Nantucket Blue

Thirty-one





“HONEY, I DON’T SEE THE NEED for me to come to Nantucket. You’re doing just fine, and it’s only a few more weeks until the summer’s over.” Even through the phone, I could tell Mom was distracted. She was probably playing computer hearts. I sat on the back steps of the porch, sipping lemonade from a fresh batch Gavin had just made. I used Mom’s distraction as an opportunity to skim my notebook for key words and phrases I’d copied from the diary.

“But, Mom?” I said into the phone.

“Yeah?”

“‘What is life, if not for living?’” I was hoping she would recognize her own quote.

“Is that from that Weight Watchers commercial?”

“No. It’s from something else.”

“Well, I don’t see what it has to do with me coming to Nantucket, especially since I get seasick on boats.” Yeah right, I thought. In the diary, she and Lover Boy had been on numerous boat trips. There was a ferry ride to Cape Cod for a stolen night in a motel, into which they checked in as “Mr. and Mrs. Donald Duck.” There was also a zippy cruise in a Boston Whaler out to Tuckernuck Island, not to mention a secret sunrise sail. Mom’s computer zinged with a hearts victory.

“Mom, are you sure you have seasickness? Are you sure that you’re not inventing that?”

“Excuse me, but I think I know whether or not I get sick on boats.”

“Then take a pill!” I said.

“Watch your tone, please,” she said.

Gavin knocked on the sliding glass door and made a “keep it down” gesture. I gave him the okay signal. I hadn’t realized I’d yelled.

“Sorry, Mom. I just want you to picture this.” I glanced at the notebook, skipping over any boat-related notes. “Dunes. Sunsets. Lobster. Cisco Beach. Beer.”

“Beer? I don’t drink beer,” she said. “What’s this about? Oh no. Have you signed me up for some singles’ thing? I told you—”

“No, Mom. I just want you to come out here for my birthday,” I said. “It’s only a week away.”

“You were nine the last time you wanted me around on your birthday.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to college next year so maybe I’m feeling sentimental.”

“Well, that’s very sweet. But I’m afraid I’d come all the way out there and you’d just want to be with your friends, not boring old Mom.” Boring old Mom? I was staring at the words “nude beach” in her diary. “How about when you get back, we go out to Sue’s Clam Shack? Are you sure there’s no one that you want to see out here?”

“The only person on Nantucket I want to see is you, and I’m going to see you in just a few short weeks.” Zing! A hearts success.

“I just want you to think about it. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

I hung up and opened the book, wishing I could find the right words, the ones that would lure her back out to this island, this unlikely rock of love. The problem was that in the diary she was more specific about what she and Lover Boy had done to each other’s bodies than where exactly they’d been. I wasn’t about to recite those passages to her. I could barely read them without wanting to barf. A page caught my attention—she’d written in a circle around a poem.


Dear Emily,

Right now I’m sitting in front of the library, where I’ve come to escape Aunt Betty, who was lecturing me on the importance of knowing how to properly set a table. She thinks my parents haven’t taught me any feminine charms. All I want to do is think about last night with Lover Boy. On one hand, I’m confused because he canceled our last date. He said he needed to work on law school applications and it gave me a weird feeling. It’s still only summer and he’s barely mentioned law school this whole time! On the other hand, I wonder if I’m being paranoid. He cares so much about his future. He has big dreams. I want him to follow his dreams! And it was just last week when he told me that he loves me, and I knew it was true when he said it, the way you just know. He loves me!

I’m listening to the crickets as I write this. And I just realized that I’m writing here on your poem about the cricket. I love that crickets are here in this magical time, when it’s not night or day but some in-between time. I’m deciding right now that when I want to think of a day with magic in it, I’ll think of this day. I will say to myself: Cricket. It will be my secret code word for magic or love or both.

Love, K.


My name. Mom had always said that I got my name because I used to chirp in my crib. But that wasn’t the whole truth. I read the poem.


The cricket sang

And set the sun,

And workmen finished, one by one,

Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,

The twilight stood as strangers do

With hat in hand, polite and new,

To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,—

A wisdom without face or name,

A peace, as hemispheres at home,—

And so the night became.


I wasn’t just Mom’s daughter. I was her word for magic.

“What’s up with you?” I looked up. It was George, taking a fresh-air break, something I’d encouraged him to do. I’d told him it didn’t matter that he was on crutches, he needed to hobble around the block every six hours or so. His skin had started to look yellow.

“I think I finally get Emily Dickinson,” I said.

“That makes one of us,” he said. “Hey, will you come listen to this? I need your young ears to decipher part of Lilly Carmichael’s interview. I’ve been to too many White Stripes concerts or something.”

“Sure.” I closed the diary and followed George into the annex, which was officially on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

He played the digital recording on the computer. Mrs. Carmichael’s voice was smooth, like one of Mom’s books on tape: “Boaty’s proposal was very romantic. It came as a great surprise. I’d had a mad crush on him all summer. But that hardly made me unique; so did all the girls.”

“Yada yada yada,” George said, skipping ahead. “She goes on about this for a while. Tell me something I don’t know.” He pressed PLAY. “Okay, now listen.”

“Boaty and I went for a sunset sail. I didn’t even want to go! Can you imagine? I kept telling him that there was a big clambake I’d been looking forward to and we could always go sailing tomorrow night, but he insisted that the sunset that evening was going to be the best of the summer. And it was. It was glorious. As I was admiring it, he pulled from his pocket a ring made out of seaweed. He had no money then.” Lilly’s voice softened. I could hear her smiling. “It was such a surprise! The only thing on my mind the whole day was getting to Paul Morgan’s clambake, always the party of the season.” On the recording, George asked who Paul Morgan was. Lilly answered. “Paul was the boy my parents wanted me to marry. He was from an old Nantucket family, had all the money in the world, all the right credentials. My mother always thought he was the one for me because—” Here the voice became indecipherable.

“Oh, Paul Morgan!” I said as the familiarity of the name landed.

“You know him?” George asked, pausing the interview.

“Yeah, I do.” This wasn’t true; I just felt like I did. “Well, not really. I’ve just met him and I’ve heard a lot about him.”

“From whom?”

“My mom. They dated at one time.”

“Oh.” George tilted his head. “Interesting. Okay, so listen hard; this is the part I can’t understand. It sounds like she’s saying her mother always thought Boaty was interested in Lilly’s ‘local vision.’ But that makes no sense,” George said. What the hell is ‘local vision’? And why would that be a bad thing for him to be interested in?”

“Play it again.” I said. He did. “One more time.” He watched me as if I were a medium. I clapped my hand on his shoulder. “Social position. She’s saying social position.” My eyes widened. “Her mom thought that Boaty was a social climber!”

“I think you’re right.” George played it again, his face frozen in concentration. He sighed with relief. “That’s it.” He scratched his neck. “No wonder she mumbled.”

He was waiting for me to respond, but my mind wasn’t on the recording. It was on Paul Morgan.

I hadn’t realized that Paul Morgan was such a prominent, wealthy man. I wondered if that would scare Mom away. She said she didn’t trust rich people. I’d have to make sure they met someplace low-key. How was I ever going to make it seem like this was all her idea?