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.”
“How’s that?”
“Our entire restaurant industry thrives on the lore of the last remaining fisherman. They’d dump a boatload of bass into the Yacht Club swimming pool, just to be able to say the fish is locally caught. That man isn’t worried about his job. He just likes to piss me off. Chapman Mayhew can smooch my flat, white, wrinkled fanny.”
“All right, Cis,” Bess says with a sigh. “I haven’t had the coffee yet to deal with that mental picture.”
Bess slides one leg into her sweatpants (red, faded, Boston College; fifteen years old), and then the other. She hoists them over her hips, loosening the drawstring as she goes.
“Speaking of,” Cissy says. “I need a favor.”
“A favor? Related to your fanny? Thanks, but I see enough derrières at work.”
“Stop with the jokes, Dr. Codman. Are you helping me or not?”
“Always, Cissy. I’m forever at your disposal.”
“Exactly what I’d hoped. All right, my dear. Here’s what I need you to do.”