The Islanders

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “I didn’t think I could.” His face was so close to hers. He had brushed his teeth: she smelled mint.

  “But now you can?” She was whispering.

  He nodded. “I regretted saying that. And I realized that I actually can.” He put his thumb on her cheek again. Something about that thumb.

  It was hard to say, after that, who kissed whom first. Did it matter?

  Pickles sighed and flopped onto the floor, turning her face away, giving them privacy, which Joy appreciated, because it had been a long time, and she was worried she was a little rusty, and she certainly didn’t need an audience.

  Chapter 17

  Anthony

  Anthony awoke once in the night to a cacophony outside an open window. He lay there for a moment, confused. This wasn’t Fitzy’s uncle’s cottage; this wasn’t the four-poster bed. This wasn’t the quiet and isolation of Corn Neck Road. Then he remembered the artichoke hearts, and the banana bread pudding, and quite soon after that he remembered his own fractured heart, which he could feel opening and turning toward the light, like a heliotropic flower.

  There was a throb of disco music from down the street. Outside the open window a drunken fight was playing itself out.

  A girl: “You did too, Sully, you did fucking too!”

  The answering voice (presumably Sully): “Come on, Mariah, why you gotta go and do that? Why you gotta do it every time . . .”

  The voices faded; Sully and Mariah went on their un-merry way.

  He thought, Is this really happening? Am I really here? He felt in the darkness for the body next to him. He thought, Joy. He turned on his side and fell into a sleep like he hadn’t experienced in months, since before Huxley Wilder called him to tell him about Anonymous Source.

  Sometime after dawn there was a shifting on the mattress, a kiss on his forehead. He said, “Whaa?”

  “Shhh,” said the voice of an angel. “Shhh, back to sleep.”

  Hours later, he awoke again. He was alone. His limbs were heavy after so much sleep. He felt clearheaded and wonderful, as though his brain had been infused with some magical elixir.

  In the kitchen, Pickles was sitting politely, wearing an inquisitive, slightly reserved expression. Anthony reached out a cautious hand. Pickles licked it. Anthony fought the urge to pull away, and Pickles stopped licking and lay on the floor near Anthony. She sighed, possibly with contentment.

  There was a note on the counter, along with instructions on how to work the French press.

  I’m at the shop. Get yourself out of here by noon. Take this note with you, or eat it. And make the bed if you don’t mind, Maggie’ll know something is up if it’s not made.

  Anthony looked at the clock on the microwave: ten-thirty. He didn’t want to leave.

  He let his eyes roam around the kitchen, taking in the cabinets with paint peeling in the corners, the dings in the cheap metal sink, the slightly tilted floor. If Anthony were still a writer, this would be a home he’d love to describe.

  The cottage was not fancy, but it was tidy and well kept, he would have written, with a large window in the front room, out of which he could just see a slice of the cobalt sea.

  He couldn’t really see a slice of the sea; he was employing poetic license. Was cobalt being generous? This was New England, after all. But Block Island’s water was very blue, in a non-New-England-like way.

  His phone rang: his mother’s number showed on the screen. He’d call his mother back. Later, he’d call Cassie, again, ask to speak to Max (again). But just at that moment he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He was experiencing a sensation that had not visited him in so long that it took him some time to put a name to it.

  Contentment.

  He thought, Plot twist, and turned off his phone.

  Chapter 18

  Lu

  www.DinnerByDad.com

  Stay tuned, folks, because in the next few days we’re going to get serious about pickling (s/o to Ophelia). We’re going to do the obvious and pickle cucumbers. We’re going to pickle onions and carrots and peppers and we’re even going to pickle peaches. We’re going to talk expensive vinegars and how not to overheat your pickling liquid and why pickling is a fantastic activity to do with kids, and I’ll share some stories about my first pickling experience with Charlie and Sammy. We’re going to talk about why splurging on one bottle of Huilerie Beaujolaise Vinaigre de Citron might just make your life better. The only thing we’re going to stay away from, readers, is asparagus. Some things just aren’t meant to be pickled!

  Lu was starting to feel excited. She’d never pickled anything before! And why not start now? She was already imagining the antics the fictional Charlie and Sammy would get up to with the vinegar, and the photos she’d take of their labeled mason jars. Maybe she’d even have her own real live kids decorate their own real live mason jars, and she’d photograph those. Jeremy might be happy when he returned from the hospital and saw the fruits of their labor. The vegetables of their labor, more accurately. Jeremy loved pickles. He always scarfed down the pickled radishes at the sushi restaurant, and he piled bread-and-butters high on his hamburgers.

  Maggie couldn’t come today because her mother needed her in the shop. But, stroke of luck, Lu had spotted a sign for a one-day, four-hour camp at the club on Corn Neck Road. (Nancy and Henry were members.) She’d dropped Chase and Sebastian off at nine. They were going to learn to clam!

  She spent some time reading other food bloggers’ pickling posts. You could pickle with or without sugar; you could pickle with high-end vinegar or good old inexpensive white vinegar, the kind Lu bought in giant jugs in case she had to build a last-minute volcano with baking soda. Lu wanted to be able to report to her readers if it really did make a difference. Would they have high-end vinegar on Block Island? She wasn’t sure. But if she found it, she could set up an experiment, try a few of the veggies with the cheap stuff, a few with the expensive stuff.

  When Jeremy came home next, he could do a taste test! Blindfolded, because all of the best taste tests were, and Leo could write about Jacqui doing the taste test after work one night. He’d feed the different options to her, forkful by forkful, which wasn’t quite as sexy as feeding a woman strawberries by hand, washed down with champagne, but it might be enough to get the more romantically deprived of her readers a little bit excited.

  Shower, and then shop for vinegar, or the other way around? She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, weighing the pros and cons of each, when she heard a car drive up. She hightailed it to the bedroom, which offered a clandestine view of the driveway.

  Shit shit shit shit shit. Nancy was descending from her beautifully maintained silver Cadillac coupe (the Cadillac of Cadillacs). She was wearing, on this summer morning, which was already hot and humid, a tan pencil skirt, a smooth light yellow blouse, and a pair of dark green pumps. Pumps! Dark green! On an island! In summer!

  Could Lu pretend not to be home? No, her own car was in the driveway; there was no escaping. If only they had a dog, she could pretend to have been walking it. Was it too late to procure a dog? Could she walk Sebastian’s hamster, which had traveled all the way from Connecticut with them?

  The doorbell rang once, then twice. When it rang a third time—this time Nancy was depressing the button for several seconds, obviously making a point—Lu descended the stairs and opened the door.

  Her mother-in-law looked surprised to find Lu there, although who else would she have been expecting? “Hi, Nancy,” Lu said, stepping aside and ushering Nancy in. She kept her voice noncommittal, easygoing, at an appropriate level of polite daughter-in-law-ness. She was the picture of a woman not a bit bothered by being disturbed on a summer morning.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Even though, of course, she wasn’t wearing gloves, Nancy somehow gave the impression of whisking them off. “Is Jeremy at the hospital through the weekend?”

  “He is!” Where else would he be? “He had to stay longer than he thought.”

/>   “I don’t know how he does it,” sighed Nancy. “All those hours, working so hard.”

  “I know how he does it,” said Lu. “He has a wife.” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

  “Well,” said Nancy. “Yes. But you don’t see his patients for him, do you? You don’t perform his surgeries?”

  Lu thought, Everything but! She chortled gently and said, “No, of course not.” Then, because she had the impression that this was what Nancy wanted, she added, “I could never.”

  Nancy nodded crisply and made her way, uninvited, to the kitchen, while Lu followed behind, explaining apologetically that the boys weren’t home because of the clamming camp. Too late Lu saw that she’d gotten so caught up in the pickling plans that she’d forgotten to clean up after breakfast; she watched Nancy take in the constellation of morning toast crumbs, the Rorschach blot of orange juice. Under Chase’s stool, she could be certain, was an entire meal’s worth of surrendered cereal bits. She pictured them being carried off by an army of industrious ants. Look what we’ve found, one ant would say to another. Look at this, it’s a goddamn gold mine! And then they’d motion to all of the other ants to join them.

  Lu swiped as many of the crumbs as she could into the sink without being too obvious about it. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked Nancy.

  “I had mine hours ago.” Nancy was a competitively early riser.

  “Me too,” said Lu. “But I’m going to have more.”

  “I suppose I could have another.”

  Lu made herself busy with the coffee maker. She couldn’t bear to be idle in front of Nancy; it made her feel naked.

  “Were you . . . exercising?” Nancy took in Lu’s apparel. “While the boys were gone?”

  “I was,” said Lu untruthfully. “Yes.” She pretended to wipe some sweat off of her forehead. “Just got back, in fact. Spinning. Really tough class.” She shook her head as though she could scarcely believe it, how tough it had been. “One of the teachers here . . . man, oh, man . . .” She let her voice trail off and she looked into the middle distance. Her legs positively ached with the memory of that class. “Tommy, his name is.”

  Lu had been fourth in her class at Stanford Law. How she’d loved the gleamingness of the Stanford campus, the umbrellaed tables set out in Crocker Garden, the thinking that went on. Advanced Supreme Court Litigation, American Legal History, 21st Century Skills and Practice Management: she’d loved it all. Later, when she was working, she’d loved wearing suits every day, heels, ticking her way down the hall at the firm, her mind ticking too, keeping up with her heels. She’d never minded the long hours. She’d thrived on them. And now an imaginary spin class made her tired.

  “I was thinking of doing some pickling,” Lu said.

  Nancy sniffed. “Why?”

  “I thought it might be fun. I thought it might be something I could do with the boys when they get home this afternoon.”

  “It sounds messy,” said Nancy.

  “I don’t mind a little mess.”

  Lu watched Nancy’s eyes roam around the kitchen. “No,” Nancy said finally. “I guess you don’t.”

  Lu had to get Nancy out of here. She peered at the clock on the microwave and feigned shock. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “Is that the time? I need to jump in the shower.”

  “Now? I’ve only just arrived. I thought we could visit.” Lu wondered if she could use Jessica as an excuse, but surely a lie like that would get back to Nancy.

  The coffeepot was gurgling along happily, like it had not a care in the world. Lu was searching her mind for other places she could reasonably pretend to need to be when Nancy asked, “When do you pick them up?”

  Lu checked her watch. “One o’clock.”

  “I could get them.”

  “Really?” Lu approached this offer with care. She didn’t want it to run away, like a frightened animal. “Would you really do that?”

  “I would. I’ll take them to lunch after. We’ll sit somewhere by the water, look at the boats. When Jeremy was a boy he used to love to eat over by New Harbor.”

  The boys had brought bagged lunches to camp, but Lu wasn’t about to divulge that piece of information to Nancy. She hoped the boys wouldn’t either. They were growing children: they could eat twice. This would give her at least ninety extra minutes, maybe enough time to shower and put on actual clothes and buy the vinegar and the vegetables and set up the mason jars, so that when the boys got home she’d have the project ready to go.

  “That’s settled, then,” said Nancy. She wiped her hands together as though she were wiping away a problem. “Do you need to call someone at the camp, let them know I’ll be collecting them?”

  Did she? Lu couldn’t remember. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Maybe you’d better, just in case.”

  “Right. You’re right. I will.” (She wouldn’t.)

  Lu poured the coffee into two mugs and placed one in front of Nancy. Once they’d had their coffee maybe she could usher Nancy toward the door.

  “How are things in the bedroom, Lu?”

  Lu choked on her coffee. “I’m sorry?”

  “In the bedroom. Between you and Jeremy?”

  Lu’s face grew hot. Something about Nancy turned her into a compliant child who felt like she had to answer any questions put to her. Her own mother didn’t have that effect on her. Nobody else in the world did! It was just Nancy. Once, when Sebastian was a newborn, Nancy had inquired into the specifics of Lu’s violent case of mastitis. And Lu had told her!

  “They’re fine,” she said, inaccurately, now. The truth was that Jeremy was so often working, and Lu was so often up in the night with Chase and his vicious nightmares, that they sometimes seemed more like office mates on rotating schedules than like husband and wife. Coworkers.

  Nancy nodded her approval. “Good. It’s a busy time for you all,” she said. “But it goes so fast, the boys are only little once. You blink and you miss it.”

  Lu gritted her teeth. “How come nobody ever says that to a man?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?” said Nancy.

  “It goes fast for everyone, how come people don’t tell the dad that? They tell the mom, always the mom. I have never heard a single person say that to Jeremy.” She looked deep into Nancy’s eyes and then, without waiting for an answer, she said, “I need to take my shower now. Please, help yourself to more coffee.”

  Lu ran the shower super-hot and stepped inside, letting the steam engulf her. She had read somewhere that cool water was better for your skin, but hot water felt so good, like it was washing away all of the evil parts of her. All the resentment and bad temper and terrible thoughts of wanting to be elsewhere. Leaving her cleansed and motherly, ready to pickle.

  When she returned to the kitchen Nancy was, impossibly, still there. She was holding Lu’s cell phone.

  “Your phone rang,” said Nancy. “While you were in the shower.”

  What Lu thought was, Please don’t tell me you answered it.

  “I answered it,” said Nancy.

  “You answered it?” Lu tried to convey with her voice what an appallingly inappropriate thing to do this was, but she feared that instead she still came off as the same compliant child, waiting patiently for the grown-ups to tell her the answer. “Who was it?”

  “It was a wrong number.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were looking for someone named Leo.”

  Lu’s hands got instantly sweaty. “Well, who was it?”

  Nancy gave Lu a shrewd look. “How should I know? It was a wrong number, and I told them as much.”

  Later, when she checked her blog email, Lu found this, from aknowles@wla.com.

  Dear Leo,

  I tried to track you down by phone but it was a #fail. Whoops! My name is Abigail Knowles, and I am a new agent with the Wilder Literary Agency in Manhattan. I’m looking to build my list of clients. I’m a new and VERY BIG fan of your blog, and I think we could p
ut together a fabulous cookbook proposal to shop around. If you are interested in talking more, please respond to this email at your convenience. I know a publisher will gobble this idea up, ha ha.

  All best,

  Abigail

  Chapter 19

  Anthony

  In the afternoon Anthony returned to Joy’s house with a bouquet of flowers he’d bought at the farmers’ market at Legion Park. It had been a heck of a bike ride out there, but worth it. The flowers were stunning. He planned to deliver them with an apology. He’d let Joy do more of the talking the night before, and he hadn’t been completely truthful about his own background. He hadn’t been honest about his father. He hadn’t mentioned his son. He hadn’t expected to fall for her! He hadn’t expected to sleep with her! But sometime during the night the universe had reordered itself. Everything was different now.

  He rang the doorbell: no answer. Gingerly he tried the knob, which gave way immediately. He could just sneak inside and leave the flowers in the kitchen. From inside the house he could hear strains of the Hamilton soundtrack: “The Room Where It Happens.” He closed the door again—the house wasn’t empty. He rang the doorbell again.

  Back when his star was on the rise he and Cassie had second-row seats to Hamilton; he loved that song.

  A girl opened the door. She had a purple streak in her hair and green gum in her mouth. She was wearing a T-shirt that depicted an ear of corn and said I Know It’s Corny But You Are AMAIZEing. She tilted her head at Anthony and said, “Are you a robber?”

  “No,” Anthony said. “No, I’m not a robber. I come in peace. I’m a friend of your mom’s. You must be Maggie.” Joy’s genes had to be pretty strong, the Navy SEALs of genes, because her daughter was basically a carbon copy of her.

  The girl looked at him quizzically.

  “Hold up,” she said. From the pocket of her jean shorts she produced an iPhone. Without asking, she took his photo. “I’m just texting your picture to my mom,” she said. She waited, then her phone dinged. “Okay,” she said. “She verified that you’re not a robber. Come in, so Pickles doesn’t run out the door.” Anthony hadn’t noticed that Pickles had appeared, panting and smiling. He entered the cottage and held out his hand. Pickles licked it. Apparently this was their new routine. If so, he could dig it.