I pulled into the driveway of Hannah Chapman Events. My sister lived on Wellfleet’s Main Street in a beautiful old Victorian. The first floor was for her business; she and Thomasina, her cat, lived on the second and third floors, and had my entire adult life. She had a beautiful patio in the back, bursting with color. Love of gardening was one of the few things we shared.
Right after graduating from college, Hannah had moved back to the Cape and begun working for a florist, which confused everyone . . . she had degrees in economics and psychology from Bates College. Then, two years later, she bought the woman out, changed her last name to Chapman (Dad was horrified, but at least she took the name of his boat), and opened Hannah Chapman Events. She’d always been a great dresser, thanks to our stepmother, and now that sense of style was put to use in her business. Beatrice advised and helped, making them closer than ever, and when I came back to the Cape, newly married and pregnant, Hannah was fully ensconced in her work.
She quickly became the most sought-after wedding planner on the Cape and islands. Hannah didn’t touch a wedding that didn’t have a budget of at least six figures and often handled weddings that cost a million or more. Her professional life revolved around excess and materialism, high-maintenance brides and . . . well, greed. Showmanship. Wealth. All for a day (or a weekend).
My professional life revolved around bringing humans into the world and taking care of women’s health. You can see we didn’t have much in common.
But once, a long, long time ago, I had worshipped her.
The best part of my childhood was ages zero to eight, back when I was innocent and happy. Hannah and I would play outside, climbing trees, jumping off the tippy old dock into the cool, perfect water of Herring Pond. We were free-range kids, allowed to roam wherever we wanted. Every path, every trail and every tiny beach were ours. We were the princesses of the forest.
Hannah and I shared a bedroom; there were only two in the house back then. Our walls were knotty pine, as was common on the Cape, and the overall feeling inside was dark and cozy and safe (to me, anyway).
But outside . . . that was paradise. It was like we were the only ones in the world. Most of the other houses nearby were owned by summer people, so we were the only local kids around. Hannah taught me every bird, from blue herons to barn swallows. Deer stepped across our paths, foxes and coyotes scampered and skulked, little skunk families trundled by, and it was everything a kid could ask for. My sister wasn’t quite as outdoorsy as I was, preferring books to climbing trees, but she was a solid companion. Not as fanciful as I was . . . I loved building fairy houses at the bases of oak trees, pretending to ride horses down the bumpy roads. By the time I was six, I could go off on my own, as long as I didn’t go near the water. I had to be “within earshot,” but otherwise I was free, which, to be honest, was what my mother preferred. She was a lawyer who consulted with other lawyers, constantly on the phone.
I knew Mom liked Hannah more . . . the lower-maintenance child who didn’t ask to sit on her lap. “Find something to do, Lillie,” she would say if I requested her time, and the message was clear—unless arterial blood was soaking my clothes, unless I was projectile vomiting or running a fever of over 102, she had better things to do. Back then, I assumed my mother loved me . . . sort of. Just not the way my friends’ mothers loved them. Beth’s mother would sit and chat with us at the kitchen table, offering us coconut macaroons she made herself. Carlita’s mother couldn’t walk past her without touching her hair or dropping a kiss on her head.
I remember watching in wonder as my friends ran into their mothers’ arms off the school bus, faces lit up with joy. My mom was there, too, at the intersection of Collins and Rose Roads, waiting in her car, tapping her finger on the steering wheel. She never even unbuckled her seat belt, let alone got out of the car for an embrace. “How was your day?” she’d ask, but NPR would be on the radio, and I learned to echo Hannah and say it had been fine (which it generally was).
Our father was different. I only saw him for a couple of hours a day, but his lined, harsh face would soften at the sight of me, and even when I was eight, he still picked me up. He wasn’t much for talking, but his big rough hand dropping on my head or a wink from across the kitchen table made me feel so special. Some nights, he’d sit on the edge of my bed or Hannah’s and tell us that he’d seen a whale that day, or dolphins. He might give us a particularly pretty scallop shell he’d tucked in his pocket. His hands were scarred from a thousand little cuts—the price of shucking scallops every day. I’d trace the map of lines on his hand, glad he was home, proud to be the daughter of Pedro Cristóv?o Silva, fourth-generation fisherman.
I also knew I was his favorite . . . at least in the sense that I was more like him. I was a true Silva. I could shuck a scallop at five, knew how to steer the boat out of the harbor at seven, and loved nothing more than tagging along with him and his crew when he let me. Hannah, on the other hand, got seasick and started gagging before we were even away from the wharf.
To her credit, Mom rarely lost her temper. She was just . . . irritable, and that irritation could rise till she gripped the kitchen counter and clenched her teeth and muttered to herself. The bedroom door might be sharply closed, her sign that we were not to disturb her.
I understood my parents didn’t get along. Beth’s parents hugged and kissed and teased each other, flirted with each other, complimented each other. It was as if “parents” meant something entirely different at her house. Dad worked long hard hours, gone before dawn, back for dinner, in bed by nine or earlier. Mom was always on the phone or in front of the computer.
When they were in a room together, tense irritability and dissatisfaction stewed and bubbled in the air. Mom was stylish in that quiet, WASPy way—reserved and elegant, her blond hair in a perfect, slightly asymmetrical bob, her makeup flawless. She wasn’t a Cape Codder . . . she’d grown up in New Hampshire. They met when Mom was on vacation with her parents just after she graduated from law school. Dad was a good-looking guy, and maybe she was sticking it to her snobby parents, but she got a job at the district attorney’s office in Barnstable and married him six months later. “He swept me off my feet,” she said. “At the time, it seemed romantic. Then again, I was naive and irresponsible.”
Mom had a gift for twisting a blade you didn’t know she carried. There was always the afterburn, as Hannah called it. “You look pretty,” she might say to one of us. “What a nice change.” Or, if she and Dad were going out, “Well, well, well. You don’t smell like fish, Pedro. I didn’t know it was possible.”
Dinners were grim and fast: eat what was provided, clean up, go do your homework. When Hannah turned nine, Mom deemed her old enough to take care of me and started full-time at the DA’s office. That was fine with me. That was better, in fact, because the minute Mom came home, the tension began. She’d always comment on what we hadn’t done—if I had swept the floor, she’d ask why I hadn’t emptied the trash. If Hannah had started dinner, she’d ask why the breakfast dishes were still in the sink. Then Dad would come home with HandsomeBoy, his faithful mutt who went out on the Goody Chapman with him. Mom would grimace and tell Dad to shower even though that was exactly what he did every single day.
Dad was a classic Cape Codder with a New England work ethic and a hatred for meaningless small talk. He was brief with his rare praise. “Good job” was about as eloquent as he got, and usually to Hannah, who had more proof of her worthiness—straight As, science fair awards, honors math.