Chapter 3
Chapter Three
C atherine hadn’t returned to New York in six months. Seeing the skyline through the car window sent cold chills down her arms and legs. It was the same skyline that had called to her grandfather over gray and blue waters as the giant vessel made its final lurch to America. She wondered what it was he’d felt. Relief? Gratefulness? Or had he longed for his golden Italian hills, his turquoise Mediterranean waters?
Catherine had been to Italy only a couple of times, and both had been overscheduled and action-packed with all things Quentin’s career. He’d had to meet other newscasters; he’d had to conduct interviews with famous movie stars and fashion models and so on. Catherine had been shuffled around with royalty, thinking only of her grandfather, of the man who’d once felt such prominence on the same soil. Once or twice, Catherine had considered staying in Italy to conduct more research about her grandfather’s past. But back then, she’d had younger children and hated leaving them in the city with a nanny or a friend.
Scarlet was mysteriously quiet during the ride. A few times, Catherine prodded her with questions, asking her about her ideas for a documentary, asking if she needed anything for her new apartment. Catherine knew she sounded overwhelmingly “mother-like,” but she couldn’t help it. Scarlet’s silence was worrisome.
“Are you going to try to meet up with any old friends while we’re here?” Catherine asked as they crossed the bridge into Manhattan.
“I don’t know. Alyssa’s in Martha’s Vineyard, and I haven’t kept in touch with many others.”
Catherine’s heart twinged at the mention of Alyssa Potter. Alyssa had a husband and a child. She owned and operated a bakery slash bookstore in Martha’s Vineyard with her sister Maggie. She had a small but beautiful life. Her mother, Janine, was probably so proud.
I need to give Janine a call, Catherine thought for the thousandth time. But lives moved forward so quickly. Before you knew it, you hadn’t talked to people you loved in years.
Catherine gave the hotel valet driver her keys and watched as the bellhops gathered their suitcases and wheeled them into the lobby. This was the sort of high-society city life they’d once taken for granted. But Catherine wasn’t accustomed to it now. Her fingers itched with the desire to handle her things herself.
The hotel clerk gave them their keys—a room for Scarlet and a room for Catherine with a central room in the middle that they shared. They went upstairs and spent a few minutes in their room to tidy up and take a bit of time for themselves. Catherine closed her door and wondered what Scarlet did in her room. Probably texting? That was what twentysomethings did, right? Thinking of it, Catherine sent a text to Quentin to say they’d arrived safely.
QUENTIN: Good luck! Can’t wait to hear all about Ellis Island!
But Catherine and Scarlet weren’t due for Ellis Island till tomorrow morning. They’d made an appointment at nine thirty so they could have sufficient time alone with the book he’d signed and, hopefully, the photograph they’d taken of him at the time—a routine procedure during 1942.
Funnily enough, Ellis Island ceased operation in 1943—just one year later. It meant Catherine’s grandfather was one of the final people Ellis Island had welcomed.
I wonder what they thought of this high-society man from Italy entering the gates of Ellis Island just like everyone else.
Catherine was to be the first person in her family to go to Ellis Island and see his signature. She was the first to dig into the familial stories that served as the backdrop of future generations.
For that evening, Catherine had made dinner reservations at a beautiful restaurant near Central Park—one where they’d celebrated numerous family birthdays over the years. Even Scarlet’s eyes lit up when Catherine shared the plans. A few hours before dinner, mother and daughter stepped out for a stroll in a city they both knew deep in their bones. They strode up toward Central Park, gossiping about the past and the people they’d once known.
“I hope we run into Tess Hedges,” Scarlet said under her breath, speaking of an old neighbor of theirs on the Upper West Side. “She always said the strangest things when we ran into her. Remember that time she told us she was looking for gold beneath her house in the Hamptons?”
Catherine giggled and smacked her hand over her mouth.
“Come on,” Scarlet said. “You remember.”
“I do.”
“Did she ever find it?”
“Well, last I heard, she got a nose job,” Catherine said.
“I guess she found the gold, then!”
Catherine’s smile was so big it hurt her face. She’d forgotten about poking fun at the vanity of the Upper West Siders.
“Does it look good?” Scarlet asked.
“What?”
“The nose job!”
“Oh. Um. I think she went too small!” Catherine said.
Scarlet giggled and linked her arm through her mother’s. Warmth flooded Catherine’s arms and legs.
Catherine remembered the first time Scarlet had gossiped with her. Scarlet had been twelve or thirteen, and they’d seen a woman in an elaborate purple fur coat stroll down Park Avenue. “What’s that peacock doing over there?” Scarlet had asked. And Catherine had burst into peals of laughter so great that she’d had to hide in a lobby of a community center.
She’s not just my daughter, she thought. She’s my friend, too.
It was a rejuvenating feeling.
It was true you saw all kinds of people in the city. It was a different cast of characters than Nantucket Island—people from all over the world, dressed in all manner of things, going who-knew-where. It was a Wednesday, but that didn’t mean the city was any less alive than it was on the weekend.
“I took you there when you were little,” Catherine said as they passed a little place where girls could pick out dolls and choose their outfits and call them by whatever name they wanted. “I still remember the way you looked at the doll you made. You called her ‘Rachel,’ and you said she was going to change your life.”
Scarlet laughed. “It’s funny. I don’t think I even knew I had a cousin named Rachel back then.”
“You didn’t,” Catherine said.
“Did you think about telling me right then?”
Catherine thought for a moment, remembering the complexity of keeping their children out of the mess of the Copperfield family. “It felt like a different dimension to ours entirely,” Catherine said. “Rachel was all the way in Chicago with Julia. We lived here. I never imagined in a million years your father would reunite with his family.”
Scarlet’s eyes caught the glow of the low-hanging street lamps as they turned on that early evening. “Are you happy we moved to Nantucket?”
“I’m blissfully happy,” Catherine admitted, feeling her heart melt. “But when we’re in the city, all these memories come flooding back. I can’t fight them.”
“I feel the same way,” Scarlet said.
Before dinner, Scarlet and Catherine went to a swanky cocktail bar on a rooftop in the Upper West Side. It was brand new, something Scarlet had seen on social media, and from the top, they could make out one of the windows of the home where Catherine and Quentin had raised their babies. A shiver ran down her spine. The new owners had closed the drapes, but had they not, she might have been able to peer into the little room she’d once used as her office. How many articles had she written in that room? How many private cries had she had, wondering how she was going to make it as a journalist and as a mother and as the famous Quentin Copperfield’s not-so-famous wife?
But she was forty-eight now. She’d beat cancer. Her children were almost all out of the house. Did that mean she’d made it?
Catherine turned to catch a young man approaching Scarlet with a beer in his hand. He smiled at Scarlet, who flinched away from him. Catherine’s heart darkened. The young man attemped a conversation, but Scarlet reeled back and gestured toward Catherine. The man left, shoulders dropped, and Scarlet returned to Catherine with a loose smile that Catherine didn’t believe for a minute.
“Did you know that young man?” Catherine asked.
“What? No.” Scarlet’s tone was harsh.
“Did he want to buy you a drink?”
“I guess.”
“You could have let him,” Catherine said. “It’s always fun to meet new people.”
Scarlet half rolled her eyes.
“All right. Sorry I said anything.” Catherine inhaled.
Scarlet sighed. “Sorry. I just wasn’t interested. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is.” Catherine pressed her lips together and remembered Owen. Maybe Scarlet couldn’t trust men anymore because of him. Catherine certainly couldn’t blame her if so.
Scarlet tucked her jet-black hair behind her ear and glanced at the floor. The DJ switched, and the pleasant electronic beats transitioned to something harder.
“Let’s head to the restaurant,” Catherine suggested.
“Sounds good.”
It was a brilliant night, save for that single hiccup. Over Italian food, Scarlet and Catherine laughed and joked about the past; they talked about how much they were going to miss Ivy when she returned to the city; they talked about James’s surprise jock career after his move to Nantucket and the clear truth that he was the most popular kid in school. They talked about Quentin’s latest documentary at the Sunrise Cove Inn and how it had assuredly revolutionized how people thought about Martha’s Vineyard.
“I can’t get over that the Underground Railroad went right through there!” Scarlet whispered, her fork rotating over her pasta.
Eventually, Catherine returned to the topic of her family and her book. “Maybe it’s just me getting old, but I want to make sense of myself in the context of my family,” she said. “When I got sick, I thought of all these relatives I’ve heard about. They lived, and they loved, and they had children, and they worked, yet they’re all gone now. Someday, I’ll be gone, too.”
Scarlet gave her a look that meant don’t.
But Catherine pressed on. “I fought hard for the life I still have. You were there with me every step of the way, and I can’t thank you enough.” Catherine reached across the table to take Scarlet’s hand. “One day, I want your granddaughter to know about us. I want them to understand where we came from and what my grandfather gave up. I want this all to be connected through time and space. And that’s why I want to fight so hard to write this book. It’s my mark.”
Scarlet’s eyes glinted with tears. “I get it, Mom,” she said softly. “You didn’t need to explain.”
Catherine laughed at herself and tapped her napkin beneath her eye. “I know,” she whispered. “But sometimes I have to explain my obsession to myself, too.”