CHAPTER NINE

Sadie

Ever since I could remember, I’d wanted to leave Stoningham, because even though I loved it, I hated it. It was so smug. So content. So adorable. So assured of itself. In a way, it was like my sister, never questioning its value. Welcome to Stoningham. You’re lucky we let you in, the town seemed to say. If you play your cards right, we might let you stay.

The fact that my mother viewed Stoningham as an achievement, rather than a place, definitely colored my views as a teenager, when I felt it was my duty to think the opposite of everything she did. When I was little, it was paradise, of course—a rocky shore with a couple of sand beaches, huge stretches of marsh, land reserves, the gentle Sound always murmuring, that one part of the shore where the Atlantic roared in, unfettered by Long Island. There was Birch Lake, still so pristine and quiet, surrounded by old-growth forest with gentle paths for walking. We had the most beautiful skies, and they were my first paintings. Skyscapes in pastels or watercolors, those endless shades of blue, violently beautiful sunsets in the winter, summer skies smeared with colors.

But it was a small town. A tiny town, and so stuffy it was hard to breathe sometimes, especially if you were Juliet’s not-as-smart-or-athletic sister, or the daughter of Barb Frost, Queen of Committees and Volunteerism, daughter of John Frost the lawyer, and yes, related to that Robert Frost.

Being average was difficult.

I had one talent, though, and I would use it to get away, distance myself from the smugness, the familiar, the “aren’t you Barb’s daughter?” of Stoningham.

Looking back, it’s hard not to be a little embarrassed. Girl from tiny town in Connecticut goes to New York to become artist. Wears black and pierces nose. Fails to set the art world on fire. Becomes waitress, then teacher, then sells out. Eventually goes home to help ailing parent.

The thing was, I’d been sincere. At eighteen, my heart was pure, my determination boundless. I was talented . . . I’d won first prize in the annual Stoningham art show since I was fourteen and even sold three paintings at Coastal Beauty Art Gallery in Mystic. I’d placed third in the Young Artists of Connecticut Competition, Acrylics.

I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t draw or paint. I loved it so much—the smells, the textures, the way a single flicker of a brush could take you on a journey, how the slightest color variation could make all the difference. I loved mixing paints, the sweet perfection of a new brush, like the smallest baby animal, so soft and innocent and full of potential. I loved seeing something come from nothing. And not just something, but an experience. Not just a picture, but emotions, an entire story in a frame. There was nothing else I wanted to do.

Of course I was going to New York to study art! What other city in America was there for art? (Aside from Austin, Denver, San Francisco, Chicago, etc., but I was young and ill-informed.) New York it would be.

Dad was encouraging—“Of course! Follow your dream, sugarplum!” Mom was baffled.

“An art major?” she cried, as if I’d said assassin for drug cartel. “What are you going to do with an art major? Your sister is an architect!” Just in case I’d forgotten what Perfection from Conception did for a living.

Speaking of Juliet, who was also sitting in judgment, she laughed. “You’re adorable. Do you like living in cardboard boxes?”

“Have you ever been to a museum?” I asked in my oh-so-sophisticated way.

“I’ve designed museums, Sadie.”

“Then you should remember that they’re just places to hold art. Have you ever bought a painting? Seen a movie?” I raised an eyebrow at my mother in response to her snort of disapproval. “People who think art is a waste of time should have to live in a world without color.”

“Have you ever been poor?” Jules asked. “Ever eaten at a soup kitchen?”

“This might come as a shock to you, Jules, but money and luxury aren’t everything.” She’d just built her house on the water, tearing down an old gray-shingled cottage to construct what was admittedly a fabulous home with views from every angle. “You’re all very narrow-minded,” I said. “Except you, Daddy.”

“Well,” he said. “If you can’t follow your dreams now, baby, when can you?”

“See?” I said, hugging him.

“Oh, super, John,” Mom said. “She needs to have something to fall back on. Something practical.”

“What if she’s the next Jackson Pollock?” Dad said.

“Then she’ll kill herself in a car crash while drunk-driving,” said my sister.

“Keith Haring, then,” Dad said.

“AIDS.”

“Vincent van—ah, shit. Georgia O’Keeffe, then.”

“She lived to be ninety-eight,” I said. “Guess art isn’t always fatal. But I do appreciate the support.”

My mother would not be convinced. She wore my dad down until he agreed that I should double major in studio art and art education. I had nothing against teaching. I pictured myself in a Tribeca studio, allowing worshipful artists in every Saturday for a master class. At least one of them would be named Lorenzo and be madly in love with me. So off to Pace University I went. (Columbia and the School of Visual Arts had rejected me, thanks to mediocre grades, I told myself.) But hey. It was still New York, and I was going.

In doing so, I broke Noah Pelletier’s heart, and he broke mine.

High school sweethearts. The only boyfriend I’d ever had. Wise beyond his years, stoic, hardworking, a fifth-generation townie and my first love. He was wrenchingly beautiful—eyes so dark they were nearly black, full lips that made him look a little grumpy unless he smiled, and wild, curly unkempt black hair that framed his face.

We’d been friends since before I could remember. When we were small, we’d go over to each other’s houses to play once in a while, and as we grew older and play-dates stopped being a thing, he remained one of the nicer boys in school—quiet, good at sports, a mediocre student, like me. We sat next to each other in band during fourth and fifth grades, me on flute, him on clarinet, neither of us very good, though he practiced more. He always picked me to be on his team in gym class. Smiled at me during recess. Once, he got hit in the head with a baseball, and I walked him into the nurse’s office, holding his arm to make sure he didn’t fall. In junior high, we didn’t see each other much, since he was busy being a guy and playing soccer, and an art teacher had told me I had “a real gift.”

Then high school started. Something had happened to Noah over the summer. His voice dropped an octave and his hands were suddenly big and strong. He’d grown a few inches, and when he smiled at me, it felt . . . profound. I could practically feel my heart changing—a lifetime of good-natured affection suddenly turning into a pounding, beautiful ache.

In the front yard of my parents’ house was a beautiful Japanese maple tree, and in the fall, it grew so red it glowed. That was the color of my heart when Noah looked at me, and all freshman year, my paintings were filled with red and black, the black of his hair and eyes, the pure Noah-red of my love. Noah Sebastian Pelletier, he of French Canadian descent, a boy who looked as if he would’ve been at home in the Canadian Rockies on his own, sitting by a fire, watching the stars, the wolves surrounding him in recognition of his wild beauty and soul.

Hey. I was a teenage girl. It was my job to think this way. I dared not draw him, afraid my mother would find the pictures and lecture me about sex. Or worse, tell me I could do better than a blue-collar boy—Mom was such a snob, and couldn’t resist telling people that my sister had married a man who was somehow related to British nobility. My mother might call his mother and tell her we were too young to be in love, and that would be worst of all . . . because Noah was not in love with me.

Unfortunately. His gentle, “Hey, Sadie,” in the halls of Stoningham High, the occasional scraps of conversation about assignments or, once in a while, an amused smile when he caught my eye when our peers were goofing around . . . same as he was with everyone. There was nothing special between us, and it made my heart hurt in the most pleasurable way, pulsing with that pure, glorious crimson. Once, we sat together at the mandatory holiday pageant, watching Gina Deluca, who was two years ahead of us, do an interpretive dance of Mary giving birth to Jesus, and we laughed silently till tears ran down our faces, Noah’s hand covering his face as his shoulders shook, peeking at me through his fingers, both of us laughing harder in that wonderful, uncontrollable way. Oh, I relived that moment thousands of times. Thousands.

The summer between sophomore and junior years, I was fifteen, being on the younger side of my class, since Mom had kicked me into kindergarten when I was four. One sunny, perfect afternoon when the gulls drifted on air currents and red-winged blackbirds called to each other, I took my sketchbook down to the tidal river. The school fields were nearby, and I’d heard some sportsball type of yelling, but I was on another plane. When I was drawing or painting, I was adrift in the moment . . . It irritated my mom that she’d have to say my name over and over before I’d lift my head, but to me, it was the best, most beautiful way to be, alone in a world of my own making. I’d go for hours without eating or drinking. I could sit in the cafeteria at lunchtime and not hear a word . . . unless it was said by Noah.

This day, I was sketching with a new set of graphite pencils, a gift from my father, focused on the sway of the reeds and the curve of the piping plover’s head as it darted along the muddy edge of the river. The sun was hot on my hair, the gentle gurgle of the tidal river was music, and the quick steps of the little bird were so cunning and sweet. All of it flowed from my pencil onto the paper, and I was in a state of utter bliss.

Then a black-and-white ball bounced down the hill, and instinctively, I stopped it with my foot before it hit the river and was carried out to sea. It took me a second to put the pieces together: soccer ball. Intruder. Sports. Boys.

Noah.

He stood there, hands on his hips, his legs already a man’s legs, tan and muscled, appropriately hairy, which I suddenly found extremely attractive. Sweat dampened his T-shirt, and his cheeks were ruddy, his hair tangled and unruly and glorious.

“Hey, Sadie,” he said with a half grin, and my stomach contracted with a strong, hot squeeze.

“Hi,” I managed.

“Thanks for saving the ball.”

“Sure.”

He glanced at my sketchbook. “Wow. That’s incredible.”

The heat of pride (and lust) crept up from my chest, tickling my neck. “Thanks.”

He sat down next to me, taking the ball under his arm, the smell of his sweat and grass from the soccer field enveloping me. “You having a good summer?”

“Mm-hm.” My cheeks were hot, and I kept my eyes on the drawing to avoid melting into a puddle of lust. “Are you?”

“Sure.”

I sneaked another look at him. Long lashes on top of that wild beauty. His face had taken on more definition in the past year, and I had to swallow. I wanted to draw that face. Heathcliff. He was Heathcliff of the moors, if I ignored the Ramones T-shirt and gym shorts.

“I should get back,” he said.

“Oh, right. Sure.” My conversation game was red-hot.

“All right if I kiss you?”

I may have twitched. “I . . . What did you say?”

He grinned and half shrugged, so I leaned toward this wild boy, and our lips met, a soft, gentle kiss. The deep scarlet in my heart flared with such heat and beauty, I already loved him.

When the kiss ended, he rested his forehead against mine, his eyes still closed. “Wanna be my girlfriend?” he whispered.

“Okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

And that was that.

My parents didn’t mind too much; I was that age when kids started dating, and everyone knew the Pelletiers as a good, solid family. Besides, Juliet was pregnant, and our mother was obsessed with throwing her a ridiculous shower (as she’d been obsessed with the wedding two years before). Me having a boyfriend barely registered.

Noah’s parents didn’t mind, either. He was an only child; they loved him and welcomed me, seeing me as a nice girl for their boy, though his mom’s forehead did pucker when I mentioned traveling and applying to schools in San Francisco and Barcelona.

Noah had a job on the weekends; his father was a general contractor, and a lot of his work was expanding houses for the summer people that populated Connecticut’s long, gentle shoreline. He’d worked on Juliet’s house, in fact. Noah would put in long hours most Saturdays and Sundays, not returning till late, when he would come to my house or, if it was super late, to my window, tossing pebbles against the screen until I came out. In these cases, I was Juliet. Juliet Capulet. Or Montague. I always forgot who had which last name.

“Hey, Special,” he’d say softly, and that glowing red would pulse in every molecule of my being. You bet I’d sneak out to be with him . . . to the town green down the block, where we could lie on a blanket and kiss, or, in the off-season, to the dock of one of the summer “cottages,” the waves lapping and lifting us as we fitted together, wrapped so tightly around each other it almost hurt.

In school, his black eyes would rest on me like I was the only person in the world. My friends were jealous; not only was I dating the cutest, nicest boy, but he loved me, and made no secret about it. He loved me. When we were together, everyone else fell to the wayside, and every spare minute was given to each other. It made my friends irritable, but I couldn’t help it. I was smitten. Utterly, completely in love.

For our first Valentine’s Day together, I gave him my first big canvas oil painting—a periwinkle-blue sky just before sunrise, golden clouds tipped with the same color of glowing, lush vermillion that lit up my heart. He hung it in his bedroom and took down all his movie posters and memorabilia so my painting was the only thing on that wall.

Oh, the kissing, the sweaty tangle of young limbs and heated murmurs that painting saw . . .

In our junior and senior years, Noah went to a vocational school part-time, taking a bus to New London on Thursdays and Fridays to learn carpentry, since he loved woodworking as much as I loved painting. I thought we were perfect for each other, both of us artists, though he’d laugh when I said that and say making door frames or coffee tables wasn’t exactly art. Though I’d never thought of myself as unhappy before, being with Noah—so seen, so important . . . it taught me what happiness was.

He had one flaw: he wanted to stay put. He wanted life to be exactly like his parents’ and grandparents’. He wanted to marry me in a few years and raise a bunch of kids, preferably five. (How many teenage boys say they want five kids?) I loved that he saw us together, because I did, too. Just . . . not here. I pictured us traveling, hiking on the moors or walking through the streets of Rome, on the Great Wall, in the spice markets of Mumbai. How we would fund this was unclear, but we were young. We could, er, backpack or however it was that people without rich parents traveled.

But as graduation drew closer, things got a little prickly. Noah had no problem with my plans for the next four years, but there was always a hint of condescension somewhere in there. Like once I’d gotten this “see the world/live in the city” bug out of my system, I’d understand that Stoningham was the only place to be.

But there was no way on earth I wanted to live in the town I’d grown up in. A thousand year-round residents, thick with pretension because of the brushes with celebrity or true wealth—Genevieve London of the handbag empire; an Oscar-winning actress who spent all of two weeks a year in her six-thousand-square-foot house. I didn’t want to run into the same people on the same streets in the same places I’d already been every day of my life. Staying here was an admission of fear of something greater . . . or a total lack of ambition. Only people like Juliet, with her Ivy League degrees and brilliant success, could come back to Stoningham without seeming like a loser. Or so it seemed to me.

I didn’t want to be Barb and John’s daughter and Juliet’s not-as-amazing sister. I didn’t even want to be called “Noah’s girlfriend.” I wanted to be myself . . . with Noah, still my parents’ daughter, but I wanted to be Sadie Frost, yes, that Sadie Frost, the artist.

Change. The word was a siren call that filled me with an energy and thrill I couldn’t describe. When you grow up in Connecticut, you’re defined by the absence of things. We had hills but not mountains. A shoreline, but not really the ocean. Farms, but not exactly farmland. Cities, but either scarred by urban blight or too small to hold their own with Boston and New York just a train ride away.

New York. Oh, New York. All the songs were true. I wanted to be in the hard, glittering city, with its harsh reflections and sharp-toothed skyline, its roar and breath, to meet new people, to not have my family history ambling beside me, to be the only one who defined me. I was eighteen. I ached for it the same way I ached for Noah, with the same molten red longing.

The fact that he had none of this desire baffled me. I thought we were supposed to want these things. Noah did not. He was utterly happy with the idea of waiting me out.

I didn’t hate Stoningham, but God, it was relentless in its familiarity. Every street, every inch of shoreline, every type of weather was something I’d lived over and over and over. The sameness was squeezing the life out of me.

We didn’t make any promises about the future . . . Each of us figured the other would see the light. Their light. I went off to New York, and the first thing I put up in my dorm room was a picture of Noah and me, our arms around each other on the town dock, both of us smiling. His curly hair whipped in the breeze, and my eyes looked more blue because of the sky and water behind us. Breaking up was not in my plans. Ever. We were meant to be. We could find a way where we were both happy and fulfilled. We were different from other high school couples. Our love, I was certain, would last forever.

I was wrong.