Sunday Morning
Bess slams through the double kitchen doors and books it out to the patio, where she finds Cissy sprawled on a lounger, clutching a highball like it’s three o’clock on the French Riviera and not midmorning on Nantucket. Meanwhile, there’s enough rain and bluster around them to garner a special storm name. That there’s never been a Hurricane Cissy seems like a gross injustice.
“Hi Bessie-boo,” Cissy says, and picks up her drink.
The wind whirls so mightily that even Cissy’s iced tea is sloshing around in its glass, or what Bess assumes is iced tea. Cissy normally drinks vodka but you never know. Along with the drink of debatable content, Cissy has a copy of Gone with the Wind splayed across her legs. Gone with the freaking wind. How maddeningly on the nose.
Bess has no time for this now. She sprints to the edge of the patio, then stops short. Her heart scrambles up into her throat. The patio is smaller, yes? Closer yet. She stands shivering as the rain and sand drive sideways, prickling her face.
“The box,” Bess says. “Where is it?”
“What box?” Cissy asks, and sips her drink.
Sneakers clomp out onto the patio.
“Hello there, Evan Mayhew,” Bess hears her mother say. “I’d recognize those cocksure footsteps anywhere. You know, I don’t say it nearly enough. Or ever. But you’ve turned into quite a nice young human, sabbaticals in Costa Rica notwithstanding.”
“Uh, thanks?” he says.
“It’s a miracle since you have no mom and the world’s most obnoxious and pigheaded dad.”
“Cissy!” Bess whips around. “Jesus, you’d think you were the only person in this family to ever get dumped by a Mayhew.”
“Hey!”
“Mother. Where the hell is my box?”
“Hmmm.” Cissy shrugs. “I’m not sure what box you’re referring to.”
“A cardboard box.” Bess demonstrates its size, very roughly, with her hands. “I left it here last night. It was filled with Grandma Ruby’s china. There were mice or something in it, so I brought it outside.”
Bess retraces her steps.
“Then we started talking about the hookers … er, uh, about the demise of my marriage. Then it got dark—”
“Oh yeah, it got dark all right.”
“The sun set.” Bess rolls her eyes. “We went to get dinner and I completely forgot about it.”
“Strange,” Cissy says with another shrug. “Sorry I can’t help you.”
“Are you sure you didn’t move it? Maybe you don’t remember?”
Cissy laughs dryly.
“I’ve had enough box-moving,” she says, “to want to strike out on my own. But thanks for playing. It could’ve blown away? It’s kinda breezy today.”
“Breezy?” Evan says with a scoff.
“Cis, it was a box of Grandma’s china. I broke a sweat carrying it downstairs. It couldn’t ‘blow away.’ Even in this wind.”
Bess toes up to the edge of the veranda and cranes her neck out over the cliff. As her stomach somersaults, Bess reaches behind her, as if on instinct, and is surprised to find Evan within her grasp. She gloms on to him to steady herself, though the very touch of him topples her off-balance in an entirely different way.
“Is that it?” Bess squints.
Her eyes sting from the wind and the sand and a million other things besides.
“Oh my God.”
There it is, her box of china, scattered and cracked on the embankment. They’ve lost more bluff overnight.
“Cissy!”
Bess spins back around and staggers toward her mom as Evan conducts his own inspection. His hand flies to his chest and he keeps it there, as if trying to physically hold in his breath.
“Cissy, we have to leave. Now.”
Bess is almost panting.
“You sucked me in,” she says. “I’ve gotten too comfortable here. This is beyond dangerous. We’re losing feet by the day!”
“What’s a little patio?”
“Yes, it is now quite a little patio, that’s the problem. And God knows what’s happening to the foundation of the house. Cis, it’s pouring. Are you familiar with the concept of a mudslide?”
“It’s hardly pouring. By California standards, I guess. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“It’s probably time to get a little dramatic,” Evan notes as he backs up to the house.
This is a guy who climbs roofs for a living and his face has gone completely white.
“I know you’re still trying to find a new engineer,” Bess says. “And that’s fine. I’ll even help make calls! But we need to leave. The both of us. Now.”
“It’s over,” Cissy says.
“I know it’s over, that’s what I’m trying to say.”
“I can’t get anyone to relocate our home.”
“Oh, Mom,” Bess says, and frowns. “I’m sorry but…”
“I tried to figure out if I could move it myself, but in the end it’s out of reach. Oh, this poor old girl.” Cissy looks up at the porch’s ceiling. “She won’t see a hundred years after all. Why’d my grandmother make her so large?”
Cissy Codman just cried “uncle.” Bess never expected to see the day.
Everyone is quiet for a moment, no sound but the howling wind and little pieces of shell clicking against the windows. Cissy looks tired. Her eyes are sort of drifting, lolling about in her head.
“I’m sorry,” Bess says at last. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save the house.”
“Me, too,” Evan says, his voice hoarse.
“But you know what, Cis?” Bess feigns some spunk. “This will be fun!”
She walks a few paces forward and takes a seat at the end of Cissy’s chaise. Meanwhile, Evan inches closer to the door. Emotional women, a deadly house. There’s no decent way for this to end. And so Bess gives him a small wave, followed by a nod that says, Feel free to leave, we’ll talk later.
“We’ll have a grand time finding a new place,” Bess says. “How about Tom Nevers? Or Polpis? I’ve always liked how quiet it is up there, sort of like Sconset. But you really can’t beat the restaurants in town. Think of the meetings you could crash if you were only blocks away. And your charities! You haven’t done anything for the Home for Aged Sailors in forever.”
Bess looks up at Evan, who is partway through the door. Talk about moving a damned house. Cissy is her very own residence, a proper institution. And she was complaining about Cliff House being too large?
“I’m not leaving,” Cissy says.
“Oh, for cripe’s sake. We’ve lost a foot of bluff, at least, since yesterday. Frankly, I’m not staying here another night.”
“Thank God,” Evan mutters.
“We have to leave,” Bess says again. “And I get it. This has been your home, our family’s home, for all this time. It can’t be easy to pack it in. I’m sad about it, too. But loss is part of life.”
Bess wonders if Cissy’s reluctance to leave is also about Chappy, who’s lived across the street for sixty years. It must be, Bess decides. Because though he’s never lived there, Chappy is part of Cliff House, too.
“It’s fine to give yourself time to mourn,” Bess continues. “We won’t buy anything right away. You can stay at Tea Time, peruse the listings, and drive local Realtors bonkers with your crazy demands. When you’re ready to pull the trigger, boom.” Bess claps. “I’ll be on the first flight out to help you consummate the deal.”
“I’m not buying a new house.”
“Mother!” Bess yells at the sky.
It’s as if she’s stubbed her toe and wants to scream “fuck!” a million times until the agony goes away.
“Just buy a new friggin’ house!”
“I can’t,” Cissy says. “Because the money is gone.”
“Excuse me?” Bess drops her head back down and gawks at her mother.
Poor Evan is stuck in the doorway, coming and going at the same time.
“You heard me,” Cissy says with a sniff. She takes a sip of her drink.
“Your money is gone? I thought you had, like … millions or something?”
“Saving a bluff is no easy task,” she says. “And not a cheap one either. I poured every last dollar of my grandfather’s, and my father’s, into the SBPF.”
“Shit. Does Dad know?”
“Why would it be any of his business?” Cissy snaps. “That’s my money.”
Bess hears the door click. She looks up to see Evan still on the patio, in the wind and rain. He has officially picked a side.
“How’d you fritter away that much?” Bess asks.
“‘Fritter’? You make it sound like I spent it all on wine and fancy jeans. Elisabeth. Who do you think is paying for the various studies and commissions? The geotubes that are being installed next month?”
“Aren’t a lot of people contributing?” Bess says. “The city? The state?”
“All of those gave something. But I gave everything I had.”
“God,” Bess says.
Cissy gave it all she had indeed.
“I do have some money,” she says. “I’m not a complete moron and I like to eat and buy clothes on occasion.”
This last part is news, Bess thinks wryly. As far as she can tell, Cissy’s been wearing the same uniform for half a century. Maybe Red Sox baseball caps have a quicker replacement cycle than one might expect.
“All that aside, I definitely can’t afford to buy on Nantucket,” Cissy says. “When did everyone get so rich?”
“Wow. You are a local after all,” Evan murmurs.
“Cissy! Stop acting so cavalier!”
“Don’t panic, Bess. You won’t have to take care of me in my old age. I have enough to last me until I’m dead. It’s not so far away.”
“That’s not what I’m panicked about,” Bess says. “What about Dad? His firm seems to be doing, like, grossly well. His partner’s wife bought a house in Vail without asking. I’m sure Dad has plenty of cash lying around, too.”
“I’d never ask that of your father. I put my money where my heart is. It’s not his fault.”
“I get that. And I respect it, too. But you’re entitled to half of the Boston house! That could easily buy you a nice place here.”
“No, Bess.” Cissy sighs. “I’m not going to make your father sell his home.”
“He wouldn’t even need to sell it! I’m sure he has fifty percent of its value in ‘liquid assets’ somewhere. Isn’t that what people like him call cash?”
“No, Bess,” Cissy says again. “I’m not taking money from your dad.”
“Fine.”
Bess is pretending to agree but knows exactly what she’ll demand from old Dudley Codman the minute she sees him at the airport. Their marriage might be strained, or nonexistent, but he’ll give his whatever-wife something fair. Dudley-do-right or Dudley-do-the-bare-minimum. He’s not the warmest man but neither is he a bastard.
“Well, I can chip in,” Bess suggests.
“Didn’t that gigolo you married take all your money?”
“I suppose he did,” she says with a bitter laugh. “What about Clay? He makes, like, embezzler-level cash.”
“I’m not taking my son’s money, either. No, Bessie. This is where we leave it. The last home I’ll ever own. And as for Cliff House”—she takes another sip of her drink—“I’m going down with the ship.”
“What?!”
A blood vessel pops somewhere near Bess’s right temple.
“I’m not leaving this house,” Cissy says, “until they drag my dead, crinkled ass out of it.”
“You’re acting like a lunatic,” Bess says, jumping up and down, literally hopping mad. “What do you mean they?”
So it isn’t iced tea in her glass after all. Bess glances at Evan, whose eyes are wide like windows.
“The coroners,” Cissy says. “Or the geologists if they have to pick me out of the rocks and rubble.”
“Jesus Christ! Cissy!” She turns to Evan. “Can you believe this?”
“I cannot…”
“So you’re going to what?” Bess says. “Sit on this patio and wait to die? That’s a spectacular plan for an otherwise healthy woman. Physically healthy, that is.”
“My mental health is just fine.”
“This?” Bess points to her drink and Gone with the Wind. “This is not grit, Cissy. This is giving up. You’re giving up, throwing in the towel. The mother I know is incapable of defeat. And don’t you still have a bluff to save? They’re going to put in the geotubes and it is about the entire shoreline, right? Not just your house. Don’t prove Chappy right on this one. Don’t give that jerk the satisfaction.”
Bess catches eyes with Evan.
“Sorry,” she says with a wince.
He holds up both hands.
“Understood.”
“And Grandma Ruby?” Bess says, growing screechier by the second. “She’d be hot as a fired pistol. Stop your complaining, she’d tell you. For God’s sake, pull yourself together and get on with your life.”
“You don’t know the first thing about it,” Cissy says.
Bess thinks of the articles, and what Evan told her. It’s possible Ruby soldiered on with an alcoholic husband who was also a semicloseted homosexual. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t soldiering on. Maybe it was stubbornness and she chained herself to that marriage, sure as Cissy has with Cliff House.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Cissy says, scooting a hand beneath her rear. She produces a phone. “Your father is looking for you. He caught an earlier flight so you’ll have to pick him up. Soon, I think. Though I can’t remember the details.”
“Fucking hell!” Bess wails, then kicks in a few other swear words.
She’s never been much of a curser but Nantucket with its wind and sea lore has brought the sailor right out in her.
“I’m so tired and I can’t even…”
Evan walks over and puts a sturdy arm around Bess. On the chaise, Cissy wiggles to make herself comfortable. She picks up her book and begins to read.
“Oh my God! Mother!”
“Listen,” Evan says, rubbing her shoulder. “You need to take a nap. Shake this off.”
“But my mom!” Bess stomps a foot and Cissy releases a little snigger. “And my dad! Who, apparently, needs a ride from the airport.”
“I’ll take care of them both.”
“But…”
“It’s fine.”
“But…”
“It’s fine,” he says again.
Bess thinks that he might actually mean it.
“Be forewarned, Evan,” Cissy says, peering over the top of her book. “Dudley’s never been a big fan of yours. So, you know, don’t take offense to anything he might do.”
Evan yanks Bess toward the door before she completely loses every last bit of shit she has.
“Ignore her.…”
“By the way!” Cissy calls, always with a final directive. “Felicia’s present is on the dresser in my bedroom. Please bring it with you to the wedding since I can’t be there tomorrow.”
Bess makes a hard about-face, ready to charge the woman. Luckily, Evan is swift to stop her.
“Keep walking,” he tells her.
“Oh my God,” Bess says again, tears bubbling as he leads her inside and to the downstairs guest room.
It’s the spot farthest from the ocean and all done up in white, like a cloud.
“This started as a complete catastrophe and it’s gotten worse,” she says.
“I know.”
Evan guides her to the bed and Bess lets herself collapse onto it.
“Cissy’s just fired up,” he says. “It’s her pattern. The Big Show before regaining her faculties. I’ve seen it a million times.”
Either Evan doesn’t have a clue or he knows exactly what he’s talking about. It occurs to Bess that over the past few years he’s spent more time with Cissy than she has.
“It’ll be fine,” he promises.
Evan kisses the top of Bess’s head. She promptly comes down with a raging case of goose bumps. He notices and pulls a blanket over her.
“You’re exhausted,” he says. “So take a nap.”
“But the cliff…” she says with a small moan.
“Short nap. Thirty minutes, tops. I’ll get my guys over here. We’ll move your stuff, including your mom. Tonight you can stay at my place.”
“Your place? That’d never work,” Bess says without thinking, as she is already drifting away.
Sometimes you don’t know how tired you are until you actually stop to rest.
“Fine,” Evan says, getting grumbly. “Stay at Tea Time. A hotel. Whatever. You’re not staying here.”
In the end, Evan’s words will be more a prediction than an order. It’s true. Bess will not go on to stay at Cliff House that night, or ever again. Neither will she stay with her cousins at Tea Time, or with Evan himself, or even with her dad at the Wauwinet. On that night Bess will sleep in a place with markedly less charm than any of these.
Bess wakes from her dark and delicious nap feeling if not better, at least not so riddled with curse words and ire. She might be able to handle Cissy without the threat of impending violence.
After a few stretches, Bess pads to the downstairs bathroom, where she runs a brush through her long, straight hair. A few of Cissy’s blond, kinky ones end up on her shirt. Bess checks herself in the mirror. She looks a tad pale but otherwise not so bad. Of course, she’s not wearing her glasses, so that helps.
Bess tugs down her pants, realizing just how badly she needs to pee. She closes her eyes in relief. After what feels like minutes, Bess opens her eyes and reaches for the toilet roll. Then her gaze drifts downward and Bess lets out a scream. Her formerly white jeans, bunched around her ankles, are now completely caked in blood.