Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Nina
April 1998
I t was six weeks until the White Oak Lodge opened its doors for the season, which meant chaos and the sounds of construction for the Whitmore family. Every morning at seven, it was the same: the harshness of hammers against nails, the landscapers barking at men with shovels, the pool cleaner here for an additional scrub, playing music from the eighties and dancing around, doors opening and banging shut, and people calling out names, telling them to hurry up and get over here.
As though she instinctually knew it was about to begin, Nina woke up by six thirty and sat in the little chair in her bedroom, peering through the window and watching the construction come alive. In the distance stood her father, his arms spread out as he discussed a new build with one of his construction guys. A hard hat glinted on his head, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept much. Bags hung beneath his eyes. Nina had heard her mother say to him a few days ago, “Benjamin, you’re looking old beyond your years,” and he’d given her a look that Nina hadn’t understood. She wasn’t sure there’d been a lot of love there.
But today wasn’t just a typical day of White Oak Lodge construction. It was Nina’s eleventh birthday. Her heart banged with excitement, wondering how her family would come together to surprise her, to illuminate their love for her. Last year, her father had gotten her a new bicycle, Allegra had done her hair in fancy braids, Charlotte had baked a strawberry cake, and Jack—Nina’s favorite sibling and the one closest to her in age—had danced around the beach with her to all her favorite songs, playing tapes and CDs on her new boombox that could take both. Everyone had said you’re double digits, now!
Of course, Nina knew that being ten was no real feat in a family of much older siblings. Now that Nina was eleven (officially, because on her birthday she’d come into the world at five in the morning), Jack was seventeen, Charlotte was almost nineteen, Allegra was twenty, Lorelei was twenty-one, and Alexander was twenty-three. Being twenty-three felt like an impossibility, an age she would never reach.
When the sun churned higher and burned the fog off the Nantucket Sound, Nina left her bedroom and hurried into the kitchen for a first round of birthday greetings. To her surprise, nobody was there, and the kitchen looked just as it always did: the countertops gleaming, the bowls and plates washed and put away, a few notes on the refrigerator, several of which her mother had written, reminding various members of the family to do whatever it was they were meant to do. Charlotte had a dentist appointment. Jack needed to write an English paper for his high school class. There, hanging to the left of the fridge, was a calendar upon which Jack had written Nina’s birthday in big, sloppy red letters with a heart around them. Her heart pumped with expectation for the day ahead.
Nina dug through the cabinets to find Little Debbie’s Oatmeal Cream Pies, which she’d decided to have for her eleventh birthday breakfast, and packed in a little backpack. Around her, the apartment in which the Whitmore family lived creaked and groaned. The apartment was just as large if not larger than a traditional house, but it was attached to the luxurious White Oak Lodge via locked doors and long, shadowy hallways. Her father had explained that the hallways were built because of the harrowing nature of Nantucket storms and icy winds. “When my great-great-grandfather built this place,” Benjamin had explained, “it was a lodge for men who’d spent months, if not years, on the high seas and wanted a warm place to tend to the wounds of their hearts and bodies.” Nina had gone through several of the tunnels herself, pretending it was another time, that the winds outside were howling, and that this was the only safe space in the world. But these days, the tunnels were locked, and it was important that she didn’t barge through and scare the few guests who spent time at the White Oak Lodge during the offseason.
When summer arrived, the White Oak Lodge would be bustling, its rooms packed with tourists and lodge regulars, friends of the Whitmores, iconic celebrities from Europe, gorgeous women who spent all afternoon drinking cocktails by the pool, men in sailing gear, and very few children.
Nina strapped her backpack on her shoulders and left, hurrying along the frothing beach until the lodge looked as small as a playhouse. There, she kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the frigid sand. She tore open a cream pie and ate it as slowly as she could, which wasn’t very slow at all, and watched her father at a great distance, marching around the pool, talking. Just then, her mother popped out of the front porch, wearing a long white dress, her black hair a glossy river down her back, and her olive skin shining in the morning sun. Nina knew that her mother had been born in Florence, Italy—that she’d met Benjamin because many years ago, her own father, an Italian film director, had summered at the White Oak Lodge. Benjamin’s entire life had been the lodge, and for Francesca, this was the life she’d married into.
Nina knew better than to ask her mother about any birthday plans, especially so early in the morning. She knew her mother would accuse Nina of badgering her. Nina dropped further from the lodge and opened another oatmeal cream pie, telling herself to bide her time and wait until the full morning had birthed itself. At that time, she was sure her father, mother, and siblings would gather around her, praising her and saying Happy birthday, my darling.
But hours passed, and no one called her name.
Nina was confused. By eleven, she was back at the hotel, wandering through construction workers and men with big painting buckets and baseball hats, looking for her family. The sugar she’d eaten for breakfast had rattled her. The radios scattered across the sweeping estate played all manner of talk show hosts and oldies stations, and they fuzzed together. At the corner, one of the painters pretended to throw paint at Nina and ended up flicking a few dollops on her cheek. Nina didn’t make a sound. She put her finger in a white droplet and brought it back, looking at it.
Just then, she heard her mother’s voice. “Nina? Are you getting underfoot?”
Fear crystallized in Nina’s heart. She turned to find Francesca draped on the veranda, watching her as though she’d had one eye on her all this time and had been waiting for her to make a mistake. Nina searched her mother’s face for signs of a happy birthday smile that never came.
Francesca beckoned for Nina to approach and led her into the kitchen, where she scrubbed the paint off her cheek. Allegra and Charlotte were at the kitchen table, poring over a list of to-dos for the day and talking about Allegra’s boyfriend, who hadn’t called when he said he would. There was something ominous about the way they talked about it, something that gave Nina the impression she would never understand adult lives. The feel of the rag on her cheek chilled her to the bone. Her sisters didn’t say happy birthday, either.
Should Nina remind them? Oh, but Nina was old enough to recognize how pathetic that was. She kept her lips snapped shut and let her mother continue to scrub her cheek, that was, until the phone rang and her mother abandoned her to fetch it.
It was a Saturday, which meant Jack wasn’t in school. Nina left the kitchen and padded through the halls to find him, but when she tapped open his door, she found only the messy bedclothes on his mattress, his backpack thrown against the wall, and an empty pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. She’d heard her father telling Jack that he needed to quit smoking immediately, to which Jack had said, “I’m half European, doesn’t that mean anything?”
Their father had rolled his eyes.
Nina wanted to throw herself onto Jack’s bed and cry.
But suddenly, from down the hall, erupted a voice. “What are you doing, snooping around?”
Nina jumped around to find Jack with his hands on his hips and a big smile. It was the first anyone had offered her all day, and she melted into it, throwing herself down the hall to hug him. He picked her up and swung her, just as he’d done when she was a whole lot younger than eleven, then set her down and said, “I have to run a few errands for Tio in town. You want to come?”
Tio meant uncle in Italian. Jack was referring to Tio Angelo, their mother’s brother, who’d moved in with the Whitmore family three years ago after a serious car accident back in Florence had left him both penniless and with a limp.
Nina said yes, and off she and Jack raced to his little light blue pickup truck. Buckled in, she raised a hand to their father, who stood with a few construction workers about fifty feet away from the driveway. Jack grunted and said, “Don’t bother. He’s lost in his plans.”
Jack backed them out of the driveway and turned up the radio to sing along to one of the top songs of the nineties—“Give Me One Reason” by Tracy Chapman. Nina tried to follow along, but she was no match for Jack, who seemed to remember every lyric of every song, even if he’d only heard it a few times. Nina never felt as safe with anyone as she did with Jack. He was muscular and six-foot-three with shaggy black hair and strange blue eyes the color of the Nantucket Sound in mid-July. As far as she knew, he had no girlfriend and very few friends, but she knew that was because he was more like her—a loner, a dreamer. Maybe she’d grow up and be like Jack. Perhaps that was all she really wanted.
Jack hadn’t wished her a happy birthday, either. But he was the first to have paid real, tender attention to her—and he was Jack, which meant she already forgave him for everything.
Jack parked at the hardware store and led Nina through the aisles that smelled of cedar wood and mulch to find rows of plastic containers about three feet by four feet. Nina could have sat comfortably in one. Jack piled three in one cart and two in another and asked Nina to wheel the lighter of the two to the checkout counter. Nina felt responsible and eager to please. Once there, Jack paid in cash and made light small talk with the hardware store owner.
“More storage for the lodge?” the owner asked.
“My dad has me going on about a million errands,” Jack said. “You know how the preseason is.”
“No doubt,” the owner said.
Back at the truck, Nina considered asking why Jack had said the errand was for their father rather than for Tio Angelo, but thought better of it. Maybe Jack had mispoke. Or maybe the errand was for both Tio Angelo and their father. Regardless, by the time they were back on the road, Nina had dismissed the thought entirely and thrown herself into singing with Jack. It was lunchtime, and he pulled them into the parking lot near the Boardwalk Burger Point, where he bought them cheeseburgers with french fries and milkshakes. Nina could hardly believe it. They sat together with their food on the boardwalk, watching men work on their boats. Jack ate his burger in what seemed like three seconds flat, but Nina ate slowly, wanting to cherish every bite. Was this a birthday present? Or was this a random, everyday treat from Jack? He seemed so bright and happy, telling jokes at rapid-fire.
After they ate, Jack dropped the plastic containers off at a little warehouse not far from the port and drove them around the island at top speed, practically daring any cops to pull them over. Nina was ecstatic, squeezing her knees and crying out with happiness. Jack couldn’t stop laughing. “You’ll tell me if you’re too scared, Nina? I’ll slow down!” he promised. But Nina would never tell her brother she was too frightened of something like this. She wanted to like what he liked. She tried to be brave enough for everything.
That afternoon, Jack was needed back at the White Oak Lodge to help out with preseason fix-ups. Nina clambered out of the truck onto legs like pudding and smiled at her father and mother, who were watching her from the veranda, drinking lemonade. It was nearly sixty-five degrees and far warmer than it usually was for her birthday, and Nina thought it was really such a waste that she hadn’t had a little party on the beach. She hung there for a second, half expecting her father or mother to say happy birthday, but neither of them did.
“Where did you take Nina?” her mother demanded of Jack.
“I was watching out for her. We had lunch and everything.” He adjusted his baseball hat and gave their mother a look that Nina couldn’t fully understand.
Francesca glowered at him and said, “I made lunch for her. I had everything ready.” Implied in what she was saying was that she’d wasted her time.
Nina’s heart spasmed. She had a birthday lunch ready for me.
But Jack scoffed. “Don’t lie to yourself, Mom. I know how you treat Nina. Everyone does.”
Nina hung in the driveway. Her legs felt like they didn’t belong to her. Her mother and father gaped at Jack, and silence stretched between them. Jack looked proud of himself. Nina was half grateful to Jack for pointing out how cruel their mother could be to Nina, but she was also half ashamed that it was so obvious and easily said. Francesca’s cheeks were fire-engine red. “When you have six children to raise, why don’t you call me and tell me how it is?” Francesca hissed at Jack.
Benjamin clapped his thigh and said, “All right, Jack. I think that’s about enough for today. Follow me to the boathouse?”
Jack disappeared with Benjamin and left Nina with Francesca, who couldn’t look her in the eye.
“He really did feed me,” Nina chirped, wanting to fix it. She wanted her mother to know that with Jack, Nina was always safe and always cared for.
But Francesca’s face was drawn. With her hand on Nina’s shoulder, she guided her back to the kitchen, where she sat in front of a cold bowl of soup. Francesca told her to eat it so it didn’t go to waste. Nina thought she was going to throw up. She held the spoon aloft and tried to look her mother in the eye to transmit the knowledge that today was Nina’s birthday, which meant that Nina was supposed to be held, cared for, and laughed with. But Francesca was looking out the window at something Nina couldn’t see.
Francesca said, “You’ll tell us, won’t you?”
Nina’s voice was fuzzy. “Tell you what?”
“Tell us if Jack is up to no good?”
Nina furrowed her brow and put her spoon back into an Italian soup she’d had probably a thousand times in her not-so-young life. “Jack’s always working for you and Dad,” she reminded her mother.
Francesca’s fingers flickered in a way that suggested she craved a cigarette but wasn’t going to let herself have one. She kept watch out the window. In the back of her mind, Nina prepared herself for what was to follow: a birthday unlike any other birthday, a birthday everyone had fully forgotten. There it was on the calendar, written in bright red. A Saturday. Nina had double- and triple-checked today’s date. There could be no denying it was today.
Later, Nina escaped her mother and that bone-cold soup to roam the beaches by herself. In the distance was the sound of machines and men calling out, but out here so close to the Nantucket Sound, Nina’s thoughts were the loudest. She dreamed of leaving the island and having a different life. She dreamed of traveling great distances, meeting all kinds of people, and becoming like a heroine in one of the books she liked to check out from the Sutton Book Club. But it felt like a lifetime between here on this Nantucket beach and that impossible future.
Suddenly, there was a shadow on the beach beside her. Nina flinched to look up at her Tio Angelo: a broad-shouldered man in his late forties with a handlebar mustache and trousers with suspenders. He spoke English with a powerful Italian accent that made Nina think of old black-and-white films directed by her grandfather, a man she’d never met.
Tio Angelo liked to speak Italian to his nieces and nephews and laugh when they didn’t understand. “Why didn’t your mother teach you?” he asked now, shaking his head and sitting in the sand beside her. “What a waste!” But his smile reminded Nina that he was just playing around.
“What’s got you so blue, darling Nina?” Tio Angelo asked now. He was the first who’d noticed and seemed to care.
Nina’s chin quivered, and for a moment, she thought she would give herself away and tell him it was her birthday.
But Tio wasn’t done. He said, “Your father, he is swept up in all the chaos of opening. It is a difficult time. You know, for the Whitmores, all the money must be made during the summertime. It brings a great deal of pressure.” He tapped his nose.
Nina had always heard that owning and operating a luxurious hotel on one of the swankiest vacation destination islands in the United States was no easy feat. Once upon a time, apparently, it had been easier. Money had dropped in buckets into the Whitmore accounts.
“Your father thinks he is a failure,” Tio Angelo said, his eyes on the horizon between the water and sky. “He is not the same owner his father was. He is not the same owner as his grandfather. And who is to say he can keep it up forever? Not to mention, which of his Whitmore sons will he pass the hotel to?”
Nina couldn’t keep it to herself. “Alexander, of course!” He was the oldest, the most responsible.
But Tio Angelo shook his head. “Your oldest brother wants to do something else with his life. Haven’t you heard their arguments? They’re echoing through the halls of that hotel day in and day out. Usually, they pick outside my room to argue, which is a wonderful gift.”
Sarcasm rippled across Tio Angelo’s face.
Nina had heard Alexander and Benjamin discussing something in earnest, but she hadn’t given much thought to it.
“Why wouldn’t Alexander want to take over?”
Tio Angelo relished her questions. “Do you think there is life outside of Nantucket Island?”
Nina furrowed her brow with confusion. “Sure there is,” she said because she thought that was what Tio Angelo wanted to hear.
He erupted with laughter as though all this were a game.
“What about Jack?” Nina said, naming the only other Whitmore son.
“Jack! Now that’s an interesting proposition,” Tio Angelo said, seeming to mull it over. “Why do you think Jack would make a good hotelier?”
“Um. He’s so kind?” Nina suggested. But even a moment after she said it, she recognized how silly it sounded. Kindness didn’t make a good hotelier.
“Sure,” Tio Angelo said, nodding as though she’d made a profound point.
Nina’s heart cracked open. With her finger, she drew a line in the sand between them and studied the particles that filled her fingernail.
“You’re a good girl, Nina,” Tio Angelo said gently.
Nina’s throat was tight with sorrow. If I’m so good, why did everyone forget my birthday?
Instead, she asked, “Why doesn’t my mother like me?”
Tio Angelo’s eyes widened. But unlike any other adult might have, he didn’t gaslight her about her feelings. Instead, he said, “Italian mothers are difficult, Nina. They try and try and try, but they can’t overcome their emotions sometimes. Do you know what I’m saying?”
Nina nodded, although she had no idea what he meant.
“She takes care of you, doesn’t she?” Tio Angelo said.
“Yes.”
But , Nina wanted to say, she seems to love everyone else except me.
“She didn’t want to be a mother so late in the game. After five others!” he said with a light shrug. “But you’re getting older now. Maybe you and Francesca can find common ground. Maybe she’ll see that you’re the best of the lot.”
Nina wasn’t sure. But as the waves lapped up on the shore and tickled her toes, she let out an exhilarated laugh and jumped up. Tio Angelo jumped with her, smiling exuberantly in a way that made her see what he’d looked like as a younger man, a boy in Italy with his whole life ahead of him.
“Tio Angelo?” Nina cried out mid-laugh. “Can I tell you something?”
“Nina, you can tell me anything!”
Nina forced herself to stop laughing and finally blurted out, “Today is my birthday. Everyone forgot.”
Angelo’s face melted with surprise. He put his hand on Nina’s shoulder, shook his head, and said, “This won’t do, Nina. This won’t do at all.”
He sprang back to the house to tell everyone. And this , Nina thought later, was one of the best birthdays of her life. A birthday edged with guilt that forced everyone to smile extra big, made their “Happy Birthday” songs extra bright, and halted all construction on the preseason White Oak Lodge. A birthday of three grocery-store-bought cakes, dancing around the bonfire with Jack, and her mother and father holding hands and kissing beneath the stars. Everyone said sorry over and over again. Everyone hugged her extra tight. It was all because of Tio Angelo, she knew. And when the night was ending, she hugged him close and whispered, “Thank you, Tio Angelo.” She told herself not to cry, but later in her room, she couldn’t help it. She was eleven years old and felt as though everything was about to change for good. Maybe it already had.