What are we talking about in 1997? Princess Diana; Harry Potter; Madeleine Albright; the Hale-Bopp comet; Lima, Peru; Tony Blair; Google; Gianni Versace; “I’m the king of the world!”; Garuda airlines; Brett Favre; Hong Kong; Notorious B.I.G.; “Candle in the Wind”; the Heaven’s Gate cult; Louise Woodward; John Denver; Promise Keepers; Mulder and Scully; Chris Farley; Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson.
On the third weekend of June 1997, Jake McCloud and Ursula de Gournsey are to be married in South Bend. The ceremony will be held at the Log Chapel on the campus of Notre Dame, and a small wedding dinner will follow at Tippecanoe Place. Mallory has learned these particulars because Cooper is serving as Jake’s best man. Mallory asked Coop for details in a casual way. Are there groomsmen? Only one, apparently, Ursula’s brother, Clint. And who is Ursula’s maid of honor?
Cooper has no idea. “Her mother, maybe?”
Her mother? How bizarre, how bizarre, Mallory thinks. (This was her students’ favorite song this past year and the lyrics are an unwelcome earworm.) Or maybe what’s bizarre is that Mallory would never in a million years ask Kitty to be her matron of honor.
“Is Jake excited?” Mallory asks. Her voice is tense, but Cooper won’t notice.
“Excited?” Cooper says. “I don’t know. Do you get excited about marrying someone you’ve been dating for sixteen years?”
Mallory can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Jake’s wedding weekend is the only weekend of the summer—of the past four summers—that Leland is able to come to Nantucket for a visit. She and Fiella arrive at six o’clock on Friday. Mallory drives down to Steamboat Wharf to pick them up from the ferry.
“That took forever,” Leland says. “Five hours on the highway and two on the boat.”
“Why didn’t you just fly?” Mallory asks. She checks behind Leland for Fiella. She’s nervous to meet her, not just because Fiella is her best friend’s lover and she wants to make a good impression but also because she’s famous, a real famous writer. Fiella’s first novel, Shimmy Shimmy, is being made into a movie starring Angela Bassett and John Malkovich, and her second novel, Cold Ashes of the Heart, was picked for Oprah’s Book Club and has been sitting at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for twenty-seven weeks.
Mallory spots Fiella halfway up the gangplank, surrounded by college-age girls who are asking for her autograph. It’s not surprising that she’s been recognized because her looks are so distinctive. She has deep copper-colored skin and corkscrew curls that start dark brown at her part before turning golden at the ends. She’s wearing a bright orange halter dress that puts her breasts on perfect display. Honestly, Fiella Roget is even more breathtaking in person than she is in photographs or on TV (Mallory has seen her on both Oprah’s and Jay Leno’s shows).
“Fifi didn’t want to fly,” Leland says irritably. “She wanted to ‘experience the journey over water.’”
“I can see that, I guess,” Mallory says. No sooner does Fiella sign an autograph for one person than another girl appears in her place and Mallory wonders if Leland has to deal with this everywhere they go and also if they’re ever going to make it off the dock and back to the Blazer.
Eventually Leland has to wedge herself into the crowd and yank Fiella free, causing a bit of a scuffle.
“Personal space!” Leland shouts at a perky blond girl in a Tarheels T-shirt who’s holding a paperback copy of Shimmy Shimmy. “We’re on vacation!”
Still the girl thrusts the book at Fiella, and still Fiella seems happy to sign it. Then she eases out of the crowd like she’s slipping off a silk robe and offers her hand and a radiant smile to Mallory. “Sorry about that,” she says. “I’m Fifi and you’re Mallory. I know because I’ve seen all the photographs of you and Lee from growing up. I couldn’t be happier to meet you.” Her voice makes Mallory shiver. Fiella—Fifi—has the slightest French Creole accent. The woman is majestic; she is royalty. Mallory can see why Leland fell in love with her.
“Honestly, I’m sick of it,” Leland says on their way through the parking lot. “They sat on the boat ogling you for two hours but they only screwed up the courage to approach you as we were disembarking?”
“They’re harmless,” Fifi says, waving away Leland’s complaints. “Plus they pay the bills. Anyway, look at this charming place! Aren’t we just the luckiest creatures on earth. Thank you, Mallory, for inviting us.” They come upon the Blazer, freshly washed and waxed and vacuumed for their arrival. “Oh, is this our chariot?”
“Please,” Leland says. “Talk like a normal person.”
It’s fun entertaining houseguests when one of them is as enthusiastic as Fiella Roget. Fifi sits in the front of the Blazer while Leland rides in back with the luggage; when Mallory peers in the rearview mirror, she sees Lee glowering, a look Mallory knows only too well. Still, she assumes it must be humbling, and maybe even demoralizing, to have a famous girlfriend—especially for someone like Leland, who is used to being the center of attention. But surely Leland has grown accustomed to her role. She and Fiella have been together for over two years.
Fifi pulls a clothbound journal out of her leather satchel and starts scribbling things down even as the Blazer bounces over the ruts in the no-name road.
“Stop!” Fifi cries. Mallory hits the brakes, thinking Fifi is uncomfortable or she’s forgotten something back on the wharf, but Fifi jumps out of the car, runs to the banks of the pond, picks a fuchsia blossom off a rugosa bush, and inhales the scent.
“Look at this, Lee!” Fifi cries out, holding her hands over her head. She seems to be hugging the entirety of the landscape—the flat blue mirror of the pond, the electric green of the surrounding reeds, the pink and white explosion of the rugosa rose.
“It’s called nature,” Leland says. She does not look amused.
At the cottage, Fifi spends a long moment taking in the vista of the beach and ocean, then she turns her attention to every detail inside. Mallory has done a proper spring cleaning. She bought a new duvet and sheets for the bigger guest room. There’s a crystal pitcher and glasses on one nightstand and a bouquet of wild irises on the other. Over the winter, Mallory had her sole bathroom renovated; now there’s clean white subway tile, a new vanity instead of the pedestal sink with the rust stain that was impossible to get out, and a new toilet with a slow-closing lid—such a luxury! Mallory kept the porcelain claw-foot tub because her contractor Bob (who has such a thick New England accent that Mallory thinks of him as “Bawb”) said that it was in good shape and would be hell to replace. Mallory got some new throw pillows to soften up the unyielding green tweed sofa and she placed a jar of shells and beach glass on the coffee table next to Cary Hazlegrove’s book of Nantucket photographs. She bought Russian River chardonnay for Leland and a bottle of Bombay Sapphire for Fiella, who drinks only gin over ice. Mallory made a layered fruit salad and baked Sarah Chase’s orange-rosemary muffins, which she’ll serve for breakfast with homemade honey butter.
Fifi exclaims over the cottage, the shells, the narrow harvest table, the bowl of peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots—and then the wall of books.
“My God,” she says. “I’m never leaving.”
Leland emerges from the bathroom. Mallory gives her friend a hug and whispers, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m happy to see you.”
Leland pulls away, and her expression says it all: Leland is suffering. Fiella takes up all the oxygen in every room.
“Tim Winton, The Riders?” Fifi says, pulling the book off the shelf. “I’ve been desperate to read this!”
Mallory nearly snatches the book from Fifi’s hand. It was Jake’s Christmas present to her this past year. This is by a man too. But it’s good anyway. XO, Jake.
“You’re welcome to borrow any books but the four on that shelf,” Mallory says.
“Why?” Leland says. “Are those sacred?”
Fifi replaces The Riders. “I feel the same way about certain books,” she says. “Song of Solomon. The Bone People. All of my Jamaica Kincaid.” She plucks a book from the shelf below. “The new Mona Simpson! Okay if I borrow this?”
“Yes!” Mallory says. “I loved it.”
“Wine, please,” Leland murmurs.
Mallory mentions that she has tuna steaks marinating and a fresh baguette and fixings for salad. “Or we can go out,” she says. “I’m friends with the bartender at the Blue Bistro and he has a table for us at eight o’clock if we want it. But I didn’t want to assume…” Mallory looks at Leland. “Did you two make other plans?”
“Other plans?” Fifi says. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mallorita, we came to Nantucket to spend time with you. So that I can get to know you. Of course we’ll stay in; we’ll eat the beautiful meal you prepared and we’ll talk all night and share our deepest secrets.” Fifi takes Mallory’s hand in both of hers and Mallory looks down to see their fingers, dark and lighter, wound together. Mallory is mesmerized, but when she looks over Fifi’s shoulder, she sees Leland rolling her eyes.
They pour wine, snack on the salt-and-pepper cashews that Mallory made earlier in the week.
“When did you learn to cook?” Leland asks. “If memory serves, you couldn’t even operate your Easy-Bake Oven.”
“Stop it, darling,” Fifi says. “You sound like a petulant witch.”
“I taught myself,” Mallory says. “It’s quiet here in the winter.”
They toss a salad, heat the bread, grill the tuna, shake up a vinaigrette. Mallory lights the sole votive candle. They raise their glasses.
“Thank you both for coming,” Mallory says. “I’m so happy you’re here.” As they touch glasses, Mallory realizes this is true. She has barely thought of Jake and Ursula’s rehearsal dinner—which is being held at a pizza parlor called Barnaby’s—at all.
During dinner, Mallory tries to keep the conversation focused on Leland.
“So,” she says. “How are your parents?” What she really wants to know is: How do the Gladstones feel about Leland and Fifi together?
“They’re getting a divorce,” Leland says.
Mallory sets down her fork. “What?”
“My father is sleeping with Sloane Dooley,” Leland says.
It takes Mallory a minute. Sloane Dooley? Fray’s mother, the disco dancer and maybe cocaine addict? “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Not kidding,” Leland says. “My mother seems to think it’s been on again, off again for a long time. Like maybe even since Fray and I were together.”
“I can’t believe this,” Mallory says. She cannot, in fact, believe this. Steve Gladstone and Sloane Dooley sleeping together? Maybe even way back when Mallory and Fray and Leland and Cooper were all in high school? “When did you find this out?” What Mallory means is why didn’t Leland call her when she found out? And why didn’t Kitty call her? But then Mallory remembers that Kitty has called, three times in the past few weeks, and left messages begging Mallory to call her back, messages that Mallory ignored.
“End of May,” Leland says. “Geri went to the Preakness with the Ladies Auxiliary and she came home to find my dad and Sloane in the hot tub together.”
“Geri is a wreck,” Fifi says. “We almost brought her up here with us.”
“That was Fifi’s idea,” Leland says. “I didn’t entertain it for a second.”
“So you and Geri…” Mallory says. “You’re close?”
“Best friends,” Fifi says. She holds up two crossed fingers. “But then, I love Steve too. I think his involvement with Sloane is such a betrayal.”
Mallory is stopped by that. Fiella Roget considers Steve’s affair with Sloane Dooley a betrayal? This statement sounds grandiose and self-important. Fifi doesn’t even know them! She didn’t grow up on the same street with them!
“Steve is crap,” Leland says morosely. “Sloane is worse crap. They’re moving into a place in Fells Point.”
“Whoa,” Mallory says. She tries to summon the memories she has of Sloane. Their school bus stop was in front of Fray’s grandparents’ house and Mallory vividly recalls that one frigid morning, a taxi pulled up and Sloane emerged, wearing only a purple lace bra and jeans under a loosely belted leather coat. She remembers Sloane going away to St. Michael’s for the weekend with a man who worked for Alex Brown, Senior wondering aloud if she was being paid for her time. Sloane smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and liked KC and the Sunshine Band. That’s the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it! Sloane Dooley hovered around the edges of their lives, acting scandalously, then disappearing.
The Gladstones, meanwhile, had been like second parents to Mallory. She remembers the day Steve came home with the convertible Saab and asked Leland and Mallory if they wanted to go for a ride. He’d bought the car on a whim, without telling either Geri or Leland, and Mallory had been startled by that. (Senior and Kitty didn’t even bring a pizza home on the spur of the moment.) Geri had called it Steve’s midlife crisis, and now Mallory wonders if maybe Steve bought the car to impress Sloane Dooley.
Mallory feels a deep sorrow. She had assumed that the Gladstones would stay together season after season, year after year, in their house on Deepdene Road. The life they’d created seemed normal, happy, and, above all, permanent. Whenever Mallory thought of Leland’s parents, she pictured Steve setting out the recycling bins as Geri climbed into her Honda Odyssey dressed in her tennis whites. The Gladstones hung Christmas lights; they had a house account at Eddie’s. They skied and went on European river cruises. When they went to visit Leland in New York, they took her to a Broadway show and then out to dinner at one of Larry Forgione’s restaurants. Apparently, news of Leland’s relationship with Fiella Roget hadn’t bothered them in the slightest. They both embraced Fiella—and how wonderful is that? Mallory is horrified that slatternly, slothful Sloane Dooley has managed to pry the Gladstones apart. Maybe there was a loose seam or a fault line—or maybe the problem is marriage itself. Marriage is a gamble with even odds; half the time it works, half the time it doesn’t.
Mallory throws back what’s left of her wine and goes to the fridge for another bottle. She’s glad she’s not the one who’s getting married this weekend.
The talk turns to Fiella, which feels inevitable. Fiella Roget learned the “art of storytelling,” as she puts it, at her grandmother’s feet. Fiella grew up in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, with one new cotton dress and one new pair of sandals per year. She had a rag doll named Camille that she dragged everywhere and a picture Bible. Her favorite story was Daniel in the lions’ den.
“If you think about it,” she says, “Shimmy Shimmy is just a postmodern retelling of that story from the perspective of a young woman of color.”
Leland’s eyelids flutter closed—clearly she has heard this a few thousand times—and although Mallory could listen to Fifi all night, she knows she should gracefully end the evening.
“I’ll clear the dishes,” she says. “You’ve had a long day. Sleep as late as you want tomorrow. I go running early, but I’ll set out things for breakfast.”
“Leland will go to bed,” Fifi says. “But I’m a natural night owl. I’ll help you clean up. One more glass of wine and I’ll spill the salty stories—losing my virginity to Mr. Bobo the loan shark, then stealing money from his wallet in the night. He was a heavy sleeper and I never got caught, though I shudder to think what would have happened if—”
Leland clears her throat. “Fifi, stop.”
“I can handle the dishes,” Mallory says. “But thank you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mallorita,” Fifi says, picking up the breadbasket. “Let me help you.”
“Mallorita” seems to be her new nickname, which is fine, though Mallory is sensing some pretty heavy static coming from Leland. Mallory and Fifi start washing the dishes and wrapping up the leftovers. It’s nearly eleven, and Mallory wonders if the rehearsal dinner in South Bend is over. Are Jake and Ursula spending the night separately? Do people who have been together for so long follow the usual traditions? Mallory guesses yes. Ursula will stay at her mother’s house and Jake and Cooper will stay with Jake’s parents. The wedding is at five o’clock the next evening. Mallory isn’t sure how she’s going to feel tomorrow at six o’clock, when Jake is officially married. Will all of her love, longing, guilt, joy, misery, and confusion condense inside her? Will her heart become a black hole? Or maybe she’ll feel exactly the way she does now—numb. Jake isn’t hers; he has never been hers. Their time together is something she borrows. Or, okay, steals.
The bedroom door slams, startling Mallory so badly that she cuts her finger on the serrated bread knife. A line of blood rises. It’s not bad, but still—what the hell? Mallory spins around, sucking her finger. Fifi is standing at the head of the harvest table, the last of the dirty silverware clutched in her hand like a postmodern bouquet of flowers.
“Please excuse her,” Fifi says. “She’s throwing a tantrum.”
Mallory doesn’t need to ask why; she knows why: Leland is jealous. Fifi paid too much attention to Mallory, and Mallory was unsuccessful in reflecting that light back onto Leland. Mallory wonders if this happens often, maybe even every time they’re out with someone else.
“I cut myself,” Mallory says.
“Let me see.”
“No, it’s fine. I just need a Band-Aid.”
“She’s insecure,” Fifi says. “I have to admit, I’m starting to find it tiresome.” The statement is an invitation for Mallory to join Fifi in some Leland-bashing. There’s no denying it’s tempting. Leland has real flaws—but then, so does everyone. And Leland must be traumatized about her parents’ split and her father’s relationship with Sloane Dooley, of all people. Can anyone blame Leland if she feels sensitive, even suspicious?
“I’m going to bed,” Mallory says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Mallorita.”
The nickname instantly becomes cloying. Fiella Roget hasn’t known Mallory long enough to bestow a nickname on her. But this is how she draws people in, how she wins them over, makes them feel special.
“My finger,” Mallory says. “I’ll see you in the morning. Stay up as late as you want, but please don’t go walking on the beach.”
“Is it not safe?” Fifi asks.
“It’s safe, but…”
“You’ll worry?” Fifi says. “That’s sweet.” Before Mallory knows what’s happening, Fifi takes Mallory’s wounded finger into her mouth and sucks on it gently. Maybe it’s the effect of the wine, but Mallory has the sensation of stepping out of her body and watching this interaction from a few feet away. She sees herself with her finger in Fiella Roget’s mouth. Her first thought is How bizarre, how bizarre, which makes her want to laugh because, guess what, kids, this really is bizarre. Mallory’s finger instantly feels better, held tight by Fifi’s lips and tongue.
The bedroom door opens and Fifi quickly but gently removes Mallory’s finger from her mouth and pretends to study the cut.
“What’s going on out here?” Leland asks.
“Nothing, mon chou,” Fifi says. (The whole history of the world, Fiella has come to realize, is a matter of timing. Five more minutes and she might have been able to kiss adorable, straight-as-a-pin Mallorita. There’s no denying that, for Fiella, there is still a deep thrill to be found in such conquests.) “I’m coming to bed.”
The next morning, when Mallory gets home from her run, she hears Leland and Fifi screaming at each other. They’re in the kitchen; Mallory can see them through the screen of the back door. Leland is wearing white silk pajama shorts and a matching camisole. Fifi is naked. She’s standing in a shaft of sunlight that makes her skin look like molten gold. Fifi’s breasts are firm and upturned; her stomach is a smooth, flat plane with a dark oval divot for a navel. Fifi’s lower half is blocked from view by the counter.
“You’re trying to seduce her!” Leland says. “Not because you’re attracted to her, not because you find her interesting…you’re doing it to make me angry!”
Mallory’s eyebrows shoot up. Wow.
“She’s your friend,” Fifi says. “I want to know her.”
“Oh, right,” Leland says. “Like you wanted to know Pilar.”
“Pilar was a mistake,” Fifi says. “Anyway, Mallory is straight.”
“I was straight until I met you!” Leland says. “Every woman is straight until she meets you. And Mallory is particularly suggestible. Easily swayed. I told you that before we got here. She’s a follower—”
“I think you might be wrong about that. She has spunk. She’s uncomplicated, maybe, but she’s hardly a doormat. She reads—”
“She reads what people tell her to read,” Leland says. “The entire time we lived in New York, she borrowed a book as soon as I was finished with it.”
“The point is, she’s harmless,” Fifi says. “And she’s nice. You should try being nice sometime—”
“Ha!” Leland says. “If I were nice one day, you’d leave me the next—”
“Oh, do shut up, Leland,” Fifi says. The name on Fifi’s tongue sounds like a taunt, probably conveying Fifi’s disdain for her lover’s WASPy-ness.
“You shut up!” Leland says.
Suddenly they start kissing, and then Leland’s mouth travels down to Fifi’s breast. Mallory is trembling with rage and humiliation and other feelings she’s probably too uncomplicated and nice to identify.
“Hey, is anyone awake?” Mallory yells through the screen. She stamps her sandy sneakers against the welcome mat to give them a moment to compose themselves, and by the time she steps inside, Leland is standing at the counter pretending to inspect the platter of muffins. Fifi has disappeared into the bedroom.
“Hey,” Leland says, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “How was the run?”
“It was…nice,” Mallory says, hitting the word with a sledgehammer. “So, listen, I’ve had a change of plans. You guys are on your own today and probably tonight as well.”
“Change of plans?”
“Yes,” Mallory says. “And unfortunately, I’m taking the car, but there are two bikes, or you can call a taxi. The numbers are listed in the phone book.”
“Mal,” Leland says. She knows, or suspects, that Mallory overheard, and now she’ll backpedal, apologize, or, worst of all, downplay what she said and try to persuade Mallory that she meant something else.
“Forget that,” Mallory says. “I’ll bike. You two can take the Blazer.”
“Mallory.”
But Mallory is having none of it. She goes into the bathroom, grabs a towel, and heads for the outdoor shower.
An hour later, Mallory is sitting at the bar at the Summer House pool drinking a Hokey Pokey, which was purchased for her by the man sitting next to her, Bayer Burkhart. The name Bayer, he tells her, is spelled like the aspirin, but he pronounces it like the animal that he sort of resembles. He’s a burly guy with a dark beard. He asked Mallory if he could buy her a drink and she said yes, a Hokey Pokey, because her sole intention was to get drunk. She wondered if this counted as being suggestible. What she was…was easy to get along with. Unlike some people.
“I’m easy to get along with,” Mallory says once she has sucked down her Hokey Pokey. “Unlike some people.”
“Cheers to that,” Bayer says. “Looks like someone needs another drink.”
Isolde and Oliver don’t work at the Summer House anymore and neither does Apple—she’s back at the camp for girls in North Carolina this summer—so Mallory is anonymous, which feels wonderful. Bayer seems to have the exact same goal as Mallory: To drink the afternoon away and tell the complete stranger on the next stool all his troubles because he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him but we are all human and therefore can offer empathy and an unbiased opinion.
“So,” Bayer says. “Who are you?”
Mallory, she says, though she doesn’t reveal her last name in case Bayer is a serial killer. She’s the daughter of an accountant and a housewife; she grew up in Baltimore, lived in New York City briefly until her aunt Greta died and left Mallory her cottage on the south shore and a modest sum of money, at which point Mallory moved to the island permanently and now she’s an English teacher at Nantucket High School.
“Now for the real question,” Bayer says. “Why are you drinking all alone in the middle of the day?”
“Two reasons,” Mallory says. “One is I have houseguests. My best friend from growing up and her lover, also a woman, who is famous. I can’t tell you who she is…” Mallory pauses and studies Bayer more closely. Does he look like a person who reads? He has intelligent-seeming brown eyes and he’s wearing a polo shirt and a Breitling watch with a blue face (expensive, she knows). “Do you read?”
“Mostly nonfiction,” Bayer says. “And biographies. My favorite book of all time is October 1964 by David Halberstam.”
Mallory mentally adds this book to her list, then chastises herself for being suggestible. “Anyway, my friend Leland and her girlfriend had a fight, a loud fight, during which they said insulting things about me and I overheard them.”
“Ouch,” Bayer says. “What were the insulting things?”
“Not important,” Mallory says.
Bayer tips his glass. “To me, you’re flawless.”
“Because you just met me,” Mallory says. “I haven’t had a chance to disappoint you yet.”
“Amen,” Bayer says. “What’s the other reason?”
Mallory is still coherent enough to stop and ask herself just how honest she wants to be with her new-friend-but-maybe-serial-killer Bayer. “My ex-boyfriend is getting married today.”
“That,” Bayer says, “is quite the double whammy.”
“Tell me about it,” Mallory says.
Bayer suggests food for both of them, says he’s buying, she should get whatever she wants, and she confesses that she used to work at the Summer House and she knows the best thing on the menu is the bacon cheeseburger. She’ll take hers medium rare with extra pickles and she’d like her fries seasoned and crispy.
“I love a woman who knows how to order,” Bayer says. “I’ll have the same.”
“Now you talk and I’ll listen,” Mallory says. “Why are you drinking all alone at the Summer House pool today?”
Bayer just arrived on Nantucket on Wednesday, he says. He sailed in, he’s living on his boat, and he’s rented the slip for the entire summer, though he’s not sure how long he’ll stay. He has a larger boat in Newport—that one has a crew—but he needs time away from them and them from him so he set off on his own for a while.
The Hokey Pokeys have done their job; Mallory has no inhibitions. “What do you do for a living?” she asks. “You sound rich.”
Bayer throws his head back and howls with laughter, and it’s this laugh—and not the fact that Bayer Burkhart owns two sailboats, one with a crew—that makes Mallory see him differently. While laughing, Bayer becomes instantly desirable, even sexy.
“I invented a bar-code scanner,” he says. “The one used in most retail stores across the country.”
“Oh,” Mallory says. She grapples with this a minute. He’s not a lawyer or a doctor or an investment banker. He’s an inventor. He invented a bar-code scanner. “How old are you?”
This makes him laugh again and he says, “How old do you think I am?”
Mallory fears the answer is forty or maybe even forty-five, which would be too old. Mallory can date someone ten years older, maybe. “Thirty-seven?” she asks hopefully.
“Bingo!” he says.
They eat and have more drinks, though how many more, Mallory can’t say. At some point, however, she realizes she is too drunk to bike home. Bayer says no problem, he’ll call her a taxi that will deliver her and her bike safely back to her cottage. This is very kind, but Mallory won’t deny that she’s disappointed.
“Don’t you want to invite me to see your sailboat?” she says.
“If you’re too drunk to bike home, then you’re too drunk to see my sailboat,” Bayer says. “I’m not like that.”
Mallory frowns and Bayer lifts her chin with one finger. “I will take your number, though, if you’re willing to give it to me.”
Mallory arrives back at the cottage around sunset. The Blazer is gone; Leland and Fifi are out. Mallory gets herself a glass of ice water and passes out facedown on her bed. She feels like she’s forgotten something. The oven? No. The iron? No. Well, if she can’t think of it, then it must not be that important.
When Mallory wakes up the next morning, she has a headache and her heart feels like one of the mermaid purses she finds washed up onshore, brittle and empty.
She instantly remembers the thing she had forgotten the night before: Jake is married to Ursula.
Mallory, meanwhile, is single and the reasons why have been cataloged by her very best friend in the world: She is neither interesting nor original. She’s suggestible, a follower. She’s “nice,” like a jelly jar filled with daisies or a pony that trots in a circle.
Jake is married to Ursula.
Through the walls, Mallory hears a woman’s voice moaning in ecstasy.
No, Mallory thinks, this is not happening.
The phone rings. Mallory checks her clock radio. It’s early but not that early—eight thirty. Maybe this is Cooper calling to tell her that Jake left Ursula at the altar.
“Hello?” Mallory says. Her voice sounds like pea gravel in a blender.
“Mallory, it’s Bayer. Feel like a sail?”
How bizarre, how bizarre—Leland and Fifi’s disastrous visit leads Mallory right into a romance with Bayer Burkhart.
Bayer takes Mallory sailing that first Sunday and she falls in love—not with Bayer but with life on the water. His sailboat is a seventy-foot racer-cruiser called Dee Dee. Mallory asks if Dee Dee is an ex-girlfriend, the one who got away, and he says no, he named the boat after Dee Dee Ramone. Does Mallory approve? She answers in the affirmative, even though she knows only three songs by the Ramones. Dee Dee has a finely appointed cabin. There’s a galley kitchen with an espresso machine, a sitting area with satellite TV, a round dining table, a master suite in the bow with a low, wide bed and a head that has a hot shower, and a second, smaller suite that Bayer uses as an office. All of the doors are heavily varnished and have hook-and-eye closures so they don’t fly open in rough seas.
They sail every day the wind is good—to Tuckernuck and then farther on to tiny Muskeget. They sail past Martha’s Vineyard to Cuttyhunk. They sail around Monomoy up to Chatham.
For the first few trips, Mallory lies on the foredeck in her bikini, reading, but after a while she starts to take note of what Bayer is doing—when he trims the headsail and lets out the mainsail, how he tacks, how he handles the ropes. She loves the focus on Bayer’s face when he’s sailing. He seems interested only in getting them from one place to another in this most ancient and storied of ways.
When they’re lying in the low, wide bed looking out the open hatch above them at the towering mast and the stars, Bayer is very, very interested in Mallory’s body. He’s such a skilled lover that she finds herself counting the hours until night falls, when Dee Dee is secure in its slip and they make it rock.
Bayer says he wants to turn Mallory into a proper mate. He shows her how to tie up the boat; turns out, she’s a natural with knots. She loves standing on the bow in bare feet and tossing the rope over the bollards like she’s a cowgirl lassoing a calf. She misses every once in a while but Bayer is patient. There hasn’t been one cross word between them. Why would there be? Their days are filled with sunshine, water, wind. They swim, Mallory reads, Bayer casts a few lines and nearly always catches something big enough to keep, a striper or a bluefish. He grills the striper on his hibachi; he soaks the bluefish in milk.
They spend a week like this, two weeks. She calls him Skipper; he calls her Mary Ann. On days when there’s no wind, Bayer works on the boat and Mallory returns to her cottage, goes running or biking, and waits for him to call her. She never appears at the dock without being invited, though she wants to surprise him, just once, because at some point, she gets the feeling he’s hiding something. She can’t say what it is or even what makes her feel that way. Kitty calls and, as usual, asks Mallory about her love life. Finally, Mallory has something to tell her mother—she’s found a wealthy man with a yacht!—but when Mallory thinks about it, she realizes she barely knows the first thing about Bayer.
She makes a list: He invented the bar-code scanner. He lives in Newport, where he keeps a boat even bigger than Dee Dee. His favorite book is October 1964, and recently she has seen him reading something called The Perfect Storm. He likes the Ramones as well as the Violent Femmes, the Clash, AC/DC, and INXS; he has encyclopedic knowledge of the band members’ names. He talks about Joe Strummer and Michael Hutchence like they’re his friends. Maybe they are his friends?
Mallory once asked him what he did with his time when it wasn’t summer and he wasn’t sailing.
He said, “I dabble in politics.”
Mallory pressed him. What did that mean? “Do you go door to door handing out flyers for your favorite candidates?” she asked. “Do you work the phone banks?”
He laughed. “I pull the puppet strings.”
Bayer is a master artisan when it comes to crafting vague comments like this one. He’d told her just enough that first afternoon to make her think he was opening up. But now, weeks later, he remains a mystery.
Sometimes, Bayer will tell Mallory stories of the high jinks of his past—his buddy Icarus, his buddy Dennis; Havana, Islamorada, Hamilton, Nassau; sailfish, storms, sharks; this guy who owned a boat called Beautiful Day, great boat; another boat, Silver Girl, that Bayer tried to buy but the guy refused and then, months later, he went bankrupt. Did you buy the boat then? Mallory asked. No. Turns out I wanted it only when I couldn’t have it, Bayer said. Mallory wonders if this is a hint that she should try to play hard to get. But why would she do that when they’re so happy and the summer is so short?
Bayer gives her hundreds of dollars when he sends her to the grocery store or the liquor store. He hates running errands himself so she’s doing him a favor, he says. He protests when she tries to give him the change. Keep it, he says. It’s just money. What’s mine is yours.
He smokes one cigarette at the end of each day and if Mallory has been drinking, she’ll take a drag, though most times she just watches Bayer’s figure against the darkening sky, the ember glowing, the smoke releasing from his mouth.
“Will you take me to Newport?” she asks one night. It dawns on her that they rarely spend any time ashore—in Chatham, it rained, so they’d gone for lunch at the Squire, and they had spent a blissful afternoon on the beach on Cuttyhunk, but they hadn’t seen another soul.
“I left Newport this summer because I wanted to get away,” Bayer says.
“Let’s go out to dinner here, then,” Mallory says. “We haven’t been anywhere since that day at the Summer House.” Bayer hasn’t even been to Mallory’s cottage. When she invited him, he said, Trying to make a landlubber out of me? She understands his point: her cottage isn’t a boat, and life is just flat-out superior on the water. “How about dinner tomorrow night? My friends work at the Blue Bistro.” She swallows because she’s afraid he’s going to say no. She’s breaking a rule of some sort, or she’s revealing herself to be the kind of person who needs society to be happy, whereas Bayer is quite obviously content with her company alone. “I’ll pay.”
He laughs. It’s a real laugh; she at least knows him well enough to tell that. “You will not pay. I’ll pay. Do I have to wear shoes?”
Mallory wears a Janet Russo sundress and Bayer wears shorts, flip-flops, and a button-down shirt in peach gingham, and he wets his hair and trims his beard and looks more than presentable when they walk into the Blue Bistro, which is beachfront fine dining, tucked between Jetties and Cliffside. The restaurant smells delicious and it’s buzzing with conversation and laughter, and there’s a piano player doing an easy-listening version of “I Fought the Law,” which actually elicits a smile from Bayer. Isolde has set them up at a two-top out in the sand, so close to the lapping waves of Nantucket Sound that it’s almost as if they’re eating on the boat. Isolde brings menus and the wine list but Bayer waves them both away and orders a bottle of Sancerre and the seafood fondue for two.
“Very good,” Isolde says, and she awards Bayer one of her rare smiles. “How did Mallory get so lucky?”
Bayer takes Mallory’s hand across the table. “I’m the lucky one.”
Oh my God, Isolde mouths to Mallory over Bayer’s shoulder.
The wine comes; they drink. The kitchen sends out a basket of savory rosemary-and-onion-flecked yeast doughnuts. These doughnuts are famous across the island, but Mallory had assumed they would fall short of expectations. But…wow…they are, without doubt, the most delicious thing she has ever tasted. To Bayer, she knows, the most delicious thing is something far more simple—a cold, ripe plum—but she sees his eyes pop.
“God damn,” he says.
He’s happy. The date is going well, then? She’s not sure why but she feels there’s something at stake here.
They take their glasses of wine to the water’s edge and get their feet wet. The sun is setting; there are stripes of magenta flaring across the sky. A gull soars low, just skimming the surface of the water; the ferry glides across the horizon, heading for the mainland. Mallory has lived on Nantucket for four years and still she finds the summertime here so beautiful that it hurts. Probably because the summer is fleeting, evanescent. It always ends. Mallory doesn’t want it to end. She yearns for something that will stay, something permanent. Is she talking about Bayer? Is she talking about Jake?
She’s getting drunk. She leads Bayer back to the table.
A second bottle of wine. The seafood fondue appears. Mallory spears a shrimp with her fondue fork, plunges it into the hot oil, and then, when it’s plump and pink, she dunks it into one of the three delectable sauces.
This dinner is perfect; this restaurant, the entire evening, couldn’t be any better. Right?
Before dessert, Oliver sends over shots of sambuca in tiny frosted glasses. Mallory holds hers aloft. “To you, Skipper,” she says.
Bayer grins. “To you, Mary Ann.”
A woman materializes out of nowhere. She’s in a red floral wrap dress with a matching headscarf. She has dark hair and wears red lipstick. She’s pretty enough. Older. Bayer’s age.
“Bayer?” she says. “Is that you?”
Bayer stands up. “Caroline, hello, yes.” Air kiss, hand on Caroline’s back, and a sweeping arm to introduce Mallory. “Please meet my friend Mary Ann.”
Mallory has been raised by Kitty; she knows to stand up when meeting someone. But she doesn’t account for the sand or the proximity of her chair behind her or her drunkenness or her confusion because Bayer has chosen not to use her real name. Mallory’s chair falls backward at the same time that she lurches forward, and she practically watches herself fall face-first into all the glassware and the candle’s flame, but at the last minute, she catches herself and nothing breaks or spills.
“Pleasure to meet you, Caroline.” Mallory’s words, while not slurred, are not exactly crisp either.
Caroline’s hand is smooth, her grip firm, her eyes assessing. She takes Mallory in and must draw the conclusion that further conversation is unnecessary because she turns back to Bayer. “I heard you were here,” Caroline says. “From Dee Dee.”
From Dee Dee. Mallory reaches for her wineglass and, finding it empty, picks up Bayer’s and throws back what’s left. Is this rude? She doesn’t care.
Bayer says nothing. His face is still; his eyes are those of a man facing his own execution.
“How are the children?” Caroline asks. “Enjoying camp?”
“Not if you believe their letters,” Bayer says. His lips turn up ever so slightly at the corners. “Good to see you, Caroline.”
“Oh,” Caroline says. “Well, okay, then. Good to see you too.” She nods at Mallory. “Enjoy your evening.”
Caroline’s visit brings the evening to a premature end. Mallory says she doesn’t want dessert. She goes to the ladies’ room, trying to tell herself that there’s an explanation, that the only lie is who he named the boat for, which is minor. Dee Dee Ramone. He was making a joke and she didn’t know any better. When she returns to the table, Bayer is leaving a pile of hundreds for the check, and it’s this that lets Mallory know he’s guilty. Just throw money at the people you’re wronging and their friends, and they’ll forgive you. Isolde sees the pile of bills as she brings a to-go box with complimentary desserts from the kitchen and she murmurs in Mallory’s ear, “Everything okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Mallory says—though actually, she has no idea.
Back on the boat, Bayer lights a cigarette, sits in the stern, and pats the cushion next to him.
Mallory shakes her head. She feels she should remain standing. Where does she even start? “You have children?” she says.
“Guinevere, age ten. Gus, age nine. They’re at camp in Maine this summer.”
Guinevere, ten. Gus, nine. Why is this the first she’s heard of his children? Well, there can be only one reason, right? “And Dee Dee?”
He clears his throat. “My wife.”
“Your wife.”
“Yes,” Bayer says. “When I told you I had a bigger boat at home, with a crew, and I needed time away from them…”
“You meant you had a family.”
“It was a euphemism.”
“It was a lie. A lie, Bayer.”
“I do have a second boat,” he says.
“I don’t care about your second boat,” Mallory says. “I care about your wife. By not telling me, you made me complicit. What must Caroline think?”
“Who cares what she thinks? Do you care? You don’t even know her.”
“Well, then, what about what I think? You lied to me. Now, of course, all the things that have been bothering me about our relationship make perfect sense.”
He turns on her. “Are there things about our relationship that bother you? Because, frankly, you’ve seemed pretty damn content.”
Well, she was content—when she’d thought that she had landed a rich, eligible bachelor with time and money to lavish on her. She supposes now that it was no accident she got involved with Bayer directly after hearing Leland say all those unkind things about her. Leland was right; Mallory is suggestible. And she’s gullible. A more clever person would have realized she was being duped.
“This whole thing was a sham. I feel so…stupid. So used. I’m a nice person, Bayer! I’m a good person.”
(Bayer stubs out his cigarette. He considers Mallory. She looks beautiful tonight, but then, she always looks beautiful. She’s young, maybe too young to understand. She told him during their first meeting at the Summer House that she wondered if he was a serial killer. No, he’s not a serial killer, and honestly, he’s not even a garden-variety philanderer, though he’s aware it must appear otherwise to Mallory. He and Dee Dee agreed to spend the summer apart. The kids were at camp; it seemed like the right time.
Do what you want, Dee Dee said. But go elsewhere. I don’t want to hear about it.
Where Dee Dee is concerned, all is fair—though she’ll likely be hearing from Caroline Stengel in the morning, if not tonight. But Bayer admits to himself that all this probably hasn’t been fair to Mallory. He should have come right out and told her he was married. He’s curious why she never asked. This has made him wonder about her as well. There were times when he would have described her as not-there. Meaning somewhere else, with someone else.)
“You are a nice person and a good person, Mary Ann. Yes, you are. But even nice, good people aren’t perfect. Everybody has weaknesses. I suspect there’s a secret you’re keeping as well. Maybe even something big?”
Mallory feels like she’s in a hot-air balloon that’s about to crash into a cornfield. Either she’ll be killed in a fiery wreck or she’ll walk away unscathed.
The latter, she thinks. It’s her choice and she chooses the latter.
And Bayer is right. She is keeping a secret. Something big.
“I’m in love,” she says.
He looks genuinely surprised. “With me?”
“No,” she says. “I’m in love with Jake McCloud.”
(Ah, he thinks. His instincts were correct.) “Is Jake McCloud the boyfriend who got married the day we met?”
“He’s the one who got married,” Mallory says. She hesitates and thinks, How bizarre, how bizarre, that Bayer Burkhart is the person I finally tell. “But he was never my boyfriend. He’s my…my Same Time Next Year. Like in that movie. He comes to Nantucket to see me every summer for one weekend, no matter what.”
Bayer nods. “Interesting arrangement.” (He can’t believe it, but he feels jealous. It’s something about Mallory’s expression. Jake McCloud is one lucky bastard. Frankly, Bayer would like to strangle him.) “That sounds nice.”
She shrugs. “It has its ups and downs.”