Chapter 6
The first four years of Candice’s college career at NYU were messy and strange and funny, the foundation of a story about a young woman in the big city.
Candice lived in one tiny room after another, with a string of funny and artistic girls from the Midwest and California, and she read all the great Russian, American, and British literature.
She wrote many, many short stories—most of them bad, but some of them okay—and she bonded with her professors, some of whom suggested that she was good enough at creative writing to pursue it at a master's level.
Candice was twenty-two when she graduated from NYU and learned that she’d gotten into NYU’s MFA program.
Shrieking, she ran into her roommate Stacy’s bedroom and jumped up and down on her bed.
She genuinely felt that her life was beginning, that finally, she was going to become what she’d always wanted to become.
Stacy got up and took them out to breakfast, where they drank mimosas and ate stacks of pancakes and eggs and bacon.
Stacy was thrilled for Candice, but Candice could see that she was sad, too.
Stacy was leaving the city to attend physical therapy school in Cleveland.
For her, the dreams of the city were over.
That summer, Candice and her siblings went back to Martha’s Vineyard for the Fourth of July.
Stella and their father, Ben Winthrop, were both there, waiting for them, the kitchen stocked and the sailboat waiting.
Candice threw herself into her father’s arms and exclaimed that she’d gotten into the master’s program of her dreams, that she was going to stay in the city for at least another three years.
Her father called for champagne, and Stella approached, pain and intrigue in her eyes.
Candice knew that she should have called ahead.
She should have told her parents her news at the same time. Now, her mother was hurt.
But Candice had always found her father, Ben, a much easier person, a funnier and livelier person, a person whose every question didn’t feel like an attack.
Lindsey and Henry felt the same way. Already that first night, they gathered on the veranda, sharing wine and talking about their lives, while Stella sat silently, wrapped in a shawl, looking at the four of them as though she didn’t fully recognize them.
Stella could get secretive, as though there was an entire universe inside her that she didn’t want anyone to see.
When Lindsey, Henry, and Candice traveled back to the city after the Fourth of July, Lindsey asked, “Why do you think Dad fell in love with Mom?”
Candice and Henry were at a loss, at first. They knew that Lindsey was reeling after a recent breakup and that she was thinking about love, breakups, and why people stayed together at all. But Candice had asked herself this very question before.
“They met on the Vineyard, right?” Candice asked.
“That’s the story,” Lindsey said. “I mean, I think that’s all I know about it?”
“They were two rich kids.” Henry shrugged. “Rich kids with pretty faces who wanted to go on to have more rich kids with pretty faces. I don’t think it’s that surprising.”
Candice thought Henry was simplifying things a little too much, but she had no other conclusions to make, so they dropped it.
That first semester at NYU’s MFA program, Candice, of course, met the marvelous wordsmith Nathan Lerner.
She fell in love with him after reading the first story he submitted for the workshop about an ice fisherman in Ontario who was unable to express himself to anyone, not to his wife, not to his kids, and hardly to himself.
It was such a beautiful meditation on life and how we find different ways to sustain ourselves that it brought Candice to tears.
But Candice could see that many of the other women in their writing cohort liked Nathan, too.
And why wouldn’t they? He was handsome and charming and thoughtful.
He was one of the best writers, if not the best, and he wasn’t from the city, which was a godsend.
It meant that he was more empathetic, that he knew the entire world didn’t revolve around Manhattan.
Nathan didn’t start a conversation with Candice until after Candice submitted her first story for the workshop.
It was about an older woman living on the coast who thought she was a witch until her final spell—to heal her daughter in the midst of her tumultuous pregnancy—failed, and her daughter died.
It was a devastating story, one that nearly killed Candice to write.
They ran into each other at a bar not far from the NYU campus and around the corner from Candice’s apartment.
They locked eyes at the bar while Candice was trying to order a beer, and Nathan followed her over to her table, where she’d planned to spend the evening reading James Joyce.
Nathan had other plans. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
Candice felt a blush crawl up her cheeks. She put her book away and said he could.
Nathan’s eyes shimmered with the candles that flickered around them. It seemed there was too much of him on the inside of his brain, as though he spilled to the surface of himself. “I read your story this afternoon,” he said. “It’s weird to run into you here. I feel like I called you here.”
Candice hadn’t allowed anyone to read her short story before submitting it, so this was the first feedback she’d gotten. She could tell from his flushed face and his tone that he loved it. More than that, she could tell that her story had confused him, that he hadn’t known what to make of it.
They spent more than an hour discussing the characters, the world she’d put them in, and whether or not she’d been inspired by anything in “real life.”
“Not really,” she said, although for some reason she thought of her mother on the coast, living in her grand mansion, her eyes to the stormy ocean. “But I don’t think you need to write from experience to write at all. You’re not an ice fisherman, are you?”
Nathan smiled. “Not last time I checked.”
That night, Nathan walked Candice back to her apartment, where he kissed her lightly on the lips before whispering, “Good night, beautiful writer.” Candice shivered. She felt as though her life had just cracked open.
They fell in love quickly after that. During Candice’s workshop, Nathan fought any person tooth and nail who didn’t say it was “perfect.” He said that it was already fit to be published.
He said that he’d never met a character like Candice’s “old witch on the shore.” Candice, who wasn’t allowed to speak during the workshop for her own piece, sat there, biting her tongue to keep from grinning.
When the workshop was over, Nathan invited her over to his apartment, which he shared with three other guys from NYU.
She slept over that night. She never wanted to leave him again.
It wasn’t till the end of that first year of the MFA that Candice invited Nathan to Martha’s Vineyard to meet her parents.
During that time, Ben and Stella spent nearly all their time at the Harbor Estate and only dipped into Manhattan for various events.
They said the winters made their bones harder, and they loved the snow.
But it was a gorgeous eighty-degree day when Nathan and Candice drove from the city to Martha’s Vineyard.
On the ferry, they kissed at the railing and watched Candice’s island come closer.
Nathan sang that song “Island Girl,” and Candice laughed and said, “I don’t really think it’s that kind of island.
” But Nathan assured her that all islands had a similar vibe.
“It’s like island people don’t need anyone else.
All they have is each other. They’re inaccessible. ”
Candice thought that was really poetic, even if it didn’t make total sense to her.
When they reached the Harbor Estate, Ben and Stella greeted them outside. Ben clapped Nathan on the shoulder, beaming. “Welcome to the Vineyard!” Candice and her mother shared a somber hug, and then Candice shook Nathan’s hand and invited him inside.
“We have a lot planned for the weekend!” Ben said as they walked to the veranda, where they’d share wine and cheese and fresh bread from the Oak Bluffs bakery. “We’re going to take you two sailing tomorrow. Nathan, have you ever been sailing?”
“Never,” Nathan affirmed. “I’ve always wanted to learn.”
Ben beamed. He was in his element.
Nathan was the first “official” romantic partner one of the Vanberg siblings had brought home to meet the parents.
Candice knew that her father longed for grandchildren, for the family to all live here on the Vineyard and go sailing and eat dinner together.
He longed for a wonderful friendship with his son-in-law.
He guessed that Lindsey wouldn’t find a nice man easily, which was probably true.
It wasn’t clear what Stella thought of Nathan, not at first. She asked him pointed questions, to which Nathan responded with boisterous and creative energy. Candice couldn’t stop smiling.
During their sailing expedition around the island the following afternoon, Nathan did his best to help with the ropes and sails before resigning himself to helping Stella with the wine, food, and snacks.
When they dropped anchor to eat, Nathan raised his glass of champagne to toast the Vineyard, as well as Stella and Ben.
“The past eight months with your daughter have been the happiest of my life,” Nathan said. “So much so that I’m embarrassed to say, I wrote a poem about her. I thought I’d share.”
Ben smiled wider. “We’d love to hear it.”
Stella didn’t say anything.
Together, they sat as Nathan recited an artistic and strangely syncopated poem meant to illustrate his love for Candice. Every word of it shimmered with love, and Candice felt dizzy. When he finished, Ben clapped, saying, “That’s the kind of thing every father wants to hear.”
Stella seemed to know she needed to say something. “That was really something, Nathan,” she said.
Nathan smiled and kissed Candice’s cheek. “Words have been pouring out of me since I met Candice. I think we’ve helped each other’s creativity. I certainly haven’t been able to stop.”
“Is that true, Candice?” Stella asked.
“Yes,” Candice said. It didn’t matter that she’d had a period of strangled writer’s block in January and February. It didn’t matter that her second short story hadn’t been as good as the first. Nathan’s kept getting better and better, which was almost as good as her own success.
When they tied up the boat later that evening, they fell into pairs: Ben and Nathan, Stella and Candice.
Candice could feel a harsh urgency coming from her mother, as though she really needed to say something.
She wasn’t surprised when Stella touched Candice’s elbow and asked her to hang back.
Nathan and Ben continued to the main house, where they planned to get the dessert out of the fridge.
Slowly, Candice forced herself to look her mother in the eye. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. Her mother’s eyes were endlessly intense, almost reminding her of Nathan’s.
“What do you want to say, Mom?” Candice finally asked. There was a heavy sigh in her voice.
Stella raised her chin. At that moment of silence, Candice searched herself for a rebuttal. She wanted to mention that it was obvious that Nathan and Candice were already more in love than Stella and Ben. She wanted to point out that Stella was jealous! But it was impossible to say.
“Honey, that man is only capable of one thing,” Stella said finally.
Candice couldn’t speak.
“He loves himself. He can only ever love himself. And it’s a powerful, twisted love,” Stella continued, hurriedly. “He wants to overshadow you. He wants to make it so his love for everything—including you—is more powerful than you. He’s that type.”
Candice flared her nostrils. “You don’t know him.”
“Honey, I do. I really do,” Stella breathed, her eyes dark.
Candice wanted to argue with her mother.
She wanted to fight, right here on the beach in front of the Harbor House, as her future husband and her father removed the cover from the carrot cake and grabbed forks from the drawer.
But before she could, Stella turned and headed toward the house, her posture perfect, her head straight.
There was no arguing with her, Candice knew, because Stella always believed she was right.