The Summer We Started Over, page 2
“Let’s sit,” Jeff suggested.
They settled on the sand a few feet from the tide’s reach with their arms wrapped around their knees as they watched the waves.
He studied her face. “Tell me about your family.”
“Well, there’s my sister, Barrett—”
“Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Jeff said.
“Score. You must have majored in English.”
“History, actually. So…Barrett?”
“Barrett is my younger sister. She’s working hard to pile up money so she can have her own business on the island.” Eddie lifted a handful of sand and let the grains trickle through her fingers. How could she talk about her brother to a man whose brother was an Army Ranger? “My younger brother, Stearns—”
“Thomas Stearns Eliot,” Jeff said.
She smiled at him. “Right. Um, Stearns died in a motorcycle accident last year.”
“I’m sorry.” He said nothing else, did not press her for details.
“Thank you.” Eddie cleared her throat. “Anyway, now, it’s just me and Barrett and my father. And a dog, Duke. And Duchess, a horse that came with the farm.”
“You must have bought the MacKensies’ place,” Jeff said. “I remember meeting that horse. Although I suppose ‘meeting’ isn’t the right word. She wasn’t interested in me.”
“She’s not interested in anyone. Honestly, she acts as if she’s too good for the rest of us.”
Jeff leaned back on his elbows. “Why did you all move here?”
Eddie wondered how much she could tell him without frightening him away. But he was easy to be with, and if he felt even a fraction of what she felt, he would be seeing her again.
“My father was an English professor at Williams. My mother left my father. Divorced him. She’d never enjoyed the whole mommy-and-wife business. My sister was taking courses at UMass, and Dad suddenly announced he was selling our house and moving us to Nantucket. I was working in New York, and I quit my job to come home and help.” She shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
Jeff didn’t seem fazed by her eccentric history. “What were you doing in New York?”
“I worked as an assistant to an editor’s assistant. Basically, I was an errand girl. But I’ve always wanted to work in publishing, so I took the job, even if it was on the lowest rung.”
He studied her face. Returning his gaze to the sea, he said, “I never wanted to live here all my life. I thought I’d move off and do something amazing. But I did move off. I lived in Boston for a few years. When I came home to see my parents now and then, I realized I prefer the island life. Now you, Eddie, your family, must have some kind of money, if you could afford to buy a house and a piece of land on Nantucket. I don’t have that kind of money. Most people who grow up here don’t have that kind of money. I live with my parents now, but they were smart. They bought a piece of land for me out at Tom Nevers Head when I was born and I’m building a house there. Working hard. Especially in the summer when I won’t be able to see you as often as I’d like.”
“Oh,” Eddie said lightly, “you want to see me again?”
“Yes, and not only in the bookstore.”
Eddie thought every cell of her body was actually sparkling with pleasure. “We can meet tomorrow evening.”
“I don’t think I can wait that long.” Jeff leaned toward her and softly, lightly, kissed her lips.
Her breath caught in her throat. “Wow. What was that?”
“Basically, just a sign to show you I’m a gentleman. If I acted on my instincts, I’d do a lot more.”
Eddie shivered. “If I acted on my instincts, I’d let you.”
* * *
—
All that summer, and into the fall, Eddie was with Jeff whenever they found time in their busy lives. They sat in the seclusion of the shadowy dunes at Madaket, watching the sun set in a showgirl explosion of color. They kayaked to Coatue to picnic and swim. They held hands while watching movies at the Dreamland. Jeff showed Eddie his apartment over his parents’ house, and they made love, and it was love, sweet, urgent, and undeniable, like sunrise and the surge of the ocean. They talked. They spoke about his parents, his brother, Jeff’s college football team. Eddie told him about Stearns and Dove and her father.
Eddie told Barrett about him.
“I want you to meet him,” Eddie said. The sisters were doing the dishes. “But I also don’t want him to meet you.”
Barrett tied a dish towel over her head, peasant-style, bugged out her eyes, and made her two front teeth protrude like a rabbit’s. “We’re not good enough for him?” She purposefully drooled as she spoke.
Eddie laughed. “No, silly. I just don’t want him to think…that we’re serious about each other.”
“But you are serious, aren’t you?”
Eddie looked away. “It’s puppy love.”
“You are way too old to be a puppy,” Barrett remarked.
“Okay, then, it’s summer love. Island love. It won’t last. Anyway, Barrett, you know I’ll never have children. Jeff’s someone who would be a great father. Just not with me.”
Barrett touched Eddie’s shoulder. “You don’t really mean that, Eddie.”
“I do,” Eddie said. “I absolutely do.”
One night in March, when the clouds made a blueberry sky and the ocean was darker and somehow threatening, its heavy waves rearing up and crashing down, Eddie and Jeff lay on his bed after making love. Eddie was drowsy and dreamy, her body satisfied, her mind blissed out.
Jeff lay next to her, spooning her, his arm over her waist, his warm breath against her neck.
“I love you,” he said.
Eddie whispered, “I love you.”
“I want to marry you,” he said.
Eddie froze. She’d thought this might happen, but she hadn’t thought she would have to give him up so soon.
Now, while he couldn’t see her face, she said, “Jeff, I can’t marry you. And you shouldn’t marry me. I can’t have children.”
“Why not?” Jeff’s voice was calm, reassuring. “Is it…something physical?” Before she could respond, he said, “We can adopt.”
“It’s not physical. It’s…it’s the way I am. I don’t want to be a mother. I would be a terrible mother.” Eddie pulled away from Jeff’s arm. She rose from the bed and hurriedly dressed in the clothes she’d cast off hours before. “I have to go.”
Jeff rose and pulled on his shorts. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry.” Eddie put her hand on the doorknob.
Jeff reached out and clasped her wrist. “Is it the book thing? New York? You don’t want to stay at home with a baby drooling on your shoulder? You want the glitz and speed of the city?”
Eddie hung her head. She closed her eyes. She had told him why she didn’t want to be with him. It was as if he hadn’t heard.
“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s it. That’s the reason. Let me go, Jeff.”
He withdrew his hand. “I’ll drive you back.”
Three days later, a New York contact texted Eddie about a romance writer who needed an assistant. Eddie sent her résumé to Dinah Lavender. She did a long FaceTime interview with the writer. A week later, Eddie left the island and flew to New York and her new life.
* * *
—
Standing in Dinah’s Manhattan apartment, Eddie thought of Jeff. They had fallen in love so fast. They’d spent every day and night together as often as they could. They’d been bonded, joined together so completely, as necessary and essential as the shore and the sea. They had wanted to be with each other forever. But Eddie had left, and Jeff knew why. And they both knew she would leave again.
But, Eddie reminded herself, she wasn’t returning to Nantucket because of Jeff. She was going to the island to help her sister.
She had to talk to Dinah.
* * *
—
Thais had made a large and complicated dish of chicken pad Thai that evening. Eddie set the table in the small morning room, smoothing out a fresh Irish linen tablecloth, and laying out the Spode Buttercup dinnerware, which seemed to be Dinah’s favorite. She poured white wine into the stemless wineglasses, and set a small pot of yellow primroses in the middle of the table. The room was bright with sun in the morning, but by evening, the light was dimmed, and gentle on the complexion.
Eddie walked down the hall and tapped on the door of Dinah’s study.
“Dinner’s ready.”
“Oh, thank God!” Dinah shoved her chair away from her desk so quickly she nearly tipped over. “I’m right where I should be. I know what Ace will be doing tomorrow. Could you research the rarest sports car made in England in the 1960s?”
Eddie walked toward the hall, tapping notes onto her phone as she went.
Dinah wore jeans, sandals, and a Versace shirt with ruffles at the neckline and wrists and gold bangled earrings that swung and shivered with her every move. Her black hair was so thick and heavy that she had to wear three barrettes to hold it up when she wanted it twisted back and out of the way. As she spoke, the ends of the twist waved above her head like black feathers. Sometimes just looking at Dinah could make Eddie motion sick.
Eddie opened the lid on the bowl and ladled the pad Thai onto Dinah’s plate, and then onto hers. As they ate, Eddie asked Dinah about the book she was working on, because Dinah’s mind was always filled with whatever book she was working on. Dinah seemed to believe she was writing a documentary, and she fretted anxiously if a character had to go to jail or give birth to a baby without medical help. Eddie listened, seldom saying a word, but Dinah always thanked her at the end of the meal for helping her sort out some of her characters’ issues.
“Dinah,” Eddie said, after taking her last sip of wine. “I had a call from my sister today. I need to go to Nantucket to help with my father.”
“Is he ill?” Dinah asked, blotting her lips with her linen napkin.
“Not ill, really. He’s depressed. He has been ever since…my mother left.”
“Shame.” Dinah had little interest in the problems of others unless they were compelling and explosive enough to give her ideas for her books. “I suppose you could pop up for the weekend.”
“I need to stay longer than that.” Eddie kept her gaze on her employer, an unspoken message that she wasn’t going to back down.
“Oh, dear. How long?”
“At least a month.”
“A month? I can’t do without you for a month!”
“Sure you can, Dinah. We can talk and text and email and I can do everything virtually, the way most things get done these days.”
Dinah’s hands flew to her mouth as if she’d been given a bad medical diagnosis. “But who will I go out to dinner with?”
“Liz. Sara. Emily.” Eddie named Dinah’s editor, agent, and publicist. “They have all been begging you to go to lunch or dinner with them.”
Dinah shook her head. “No. Not for a month. I’m at a crucial place in my novel.”
“Dinah, you are always in a crucial place of a novel.” Eddie was surprised at the strength of her convictions. “I haven’t had a vacation in two years.”
Dinah argued, “But we’ve been to Paris! To London! To Hawaii!”
“That’s right, Dinah. We have been. I’ve never gone off on my own.”
Dinah sniffed. “I see. I hadn’t realized my presence was so distasteful.”
Eddie took a deep breath. “Dinah, stop. I know that deep down you are a really kind person. You know that right now we are not in one of your books. I’m a real person with a troubled father and a sister who needs me. You will be just fine here. I’ll bet you’ve got a dozen contacts who would wine and dine you.”
Dinah sweetened her voice. “What if I gave you a raise?”
Eddie laughed. “Dinah, I have to go. I’ll call you every day. Now you go choose a movie and I’ll make us hot fudge sundaes.”
Dinah froze for a long, dramatic moment.
Then she asked, “With sprinkles?” Dinah grinned, letting Eddie know she was well aware of her little girl act.
“With sprinkles.”
* * *
—
Eddie wrote in her journal that night. She hadn’t written in it since she moved to be with Dinah. Her time in New York had been so busy, crowded with work and play and fabulous restaurants and theater. She’d shot photos with her iPhone instead. Now she realized that those photos were all about the surface. She hadn’t caught her deepest thoughts, and now she needed to write in her diary to delve into her extremely confused soul.
Barrett is so brave. So certain. My desires, my life plan, my vision of the future wobbles like a tower of Jell-O compared to Barrett’s confident decisions.
I think of my mother now, and it always hurts to think of her—how little pleasure she took from being our mother, how little interest she had in us—and I’m afraid that I’ll be that kind of mother, resentful and erratic.
I don’t want to be a mother. I shouldn’t be a mother.
I won’t be a mother.
My most secret, most haunting dream of my future is, at the best, fantasy. It is completely unachievable. I must harden my heart against sentimental longings. I think of Jeff as the love of my life, but I must be the love of my life, even if it breaks my heart.
two
In the farmhouse on Nantucket, Barrett made a peanut butter, lettuce, and mayonnaise sandwich and put it on a plate, covered by a napkin. She taped a note for her father on the top: Your sandwich is under here. Your favorite kind!
She moved around the kitchen, putting away the clean dishes from the dishwasher, scrubbing the counter and the spacious old porcelain sink. She washed her hands and leaned against the sink, rubbing hand lotion into her skin, exactly the way her mother had done every day and evening before she went away.
Eddie had also gone away, for two whole years. But she’d promised she’d come back in May, to help with Barrett’s shop opening and with their increasingly dotty father. Eddie often sent money, enough to pay for a new water heater or storm windows on the east side of the house. Mostly Eddie had sent wonderful, usually useless, gifts from Paris or Tuscany or wherever Dinah Lavender took her. But Barrett needed her sister here, now.
“Buck up, buttercup!” Barrett said to herself. She tapped her leg. “Come on, Duke. Let’s go feed the horse.”
Duke, their sweet rescue dog, went to the back door, his black and white tail wagging. The odd-looking dog was a happy creature, pleased to go with anyone, or curl up anywhere, preferably next to a person’s warm body, and snooze.
Together Barrett and Duke walked out into the May morning. Spring could be fickle on Nantucket. Today the wind was playful and the sun shone bright, unobscured by clouds. They walked to the small barn, originally built in the 1800s to shelter animals and store bags of grain, and now not used for very much at all. Although it stood strong and steady, it had an air of emptiness. And it was empty, except for the few bales of hay and oats kept over the winter to feed the arrogant horse.
Duchess had come with the farm when William Grant bought it three years ago. Actually, it was in the terms of the sale that the horse remain on the farm, because the relatives of the owners who had died didn’t want to take the time and trouble to find someone to buy her, and they assured the Grant family that the horse was very happy here and would be no trouble. They had been right. The horse was no trouble. But also wrong, because she certainly didn’t seem happy. She was a buckskin bay with chocolate mane and tail, sixteen hands, beautiful and standoffish. The first year Barrett lived here, she’d tried her best to befriend Duchess, and as a new girl in town, she could have used a good friend on the island. But the horse would bolt if Barrett tried to touch her. When Barrett held out a carrot or an apple, the horse would approach warily, extending her head and sniffing, her rubbery nose touching the apple, then snatch the apple with her huge horsey teeth and race off to the opposite end of the field.
Gradually, Barrett made human friends and stopped spending time with the horse. That first year, Barrett and Eddie were frazzled, doing ten things at the same time, unpacking boxes, buying groceries, cooking meals, trying to stir their father into a semblance of life—after all, he was the one who had moved them here! But their father had sequestered himself in his office on the first floor near the kitchen. He was, he said, working on a book. He wandered the house day and night, eating whatever was around, not interacting with his daughters. His only pleasure seemed to be ordering used books from literary internet sites and receiving them in the mail. Eddie stayed for the first year, settling their new, smaller, family into the farmhouse and working at the bookshop. Barrett waitressed at night, worked in retail all day, and babysat when she had time, to save up money for her shop.
“Good morning, Duchess!” Barrett called. “The sun is shining, it’s almost summer, and I’m going to open my shop in one week! I’ve got to stop mooning around. Eddie will come home and deal with Dad, and I’ll get rich for all of us.”
She knew that wasn’t true, that she’d get rich, but she did have high hopes for her shop.
When they moved to Nantucket, Barrett had quickly realized she could make serious money here in the summer. She took as many jobs as she could, worked hard, and made friends. She took business courses virtually for two years, and at the same time she continued working. She had a dream and she made a rational plan.
Barrett had made friends and gradually become comfortable in her life. That, she thought, was saying a lot. For that, she thought, she deserved some kind of medal. Her brother had died, her mother had left them, her father had retreated into his books, and after a year on the island, Eddie had left to work with Dinah Lavender. For Barrett it had been sink or swim. There had been days and weeks when she wanted to stop struggling and collapse in grief. But the horse and dog and her father needed feeding, and friends invited her to beach parties, and really, it just wasn’t in her nature to give up.
