Friday Afternoon
Phone in hand, Bess taps out a few words.
She deletes them. Types a few more.
They aren’t right either. Delete, delete, delete. There is nothing Bess can say that doesn’t make her sound like a pathetic high school girl incapable of talking to boys. This, when she is thirty-four years old and with much bigger problems than what to do about the cute neighbor boy.
Bess shakes her head and instead writes what she really wants to say.
Hey. Party for Flick tonight. 8pm. Marina, Old S Wharf, near Slip 14. Come with? Boat parties. Like the old days.
“God, Palmer,” Bess mutters, “you’d better be right about this.”
She is about to end the whole pathetic deal with a winky emoticon when her phone rings, startling her and causing her to hit Send before she can exercise her better judgment.
“Shit!” Bess yelps. “Shit!”
The text has gone to Evan. What was she thinking, inviting him to her cousin’s pre-wedding fête of bankers and blue bloods? She shouldn’t listen to Palmer. Palmer sees the world from a very rosy place.
“Shit,” Bess says a third time, for good measure, as her phone continues to ring. “Goddamn it.”
DAD, the phone screams at her. DAD.
“Um, hello?”
“Bessie, that you?” her dad bellows.
He is grumpy and short of breath. Bess imagines him pacing by the picture window in his office, glaring out over the Charles River.
“Yep!” she says. “Who else?”
“How are you?”
“I’m pretty go—”
“Glad to hear it. Listen, I need you to pick me up at the airport.”
“The airport?” Bess says, blinking. “What airport?”
“Nantucket! What’s wrong with you? Are you drunk?”
“What? No! It’s only noon! So, wait. You’re coming? Here?”
The phone buzzes in her hand. Has Evan texted her back?
“Yes of course I am!” Dudley says. “It’s my niece’s wedding. Seriously, what is wrong with you?”
“Oh … right. Sorry.”
It hadn’t occurred to Bess that her dad might come for the event, even though Aunt Polly is his sister, Flick his niece. She’s his very favorite niece, at that—his favorite in the whole family, no doubt. He likes her ambition, drive, and custom-made herringbone pantsuits. Bess should’ve guessed he’d show. Dudley Codman always comes through. Old Dudley-do-right-eventually.
“Um, okay,” Bess says. “When? Tonight?”
“Sunday. I’m taking the late flight. Six forty-five. Cape Air. I’ll be staying one night. At the Wauwinet.”
“I’m happy to get you,” Bess says. “But, Dad, wouldn’t you rather have Mom pick you up?”
“Your mother?” He snorts. “Elisabeth, that woman once showed up at the airport on a fucking bike.”
Bess laughs.
“Yeah,” she says. “Been there.”
“So you’ll do it, okay good, speaking of your mother,” Dudley says, spitting sentences like he’s checking them off a list, or shooting them from a gun. “You guys ’bout packed?”
Bess clears her throat.
“Sorta?” she says.
“‘Sorta’? Bess, you’ve been there a week. What the hell have you been doing if not packing? In case I haven’t mentioned you could die.”
“I know. It’s just, well, some things are packed.”
“Some things.”
“It’s been busy. Two town meetings in the past three days.”
“Christ, say no more.”
Bess can almost hear his eyes rolling.
“Your mother told me about the geotubes,” he says.
“She did?”
“So hooray. But you gotta get that woman packed, understand?”
“Yes, but it’s not that simple.”
“It never is,” he says. “Listen, thanks for going out there. I’m sure Cissy’s been a royal pain in the ass but it’s comforting to know that progress is being made thanks to you.”
Bess fights a groan. Progress. Right. What’s Dudley going to think when he sees Cliff House? And what will he do to Bess? With her father there are always “consequences.” He might cut her out of the family. Or send her to the Sudan with Lala.
“So, um, are you going to help pack?” Bess asks, her voice coming out in a squeak.
“Why would I do something like that? Gotta run Bessie, see you later, love you, bye.”
The phone goes dead.
Bess exhales. At least Dudley is staying at the Wauwinet and away from Cliff House. He won’t find out that Bess is a flat liar. Sorta packed. Just like Bess is sorta married. Technically. A little bit. But not in any meaningful way.
After checking for a response from Evan (nothing, nada, zilch), Bess tucks the phone into her back pocket. Jeans this time, for the love of all that’s not elastic, though the jeans are noticeably snug. Bess will have to figure out something. Soon. Sweatpants are comfy but they can’t solve all her problems.
“Hey, Cis,” she says, walking into the living room.
Her mother is hurricaning around the place, pulling and pushing and packing. Well, wonders never cease. There’s some movement yet.
“Hiya Bess!” Cissy trills as tweenager music blares from a nearby stereo.
I’m wide awake …
“Wow, Mom, I didn’t take you for a Katy Perry fan.”
“She’s cute. I like her hair!” Cissy smiles. “It reminds me of yours.”
“Isn’t hers blue?”
“Not always.”
Cissy swipes a collection of picture frames from the fireplace mantel and plunks them into a box.
“Glad to see you’re getting things done,” Bess says, and perches on the arm of a floral couch at least twenty years out of style. “Packing wise, that is.”
“Well, they can’t move the house with everything in it! Oh, Bessie, I’m just so jazzed all of a sudden. What is it that you Californians say? I’m stoked!”
“I do not say that. Ever.”
“I’m stoked on the geotube plan. Cliff House lives!”
Cissy twirls and leaps across the room, like Palmer from her ballet days, if Palmer were over sixty and mildly arthritic. Bess feels a little dizzy from all the motion.
“‘I’m falling from cloud nine,’” Cissy sings, then sets about attacking an assembly of gardening and entertaining books from the eighties.
“So Dad just called,” Bess tells her.
She checks her phone. No texts. No missed calls.
“He’s coming for the wedding,” Bess adds.
Cissy hesitates and then scowls.
“Mom?”
Cissy turns toward Bess and holds up a book. 101 Ideas for Carpeting Your Bathroom.
“Is it awful to trash old books?” she asks.
“Not that one.”
Cissy flings it into a bin.
“So yeah,” Bess says, eyeing the trash. “Dad’s coming, but only for twenty-four hours.”
“Okeydoke,” Cissy answers, wholly unfazed by the news.
Bess remembers what Grandma Ruby said, back when Bess was a little girl complaining that her dad didn’t stay the entire summer.
“Oh, Bess, the men only come for the parties,” she’d said. “The events. They don’t have the time or stamina for the day-to-day.”
“Bottom line,” Bess says, and squats to inspect the box beside her. “He’ll be here on Sunday.”
“Fantastic.”
Bess picks up a red scrapbook and tabs through some pages.
“This is from the dining room,” she says. “I was looking at it the other day.”
“You’re welcome to have it. Otherwise, it’s going in the trash.”
“You can’t throw this away. Grandma must’ve kept it for some reason.” Bess turns a few more pages. “Did you know someone named Harriet Rutter?”
“Sounds familiar. I think.”
Cissy checks the underside of a desk clock that hasn’t worked in years.
“She was some sort of writer, apparently,” Bess says. “Magazines, newspaper articles. Grandma Ruby kept everything the woman ever wrote, as far as I can tell.”
“Hmmm…” Cissy says, moving from desk clock to candlesticks to piano bench. “She might’ve been a friend of my mom’s from school or the club or something. Maybe she had a dalliance with Robert? I think there was a falling-out and I seem to remember the little brother was involved.”
“This Hattie person had quite the journalistic repertoire. Sports stories, makeup tips, opinion pieces about the war—Second World and Vietnam. Also, you’ll be pleased to know there are seventeen different types of dickies available for the adventurous dresser.”
“I really don’t know much about—”
Suddenly a slap of thunder shakes the house. Bess lets out a small cry and grips the sofa. Within seconds, rain begins battering the home.
“This weather!” Bess says.
Cissy casts a nervous glance toward the windows.
“It’s fine,” she says, unconvincingly.
Cissy yanks a strip of packing tape from its roll and bites it free. Ignoring the rain now assaulting the roof, Bess fishes the Book of Summer out from beneath Hattie Rutter’s bizarre amalgam of press clippings.
“Aw, hello book,” she says. “Not very summery today, are we?”
Bad news for Flick’s party, Bess thinks. That’s why Evan hasn’t texted back. Who goes on a boat in this weather?
“Bessie, are you helping over there?” Cissy asks. “Or are you snooping?”
“A bit of both. Cis, have you ever read this?” Bess asks, holding up the book. “In thirty years, I don’t think I’ve seen you open it once.”
“Of course I have. Here and there. It’s mostly just people talking about parties and hairdos. A nice keepsake but not particularly compelling.”
“What?! Come on, there’s so much more to it than that. Look! Here’s an entry about little Cis, dated June 6, 1964. Written by your mom … ‘We opened Cliff House today. About ten days late. Cissy had a Bobby Sox tournament. Her team lost two to one in the finals. The girls put forth a valiant effort, or so I’m told. I don’t know the first thing about it. Cis is quite aggrieved by the loss.’
“Bobby Sox!” Bess says, and glances up. “How precious!”
Cissy rolls her eyes.
“Pretty slow-paced if you ask me.”
“I’m delighted to learn you’ve had a long history of being aggrieved.”
“Please. Mother couldn’t tolerate any sort of ‘mood.’”
“And why would she?” Bess says, returning her eyes to the page. “You had Cliff House for that. ‘Our moods lifted the minute we arrived on-island. Right on time or days overdue, Cliff House gives me the same feeling every time. This is my forty-fifth summer at Cliff House, something north of four thousand days, but my stomach still somersaults with the thrill of it, the promise that our lives will change, if only for a season.
“‘The decades, the memories, only the best of these cling to the home, the bad spirited away on a swift ocean gale. Life’s not been perfect here, or anywhere, but no matter what’s happened, in spite of the business with Sam and all the variations of bad business before and after, my heart fills with unrepentant joy the moment the tires crunch on the shelled drive.
“‘Cliff House is a comfort. In the winter months you only need think: Well, summer’s not so far away. I can last until then. Whatever happens in the real world, Cliff House remains a permanent, never-changing promise. In this big house cemented on its bluff, we can return to the people we are supposed to be.’”
“I thought you wanted me to leave the house,” Cissy says, sniffling. “That doesn’t help.”
“Just hairdos and recipes, huh?”
Bess smacks the book shut.
“It’s funny,” she says. “That entry was made exactly twenty years, to the day, after D-day. I wonder why Grandma didn’t mention the date?”
“Why would she?”
“Well, it’s been twelve years since 9/11 and it’s still a pall over the day no matter what else is going on. One of my friends got induced on September tenth just to avoid her child having that birthday.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
The thunder crashes again. Lightning rips across the sky. When Bess looks up, she sees a tall man standing in the window bay.
“Motherfucking Christ!” Bess screams.
“Bess! What in God’s name?”
When Cissy spies the man, her face at once relaxes. She patters over to the French doors.
“It’s just my engineer,” Cissy says as she kicks open the door. “Hello, Mike. Sorry about the weather. I didn’t think it’d come down like this.”
A man in boots and a rain slicker stomps inside. He shakes himself off like a wet dog.
“Mike oversaw the relocation of Sankaty Head,” Cissy explains to Bess proudly, as if describing how her son hit a three-run homer. “He’s the best in the biz. Mike, this is my daughter Bess.”
“Hi, Bess,” he says in a half mumble. “Nice to meet you.”
“Mike is going to move Cliff House for us!” Cissy grins. “So, what’s the damage? How far back do we have to go and how much will it cost? Do you think a pool is feasible? I mean, eventually.”
“Cissy, no.”
“Fine.” Cissy flicks her hand at him. “No pool. But the other stuff we talked about…”
“I’m not moving this house.”
“Not you personally, but—”
“Cissy,” Mike says, sternly. He must have experience in Cissy-related matters. “You’re not listening.”
“I am listening! I’m a great listener! It’s one of my premier qualities.”
Bess scoffs from her corner of the room. Cissy doesn’t catch it, naturally.
“There’s no easy way to tell you this,” Mike says. “So I’ll just come out with it. I can’t move your house.”
“Then I’ll find someone else.”
“No one can.”
Cissy looks disoriented, like she’s in a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon and someone’s tried to blast her with TNT. There are practically symbols circling above her head.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“The bluff is too far gone,” Mike explains. “The soil might as well be quicksand.”
“But you’re testing it in the rain! It’s not always like this!”
“Well, if it never rained again…”
“And the geotubes. Don’t forget about the geotubes! Did you read that they’re going to approve my measure?”
“Yes, you e-mailed it to me three times.” Mike sighs. “Cissy, I really hate this.”
“Listen, move the house all the way to the street. No yard? That’s fine. I can hold my parties indoors. Do whatever you have to do.”
“I can’t move it any closer to the street.”
“Take out the privet hedge! I realize that I said to keep it at all costs but if that’s the cost of saving Cliff House, so be it.”
“Cissy,” Mike says again and takes a few steps closer.
Bess stands in place, ogling. He is a brave man to tell Cissy no.
“You can put in sandbags,” he says, and gently pats her arm. “You can take out privacy hedges. You can do both of these things but the fact is that this land is unstable. A pool, you ask? I wouldn’t put a bowl of good chowder anywhere on this property.”
“But isn’t there any way—”
“See that?” he says, and points toward the door. “My soil-testing kit outside? It’s pouring rain but I’m going to walk out there and grab it. I’m afraid it won’t survive the holiday weekend and I’ll be out fifty bucks. Never mind the kit, though. If I were you…” He looks at Cissy. He looks at Bess. “I’d get out. Now. You don’t have a lot of time left.”