The Castaways (33 page)

And God, what a feeling when the bus pulled out of the depot, when the driver punched her ticket and said, “In Grand Rapids, head to bay nine. Bus to New York City.” The sensation of miles of asphalt putting time and distance between Delilah and the life that held her down titillated her. She wasn’t running from anything, she wasn’t running toward anything—she was just running for running’s sake, and it was a drug: the blurred landscape out the window was a soothing poultice for her itch. Go, go, go!

She transferred buses in Grand Rapids. Peed in the terminal, bought some peanut butter crackers because somewhere in her head was her mother’s voice nagging her about protein. She had both seats to herself practically the whole way to New York. She stretched out and used her backpack as a pillow, she read seventeen of the
Complete Stories of John Cheever,
which had been assigned in her English class. She noted, with a certain satisfaction, the difference between reading a book because it was assigned and reading a book because she wanted to. Which led her to her next quasi-intellectual thought, which concerned Henry David Thoreau and his desire to live deliberately.

And that, Delilah decided, was why she had hopped on this bus. She was going to Nantucket Island because she wanted to live deliberately, she wanted to choose her path every second of her existence, she wanted to cultivate a heightened awareness. She was in charge of her well-being; she was her own person. Forget the edicts of home and school, the din of the hallways and the obligation she felt when Dean Markbury handed her a joint. (She had to take a toke to be socially acceptable.) She was free of that now.

Sing it:
Free!

The bus stopped just before crossing the George Washington Bridge. Delilah had had a seatmate since they stopped in Williamsport, Pennsylvania—a brown-skinned man of indeterminate ethnicity (Salvadoran? Thai? Lebanese?). The man was about fifty and stunningly handsome. He had bulging arms, he wore a tight black T-shirt and jeans, he wore a diamond stud in his left ear and a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers. He had nice feathery black hair, and he wore what looked to be an expensive watch. But what was riveting about this man was that he held a pack of cigarettes in his hands the entire time he was on the bus. He opened the pack, inspected the filter ends, counted them perhaps, shut the pack. Opened the pack, pulled a cigarette halfway out, dreamed about lighting up right there on the bus, the inhale, the burn, the satisfaction, the high. The addiction met. Delilah was fascinated with watching his struggle. The want, the can’t-have. The need, denied, minute after minute. It was almost sexual, watching this handsome, tough-seeming man, older perhaps than her father, want it want it want it. It was transferable. Delilah wanted a cigarette, too, and she wanted this man. The boys Delilah had known at school had wanted only one thing: to touch her breasts, to ogle them, bare. Would this man also want that? Did he notice her breasts? She breathed deeply, squared her shoulders, tried to edge her breasts into his field of vision. He wanted only the cigarettes.

The bus stopped; the mighty bridge loomed in the windshield. The man stood up, collected his backpack. Delilah was heart-broken. No! He could not leave! Was this even his stop, or was he getting off the bus solely so he could smoke? She wanted to follow him. Who was he, what was his name, where did he live, what country was he from, where was he going, what had he been doing in Williamsport, Pennsylvania (“Home of the Little League World Series,” the sign said). There were a thousand stories contained within this man, a thousand stories in Delilah herself and everyone else on this bus, not to mention the thousand stories of the 8 million residents of the city on the other side of the bridge. Delilah watched this man’s back—she would never see him again, of this she was sure—and then she eyed the cherry-red cover of the Cheever. It was a grain of sand. The stories that made up the world were infinite, like the stars.

New York to Boston, Boston to Hyannis. Out the window, Delilah saw the ocean. On the ferry to Nantucket, she scanned the local paper and found several ads for rooms to rent. She craved a small space of her own, a hole in the wall, a hiding place like Anne Frank’s where the Nazis wouldn’t find her. She was very far away from home, and yet she felt exposed and obvious, as though she had a camera trained on her. She disembarked from the ferry. There were people waiting on the dock, but none of the people was waiting for her. She was a sixteen-year-old girl who had traveled twelve hundred miles to get here, to Nantucket Island, her newly discovered spiritual home.

The best thing about Nantucket was that it fulfilled its promises. It looked exactly as it did in the magazine. If anything, the air was more rarefied than Delilah expected—it was fresh, and filled with salt spray, evergreen scent, and fog. Delilah found a pay phone on the wharf and started dialing numbers from the ads in the newspaper. The first place she called had already filled the room, the second place ditto. The third place ditto, and this worried Delilah, because everyone knew the third time was a charm. At the fourth number, no one answered. Delilah filled with a hot, prickly panic. This was an island—she
had
to find a place to stay. It wasn’t like she could just move a town over. The fifth place had to work (there were only five ads), but the man who answered the telephone asked Delilah how old she was (she said nineteen) and then what she looked like. Delilah had heard all the requisite warnings about people who didn’t have her best interest at heart. She hung up. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. She was dangerously close to screaming out,
What have I done?

Deep breath. She called the fourth place back, let the phone ring fifteen times, and after the sixteenth time someone answered. A little old lady. Yes, the room was still available. The room was free of charge. The woman—Tennie Gulliver, her name was—just wanted someone else in the house, someone to take out the trash, which she could no longer do, someone to be around in case the unthinkable happened. Delilah would be responsible for paying a quarter of the electric bill in addition to her phone charges. Okay?

“Okay,” Delilah said.

Tennie Gulliver gave Delilah directions; she could walk from the wharf. Delilah slung her bag over her shoulder and walked through Nantucket town. The houses were dignified and old-fashioned; they had window boxes planted with geraniums and majestic front doors. There were lights coming on and cooking smells. Delilah crossed the cobblestones, she walked up brick sidewalks past galleries and restaurants and antique shops, an ice-cream parlor, a jewelry store.

Tennie Gulliver’s house was on Pine Street, just off Main. It was an ancient among the elderly; the plaque on the front of the house said it had been built in 1704. The house stooped and sagged. The shingles were mildewed and the white paint of the trim was flaking away.

Delilah dropped the big brass knocker and waited a long time, long enough that she began to wonder if the unthinkable had happened to Tennie Gulliver between the time she had hung up the phone and now. But finally there was the sound of the lock being undone and the door swung open and there was Tennie Gulliver, all eighty-five pounds of her, with her white, cottony hair and her shrunken apple face and her cane. Tennie Gulliver looked exactly as Delilah had expected (a bit of a disappointment, since Delilah loved to be taken by surprise)—like the old woman who lived in a shoe.

It was as though Delilah had not only traveled twelve hundred miles across the country but also a hundred and twenty years back in time. Tennie Gulliver lit her main room with candles and the kitchen with a dim overhead bulb. (“I need proper light when I’m cooking!” Tennie said.) There was radio, but no TV. A rotary phone, but no answering machine. A gas stove, but no microwave. Delilah’s room would be upstairs; there were in fact five bedrooms upstairs, and Delilah could have any one of them, Tennie said. Tennie’s bedroom was on the first floor; it was the den, converted, because Tennie could no longer negotiate the stairs.

“Okay!” Delilah said. She liked the idea of having her choice of five bedrooms, of inhabiting all five on successive nights, like a girl who lived in a castle.

Actually, there was something about being here on Nantucket on her own, in this old, old house with this old, old woman, that made Delilah feel not like an adult but like a child.

As if reading her mind, Tennie said, “How old are you?”

Delilah lied. “Nineteen.”

Tennie said, “Do you need a job?”

Delilah paused, thinking about her eight hundred and eighty-five remaining dollars. Despite her free rent, she would have to work. She had not thought about any particular job beyond her job of living deliberately. But she would have to make money deliberately.

She said, “I baby-sit.”

Tennie stared. Could she hear? Her ears were like small white shells, but they were unencumbered by the beige hearing aids that Delilah’s grandparents wore.

Delilah said, “Do you have grandchildren?”

Tennie said, “Vern’s last name is Snow. He’s the son I had with my first husband. The son I had with my second husband, Mr. Gulliver, Gully, lives in Sconset. He chops firewood for a living and should be avoided.”

Delilah nodded. Everybody had a thousand stories.

“I’m going to heat up a lobster pie. You’ll eat?”

“Yes,” Delilah said. “Thank you.” She lugged her backpack up the steep, narrow staircase. The five bedrooms upstairs were prim, spare, spinsterish, as appealing as five bedrooms in a convent or a nursing home. They were much alike, but Delilah claimed the only one with a double bed. The bed was about five feet off the ground; it was a bed for a giant. Delilah would need to stand on a chair just to climb up on top of its white chenille spread and lay her head on the stiff pillows. There was a nightstand with a dainty lamp made of milk glass wearing a fringed shade that looked like an old lady’s church hat. There was a bureau that had twenty-seven drawers, and next to the bureau was a dressing table that supported a triptych mirror, open like a book. Delilah sat at the dressing table and looked at herself in the triptych mirror. She looked at herself deliberately.

She was safe here.

Delilah woke up the next morning in a fresh mood. It was the first day of her new life.

She could do whatever she wanted. So this, she thought, was freedom. What did she
want
to do? What did
she
want to do, really? Go for a walk? Spend money on a restaurant breakfast? Lie in bed for an hour and read Cheever? She descended the stairs to find Tennie making buttermilk biscuits and bacon and brewing some wicked-smelling coffee.

Tennie said, “You’ll eat?”

Delilah breathed in, breathed out. It was amazing the obligation she felt, even to this woman whom she’d known only half a day. Did she
want
to eat breakfast with Tennie? She meant to stick to her guns, hold sacred her duty to herself. The bacon was crisp, the biscuits looked fluffy, and Tennie set out a pot of softened butter. There was cream for the coffee—real cream! Delilah’s mother bought only fat-free lightener, and hence Delilah had never learned to like coffee. And Delilah’s mother
never
cooked bacon. Full of nitrites, she said.

“Yes,” Delilah said.

From now on Delilah’s life would include bacon, and coffee with real cream and two teaspoons of sugar. And Delilah would get the biscuit recipe.

“You’ll go see Vern about the job?” Tennie said.

Delilah was confused. What job?

“Where?” she said.

“Lobster restaurant,” Tennie said. “In town. You can’t miss it.”

Delilah did not want to work in a restaurant. Dean Markbury waited tables at Denny’s, plunking down Grand Slam breakfasts and club sandwiches for two dollars an hour. He had to wear polyester pants. But what if Delilah had no choice?

She pulled apart her biscuit; the flaky layers were like the pages of a book. She wanted to learn to cook. She wanted to meet the black sheep woodcutting son, who in Delilah’s mind looked exactly like the man on the bus, and get married.

Or not. She would see.

Nantucket town on a mellow spring morning: no tourists to speak of, shopkeepers sweeping geranium petals off the brick sidewalk. They smiled at Delilah, and stared at her a few extra seconds, trying to place her.
Is that so-and-so’s daughter? No, no, it’s someone else, I don’t know who that is.
It was liberating to be a stranger.

She found Vern’s on her own. It was impossible to miss, at the base of Main Street. The sign in front said “Vern’s” and another sign said “Lobster.” Delilah wandered in. Well, it wasn’t Denny’s. There was a dark wood bar lined with tall stools, the seats of which were made from upside-down lobster pots. There were scarred wooden tables and hanging fishing nets and brass portholes fixed into the wall and green and red port and starboard lights. The door had been left wide open; a sweating glass of water and a bowl of lemons were on the bar. Delilah thought maybe the place was open for lunch, but it was empty.

“Hello?” she called out.

A muted TV was on over the bar—it was the midday news—and Delilah filled with dread. She did not want to think about the outside world, about Michigan or her weeping family. She watched the screen for a second—bad house fire in a place called Dedham. There were hundreds of millions of people in this country; Delilah Ashby gone missing would not register beyond the limits of the South Haven School District. Right?

A man came out of the kitchen wearing brown rubber pants held up by suspenders.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re the girl living with Ma?”

This was Vern. He had thinning blond hair and a permanent sunburn and a thick New England accent. He said he would hire her even though she had no experience, because she could stay the whole season, right? She wasn’t going to leave him in the lurch in the middle of August like Little Miss Smarty-Pants from Radcliffe, right? Right, Delilah said. He told her she could expect to make a hundred dollars in tips a night. The lobster dinner was $29.95 and included baked potato, corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw, and a dinner roll. Most people liked to start with a bowl of chowder or a plate of steamers, and most people liked a glass of chardonnay or an ice-cold beer, sometimes two or three of these, and then most people could not turn down the homemade pies, all in season—this week was lemon meringue—and hence the average bill was up there.