Conversations
conversations
Blythe had learned to keep the refrigerator, pantry, and shelves stocked with food. Seedless grapes, bananas, watermelon slices would disappear in one day as various kids swarmed the kitchen, grabbing whatever they could eat without having to sit down. Once a week Blythe made meatloaf and cut it into thick slices so it could be eaten in a sandwich or warmed on a plate with chips. She made a large pot of macaroni and cheese every week, and a rice salad tossed with vegetables, a bottle of the ranch dressing her children preferred placed next to it. Bowls of Brussels sprouts roasted in olive oil, sea salt, and, sometimes, parmesan cheese. Towers of carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, red peppers, cut fresh every day. She seldom bought cookies or chips, knowing they wouldn’t last twenty-four hours in her house, but she bought mozzarella sticks and yogurt with fruit and salted nuts. She refused to buy sodas but made pitchers of fresh lemonade. Her kitchen was a kind of free twenty-four-hour cafeteria.
Tonight, Miranda would have dinner at home with Brooks and some, if not all, of her siblings. Blythe told Miranda it was the proper thing to do. It was a way to welcome him into the household. Any other evening, Miranda and Brooks could eat lobster rolls and hot dogs from the Sandbar restaurant at Jetties Beach, and enormous pizzas from Sophie T’s, and probably Sunday dinner at Celeste’s. But this was Brooks’s first night here.
Blythe entered her kitchen, the funny old kitchen they’d never gotten around to renovating. It had red tiles on the floor, supposedly to look like bricks, and a wide double porcelain sink and cupboards with flowered knobs put on by the previous owner, and a new refrigerator, stove, and microwave. The ugly cousin in the kitchen was the rolling dishwasher that sat in the corner and had to be pushed over to the sink and hooked up to the faucet with a long black hose and to the electric socket with a long black cord. Blythe had considered getting a new dishwasher installed with the hoses directly connected to the sink, but the kitchen would have to be completely torn apart and rearranged, and there had never been time.
She didn’t mind. Nantucket cherished its history and the buildings, streets, and houses that had come with it. The room was small, and it certainly didn’t have an island, but she didn’t mind that, either. There was enough room for a wooden table under a window where two people could sit, eating breakfast or helping to peel potatoes.
She brought out the large casserole dish from the cupboard and began opening tin cans of tuna fish. It was fun to make this retro dish that she could remember her own mother and grandmother serving.
She realized she was singing as she worked. She stopped for a moment and gazed out the window.
She was happy because she’d seen Aaden.
But more than that, she was happy because at last she felt free to be happy.
The first couple of years of her divorce had been hard on the children. Bob had moved out. They sold their big house in Arlington and Blythe bought a smaller one in the same school district. They’d talked together with their children, explaining that their lives would be different, but better. The kids went through a period of slamming doors and yelling fiercely critical remarks at Blythe and Bob. After a while, everyone settled down.
Sometimes in those first months, Blythe would hear Miranda crying while she took a bath with the bathroom door locked. Teddy became obsessed with throwing things in the backyard—sticks, plastic bottles, shoes—until Blythe had a basketball hoop put up on the garage door. She gave Teddy a basketball, and that had really seemed to help to use his turbulent energy. Holly had regressed a little, finding the baby dolls she’d packed away in the attic and tending them. She would wrap her babies in blankets and rock them, singing softly to them, saying, “It’s okay. Shh, now. It will be all right.” Daphne had been angry. She had a passion for justice and lots of energy fueled by her emotions, but no place to use that energy.
In October, when the weather was bright and crisp and the leaves were beginning to turn, Blythe rallied her four children and forced them to hike with her up the unfortunately named Gibbet Hill. She confiscated their phones and sang old camp songs that embarrassed them so much—it wasn’t the songs, it was their mother’s singing—that they promised not to complain if she would promise not to sing. Afterward, she took them for cheeseburgers and ice cream and felt victorious as she saw her children eating heartily.
Every weekend that fall, Blythe went climbing. Often the children had better offers. Overnights. Parties. Time with their father and Teri. Most of the time, only Daphne joined her on the hike, and as the weeks passed, Daphne’s fury diminished. Blythe felt better, too. She saw how her daughter was beginning to notice what was along the trail. Blythe would stand gazing in awe at a maple blazing with red leaves, and Daphne would kneel at the tree’s trunk, studying a mushroom—or was it a toadstool? Blythe began to explore websites, looking for the best parks. She bought Massachusetts field guides that described where and how to find turtles, bugs, frogs, and snakes. She was only slightly surprised when Daphne saved her allowance and bought The Secret Pool and The Secret Bay.
But, Blythe thought, this was this year. A new year. A new summer. Anything could happen. Anything had already happened—Aaden was on the island.
And so were her children, and their friends. Holly was having Carolyn for a sleepover tonight, and Miranda would stay home to have family dinner with Brooks on his first night on the island. Other than tonight, who knew when they’d all be together at the table. Blythe had released her children and herself from the rule of eating dinner together every night. The four didn’t exactly roam wild on the island, but every day was different, with friends meeting at the lawn at Children’s Beach for a game of soccer, or to see an extravagant animated epic movie on the big screen at the Dreamland, or a rainy day with board games and popcorn and apples for dinner.
She hummed as she worked, wondering if she’d have time before dinner to call Aaden and deciding she’d do that and make a plan to meet him later on Straight Wharf.
She took a foolish moment to brush her hair and apply fresh lipstick before sitting on the side of her bed and calling him. She got his voicemail.
“Aaden, it’s Blythe. Would you like to meet later at the gazebo at Straight Wharf? We could check out the yachts.”
Around five-thirty, the children stormed back into the house, talking, arguing, kicking off their sneakers, staring at their phones, and the Great Tracking In of the Sand began. It would take place every day for the entire summer. In earlier years, when the children were young, Blythe had made herself crazy trying to sweep up every sneaky tiny grain of sand that came in on the children’s shoes, clothes, and skin. Blythe made rules: Take your shoes off at the door. If you’ve been swimming, go around to the back, drape your towel over the porch railings, and use the outdoor shower before you enter the house. That helped. But nothing could prevent shifty bits of sand from making it into the house to lie on the floor, on the sofas, and, finally, in the sheets.
Well, she wouldn’t worry about that today. She had other things to think about.
Miranda and Brooks arrived, both of them with sunburned cheeks and noses.
Blythe kissed her daughter. Miranda was glowing, and not only from the sun. Blythe pulled Brooks in for a hug. Miranda had told her how lonely Brooks was, how a housekeeper named Mrs. Jones took care of Brooks when his parents had to go abroad. Mrs. Jones was nice, and a reasonably good cook, but she wasn’t a motherly type, more of a formal person.
Brooks said, “I’m really glad to be here.”
“Mom,” Miranda said, “I’m going to show Brooks where to keep his stuff.”
“We’ll have dinner in about ten minutes,” Blythe said.
She was starting to set the table when Daphne wandered in, carrying a book with her finger holding her place.
“Oh, good,” Blythe said. “You can help me set the table.”
“Why do I have to be the one who always helps,” Daphne asked, sighing.
“Because you’re the child I like to be with the most,” Blythe told her daughter, because that was what she told all her children when she was alone with them.
“Oh, Mom.” Daphne rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
Finally, all the food was ready and everyone was seated and Blythe made them hold hands and say a quick grace and then she passed the bowls around. Already the children looked rosy and flushed from the sun and all the time spent outdoors. They ate quickly, as if they hadn’t been fed all day, and the humble tuna casserole vanished. They gave up and played at eating their salads—why didn’t children like salads?—all the while arguing about Dune: Part Two and how could the dainty Timothée Chalamet possibly be cast as a warrior and why was Christopher Walken so cool even if he was, like, ancient ?
Blythe sat eating quietly, sipping her wine, wondering when Aaden would return her call. Holly’s friend Carolyn was at the table, picking at her food, and needing to eat it all, because the girl was too thin, but it wasn’t Blythe’s place to insist she eat, and Holly would be embarrassed if Blythe tried. Brooks was debating the strengths and weaknesses of Dune: Part Two with Teddy, while Miranda listened with miraculous patience to Daphne talking about the cnidarians and ctenophores on display at the Maria Mitchell aquarium.
Voices drifted from the front door.
“Yoohoo, Blythe!” Sandy called. “I’m here with Nick. Can we come in?”
“Of course,” Blythe called.
Sandy entered the dining room. “The girls have gone off with friends on a sunset cruise. What are you doing this evening?”
Nick was there, behind Sandy, just inside the doorway, looking uncomfortable and also heart-stoppingly attractive.
Be normal, Blythe ordered herself. “We were just finishing dinner. I made sugar cookies—”
Before she completed her sentence, the children jumped up from the table as if they’d been zapped by an electric shock.
“Wait!” Blythe said. “Have some manners and say hello to Sandy and Mr. Roth.”
As if directed by a choir leader, the children chimed, “Hello, Sandy. Hello, Mr. Roth.”
“Now,” Blythe directed, “take your dishes to the kitchen. The cookies are for dessert. Help yourself.”
“Then we can leave?” Miranda asked.
“Yes,” Blythe answered dryly. “I’ve officially unlocked your shackles.”
“Great!” Miranda took Brooks’s hand. “Come on, let’s walk into town for ice cream.”
Brooks rose—Miranda was gently pulling him to his feet. “Thank you for the dinner, Mrs. Benedict.”
“You’re welcome, Brooks.” Smiling at Sandy and Nick, Blythe invited them to join her at the table. “Sit with me while the kids sort themselves out.”
For the next few minutes, it sounded like middle school when the last bell rings. People ran up the stairs and back down, called out names and questions, raced out the front door, thundered back into the kitchen to grab a few sugar cookies, raced out the back door, and all at once, blissfully, it was quiet in the house.
“We’re on our way to Straight Wharf to get ice cream,” Sandy announced. “We thought you’d like to come with us.”
Blythe couldn’t think of a reason not to join them. Her children had gone off, and Aaden hadn’t returned her call, and if he did come to Straight Wharf, well, Nick was with Sandy, wasn’t he?
“That would be fun! Give me a moment to get organized.”
She took her plate into the kitchen, dashed into the downstairs lavatory, brushed her hair, swooped on some lipstick, and checked her phone, in case Aaden had left a message. No message.
She stood in the lavatory, which she and Bob had decorated several years ago with cream wallpaper patterned with seashells and pale cream woodwork, and gave herself a moment to think. What if Aaden came to Straight Wharf without phoning her back? Or what if he phoned? She imagined introducing him to Sandy and Nick, and everyone would get along fine, but it would change the emotional tone of the evening, at least for Blythe. It was too soon for her to consider herself romantically linked with Aaden, even though in a way, she’d been romantically linked with him since she first saw him. But even if the two men shook hands and were friendly, Blythe would silently freak out. Blythe loved Sandy and she was sure that Nick was a great guy, but she didn’t want to deal with Aaden seeing her with another man, which was ridiculous, but a powerful thought.
Also, she was insanely attracted to Nick.
Blythe took a deep breath. She walked down the hall and found Sandy and Nick sitting in the living room.
“Sorry I took so long,” Blythe apologized. “Would you mind if we stayed here and sat out on the back porch and had iced tea and sugar cookies? It’s just that it’s been such a circus getting all of us out of the Arlington house and down here and unpacked and so forth. I’d love to sit and catch my breath.”
“Of course,” Sandy said.
Blythe led them to the kitchen. She poured iced tea for her and Sandy and a Scotch and soda for Nick and carried the plate of sugar cookies—there were four of them left—out to the back porch.
“Oh, this is lovely,” Sandy said as they stepped out onto the porch. “I want the swing.”
“It’s all yours.” Blythe set the plate of sugar cookies on the small wicker table and sank into the wicker rocking chair.
Nick sat on the wicker settee facing the flowers and lush green lawn. “Nice garden.”
“I hope the cushions don’t reek,” Blythe said. “We keep them in the house in the winter, tossed in with the boots and snow shovel in the back hall, but I haven’t had time to wash the slipcovers.”
Sandy stretched her arms over her head. “The only thing I smell is summer. Isn’t this a perfect night!”
“How long will you be on Nantucket?” Blythe asked Nick.
He said, “I’ve got three months of vacation. I’ll be here off and on all summer.”
“Nice.” Blythe couldn’t keep from reappraising the man on the wicker settee. Nick was big like a football player, but as well-dressed and charming as a diplomat.
Nick smiled. “It is nice. Your home is beautiful.”
“I work hard to keep it that way. The most challenging job is to make my children do their assigned tasks. Mowing the lawn. Watering the flowers. Doing laundry. Sweeping, vacuuming, and that most heinous task, cleaning the bathroom.”
“If you can inspire your children to do all that, then you must be a remarkable teacher.”
This time his smile reached his eyes. He was very handsome, and Blythe saw that he was kind. It was easy to talk with him. She was comfortable in his presence.
There was that heart flutter again. Maybe she was more than comfortable.
“How did you get into…teaching?” she asked.
Nick said simply, “It’s a family thing. My grandfather taught history at St. Mark’s in Southborough. My father was principal at Arlington High, and my sister teaches there now.”
“Wow. Impressive.”
“I like teaching. I like the challenges.” He shook his head. “Not all of them.”
Sandy pushed the floor with her feet, bare now that she’d kicked off her sandals, and the wicker swing creaked as it went back and forth.
Blythe agreed. “It’s hard work, I remember. But when they get something right, when we get something right, it’s dazzling.”
Sandy interrupted. “Okay, enough. Life can’t be all about teaching. You don’t know it yet, but Nick can get awfully boring and dreary.”
“Thank you, Sandy,” Nick said with a smile.
Ignoring him, Sandy continued. “That’s why Hugh invited him here for a few weeks.”
“Do you sail?” Blythe asked. “Sandy’s husband is a great sailor.”
Before Nick could answer, Sandy spoke up. “If Nick goes out with Hugh on his boat, I’m going to make Hugh swear not to force Nick to crew. Nick’s our guest. He should lie in the sun and relax.”
“Like now,” Blythe said. “Look.”
The sun had dropped beneath a cluster of puffy white clouds, their rippling edges glowing pink. From the apple tree at the back of the garden, a robin sang, his tail flicking among the fresh green leaves. A gentle gray dusk passed on to the porch, so the light was dimmed and it felt that, for a moment, the world held its breath.
They were quiet for a while, and the silence seemed to be a way of speaking to one another, and to the evening, to the moment, this moment of peace.
Then another bird swooped onto the branch where the robin sat and they chirped and flew off. Someone called for someone named Corker from a house down the street. Someone else yelled, “Coming!”
The world began again.
Nick said, “I’d like to rent a spot on this porch every evening.”
Sandy pretended to be indignant. “What’s wrong with our porch?”
“It doesn’t face west.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Sandy slipped off the swing, stepped into her sandals, and said, “I have to go home. I’m suddenly yearning for my new mystery novel.”
Blythe was used to her friend’s quick changes. “That’s a good idea. I haven’t read a book in two or three days. It was such a mad dash packing to get here. It always is.”
Nick rose, too. “Thank you for the cookie and the drink. I hope we can get together again.”
“I’d like that,” Blythe told him, trying not to sound too eager.
She walked with them through the house down the hallway, and the entire time she admired the long span of Nick’s back, his wide shoulders, his thick honey-brown hair. No male-pattern baldness here, she thought, and she knew that shouldn’t matter, but right at that moment, it did. When they stepped out onto her front porch, Nick turned and shook her hand.
“Thanks again, Blythe.”
She wanted to say: Don’t leave.
“I’m so glad you came,” she told him.
They smiled at each other and kept holding hands. Blythe had forgotten how delicate the skin of her palm was, and the trick it had of sending shock waves through her body.
Behind Nick, Sandy stood grinning.
“I’ll see you soon,” Nick said, and gently released her hand.
Blythe returned to the kitchen. She realized she was humming. And she hadn’t thought of Aaden for the past hour.
She checked her phone.
Aaden had texted: Sorry. I was out with my host for drinks with his neighbors. Raincheck?
Before she could stop herself, Blythe texted, Maybe . Because it was fun to flirt with Aaden even though he probably knew she’d run to him in the pouring rain or the wildest wind.
Immediately, his text popped up. Tomorrow? Dinner?
Blythe texted Yes and hugged herself.
The summer was beginning to be more interesting than she’d imagined.
—
Now Blythe waited for her children to come home. The three younger ones had to be in by eleven. Miranda and Brooks had a curfew of midnight. Blythe settled herself in an armchair in the living room and opened one of the Agatha Christie mysteries someone had left in the bookshelf. What was it about Agatha Christie books that was so unexpectedly comforting?
Not that she needed comforting. She hadn’t been this excited since—since high school? Could that be true? It could be, because never before had she been interested in two men at the same time. She closed her eyes, lay her head against the back of her chair, and pictured the two men. Aaden, dramatic like lightning spearing her heart. Now Nick, as sweet and tempting as a spoon of honey.
She was being silly, and she knew it, and she loved it! How many times did a woman in her forties who had children to raise and feed and protect find her entire body awake and astonished by her own desires and pleasures? For pleasure was what Blythe had experienced with Nick, and with Aaden, too. What a surprise!
What a revelation.
“Mom! We’re back!”
Holly and Carolyn were the first to come in through the front door. They launched themselves into the room, both talking at once about the handsome young Irishman who played the fiddle on Main Street and the adorable little girl who spontaneously danced to his music and were any cookies left and they were going to get up early tomorrow and run down to Jetties Beach to watch the sun rise.
Blythe managed to squeeze in a motherly reminder. “Be sure to brush your teeth before you go to bed.”
“Okay, Mom!” Holly started to run up the stairs, but in a quick change of mood, she raced back into the living room, and hugged Blythe. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”
Blythe returned to her mystery, listening with half an ear to the sounds coming from the second floor. Bathroom door opening and closing. Laughter. Bedroom door opening and closing. Muffled laughter.
She remembered being that age, when everything made her laugh. At eleven, Blythe had considered the world incomprehensible and surprising, with something unexpected happening every day. Tonight, Blythe felt that way again.
When Daphne arrived, she was talking on her phone.
“Hang on,” she said to whoever was on the other side. “I’ve got to check in.” She stuck her head into the living room. “Hi, Mom. I’m going to bed now.”
“Don’t spend all night on the phone,” Blythe said.
“I won’t.” Daphne trudged up the stairs to her bedroom, still talking on her phone. “But I like the pale pink skirt.”
It’s a friend, Blythe thought. Daphne has a friend, and how could that be anything but wonderful? Daphne could be a loner, an introvert, and Blythe knew she couldn’t change her, and sessions with her therapist taught her that she shouldn’t change Daphne. She might not want to be popular, but she had been close to Johnny before he moved away. Now she had a few serious friends like Lincoln, plus her ongoing passion for saving the world, and what parent could object to that? Blythe’s own parents adored Daphne above all Daphne’s siblings, and they often sent her important books about world problems needing solving like Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive and The Soul of an Octopus. Blythe wished her daughter would read some of her older sister’s romance novels with knights and peasants and wishing wells to balance out the harsh realities.
Blythe’s ears perked up when she heard two male voices coming toward the house. Had Teddy invited someone to sleep over? The guys were comparing Minecraft and Fortnite, two video games Teddy played at home. The front door slammed and Teddy and Brooks entered, engrossed in their discussion, and Miranda followed.
Teddy and Brooks went down the hall to the family room. Miranda came into the living room and threw herself right onto Blythe’s lap. She was taller than Blythe, but much slimmer, with long, long legs. Blythe felt like she was embracing a flamingo.
“Honestly, Teddy is driving me psycho. He talked with Brooks all the way home. I think Brooks has forgotten I even exist.” Miranda put her arms around Blythe’s neck. “Mommy, make Teddy go away.”
Certain things Blythe knew at once. One simple breath produced a small explosion of information in her thoughts: no hint of alcohol or pot or even cigarettes.
Blythe kissed Miranda’s cheek. “What would you do without me?”
She gently shoved her daughter off her lap and stood up. After smoothing her wrinkled shirt, she went into the hall.
She called out, “Teddy? Wherever you are, Teddy, you need to go to bed. Tennis tomorrow morning.”
“Going, Mom!” Teddy burst out of the family room and up the stairs to his bedroom.
Miranda approached Blythe and hugged her from behind. “You’re so cool, Mommy.”
“I love you, too.” Blythe slipped around to face Miranda. “Now you have to help Brooks get settled for the night. And then go up to your own room. No dawdling. It’s late for all of us.”
“Okay.” Miranda drifted away down the hall and into the family room.
Blythe double-checked the kitchen and the porch lights at the front and back doors.
At the door to the family room, she said, “Miranda. Now.”
Miranda detached herself from Brooks, who was standing in his black sleep shorts and red T-shirt with a silk screen of Patrick Mahomes bellowing like a moose.
The pullout sofa bed was already made up with cotton sheets, a blanket, and a pillow.
“Do you have everything you need, Brooks?” Blythe asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Brooks replied.
“Brooks travels all the time,” Miranda said. “He knows how to pack. Someday we’re going to backpack through Europe.”
“But now we’re all going to bed,” Blythe said.
Miranda sighed dramatically and went up the stairs to her room.
Yawning, Blythe flicked off all the downstairs lights. As she went up to her own room, she thought how these teenagers, so full of energy and plans for the future, had no idea how beautiful they were, or how time would slowly burnish the honeyed smoothness of their limbs and their thoughts until their faces, their bodies, their hearts would be marked with life’s answers to their desires. The answers would not always be yes.
But sometimes the answer would be yes, and at the most unexpected moments.