Her hygienist and dentist are going to know that Jimmy is cheating on her.
Beth tries to forget about Jimmy and her dentist and what she and Petra talked about earlier and focus on Jill. She’s telling them a story about Mickey’s latest transplant project. Jill’s husband, Mickey, runs his own construction company. The most incredible jobs he contracts aren’t new construction or elaborate additions, but the moving of existing homes a few critical feet. The historic cottages and mansions positioned on the cliffs in ’Sconset are all in imminent danger of tumbling over with the eroding edge, as if each home were sitting on a piece of pie, and every year Mother Nature carves out another bite with her fork. Mickey’s crew can miraculously move an entire house back, one hundred feet, four hundred feet, but eventually the owner will run out of frontage. The front door will be at the road. There’ll be nothing left but crust, and Mother Nature will still be hungry.
Mickey’s now transplanting a seven-bedroom monstrosity on Baxter Road, but this one’s different. The owners recently bought the house directly across the street. Mickey’s crew razed it, and now they’re moving the cliff house to the other side of Baxter, to an entirely new piece of pie. Only on Nantucket.
“Crazy, huh? Mickey says if he lives long enough, he’ll move that house again,” says Jill.
“This is why I live mid-island,” says Petra, who lives mid-island because that’s where she grew up and because she can’t afford to live closer to the ocean.
It’s a good story, but Beth is now busy testing out the believability of different exit strategies in her head and can barely keep her butt on the couch. I forgot my book. Gracie’s not feeling well. I’m not feeling well.
Petra, who is sitting next to Beth and somehow senses her approaching flight, reaches over and discreetly slides Beth’s hand between their laps. She squeezes it, firmly but not too hard, offering both comfort and an anchor. I love you, and you’re not going anywhere.
They hear a perfunctory knock at the door, and then Courtney and Georgia enter at the same time, a study in contrasts. Courtney’s round, makeup-less face is flushed pink, her hair is loosely gathered into a ponytail high on her head, her hairline is wet with sweat. She’s wearing a lavender tank top under an unzipped thrift-shop winter coat, black cotton yoga pants, and flip-flops. She has her book in hand. Bright and smiling, she takes a seat on the couch on the other side of Beth, her energy floating into the room along with her, landing softly, like an airy, white dandelion puff blown in on a gentle breeze. She smells of patchouli.
Georgia, on the other hand, is hurried and harried, wearing smoky evening eye shadow, lipstick, and bold, dangling gold earrings, clomping in on her black business heels, struggling against the weight of the stuffed leather laptop bag on her shoulder, cursing the latest bridezilla who kept her on the phone for forty-five minutes agonizing over aisle runner choices, peeling off hat and gloves and scarf and coat as she apologizes for being late. If Courtney is a wispy seed sailing in on a warm breeze, Georgia is a tree limb snapped by a hurricane wind, crashing to the earth. It’s hard to imagine from the sight of them that Courtney and Georgia are best friends, but they are.
Relieved and now called to action, Jill excuses herself and runs into her kitchen. Before Georgia can sit down, Jill returns, claps her hands twice like a schoolteacher demanding her class’s attention, and ushers the group into her dining room. Georgia is the first to gasp, then they all do. Jill beams, delighting in all the oohs and aahs, gratified to have elicited the exact reaction she’d imagined.
The book this month takes place in post–World War II Japan, and clearly Jill was inspired by this setting. An origami animal sits on the center of each plate—a purple crane, a white swan, an orange tiger, a green turtle, a gray elephant. A gob of green wasabi and a neat pile of fleshy, pink ginger are placed to the right of each paper animal, and each plate is flanked by a pair of chopsticks and a tiny bowl filled with soy sauce. White tea lights are scattered around the room, and two bottles of sake are on the table. California, salmon, and tuna rolls are displayed on an oval platter at the center of it all.
“Wow, Jill. Tell me you didn’t roll these yourself,” says Courtney.
“Of course she did,” says Georgia.
“I did,” admits Jill.
“And did you make these, too?” asks Courtney, holding up a purple paper crane.
“It wasn’t hard. They have simple directions on the Internet,” says Jill.
“It wasn’t hard for you. You’re amazing,” says Courtney. “You must’ve been preparing all day.”
“It didn’t take that long,” says Jill, taking great pleasure in all the fuss.
“You could do this for a living,” says Beth.
Jill’s been a stay-at-home mom for sixteen years, and she certainly doesn’t need to work as long as Mickey keeps moving houses, but it’s not a bad idea. She could hire herself out to the wealthy summer residents, hosting lavish book club parties. They’d love her.
“Okay, now everyone choose a seat. Each place card has the name of one of the characters, so you’ll—”
“We’re not talking about the book tonight,” says Petra.
Beth’s stomach tightens. She wishes she could at least down a glass of sake before they dive into this.
“What?” Jill smiles nervously. “Of course we are.”
“No, we’re not,” says Petra.
Petra is five years younger than the youngest of them, but she’s without question the alpha male of the group. The oldest of seven children, daughter of Polish immigrants, and owner of Dish, one of Nantucket’s most beloved restaurants, Petra is tough and bossy and will say with a shameless, crooked smile that she comes by it naturally. But she’s also fair-minded, and there’s not a nasty bone in her tall body. If anyone can derail Jill’s book club extravaganza without tears or a friendship-ending argument, it’s Petra.
“And we need something stronger than sake. You have any vodka?” asks Petra.
“But that’s not Japanese,” says Jill, still trying to resist the suggestion of deviating in any way from the book’s theme.
“Jimmy’s cheating on Beth with the hostess at Salt, and he moved out,” says Petra.
Again, Georgia is the first to gasp. Jill turns to Beth and absorbs the fear and apology in Beth’s eyes. Without another word about Japan, she walks into her kitchen and returns to the table with a bottle of Triple Eight vodka in one hand and a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice in the other.
“Will this do?” she asks as she sits down.
“Perfect,” says Petra, and she begins pouring vodka into wineglasses, leaving little room for juice. “Show them the card.”
Beth pulls the card and envelope out from her book and obediently passes them to Georgia.
“Oh, Beth,” says Georgia after reading the card and passing it along to Courtney. “This is from the hostess at Salt? Who is she?”
“Angela Melo,” says Beth.
“I don’t know her,” says Jill, skeptical of there being anyone on Nantucket whom she doesn’t know.
“She’s only been here a couple of years. She’s from Brazil. Came over with her sister as summer help,” says Petra. “They applied for jobs at Dish, but I couldn’t use them.”
“I don’t know her either,” says Courtney. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since July,” says Beth.
“Oh my God, Beth,” says Jill.
“I know,” says Beth.
She takes a big gulp of vodka from her wineglass. It’s warm, it doesn’t have enough cranberry juice, and it scorches the back of her throat. The sake would’ve been better. Talking about the book would’ve been better. She tips down another big gulp.
“I told you not to let him work at Salt,” says Georgia. “That place is too sexy. The music, those martinis. Even I want to have sex with someone after I’ve spent an hour in that place.”
Jimmy used to scallop from October to March and bartend a few shifts
here and there over the summers when scalloping is prohibited. But he never actually needed to bartend. Nantucket scallopers used to make great money. He bartended mostly to stay busy, not because he had to. Jimmy made a proud and reliable living over the years, and Beth enjoyed having him around for summer vacations with the kids.
But the scallops started disappearing from the harbor a few years ago. Then, in a frighteningly short amount of time, they were essentially gone, and Jimmy was essentially out of a job. He blames the McMansion owners with their lush, green carpet lawns laced with fertilizers that leach into the harbor, poisoning the aquatic infrastructure, killing the scallops and God knows what else.
He continued to bartend part-time in the summer, but he had no work in the winter, and for a while they had a hard time paying their bills. Jimmy moped around the house, frustrated and in denial, still hoping for the scallops to make an unlikely comeback. Then, a little over two years ago, Salt asked him to work there full-time, year-round. Year-round work of any kind is a rare and precious gem on Nantucket, and they desperately needed the money, so Jimmy the scalloper became a bartender at Salt.
“How long have you known?” asks Georgia.
“About a month,” says Beth.
The longest month of her life. She’s seen Jimmy three times since he’d moved out, all unannounced visits. He came by once in the morning, after the girls were already in school but before she’d had a chance to shower, to retrieve a pair of work shoes. The other two times, he came over in the evening. He milled around in the kitchen, talked to the girls, never sat down, asked if he had any phone messages. He never has any phone messages.
Each time he showed up, her heart lifted, hoping, almost assuming that he was there to tell her that he was sorry, that he’d been crazy, that he didn’t want to live without her and the girls, that he wanted to come home. But he never said any of this, so her heart felt stupid and betrayed all over again. She faked indifference toward him, acting nonchalant as she peeled potatoes at the sink while he chatted with Jessica, pretending to be absorbed in a book while he bumped around the house searching for his shoes (not a chance in hell that she was going to fetch them for him, and she knew exactly where they were).
Whenever she’s home now, she finds herself glancing out the windows, listening for noise in the driveway, straining her vision and her hearing, holding her breath, even checking herself out in the mirrors, making sure she looks okay, just in case. She hates not knowing when he’s going to show up next. Even more, she hates that he assumes he can simply walk through the front door whenever he wants, day or night. What if she’s busy? What if it’s not a good time? What if she starts having an affair, too? He can’t just waltz in anymore. He moved out. She hates him for moving out. But what undoes her the most, when she allows an unguarded and honest moment to settle over her while she’s peeling potatoes or looking out the window, is the thought that at some point he might never walk through the front door again.
“Do you know her?” asks Jill.
“No,” says Beth.
“You haven’t been to Salt yet to check her out?” asks Georgia.
“God no!” says Beth.
“I’d be dying to know who she is. You don’t want to be in line with her at the bank and not know it. We should all go together and give her the evil eye. Petra, you and your witch doctor should put some kind of curse on her,” says Georgia.
They all laugh, including Beth, despite her self-conscious misery. She imagines a cloth voodoo doll dressed in a miniature, black Salt T-shirt with sewing pins stuck in its eyes. She can feel the vodka now, warm in her stomach, buzzing in her head. Normally, she’d say she’d had enough. She doesn’t want to feel wrecked in the morning. But she hasn’t been sleeping well, and she feels wrecked most mornings anyway, so what the hell. And Petra’s driving her home. She refills her wineglass with vodka.
“I don’t know if I could. Maybe.”
“Have you guys gone to counseling?” asks Courtney.
“No.”
“Maybe you should go,” says Georgia. “Phil and I used Dr. Campbell. He was good. Well, not that good, I guess, he didn’t fix us. But we were beyond fixing.”
Phil was Georgia’s second husband, the one she loved the most. She’s been married four times. Her friends will say that she’s “in between husbands” now, but Georgia insists she’s “divorced.” End of story. She keeps a Post-it note under a refrigerator magnet at eye level: DO NOT GET MARRIED EVER AGAIN. But they all know that she will. She can’t help it. She’s a hopeless romantic.
As the wedding coordinator for the Blue Oyster, twice a week for at least twelve weeks a year she’s surrounded by brides looking like Disney princesses in Vera Wang, grooms looking like James Bond in Armani, “Ave Maria” playing on the harp (sung or played at all four of her own ceremonies), weddings that are stunningly perfect down to the most microscopic detail. Every week each summer, she gushes about the most beautiful wedding cake she’s ever seen, the most elegant bridal bouquet ever carried down the aisle, the most moving toast she’s ever heard, as sincere, wide-eyed, and excited as she was for her very first bride and groom. Those weddings never get old hat to her. For Georgia, each wedding has its own real magic, a belief in true love and destiny and God that permeates her soul. Then she transfers all of that over-the-top fairy-tale romance onto whatever unsuspecting guy she’s dating. Next thing they know, the Post-it note is gone from her fridge, and she’s got another new last name.
“I don’t know if he’d even want to,” says Beth.
“Do you want to go to counseling?” asks Petra.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want a divorce?” asks Courtney.
“I don’t know.”
Beth doesn’t know what she wants. She wants this to be a regular book club night. She wants to drink sake and talk about Japan. She doesn’t want it to be the Thursday night that everything officially and publicly changed. Her marriage, her picture-perfect life as wife and mother of three on Nantucket, is gone now. Her marriage is broken.
I’m broken, she thinks.
Tears spring from her eyes and roll down her face. Georgia scooches her chair over toward Beth and puts her arm around her.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” says Beth, embarrassed to be crying in front of everyone, to have a cheating husband in front of everyone.
“You’re going to be okay,” says Georgia, rubbing circles with her hand on Beth’s back.
“I’d divorce the bastard,” says Jill.
“Jill!” scolds Petra.
“Well, he is, and I would,” says Jill, looking to Georgia for support.
“You know I’d get rid of him. Already been there and done that. But I was probably too quick to end things, especially with Phil. It’s something I should work on, if I were getting married ever again, which I’m not.” Georgia lifts her wineglass in a gesture of cheers and drinks the rest of her vodka in a toast to her own proclamation.
“You have to figure out what you want,” says Petra. “You and Jimmy can recover from this if you both want to. Or this is the way out. But you should decide what you want. Don’t let him or anyone else decide for you.”
Petra’s right. She’s always right. But Beth’s head is swimming in vodka, and the only thing she can think of that she wants right now is for Georgia to keep rubbing her back.
“And we love you, no matter what you decide,” says Petra.
Georgia squeezes Beth’s shoulders, and everyone nods, everyone except for Courtney, who looks lost in thought, her eyebrows knotted. Beth feels drunk and embarrassed, broken and uncertain, but suddenly, surprisingly grateful.
“I love you, too,” says Beth, smiling through tears, because even if Jimmy doesn’t love her anymore, she feels lucky to have a handful of girlfriends who will love her no matter what.
CHAPTER 6
Mourning doves whistle back and forth in plaintive conversation while sunlight eases its way into Olivia’s
bedroom through the unshaded windows, bathing her in a soft and gentle glow. This is generally how she begins each day now, in synchrony with the birds and the sun. And if it’s a cloudy or stormy morning and the doves aren’t feeling chatty, she sleeps and sleeps, probably until at least noon. Maybe much later. She doesn’t know. She’s lost all track of real time. The power went out for a day last month, the first of too many times to count now, and she never bothered to reset any of the clocks. She also stopped wearing a watch. This hasn’t been a problem as she has nowhere that she needs to be. She’s existing outside of time.
She looks over at the other side of the bed, the comforter and the pillow unbothered, and remembers all over again that David isn’t here. He’s in Hingham. She’s on Nantucket. Separated. She still sleeps curled on her side with one arm hugging the edge of the mattress, leaving room for him. She shimmies over to the middle of the bed and lies flat on her back, arms and legs spread wide, taking up as much space as possible. It feels strange.
She stretches and yawns, in no hurry to leave her bed, enjoying the extravagance of emerging slowly from a full night’s sleep. It seems like only yesterday that she woke too early every morning to David’s alarm clock or to Anthony’s eeya-eeya-eeya, shocked into consciousness, still exhausted. More than exhausted. Eroded. A little more of her missing each day. Those mornings were just yesterday, and yet they were a million years ago. Time’s a funny thing, bending, warping, stretching, and compressing, all depending on perspective.