What are we talking about in 2014? Polar vortex; Jimmy Fallon; Flint, Michigan; The Twelfth Man; Vladimir Putin; Malaysia Airlines Flight 17; Ebola; Janet Yellen; mindfulness; Robin Williams; Ferguson, Missouri; CVS; the Oregon Ducks; Cuba; Tim Lincecum; One World Trade Center; Clooney and Amal; ISIS; Minecraft; Hannah, Jessa, Marnie, and Shosh; conscious uncoupling; Tinder; Greg Popovich; “I’m all about that bass (no treble).”
The summer after Mallory’s parents are killed…
Okay, wait. She needs a minute just to process this phrase. Her parents killed. Senior and Kitty dead. All through the first half of 2014, Mallory struggles. She wakes up feeling just fine…until she remembers. Then it’s like falling into a black, bottomless hole, wind rushing in her ears, vertigo, nausea, a weightlessness, a loss, not only of Senior and Kitty but of herself. There’s an assault of emotions, all of them unpleasant, some of them ugly, and the most hideous is guilt. Was Mallory a good daughter? Or even a decent daughter? She fears not.
She resented all the rules. Step one, napkin on lap. No yelling to someone in another room; no stomping up the stairs. Bread and rolls were to be broken in half first, then into pieces that were buttered individually. Salt and pepper were always to be passed together. Nail polish could be applied only in the bathroom. Thank-you notes were to be written and mailed within three days. There was a list of forbidden TV shows, among them Prisoner: Cell Block H, Falcon Crest, Hill Street Blues. No Rocky Horror. Good morning. Please may I be excused. Hello, Blessing residence. And above all: Never refer to a person using a pronoun while the person was present. Kitty was a stickler for that one.
Mallory loathed their expectations of her: good grades, good posture, sparkling conversation, spotless driving record, irreproachable work ethic. She had rebelled mentally even as she complied, and she was certain Senior and Kitty could tell. There was nothing her parents had taught her or asked of her that had not served her well. She should have been grateful instead of surly. She should have taken her mother up on her offers of makeup lessons and ballroom dancing. She should have gone shopping with her at the Mazza Gallery; she shouldn’t have called the David Yurman earrings Kitty gave her for her fortieth birthday “matronly.” Mallory had rejected all of her mother’s efforts to refine her. She had joyfully spent her four years at Gettysburg wearing sweatpants, her hair in a scrunchie. She had gotten a tattoo her first winter on Nantucket, a vine that wrapped around her ankle. If anyone had asked her why, she would have said it was just for decoration, for fun, but the real answer was that she reveled in becoming the anti-Kitty.
Mallory avoided the emotional work of dealing with the loss of her parents by focusing on the practical work. What had to happen? Well, immediately, there was the service, burial, and reception to plan. Somehow, Mallory did this on autopilot; Cooper was less than no help. Then there was the house to put on the market, the furnishings to give away or auction off, and Senior’s business to sell. Again, Cooper took a pass, so Mallory worked with the family attorney, Jeffrey Todd, and her own attorney, Eileen Beers. During February break from school, Mallory and Link drove down to Baltimore to sort through each room of the Blessing house. Over April break, Link flew to Seattle to see Fray and Anna, who was pregnant with a baby girl, and Mallory and Cooper met in Baltimore to finalize the sale of the house and the business. Even split between them, the money was considerable. To Mallory, it was a fortune. But money, once her largest concern, now meant nothing.
What does Mallory say to herself to fend off the demons?
They were together.
There was no suffering.
They had lived full, happy lives.
She had given them a grandson, whom they both adored.
It wasn’t her fault.
The accident had nothing to do with Mallory. She had spoken to both of her parents on Christmas and thanked them for her gifts: a new Wüsthof chef’s knife, Malouf linens for her bed, a hardback copy of The Goldfinch. They had thanked her for the black-and-white picture of Link and the gift certificate to Woodberry Kitchen. She had told them she loved them. Link had told them he loved them.
Mallory hadn’t known about the Yo-Yo Ma tickets, and frankly, she was surprised Kitty had been successful in convincing Senior to go, though he did love Washington in general and the Kennedy Center in particular. Cooper hadn’t known about their plans either, but he hadn’t been offended. They were two healthy, happy adults, completely self-sufficient. The car they drove was an Audi A4, which Senior had bought the previous spring. There was no reason for the tire to blow other than raw bad luck.
Cooper is of the opinion that when your number comes up, it comes up. Nothing to be done about it.
Mallory tries to adopt this perspective as well, though she has a difficult time. She keeps thinking something went wrong, that there was a mistake; it wasn’t supposed to be this way. She wants to fix it. She wakes up in the middle of the night crying. She wants them back. Please—for just a day or an hour or even a minute so that she can tell them she loves them. So she can thank them.
The summer after Mallory’s parents are killed, an unlikely savior arrives, and that savior is baseball. Lincoln Dooley is chosen as the starting catcher for the Nantucket U14 travel team. Mallory spends the month of July in the bleachers and behind the backstop at the Delta fields on Nobadeer Farm Road as well as at a dozen fields across Cape Cod and the south shore. As time-consuming and expensive as it is to attend every single game, it’s just the preoccupation Mallory needs. The Nantucket U14s are the best team Nantucket has fielded in the history of their baseball program; they have a winning record, which is impressive given that the island has such a small pool of kids. One reason for their success is that ten of the twelve teammates have played together since T-ball. The other reason is the coach, Charlie Suwyn.
Charlie is in his sixties; his own children are grown, he owns a prosperous caretaking business on the island, and he recently lost his wife, Sue, who was the biggest champion of youth sports that Nantucket had ever seen. Charlie’s love of the game is infectious, but more than the game, he loves the kids, who are, frankly, at a challenging age. Charlie has schooled his players in strategic baserunning, which is how they often win; the Nantucket team steals home more than any other team it plays. Off the field, Charlie is warm and nurturing. His motto is three words long: Kids playing baseball. The players are developing skills, learning sportsmanship, creating a team atmosphere, and having fun. There are many things that are wrong with the world, but this thing is right.
As catcher, Link is the key to the team; he’s not as glorified as the pitchers, but he’s involved in every pitch of the game. He has a deadly accurate arm, and at least once in every game, he’ll throw out someone trying to steal second. He has been inconsistent at the plate and Mallory is never so tense as when he’s up to bat. He strikes out a lot, that’s fine, but he strikes out looking, which is not fine. He bats seventh in the lineup.
Fray hasn’t traveled east to see Link play even once. Mallory knows this bums Link out, though he doesn’t talk about it. Mallory sends endless videos with captions that say, Look at our son! And Number 6 is en fuego! Fray occasionally calls after a game (at Mallory’s prompting—Call now, before the pizza comes!), and although Mallory hears only Link’s side of the conversation, she can tell it’s stilted.
The travel season culminates with a week of tournaments in Cooperstown, New York, at the end of July. Mallory splurges on a room at the Otesaga Hotel. The place is filled with history and old-fashioned charm; this is where all the Hall-of-Famers stay when they’re in town. In addition to watching a lot of baseball, Mallory squeezes in some pool time and breakfast every morning on the veranda overlooking Otsego Lake.
The living is good; the baseball not so much. Nantucket plays seven games and loses the first six. Link is brilliant behind the plate but abysmal at the plate; he strikes out sixteen times. In the final game, however, his luck changes. He hits the ball at his first at bat and it goes sailing over the fence: home run! Mallory is so excited—and so shocked—that she starts to cry. Throughout the season, Mallory has pictured her parents up in the sky, sitting in some heavenly version of lawn chairs (like earthly lawn chairs, but comfortable), cheering Link on.
Did Kitty and Senior see that? Home run! Here in Cooperstown!
At Link’s second at bat, he hits another home run. What? Mallory blinks, confused, but yes, the ball cleared the fence and there goes Link, trotting around the bases, then jumping into the crowd of his assembled teammates at home plate.
His third time at bat, Nantucket is behind by two runs and the bases are loaded. Dewey, the father sitting next to Mallory, says, “What are the chances he does it again?”
“Zero,” Mallory says, though she hopes for something better than a strikeout. A single would, maybe, tie the game. The count gets to two and two, and Mallory imagines Senior up out of his heavenly lawn chair shouting, the way he used to at the Orioles games on TV. Then she hears the crack of the bat and the ball goes all the way over the deepest part of the fence and everyone on base scores and while the other parents are jumping up and down, creating cacophony on the metal bleachers, Mallory has her face in her hands. She’s sobbing because she isn’t sure what happens when people die but she is sure that her parents are here in Cooperstown somewhere—either that or she and Link are carrying Senior and Kitty around inside of them, because they made this happen. She knows they made this happen.
The next day, they drive home. Despite the triumph of the last game, the trip is melancholy. This baseball season was a sweet spot in their lives; Coach Charlie and the other parents have become a family. The games, although not all exciting, were addictive in their own way. Mallory can now tell a ball from a strike from any spot in the park as well as a curve ball from a slider. She has subsisted on hot dogs and peanuts in the shell; she has lived in cutoffs and a visor. Now that the season’s over, Mallory won’t deny it—she’s sad. Link might play next year or he might get a job instead. But even if Link does play, there’s no telling which other kids will return, and in any case, it won’t be the same. This season is something that can’t be repeated; it will just have to live on in everyone’s memories. The Nantucket U14s in ’14.
It’s on this five-hour drive from Cooperstown to Hyannis that Link tells Mallory that he doesn’t want to go to Seattle the following week—or at all.
“But…” Mallory says. “Don’t you want to see the baby?”
Link pulls out his left earbud. His buddy Cam, the center fielder, is riding home with them, but he’s asleep in the back seat. “No,” Link says, softly but firmly. “I don’t.”
“Honey, she’s your sister and you’ve never even met her.”
“She’s too little to know any better,” Link says. “I don’t want to go.”
“But what about your dad and Anna?”
“Anna, ha,” Link says. “She doesn’t like me.”
“What are you talking about? Anna loves you.” Only a few summers earlier Mallory had been certain she’d lost Link to Anna’s influence.
Link shrugs. “I liked summers when we were in Vermont. In Seattle, Dad is always at work, and the house is cold. Anna is either on her phone or on her laptop, and I spend way too much time playing video games. The only day we do stuff together is Sunday, and now there’s a baby, so, yeah…I’m not going.”
“You don’t have the power to decide that, bud, sorry.”
“Mom,” Link says. “Please don’t make me go. I haven’t had my summer yet. We haven’t sailed, we haven’t kayaked. I’ve barely been in the ocean.”
“We all make choices,” Mallory says. “Your choice was to play baseball.”
“What if Dad says it’s okay if I don’t go?” Link asks. “Then can I stay home?”
Mallory isn’t sure how to answer. She has sensed the relationship between Link and Fray deteriorating for a while. Fray used to come to Nantucket all the time, every month. But since he moved to Seattle, he hasn’t come once. Not once! Mallory hasn’t called him on it because she knows he’s busy. He’s a wonderful provider for Link, and Mallory figured Fray and Link would reconnect over the month of August like they always did.
She can’t stop herself from thinking that if Link doesn’t go to Seattle, he will be on Nantucket over Labor Day weekend. Which is not okay. Mallory is sorry, but that is not okay.
Is she going to condemn her only child to a month of misery in a house with a newborn just so she can continue her love affair?
Link needs to meet his baby sister, Cassiopeia. Baby Cassie. He needs to spend time with Fray. Link is thirteen years old; it’s a crucial time to have a male role model, a father.
Surely Fray will agree with this. Fray will never allow Link to skip a summer. Fray will sweeten the deal with Mariners tickets or a father-son camping trip in the San Juan Islands. Anna and the baby will stay home with the cadre of baby nurses. Mallory paints an irresistible picture in her mind: Fray will take his fifty-foot Grady-White over to Friday Harbor to use the luxe cabin of one of the Microsoft execs for a few days. They’ll fish for steel-headed trout; they’ll see killer whales. They’ll build campfires and talk about girls.
“If Dad says it’s okay for you to stay on Nantucket, I’m not going to argue,” Mallory says, and this placates Link. He puts his earbud back in.
But Fray will never okay it, Mallory thinks. She has nothing to worry about. Her time with Jake is safe.
Fray okays it.
“What?” Mallory says. She and Link are home now, home sweet home; it’s August on Nantucket, the weather is glorious, the water is cool but not cold, and Mallory swims enough to make up for her lost month. She goes to Bartlett’s Farm for corn, tomatoes, blueberry pie, broccoli slaw, a bouquet of peach lilies. Baseball has already become a distant memory.
“He said I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” Link says. “He thinks maybe Christmas will be better. We’re all going to Hawaii, I guess.”
Mallory says, “It’s my first Christmas without my parents, but yeah, Hawaii sounds great. Have fun.”
“Mom,” Link says, and he grabs Mallory around the middle and squeezes her the way he does when the subject of Senior and Kitty comes up. “You can join us.”
Mallory laughs through her tears. Yes, she’s crying again, for the umpteenth time. Her parents each had their idiosyncrasies. But now she sees that they were her anchors. They were there—Kitty with her tennis and her dreams of British royalty, Senior with his pragmatic worldview. Both of them were perplexed about Mallory’s partnerless lifestyle not because they disapproved of it but because they loved her and wanted her to find someone.
Mallory calls Fray. In the fourteen years that they have been co-parents, she has never spoken to Fray in anger. But today, yes. Today, she is loaded for bear, as the saying goes.
“You told Link he didn’t have to come?” she says by way of greeting. Fray didn’t answer his cell so she has ambushed him on his office phone. She sends his secretary, Mrs. Ellison, a large bag of vanilla caramels from Sweet Inspirations every year at Christmas specifically to ensure this kind of emergency access. “What the hell?”
“He doesn’t want to come,” Fray says. “He was away all summer playing baseball and now he wants to see his friends. I was thirteen once. I get it.”
“Don’t you want to see him?” Mallory asks. “You’re his father. Don’t you want to put your eyes on him, have the birds-and-the-bees talk, introduce him to his sister?”
“His sister has turned the household upside down,” Fray says. “Anna has postpartum depression. She’s a mess, so she’s getting help, and I’ve hired someone to be with the baby full-time. This isn’t a great summer for me, Mal. Frankly, I was relieved.”
“Relieved,” Mallory says. Postpartum depression is serious; she can’t argue with that. Poor Anna. Mallory shouldn’t send Link out to that kind of fraught situation.
“It’s not forever,” Fray says. “I told Link we’d take him at Christmas.”
“That’s very nice, but that plan leaves me alone at Christmas, and I just can’t handle that this year,” Mallory says.
There’s silence. Fray clears his throat. “That hadn’t occurred to me. And I’m sure Thanksgiving will be difficult for you too.”
“I need Link at the holidays,” Mallory says. “The holidays are mine, August is yours. That’s how we do it. That’s what works.”
“But not this year,” Fray says. “I’m so sorry.”
Link isn’t going to Seattle for a month, but what about for two weeks? Or a week? Or just over the long weekend before school, Labor Day weekend? By Labor Day, Anna might be feeling better.
“It’s too far for a weekend trip,” Link says. He sounds seventy years old, Mallory thinks. He sounds like Senior. “Besides, I want to go stay with Uncle Coop over Labor Day weekend.”
“Uncle Coop?” Mallory finally gets a clear breath.
“The Black Keys are playing at Merriweather Post Pavilion,” Link says. “I was hoping maybe Uncle Coop would take me.”
Mallory goes online and buys two seats, row C center, for the Black Keys at Merriweather Post on Saturday, August 30. Link texts all his friends to brag. Mallory steps out onto the deck and sits in her spot in the sun; the boards have two worn-down ovals where her butt cheeks have rested so often for the past twenty-one years. She runs through the reasons this is a good development—Link gets to see his favorite band live in concert, he’ll get some quality time with another male role model…and he will not be here on Nantucket.
Mallory calls Cooper. She has a momentary panic that he already has plans that weekend.
“Hey, are you free Saturday, August thirtieth?” she asks.
“Hey, Mal,” Cooper says. His voice is flat. His natural pep and charm have diminished since Kitty and Senior died. So another benefit of sending Link is that it will cheer Cooper up—win-win-win! “Yeah, I am. Why?”
Mallory uses a measured, concerned-mom voice rather than a snake-oil-salesman voice. Link doesn’t want to see Fray, so he’s staying on Nantucket instead; Mallory wanted to surprise him with something special after his incredible performance in Cooperstown and so she was hoping Coop would be willing to host Link over Labor Day. He wants to see the Black Keys at Merriweather Post. Mallory already bought two tickets, row three.
“I probably put the cart before the horse on the tickets,” Mallory says. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m psyched about the concert,” Coop says. “The concert’s not the problem.”
“Okay?” Mallory says. “What is the problem?”
“The problem is, I know what you’re doing,” Coop says. “I know what you’re doing, Mal.”
Mallory focuses on the sparkling surface of the ocean, the waves turning, turning, turning. “What am I doing?”
“You want me to say it? You want me to say it? Fine, I’ll say it. You’re getting rid of Link.” He pauses. “So you can be alone over Labor Day weekend. I know about you and Jake, Mal.”
Is Mallory surprised to hear this? Yes. Yes, she is. She wants to throw her phone into the water.
Jake told Mallory years ago that Cooper seemed off—maybe sour, maybe indifferent. They didn’t get together anymore. Mallory wasn’t concerned by this. People grew apart. Adults had busy lives. Hell, Mallory now sees Apple only at school and maybe once or twice over the summer because Apple is married with nine-year-old twins; she’s busy. Cooper has such a tumultuous personal life that he might not have evenings to spare, especially with Jake back and forth to Indiana.
But now.
“Coop,” she says.
“I don’t want to be a party to your deception,” he says. “It’s the adultery I object to, yes. But also, Mal, he’s using you.”
“No,” she says.
“He has Ursula,” Coop says. “You have…nobody. It kills me thinking about you spending most of the year by yourself, waiting for him to return. You’re like one of the sea captain’s wives, standing on your widow’s walk. It’s heartbreaking.”
“It’s not like that,” Mallory says. Mallory had relationships with JD, with Bayer, with Scott Fulton—and she had relations with Fray. She has hardly been alone all these years, but she never found anyone she loved or even liked as much as Jake and she didn’t see the point in settling.
She has always felt she has agency in her relationship with Jake. She was the one who decided, that first summer, not to turn it into something bigger. If she had, she’s sure the relationship would have ended, maybe even ended badly, and Jake would be nothing but a name from her past. As unconventional as their romance has been, Mallory believes she made the right choice.
She isn’t famous like Ursula; she isn’t a scene-stealer. She’s just a person—a good person, she has always believed. To Coop, it must seem like she has zero integrity, but where her relationship with Jake is concerned, Mallory would argue she has nothing but integrity. She has never taken more than her share. Their weekends together have a certain purity; they aren’t dirty or mean-spirited. She’s not trying to fool herself; she knows it’s wrong. But it’s also right.
If Mallory tells Coop this, will he understand? He may; he may not. She isn’t sure what kind of warped rulebook he uses when it comes to love. Or maybe she’s the one with the warped rulebook. Or maybe there is no rulebook.
Mallory has a ripcord. Will she pull it?
“I’ve lost a lot already this year,” she says. “I can’t give him up too.”
Yes, she is using the bald, gaping, awful fact of their parents’ death.
She might also say: If you hadn’t left your own bachelor party, this would never have happened.
“Okay,” Cooper says. “Send him down.”
Mallory breathes out a “Thank you.”
“Oh, and by the way, I’m dating someone new,” Cooper says. “Her name is Amy. She’s a psychologist. I can have her talk to Link, see if he’s okay.”
“He’s okay,” Mallory says. “Maybe you should have Amy see if you’re okay.” She cringes, wondering if it’s wise to crack a joke at Coop’s expense.
He laughs. “Amen,” he says.