Nantucket Blue

Twenty-two





ZACK HELD THE LITTLE ROWBOAT close to the dock, and I stepped in. He handed me the canvas bag with the champagne and plastic cups he’d taken from 4 Darling Street. “Dad hates champagne, and Jules forgot all about it. So that whole case of Dom Perignon in the pantry is for me.”

“What’s Dom Perignon?” I asked, lowering the bag into the stern.

“The good stuff,” he said, untying the line.

“Won’t your dad notice it’s gone?”

“I don’t think he’d notice if the fridge was gone and a white tiger sat in its place,” he said, and stepped in. I couldn’t help but picture the bizarre image. He slipped the oarlocks into place, slid in the oars, and rowed us into the harbor with long, even strokes.

“Hey, you said champagne. Does this mean you’ve gotten over the French girl?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling. I leaned back, elbows on the edge, and looked up. The sun had set, but it wasn’t dark yet. The sky was purple. Above us, a half-moon tipped. We rowed past the homes that lined the harbor; past the squares of lighted interiors; past people sitting on verandas, drinking and laughing. Voices floated out to us on waves, turned to wisps, drifted away. The oars slapped the dark water, slid under and emerged, tilted and weeping as they skimmed the surface. I dropped an arm, let my fingers trace the water. I felt like I could’ve stayed in the back of that boat all summer and been happy.

“So, you see that McMansion with all the lights on?” Zack asked, taking both oars in one hand as he turned and pointed to a house on a distant cliff.

“Yeah.” It was a huge place with a hundred windows.

“Okay, now, you see the one next to it, with only one light on? That’s where we’re headed. It’s the best spot to see the fireworks.” He turned to face me again, rowing with effortless strength and confidence. Maybe this was where he got his soccer-player body. The thought made me shiver.

“Here,” he said, taking off his sweatshirt and tossing it to me.

“I thought you had a fungus,” I teased.

“I told you, it cleared up,” he said, splashing me a little with the oar. I wiped up the drops on my leg with the sweatshirt and put it on. It smelled like the beach.

Farther out were some yachts. On one of them, there were at least thirty people, all dressed up like they were set to sail to the Academy Awards. A tall, thin woman with long red hair in a short, sparkling gold dress talked to two men in tuxedos. I wondered if that was Jay’s mom. It was hard to tell, but she had the same model-like silhouette. Zack waved. One of the tuxedoed men waved back.

“Looking for Bella Figura?” the man asked.

“Excuse me?” asked Zack.

“Bella Figura!” the man said.

“Bella what?” Zack asked, rowing us closer to the yacht. Now the woman in gold was looking at us. I felt certain she was Jay’s mother. Oh god. Had Jay told her what I’d said about his brother?

“Aren’t you the one we sent to bring us more wine?”

“No,” Zack said. He handed me the oars and stood up, hands on his hips.

“Oh my god,” I said under my breath. I hid my face in his sweatshirt.

“On my yacht”—he unfurled his arm, his forehead crinkling as he named the little boat—“La Principessa, we only drink Dom Perignon!” Zack said. “Isn’t that right, Principessa?”

“Uh…yes?” I said quietly. I was afraid to look at the reactions of the fancy party people. Especially Mrs. Logan.

Zack sat down, took the oars, and rowed on. “Hey, why were you hiding?”

“Wasn’t that Mrs. Logan?”

“Was it?” He shrugged. “So?”

“So? We know her. And who knows who those people are. Maybe they’re important.”

“You care too much what other people think.”

“Well, it matters.”

“No it doesn’t,” he said, maintaining eye contact. “Anyway, she was laughing.”

“Hey, can I row?” I asked, anxious to change the subject and get back the mood of five minutes ago.

“Sure.” The boat rocked as we switched spots. “Keep your eye on that buoy.” My strokes were choppy and uneven. “So, you don’t need to go so deep in the water. Just go right beneath the surface. And you want to keep the oar pretty flat.” I did what he said. “Okay, that’s better. The tide’s coming in. It will be easier on the way back.” He lay back, put his feet up. “I kind of like this whole girl-in-charge thing.”

“We’re not going to get lost at sea, are we?” I asked.

“Not unless you want to.” Zack smiled. There was the feeling again. The warmth. The fluttering. The heart buzz. I focused on rowing. A few fireworks shot off from a distant beach. Little gold ones.

“So, where’s your family?” he asked.

“Providence. What do you mean?”

“Most people spend holidays with their family.”

“Fourth of July isn’t exactly Christmas.”

“You’re a little heavy on that left oar; we’re veering.” I looked over my shoulder and then used the right oar to get us back on track. “You were at our house on Christmas, too.”

“Christmas night, not Christmas morning.”

“You were there by two o’clock.”

“Whatever.” Neither of us spoke for a minute. I was doing the choppy thing with the oars again. I took a deep breath, tried to get them at that perfect angle. “Well, your family is so fun. And my mom, it’s like she wants to be sad all the time. I’m like, ‘Go out, Mom. Please, make some friends. You’re not eighty years old,’ you know? It’s like she’s forgotten how to be happy.”

“Did she ever know how?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, thinking about when we used to go to Newport together, about sitting on her bed when I was little and watching her put on her makeup. I paused. My hands were starting to hurt. And where had these words come from? I’d never said them aloud before. It was like I was stirring them up from the ocean.

“Want to switch?” Zack asked.

“Not yet.”

“Where’s your dad? Did he move?”

“He’s still in Providence,” I said. “He’s just really busy. With his new family.” Zack raised an eyebrow. There was a weird lump in my throat. I pushed it down, rowed on, my eyes fixed on the buoy. “Well, his wife has this son. She adopted him from an orphanage in the Ukraine when he was three years old. She basically rescued him, which was a pretty incredible thing. She didn’t have a husband or anything when she went over there and got him. And he’s actually a really cute little boy.

“But I guess he wasn’t held as a baby, and he didn’t get the proper nutrition, so he has all these problems. Like, every night, he wakes up screaming. He has these nightmares and wets the bed and stays up all night just rocking, and Dad and Polly stay up with him, and then everyone’s exhausted the next day. I know he can’t help it, and I know Polly and my dad are basically heroes, but sometimes I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Never mind. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’m almost eighteen.”

“So?” Zack asked. The lump rose. I swallowed, sending it back to my gut.

“So, I’ll be in college soon. Gone.” The sky was blacker now, the moon whiter. Silver fireworks shot into the sky. “Look, they’re starting,” I said.

“Nice,” Zack said, looking up for a second before turning his attention back to me. “But he’s still your dad, and it sounds like these people make it impossible for you to spend time with him. That must be hard.”

“No, I’m glad he has a life. I wish my mom would get one. Once, like, three years ago, when I started to realize that she wasn’t getting out at all, I actually signed her up for an online dating site for divorced people. It was called Second Glances.” I hadn’t told anyone about this, not even Jules.

Zack laughed. “How’d that turn out?”

“It started out good,” I said. “I made her a great profile, and I put up this old video I had of her singing ‘My Girl’ to me on my birthday. You know that song by the Temptations? She looked so pretty in that video, and she has such a good voice. I knew if guys saw it they’d want to meet her.”

“Did it work?”

“Oh my god, yes. So many guys were ‘glancing’ at her—that’s what they call it on the site when someone checks out your profile. And I was ‘glancing’ back as her, just to keep them interested until I could get her into it. But every time I brought up online dating she was like, ‘No way.’ And then we were at Whole Foods and we ran into one of the guys. And he started to talk to her and she was like, ‘I don’t know you.’ And he was like, ‘Yes, you do. We’ve been glancing for two weeks now.’ He pulled up her profile and played the video right there by the bananas.”

“Oh shit,” Zack said, laughing. “She must’ve been so pissed.”

“She was. I got in so much trouble. And it was really expensive. It turned out I’d signed her up for a two-year nonrefundable membership. She made me pay for it with my babysitting money.” Zack laughed harder. So did I. “Twenty bucks a month.”

“When did you finally stop paying for it?” he asked.

“Actually, I renewed the membership last year,” I said. “But I didn’t tell her.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, there’s this one music teacher in Newton. He’s not the best-looking guy in the world—he’s kinda bald and he has a big nose—but he plays the guitar and the piano, and he just seems nice. I keep thinking that if she’d just give him a chance…”

“Or a glance,” Zack said.

“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “Exactly. If she just gave him a glance, she might actually be happy.” But when I thought of her telling me over and over again that she wasn’t interested in dating, my smile got swallowed up by the sea.

“Let’s switch places,” Zack said. “You’ve been rowing a while.” The boat rocked again as we switched places. The fireworks were picking up. An umbrella of red light opened above us. There was the faint smell of something burning. A blue umbrella followed with a boom, turning to silver rain. “Oh my god, it’s so beautiful.”

“And we’re almost there,” Zack said.

I looked at the house. It was so close now. I hadn’t realized how far I’d rowed. It looked spooky, leaning to the left, like one strong wind would blow it over. There was a steep hill that went from the back door to a perfect little horseshoe-shaped beach, a rickety staircase between them. I felt the boat scratch against the pebbly bottom.

“Come on.” Zack took the bag with the champagne and jumped out of the boat and pulled it almost all the way to shore.

“Is this public?” I asked as I took off my flats and hopped out. The water was ankle-deep and surprisingly warm.

“No,” he said, dragging the boat up onto the beach. “But I’ve always thought this little beach would be the best spot to see the fireworks.”

“So, this is someone’s private land?”

“Yeah, but she won’t bother us. She’s just some super old lady who barely comes out of her house. She’s a famous miser and she has the best view on the island. She should want to share it.”

“So, are we like, trespassing?”

“Yes, but whose land really is it?”

“Ah, hers?”

Zack spread out a blanket, secured it with four rocks. “Wrong. It belongs to the children of tomorrow. And they don’t mind that we’re here. Now, let’s open that bub!”

“Who’s down there?” said an old voice.

“Oh shit,” Zack said, our eyes locking.

“Who’s on my property?” said the voice.

“Uh, just a couple of friendly youths,” Zack said, shoving the blanket into the bag. I took off my shoes again and stuck them in as well.

“We’re really sorry,” I said. We ran to the shore and pushed the boat into the water. Above us the sky was in gold and silver hysterics. The old lady searched for us with a high-powered flashlight.

“You’re trespassing and it’s against the law!” She made it halfway down the stairs, shining the light right on us. For a super old lady, she sure was quick. The boat scraped the sand until it was deep enough to float. The bottom of my shorts were now soaked. Zack hoisted me by the waist and I hopped in. He followed, the boat wobbling. I scrambled to the seat in the stern, pulling my wet shorts away from my body. Zack bit his lip as he fumbled with the oarlocks. He lifted an oar while I guided it into place. Zack rowed us quickly away, out to sea, both of us cracking up.

“Youths?” I asked.

“It’s what we are,” he said, and then shouted, “Happy Fourth of July!” The old lady said something in response, but we couldn’t understand. Above us the fireworks were in a riot. Little rockets of light shot upward and popped open, full of sequins.

“Look,” I said as the explosions quick-fired, getting bigger and more dramatic. “The grand finale.”

“The Fourth of July, aboard La Principessa!” Zack added in an Italian accent.

“Oh! Champagne!” I said, and clapped my hands.

“Yeah, get it.”

I unwrapped the gold paper and tried to pull off the wire cage over the top of the bottle, but couldn’t figure it out.

“Here,” Zack handed me the oars. His knees were outside mine. Our legs touched, his knees squeezing mine. He untwisted the wire and popped the bottle. The cork flew into the water, and champagne spilled over the top of his fingers and all over my lap.

“Sorry,” he said, and tried to wipe it off with the bottom of his T-shirt. We were both laughing. The bubbles were cool and tingly on my thighs.

“I’m totally soaked!” I looked up; he was so close. Our cheeks touched.

“You are just…” he said into my ear. My eyes closed, eyelashes like matches striking my cheeks, setting them on fire. He kissed me, long and sweet, on the mouth.

“Just what?” I asked when I came up for air, stunned, heart stomping like a parade, wrists aching from holding the oars.

He seemed unable to finish his sentence with words. He pulled the wet oars inside the boat, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me again. He gripped my waist. His fingers slipped down the back of my shorts.

“She’ll kill me,” I said, pulling away. “Literally.”

“She’ll kill me twice,” he said, and pulled me closer.

“That’s impossible,” I said.

“Not if I turned into a zombie.”

“Zack.” I removed his hands and placed them on his own knees. I put my hands behind my back and took three deep breaths. “It can’t happen again.”

“Okay,” he said. A warm wind twisted my hair. The boat drifted, and his hands did too, back to my legs, up my arms and neck. We kissed. We drifted and kissed and drifted and kissed as the sky flashed and clapped and bloomed and broke.