He demonstrated with the ball in his hand, which thwacked against a ladies’ tennis trophy sitting on a high shelf.
“Ivory tower?” Ruby barked. “Hardly! Look around. The toilets at Cliff House only work half the time.”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite roughing it in your summer home. I’ll ask Mummy to take up a collection at church.”
“You’re a real gagster. Golly, it’ll be a nice change to live with a well-mannered gentleman for once.”
Ruby’s thoughts drifted back outside, where glassware clinked and groups of men bustled about the grounds. Her eyes flicked down to the long, white table that divided the lawn in two. Three dozen small, round tables flanked it, their umbrellas spinning and dancing in the wind.
“Here’s the thing,” Topper said as Ruby glanced back toward her dress. “Sam’s a swell guy but it’s like he’s following a script. You need someone more … his own man.”
“Sam is very much his own man,” Ruby said, though did not strictly know.
“Ruby!” said a voice from the hallway, a caw followed by three sharp pecks on the door.
“Oh brother,” Ruby muttered.
It was P.J.’s new wife, Mary. A real cold fish that one, an utter snore.
“Ruby!” Mary warbled again. “Mama Young sent me to check on you.”
“I’m fine. Almost ready.”
“Lovely! Have you seen Robert?”
Topper pressed a finger to his lips, all the while chortling behind it.
“Yes, he’s in here,” Ruby said. “Helping me get dressed.”
“Ruby Genevieve!” Mary screeched. “That is sickeningly inappropriate. I just … I don’t even…”
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t!”
Mary huffed and stomped several more times before turning on her toes and marching back to “Mama Young.”
“That woman,” Ruby growled.
“Oh she’s not so bad.”
“Actually, she is the very worst.”
With a sigh, Ruby slipped her wedding frock off its hanger and tried to wade through the froth to find its center.
“I’m sure Mother wants to help you with that,” Topper said. “You being her only daughter and all.”
“Probably.”
Ruby wiggled it up toward her chest, then over her shoulders.
“We are a sorry lot.” Topper tossed the ball one final time. “This family. Poor manners. No decorum. Thank God money covers most ills.”
11
Monday Morning
For the second day in a row, Bess wakes up in a blind panic. And her first thoughts aren’t even about the cliff.
Not that the rapidly eroding bluff isn’t terrifying. It is and very much so. On some mornings, the fog is too dense to see the veranda. As a little girl, Bess would sit in her window and gaze into the white, pretending she was a princess in a cloud. And while the haze is thick this morning, the very best of princess dreams, Bess can see straight past the edge of the yard and down to the shoreline. There is no space left for make-believe.
Alas, it is not impending doom that brings Bess the initial wave of heart-knocking nausea but the date itself, glaring up from her phone.
Monday, May 20.
Cissy’s meeting is tomorrow; Flick’s wedding in a week. In between, two women must move the contents of a house. Bess is a damned good procrastinator, a near-expert embracer of denial. But even she has to acknowledge that there won’t be a return trip to California. Which means Bess must address Wednesday through Saturday, and the meetings and appointments waiting for her back in the Bay.
“Crap,” she says, scrolling through her calendar. “What am I going to do?”
The question applies to so many things.
Suddenly, the door pops open and claps the far wall.
“Cissy!” Bess yelps.
She socks the phone against her chest, as if Cissy might see the screen.
“How about some privacy?!” Bess says as Cissy hard charges in, an empty box between her hands.
“Gimme a break. What do you need to be so private about? I pushed you out of me, tore myself from stern to bow.”
“That’s lovely.…”
“So your flimsy getup is hardly worth noting. You look great, by the way.”
Bess glances down at her camisole and underwear. Great? She doesn’t feel the least bit so.
“Thanks,” she mumbles nonetheless.
“Let me know if there’s anything in this bedroom you’d like to keep,” Cissy says, yanking open the door to the pink wardrobe, which, come to think of it, has been in that same corner Bess’s entire life. “Let’s see. What relics has Bess Codman abandoned in here? Cap and gown … letterman jacket … wedding dress.”
“Ha!” Bess yaps. “Feel free to let the dress fall over the cliff.”
“Don’t be so negative. Maybe you’ll have a daughter one day who’ll want to wear it. Vintage, you know.”
“Too true. Who doesn’t love the nostalgia of a failed marriage?”
“What about these?” Cissy asks, reaching for the top shelf.
She removes four yearbooks, two from Choate, and two from Nantucket High.
“You can ditch those, too,” Bess says.
“You know what?” Cissy flings them onto the floor, where they land with a thud. “I’m going to hang on to them. Just in case. It’s not like you could ever get them back.”
Cissy roots around the wardrobe for several more minutes, casting a flurry of apparel, scarves, and questionable forms of millinery across the scuffed wood floors. Evidently Bess wore a fedora at some juncture. She doesn’t remember it at all.
“Oh!” Cissy exclaims in a burst and without warning.
She twirls around to face Bess.
“You will not believe what happened earlier this morning!”
“All right…” Bess says, cautiously.
Cissy’s “you will not believe” could be anything from spilling her coffee to accidentally rescuing a seal pup from the jaws of a shark.
“Chappy Mayhew,” her mom says. “The bastard encroached upon my property!”
“Um … er … what?”
“He claims he was just fetching the paper. That it was thrown onto my driveway by mistake. Likely story! Benji Folger is the paperboy and he’s a Little League pitcher, a stellar one at that. I’ve watched three and a half of his games. There’s no way he’d miss his target.”
“Okay…”
Bess walks over to her suitcase and extracts a pair of sweatpants. She’d gone to unpack last night but decided not to bother. They’ll be moving on soon. Bess can’t fathom that she’ll never unpack at Cliff House again.
“That Chappy Mayhew,” Cissy says, still at full rant. “The nerve of him! If only his balls were actually as big as he pretends they are.”
“Mother! Enough! And unless he did something wrong, I’m sure it’s well within his purview to wander across the road.”
“I saw him hock a loogie onto my roses.”
“Cis, I get that he rankles you. That family’s always been unnaturally egotistical.…”
“They’re a bunch of smartasses, is what they are.”
“Agreed,” Bess says with a nod. “And I appreciate all you’re trying to accomplish with the beaches and the revetments, but the man has his own concerns. Chappy is worried about his livelihood. You can’t fault him for that.”
“Actually I can fault him for that because it’s a bunch of horseshit. As long as there are tourists on Nantucket, Chappy Mayhew will have a steady stream of income.”