Nantucket Nights (15 page)

“I do what everybody else in this world does, Theo. I try to survive.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, look, I eat, I dance, I read, I satiate my sexual desires.”

“Do you want to know what I do?” Theo asked. “Do you want to know how my day at work went?”

Antoinette batted her eyelashes. “How was your day at work, honey?”

“Never mind,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said.

There were funny little things about her. Like, for example, she had no photographs of herself. No pictures of her family. When Theo brought the snapshot of her holding him as a baby, she gazed at it for a long time. “That’s me,” she said finally, as if there had been any doubt.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “How come you don’t have other pictures?”

“Pictures of what?”

“Of yourself.”

She looked truly puzzled. “Why would I have pictures of myself? I already know what I look like.”

“What about your parents, then?” Theo asked. His voice was thick and nervous. It wasn’t fair—she had known him since the day he was born. “Are they still alive?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Theo asked.

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” she said.

He asked a lot of questions but received no answers. Maybe there were no answers, Theo thought. It was as if Antoinette were a mirage, a phantom who had no past and whose likeness couldn’t be captured on film. He tasted her skin, he sniffed under her arms, he tangled his fingers in her coarse, curly hair to reassure himself that she was real.

He was brave enough to bring up Antoinette with his mother only once. Just after school ended, he was helping in the garden and he said, “I saw Antoinette on my way to work today. Riding her bike.”

“Oh, really?” his mother said. She was kneeling in the dirt, staking her tomato plants; it was Theo’s job to hold the plants against the stake while his mother tore strips from one of his father’s old white T-shirts and tied the plants up. “I should call her, I guess.”

Theo stared at the earth, as rich and brown as chocolate cake. “What’s Antoinette’s story, anyway?”

His mother looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Theo said. The sun was hot against the back of his neck. “She’s just so.. . weird. How did she end up here? Was she born here?”

“No,” his mother said. “She came from New York City the same summer I moved here. We lived together. You know that.”

“What did she do in New York?” Theo asked.

“Ballet,” his mother said. She moved on to the next plant and Theo followed. “That’s really all I can tell you.”

“How come?” Theo said. “Is her life, like, classified information?”

His mother ripped his father’s shirt down the middle in a way that seemed almost violent. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

One evening in mid-June, Theo told Antoinette that he loved her. They had finished making love, and Antoinette was bleeding a little. She had her period.

“Ugh,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t mind,” Theo said. “I love you.”

Antoinette disappeared into the bathroom, closing the
door. Theo could hear her opening a drawer, rummaging around. He sank his head
back into one of Antoinette’s feather pillows. He’d never told a woman that he
loved her before. He never said the words, not even to his mother and father. I
love you.
It was an overused phrase, but that was how he felt, that was who he’d become—someone who loved another person. He felt vulnerable, exposed, scared. He put on his clothes.

“I love you, Antoinette,” he said to the closed door. “Are you listening?”

Oddly enough, it was his father who caught him. One night, the week after the Fourth of July, Theo sat in his Jeep at the end of Antoinette’s driveway. He saw a red Chevy coming from the north, but there were a lot of red Chevys on Nantucket—and besides, his dad was working in Monomoy, which was to the west. But then the driver flashed his lights. Theo threw the Jeep into reverse and backed up ten feet, bent his head, and closed his eyes, praying that the truck would pass. Instead, when he looked up, the red truck was stopped right in front of the driveway, and there was his father, window down, staring at him.

“What are you doing here, Theo?” his father said. “Did your mother send you to get something?”

What could he say? He clawed around for some likely reason for being in Antoinette’s driveway.

“I was out exploring,” he said, “and I made a wrong turn.”

His father stared at him. Theo willed another car to come along and end the issue, but none did. Then his father waved a hand.

“Follow me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Theo pulled out behind his father, reviewing the lie in his head. He’d made a wrong turn while exploring. He’d forgotten it was Antoinette’s house until he pulled up, and then, because it looked like she wasn’t home, he’d turned around. Nothing wrong with that.

They drove to Monomoy, to the Ting house, such as it was, barely framed out. Still, the views across the water were incredible. Theo climbed out of the Jeep; he was sweating.

“No wonder you’re never home,” Theo said to his father. “It’s beautiful here.” “It’s beautiful at home,” his dad said. “This is nothing but work.”

“Yeah, well. Huge house.”

“Biggest house on the island.”

“Yeah,” Theo said.

They walked inside—the walls weren’t completely up yet—and headed toward the front of the house where giant windows overlooked the harbor. The wooden floors were littered with tools, nails, an electric sander. The sun was still up above the steeple of the Congregational Church. Seagulls cried. Theo’s hands were shaking.

“So tell me again,” his father said. “What were you doing at Antoinette’s?”

“I made a wrong turn,” Theo said. How long had it been since he’d lied to his father? He couldn’t look his father’s way, but with a view like this, there was no need. Theo focused on the sailboats, which looked like bits of confetti scattered across the water. “I was hunting for a certain dirt road, and I drove up Antoinette’s driveway accidentally.”

“The roads back that way are confusing,” his father said. “I got lost a few times myself when I was building that house.”

It had been two weeks since Theo had told Antoinette he loved her, and she’d said nothing in return. Okay, then, she didn’t love him back. Did he really expect her to?

Theo looked at his father. His mother always said his father was a lucky man. “I’ve been seeing Antoinette,” Theo said. He kicked a nail across the floor. “We’re sleeping together.”

His father’s eyes closed and opened again. Brown eyes flecked with gold, like Theo’s own eyes and the eyes of his brother and sisters. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

“You have to believe me,” Theo said. “It’s true.”

“What the hell are you telling me?” Theo recognized the expression on his father’s face—he was holding back his anger, keeping himself in check. When Theo’s father was a teenager, he’d flown out of control all the time—started fistfights, punched holes in walls, broke legs off dining room chairs. But not anymore. “Theo,” his father said, in a voice so low Theo could barely hear it. “What’s going on?”

Theo spewed forth the story, an edited version, from the baseball game forward, up to the part where Theo now knew himself to be in love—only instead of the kind of love that made things bright and clear, this kind of love obscured things, confused them. This was the kind of love that was like walking through the dark woods alone, terrifying, unknown.

“I haven’t told anybody else about this,” Theo said. His voice broke. “I want her to love me back, Dad.”

His father put his arm around Theo and squeezed hard. “Trust me when I say you’re in over your head. And what about your mother?”

“What about her?”

His father turned Theo’s face by the chin. “What am I supposed to do? Keep this from her?”

 “Yeah,” Theo said. “I mean, you can’t
tell
her.”

 “Well, then, you shouldn’t have told me.”

“Except you’re my father.”

“That’s not going to work, Theo. I’m not getting warm, fuzzy father-son feelings about this conversation. Because what you’re telling me spells danger for you and for your mother. You especially. You’re going to get creamed in this, I promise. Antoinette is too old, too sophisticated, too goddamned complicated. But mostly too old. Do you hear me? Now, I understand wanting to get laid. I understand that part just fine. But not Antoinette.” He put his hands on the windowsill and leaned through the empty window. “What the hell is that woman
thinking?
You’re just a kid.”

“I’m an adult,” Theo said. “Eighteen, right? Old enough to go to war and all that.”

 “It’s wrong,” his father said. “What Antoinette is doing is
wrong.”

 
“It’s not her fault,” Theo said. “Please don’t say anything to Antoinette.”

“Well, it’s over now. I’m making it over.” Theo’s father blew air out his nose, like a bull ready to charge. “You’re forbidden from going over there again.”

“You can’t forbid me to do anything.”

“I sure can. I’m your father.”

“What about you always telling us to make our own choices, to develop our independence? What about that? Was that all bullshit?”

“This isn’t a sound choice, Theo.”

“Just let me deal, okay? I told you because, well, because I needed to tell somebody, and you asked. Whatever, just let me make this mistake if that’s what this is.” He poked his father in the back. “If you tell Mom, I’ll kill you.”

“Don’t threaten me, mister.”

Theo kicked some more nails, then a hammer. What he needed was some
help,
some
understanding.
Didn’t his father see that?

“Just forget it,” Theo said. He left the house, got in his Jeep, and headed home.

Theo studied his mother for any sign of change and saw none. So there was that. Either his father respected his decision or he was too afraid to tell Theo’s mother the truth. His father was cold with him, distant, and that hurt because his father wasn’t home that often anyway, and so Theo went from getting a small amount of his father’s attention to none at all. So what could Theo think but,
Fuck him?
All his father cared about was building some huge house that—according to the principles of
300 Years of Nantucket Architecture
—would ruin the character of the island forever.

...

And then, Antoinette missed her period.

She’d been irritable for a few days—if a person who almost never communicated could be called irritable—she didn’t want to be held or kissed. She slapped Theo across the face while they were making love. She pretended like it was an act of passion, except that it hurt, and tears came to Theo’s eyes. When it was over, he said, “Why did you hit me?”

She rolled away from him on the mattress. “Sorry, I was letting out some frustrations.”

“What kind of frustrations?” This was what ate away at him: Antoinette had frustrations and he didn’t even know about it. “Frustrations with me?”

She stood up and looked him over.

“I missed my period.”

“Oh, shit,” he said. They had never used condoms because Theo figured Antoinette would take care of herself—the pill, IUD, menopause for all he knew. “So you think you’re pregnant, then?”

“Well, it’s been a while, but it feels the same.”

“Wait a minute. What feels the same? You’ve been pregnant before?”

“I have a daughter,” Antoinette said. “Or I had a daughter. Twenty years ago.”

“You’re kidding,” Theo said. “You have-a daughter who’s older than me?”

“I gave her up for adoption,” Antoinette said.

“Really?” Theo said. “How come?”

She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me,” Theo said. “You never tell me anything.” He touched his cheek where she’d hit him and wondered if she’d left a mark.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed out the window into the woods. “Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Why would you want to know about an old woman’s life? What could it possibly mean to you?”

“I want to know you, Antoinette,” Theo said. “I show up here every day and we .. . we screw and I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t know anything about your family, your parents, this daughter. Just tell me about the daughter, okay?”

“It’s old stuff,” Antoinette said. “Old and sad.”

“Please,” Theo said.

“You’re going to be shocked,” she said.

“I won’t be shocked,” he said, although he felt completely shocked—Antoinette thought she was pregnant, and she’d been pregnant before. “I promise.”

Antoinette wound a strand of black hair around her finger. “I got married right out of college,” she said. “My husband and I lived in Manhattan, and my husband was a consultant for Price water house. He had projects in California, so he was away a lot, but that didn’t bother me. I was getting my master’s in dance at NYU, I had a great apartment on the Upper East Side to decorate, I was busy exploring the city. Then, after a year or so, I discovered I was pregnant.”

“Okay,” Theo said.

“I was a twenty-three-year-old dancer whose husband was all but living on the West Coast. There was no place in my life at that time for a child. I wanted to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Get an abortion?” Theo said.

“Get an abortion. But my husband talked me out of it. He
wanted
the baby.
It’s going to be great!’
he said.
“We’re starting a family!’
He convinced me to leave school, which I did, and in return I asked him to leave the project in California and take a project closer to home. So he did. He took a project in Philadelphia and he was less than two hours away by train. He was home every weekend. He walked with me in Central Park, he took me to see
Aida
at the Met, he went out in the middle of the night to get me watermelon from the Korean deli.” Antoinette tightened her fists and brought them to her ears, like she was trying to block out an awful sound.

“Then what happened?” Theo asked. Here was Antoinette’s history, her real history, that even his mother might not know.