Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Nina
July 2012
N ina and Daniel walked from their B&B to the Nantucket Historical Society. In a light yellow button-down dress and a pair of sandals, Nina knew she looked far more like a young wife on her honeymoon than a downtrodden quasi-orphan with a dramatic Nantucket history. Beside her, Daniel looked self-serious and eager to learn. In his backpack, he carried notebooks and a laptop, where he hoped to record the dramatic findings of their Whitmore research. A part of Nina hoped they would find nothing. A part of her hoped they’d find a big newspaper article titled something like “Firework Accident Claims White Oak Lodge,” and that would be that.
A part of her hoped they’d undercover a tremendous drama that would lend meaning to the great loneliness of her life—but she knew that would bring more pain than she could bear.
The guy who worked in the archives of the Nantucket Historical Society was named Jeremy. Nina half remembered him as the high school football quarterback who’d been set for a Notre Dame football scholarship before a car accident landed him in the hospital and ripped him of a sublime future. Nina remembered her mother crying about it, saying in a lilting Italian accent, “That kid was going places. It’s a shame.”
It was bizarre to see Jeremy again like this—a little bit older than her, a little bit sadder, caught up in the dramas of Nantucket society, never having left. It was clear from the first handshake that he had no idea who she was, and Nina wanted to keep it that way. Not that he’d remember the youngest Whitmore. The baby of the family.
In the aisles of the archives, Daniel explained that he and Nina were anthropologists and journalists trying to learn more about the Whitmores and the White Oak Lodge. Jeremy’s eyes brightened.
“I haven’t heard that name in a while,” he said, whipping them over to the opposite side of the archives, where he pulled open a drawer filled with files on the Whitmore family. “One of the oldest families on the island, going back generations. The lodge itself was built back in 1862, if you can believe it.”
At the mention of that year, Nina’s ears rang. The year 1862 had been drilled into her from a young age. It couldn’t have been any other year.
“It was built by these folks,” Jeremy said, tugging a photograph from the back of the file that featured an unsmiling married couple standing on the dunes where they’d built the lodge. “Samuel and Daisy Whitmore. Look at them!” The photo had been colorized badly, making them look overwhelmingly pastel and red-cheeked and friendly in ways Nina guessed they were not. She struggled to count back the generations and decided they were her great-great-great-grandparents, a fact she didn’t share with neither Daniel nor Jeremy. “Originally, the lodge was a sort of wilderness lodge, a space for fishermen and other outdoorsmen to shack up and grab a hot meal, but it soon transformed into something far more luxurious and exquisite,” Jeremy said. “By the end of the 1800s, it was the place to be for wealthy city slickers.”
Daniel put his hands on his lips and smiled proudly. “And the Whitmore families took over where their parents left off?”
“Yes,” Jeremy said, tugging the next photograph from the file—one of Richard and Rose Whitmore, Nina’s great-great-grandparents. It was a photograph that had once hung in the stairwell of the family apartment located in the northeast corner of the White Oak Lodge, an apartment with external access that didn’t force you to walk through the rest of the hotel in order to go home, but one where Nina remembered, you could still hear some of the goings-on of the tourists staying the week or month with them. Nina liked to eavesdrop, especially on warring married couples, whose insults boggled her mind. Was it possible to hate someone you supposedly loved so much? Now, she couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way about Daniel. It wasn’t possible.
For a little more than a half hour, Nina and Daniel looked through photographs of her great-grandparents, her grandparents, and the White Oak Lodge through eras of reconstruction, hurricanes, refurbishments, and grand parties. It wasn’t till then that they found the first photograph of Nina’s father, taken in 1960 when he was ten years old. In it, her father, Benjamin Whitmore, wore a mischievous smile and a swimsuit and held up a fish he’d just caught. Nina’s stomach heaved. Again, she thought she would throw up, made an excuse to Daniel, and hurried upstairs and into the sunlight.
Benjamin Whitmore: the father she’d loved so much, the father who’d once taught her to fish, and the father who’d jumped through waves with her and held her when she cried. In the photograph, he’d been one year younger than Nina had been when he’d died. So young! So naive! So immune to the world’s evils! So open to its charms!
Why had Daniel brought her back here? She felt like a boat out at sea, pummeled by stormy waves, lightning striking the night sky.
A split second later, Daniel came out and wrapped his arms around her. Disappointment lingered in his eyes as though she hadn’t performed as well as he’d hoped, but his words told her, “It’s okay, honey. It’s all right. Let’s get you away from here.”
Nina wanted to go back in and thank Jeremy, but Daniel assured her that he’d already passed their thanks along and that it was better not to go back into the basement. Nina shook in his arms and said, “It was the first time I’d seen my father in years.” This was true. No photographs had survived the fire, none that she knew of, and Great-Aunt Genevieve hadn’t moved anything with her to Michigan when she’d married her husband. Nina had never asked Genevieve why, sensing that the question and the answer were uncomfortable. Now, Great-Aunt Genevieve was dead, and all those secrets were buried in her grave.
They returned to the hotel to change into swimsuits and restructure their day. Nina wanted desperately to rebound, to make the following three days on the island as bright and sparkling as their wedding day. But under everything they said, there seemed to be a shadow. He brought me to Nantucket against my will , she thought at odd times, then tried to strike it from her memory. She tried to remember he loved her and would do anything for her.
Again, they swam in the Nantucket Sound, floated on their backs, and kissed in the sunshine. Tourists swarmed most beaches, but Nina remembered the ones frequented by mostly locals, and she directed Daniel out to them, flicking through the radio stations until they found songs they wanted to sing. Only once that afternoon did Daniel bring up the White Oak Lodge, and it was to say, “It looks like such a grand place. I can’t believe it was lost.”
Nina coughed into her hand and kept her eyes on the turquoise horizon. She knew he wanted to go out to the old, burned-out structure. She also knew that she wouldn’t be caught dead out there. There were too many ghosts.
Maybe to distract Nina from her obvious troubles, Daniel made another dinner reservation that evening. Before they left the hotel, he surprised her with a bottle of champagne, pouring two flutes with bubbles and toasting “his wonderful wife.”
“It’s no wonder you’re from here,” he said. “It’s gorgeous and mysterious, like you.”
“I’m not mysterious,” Nina countered. But in his eyes, she saw something she’d never caught before: curiosity and jealousy.
Some of her wondered if he’d married her just to get to the bottom of her story, as though he was studying her like any other anthropological site. But she swiftly brushed that thought aside, banishing it. She couldn’t let it taint her marriage.
The restaurant was a long way from where they were staying. Because they’d already drunk champagne and another cocktail on the terrace of the B&B, they hired a cab to take them. The driver was chatty and thrilled when Nina and Daniel confessed they were recently married.
“Marriage is the best thing in the world,” he said. “You have a partner in life. Someone to pick up the slack.” He kept glancing into the rearview mirror to see if they understood him. “This is your honeymoon, then?”
“It’s more of a homecoming,” Daniel said.
Nina glared at him, pressing her elbow into his side to keep him from speaking up.
But when the driver asked what he meant, Daniel said, “My wife was born here. She grew up at the White Oak Lodge.”
The driver’s face transformed from one of brilliant excitement to shock and wariness. The car sped up the slightest bit. They were going ten miles over the speed limit. Nina wanted to curl up and hide.
“A Whitmore?” the driver asked, his voice lower.
“That’s right,” Daniel said.
Nina felt the driver’s eyes upon her through the mirror, demanding answers. She sputtered, “I left when I was really little.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, the driver’s eyes softened. “You’re the girl,” he said.
Nina’s heart pumped. Did he recognize her? Did everyone on the island know who “the little Whitmore girl” was?
“They sent you away,” he said.
Nina stared down at her knees.
“But you came back?” the driver asked. “After everything?”
Daniel’s eyes were bugging out of his head. He looked the way he did when he was learning something new, marking things in his notebook, and studying. For a moment, Nina thought maybe she hated him, but then she reminded herself that, in fact, he was the only person in the world she loved.
Before Nina or Daniel had a chance to answer, the driver pulled up at the expansive restaurant right on the water. Its walls and ceilings were made of glass, and Nina could see all the way through it, past the diners at their tables to the yonder pink-tinged sunset. Nina bucked out of the car as quickly as she could while Daniel hung back and paid the driver. Nina perked up her ears to hear, but when Daniel asked, “What happened? Back then?” the driver just shook his head, took the money, and told Daniel to have a nice day. Anger spiked in her stomach. As the taxi backed out of the drive, Nina stormed up to the front door, her hands in such tight fists that she thought she might draw blood. Daniel hurried up behind her, calling her name.
Nina twisted around and glared at him. “Why did you do that?”
Daniel looked flustered, his face like a little boy’s. “What do you mean?”
“Why did you tell him I was a Whitmore?”
“Um. Because you are?” Daniel said, his voice edged with disbelief. “I don’t know if you remember, but the archives told a story of Whitmore royalty. Your family was something special. I mean, there wasn’t a corner of this island they didn’t touch over the past two hundred years. Don’t you want to celebrate that? Don’t you want to claim your identity?”
Nina flared her nostrils.
“You’re incredible, Nina, and it’s partially because you’re from incredible people,” Daniel said, touching her hand. “I know everyone on this island feels it, too.”
“The driver acted like I was evil,” Nina pointed out.
“He was just surprised. You said that most, if not all, of the Whitmores left after the fire, right? He probably never imagined he’d meet another one of you. And here you are—the prettiest one, the youngest one, the cleverest one.”
Nina wanted to tell him to stop buttering her up. But before she could, the ma?tre d’ approached to say, “Good evening. Do you have a reservation?”
Nina wanted to go back to the B&B, pack her bag, and return to Princeton. But she also didn’t want to fight with Daniel. They were newlyweds. They were partners in life and academia and on their way to figuring everything out. She wanted to trust him.
As they followed the ma?tre d’ to their table near the water, Nina slipped her hand into Daniel’s and shivered with what felt like distaste. Under her breath, she said, “I think I might need to go back to Princeton early.”
Daniel arched his eyebrow. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nina.”
Nina felt as though she’d been smacked.
They sat across from one another, listening to the server as he listed off the specials for the evening and recommended the very best wine pairings. Since dating Daniel, Nina had been to perhaps fifty restaurants like this, swanky places where the menu didn’t list the prices and people wore too much white, and they reminded her always of the restaurant attached to the White Oak Lodge. She ordered a cocktail and couldn’t look at Daniel as he spoke about what he wanted to do tomorrow: rent a sailboat and go around the island. She knew he wanted to get a better look at the White Oak Lodge, and she knew the very best vantage point was from the water. She also knew that when she woke up tomorrow, she would say she had the worst of all migraines, that he could go out on the boat if he wanted to, but that she was going to stay inside and rest.
Was this how her marriage would always go?
On her wedding day, she’d half expected cold feet. She’d expected to feel wait, is this really what I want? But that hadn’t come, not till now, seated here with her burnt orange cocktail, listening to Daniel ask what seemed like his fifteenth question about how they cooked the sea bass. Suddenly, Nina was on her feet. The server looked perturbed. “May I help you with something, madam?”
“I need to dip into the ladies’ room,” she said, not bothering to put on a smile. “Daniel, order me whatever you think is good. I’ll be right back.”
The server said, “Wow, your wife trusts you a lot!”
As Nina cut through the restaurant, she thought she heard Daniel say something about how difficult it was to travel as a newly married couple. “We don’t really know each other well yet.”
Nina’s stomach felt twisted.
When she reached the bathroom, she tried the door and found it was a single and currently in use. She hung back in the shadows of the hallway, listening to the humming conversation of the restaurant’s many guests. There were three glass walls between where she stood and where Daniel sat, still talking to the server, and it made Daniel appear like he was deep underwater. Of course, the walls around the bathroom itself were mercifully not see-through, and they allowed the owner, the decorator, or whoever to hang a number of photographs, presumably of friends or family or regulars, who made Nantucket their home. There were sailing photographs that seemed to feature the owners at the head table, dining over an immaculate feast, ones of birthday parties, housewarmings, and Fourth of July barbecues. Whoever owned this restaurant was truly loved. Nina’s heart panged.
That was when she saw a familiar face.
But it couldn’t be.
About twelve people were seated on the glistening sands in one of the middle photographs, drinking beers and picnicking. Most of them looked to be in their twenties, with flat stomachs, frothing hair, and slim sunglasses fit for what looked like the early 2000s. Nina took a small step forward to assess it further and realized she’d been right about the sunglasses. There was a time stamp in the corner that read: JULY 7, 2002. She remembered that with digital cameras, it had been common back then to record the dates and even times of photographs, something that wasn’t necessary with the advent of cell phones.
The face she recognized was off to the right in the photograph, a handsome black-haired and suntanned man in his early twenties who seemed in the middle of cackling over something. In his left hand was a beer, and beside him was a sensational-looking blonde, a woman like Marilyn Monroe in her early years. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that was Jack. But that was impossible. Her brother Jack had died in the fire—a fire that had happened a full four years before this photograph was taken. Still, her brain felt fizzy. Everything about the man in the photograph seemed to evoke Jack as he’d once been: the freedom and the hilarity and the way he’d had with women. Everyone in the world loved Jack.
When Nina had learned of Jack’s death, she’d been at the police station and picked up a glass from the counter and thrown it to shatter against the wall. Great-Aunt Genevieve had hissed and said, “Get a hold of yourself!” But how could she have? Her brilliant brother was gone.
Nina didn’t know what to make of the photograph. When the older woman exited the bathroom, Nina waited for her to disappear on the other side of the glass wall and took the photograph of would-be Jack with her into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She felt insane. But at the same time, she knew she couldn’t let the photograph remain here at the restaurant. She had to take it with her.
It was her anthropological sensibilities, she told herself. But really, she knew it was her selfishness. It was her outrageous ability to believe in something else, something beyond reason. She knew in her heart of hearts that Jack had died on July 4th, 1998. Yet here, in another reality in 2002, he sat on a bright and blue-skied afternoon. Not wanting to steal the frame, she removed the photograph and slipped it safely into her purse, then shoved the frame behind the toilet and retreated to the table. As she sat down, Daniel gave her an injured smile and reached for her hand.
“I’m sorry about today,” he said.
Nina had the sensation that he was speaking a language she didn’t know.
“I wasn’t on my best behavior,” he said. “I want to start over.”
Nina considered what he’d say if she told him about the photograph. Maybe it was something he’d want to get to the bottom of. Perhaps he’d wanted to struggle through the weight of what it meant together. Or maybe he’d call her crazy.
It was better to keep it to herself.
Nina flicked the napkin over her thighs and offered Daniel a dazzling smile, one not unlike Jack’s. “Being here has been really emotional for me,” she said.
“And maybe that’s why it’s good we came,” Daniel said. “You need to get over it so we can start our life together. Exposure therapy, or something like that.”
Nina wanted to point out all the ways he’d wronged her since they’d left Princeton. But tonight, surrounded by all these people, with a stolen photograph tucked in her purse, she was far too intelligent to put herself through something like that. It would only acknowledge the space suddenly growing between them. It would only point to his mother’s belief that he should have married someone else, someone in their social circle. Someone who wasn’t going after Daniel’s position as an anthropology professor. Someone who would be a quiet and good-natured wife and mother.
Marriage was a dance with specific steps. It was time to learn them.
Daniel touched her hand and gazed into her eyes. “Let’s enjoy the rest of our time here,” he said softly, tenderly. “I promise. No more Whitmore talk.”
Nina breathed and swept her fingers through his. “No more Whitmore talk.”
She promised herself she would never return to Nantucket again.