?”

  “He sneezed or farted near the property or something,” Bess says with another sigh. “Anyway, I’m not here to quibble over the details and I fully recognize the ridiculousness of the situation. But your dad is very obstinate and peevish…”

  “He’s peevish?”

  “Yes. Very much so. Hear me out. Cissy and Chappy, they have their little repartee, their back-and-forth.”

  “That they do.…”

  “Their saucy insults and middle fingers.” Bess lifts one, as if to demonstrate.

  “Bess Codman, you’re cute as ever.”

  “But it’s a dance,” she says, ignoring Evan and speaking as fast as her mouth will carry her. “And the more he antagonizes her, the more she digs in. I’m trying to compel Cissy to leave Cliff House. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s about to fall into the ocean.”

  “All of Nantucket has noticed. I heard Vanity Fair is writing an article about it.”

  “Fa
ntastic. And my grandmother weeps from the heavens,” Bess says. “Anyway, here’s the problem. I want Cis to leave but the more your father keeps sticking in her craw, the more she’s going to stick around here.”

  “Cissy has a lot of craws.”

  “Yes, she’s a real craw machine. Swear to God, Evan, if your dad was simply nice to her, if he treated her with a crumb of kindness or respect, she’d get bored and leave. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Cissy would be out of Chappy’s hair and I wouldn’t need to organize a funeral. As much as Cissy torments your dad, he doesn’t want her dead. I don’t think so anyway.”

  “No,” Evan says. “He would not want that at all.”

  “Can you just convince him to, I don’t know, step away from the fight? At least until I get her out of the house? Please?”

  “All right, Bess,” Evan says, eyes softening, the playful spark falling right out of them. “I don’t know that he’ll take advice from me but I can sure as hell try.”

  “Thank you.” She exhales. “That’s all I ask.”

  As they stand stiff and silent, Bess notices the reflection of her sweatpants in the oven door. A sudden wave of dizziness overtakes her. What must she look like? Evan saw her in that very kitchen, in those very pants, a thousand years ago, back when Bess had the youth to make it seem like a casual outfit choice instead of the very definition of “giving up.”

  “So, I’d better—”

  “It’s been awhile, Bess,” Evan says, his voice like velvet. “How long?”

  “Four years,” she answers with a sharp nod, as if confirming to herself.

  “Since your wedding, then? Am I right?”

  Bess nods again but won’t catch his eyes.

  “Four years,” Evan says. “That’s quite awhile. Guess you didn’t miss this place.”

  “Are you kidding?” She looks up. “I’ve missed it with every speck of my being. Sconset is a dream. The ocean. The sand. The wild roses and honeysuckle and bayberries on the dunes. There’s nowhere like it in the world.”

  “Wow,” Evan says with a dry laugh. “They say Sconset is a place folks get sentimental about but I didn’t think that’d apply to Dr. Bess Codman.”

  “Don’t even start with the ‘doctor’ stuff.”