When the doctor came in and pronounced my father dead, the three of us were in the worst part of the hospital, the saddest room in the universe—the space where they deliver bad news. I remember it was painted a soothing shade of blue, which didn’t matter. No one in that room ever sees anything. It’s all about sound—what they hear, what they say, how they shriek.
We’d been sitting, and then we stood up to listen to the doctor, then to hug, shed tears. No point in sitting back down again. It didn’t take long for the tears to stop, for pragmatism to creep in. In seconds, Caroline was blowing her nose, and Alice was out in the corridor, calling their island friends and Florida friends, sharing the news. John had stayed home with the girls. Caroline and I discussed next steps.
“I’ll coordinate with Mom and make the arrangements,” she said. “Maybe you could organize rearranging their condo, helping move his things. When she’s ready.”
“I’ll call the golf club,” I added. “And the one in Florida.”
“Fine.”
“Matt can help us with the house, of course.”
“Yes, of course.”
She got on her phone and tried to organize all our ferry reservations, and I let her.
I was sorry my father was dead. But I was glad to be leaving the island early; I couldn’t lie about that. I was tired of watching him and being blamed when things went south. I was glad there was no family portrait and no family chowder dinner we did every July 5. The rest of the chowder would rot in the cottage refrigerator until Matt found it and emptied it. And I’m glad we didn’t have to argue anymore about whether my dad was okay. Now, finally, we could agree.
And yes, I was glad I could finally take my phone off vibrate and answer the texts about the wine pairings for August parties and how they should outdo their friends. It’s one big competition, wine collecting. Anyone who thinks it’s about taste or terroir, or even about money, is fooling themselves. Competitiveness—that’s how I made my money. It almost seemed destined. I understood that trait better than anyone. But being glad to return to work doesn’t make me a monster. It makes me pragmatic, like dear old Mom.
“I’ve got to make a few work calls,” I said. “Bring them up to speed, let them know I’ll be out of pocket,” I said, and she nodded.
Finally, we were both off the phone, and we decided to leave, called a cab.
We went out to the lobby. My clothes were damp, and I had streaks of blood up and down my sleeves from reaching down to check Dad’s pulse. To lean in and tell him to hold on. He was still alive then, when I got to him, but barely. His head nodded slightly as if he heard me. Hold on hold on hold on, I’d said through my tears. Barely aware of anyone around me, my sister, John, the crowd that had begun to form. But had he held on up there, above the harbor? Or had he let go? Squeeze my hand if you hear me, Dad, I’d said. I thought I’d felt something, but maybe I was wrong.
Caroline’s clothes looked cleaner than mine. Khakis were wrinkled, grimy at one knee, but no blood on her blue, cabled sweater. And her smell—that clean, strawberry smell she had… Well, I was grateful for it suddenly. It covered up whatever else had happened in the room.
We waited outside for the car to arrive. My mother was still on the phone, making her calls. There were other people outside on their phones too, other people waiting in their cars with the windows down. Several men paced up and down, adjacent to the sidewalk. Here were all the somber faces of Nantucket, right here, nowhere else. Even when the boat ride was choppy, even when the planes dipped in the wind, no one looked sad or worried. Unless they were here. Other people who’d received bad news or mixed news and were waiting for the next thing to happen, to figure out what to do or where to go. No one gave birth here. No one got life-saving cancer treatment here. This was for emergencies. This was the only truly sad place on Nantucket.
A cab driver pulled up. The driver got out and asked if we were the Reillys.
“Nope,” I said, and he nodded. Some other poor family would be crying in his cab, not us.
He stretched elaborately while he waited, then looked inside at the lobby.
“They don’t show up, I can take you,” he said. “Where you headed?”
“Hulbert Avenue.”
“Oh, you’re a brave one.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the rapists and vandals down thataway these days.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hate crimes. Geez. That’s a word nobody used ten years ago, right? A crime was just a crime.”
Finally, the Reillys came out, carrying several plants and bouquets of flowers. They didn’t look particularly sad, and I wondered if one of them had gotten an appendectomy or something. An emergency that required a stay, that beat the odds.
We watched them leave.
“We’re lucky to get a ride home,” I said. “Seeing as how Hulbert Avenue is now the ghetto.”
“Right.”
I asked Caroline something innocuous, stupid, changing the subject, if Sydney was ready for school. She shrugged, didn’t answer, turned away. My mother stood at the other end of the sidewalk. She gestured with her right hand as she spoke, her gold bangles clinking. No Kleenex. No tears. All business.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Are you going to be mad at me forever?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“No. I think I have a right to know how long this shit is going to go on. Through adulthood, and childbirth, and now death?”
“Why are you rehashing this?”
“Because you rehash it every day we are together. Every day.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“Do you have any idea,” she said suddenly, “what it’s like to grow up with no one in your family believing you?”
“I believe you.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you told the police Connor Grinstaff was at a party that night. That you saw him walking there.”
“I thought I did.”
“Well, you thought wrong.”
“And I have apologized to you for that.”
“And who cares who it was, Tom? If it was him or just others? It happened, and you didn’t stop it!”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“How could you not have heard? How?”
“Caroline! You said he covered your mouth, that his hands smelled dirty, that—”
“The walls in that house are made of paper! Mom could hear me when I coughed!”
Caroline was the only person I knew who could look exactly like she was crying yet shed no tears. Her face, as pained as I’d ever seen a face, as sad and full of mourning as you could imagine, was dry.
I took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea how close a giggle and a cry are?”
“What?”
“The sound,” I said. “The difference between a girl crying and giggling, to a guy, the line is paper thin. I don’t think you realize how close they are. Not just when you’re young, but now. Still. I get up in the middle of the night sometimes, when we’re all together here, and listen outside Sydney’s room, just to try to make sure I’ve heard it right. Just to be sure she’s okay.”
“You do?”
“See? You don’t believe me either.”
“Touché,” she said softly. Or at least that’s what it sounded like. Because suddenly, finally, my sister seemed tired, spent, soft.
“And I know, Caroline, why you didn’t fight back as hard as people thought you would. Because I know the difference between guys who are there because they like you and guys who are there because they are taking advantage of you is hard to measure.”
“Spoken like someone who has taken advantage of a few girls.”
“Look, I know how young you were. I saw girls in college, twenty years old, who couldn’t figure it out either. And I know that Matt wasn’t the only boy you liked that summer. I know you were just…practicing.”
She took a deep breath. “Do me a favor, Tom.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t you ever, ever fucking say that to him.”