Morning (37 page)

In May, there was good news. Fanny called from England to announce that she and Randolph were going to be married. It would be a small private wedding in the garden at the manor house in the fall. Fanny’s great desire now was that Sara be her matron of honor; after all, Sara was her best and really only friend. If Sara and Steve would please consent to letting Randolph and Fanny take care of the financial details, they would like to pay the Kendalls’ way to London, it was the least they could do. The wedding would be in early September.

Sara sat at her desk, looking out at their backyard, which was splendid with spring, the grass Easter-green, jonquils and tulips and hyacinths sprinkled like colored eggs under the forsythia. The world had done it again, had renewed itself, had given birth to itself. And Fanny had been born again, too, into a woman who was competent and loved and finally even a little wise. All things were possible, Sara told herself. All things were really possible. In spite of her vow, she found herself praying fervently all month, praying to whatever god it was that caused springtime, for surely
that
god would understand her desires.

And at the end of May, in spite of her prayers, the blood came.

In June she had a telephone call from a writer, a man who lived in New York and wrote a weekly column for a major news magazine and summered on Nantucket. He had heard of Sara’s work with Fanny Anderson and asked if she would be interested in looking at the manuscript of an old Nantucket eccentric. Sara and the journalist and the old codger had tea together, and Sara looked at his manuscript, which was about life in the early years on the island. The articulate old salt had run a charter yacht service for years and had taken celebrities of every kind out for fishing trips or boating parties and celebrations, so he had memories and tales to tell and his own unique philosophy of life to expound upon in his own unique and crochety and colorful way. In a way he was a kind of genius, and Sara looked forward to editing his book. It would be a lot of work, for he was a more reluctant collaborator than Fanny had been and had to be cajoled into changing certain things. He thought it a disgrace that he couldn’t call a famous senator’s wife a “ditzy alcoholic cunt,” and so on. It was a challenge for Sara, but one that, if completed successfully, would be a real accomplishment.

At the end of June, her stomach pushed out again, making her silk slacks too tight
to fasten. Her nipples stung and her breasts ached. She was zany with premenstrual tension, and on the twenty-eighth day her back began its nasty little evil cramps. The morning of the twenty-ninth day, she walked to town, bought herself four giant-size candy bars and every slick glossy magazine on the newsstand. Then she went home, took the phone off the hook, and crawled into bed to dissipate in gloom and chocolate.

The morning of the thirtieth day she was insane, maniacal, furious. Her
damned
body and its
damned
tricks! She knew her period was going to start, she could feel its pressure inside her, burgeoning, hanging, weighing her down.
Goddamn
, why didn’t it just go ahead and start? Why was she being tortured like this? She took a long bike ride to Surfside and back, then to the Jetties and back, and collapsed in a hot bathtub with an aching back.

On the morning of the thirty-first day she awoke to find that her period hadn’t started. Her breasts ached. Her back was cramping. She was insane. She watched TV all day long.

On the morning of the thirty-second day, her period hadn’t started. She thought she would fly out of her skin. She wanted to be put to sleep.

On the morning of the thirty-third day, Steve said, “Hey, shouldn’t your period be starting about now?”

The grin on his face broke Sara’s heart.
He thinks I’m pregnant,
she thought.
Oh, my poor Steve, I’m going to disappoint him again
.

“It’s going to start any day now,” she said. “I’m late, but I know I’m going to start, I’ve got all the signs.”

“Oh,” he said. “Too bad.”

On the morning of the thirty-fourth day, she flew to Boston and bought two hundred dollars’ worth of new clothes: tight dresses and a clinging, plunging swimsuit.

On the morning of the thirty-fifth day, after a night of tossing and turning and hoping and doubting, after a night of almost no sleep, Sara threw on her clothes and went sneaking off to a pharmacy at the outskirts of town where she knew no one. She bought an Early Pregnancy Testing Kit to use the next day.

Morning
.

The thirty-sixth day.

Sara rose stealthily from the bed before the alarm went off so that she wouldn’t
wake Steve. Slipping silently into the bathroom, she took the kit from where she had hidden it behind the towels.

The kit.

The cup.

The test.

The waiting.

The results: she was pregnant.

Sara stood in the bathroom staring at the stick she was holding, which had turned the most gorgeous shade of blue. She looked up and saw her face in the mirror; it was the face of an idiot, of a religious convert, the face of Saul on the road to Damascus. She put down the toilet lid and sank down onto it and just sat there, holding the miraculous stick in her hand, staring at it.

How could this happen?, Sara wondered. How could this be? Why now? Why not earlier? Why never?

She did not know; she would never know. She only knew that she was pregnant at last. She sat, stunned, while the sun rolled higher into the sky, warming the day, sending its radiance into even this small bathroom in this modest house so that the room glowed as if there were riches here. And morning spread its brightness around her world, her town, her house, her life. She felt its glow and promise, and the glimmering beginnings inside her body answering back.

She went into the bedroom. She snuggled back into bed with Steve and curled herself against him, pulling at his body so that he was turned to face her.

“Ummm,” he said lazily.

“Steve,” she said. “Good morning.”

For Julian Bach

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my appreciation to the Mugar Memorial Library, in particular to the staff of Special Collections, for their assistance in directing me to the following sources: Sir James G. Frazer,
The Golden Bough
(New York: Macmillan, 1950); Dorothy Jacob,
Cures and Curses
(New York: Taplinger, 1967); Paul Ghalioungui,
The House of Life
(Amsterdam: B. M. Israel, 1973); M. Ester Harding,
Woman’s Mysteries
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971); Angus McLaren,
Reproductive Rituals
(London: Methuen, 1984); Audrey L. Meany,
Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones
(Oxford, England: BAR British Series 96, 1981); and Elwood B. Trigg and D. Phil,
Gypsy Demons and Divinities
. The quotations pertaining to fertility rites were taken from these books (listed in order in which the quotations appear).

B
Y
N
ANCY
T
HAYER

Nantucket Sisters

A Nantucket Christmas

Island Girls

Summer Breeze

Heat Wave

Beachcombers

Summer House

Moon Shell Beach

The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

Hot Flash Holidays

The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

The Hot Flash Club

Custody

Between Husbands and Friends

An Act of Love

Family Secrets

Everlasting

My Dearest Friend

Spirit Lost

Morning

Nell

Bodies and Souls

Three Women at the Water’s Edge

Stepping

Nancy Thayer
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Island Girls, Summer Breeze, Heat Wave, Beachcombers, Summer House, Moon Shell Beach
, and
The Hot Flash Club.
She lives in Nantucket.

nancythayer.com

Facebook.com/NancyThayerAuthor

Read on for an excerpt from Nancy Thayer’s

Nantucket Sisters

Published by Ballantine Books

It’s like a morning in Heaven. From a blue sky, the sun, fat and buttery as one a child would draw in school, shines down on a sapphire ocean. Eleven-year-old Emily Porter stands at the edge of a cliff high above the beach, her blond hair rippled by a light breeze.

The edge of the cliff is an abrupt, jagged border, into which a small landing is built, with railings you can lean against, looking out at the sea. Before her, weathered wooden steps cut back and forth down the steep bluff to the beach.

Behind her lies the grassy lawn and their large gray summer house, so different from their apartment on East 86th in New York City.

Last night, as the Porters flew away from Manhattan, Emily looked down on the familiar fantastic panorama of sparkling lights, urging the plane onward with her excitement, with her longing to see the darkness and then, in the distance, the flash and flare of the lighthouse beacons.

Nantucket begins today.

Today, while her father plays golf and her beautiful mother, Cara, organizes the house, Emily is free to do as she pleases. And what she’s waited for all winter is to run down the street into the small village of ’Sconset and along the narrow path to the cottages in Codfish Park, where she’ll knock on Maggie’s door.

First, she waves back at the ocean. Next, she turns and runs, half skipping, waving her arms, singing. She exults in the soft grass under her feet instead of hard sidewalk, salt air in her lungs instead of soot, the laughter of gulls instead of the blare of car horns, and the sweet perfume of new dawn roses.

She flies along past the old town water pump, past the ’Sconset Market, past the post office, past Claudette’s Box Lunches. Down the steep cobblestoned hill to Codfish Park. Here, the houses used to be shacks where fishermen spread their nets to dry, so the roofs are low and the walls are ramshackle. Maggie’s house is a crooked, funny little place, but roses curl over the roof, morning glories climb up a trellis, and pansy faces smile from window boxes.

Before she can knock, the door flies open.

“Emily!” Maggie’s hair’s been cut into an elf’s cap and she’s taller than Emily now, and she has more freckles over her nose and cheeks.

Behind Maggie stands Maggie’s mother, Frances, wearing a red sundress with an apron over it. Emily’s never seen anyone but caterers and cooks wear an apron. It has lots of pockets. It makes Maggie’s mother look like someone from a book.

“You’re here!” Maggie squeals.

“Welcome back, Emily.” Frances smiles. “Come in. I’ve made gingerbread.”

The fragrant scent of ginger and sugar wafts out enticingly from the house, which is, Emily admits privately to her own secret self, the strangest place Emily’s ever seen. The living room’s in the kitchen; the sofa, armchairs, television set, and coffee table, all covered with books and games, are just on the other side of the round table from the sink and appliances. In the dining room, a sewing machine stands on a long table, and piles of fabric bloom from every surface in a crazy hodgepodge. Frances is divorced and makes her living as a seamstress, which is why Emily’s parents aren’t crazy about her friendship with Maggie, who is only a poor island girl.

But Maggie and Emily have been best friends since they met on the beach when they were five years old. With Maggie, Emily is her true self. Maggie understands Emily in a way her parents never could. Now that the girls are growing up, Emily senses change in the air—but not yet. Not yet. There is still this summer ahead.

And summer lasts forever.

“I’d love some gingerbread, thank you, Mrs. McIntyre,” Emily says politely.

“Oh, holy moly, call her Frances.” Maggie tugs on Emily’s hand and pulls her into the house.

Maggie acts blasé and bossy around Emily, but the truth is, she’s always kind of astounded at the friendship she and Emily have created. Emily Porter is rich, the big fat New York/Nantucket rich.

In comparison, Maggie’s family is just plain poor. The McIntyres live on Nantucket year-round but are considered off-islanders, “wash-ashores,” because they weren’t born on the island. They came from Boston, where Frances grew up, met and married Billy McIntyre, and had two children with him. Soon after, they divorced, and he disappeared from their lives. When Maggie was a year old, Frances moved them all to the island, because she’d heard the island needed a good seamstress. She’s made a decent living for them—some women call Frances “a treasure.”