“I have to pay you something.”
“When do I start?”
“Tomorrow, I guess.” She looked skeptical. “We start at four, but you can come in at five.”
“Five?”
“In the morning.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. I was somewhat deflated, but no matter. I could wake up early. If Isabelle had done it all these years, then so could I.
It was dark when I woke for my first day on the job, and I questioned my earlier impulse. I felt groggy and headachy. I bundled up against the cold and walked through the dimly lit streets until I saw the lights of the bakery. When I arrived, Isabelle was already there with her workers, Doris and Salvador. The ovens were burning and the kitchen smelled of brown sugar and cinnamon. It was all so warm and cozy, I could have nodded out right there, but Isabelle set me to work filling muffin tins. Most of the jobs I did at the bakery were monotonous, but after a few weeks I got used to the work and began to like it. I’d let my mind wander. Sometimes stories would come to me from things I saw in the shop. I imagined a relationship between Doris and Salvador. As far as I knew, they were barely acquainted, but in my mind I created a love story of passion mixed with impediments. Poor Doris in her hairnet and Salvador with his stormy eyebrows—I doubt they would have liked it if they’d known what I was thinking.
I established a routine. I woke up at four and got to the bakery at five. I worked at the bakery until noon, covered the morning rush, then walked the island all afternoon. At first, one mile of walking in the cold wind made my throat feel like tin and I’d rush home to a warm fire and woolly socks. After a while, though, I was hiking all over the island, mile after mile. Between that and my work in the bakery I could feel my body getting firmer, trimmer, stronger. I wouldn’t need to cover anything this summer.
Early evenings I worked on foundation business, and when everything was finished for the day, I took out the journal Max had given me and I wrote. Yes, it was my dirty secret. At first, I wrote only journal entries, but then I started writing this story.
Jack Reilly kept in touch. He had fixed the front steps of the house in Hull. He was building some bookshelves and he was writing. He said his book was going to be great. Sometimes he sent me pieces through the mail, pieces typed on an old manual typewriter, even though there was a computer in the house. Jack asked for advice, but he rarely took it. I envied Jack Reilly his unrestrained confidence. He was so sure of his greatness. Did that make him greater?
I dutifully called Priscilla once a week. She still couldn’t understand why I’d prefer the loneliness of the island to a winter in the city.
“I met the Goldmans at a party,” she said. “I’ve been spending some time with Emma. She’s a knitter. She says that knitting is very popular with Hollywood celebrities, not that that matters to me, of course. I can take a celebrity or leave one alone. Speaking of celebrities, her brother Max came by once while I was there. He’s not very talkative, is he? I would describe him as morose.”
“Morose?” Max was many things, but that wasn’t one of them.
“Was he alone?” I asked.
“Yes. Emma says he’s been acting strangely—not like a man in love—if any of us can tell what a man in love is supposed to act like. But Emma says he’s either engaged or close to it. That girl Lindsay is home with her parents now. They say she’s had a complete personality change. Of course, I didn’t know her before and a head injury can be a serious thing. Maybe that’s why Max is upset. You know, you throw your lot in with someone and then they change. It could be disturbing.”
If I had been managing to keep even a sliver of hope alive, it died then, gasping on the little matchbox bed I had so carefully crafted for it.
“And Charlie found Max a house. Just what he wanted. That Charlie is a genius. I read a review of Max’s latest book. The reviewer used the word
“No.”
“I think I’ll pick it up. See what all the fuss is about. Good thing you didn’t hitch your wagon to his star.”
Over the years, I had often told myself that Priscilla had the best of intentions. After all, Pris was my mother’s best friend and I assumed they’d think alike as far as I was concerned. When my mother died Priscilla was like a bandage I placed over my grief. At first, I relied on Priscilla’s judgments and opinions with a blind faith, but I was beginning to see that Priscilla had her own agenda. It was important to Priscilla that I never change. So long as I remained the same—a somewhat inept, dependent spinster—she could be the savvy one, the worldly one, a lady of great taste and sophistication—and even a femme fatale. These undermining quips of Priscilla’s weren’t new, I had just refused to notice them, because if I did, it would change how I felt about her. Now I couldn’t help noticing them and each little jab drove us farther apart.
The next week I didn’t make my call to Priscilla. I was tired of the duties of good breeding.
At the end of the week, Pris called me.
“I haven’t heard from you,” she said. I knew she didn’t like to pay for long-distance phone calls, even though she could easily afford them. It was a vestige of a time when long distance was considered a luxury. “Jane, is something wrong, dear?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“You don’t sound like yourself.” I hadn’t said anything, so how could she suggest that I didn’t sound like myself? “Maybe you should come home. Maybe you’re lonely out there.”
“I have Isabelle.”
“She isn’t a good friend.”
“Yes she is.”
“If you say so.”
It was just like Priscilla to knit up her own version of my life and toss it over the real one like an ugly throw. I tapped my fingers on the desk and stared out the window. It was a gray and cold day.
“How’s Jason?” I asked. It was a question born more of courtesy than curiosity. The more I thought about Priscilla’s relationship with Jason, the more it worried me that I had allowed this woman to guide me in the ways of men.
“I met someone new,” she said. “Kent Bracken. We have so much in common.” Like their age, I hoped. “He’s married, but it’s all so romantic, I can overlook that for now.” She might be able to overlook it, but his wife was likely to have more difficulty with the arrangement. It was none of my business. “He’s one of the greatest scientific minds of the twenty-first century—stem cell research. He could find a cure for diabetes, even Alzheimer’s. What a mind. We talk poetry for hours. We met at the symphony. He’s just crazy about culture.”
“Great,” I said. “I have to go. I’m expected at Isabelle’s.” I said Isabelle’s name very loudly.
“Well, keep in touch. I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.” Her worry demeaned me. It assumed that there was something wrong with me and there wasn’t.
“I don’t see how you could be fine on that godforsaken island in winter,” Pris said.
If she said anything after that, I didn’t hear her because I had hung up. I know it’s extremely impolite to hang up on someone when they are talking to you. This behavior certainly wasn’t in keeping with the Fortune family code, but maybe I was coming to the point where I could live with that.
Chapter 29
“May I ask you why the hell you are working in a bakery?” my father asked.
It was late May and he, Miranda, and Dolores had just arrived on the island.
Before they came, and after our winter tenants left our Vineyard Haven house, I got it cleaned and moved my
