What are we talking about in 2016? Prince; the presidential election; Muhammad Ali; Villanova Wildcats; Harriet Tubman; Antonin Scalia; Brexit; Colin Kaepernick; the North Carolina restroom debate; Pulse nightclub in Orlando; Sidney Crosby; Blue Apron; Pat Summitt; Black Lives Matter; goat yoga; Gene Wilder; the Cubs; Brangelina; Standing Rock; Carrie Fisher; preferred gender pronouns; Piper, Crazy Eyes, Alex, Red, and Healy; “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”
Burgers, shucked corn, sliced tomatoes, Cat Stevens’s “Hard Headed Woman,” hydrangea blossoms in the mason jar, the same mason jar from year number one, which Jake finds comforting; the jar sits on top of the black burn scar on the harvest table. The meal, the music, the mason jar, and the narrow harvest table are the same, but so much else has changed.
Mallory took some of the money she inherited from her parents and completely transformed the inside of the cottage. She…gutted it. Gone is the rustic paneling and the dusty brick fireplace with the slate hearth. Gone is the screen door that slammed with a spine-tingling snap every time someone came in or went out. Gone are the Formica countertops—so outdated they were back in—and the particleboard cabinets and the fudge-brown fridge and the stainless-steel drop-in sink.
By anyone’s standards, Mallory’s cottage is now dazzling, swoon-worthy. The walls are shiplap, painted white; the old, sagging bookshelves are now floor-to-ceiling white built-ins with accent lighting and cool copper rails and a sliding ladder to help access the upper shelves. The floors are pickled oak. There’s a new deep white sofa and two comfy club chairs sheathed in cream linen and underneath is a rug striped in every shade of white from French vanilla to polar icecap. The kitchen cabinets are white with tasteful brass hardware, and the Formica has been replaced with Pegasus marble. Mallory’s bedroom is like a middle-aged woman who took a vacation to the Bahamas and returned with a new attitude and a hibiscus behind her ear. The room now has a cathedral ceiling; the walls are painted the faintest peach, and there is a sumptuous king-size bed complete with gauzy white canopies floating down the sides. She has annexed the bathroom as her own, and it’s now tiled in jungle green; the old tub was finally removed and replaced with a freestanding stone tub that resembles one of the slipper shells they used to find on their beach walks. The guest room has been extravagantly wallpapered—an azure blue background printed with frolicking zebras.
The only room that has been left untouched is Link’s. Entering Link’s room is like stepping back in time: There’s the familiar paneling, the creaky floors covered by assorted braided rugs, the dresser thick with gray paint. If Jake isn’t mistaken, Mallory harvested that dresser from the Take It or Leave It at the Nantucket dump.
Jake runs his hands over the walls of Link’s room. “My old friend the paneling,” he says. Link’s room is the only place that retains the old-fashioned, cottagey smell—salt water and mildew.
“He wouldn’t let me change a thing,” Mallory says. “Except I turned his closet into the world’s smallest bathroom. He says he likes the cottage better the way it was before. Can you imagine?”
“Well…”
“Not you too,” Mallory says. “Do you hate it? Do you think I bleached out the character?”
Jake steps back into the great room. “You kept the desk!” he says. He hadn’t noticed before, but Mallory’s kidney-shaped desk is still in the same place in the far corner of the pond side of the room, nearly hidden by the master bedroom’s new six-panel door. The desk appears out of place in this new version of the cottage, like a dowdy maiden aunt at a party of supermodels, and yet Jake would choose the maiden aunt to talk to every time.
“I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it,” Mallory says. “I remember Aunt Greta writing letters at this desk. I wonder now if she was writing to Ruthie.”
The song changes to “At Last.” The music comes from Sonos, a playlist imported from Mallory’s phone. The five-CD changer is long gone.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it,” Mallory says, and she throws back what’s left of her wine. Even the wine is fancier—gone is the twelve-dollar bottle of Cypress chardonnay, replaced by a Sancerre from the Chavignol region. “But I’m the one who has to live here. Link will be leaving for college in a couple of years and you’ll leave on Monday.”
“Hey, hey,” he says, gathering her up in his arms. “It’s gorgeous, Mal. It’s like a magazine spread. It just feels different, and I have to get used to it.”
“I didn’t want to live in a charming, rustic box anymore,” she says. “Fray has a goddamned castle out in Seattle and he and Anna just bought a place in Deer Valley, a chalet, Link calls it—”
“You didn’t do all this to keep up with Fray, did you?” Jake asks.
“I wanted it to be nice,” Mallory says. “Nicer.”
“How could anything be nicer than having the Atlantic Ocean as your front yard?”
“I know, but…” Mallory pulls away a few inches and Jake gets his first good look at her. The cottage has had a complete makeover, but Mallory Blessing is exactly the same. There’s some gray in the part of her hair, which he’s glad she hasn’t “bleached out.” Her face is suntanned and when she raises her eyebrows, her forehead becomes an accordion of wrinkles, and Jake loves it. He loves seeing her get a little older, a little more seasoned. She still has the girlish freckles across her nose and tonight, her eyes are bluish, more blue than he’s ever seen them.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “Mal?”
She rests her head on his chest and he closes his eyes. Three hundred and sixty-two days he has waited to hold her in his arms.
“I’ve been tired lately,” she says. “Link and I had a tough year. I want him to study and play baseball and be a good kid and he wants to make out with his girlfriend and go to bonfires and get high with his buddies.”
“I feel your pain,” Jake says.
“Is Bess giving you a hard time?”
“Not me.”
“Ursula?”
Jake nods. Bess doesn’t have a boyfriend, go to bonfires, or smoke dope. She stays home with her friend Pageant, and the two of them make incendiary posters for the rallies and marches and protests they attend on the weekends to fight for climate change, reproductive rights, transgender rights, immigration rights, gun control, Amnesty International. It’s hard to keep up, and whereas Jake tries to be supportive—he loves that Bess is using her voice—Ursula’s attitude is one of amusement, which comes across as patronizing.
Off to defend the lesbian cheetahs? Ursula asked recently. Or is today Ugandan dwarves?
You’re offensive, Bess said. If anyone knew what you were really like, no one would vote for you.
Bess! Jake said, but she had already slammed out of the condo.
Ursula tossed it off with a laugh. Let her go, she said. I hated my mother at that age too. It’s natural.
“What if we went out tonight after dinner?” Jake says. “What if we went to the Chicken Box for old times’ sake?”
“I’d love to,” Mallory says. “But we can’t. We dodged a bullet, Jake. I thought for sure Ursula would put you on lockdown and I’d be alone this weekend.”
“She seemed unconcerned,” Jake says. Mallory told him about the whole situation with Leland’s Letter and Ursula calling Cooper. Mallory found it strange that Ursula hadn’t simply confronted Jake, but that’s because Mallory doesn’t understand the architecture of his marriage. Ursula doesn’t deal with the issue head-on partly because she can’t summon the emotional energy and partly because she’s afraid if she pulls the wrong block, the whole Jenga tower will fall. A failing marriage is a death knell in politics; Ursula will maintain at any cost.
Jake isn’t thrilled that Cooper knows what’s going on, although Cooper covering for them has bought them some freedom. Why not enjoy it? “We’re so old now,” he says. “We won’t know anyone at the Box.”
“We might, though.”
“Let’s do something different, then,” he says. “How about if after dinner we take a bottle of wine down to the docks and drink it onboard the Greta? It’ll be nice to be out on the water. We can sit on the bow. No one will see us.”
Mallory purses her lips. “Mmm, I don’t know about changing up our routine. We do things the way we do them because they work.”
“No one is going to see us on the bow of your boat, Mal.”
She huffs. “Fine. But when we’re walking, stay six paces behind me with your hands in your pockets and wear a hat.”
Jake laughs. “Deal.”
They park Mallory’s Jeep downtown and walk—Mallory first, Jake following—past the Gazebo, Straight Wharf, and Cru and onto the docks. It’s fun to be out at night among people enjoying the last weekend of summer. Jake is nervous, which only heightens his pleasure; he’s drunk too much wine, probably, and Mallory has a second bottle in her bag. They may have to sleep on the boat and sneak off at the crack of dawn.
They come to the gatekeeper. Beyond a certain point, it’s boat owners and guests only. There’s a teenager with strawberry-blond hair curling out from beneath his University of Miami hat like lettuce peeking out of a hamburger bun. Jake nearly turns back. Mallory knows every teenager on this island. She’s the English teacher—the best, the most popular. Any one of her students could whip his phone out of his pocket to snap a pic of the dude Miss Blessing is hanging out with and then post it on Snapchat. Someone else would then do face-recognition. First the high school and then the entire island would know that Miss Blessing was seen at the docks at nine o’clock at night with Jake McCloud, husband of Ursula de Gournsey.
Is he being paranoid? Probably.
“I’m on the Greta,” Mallory says to the kid. “Slip one oh six.”
“’Kay,” the teenager says.
They walk on. Jake feels so relieved that he reaches for Mallory’s hand, and she swats it away, as she should. He grabs her by the shoulders and she elbows him in the ribs. They’re at slip 100. The Greta is three boats ahead on the right. They’re almost in the clear.
A man and a woman step off one of the huge yachts on the left. The man is big and burly. Mallory and Jake have to move aside so the couple can pass.
“Evening,” Jake says.
The man stops. His weight makes the deck boards creak.
“Mallory?” he says.
Mallory turns. “Oh!” she cries as though someone goosed her. “Bayer?” She moves tentatively in the man’s direction but then seems to think better of it and offers half a wave. “Hello there. Good to see you.” She has clearly decided against a big reunion with Bayer—talk about an appropriate name; the guy is huge and hairy—and Jake is relieved.
Onward, he thinks. But he’s aware that the moment hasn’t quite ended. Bayer is staring at them—at Jake now—while the woman, a slim brunette with an armful of gold bangles, is focused on her phone.
“You,” Bayer says to Jake. “Do I know you?”
Jake isn’t going to risk looking this guy in the eye, so he checks out the boat the two just came off of: Dee Dee. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?” Bayer’s voice presses.
“He always thinks he knows people,” the brunette says. She slips her phone into her bag. When she reaches for Bayer’s hand, her bracelets jingle. “Let’s go, honey. Reservation at nine thirty.”
Jake says, “Have a good night.”
“Yes,” Bayer says. “You too.”
Mallory shoots forward like a nervous three-year-old filly out of the gates at the Derby. She practically runs down the dock to slip 106 and leaps onto the boat like it’s about to sail away. Jake can’t help himself; he laughs.
Clearly, she’s spooked. She takes a key out of the back pocket of her white capris, unlocks the padlock, and pulls open the door to the cabin. She descends into the dark.
Jake hears her setting the wine bottle down, then rummaging through a drawer. By the time he’s beside her, she has yanked out the cork.
“Who was that?”
“Bayer,” she says. “Bayer Burkhart.” She takes a deep drink straight from the bottle.
Bayer Burkhart; the name rings a bell. Or is he imagining this? “Who is he?”
“Somebody that I used to know,” Mallory says. “Wow, that was weird. Freaky, even. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”
“Do you know who the woman was?”
“No, but I have a guess.” Mallory goes to the little cabinet for glasses. “When I knew him, he lived in Newport.”
Newport. Something is definitely familiar about the name and Newport, but Jake can’t quite grasp it.
“Were you and Bayer Burkhart involved?” Jake asks. He’s suddenly aflame with jealousy.
“I suppose,” Mallory says. “Briefly. One summer. Though it’s funny—when I was looking at him just now, I couldn’t dredge up one pleasant memory.”
“Good,” Jake says, and Mallory hands him a glass of wine.
It’s Sunday night, post–Chinese food, post-movie, post–fortune cookies, post-lovemaking. These are bittersweet hours—the last eight or ten before he heads back to the airport. It feels worse this year, but why?
Mallory has fallen asleep and Jake resents her for it, though over the years, he knows, he’s usually the one who falls asleep first while she lies awake contemplating the torturous nature of their relationship.
Mallory is breathing into the soft down of her pillow. The new mattress is yielding but firm; it feels like it’s made of fondant icing. Jake runs his hands down Mallory’s back. She has such soft skin that he makes it a point to touch her any chance he gets. This time tomorrow he’ll be back in Washington. Bess and Ursula won’t return to DC for another couple of days so he’ll have some time to decompress, shake the sand out of his shoes, get his head back where it needs to be—family, work, raising money for the CFRF. This all sounds fine and it will be fine. The goring pain he feels right now at the thought of leaving Mallory will subside, bit by bit, until at last it’s bearable—and then, in April or May, the dull melancholy that settles like a blanket of dust over his heart will turn, almost instantly, into anticipation.
There’s moonlight flooding through the window from the pond side, so when Jake’s finger runs across a rough spot on Mallory’s lower back, he squints at it in the ghostly light. A bite, a scrape? A spot of some sort, he sees. He reaches for his reading glasses and his phone and shines a light on it. An irregularly shaped black mark on her back. It looks nefarious, but is it? Jake snaps a picture of it. Is he overstepping his bounds?
Maybe—but in the morning, he’s going to show her the picture and insist that she get it checked out.