Nell (37 page)

During the course of the evening, Nell came to have some understanding of what this particular group was like. Most of the men and women were dropouts, reverse snobs who disdained the ambitious rat race, had contempt for their contemporaries who were slaving away as lawyers or medical interns or accountants. They said
stockbrokers
with a snarl of scorn that reminded Nell of politicians like Spiro Agnew speaking of “intellectuals”; and they were not that much different, Nell mused, in their adamant closed-minded aversion. More than half of the people she met said they were actors, artists, directors, photographers, dancers. But if Nell asked them where she could see an exhibit of their work or what they had acted in recently, they changed the subject. Little by little the truth came out—what they really did was wait tables or work as carpenters’ assistants or open scallops. They all told Nell they had moved to Nantucket to “get away
from it all,” but as the evening went on and Nell watched and listened, she realized it was more than that. These people not only thought they were getting away from being bourgeois, avoiding entrapment in a life of boring money-grubbing. They also thought they were escaping mortality and aging. They thought they were in Never-Never Land; if they weren’t tainted by making money, if they weren’t enslaved by mortgages or leases, if they never made a commitment to one job or one person, they would stay forever young, carefree, and happy. Jesus, Nell thought after the seventh person told her he had come to Nantucket because he didn’t want to be a lawyer, this is sort of creepy.

How different these people were from the ones who attended parties Nell went to. There everyone had been well dressed and rather formal. Here everyone wore jeans, old, faded jeans, and T-shirts or shirts with frayed collars. Three men in their thirties had brought teenagers with them as dates. The women wore little or no makeup and no jewelry and looked as if they’d faint, screaming, if they were touched with a ruffle or satin or silk. No one was married. No one had children. The most attached they got was to have a “lady friend,” a “boyfriend.” Some of the men were clever, witty, quick with put-down phrases, but for the most part no one had anything especially interesting to say. Yet they were all so smug.

After all the hot dogs had been eaten and people were just drinking, Nell grew bored and yearned to go up to bed, but she didn’t want to hurt Clary’s feelings. She tried to sneak away on the pretense that she had to get the children to bed, but Clary stopped her at the foot of the stairs. “Come back down when they’re in bed,” Clary said. “I want you to get to know Harry. You haven’t really talked with him yet.”

So after Hannah and Jeremy were tucked in bed, Nell went back down to the living room and sat drinking a beer with Harry. Harry, Clary’s current lover, her antidote to losing Bob. He was a handsome man, the exact opposite of Bob in every way. He was large and hairy, with long black hair, a black beard, black eyes, black chest hair curling up over the top of his T-shirt. He looked like a pirate. He was by far the most personable of all the people Nell had met that evening. He talked easily, about windsurfing and other island sports. Nell began to smile as she watched and listened. He’s all right, she decided. He’s intelligent, clever, handsome, kind: he might be all right for Clary! She asked him what he did for a living. He told her he opened scallops and demonstrated how it was
done. He showed her the ridge of callus along his hand that had grown from holding the scallops as he dug in with his knife. He told her that opening scallops was the lowest job imaginable: it was cold, smelly, dirty, uncertain work. He seemed quite pleased about this. When Nell finally excused herself and went up to bed, she felt like Alice coming back through the looking glass.

The next morning, a Sunday morning, Nell rose to find Clary already up. She had cleaned up after the party and done most of the dishes. It was raining steadily outside. Hannah and Jeremy were curled up in the living room, eating doughnuts and watching cartoons on TV.

* * *

“Wanna talk?” Clary asked.

“Sure,” Nell smiled.

They went into the front parlor, a formal room Nell had not yet used. She made a fire to take the dampness out of the air and just for the sake of coziness, and Clary brought in fresh coffee and doughnuts. They sat together in wing chairs, Nell with her legs drawn up under her robe, Clary with her long blue-jeaned legs thrown over the side of the chair, and talked. They discussed the party and the guests at length, but by mutual and unspoken agreement, they saved Harry for last.

“What do you think of him?” Clary asked.

“He’s nice,” Nell said. “He’s really nice. I like him. He’s clever.”

“He wants me to stay here this winter,” Clary said.

“Wow,” Nell said. “That sounds serious.”

Clary laughed. “Well, it’s not,” she said. “Not at all. They do something here called ‘matching up for the winter.’ In the summer, you see, when there are so many tourists and college kids here working summer jobs and so on, everyone sort of hangs loose so they can sleep around with anyone who comes along. But in the winter most of the people go back to the mainland. So the people who remain look around to see which person might be the best to live with during the long, gray, boring months. There’s not
much going on here in the winter, you know. Only one movie house, which shows one movie a week. Most of the restaurants close. You can’t go to the beach, of course. The place really shuts down. About all there is to do for fun is to drink and watch TV. So you look around in the fall for some warm body to get you through the winter—someone to play Scrabble with and go out and buy you cough medicine. That way you don’t get lonely, but you don’t freak out at responsibility, either.”

“Oh, Clary,” Nell said. How grim, she was thinking. But she wanted to let Clary make her own decision, so she kept her thoughts to herself. “Does the jewelry store stay open all year?”

“No,” Clary said. “I’d have to find another job in order to support myself. That will be hard too, since most restaurants and shops close. There won’t be many waitress or salesperson jobs available. Harry said I’ll probably have to get a job cleaning houses. That sort of thing is always available.”

“Cleaning houses,” Nell said, keeping her tone even.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Clary said defensively.

“I didn’t say there was,” Nell said. “God, I’m always cleaning house. But, Clary—let me at least ask you this. Why would you stay on Nantucket in this temporary arrangement with Harry but not be willing to live in the same sort of temporary arrangement with Bob?”

Clary was quiet for a while. She had pulled a crocheted afghan down from the back of the chair and pulled it over her. She braided the fringe together for a few minutes. “Because I love Bob,” she said at last. “I need him. I need him to need me. He is—important to me. If I can’t be important to him, then I can’t bear to be around him. It hurts too much.” Clary leaned forward earnestly, presenting her case to Nell. “Bob
matters
,” she said. “Everything about him matters to me. Harry doesn’t matter. We are like—we’re like
toys
for each other. We know that we won’t go very much out of our way for each other or get very involved or care enough to change our lives. Harry is a drifter. He’ll never try to buy a house or accomplish anything important in the world. He’s not even connected to the world. He doesn’t want to be. He doesn’t want children. He doesn’t want to live real life. He doesn’t want to—ha—live ‘off-island.’ But Bob
is
living real life, and, Nell,
real life is hard
. It’s so hard that unless you have some kind of
agreement—like marriage—you’ll just give up during the rough times.” Clary was crying now. “You’ve got to be
bound
,” she said to Nell. “Look at you and me. We were bound for a while by marriage and law and custom and convention, all that crap. And if we hadn’t been, well, there were lots of times when we disagreed so much that we would have walked out of each other’s lives if we could have. But we didn’t have that choice.”

“There’s always divorce—” Nell began.

“Divorce is a lot of trouble,” Clary protested. “Divorce is
trouble
. Almost always more trouble than the work of making up, making the relationship work. Oh, Nell,” Clary sobbed. “I want to love, honor, and cherish Bob, I want to take care of him when he’s sick and be poor with him if he’s poor. All that cornball sappy
shit
. I don’t want to live in some attic with Harry or go into a bar and pick up a different guy every night. I want to matter. I want to love. I want to love
Bob
.”

Nell didn’t know what to say. She could not think of any answer. There was no solution. If you wanted to marry a man who did not want to marry you, there was simply nothing to be done about it. Nell realized she was crying, too. She rose and poked at the logs. The fire flared up. She heard Hannah and Jeremy laughing in the other room. She turned to Clary.

“Clary,” she said, “I know. I know. I know exactly what you want and how you feel. Your heart is breaking. I know that. But listen, you are beautiful. You are wonderful. Don’t stay on this island with Harry. Go to Boston, find a job that means something to you. You’re a biologist as well as a woman. Do some work that you have been trained to do. That’s important. You can’t give that part of yourself up. And you’re bound to meet other men. Someday I’m sure, I
guarantee
, you’ll find another man that you’ll love as much as you love Bob. You are so lovable and you have so much love to give, you will find someone. Someone who will die to marry you, who will court you, woo you, chase you. Don’t feel so hopeless. Bob isn’t the only man in the world.”

Nell talked on and on, her voice soothing and melodious. It seemed the words just flowed through her, with a rhythm and a meaning that was ancient, with a message that had been passed on from woman to woman for thousands of years, for as long as women had loved men.

It was her lunch hour, and Nell was alone in the cottage. Hannah and Jeremy were at camp, Clary was having lunch with Harry before going off to work, and Andy was at his house, working on his book.

* * *

Nantucket was overrun with tourists this last week of August. It was impossible to walk down the sidewalk at a normal pace; the sidewalks were as packed with people as Tokyo at rush hour. Tempers seemed short, especially on the streets, where bikers disdained the stop signs and drivers honked angrily at jaywalkers. Away from the heart of town, people drove their cars at fifty miles an hour through fifteen-mile-an-hour speed zones, as if in some kind of revenge for being thwarted and slowed on Main Street. It became necessary to stand in line everywhere—at the bank, the post office, the grocery store, the pharmacy. The stores couldn’t keep stocked in bread and other staples. And it was impossible to get into restaurants without reservations. The less expensive and more informal places where Nell liked to go with Clary and Andy and the children, the Atlantic Café, the Brotherhood, Vincent’s, were crammed with people from early in the evening until closing, with lines of waiting people trailing out the doors and down the sidewalks. In order to go to a movie at the Dreamland, it was necessary to get to the theater at six o’clock in order to be in some part of the line that could get tickets when the box office opened at six forty-five; the show began at seven-thirty. The beaches were crowded, even the bike paths were dangerous. But Elizabeth would be happy, Nell thought, for the boutique was a great success.

The quiet of the cottage was balm for Nell now. She walked through it, appreciating the way the late summer light slanted through the windows. With the back part of her mind she noted how much gathering and packing had to be done before they left. The house was littered with the carefree loot of the summer: shells and pebbles from the beach, old bits of dried seaweed and dead whelks on the back steps, handmade paper, batiked fish-shaped pillows, apple-head dolls that Jeremy and Hannah had made at camp, the children’s miscellaneous “souvenirs’ that they pleaded to keep—napkins and stirring sticks from restaurants, brochures, ads, and tickets from the various museums they had
visited, stuffed whales they had bought with their allowance. Half-read books were dropped everywhere, even in the bathroom. Clary’s and Nell’s records were scattered all over the living room, mixed together. Beach towels and swimming suits hung from every possible straight surface, drying, and the rugs and floors were gritty with sand.

How will we ever get this all packed and cleaned? Nell wondered. Clary had decided to look for a good job near Boston rather than remain in Nantucket and her suitcase and backpack sat open and ready on the floor, symbols of life’s flux. Each time Nell passed Clary’s room and saw the bags through the open door, she was reminded that in just six days they would all be gone from this cottage, this island, this summer life. She roamed through the house, unable to begin the work, unable to change or move a single thing. She wanted time to stop. She wanted the summer to go on and on. She wanted continually to see her children come in the door from camp, all brown and glowing from a day in the sun, proud of whatever craft they had learned that day. She wanted to sit around with Clary every evening, drinking beer, laughing, and talking. She wanted to always sit in the dining room, surrounded at last and finally by the people she loved most in the world: Jeremy, Hannah, Clary, Andy. That was heaven. She believed that life held nothing better than that. And then to tuck the children in bed and discuss the day and the news with Andy, and to climb the stairs together, to turn and have Andy right there, his arms reaching around her, pressing her against his body …

Tears welled up in Nell’s eyes. She leaned against a doorframe, thinking. Would she ever come back to Nantucket? Would she ever have this happiness again? Why couldn’t Andy say something to her about the future?

The phone rang, breaking into her thoughts. She answered it in the bedroom so that she could lie down and rest while she talked. It was Ilona, calling from Arlington, and Ilona was so upset that Nell could scarcely understand her.