Finally, the Possible Dreams Auction was getting a new home. This annual fund-raiser was an authentic intersection of the Vineyard’s wealthy summer population, its famous summer population, and its actual population. The celebrities offered themselves, or perks only they could provide, to the wealthy people. The wealthy people paid extravagant amounts to have cocktails, or a sunset sail, or a walk-on role, or a view from the owner’s box, or a serenade, or a painting, or a portrait, or a peanut butter sandwich, with the celebrities. All of the profit went to Community Services, the nonprofit that strove to keep the year-round working-class population from going off the rails.
She dutifully read the competition’s news briefs. The “Newes in Brief” covered the Possible Dreams Auction, of course, for who would not enjoy reading about such gracious generosity on the part of our very own celebrities and benefactors?
Oh, God, Joanna thought, cringing. Sometimes my inner Hank is such an asshole.
The Newes did not mention any of the other things the Journal found worth reporting on. On the other hand, it offered updated info on the monthly poetry slam in Oak Bluffs and discussed several well-known historic buildings that would be getting face-lifts before summer. It also had an entertaining little paragraph titled “Stealing Heritage,” about nouveau-riche seasonal types pilfering the gray lichen-covered boulders from their neighbors’ ancient stone walls to create the illusion that their walls were ancient too. Newly quarried local rocks had a telltale orange hue to them, from so much iron in the soil. A reddish wall meant a newcomer’s wall. Nobody wanted to be known as a Johnny-come-lately.
She wished Everett would send her to poetry slams.
BY THE FOLLOWING week, Joanna had finally achieved something like a routine. Regular work hours. The regular Hank-chores of shopping, cooking, laundry, driving to PT appointments. Her childhood onus of filling the humidifiers in the rooms too dry from heating and emptying the dehumidifiers in the rooms too damp from lack of heating. Regular Scrabble games with Hank, which he kept winning. Regular Celia-coffees (or in Joanna’s case, tea) and Celia-walks on the windy, sometimes rocky North Shore beaches, wrapped in layers of wool and flannel. Regular affectionate-but-insubstantial texts to Brian, who responded with equally affectionate, equally insubstantial texts, and never with phone calls, which was both sad and relieving.
EVERETT TRUSTED HER with news briefs for a second week, and of course, she went to the next ZBA. This time, she felt slightly less like a deer in headlights.
The room had only a handful of people in it this time, mostly the usual suspects in the usual plaid and flannel. The cloudy gray day was darkening, as gray trees and gray-shingled houses began to fade from sight out the window in the gray dusk.
James Sherman was there again, lanky and bespectacled. His surprised pleasure from their previous meeting had shifted, though: now he eyed her almost suspiciously.
“Hey, James,” she said, settling into the chair beside him, grateful to feel, if not his peer, at least competent to be there beside him.
“You’re still doing this?” he asked, at his leisurely rate of speech. “I thought last time was just a one-off.”
That felt a little like a slap. “Well, I’m here for a while,” she said, unzipping her heavy coat and shrugging out of it. “Hank is going to need me around for a few more weeks at least, maybe longer. And, you know, it’s work, it’s income.” Seeing his expression unchanged, she added, with false heartiness, “Plus not a bad way to pad a résumé, since every off-Island outlet assumes anything associated with the Vineyard is glam.”
“You should be padding your résumé with real journalism. Why don’t you come work for the Newes? I’m sure Lewis and Laurie would be thrilled to have you there.”
“I couldn’t do that to Everett,” she said. She thought James would understand that, but she’d misjudged, for he made a face as if he smelled something terrible. She scrambled to undo whatever faux pas she’d just made: “I guess my loyalty to Everett doesn’t make sense to you since he abandoned the Newes for the Journal—”
He looked even more disgusted. “Oh, it’s not that. I get the whole changing camps thing, not everyone has the right sensibility for the Newes. I meant what I said before, about the Journal being an advertising rag. But it’s doing well because people like Everett are in their element there. And, sure, everyone has a right to thrive, and okay, yes, local businesses need more of a friend than maybe the Newes is willing to be.”
“So . . . ?” she prompted.
“He supported the YMCA.”
A pause. Joanna waited for the rest of his explanation.
But that was it, apparently. That was the crime.
“And?” she asked.
He shook his head. “If the whole point of the Journal is to be a pro-business paper for the Island, how can they justify supporting a mainland incursion like that?”
“James, it’s a nonprofit,” she said. “It’s independent from any other Y. That’s how the YMCA works.”
“It’s a huge ugly building that takes business away from the local health clubs.”
“It is a local health club.”
He shook his head. “It’s as much of a franchise as McDonald’s. It’s an incursion. I lost all respect for him when he made the editorial choice to be pro-Y.”
She hadn’t been here for the hoopla around the YMCA getting built, but she recalled there had been hoopla. Not having read anything either paper had published about it, she channeled her inner Hank now, possibly even reciting something he’d said to her in an email from years back:
“Speaking as a kid who grew up here, I gotta say maybe Everett was thinking that if the youth of the Vineyard are bored and drunk and high and heroin looks attractive, but then again so does aikido, and aikido is right across the road from the high school, then who cares if it’s a big ugly building? It’s keeping them functional.”
He gave her a look. “I don’t think this is worth getting into a tizzy about. Let’s drop it. Anyhow, they’re about to start.”
Irritably she turned her attention to the agenda. An artist wanted a variance on the setback for his studio. A small affordable housing project sought a comprehensive permit. Joanna’s boyfriend from second grade, now shockingly thinning on top, wanted to add a guest cottage; a proposal to expand the bike path up-Island was referred to the Commission. Once the board had addressed all the new business, it was time for old business, and the first of these was correspondence. The Minion Lawyer of Mr. Orion Smith wrote to announce he intended to go to superior court to institute a lawsuit under Chapter 240, section 14A, challenging the legality of the town bylaw forbidding helicopter use. The ZBA and the selectmen would be kept abreast of any legal developments if they did not choose to annul their vote on the helipad.
“He’s suing us,” said one of the board members, staring truculently at the email.
“He’s trying to scare us,” corrected Helen, and said very deliberately to James Sherman and Joanna: “This is not a legal document. He is not suing us.”
“He’s not suing us yet,” said the first board member.
“We get these kinds of threats all the time, these days,” said Helen. “It doesn’t mean a thing.” But she did not look happy.
“. . . AND THEN HE totally froze me out,” she said, as Hank howled with approving amusement from his recliner. “When the meeting was over he got up and left without even a nod goodbye. I mean he said goodbye to Helen and the others but walked right past me!”
“You bitch-slapped the Newes reporter!” he chortled, saluting her with a beer can. Raising his eyebrows hopefully, he asked, “Did Helen see? Did she hear what you said?”
“I doubt it, Hank. She was trying to start the meeting, she didn’t have time for the two reporters sitting in the corner getting hissy with each other.”
“I’m proud of you,” he said. “Now just write up the ZBA report making it clear Orion Smith is a dick, and you’ve really earned that honey I gave you
.”
JOANNA EDITED THE Valentines. Some of them were very Vineyard (“I love cuddling with you when the fish aren’t running”). Others were more generic, and led her to feel unpleasantly single. Singlehood was dreaded in winter on the Vineyard. Some excruciatingly unfortunate unions occurred in attempts to lower heating bills. Joanna had cousins enough that she had seen this in action over the years. She would not fall into that trap. She hoped.
On the thirteenth of February, as she sat in bed staring out her bedroom window at the hard, cold black of an up-Island winter night, Brian texted her: Will you be my Valentine? And a moment later added: In Manhattan?
She gathered the comforter around her, turned the space heater down so that she could hear better, and called him.
“Are you calling to say yes?” he answered, sounding happy.
“If I was closer I would,” she said. “But there’s no direct flights in winter, Hank won’t let me take the truck off-Island, and the bus takes seven hours if you include the ferry.” No wonder Orion Smith likes his helicopter, she thought. For a brief, shameful moment she wondered how she could meet Orion Smith, charm him into taking a fatherly interest in her, and then hitch a ride to Manhattan with him, to finally have The Talk with Brian. A moment later, she was very glad this couldn’t happen, as she still did not know what she’d actually want to say.
“You can get a lot of reading done in seven hours,” Brian was meanwhile suggesting, in his reasonable tone.
“Good point,” she said. “And I know you like to read, so why don’t you come here?”
There was a pause long enough to measure in heartbeats.
“Um,” he said. “I have no reason to go there. I mean except to see you, of course—but you have lots of reasons to come back here for a few days. This is where you live.”
It is? she almost asked aloud. Instead, after a steadying breath, she said, “It’s a big schlep for just a short visit, this time of year when the weather is so crappy. But I promise I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“Here’s hoping ‘soon’ turns out to be one of those words we have the same definition for,” he said.
“I understand if you’re tired of waiting for me—”
“Joanna, sweetheart, no, you don’t get to do that,” he said. “I’ve given you an invitation. Reject it if you want to, but don’t try to make it look like I’ve rescinded it.”
She nodded, alone in the chilled bedroom. “All right,” she said, enervated. “Thanks for being patient. I’ll be back in town for sure by mid-March at the latest.”
“And then we can finally have The Talk,” he said, a shade too eagerly.
THAT WAS THE closest thing she had to nightlife. There really was no place to casually wander to up-Island. So much of the Vineyard was shuttered in February. There were only two places on the hundred square miles of island to buy a bag of potato chips after 9 P.M. And when she wanted something more than potato chips, well . . . Celia had an early night and everyone else her age had kids. She had never been one for bars. Sporadically—for amusement only—she would cruise local online dating sites. There were very few available men on the Vineyard, and most of them had photos of dogs, pickups, or fish in place of their profile photo. She did catch herself wondering about the availability of decent-looking men under forty whose path she crossed—in the feed store getting grain for the chickens; the propane-delivery man at the Journal; motorists waiting to be served at the gas station across the street from the paper, when she went there for cheap coffee. After a few days of idle contemplation, Brian in comparison seemed exactly right for her. But every time she’d pick up the phone to call him and tell him so, some part of her did not want to admit it.
* * *
The following week, Joanna did a feature on a new hardware store opening up-Island. She also covered the West Tisbury selectmen’s meeting, at which they decided to call a public forum to discuss the increasingly unfriendly situation with Mr. Orion Smith, infamous helicopter owner, who had used his helicopter at least once again. And there were news briefs, including a court date for the domestic violence case she’d mentioned, without going into details, the week before. It was Everett’s position as editor to keep the “ugly bits of life,” as he called them, on readers’ radars. In his childhood—which was also Hank’s childhood—nobody ever talked about anything tawdry or unpleasant, and so wives and children suffered in silence, for the sake of appearances, while their parents or husbands behaved atrociously and everyone just looked the other way. Everett had survived such an upbringing and now was adamant about never looking the other way, something Joanna had her own reasons to appreciate. Names were kept out of the paper, and sensationalistic details omitted, but every issue of the Journal had at least one article intended to rob readers of complacency. This week it was the domestic violence case.
But the big news, that final week of February, was Hank’s health.
Joanna had thought she’d soon be New York–bound. That she’d be returning to finally have The Talk with Brian. His texts (they had stopped speaking on the phone, again) made it clear he was very aware of her anticipated return date.
Hank had started physical therapy, but he hadn’t weaned off the prescription pain meds, and couldn’t put any weight at all on the broken foot, not even to test how much weight he could put on the broken foot. So it was no surprise to learn that he wasn’t healing right.
Joanna took him in for the X-ray that they thought would be the precursor to his getting the boot removed. But the same doctor who had spoken to her back in January called them both in to the overbright lab room to stare at the icy, backlit negative of Hank’s leg.
“You’re not laying down enough calcium here,” she said, pointing with a pencil eraser at what was obviously the fracture. “Which means the bone is not rebuilding.”
“What does that mean?” Hank demanded, as if she were accusing him of something.
She sat up straighter in her cushioned swivel chair. “Just that it’s going to take a little longer,” she said, briskly comforting. “Just means we keep on keeping on, maybe even dial it back a little, okay? No weight-bearing at all, use the crutches one hundred percent of the time, and keep it elevated. Come back in two weeks for another X-ray.”
“Oh, great,” Hank muttered.
“And I’ll renew the scrip for the pain meds,” she added.
“Oh, great,” Joanna muttered.
BACK HOME, SHE emailed Everett, Celia, Helen Javier and her husband, Paul, and a few others with an update. Then she fed the cats, slipped a couple pieces of eggplant parmigiana in the oven to reheat, went into her room, and called Brian to tell him her return would be delayed.
It went to voice mail. She considered just asking him to call her, but then it felt less exhausting to simply leave a message now. So she did. Three hours later, he sent a text saying, OK. Sorry to hear it.
SHE COULD HAVE gone to New York for a check-in, a weekend, a few days. Objectively she certainly could have done that. But Island Psychology seized up her brain, perhaps because it was always in control of Hank’s and she was trying to calibrate to him. According to Island Psychology, off-Island was very far away. It could have been Boston or Taiwan, there was just a few hours in the difference. The obstacle—also the buffer, also the safety net—was Vineyard Sound. This band of water, traversable in fifteen minutes if you happened to own a motorboat, made a trip to New York feel five times more time-consuming and exhausting than it really was, especially now that she was so out of the habit of making the trip. Hank claimed he didn’t care if she went, but he said it with enough petulance in his tone that she knew he’d consider her going back to New York even for a weekend tantamount to abandoning him permanently. Could she have simply bought a bus ticket? Objectively speaking, yes, of course. But it was out of the question. Especially given her increasing discomfort and confusion about The Talk With Brian that awaited her.
So a friend in New York vetted a subletter for her, but the
y needed a place for a year. She went with it. This took some pressure off financially. But it added a different class of pressure because now she would have nowhere to live in New York when she finally returned—unless she moved in with Brian. She could barely remember what Brian looked like. Sometimes she thought she was inventing him.
She was still stressed about money, and the only time the Vineyard was as quiet as February was March. At least April had Annual Town Meetings to get upset about, and by May everyone was bracing themselves for summer.
On the plus side, March was three days longer than February. But that wasn’t enough to amend her take-home pay.
So she called Mr. C.
SHE STILL THOUGHT of Paolo Croce as Mr. C even though she’d graduated from his Advanced Algebra years ago and had the right to address him as a grown-up. Her class had called him Mr. C; the name stuck and now some parents weren’t even clear what his whole name was. In addition to teaching math at the high school, he’d also moonlighted doing payroll for the Newes.
He’d been a fan of her writing on the school newspaper, and introduced her to the Newes’ editor-back-then, who had offered her the cushy internship of restaurant reviewing. Mr. C had retired from teaching by now, but last she’d heard he was still doing the Newes books.
The historic district in Edgartown was a close-nested neighborhood, with brick sidewalks and the morning aroma of baked bread wafting down narrow streets. The houses were old, in a tidy, grandmotherly way. Unlike the other towns, the empty streets did not feel abandoned in February, but simply quaint and quiet. In Oak Bluffs it was easy to imagine horse-drawn vehicles on main streets, and in Vineyard Haven one could imagine Model Ts. Edgartown evoked chiefly the foot traffic of past centuries.
The Newes offices were housed in a building nearly as stately as the paper’s masthead. Growing up, Joanna had known these as Whaling Captains’ houses, but when she went off to college and took an elective in architectural history, she realized most were Greek Revival and had been built by plenty of people, all over America, with no relationship to whaling. Broad whitewashed clapboard, dark louvered shutters framing the windows. Regal, but understated. A stoic Yankee retort to the southern plantation manor. The Whaling Captains’ houses mostly clustered here, at the eastern end of the Island. The grandest ones looked out over Edgartown Harbor toward the islet of Chappaquiddick. Edgartown, the first place white settlers had put down roots, had grown to be one of the great whaling ports of the Eastern Seaboard. Its sense of maritime exceptionalism never deserted it; a hundred years after whaling died out, it still boasted the “yachtingest of all yacht clubs” in New England.
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