Chapter 8
Achance encounter with an acquaintance led Arietta to apply to be a lifeguard at a swanky private beach on Nantucket Island.
The acquaintance, a girl named Kathy who’d once swum on the swim team with Arietta before quitting school to marry a wealthy man, told Arietta that her husband’s family belonged to this particular island club and that the club needed lifeguards.
“The prettier, the better,” Kathy said, laughing.
“These Nantucket elites like everyone to look a certain way.”
Arietta had never considered herself to be beautiful.
She’d been told she was, of course—by her sisters and her mother—but she’d always dismissed the compliment.
She’d thrown herself into her academic life, avoiding makeup and hair products and often skipping out on sleep, first to focus on her laboratory reports, before she’d changed her major to journalism.
She spent her time rewriting articles or reading entire books about the history of journalism.
She was obsessed, to put it lightly. She wanted to pour her love of science into all of her writing.
She wanted to help the world understand the exciting research that was poised to change medicine forever.
But Arietta needed money. She was only nineteen, which meant she was too young for most of the newspaper internships she craved, and she didn’t want to go back to her hometown for the summer, where her mother would probably make her cook for her father and clean up the house.
Arietta loved her mother, but she’d spent eighteen years living at home. It was time for a change.
A few days after her freshman year at the University of Massachusetts finished, Arietta was on the bus to Hyannis Port, where she took a ferry to Nantucket Island for the first time.
She couldn’t believe how good-looking everyone was, nor how fine the fabrics of their clothing were.
As she walked from the ferry ramp and into the first line of shops and houses, she felt as though she was entering another universe.
Her boss, Susie, picked her up from a little coffee shop not far from the ferry.
Susie was twenty-five, with long, slender arms and legs and bushy brown hair.
“I didn’t grow up around these people, either,” she explained as she drove Arietta to her summer dorm, where she’d be staying with the other lifeguards.
“Should I be afraid of them?” Arietta asked about the wealthy Nantucketers. It was a joke, but Susie answered it seriously.
“They always get what they want,” Susie said. “Just make sure you always play by their rules, okay? Because if they think they can’t trust you, or you stick out like a sore thumb, they’ll do everything they can to get you off their beach.”
Arietta was taken aback, but she tried not to show her fear.
Inside her dorm room, Arietta introduced herself to the three women she was going to share the space with for the rest of the summer: Candice, Marjorie, and Eloise.
They were all around Arietta’s age, and none of them were from elite families.
They were all in college, studying to become teachers, nurses, and literary scholars.
They thought Arietta’s obsession with science and journalism was a little overzealous, but they accepted her anyway. They were all in the same boat.
Arietta’s first shift at the private beach was two days after her arrival.
Sitting up in the lifeguard stand, she oversaw bored and wealthy people as they suntanned and drank beer and dipped their feet into the water.
Only three or four people actually got into the water the entire day.
Arietta decided to thank her lucky stars that this wasn’t an arduous job.
It wasn’t like she wanted to save people’s lives all day, every day.
On her third day of work, Arietta clocked off at three thirty after a six-hour shift, then changed into a sundress and headed for the beach’s exit.
It was bizarre to her that the beach was private, that only a set number of people were allowed to come to what was obviously a natural spot.
But she’d already given up on understanding Nantucketers. This wasn’t her world.
“Hey! Lifeguard. Wait up,” a male voice called after her.
Arietta paused, then turned to find a handsome twentysomething guy in a pair of dark blue swim shorts running toward her, his abs ripping. He stopped about a foot away from her and smiled. His eyes were clever and bright.
“Can I help you with something?” Arietta asked.
“You can,” the guy said. “We’re having a party tonight at my parents’ place. They’re not there. We want you to come.”
Arietta was taken aback. She’d already had a few beers with the other lifeguards and been to a couple of parties. But she hadn’t imagined that she’d get invited by an actual wealthy Nantucketer. She wondered if it was a trap or a way to make fun of her.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said, turning back.
But the guy hurried up beside her and stood between her and the entrance. “Why won’t you come?” he asked.
“Um, because I don’t want to?” Arietta said, smiling.
The guy grinned wider. “That’s not a good reason. It’s going to be a great party. It might be the best party you’ve ever been to.”
Arietta rolled her eyes. “I doubt that.”
“Why would you take that risk?” he asked. “What if it’s the best party you’re ever invited to, and you miss it? You’ll never forgive yourself.”
Arietta blushed, then glanced to the left to see Candice and Marjorie, whispering and watching her and this stranger. Marjorie waved and called out, “Hey, Fred!”
“Hey, Marjorie!” the man called Fred said. “Marjorie’s coming to my party. Why won’t you?”
It seemed stupid to argue. Arietta groaned and said, “I’ll think about it,” then scurried past him and headed back to the dorms. Once there, she talked with a few of the other lifeguards, some of whom had been invited to Fred Peters’s house party, and others who had decided to tag along.
“Apparently, those parties get wild,” one of them said.
Arietta didn’t imagine that going to a random wealthy person’s house party at the beginning of that summer would change her life forever. She put on a simple green dress, barely touched her hair, then grabbed a ride to the mansion on the beach, telling herself to play it cool.
Although the party had expensive champagne and better beer than Arietta was used to, she was surprised to find that it wasn’t so different from parties she’d frequented back at college.
Plenty of people swam in the pool and the ocean, and sausages and burgers sizzled on the grill.
Music pulsed from speakers, and a few drunk guys argued about what album to play next.
Arietta hung around with Marjorie and Susie for a while, dipping their toes into the pool when they got too hot.
And then, Fred came over and sat down beside them, grinning broadly. For reasons Arietta never understood, he only had eyes for Arietta. It felt like fate.
The first night that Fred ever took Arietta out on a proper date, they got into a terrible argument about the politics of public education, of all things, and Arietta stormed out of the restaurant.
Fred chased her and begged her forgiveness.
She demanded that he listen to all of her points on the subject and see her side.
They sat by the beach, talking for ages, finding ways to relate to one another.
Arietta had the sense that Fred had been in a wealthy bubble for years.
She wondered why he wanted to dip his head out of that bubble and meet her where she was.
Fred kissed her for the first time that night.
Arietta figured he was dating many other people, and this would be their only date.
But he called the lifeguard dorms that night and told her that he’d had a really good time.
“I don’t want you to work at that beach anymore,” he said. “I want to spend all my time with you.”
Arietta obviously refused to quit her job. She needed money for her upcoming semesters, and she guessed that her relationship with Fred wouldn’t last a month.
That summer, Fred and Arietta spent as much time together as they could.
They ate burgers, went sailing, swam in the ocean almost every day, and drove around wildly, listening to music.
Arietta hated the feeling of chaos that came over her as she fell deeper in love with him. But it was intoxicating, too.
Not long before summer ended, Fred invited Arietta to his parents’ place to meet his family.
His parents and brother would head back to Boston soon enough, leaving their summer home empty for the offseason.
Fred had to return to his job in Boston as well, where he worked with his father doing something with other people’s finances.
Arietta couldn’t fully keep track of it, mentally, maybe because it bored her so much.
But Arietta couldn’t imagine why Fred wanted to introduce her to his parents. Marjorie, who was achingly jealous of Arietta’s relationship but also keen to hear every new development, told her it meant he wanted to marry her.
“That’s laughable,” Arietta said, although she felt the truth of it like a stone in her stomach.
She did her makeup very carefully before Fred picked her up, trying to imitate how the women at the beach where she’d worked all summer did theirs. Everything had to be precise yet understated. Her true beauty had to come through.
Fred’s parents were gorgeous forty-somethings who’d known what it was like to be wealthy since birth.
They looked Arietta up and down as though she were a bit of trash they’d found on the beach, then poured her a glass of very expensive red wine and asked her about herself.
Arietta heard herself gush about her love of science and her dreams of translating difficult-to-understand scientific principles into journalism.
“I wish I could research everything myself and pursue a career in medicine,” she explained.
“But my brain doesn’t go in that direction. ”
Fred’s mother found it difficult to understand why she wanted to work so hard. “Is it your parents?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “Do they push you to pursue this?”
Arietta laughed. “Not really. It’s always been my thing.”
His mother looked at Fred and let out a confused laugh. “Where on earth did you find her, Freddy?”
Fred gazed at Arietta across the veranda table, from which they could see a miraculous view of the Nantucket Sound.
Arietta couldn’t believe that this house was usually empty.
For much of the year, nobody looked out at this view because it belonged only to Fred’s family, and views like this were not cheap.