Nantucket Nights (4 page)

It seemed true: Kayla and Valerie were fast friends. They each got jobs in town. Kayla worked at Murray’s Toggery peddling Lilly Pulitzer skirts and Top-Siders, and Valerie sold tiny gold lightship baskets at a jewelry store. They spent their free days on Nobadeer Beach, and their free nights doing the bump at the Chicken Box. Kayla reveled in the new friendship, but she felt uncomfortable excluding Antoinette. It
did
feel like a racial issue—the two white girls leaving the black girl at home. And so, Kayla invited Antoinette everywhere—to the movies, to the bars, to the beach. Antoinette always declined in the same taut, definitive way. “No.” And then, as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

Antoinette didn’t have a job that summer; she was spending her time “recovering.” That was the other thing she told them when she first moved in: She had come to Nantucket to recover. Recover from what? It was an endless source of speculation between Kayla and Valerie. Antoinette wasn’t a recovering alcoholic—she purchased cold chablis at the liquor store, poured it into one of the Waterford goblets she had brought to Nantucket, and drank alone in her room. She wasn’t a recovering drug addict— when Kayla and Valerie lit up a joint before they went out to the Chicken Box, Antoinette would poke her head out of her bedroom and ask if she could have a toke. They pushed the dope on her eagerly, hoping it would make her talk, but it shut her up even more. After smoking, Antoinette’s eyelids drooped, her mouth clamped shut, and she retreated back to her room, arms crossed over her chest.

Antoinette was a dancer. She wore black leotards and dirty pink ballet slippers, and every once in a while, Kayla found her in the backyard spinning and leaping and moving her arms in a way that reminded Kayla of an elephant’s trunk. Antoinette danced until her leotard was soaked with sweat, and when she finished, she downed a jug of water, wiped her face off with a towel, and looked around the backyard as if she’d just stepped off a bus in a strange town.

One time Antoinette noticed Kayla peeking at her from the open kitchen window, and Kayla felt like she’d been caught watching Antoinette undress or something. “Part of your recovery?” Kayla asked meekly.

Antoinette did not respond.

Kayla remembered that first summer on Nantucket vividly. As soon as she stepped off the ferry she knew she’d found her spiritual home. The island was peaceful, simple, the historic home of Quakers and Native Americans. Kayla loved the colors of Nantucket: the gray of cedar shingles, the blue of the sky reflected across the harbor, the green of the dune grass, the red of ripe tomatoes in the back of the Bartlett’s farm truck. But what made Nantucket special was the people. In mid-July, Kayla met Raoul at the Chicken Box, but their relationship didn’t grow serious until the fall. That first summer, Kayla immersed herself in life with her two roommates, the one who liked her and the one who didn’t. Kayla tried everything in her power to draw out Antoinette—she made a fancy dinner and set the table with three places. Candles, Chablis, marinated swordfish; she even went so far as to slide an invitation under Antoinette’s bedroom door.
Dinner party here! Tonight!
the invitation said.
Please come as you are! Seven o’clock!
At quarter to seven, Antoinette slid the invitation back out.
No!
it said.
Thanks!
Kayla and Val ate the swordfish and drank two bottles of Chablis by themselves.

“I don’t know why you try so hard,” Val said. “She’s obviously a mental case.”

Right before Labor Day that first summer, a heat wave hit. Walter Cronkite announced on the evening news that Nantucket Island was the most comfortable location on the eastern seaboard, and immediately people from Boston, New York, and D.C. flocked to the island. But even Nantucket was hot and sticky, and when Kayla stood in the close, un-air-conditioned showroom of Murray’s folding and refolding the Shetland sweaters they’d ordered for autumn, she felt like crying. It was hard to ride her bike, it was hard to lift her hands above her head, and it was impossible to sleep.

One night during the worst of it, she rose from bed and went into the kitchen, dug into a half gallon of Rocky Road, and lit up a joint. She heard footsteps, and she expected Valerie to appear, but instead, Antoinette walked into the kitchen, completely nude. Kayla tried to hide her surprise. One of the things she and Valerie had agreed on was that no matter how strange the things Antoinette did were, they would not act shocked.

“Kayla,” she said.

Kayla handed Antoinette the joint, trying not to stare at her dark pubic hair, her purplish nipples. “It’s hot,” Kayla said.

Antoinette inhaled the smoke and after a moment let it go. “You got that right.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Antoinette looked at Kayla then, and Kayla got the feeling it was the first time Antoinette had ever really seen her. “Let’s swim,” Antoinette said.

They woke Val, and the three of them climbed into
Antoinette’s CJ7, a great old Jeep that Kayla and Valerie had both admired but
never ridden in. Kayla thought they would go to Steps Beach, where the water was
calm, or possibly to Surfside or No-badeer, which were close to the house, but Antoinette was driving—still nude—and when she took unfamiliar roads, Kayla said nothing. They headed out Polpis Road, where Kayla sometimes rode her bike, and took a left toward Wauwinet. They continued down a road with a lot of trees—Kayla could remember thinking that nowhere else on Nantucket had she seen so many trees—and then Antoinette pulled onto the shoulder, turned off the Jeep, and got out of the car. They were sitting in complete darkness amid the chattering of crickets. Valerie pressed her fingertips into Kayla’s shoulder blade, and Kayla knew what she was thinking:
Now we’ve done it Antoinette’s deserting us here. Or worse, she’s going to march us back into those woods and shoot us.
Then Kayla heard a hissing sound and she leaned over the driver side and peered out the window. She saw, through the darkness, the even darker form of Antoinette, crouched down, letting air out of the tires.

That was Kayla’s first time up the beach to Great Point, the tip of Nantucket, the beginning and end of the island. It was the first time she’d driven over sand at all—the Jeep bounced and jiggled over bumps and in and out of ruts, and Antoinette’s breasts jiggled, too. Kayla watched as Antoinette gripped the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead. They said nothing.

Antoinette stopped out past Great Point lighthouse. There was no moon that year, but there were billions of stars, and the kind of distinct Milky Way you could see only when you were a hundred miles away from the nearest city. When they stepped out of the Jeep, they were surrounded by water on three sides, with the lighthouse behind them like a stately guard. A division was visible in the water: a current pushing toward the sound, a current pushing toward the ocean. The foam on the waves was iridescent For a moment, Kayla forgot it was hot.

She and Valerie stripped, and the three of them waded into the water and fell backwards. Chill. That’s the best way to describe the sensation: sweet and chill. Kayla’s life at that moment was all about the temperature of that water, the relief, the beauty of it. She could have stayed there forever.

Maybe Antoinette was feeling the same way, because as she floated on her back, she began to tell them things.

“I got married three years ago,” she said. “A year ago I became pregnant, and while I was pregnant, I found my husband cheating on me. I had a baby girl, but I gave her away.”

Kayla kept treading water, and Valerie, somewhere near her, did the same. Because it was dark, they didn’t have to worry about the expressions on their faces: shock, horror, and perverse interest.

“You were
married?”
Kayla asked. That explained the Waterford goblet, at least. “You had a
baby?”

“Was. Had.” Antoinette spoke to the sky. “All past.”

“So that’s what you’re recovering from, then?” Kayla said.

“Recovering, yeah. That’s the bullshit I told myself when I got here. But if this summer’s taught me anything, it’s that I’m never going to recover. I have these dreams, you know, nightmares, where I hear my baby crying and I’m searching through a big house, but behind each door instead of finding my baby I find my husband having sex with different women.”

“Why did you give away your baby?” Val asked.

“After she was born I tried to kill myself,” Antoinette said. “I took pills. My neighbor found me and I was hospitalized and social services took the baby. But in the end, I decided to put her up for adoption.”

“Because?”

“Because,” Antoinette said, like it was obvious. “Because I can barely live with my own pain. Taking care of someone else, being that
responsible,
you know, for another person’s welfare, I’m just not healthy enough. I want to be able to kill myself if that’s what I decide.”

“Please don’t decide that,” Val said. “Don’t kill yourself over a man. They’re not worth it.”

Antoinette kicked her feet. “He wasn’t just some
man.
He was my husband. Not that I expect either of you to understand.”

“I understand,” Kayla said, though of course she didn’t. But she sensed in herself the power to understand someday, and she realized the magnitude of Antoinette’s confidence. “Thank you for telling us. We thought you didn’t like us.”

“I don’t want friends,” Antoinette said. “Nothing against you personally. I just don’t have the energy. Besides, in a couple of weeks you’re leaving. You’ll go back to your lives; you’ll forget I even exist.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kayla said. She didn’t realize the words were true until she spoke them. “I’m staying here on Nantucket.”

“I’m leaving for law school,” Val said. “But I’ll be back. Next summer I’ll be back. We can come up here again. We can tell more secrets.”

“I might be dead next summer,” Antoinette said.

“No,” Kayla said. “Don’t say that.”

“You have no idea how I feel,” Antoinette said. “You have no idea how much effort it takes to survive each day.”

“Telling us the truth is a really crucial step,” Val said. “That’s why you brought us up here in the first place. You wanted us to know what happened. You wanted to share.”

Antoinette almost smiled, but instead she dipped her head back and came up spouting water from her mouth. “You white women,” she said.
“Share
is your middle name. You two can’t even go to the bathroom by yourselves.”

“Friends are important for personal growth,” Val said.

“I lost the only two people who meant anything to me,” Antoinette said. “It’s not like I can replace them.”

Kayla swam over to Antoinette and took her hand. Val joined them, and the three formed a circle in the water.

“We can’t replace them,” Kayla said. “But I agree with Val. I think we should come back here every summer.”

“I don’t know if I’ll make it to next summer,” Antoinette said.

“You’ll make it,” Val said.

“We’ll see to it,” Kayla said.

“I don’t want you future Junior Leaguers on my charity case,” Antoinette said. “You hear me? Don’t knock on my door in the middle of the night to check if I’m still alive.”

“Of course not,” Kayla said.

“And like I said, I don’t want friends.”

“We’ll be better than friends,” Kayla said. She was sucked into the idea immediately: Great Point at midnight, the stars, the chill water, three women sharing the secrets of their souls. “We’ll be the Night Swimmers.”

Kayla picked up Valerie first because she lived closer, on Pleasant Street, near Fahey & Fromagerie. Her house was smaller than Kayla’s, but more attractive—gambrel-style, like a barn, with neat hunter green shutters, pink geraniums in the window boxes, and a healthy violet-blue hydrangea bush on either side of the front door. Two cars in the driveway: Val’s slick, sexy BMW convertible and her husband’s quieter black Jaguar. Race cars, the cars of professionals who could afford landscapers and a cleaning lady, the cars of people without children. After that first summer on Nantucket, Val had accomplished most of what she set out to do: Law Review, clerking for Judge Sechrist, a job as an associate at Skadden, Arps in New York, where she met and married John Gluckstern, a Wall Street superstar. Within five years they had enough money to leave Manhattan behind and move to Nantucket year-round. Val set up her own law practice in an office overlooking the Easy Street Boat Basin. She was tremendously successful, handling all the biggest real estate deals on the island.

John worked as an investment adviser at Nantucket Bank, a job he took so he could meet other islanders with money to invest. Kayla and Raoul had been to see John twice—once when they set up Raoul’s business and then again in June, when Raoul landed the Ting job. John wore a three-piece suit to work, and at first that made one think that John was no different professionally from how he was socially: a self-important, puffed-up jackass. John had run for local office four times and had never been elected. He was unlikable. He was a one-upper, and he didn’t listen. But what Kayla found after going to see him at work was that in his job, he was different. He was eager and excited and friendly, and although he knew everything in the world there was to know about money and investing, he wasn’t pushy. He explained options to Raoul and Kayla carefully, he asked pertinent questions about the kids’ college educations, and he let them make their own choices—choices that made them feel confident, smart, successful.

After their second visit with John at the bank, Kayla wanted to gently suggest to Val that if John treated his friends and neighbors the way he treated his clients, he’d be better liked. But by that point, Val had lost interest in making John seem less reprehensible. Back in April, John ran for selectman for the fourth time and garnered only sixty-seven votes. Val called Kayla from the high school cafeteria in tears, and Kayla went to pick her up. It was a rainy night, and the two of them drove out to die deserted parking lot of Surfside Beach. The rain was so heavy that Kayla couldn’t even see the ocean through the windshield. Val sopped up her tears and slugged coffee and Kahlúa from a thermos that Kayla had brought. Val talked about how humiliating it was to have received only 67 votes when the winner got over 1,300.