“Yeah but what’s a lifetime but memories and photographs? She can keep those!”
“I suppose,” he says. “But memories are so much more vivid when you’re in the spot they happened instead of relying on your brain to paint the picture.”
“Gee thanks, that’s not depressing at all.”
“You know how it is,” he says, and gestures to the view. “When was the last time you thought about this place?”
“Hussey House,” Bess says with a smile. “Or what once was Hussey House, since you’ve demolished it with your greedy, money-grubbing schemes.”
“I am a greedy bastard, aren’t I? Imagine, wanting to eat and put gas in my car.”
“Must be nice!”
“Bottom line, if you don’t have the anchor, what is your memory but a ghost?”
Bess shrugs and then peels the label all the way off her bottle.
“To be honest,” Evan says, “I’ll be sad to see Cliff House go, too. I have my own set of memories, ya know.”
“I’m sure you do. We both do. Some better than others.”
Evan finishes off his beer. As he grabs a second, Bess watches two seagulls dive at each other, then flap away.
“I’ve never told you this,” Evan says. “But my great-aunt used to work at Cliff House.”
“What?” Bess says, spine straightening in surprise. “She did?”
“Yep. My grandfather’s sister.”
“When was this?”
“Ages ago. In the forties. She married later in life, but before that was a maid at Cliff House. My aunt said Ruby was a real firecracker.”
“Really?” Bess laughs and sets down her beer. “Grandma Ruby? I find that hard to believe. She was a bit of a groundbreaker, a feminist in her way. But very much in her way. Stone-faced, stoic. ‘Firecracker’ is not a word I’d use. Cissy’s a firecracker. Ruby was … an aircraft carrier. A battleship gliding into the harbor.”
Then again, Bess frequently teased her grandmother about her very Bostonian, “low-heeler” persona. Ruby always answered with a tee-hee and a sip of gin, and so Bess took her grandmother for the very best of sports. In retrospect maybe it was because she knew otherwise.
“According to Aunt Jeanne,” Evan says, “Ruby and her brothers palled around with a bevy of good-time girls and boys. Constantly getting into scrapes and shenanigans and forever winning sporting events at the club.”
“Are you serious?” Bess says, laughing again. “Ruby complained about Cissy’s athletic, rough-and-tumble nature. I never guessed Grandma was at all sporty.”
“She was an amazing tennis player, apparently.”
“That’s incredible.”
“My aunt might’ve been the help, but she adored the ‘young ones at the big house.’” Evan thinks for a moment. “Although there was some European girl she didn’t care for. Anyway, it all sounded like a constant party. Until the war happened, of course. Then all bets were off.”
“Wow,” Bess says, staring down at the flatbed and the nails discarded in the grooves. “It’s weird how people change.” She looks up. “Good thing I’m my predictable, same self.”
“The same!” Evan says with a cough. “I can think of five ways right now that you’re a completely different girl than the one who walked the stage at Nantucket High.”
“Oh yeah? Name one.”
“You haven’t touched that beer.”
He taps the open, full bottle sitting beside Bess’s foot. The man, he is not wrong.
“You could match me chug for chug back in the day,” he says.
“Ah. Yes. Drinking skills. One of my finer qualities. At least as determined by weaselly local teens.”
“Hey!” Evan yelps. There’s a hint of disappointment in his deep brown eyes. “I knew you had a bias against townies. That’s why you won’t drink my beer.”
“No,” Bess says, and picks it back up. “It’s not that.”
She studies the bottle. In holding it, she knows the beer is already warm.
“What is it then?” Evan asks. “You a wine type now? Spend your weekends in Napa?”
“Uh, no. I’ve been to Napa three times. I do like my wine but I like beer just as much. So, no. It’s not that.”
Bess peeks at her watch. It’s five thirty, or two thirty back in the Bay. She wonders if someone is trying to contact her. Right now someone could be calling her name.
“Bess?”
“If you want to know the truth,” she says, “the God’s honest truth is that I’m neither a wine girl nor a beer one, at least not right now. The type of girl I am is pregnant. A pregnant girl who doesn’t know what the hell to do.”
27
The Book of Summer
Nick Cabot
July 29, 1941
Cliff House
Tops told me to write in this book and doggone it, I shall do so.
’Allo folks, the name is Nicholas Cabot. You might know me as just plain Nick, Topper’s Harvard chum. The smarter and more attractive of the duo, to be sure. Alas Harvard boys we are no more. We both dropped out. There are things to do, you see. Battles to be won. People to impress with our dash and valiance.
As for me, I’m registered straight-up class 1-A (no kids or war work to hold me back!) and will soon head out to basic training for the good ol’ army. Meanwhile, Topper’s farting around the island, deciding what to do. I told him don’t wait to be drafted. All sails and no wind, that boy. Looks swell in the harbor but not exactly going anywhere.
I’ve come to Cliff House for our last hoorah. I’m not unaccustomed to Nantucket, been here a time or five. It’s funny how Tops’s island is not the one from my mind though. When I think of the place, my mind conjures the mansions on Main Street. Those grand homes with their heavy knockers and silver nameplates and monstrous screaming eagles above their front doors. But, lo and behold, there’s a charmer of a spot called Sconset, seven miles away but might as well be a thousand. Topper’s family’s spread is about a mile up from its heart.
Cliff House is a stately affair, as are a few others down the lane, though most are modest in size. Little weathered boxes, many drowning in flowers. Why, it almost makes you want to chuck it all and take up a fisherman’s life.
Even in Sconset, there is tennis and sailing and golfing and bowling. There are card games and dances and Friday night parties on the Cliff House lawn. Every person, every last one of us, is tanned and gay. We might be the closest point physically to Europe, three thousand miles dead ahead to Spain, but you’d never know it. Out here, you can almost pretend it doesn’t exist.
Oh yes, I could stay in Sconset the rest of my days and be quite content but that’s not in the cards. On Tuesday I’ll thank Mrs. Young and give Tops one last pat on the back. I’ll leave this place calmer, and more wistful, but with new matchbooks and memories and a clip of honeysuckle to remember it all by.
Always,
Nick C.
28
RUBY
August 1941
Not to sound uncharitable on the matter, but Ruby was damned glad that Nick Cabot character had split.