Past the jutting rocks of the jetties, inside the harbor, the ferry always slows down, and my heart always speeds up. Anticipation. Dread. I come back every year despite this. Masochist? Maybe. Traditionalist, definitely. I am my parents’ daughter, more than I’d care to admit.
Over the years, the anniversary of July 5 had become slightly smaller and more compact, more silvery scar than bloody wound. I was so young, I didn’t even know the phrases then. Date rape. Nonconsensual. Witnesses. Corroborate. The language didn’t live in us. No one knew how to speak of it. And everyone had their own version of what happened, which seemed to shape-shift over time, even for me. The island could erode anything, bit by bit, year by year. There wasn’t a day I ever spent on Nantucket when the rolling surf, the waving sedge grass of the dunes, and yes, even the cloak of fog couldn’t paint over, just a little, whatever had happened before.
This year, we’d been summoned early, by my mother, and the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach deepened. I wondered whether my father was as bad as she’d said. If she was as tired as she’d claimed. It was impossible to picture either of my parents broken. My brother and I? Yes. Them, no.
My father, always athletic, helping us swing a baseball bat, a golf club, a fishing rod. Patient, I see that now, with all kids, not just his own. Like a teacher, he saw the good in kids, even when there wasn’t any. Kind, but wrong.
Still, Nantucket is a beautiful place, even when you’re hurting. A therapist I went to once, at the insistence of my husband—who means well, dear God, my husband means well—thought my collection of beach glass, mentioned casually, was a metaphor. Beautiful, but in pieces. Once jagged, but getting softer around the edges. When did you start collecting it? she asked. The tears threatened at the edges of my eyes, my hands curled into fists. What price would I pay for letting her in, for letting her know? That my childhood was spent collecting shells and rocks, but it changed the summer I turned thirteen. Of course it did. Everything can change when a girl turns thirteen.
My daughter, Sydney, would not be thirteen until October, thank God, and she wasn’t one of those precocious twelve-year-olds; she was a younger twelve. Dressed like a boy most days. Still looked longingly at horses, puppies, kittens. That kind of twelve. Some girls stayed that way, I knew. They grew up and became veterinarians, dolphin trainers, zoologists. They could become sailors or rowers. Like me.
I’d learned to swim, to row, to sail, to pilot a boat on Nantucket. My dad taught me, then encouraged me, nudging my way. The path led to my job as a crew coach, starting with hauling skiffs and sunfish on Jetties Beach. Renting equipment, working the sailing camp. I spent all day in a dark-green Speedo, sometimes all night, with a sweatshirt and jeans thrown over it. By the end of the summer, my hair was almost blond, and those tank suits were pale as algae, bleached down, used up. Different in August, always, than I was in June.
I forgot myself, my family, our foibles, in the rise and fall of the waves. And so did the kids I taught. It was amazing how people too young to know their multiplication tables, kids who couldn’t read above a fifth-grade level, could be taught to read the wind, the tides, the distance to shore. Some of them just had an aptitude for it. And the looks on their faces when they figured it out, as they tacked back and forth, as it all came about. Shining, proud. Every summer, we found a few who simply belonged on the water, who weren’t destined to stay on land. I suppose I was like my father in that way—believing in their goodness, in the possibility of their doing it right.
I was lucky. That first job had shaped me, had taught me, had led me to understanding young girls, to wanting to help them, and yes, desperately wanting to have one. To telling my husband, when I was two months pregnant, that I had to have a girl so I could have a do-over.
So yes, the island led me to everything I have. That it had also led me to things I wanted to shed was almost beside the point.
We were arriving first—to open the house, to get everything ready so my mother wouldn’t have to. But also, I knew, to see what was really happening with my father. When she phoned me, Mother said she hadn’t slept in a week. She’d had to keep watch over Dad every night; he’d been sleepwalking, going out into traffic, climbing ladders, like he was in some sort of dream state. The chemo had done this to him, she insisted. Rotted his brain, made him half-crazy.
“You mean he’s disoriented,” I said. I’d read about chemo brain after my friend Cynth, who was a lawyer, got breast cancer. That was her primary fear, not that she’d lose her breast, her hair, but her finely tuned mind.
“No, it’s more than that. He’s not fuzzy. Some days, he’s completely lost the plot. Doesn’t seem to know where he is. And taking terrible risks, like going up on the Harrisons’ pitched roof just to see the stars. And it’s worse at night, when I’m tired. He slips out in the night, wearing dark clothes, and I can’t even find him.”
“Do we need to layer in some care, Mother? Hire a nurse’s aide?”
My parents had insisted I not come to Florida during my father’s treatment, that they were fine, that the hospital and visiting nurses had been wonderful, that chemo was boring, boring, boring and nothing to trouble the children with. But of course, I knew: my father didn’t want anyone to see him that way. Even family. Even friends. Only my mother.
“He’s not disabled, Caroline. He’s not diminished. He’s…more, not less.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Now that the cancer’s gone, he’s too goddamned alive!” she said.
“Do you mean…sexually? Is he—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Caroline. Just do as I ask!”
And that was it: we did as she asked. We rearranged our lives, took Sydney out of camp three days early, cancelled John’s business trip to North Carolina, and drove all night to get on the next ferry.
My daughter and I stood outside on the boat’s deck facing the harbor, watching for seals and sharks and lines of seabirds. A few people walked on the narrow part of the beach; boats bobbed on their tethers. Our house peeked at us in the distance, its widow’s walk the tallest point on the street. Legend claimed widow’s walks were built to welcome men home from whaling ships, but any Nantucketer knew the truth—they were simply there to help chimney sweeps do their job. My parents had added theirs to the house decades ago to offer a permanent view. Painted it white to match the shutters and stand out from the sky. Our place to watch sunsets and fireworks. A place to see every boat coming in. They usually welcomed us from it, waving towels as we steamed into the harbor. This year, it was empty.
We turned the corner at Brant Point Lighthouse and waved back only to strangers—beachcombers, fishermen in waders casting into the surf—who greeted the ferry, hour after hour, day after day. Year after year. Here we come again. The salt air woke everyone up; the lighthouse made everyone smile. The town dock came into view, the boats gleaming, the lines of families waiting for the arrivals like a parade.
When we were almost docked, we went inside the cabin for our things.
John gathered up the spent cups, spoons, and plates from our snack bar lunch. Sydney ran to the bathroom one last time. The front section of the Inky, the Nantucket newspaper John always read before we arrived, was still on the table. I grabbed it to put in recycling, and John put his hand on my arm.
“No,” he said. “You need to read something.”
“What? Is there some new controversial zoning law forbidding sparklers?”
He pointed to a short news item.
Second Sexual Assault at Steps Beach
June 29 a sixteen-year-old girl reported being attacked by an assailant as she walked home from Steps Beach at 9:00 p.m. The unidentified man, described as over six foot, having a slim but muscular build, floppy blond hair, and wearing a polo-type collared shirt, tackled her and ripped her bathing suit top and cover-up as they struggled. The victim’s screams drew the attention of a dog walker above the beach, and when he called down, the attacker fled on foot, running toward Jetties.
Detective Billy Clayton declined to say if this assailant matched the suspect in a similar attack June 14, when a young woman reported being gagged with her bikini top before she managed to get away. When asked if police considered the two incidents to be linked, he said the investigation was ongoing.
For a brief second, I could feel the fear of the girl on the beach, taste the salt and coconut of the swimsuit forced against her clenched teeth. But I shook it away.
I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad that Billy Clayton was in charge of the investigation. Still the quiet type. Not giving anything away. I always knew he’d become a cop, but it was hard to picture him grown now, in charge, finally important. At first, I wondered why my mother, who subscribed to the paper and read it religiously, hadn’t mentioned these events to us. Then I came to my senses. Don’t believe everything you read was one of the mantras of our childhood. And my mother wouldn’t want to dredge up anything unpleasant during a family vacation. Couldn’t fathom raising the red flag over what was probably just hormones at a beach party. I could almost hear her saying that.
“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “no walking the beach at dark. We don’t need to tell Sydney why.”
John nodded. “Wearing a polo shirt,” he said. “Blond hair. God, it could be anyone.”
“They’ll investigate a bunch of islanders no matter what.”
“What?”
“The girl could have said he was wearing a blue blazer and carrying a Lexus key, and they’d still want to pin it on a local.”
He cocked his head, blinked at me. His long, dark lashes could take so very long to blink.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“But the police are islanders.”
“So?”
“So who is ‘they’?”
“This island runs on the money of summer people,” I said.
“Even summer people who attack girls on the beach?”
“Yes,” I said, my face reddening. I turned away from him as we disembarked, walked briskly, wove through the crowd, the tangle of dog leashes, the bikes.
We grabbed our luggage from the trolley and waited for a cab with all the other families. My brother, Tom, was supposed to be on the same boat, but he’d been delayed, as usual. I watched as other brothers and sisters and cousins embraced, three generations with cable sweaters looped over shoulders. Older men with tanned faces under their bucket hats, all of whom could have been mistaken for my father. Laughing, telling stories, making plans. Soon, they’d have drinks in one hand and the steering wheel of a boat in the other. My mother thought my dad was behaving erratically, taking risks? Please, he’d been taking risks his whole life. Isn’t that what drinkers do? Isn’t that what islanders do?
As a child, all I saw was that my father was fun, and my mother was mean. At home, I’d wait for him on the front porch like a dog, listening for the sound of his car in the driveway. And in Nantucket? There was not a lot of waiting; he was there, always.
Those late afternoons, when he tried to outrun the enormous car ferry in our little Hinckley boat, cutting across its path in the harbor, heading straight for the spit of Coatue. Tom and I screaming with terror and, yes, joy, as we barely made it, the ferry horn booming in our ears and its tall wake splashing over us, cooling our sunburned shoulders.
Taking us out for walks after dinner so we could stroll through the houses still under construction, climbing high onto plywood platforms, walking up uninspected wooden stairs, swinging from scaffolding like monkey bars. The “don’t tell your mother” that was always on his lips.
My mother was never with us on the nights he took us out in the old Jeep, open to the air, stars blinking above our heads, to check on a friend’s boathouse in Quidnet after a storm or to fish in the surf at Wauwinet, wherever the stripers were biting. Casting with sharp hooks in the dark while standing in roiling water wasn’t dangerous enough, no. After our jaunts, we went for ice cream, driving a specific way back so there was always a moment or two, thrilling in its own way, when he turned off the headlights of the car on the dark twisting island streets, cresting a rise too fast, just to make us scream as the earth fell away.
What I remember most wasn’t the menthol of the pink peppermint or the sticky sweetness of the cone. But the bourbon on his breath as he laughed loudly at our protests, half giggles, half cries.
My husband and I believed my mother’s warning could have meant my father was drinking even more—combined with meds. And also, just maybe, that something was wrong with my mother. She was tired, exaggerating, suddenly incapable, and she was blaming him. Or had she expected him to die? Prepared for it after his diagnosis, then was disappointed at this new second wind? When I called Tom to loop him in and go over our theories, he suggested that Mom make a video of Dad so we could see. As if my mother could work a camera. As if my mother even had a smartphone.
The cabbie drove through the strip, past the families at the bike shop, past the dressed-up couples at the White Elephant. When he pulled into the shell-lined driveway on Hulbert Avenue, the house closed up tight looked all wrong. Prim and serious. No crooked smile of an open window, no flapping towel on a line, no hum of the outdoor shower. We walked in solemnly, not exclaiming, not sighing, not calling for the dog or wondering what smelled so good in the oven. There was no dinner already cooking, no beach plum crumble cooling on a wire tray, no hydrangeas or wild roses in a vase on the table. All the little homey things my mother would do had not been done. No signs of life was the phrase that shot through me and chilled me whenever I thought about it later.
I had been a teenager the last time I’d been at this house when my parents weren’t there. When they’d leave for their cocktail party, and timing it perfectly, as darkness fell, Matt would come up the path and slip inside the basement door. The cold earth underfoot, the blanket we kept hidden among the tarps and tents. The blanket I burned after we broke up.
As we walked inside to the sound of no one and the smell of nothing, I felt a shiver run up my spine. This is what it’ll be like when they’re dead, I thought. Sydney ran upstairs, and my heart sank; my mother had always left Sydney a little present on her bed. I should have remembered; I should have brought something for her. I went up after her, hoping to stem her disappointment.
“Mom, look!” Sydney cried.
“Wow,” I said.
“How did she do that?”
“Grandmas are smart,” I said. But I wondered myself—had my mother outsourced that task to Maggie? Or Matt Whitaker?
Two packages. The first, a Nantucket rope bracelet. The same type of braided circle I’d worn down till it fell off most summers, gray and frayed. She put it on her arm with a smile. Matt probably knew what kids liked on Nantucket, knew from his clients, from observing kids down on the strip, up to no good while their parents shopped and ate dinner. Heck, I thought, he probably knew how to make the bracelets and whipped one up at my mother’s request. Matt had always done anything my mother asked, trying to get in her good graces. But that was an impossible task. Didn’t keep her from enjoying watching him try, over and over all these years. Keeping him on a leash, using me as bait.
Sydney opened the next package and pulled out a blue tank top edged in small red and gold sequins.
“Wow,” she said. “For July 4!”
I frowned. It was tiny, cropped, as if my mother had forgotten how old my daughter was.
“Will that fit you, honey?”
“Yes, it’s stretchy, see?”
“Oh, is it a workout top?”
“No, Mom,” she said. “It’s sparkly! For the holiday.”
“Yes, it is. It certainly is.”
I had the distinct impression this was an item a cheerleader or drum majorette would wear, but that thought sounded so much like it came out of my mother’s brain, I had to squelch it.
I put my suitcase in the green room at the top of the stairs, the one that afforded the least privacy but the most sun. I was always cold in Nantucket. But it was late, and the sun was gone in my east-facing room. It had all moved west, shining upstairs in the Eaves Room. I didn’t go up there much, cold or not. When I look at those snapshots, forty of them now, three-by-fives lined up around the room, all I see is what’s missing. What I wish was there. To the rest of them, it’s just family portraits. To me, it’s evidence.
I started putting my clothes away, and so did Sydney. The clank of brass drawer pulls chimed like bells, so loud, I didn’t hear John coming up the stairs with the mail, brandishing the single envelope in his hand as if it was good news, a birthday card, a check.
Not a letter from a lawyer, addressed to my father.
I ripped it open without a single thought. John read it over my shoulder, going faster than me, drawing his own conclusions. He put his hand on my shoulder, tenderly, as I was just getting to the last paragraph.
The letter had been sent on behalf of one Robert “Bear” Brownstein, who lived behind us and apparently thought he owned the entire block.
I scanned it quickly, then looked up at John. “What the hell kind of nickname is Bear?”
“Said the daughter of a man named Tripp.”
“Not the same and you know it.”
“Robert. Rob-bear-t.”
“Ugh.”
John took the letter, folded it, slipped it back in the envelope for my mother. We’d have to tell her, of course. But I think we both wished we could reseal it and put it back in the mailbox and pretend it wasn’t there.
“Someone threatens to sue your parents, and you’re wondering about the provenance of his name?”
“It’s a mistake,” I said.
“The suing? Or the name?”
“Both,” I said.