“Oh my God,” she said. “Really? You don’t talk about yourself ever. At all. You talk about what you care about, but—”
“That’s a part of who I am,” he said heartily. He couldn’t see her directly without looking over his shoulder toward the kitchen area, but his neck was too tight to manage this in comfort. So he was speaking heartily, in part to make up for lack of eye contact.
“I know that, Hank. I value that about you immensely. It makes you one of the good guys. But you’d have to be willing to talk about all the underbelly stuff. You’d have to be willing to talk about Jen, and your experiences in Vi—”
“I don’t have to talk about Jen,” he retorted complacently. “I can tell you my opinion about my favorite breakfast cereals. I hear that’s the thing to talk about these days.”
“Sure, if you’re being interviewed for Impeccable magazine. If you’re being interviewed for the Vineyard Newes, not so much, I think.”
He paused for a heartbeat, and relaxed back into his chair. Then: “I can talk about Jen to the Vineyard Newes,” he said.
“You don’t even talk about Jen to me,” she said. “Me as a family member. You’re definitely not going to talk to me as a journalist.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that it would be nice to be asked,” he said.
“I’ll have Lewis ask you,” she offered, setting the soup pot in the sink.
“That elitist asshole,” said Hank. “He’d never ask me.”
“He asked Helen.”
“That’s because Helen was retiring from the ZBA.”
“Retire from the ZBA and I bet he’ll ask me to write about you.”
He laughed. “Nice try.” A pause. Joanna began to press the tops onto the Tupperware containers of stew. There were six. Four to be frozen, one for dinner tonight, and a smaller one for Hank’s lunch tomorrow. She opened the utility drawer to search for a Sharpie.
“So you met this guy, huh?” Hank said into the quiet, possibly just for the sake of saying something.
“Orion Smith? Yes.”
“Tell him you were my niece?”
“I did.”
“That must have gone over well.”
“I didn’t tell him at first,” she said. “So when I did tell him, it pissed him off that I hadn’t told him from the get-go. But he actually had no trouble talking to your niece. In fact . . .” Did she dare go this far? “In fact, I think he’d like to meet you.”
He started laughing, and smiled his diagonal-smirk smile. “Oh, now, that would be a meeting for the ages. I don’t think that would end well.”
“Even now that he’s dropped the lawsuit?”
“Without apologizing.”
“Don’t you think his dropping it is its own kind of apology?”
“No,” said Hank at once.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not,” said Hank. “I’m going to go out and walk around a little.” He sat upright so that the recliner folded into a regular chair. “Hand me my crutches.”
He was back to wearing a boot, and in general his demeanor was much better than it had been. He still drank more than she wished he did, but that predated the accident and was probably never going to change.
She dropped the Sharpie, grabbed his crutches and handed them to him, then helped him up out of the recliner. As she turned back toward the kitchen, her eye caught movement in the driveway: a UPS truck had left something on the threshold and was pulling away. She went through the mudroom to the front door and saw a rectangular package on the porch about the size of a serving tray, addressed to Henry Holmes, ZBA Chair. There was no return address.
She picked it up and brought it into the house. “Package for you.”
He hobbled to the table where she’d set it. “Get me some scissors,” he said. When she did, he snipped the packing tape and tore it open.
Wrapped in plastic, with a card attached to it, was a custom-made Scrabble set. The box was mahogany, and she knew that the board within, which she had played on more than once, was stiffened leather, the tiles hardwood with gold-leaf embossed letters, and the tile racks brass.
The card was linen paper. Hank, staring at the box in wonderment, impressed despite himself, opened the card and read it aloud, at first with a slightly ironic tone that gradually diminished as he realized the writer.
Dear Mr. Holmes, I hear you’re an expert Scrabble player. I am loaning you my board to enjoy as long as it pleases you. I only ask that if, and when, you are ready for me to retrieve it, we can play together once. Or more. As you see fit. Meanwhile, please give my greetings to your niece. I hope she’s not giving you any grief. In case she is, enclosed please find my card. Call or write anytime if you need to grouse about her. Meanwhile, have a lovely spring, I hope your ankle heals soon, and I look forward to that Scrabble game. Most sincerely yours, Orion Smith.
P.S. Thank you for your many years of service to this beautiful town.
Hank looked at Joanna. She was beaming. “Sheesh, you must have charmed the pants off him.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “But . . . you know . . . don’t you think this counts as an apology? Or at least an olive branch?”
He considered the box. “That is one hell of a Scrabble game. Did you tell him what I did to ours?”
“Of course not. Just mentioned you were a good Scrabble player. Believe me, I’m as surprised by this as you are.”
“You’ve got a grin on your face that suggests otherwise.”
She tried to stop grinning. But couldn’t. “I’m obviously happier about it than you are, but I really am just as surprised.”
“Who said I wasn’t happy?” Hank said. “It’s a nice board.” He looked bemused. Trying to make sense of a generous gesture coming from a person he had written off as a selfish ass. “It’s sort of a bribe, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said. “If he’d sent it to you before the ZBA ruled on his helicopter, that’d be different. I think it’s just a nice gesture.”
He was examining the box without actually touching it. “Maybe,” he allowed, a bit grudgingly.
“Want to play?”
He glanced up at her. “You and your word games.”
“You always beat me at Scrabble, Hank.”
He chewed his lower lip a moment. “You’re right,” he said. “I do.” A pause. “Let’s play tonight. You coming by for dinner?”
“Like every night for the past two weeks, yes,” she said. “Here’s the stew ready, and Celia put aside a loaf for us at Hubert’s. I’ll figure out something green for veggies.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Why don’t you come by ’round six.”
THE AFTERNOON FELT brief. She drove to Edgartown, which felt a hundred miles away (it was twelve), to finish setting up her desk at the Newes, with her own dust-gathering manual typewriter. She organized notes for her next “On the Same Page” interview, which would be with the director of one of the Island conservation groups, on the same page with an article from 1934 about the extinction of the heath hen. On her way back up-Island, she stopped at her favorite consignment store in search of a spring wardrobe, although Celia had offered her some colorful hand-me-downs. Then she drove to Helen’s and weeded the young potato plants. She went for a walk on Lambert’s Cove Beach, where the eelgrass was scant along the shore now but the bladderwrack kelp was in abundance. The water was azure blue and incredibly clear but still needed a good six weeks of solar gain to be comfortably swimmable.
She walked a mile to Split Rock and then back again. In all that time, she passed a couple in matching corduroy jackets and baseball caps letting their black Labs tear along the sand; a fellow in his sixties dressed in canvas and rubber waders, bass fishing; and a young mother beach-combing with her twin preschoolers, who were squealing over a dead crab. The beach was sandy again, the rocks covered by the caprice of the wind gods, and all was well with the world. In a month there would be parking lot attendants requesting beach passes of all the cars ent
ering the small dirt parking lot, and the dogs would only be welcome in the early morning (per a recent Annual Town Meeting). The water was a pure deep blue, the sky cloudless, there was the slightest verdant mist across the dunes as the leaf buds of beach plums and roses strained close to bursting. In a week, perhaps ten days, there would be green. In a fortnight, it would be impossible to remember that it had ever been winter. That’s how spring came to the Vineyard—very late, but very fast.
She walked down the long wooded path from the beach back to the parking lot and drove back to Hank’s. He would be able to drive soon, so she’d be yielding up the truck. Hopefully he could manage until she moved back in, come Memorial Day weekend.
As she approached the parking spot beside the house, she saw there was another car there, an old red Jeep that looked vaguely familiar. There was no adornment on it, not even dump or beach stickers, to hint at the owner’s identity. A deep thrumming sensation in her stomach warned her she knew who it was, but she brushed the idea away as impossible. She got out of the truck, leaving the keys on the passenger’s seat. Walked around the red Jeep to the door. In the mudroom she took off her boots, unzipped her spring jacket, and opened the door to the main part of the house.
“Look who’s here!” said Hank, with a jubilance that sounded almost ironic, given his lack of tendency toward jubilation. “It’s Joanna. You know Joanna, don’t you?”
Orion smiled politely with a formality she had never seen before. In his left hand he held a Sam Adams, not yet opened, water droplets dewing on the cold glass. He offered her his right hand to shake. “Yes, of course,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
She took his hand, hoping she was not trembling. “Nice to see you too,” she said, looking at his browline rather than his eyes. “That was a good photo they got of you to go with the article.”
He dipped his head to the side, almost shyly. “A good photographer can work wonders.”
There was a moment of silence. The three of them coexisted in a place of exquisite social awkwardness. What have I done? wondered three unspoken voices. What am I doing here?
“As I was just telling Mr. Smith here—” Hank finally said, gesturing with unnecessary intensity toward the table, where the Scrabble board sat waiting in its box. “Somebody loaned me this really nice Scrabble board. It seemed a shame not to use it.”
“Playing with me wasn’t good enough for you?” she asked archly.
“It’s not that,” said Hank in a mollifying tone as Orion pursed his lips in amusement. “It’s just, you know, when two people are always playing the same game together, they kind of fall into patterns, and if you shake it up by bringing in another person, then it’s a whole different game, and, you know, anything can happen.”
Her eyes darted back and forth between the two of them—two nervous men, each wanting to hold their own space without puffing out their display feathers and riling the other one. “Are you just talking Scrabble, or did the demigod of metaphors spike your beer?”
Hank blinked in confusion. “What?”
“Both, I think,” said Orion comfortably. “And if that is an invitation to play, then I accept.”
“Okay then,” said Hank, and began to hobble toward the table. As he sat, he pushed the crutches in Joanna’s direction without looking at her, knowing she would be there to catch them. She leaned them against the back of the couch where he could reach them.
Then she looked at Orion, who was now behind Hank and out of his line of sight. He let his guard down enough for her to see that he was both amused and amazed that this was happening.
“Um. Take a seat,” she said, since Hank had forgotten to invite him. Mechanically, she held out her arm, gesturing to the free chair closest to him.
“Thank you,” said Orion. He nodded his head, but it looked almost like a stilted bow. She could see his eyes taking in the chaos of the house around him. It made her feel embarrassed for Hank. But there was no malice or mockery on Orion’s face. He reached for the chair. “This one?” he asked Hank almost obsequiously, even though it was clearly the one she’d been referring to.
“Yeah, sure,” her uncle replied. “Make yourself at home.”
Without intending to, she took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, because she had not been breathing for nearly a minute. Hank didn’t notice, but Orion looked at her, concern mixing into all the other emotions he was juggling. “You okay?” he said quietly.
She nodded. Orion sat. Again there was an awkward pause between the three of them. There was a purity to their discomfort, because none of them could pretend that it was anything else.
“I notice you’ve got some Jeeps out there,” said Orion. “I’m guessing you have some mechanical abilities.”
“I dabble,” said Hank with a shrug.
“I putter about with engines myself,” said Orion. “Not as much as I used to. But always nice to meet a fellow gearhead.” He smiled.
Hank looked thrown at Orion’s placing them in a shared category. “Well, sit down, Anna,” he said gruffly. “Let’s set up the board.”
“I can do that, if you like, Mr. Holmes,” said Orion, reaching for the board.
“Don’t call me Mr. Holmes,” said Hank, as if this should have been obvious. “The name is Hank.”
Acknowledgments
It takes an island. And perhaps due to the insularity, several folks I want to heartily acknowledge have asked to remain anonymous. In addition to these Anonymoi, I am grateful to the following Vineyarders and journalists for their wisdom and suggestions: Jamie Kageleiry, Louisa Williams, Bob Drogin, Michael Colaneri, Doug Cabral, Nelson Siegelman, Peter Oberfest, the Gorgeous Group, Janice Haynes, Beckie Scotten Finn, Doug Finn, Geoff Currier, Kate Feiffer, Becky Cournoyer, Caroline Drogin, Dr. David Halsey, Dan Waters, Betty Burton, Geoff Parkhurst, Billy Meleady, and Lauren Martin and Mike Seccombe.
Much gratitude as ever to my early readers: Eowyn Mader, Brian Caspe, Amy Utstein, Marc H. Glick Esq., Kate Feiffer, Jamie Kageleiry, Michele Mortimer, and Lauren Martin.
And how fortunate I am to have Jennifer Brehl, Liz Darhansoff, and Marc H. Glick, Esq., on my team. Not to mention all the other good folk at HarperCollins and in bookstores across the land, who between them transform my manuscript into an attractively published novel that ends up on your nightstand.
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About the Author
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Meet N. D. Galland
About the Book
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When Life Imitates Art: Writing On the Same Page
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Have You Read? More by N. D. Galland (Writing as Nicole Galland)
About the Author
Meet N. D. Galland
N. D. GALLAND is the author of the historical novels Godiva; I, Iago; Crossed; Revenge of the Rose; and The Fool’s Tale, as well as the contemporary romantic comedy Stepdog and the near-future thriller The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Neal Stephenson). She lives on Martha’s Vineyard.
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About the Book
When Life Imitates Art: Writing On the Same Page
It’s remarkable, and true, that the small community of Martha’s Vineyard (winter population about 17,000) can sustain two independently owned newspapers. For at least a decade, I imagined writing about the quirky relationship between the two papers (both of which I, and several of my friends, have freelanced for—but never at the same time, since one of the papers really does have a proscription against it).
As a Shakespeare geek, I had the initial impulse to create a romance between writers of rival papers, à la Romeo and Juliet. But before I could write that story, I got scooped by reality: a journalist from each paper took a liking to each other and got married. Can’t beat that.
So I turned to my favorite Shakespearean comedies, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. These both feature a woman who must pass as
a young man to get by in difficult circumstances. My own novels also feature characters with false faces (most notably Revenge of the Rose), so apparently my subconscious finds that theme delicious. I developed the plot of this story accordingly. Because it was about a female writer who grew up on the Vineyard, left, and returned, it was inevitable that art imitated life; I confess to certain autobiographical elements.
Then I reached out to associate publisher Jamie Kageleiry at Martha’s Vineyard Times. Over the years, I’ve written some features for Jamie (who used to work at the Vineyard Gazette), and I currently write a tongue-in-cheek advice column, “MV Ps and Qs,” for the Vineyard Times. I was spending my winter in Boston, but I asked her—since I was coming home for the month of March—if I could shadow a “real” journalist at work, or at least hang out around the office, for research.
“Actually, if you have the time,” she’d said, “I’d love to hire you to do some reporting for us.”
I cautiously said yes, adding, “Kind of funny, this is what happens to my lead character—the editor of the Times-like paper sends her to cover West Tisbury.”
“Oh, good,” said Jamie, “because I’d like you to cover West Tisbury.”
So I did. Or tried to, anyhow.
Jamie and others high up on the masthead were patient and generous with me, but I was not a natural. Still, this happy coincidence gave me a great opportunity to research what it felt like to be inept at local political reporting. Thus giving the story an additional soupçon of autobiography.
Read On
Have You Read? More by N. D. Galland (Writing as Nicole Galland)
THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. (COWRITTEN WITH NEAL STEPHENSON)
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When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidentally meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must swear herself to secrecy in return for the rather large sum of money.
On the Same Page Page 25