Evan steers her bike through the gate, Bess dragging behind him.
“Here we are,” he announces. “Delivered to your front doorstep. Don’t let anyone tell you I’m not a gentleman.”
“No one needs to tell me that. I already know.”
“Hilarious.”
Evan leans in for a hug. Bess startles as if he’d grabbed her breast. Her hands fly up and she accidentally punches herself in the face.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Evan says.
“Sorry, it’s just…” Bess tries to find the words. “Like I said. I’m ‘off.’”
“Stop kidding yourself. You’re more ‘on’ than you know. After all, you’re Bess Codman.”
“Doctor Bess Codman,” she says, kidding, though it comes out sounding pompous as hell.
Thank God Evan’s dad isn’t around. Chappy Mayhew would use this as exhibit A as to why every single person in the Codman family is a Summer Person to the core.
“Yes, well,” Evan says with a smirk. “The doctor part goes without saying.”
He has enough manners to let her obnoxiousness dissolve into the gloom.
“I’m shocked you can still look me in the eye,” Bess says. “After everything I’ve told you. I’m such a wreck.”
“Everyone’s a wreck,” Evan says. “Most are way worse than you. Admittedly, you’ve been through some tough shit. But it’s temporary. You’ll move on from here. Bess Codman can do anything. She knows what she wants and goes after it.”
“Let’s agree to disagree.”
“The girl I knew,” Evan says. “The girl who beguiled a poor, young local with her beauty and smarts, the one who scrambled him up for years—”
“Gimme a break!” Bess chirps. “If anything, I was the one mixed up.”
“The girl I knew also had a hard time figuring out when to shut the hell up and listen.”
Evan gives one of his earth-cracking smiles.
“And she always understood exactly what she wanted, even when she couldn’t say it.”
Evan reaches out and places both hands, gently, on her shoulders. He pulls Bess in and gives her a whisper of a kiss on the forehead, another on her nose. Bess tilts imperceptibly forward, waiting and hungry for a third.
“Good night, Lizzy C.,” he says, stopping at just the two. “It’s great to have you back.”
Bess watches as Evan returns to his car and drives away. She half expects him to pull into Chappy’s drive, his old home.
Insides churning with some unsavory mix of giddiness and flat-out insecurity, Bess shuffles through the front door of Cliff House, which she’d left unlocked, secretly counting on a robbery. It’d be one way to move all that junk.
“Evan Mayhew, huh?” Cissy says, emerging in the hallway with a cocktail in one hand, a rolled-up yoga mat in the other. “That explains where you’ve been all night.”
“Where I’ve been?”
Bess wishes her heart would stop pounding to this great degree.
“Well, Evan’s not too bad,” Cissy says. “At least compared to that father of his. He’s crazy handsome and a real ladies’ man, from the sounds of it. I’m referring to Evan. Because Chappy…”
Cissy makes a face.
“I’m not really interested—”
“Kinda assumed you’d gotten him out of your system in high school.” Cissy sighs. “Don’t get any ideas, missy. You’re not permitted to marry anyone with the last name Mayhew.”
“Who said anything about marriage? And anyway, nothing’s going on.”
“He has a fairly serious girlfriend, far as I know.”
“Good for him,” Bess says as her insides collapse at the thought.
A “fairly serious” girlfriend? Of course he does. But then, why should she care?
“Can it, Cissy,” she says. “I’m not even divorced yet.”
Also, she’s pregnant by someone else. Bess can’t imagine Evan Mayhew, or any other sensible male, itching to hook up with a divorced, knocked-up chick who’s already eclipsed her prime.
“It’s not like that with Evan,” Bess prattles on. “I went to him for advice. You see, there’s this very stubborn elephant I’m trying to move out of a house.”
Bess tries to sweep past her mom and on down the hallway, but Cissy springs in front of her, not dribbling a drop of booze in the process.
“Bessie, never mind those Mayhew creeps. I have terrific news. I got it!”
“Got what?”
“I got the emergency town meeting to approve the geotube installation. It’s happening tomorrow night.”
Bess doesn’t know whether to give Cissy a high-five or dissolve into a sobbing mess. Another meeting. More straws for Cissy to grasp at. More flyers for Bess to pass out.
“You did?” Bess asks.
“Yep! The information about having to buy more land and rebuild the infrastructure, well, it really made those fogies take notice. They’ve realized it’s better to keep what we have. Not only does it preserve Sconset’s historical and aesthetic integrity, it’s far cheaper. Finally, they’ve seen the light!”
“Or else they decided it’s the quickest way to get you to zip it.”
Cissy gives Bess a pinched look.
“They’re lucky someone cares as much as I do!” she says. “In twenty years—in thirty—after I’m long gone, they’ll be grateful for what I did. No one will remember my face or my name, but one day some soul will say, ‘Hey, did you know they almost let all this fall into the ocean?’”
“Congratulations. Truly. I guess the fighting will finally pay off.”
Bess makes her way toward the stairs.
“We need to discuss the big move tomorrow,” she calls over her shoulder. “And why you bought a flagpole. Right now I’m too beat. I could sleep forever.”
“It’s not even nine o’clock!”
“What can I say? I’m getting old.”
“Bessie?”
“Yes, Mom?”
She turns back around.
“You look good,” Cissy says. “Pretty. Beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“You should lose the glasses, though. What happened to the contacts you wore in high school?”
“Twenty years ago? I can’t really say.” Bess shakes her head. “You really are something else.”
“Island life agrees with you.”
Bess remains unmoved. It’s one of Cissy’s favorite mantras.
“Thanks Mom,” she says.
“You’ve … I don’t know. Filled out.”
Cissy tries to make a shapely-woman sign with her hands, but both arms are still occupied with yoga props and vodka.
“Filled out,” Bess says with a snort. “That’s one way to put it.”
Her mom smiles then, wide and hardy, all telltale Cissy toothy.
“There’s nothing left for you back in the Bay,” she says.
“Except for my job, a new apartment, a cat…”
“You should make this a permanent change,” Cissy says, not hearing her at all.
Bess thinks of her fake novel, the one with the island practice and Nantucketer ailments and charming high school boyfriend brought back to life. She can stay here with Cissy, and eventually marry Evan. On weekends they’ll play a few rounds at Sankaty Head; attend Yacht Club balls at night. It’ll be sunshine and bicycles the rest of their days.
Except, of course, for all that fog perpetually hanging around.
“Oh, Cissy,” Bess says with a sigh, and wraps her mother in a hug. “Stay at Cliff House? If only that I could.”
31
The Book of Summer
Harriet E. Rutter
September 1, 1941