“Yes,” she said, remembering those days, which lapsed as she was weaning off training wheels, and the annual average building-permit rate quadrupled over a decade.
“So,” Orion continued, as they settled back into the kitchen. He slipped his wool coat off and laid it on a stool. “Will you please take your jacket off? You make me feel like a terrible host.”
“Can’t have that,” she said quickly, and disrobed.
He had reached for a knife to cut the gingerbread. “Here’s the man who doesn’t believe in zoning because he feels everyone has a right to do whatever they want with their own resources. Got that? Except he thinks that private schools should be abolished because they give rich kids an unfair advantage.” She laughed a little, pained: oh, yes, she remembered that diatribe. “He wants the government to ban private organizations. So depending on his whim, he’s either a libertarian or a fascist. He takes a position on things depending on his mood, or something-or-other, and then he tries to impose it on everyone else.”
She focused on her coffee mug, on the letter P in NPR, and said nothing because she couldn’t think of a way to respond without exposing herself. Ironic how those qualities in Hank that exasperated her also made her feel defensive of him.
To distract him, and herself, she looked out the window. “Y’know, I used to traipse around out here,” she said. “As a kid. My best friend and I would ride our bikes to the beach with picnic lunches in the spring, then walk down the beach a ways and sneak up the cliffs. We pretended we were Wampanoags and had the whole Island to ourselves.”
“Isn’t that cultural appropriation?”
“Is that worse than geographical appropriation?”
“Wow, it’s already time to have an argument about the concept of private property? This is only our second coffee date.” He strolled into the pantry.
She smiled, abashed. “I admit the ship has sailed on the issue of private property. However—”
“There is always a however, and it’s always about the good old days,” he said, like an understanding parent. “Go on.”
“We had permission to trespass. Sometimes it was tacit permission, but it was a time when that just happened a lot. People weren’t as fierce about guarding their property lines as they are now.”
He came out of the pantry with a small dessert plate. “You were a kid. How rough is anyone going to be with a little girl?” He considered the loaf of gingerbread, curlicues of steam still hovering over it as he assessed which piece to take. “If you were a grown-up caught trespassing, you’d have paid hell for it.”
“I don’t think so. It was the same for fishermen and hunters. It’s the law of the land that fishermen can go anywhere below the high-water mark, but that’s becoming acrimonious in a way it just didn’t used to be. More and more, the people with summer homes want to be here because the Island is trendy and pretty, not because they have any real understanding of what the Island is. They have no deep ties to the community, and they’re really disinclined to form any—I mean they become buddies with each other and say things like, Oh, yes, I really feel like I’m part of the community, but they just mean the community of well-heeled summer people. They just mean their own enclave.” She could feel herself physically heating up. This was the part of her that Hank had molded and fed, and she did not want it to get the better of her at this moment, but she felt its anger, and she couldn’t shut it down. “I mean, sure, they might invite a real working Islander to their cocktail party because it gives them street cred, and they’ll give generously to all the fund-raisers, which is great, but they don’t actually want to know the natives. They don’t want to really face, with any kind of intimacy, the people who have no stable housing or are struggling to make their mortgage or who dive into depression every winter when there’s no employment. They want to appreciate them without embracing them. They will open their pocketbooks, but not their gates. So the whole issue of access comes down to money—nothing but money.”
He looked up from his gingerbread contemplation with that diffident smile. “That’s the main reason people like to have money, Anna.”
The intimacy of his using her name gave her another shock.
“Well,” she said peevishly, “that mentality is why you’ll never be loved here.”
He laughed. As always, without malice. “You’re a snob. You know that, right? You’re all reverse snobs. I’m bad because I’m not poor. You’re good because you’re not rich, even though you covet what I have.” He picked up a serving spatula and reached for his chosen piece of gingerbread, right in the middle of the loaf.
“We don’t covet your money,” she shot back. “We covet your access to things that feel like part of the common good but which we no longer have access to. Even if we don’t legally have a right to those things—I’m not knocking private property, for Pete’s sake—it feels like we are being deprived. By you.”
He was so incredulous he almost dropped the spatula. “I’m not responsible for what you feel—”
“I know that,” she said impatiently, “but we’re going to treat you like you are, whether you deserve it or not, unless you offset that somehow. That’s just how things work here.”
“Offset it?” he said, bemused.
“You know, do something generous for the community.”
“I’m very generous. You won’t discover that if you try to google me, which I assume you’ve finally done. I keep my donations anonymous, but you would give me lots of brownie points if you saw the figures.” He picked up the spatula again.
“Are you generous here?” she asked, waving her biscotti toward the window. “Are you acting locally?”
He made an exasperated sound. “Oh, I get it, it’s like an inverse of NIMBY, it counts only if it’s in my backyard.” He put the spatula back down again and faced her across the granite counter. “What would that be, there’s a lot of i words in that—” counting them on his fingers: “if, it’s, in . . . so that would make it . . . oiiimby. On Martha’s Vineyard, philanthropy counts oiiimby! Sounds like a war cry.” He picked up the spatula again, now with resolve, and finally got the gingerbread onto the plate.
“I’m just telling you what would make it easier for you here. You can judge it all you like, it doesn’t change how people are.”
He gave her a conciliatory smile. “What if I opened the property up to the local kids once a year? Let them come in droves to study the flora and fauna, have an all-day field trip with a naturalist, that sort of thing.”
“That’d be good,” she said. “Of course, they’re already doing that right next door at the Beechwood Point preserve, but sure, people would feel more generous toward you in turn. Not that it would impact the decision the Zoning Board made, but you know, it couldn’t hurt. Anything involving kids is good.”
“Okay, and what if I didn’t do that,” he continued in the same friendly tone, moving toward her and settling onto a stool. “But instead opened it up to really needy kids who have no access to nature. Like brought in a bunch of them from Detroit.”
“Easy to do on your helicopter,” she said.
“I know, right?” He laughed. “Actually, the helicopter only holds five and its range isn’t that long—it’s just a little Jet Ranger. Anyhow. Tell me.” He leaned closer to her, and again she smelled a hint of cardamom. Or maybe that was from the gingerbread. “If I made sure everyone here knew that I was doing this wonderful thing, even if it didn’t help the locals . . . how would that fly, so to speak?”
She thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right, we’re hypocrites, we’d like you more if you let the local kids onto your property as part of your generosity.”
He nodded a little, understandingly, as if he knew she’d say this. “And why is that?” he prompted.
“Because we feel the need to take care of our own. Put our oxygen masks on first. ’Course, you probably don’t have oxygen masks in your helicopter.”
“Cute,” he said.
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sp; “But yes,” she went on. “We’re an island. There are finite resources here, you can’t simply go a little further afield to forage, there is an innate awareness of limitation, especially since the poverty rate is over ten percent, and the cost of living here is twice what it is in the rest of Massachusetts while the average year-round income is half. That sense of lack, it percolates down into how we see things unconsciously. Especially when there’s suddenly a gazillion people here in the summer, wanting, wanting, wanting.”
“And giving, giving, giving,” Orion returned. “Maybe your problem is with the whole notion of give-and-take. Everyone’s all about Yankee self-sufficiency here, or kid themselves into believing they are, anyhow. You don’t get to live that way in a resort community. Especially one that, as you just said, has limited resources. You need tourists as badly as Venice does.”
“I’ve been to Venice,” she said. “Venice gets to regulate what outsiders do to Venice. We don’t have that kind of control. Even if you think the ZBA is fascist, we’re libertarians compared to Venice. We feel very vulnerable to the whims of off-Islanders. That’s why new things scare us. We are suspicious of change.”
“So my real crime here isn’t that I’m rich, or that I’m damaging the environment, or that I’m cheating anyone of anything. It’s just that I’m doing things differently.”
“In part, I guess,” she said quietly. “I mean, maybe.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. He took a triumphant bite of gingerbread. “Will you please have a piece of this.”
It smelled better than the best gingerbread of her childhood. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll just dunk my cookie in my coffee, I’m happy as a clam.”
He gave her a penetrating look. After a pause, he asked, rhetorically, “How do we know clams are happy? I get happy as a lark, because they sing, and happy as a pig in shit, because pigs make those contented little snorty sounds. But clams—”
“Happy as a clam at high tide,” she said. “That’s the whole phrase. Clams are safe at high tide. Nobody can get at ’em. They are impervious.” She raised the coffee mug. “Cheers.”
He mirrored her with a gesture, as he’d nothing of his own to toast with. “If you feel better depriving yourself, that’s fine. It’s a great recipe.”
It smelled like it. “Enter it in the Fair,” she suggested. “Once you win a blue ribbon at the Fair, people might respect you more. Plus there’s a five-dollar prize, that could help you with a retainer for your trial lawyer. The Fair’s not until August, though. I’m guessing you want to get all this thrashed out well before then.”
He winked at her. “Not sure if you’re trying to talk me into suing faster, or not suing at all.”
“I’m freelance, I get paid per piece. There will be more to write about if you actually go ahead and sue.”
He laughed. “I like you for thinking that way,” he said in a bright voice. Then, lowering his tone to something more intimate and knowing, he amended, “But what I like even more is, I’m pretty sure you don’t mean that. I think you love this place a lot—all of it, even the hotheads like Henry Holmes—and you want peace to reign supreme. Right?”
She went red when he said Hank’s name, and trying to camouflage the cause of the blush, made sure to look sheepish. “You got my number.”
“Yes I do, which means I can call you for another date. Should we schedule it now, get that out of the way?” He twisted like a cat and leaned in her direction, until his ear was resting on the counter and he was grinning up at her. It was an unselfconscious, goofy thing to do, and she giggled uncontrollably in response. “You have a great laugh,” he said. “Come on, admit it, you like me.”
She recovered from the giggles. “Can I just ask—are you living here now? In March? You’re here a lot for a summer person.”
“I’m here when I can be,” he said, and straightened up. “I’ve gone round-trip to New York since I last saw you, but I’m hoping to roost for a bit here now. Probably be a few weeks before I head off again.”
“Why?” she asked. “What do you do?”
He winked at her and took another bite of gingerbread. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. If you’re a good journalist. Which so far you don’t seem to be. No offense. I mean, they’re giving you diddly-squat to do, I’ve been following your byline in the paper.”
“To be fair to them, there is diddly-squat going on.”
He shook his head. “The Newes has some great feature writing. Do you read it? You should probably read the competition.”
“Of course I read it. It paints a very different picture of the Island.”
“Obviously,” he said. He took a bite of gingerbread. “They’re much nicer to people like me, for starters. It’s as if they have some awareness that we add something of value to the economy. Like, I dunno, money. Also—the writing itself, some of it’s great, like the piece they just did about an outgoing member of my personal nemesis, the ZBA. This person has made my life difficult, and if I’d read about her in the Journal she’d probably just strike me as an irritant, but I read about her in the Newes and suddenly I appreciate her as a human being. I’d enjoy getting to know her. I value a newspaper that allows for that kind of reporting. Plus they have poems sprinkled through the paper, and little artistic images, and aphorisms. They really capture the nuances and ethos of what makes this place so special—no offense, but the Journal presents the Vineyard as if it were just any small town. The Newes really luxuriates in teeny little specific . . . Vineyardishnesses. Is it okay to make up a word when I’m talking to a writer?”
“Eh . . . yes,” she said. A pleasant shiver sped across her shoulder blades. He liked her piece about Helen. He had no idea it was her, and yet he liked her writing and it had, however humbly, done some good. That felt nice. But the brush with her double identity did not. “Made-up words are great as long as they have lots of syllables that don’t really add to the meaning.”
“I see. So short meaningful words are not okay? I can’t use, let’s see, stroot, or chish, or, mm, bleg?”
“Those kind of phrases sound like they belong in the word market in The Phantom Tollbooth,” she said. “Around here we only accept fabricated words if the meaning is self-evident. Vineyardishnesses passes muster. Stroot does not.”
He grimaced. “The meaning of stroot is perfectly obvious to anyone listening to the sound of the word. Stroot.”
“Ummm . . . no.”
“It’s the opposite of a lie,” he protested. “Obviously. You know, as in, I think that’s a lie—no, it’s stroot.”
“That is so dopey,” she said, but she laughed.
“Well, what do you think it means?”
“It’s the texture on your fingertips when they’re red from handling raw beets.”
He snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s right, I got mixed up. See, it is totally obvious what stroot means, it’s a perfect fake word.”
“Unlike bleg.”
“Oh, chish,” he said dismissively, grinning.
* * *
She’d hoped to beat Hank home, get dinner on before he got back so that if he asked where she’d gone out to, she could deflect him by asking how he wanted his potatoes. Come sunset, Hank could be distracted pretty easily by food. Then she would try to dive a little deeper on the internet in search of information about Orion Smith.
But when she got in, Hank was already settled in his reclining chair with his leg propped up, a Sam Adams on the table beside him to the right, a pile of manila folders congested with papers on the table to the left. He had one such folder open on his lap, lounging against his belly. He had loosened the walking boot, and his foot and ankle were swollen. The TV was on, muted. It was showing the last ZBA meeting Joanna had attended, and the back of her and Celia’s heads were clearly visible. She found the remote and clicked off the screen. Hank didn’t notice.
“Hey,” she said, lowering her backpack onto a kitchen chair.
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�Hey,” he said, without looking up from reading.
“Want some dinner?” She pulled off her outer sweater and hung it on a peg by the door.
A pause.
“Sure,” he said, absentmindedly, and kept reading.
A pause.
“What do you feel like?”
“Whatever. What we got?” He did not look up.
“There’s the last of the bay scallops from Joseph and there’s about one meal’s worth of kale still in the freezer downstairs. Marie and Bill brought over a chicken pot pie. Nice that people are still bringing food.”
“After all these weeks? That’s a comment on what they assume about your cooking,” he said dryly, finally glancing up. And he grinned to soften the insult.
“Thanks,” she said. “Anyhow, what’s your preference?”
“I do like Marie’s chicken pie,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll heat it up,” she said, and moved to turn the oven on. “Feel like a game of Scrabble?”
“Maybe later,” he said, rustling the document he was reading. “Busy now.”
“What you reading? Is that something for Jen’s fund-raiser?”
“Oh,” he said, vaguely. “No. Some stuff Helen loaned me. I need stronger reading glasses. Will you check my foot? My ankle is throbbing.”
She went to it. It looked painfully swollen, but there was no discoloration or anything else she’d been told to look for. “It doesn’t look great. Aren’t we due for a follow-up X-ray this week?”
“We are not. I am. Paul can take me. Or Helen.”
“Well, suit yourself, but I’ve got it in my calendar already. So is that pleasure reading?” She went back to the oven, opened the creaky oven door, and slid the chicken pie onto the top rack.
“Of course not pleasure reading,” he said. “Do I look like someone who would read regulatory documents for pleasure? When I am in a state of discomfort?”
“If it was about your hometown? Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he echoed sardonically under his breath. “No, this is ZBA stuff.”
She froze very briefly, before closing the oven and straightening up. “Why are you reading ZBA stuff?” she asked.
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