It wasn’t easy to sleep late in Nantucket. Our window shades were cheap—pale and thin and generally no match for the orange sunrise. The rooms that faced east, like mine, fairly glowed from 5:00 a.m. on a clear day. Then there were the birds, with their array of voices. If the songbirds signaling each other didn’t wake you up, the seagulls cracking oyster shells would finish the job. Arriving next, around 7:00 a.m., were the gardeners, with the whine of their weed whackers and hedge clippers. And then, a little before eight, the construction workers with their nail guns and saws. Whoever petitioned the courts to outlaw waterskiing and small watercraft in the harbor needn’t have bothered; the most annoying things on Nantucket were on land, not on the sea.
The morning after my father’s little escapade, however, I woke up to the rhythm of a basketball on pavement, followed by the squeak of backboard.
I woke up, rubbed my eyes, looked out the window. Where was this fresh hell coming from? I put on my shorts and a shirt and walked downstairs, out to the porch, where my mother and sister sat, not talking to each other, reading different sections of the Globe, pausing to sip their tea.
No one ever sat inside when they could sit outside. No one ever showered inside when they could shower outside. No one swam in a pool when they could swim in an ocean. No one drove a car when they could take a bike. There were no hammocks or chaises or ottomans. Only rockers, the chair that encouraged you to move. The mattresses were thin and unyielding. The toilet seats were unsteady and cracked. Everything about this house said Don’t get too comfortable.
So most of the time, on the porch, drinking a hot beverage, that was the only relaxing moment of the day.
“Good morning,” I said, my voice still froggy.
“There’s a quiche in the oven,” my mother replied.
“Then it’s an even better morning. What kind?”
“Bacon and tomato and—”
“I caramelized the onions,” Caroline said.
“I’ll engrave that on your trophy,” I said and sighed.
“The onions take longest,” my mother said, patting her hand. “They’re the hardest part.”
“Waiting is the hardest part,” I said. “When it smells so amazing.”
“Flattery will get you a second slice.”
“I hope so. Where’s the rest of the crew?”
My mother’s lips were set in a tight pair of lines I was all too familiar with. They were the only thing that stood between her propriety and her fury. Two thin lines.
“Well, your father broke into the Groves’ yard through a double-latched gate to help himself to their new basketball hoop, and your sister allowed her daughter to be his accomplice.”
“Wow. Heading to juvie already. Very impressive.”
“Maybe she takes after her uncle,” Caroline said.
“It’s not funny, you two,” my mother said. “It’s trespassing, and I don’t approve.”
“Mom, you’ve known the Groves for years.”
“That only makes it worse, Tom, and you know it.”
“Mom,” Caroline said, “honestly, with kids these days, I think we have to pick our battles.”
“Is that right?” she said with a sniff.
“There should be more yeses than nos.”
“What about battling with our neighbors? Don’t we have enough strife on that front?”
My father walked up the street, calling out, “Anyone up for a mountain bike ride?” His hair was sweaty, his face red, his smile wide.
“How about a walk on the beach,” my mom suggested.
“Or a jog!” my father said. “Sydney and I can race!”
“How about breakfast?” I said.
“Let’s go to the beach first!” my father cried.
There was no rest in these people. I was the only person named Warner who ever got tired. Caroline and Dad bounced their legs the same way when they sat; did they even know that? And my mother, well, she never sat unless she was peeling a potato or writing a letter.
“Fine,” I said. It was a beautiful day, and a walk on the beach was innocuous enough for Dad and alcohol-free for me and John. I think Caroline would carry a breathalyzer in her pocket if she could.
We crossed the street like a set of ducklings, in a row by height, John and I holding up the back, making sure Dad didn’t take a detour. Dad looked at everything differently now—every neighbor’s arched gate a portal, every Frisbee an invitation, each red plastic shovel on the beach an instrument of buried treasure.
My father was a child. Not the drooling aged infant we all fear, but a playful ten-year-old, when the joy of movement rang in your limbs, before adolescence hijacked your every thought. All the things Caroline accused me of—of perpetual college, of permanent boyhood, of Peter Panning—I saw now in my dad. And how much happier, how much more settled, would my sister be if she could do the same thing? Skip back to that time, before the whole world conspired against her to fuck her up permanently?
Caroline, Sydney, and John hunted for sea glass, my mother picked up trash, and Dad and I would have started skipping rocks if there had been more flat ones, but there weren’t.
“We should have a clambake,” my father said. “On July 4.”
“Yes, we should.”
“Remember the ones we used to have?”
“Yes.” I smiled. Dad would invite the whole neighborhood, and everyone would bring whatever they’d caught or dug up that day. Clams, mussels, striper. Bluefish if there wasn’t enough striped bass. We provided chowder, bread, and gin and tonics. I’d been taught how to make one at the age of nine. It was what Dad’s parents had done in ’Sconset, and he started the tradition in his new home on Hulbert Avenue.
My father didn’t know how to use a blender, boil an egg, or run the dishwasher, but he knew how to catch and clean any kind of fish. Not just from the boat, searching for the edge of the shoal, finding the hidden pockets, but also later, at dusk, straight off the beach. He taught every one of my friends how to use a fishing rod; even random kids on the beach could get a casting lesson. He always brought an extra couple of rods, and soon, there would be a line of us, hauling them in. He’d run to each of us, helping, enjoying the look on our faces when we caught a keeper. There was a physical satisfaction to it, like throwing a perfect spiral or hitting a line drive.
After we ate, we would sit around the bonfire until it died down, and Dad took all the kids out for ice cream. Not at the Juice Bar, because that was for tourists. We went all the way out to ’Sconset Market, and my father doled out the cones to all the kids, advising them on flavors, ruffling their hair, and pretending to take bites. Other kids loved my dad, which had only served to make my sister angry. She didn’t want to share him. He loved everybody, and that made her believe he loved her less.
“We never ran out of chowder,” he said, smiling. “Your mother always had more, no matter how many people came.”
“I never thought of that before.”
“Sometimes there were hundreds of people!”
“Dad, I don’t think so—”
“Yes! Lined up all up and down Jetties Beach on towels!”
“Okay,” I said.
“She could have sold it. I’d be a wealthy man.”
“You are a wealthy man, Dad,” I said, and he reached over and squeezed my hand, as if to say I was one of his riches.
My mother never told anyone what exactly she put in the chowder; she claimed to have a top-secret ingredient. Caroline had received the recipe on her wedding day, in a silver recipe box, and had told me the following summer: rum. Dark rum and Worcestershire sauce.
My dad and I waded ankle deep.
Sydney ran up to us, her sweatshirt gathered around her haul.
“Look at all I found!” she said.
“Hell’s bells,” my father cried. “It’s like sunken treasure!”
She held up shards of almost every color—brown, green, even aqua. I thought of all the parties it took to produce this much glass. How long it took to soften the edges of broken beer bottles, wine, whiskey. I liked thinking that some of these bottles, some of these eroded memories, were from me. I fingered the edge of a larger piece of brown glass; it was still sharp on one end, too new. Probably a damned IPA.
“That one’s probably too sharp,” she said. “I should put it in recycling.”
“Or you could keep it in your pocket as a weapon. To fight off monsters.”
“You’ve been talking to my mom,” she said.
“Au contraire. Your mom has been talking to me.”
She slipped the glass into the pocket of her jean shorts and smiled. I smiled back at her.
My dad turned suddenly and yelled back to my mom. “Alice,” he yelled. “Why the hell don’t you make chowder for us anymore? I miss that chowder!”
“Dad,” I said quietly, touching his arm, “we had it last night. And you had it for lunch.”
When we walked home, my father looked over at the Groves’ house hopefully. “Hey, guys,” he said. “How about another b-ball game?”
“No,” my mother said.
“Mom,” I said, “the Groves won’t care if Dad and Sydney use their hoop. They’re not even here.”
“How do you know?” Caroline asked.
How did I know? How to explain that one of the things I did every year was take inventory—of which house was occupied and which was not, scanning the neighborhood automatically, looking for lights on, blinds up, garage doors open or closed. It was a holdover from my youth when I needed vacant houses to smoke pot, drink, have sex with girls I met on the strip. Had the statute of limitations run out on confessing this?
“I did not ask you to come here early to gang up on me,” my mother hissed. “In case my intentions weren’t clear.”
“Mom, we’re not ganging up on you.”
“The hell you aren’t. I need your support, not your…your…conspiracy.”
Caroline’s face flushed red, as it often did when she was mad. She hated that visible evidence, always had. She’d run and hide when she felt herself blushing. She had never wanted anyone to know her. She wanted them to serve her, not know her. That’s what I told Matt Whitaker when they broke up. Matt carried a torch right up to her wedding, and then his. And coming over to our house every week, hammering and nailing, patching it up in all the broken places. I wanted to take him by the shoulders and tell him to give it up. You can’t fix her.
Now, John was Caroline’s indentured servant. I liked the guy plenty—he was a great guy. He was exactly who I’d pick to be my indentured servant too.
“He’s breaking the law.”
“Oh, come on, Mom. What’s the worst that can happen?” I said.
“He could be captured on camera and arrested for trespassing!”
“The Groves don’t have surveillance cameras trained on their basketball hoop.”
“Well, perhaps they asked someone like a neighbor to keep an eye out, and that person photographed the evidence and submitted it to the police! Then what?”
“What?”
“Well, you never know what your neighbors might be documenting, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, with a pervert on the loose, we can’t be too vigilant, can we? We should all keep our eyes open wide.”
I exchanged another glance with my sister. It was all I could do to not make the “cuckoo” motion with my finger and head.
“Mom,” I said with a sigh, “you have a very active imagination.”
“No,” she said sternly. “I have very sharp eyesight.”