Nantucket was the dul est place in America to grow up. There was no city, no shopping mal , no McDonald’s, no arcades, no diners, no clubs, no place to hang out unless you were into two-hundred-year-old Quaker meetinghouses. And yet, Josh had always had a soft spot for ’Sconset. It was a true vil age, with a Main Street canopied by tal , deciduous trees. The “town” of ’Sconset consisted of a post office, a package store that sold beer, wine, and used paperback books, two quaint cafes, and a market where Josh’s mother used to take him for an ice cream cone once a summer. There was an old casino that now served as a tennis club. ’Sconset was a place from another age, Josh had always thought. People said it was “old money,” but that just meant that a long, long time ago someone had the five hundred dol ars and the good sense it took to buy a piece of land and a smal house. The people who lived in ’Sconset had always lived in ’Sconset; they drove twenty-five-year-old Jeep Wagoneers, kids rode Radio Flyer tricycles down streets paved with white shel s, and on a summer afternoon, the only three sounds you could hear were the waves of the town beach, the snap of the flag at the rotary, and the thwack of tennis bal s from the club. It was like something precious from a postcard, but it was real.
The address Scowling Sister had given Josh over the phone was Eleven Shel Street. The Jeep’s tires crackled over crushed clamshel s as he pul ed up in front of the house. It was smal , cute, typical of ’Sconset; it looked like the house where the Three Bears lived. Josh picked up the briefcase. He was official y nervous. The house had a gate with a funny latch, and while he was fumbling with it, the front door swung open and out came a woman wearing a pair of denim shorts and a green bikini top that shimmered like fish scales. It was . . . wel , Josh had to admit it took him a minute to get his eyes to focus on the woman’s face, and when he did, he was confused. It was Scowling Sister, but she was smiling. She was getting closer to him, and closer, and before Josh knew it, she was wrapping her arms around his neck, and he felt the press of her breasts against his grubby airport-issued polo shirt, and he smel ed her perfume and then he felt something unsettling happening—he was losing his grip on the briefcase. Or no, wait. She was prying it from his hand. She had it now.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Uh,” Josh said. He took a few steps back. His vision was splotchy and green—green from the plot of grass in the side yard, green from the shiny material cupping Scowling Sister’s breasts. Okay, now, for sure, the hair on his arms was standing up. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m Dr. Lyndon,” Scowling Sister said, offering her hand. “Brenda.”
“Josh Flynn.”
“You’re such a dol to bring this by,” Brenda said. She hugged the briefcase to her chest. “I thought it was gone forever.”
“No problem,” Josh said, though it was more of a problem than he imagined. He was thrown into a frenzy by the sight of Scowling Sister. Her hair, which had been loose at the airport, was now held in a bun by a pencil, and little pieces fel down around her neck. She was very pretty. And pretty old, he guessed. Maybe thirty. She was barefoot and her toes were dark pink; they looked like berries.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked.
Chas Gorda would have encouraged Josh to say yes. One way to avoid being self-referential was to open your world up, meet new people.
Listen, observe, absorb. Josh had never seen the inside of one of these little cottages. He checked his watch. Five o’clock. Normal y, after work, he went for a swim at Nobadeer Beach, and sometimes he stopped by his old girlfriend Didi’s apartment. He and Didi had dated al through high school, but then she had stayed on the island and Josh had left, and now, three years later, you could real y tel the difference. Didi worked at the admitting desk at the hospital and al she talked about was her weight and
“Oh-kay,” he said. “Sure.”
“I’l make us some tea,” Brenda said. But she was distracted by a noise, a computerized version of “Fur Elise.” Brenda pul ed a cel phone out of her back pocket and checked the display.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I am
“Oh.”
“The kids. My sister. Her friend. And I’m not sure we even have any tea, so . . .”
“That’s al right,” Josh said, backing away. He was disappointed, but also relieved.
“Another time,” Brenda said. “You promise you’l come back another time? Now you know where we live!”
Melanie would never complain out loud, not with her best friend so gravely il , but she felt like mold on the wal at a fleabag motel. Here, then, was a classic case of Be Careful What You Wish For. Her breasts felt like lead bal oons. They hurt so much she couldn’t sleep on her stomach, and yet that was her favorite position for sleep, facedown, without so much as a pil ow. Now she had to contend with new sleeping quarters, a sagging twin bed in this strange, sunny room that smel ed like artificial pine trees.
Al she had wanted was to get away—as far away as possible. When she was in Connecticut, facing the utter wasteland her life had become, moving to Pluto had seemed too close. But now she was at loose ends; from a distance, things somehow looked worse than they did when she was standing in the middle of them. And the bizarre, unfathomable fact was, she missed Peter.
Peter, Melanie’s husband of six years, was very tal for an Asian man. Tal , broad in the shoulders, startlingly handsome—people on the streets of Manhattan occasional y mistook him for the chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Melanie had met Peter at a bar on the East Side. Peter, at that time, had worked on Wal Street, but shortly after he and Melanie married he became a market analyst at Rutter, Higgens, where he met Ted Stowe, Vicki’s husband. Vicki and Ted were expecting their first child; they were moving to Darien. Melanie and Vicki became good, fast friends, and soon Melanie was pestering Peter about moving to Connecticut, too. (“Pestering” was how Peter described it now. At the time, to Melanie, it had seemed like a mutual decision to move.) Melanie wanted children. She and Peter started trying—nothing happened. But Melanie had fal en in love with a house, not to mention the green-grass-and-garden vision of her life in Connecticut. They moved and became the only young couple in Darien without children. At times, Melanie blamed her fertility problems on the suburb. Babies were everywhere. Melanie was forced to watch the strol er brigade on its way to the school bus stop each morning. She was confronted by children wherever she turned—at the Stop & Shop, at the packed day care of her gym, at the annual Christmas pageant of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church.
