Chapter 5
It was a no-brainer.
Unsurprisingly, because there was so much other stuff to do that day and so many other people to take care of, Ruth’s family didn’t attend her high school graduation.
She walked across the stage in her cap and gown, waving as if to her family (because she was too embarrassed not to in front of that crowd), then promptly removed her cap and gown and headed home to pack.
She had no interest in going to any graduation parties.
She had no boyfriend and no real friends.
Most everyone in her Virginian town said she thought she was too good for them.
Ruth couldn’t disagree with that. She had aspirations. She pushed herself.
The problem was: she had no idea what she was good for.
Ruth took the bus to Massachusetts. The trip took many days, and she arrived disgusting yet incredibly alive, hauling her single backpack from under her seat and striding into the sunshine.
As per her friend’s instructions, she took the ferry to the island, where she asked for directions to The Salty Acre, the fish restaurant where she’d make “enough money to live on and save,” her friend had said.
Her friend, Missy, had long red hair and an electric smile.
She’d more or less dropped her Virginian accent in the two years since she’d been gone.
She scooped Ruth into a hug, then dragged her into the office to meet her boss, who happened to be her boyfriend.
Ruth asked her later how Missy and the boss had gotten together, and Missy shrugged and said, “It’s a small island.
We fell in love, but I could have fallen in love with anyone.
” Ruth was surprised at how cynical that sounded.
She wondered whether cynicism was the way forward as an adult in this life. Her parents were certainly cynical. Maybe it was mature.
Missy had agreed to sublet one of her apartment’s bedrooms to Ruth.
Sitting at the edge of her twin bed, gazing out at the water through the window, Ruth could hardly believe her luck.
For her entire life, she’d been a daughter in a family of eight, forgotten, always wearing hand-me-downs and fighting for space.
Now, she had her own room. She could have cried.
She didn’t, maybe because she didn’t want to see herself as weak and overcome.
That first night, Ruth showered, changed into the uniform, and started work.
She’d waitressed plenty back in Virginia, but this was different: fine dining, and she made numerous mistakes that either made the customers angry or made them laugh.
It was difficult to gauge which direction their emotions would go—especially because they were wealthy people with backgrounds different from Ruth's, backgrounds that made them like different species to her. Missy told her to keep at it. “You’ll get the hang of it in no time,” she said.
She was right. Soon enough, waitressing in such a restaurant and serving such wealthy people was second nature. She hardly thought of it at all.
Ruth had one day off per week, which she spent at the beach.
She tanned and read books and people-watched.
She imagined she could be like one of the wealthy elite who came to Nantucket to sail, eat divine meals, and indulge every one of their senses.
When she confessed to Missy her dreams of being rich one day, Missy laughed and said, “You don’t want that.
Trust me. Those people are obsessed with money.
They can’t think about anything else. They’re not free, like you and me. ”
Ruth wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. Didn’t having money equal freedom?
It was during Ruth’s third week of work that Quentin Caldweck walked in.
At nineteen, he was six foot four, with broad, sailing shoulders and jet-black hair.
To Ruth, he looked like a prince from a storybook.
But she refused to let him know that he had any effect on her.
When she waited on his table, she looked at him flatly, willing herself not to flirt.
After a night of her ignoring him, he seemed to go crazy with desire for her.
He demanded her phone number. She wrote it on a napkin with lipstick and handed it over, and all his friends roared.
Whatever, she told herself. She knew he wouldn’t actually call.
That night, rather than go home to wait for a call from Quentin, Ruth went out with Missy and a few other girls.
There was karaoke at the bar not far down the block.
When they walked in, Ruth spotted Quentin off to the side with his friends.
She hadn’t thought that wealthy people like him did karaoke.
He hadn’t seen her yet. On the little piece of paper meant for song requests, she wrote down “You’re So Vain,” the old Carly Simon song, and handed it to the karaoke DJ, excited to sing.
It was one of her favorites, one that reminded her of being a little kid and performing to her siblings from the makeshift stage of one of their beds.
When it was time for her to go up, Ruth performed entirely for Quentin.
She wasn’t sure what came over her. She swayed her hips and engaged with her heart and soul, belting out the tune in a way that forced Quentin to listen.
He smiled at her, his eyes alight, and his friends were in on it, too, stabbing him in the side with their elbows and laughing.
They knew he liked her. They knew the performance was all for his benefit.
After she was finished, she returned to her friends in the corner, waiting. She felt as though she might float into the air. Sure enough, Quentin came up a few minutes later, laughing. “I didn’t think I’d see you so soon,” he said.
“I’m stalking you,” Ruth said.
Quentin laughed. “Was that song about me?”
“You’d think it was, I guess,” Ruth said, winking. “That’s pretty vain of you, no?”
Quentin howled now. Ruth had never felt so vibrant. She’d never felt so in tune with another man. She shivered as a voice in the back of her mind said, "This is it." Your life is about to change.
She couldn’t believe it, but that voice was right.
Over the next two months, Ruth and Quentin spent as much time together as they could.
Almost every night, Quentin waited for her outside the restaurant, then, in his convertible, sped her off to one iconic party after another.
Ruth was eighteen, and she was up for everything—any kind of drink, any kind of food, and any kind of party theme.
She was also unafraid around other uber-wealthy people.
She soon realized that Missy was right. The wealthy were obsessed with money and not much else.
It made them easy to peg. It also made many of them boring.
Boring—and easy to manipulate. They soon fell in love with Ruth, as she seemed iconic and creative and entirely unlike them.
To Ruth’s relief, Quentin wasn’t boring.
When they weren’t at parties and had free time, they went sailing or to the beach and talked for hours about books and writing.
Ruth confessed that she’d come from nothing, a family of eight that didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and Quentin confessed that he couldn’t really understand what that meant.
When Ruth kissed him, she felt as though she were melting in his arms.
“You’ve got it bad,” Missy told her late one August night, a rare night when Ruth wasn’t with Quentin. “What are you going to do when he goes back to Yale?”
Ruth thought she was going to throw up. She hadn’t given much thought to what she would do after the summer was over.
She certainly couldn’t go back to Virginia.
Maybe she could stay in Nantucket? But when she said this to Missy, Missy said, “There won’t be any work for you here.
Everything dries up fast. If you don’t have family money, you’re shot. ”
Ruth tried to prepare her heart to say goodbye to Quentin. She told herself that she had to break up with him as soon as she could, if only to help herself move on.
That was the mature and cynical thing to do, after all.
Two nights later, out on his sailboat under a blanket of stars, Ruth told Quentin to be reasonable. “We have to end it before we get hurt,” she said.
Quentin clutched her hands and begged her to reconsider. “I don’t know what to do without you,” he said. “You’ve changed my life. You’re the best person I’ve ever met.” Ruth wanted to laugh at that, but he looked deathly serious.
“Not only that,” Quentin went on, “but you’re smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, too. You should be at a university. You should be furthering your education. I don’t understand why you didn’t apply.”
Ruth’s breath caught in her throat. “I told you. I can’t afford something like that.”
“Let me make some calls,” he said.
“Ha. Okay.” Ruth didn’t believe him for a second.
But as it happened, Quentin wasn’t from normal money.
He was from real, old-world, multigenerational money.
He was wealthy with a capital W. And his family had connections up the wazoo at Yale, so much so that within the week, Quentin came to Ruth’s apartment and announced that he’d secured a place for her at that university—provided she show off her high school grades and write an essay that proved she wasn’t a complete idiot.
“It comes with a full-ride scholarship,” he said, wagging his eyebrows.
Ruth wanted to smack him. “You’re lying.”
“I wouldn’t lie about Yale,” Quentin said, both teasing her and not.
Later at the restaurant, when Ruth told Missy about the Yale situation, Missy’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to write that essay,” Missy said to her.
“He’s obviously bluffing,” Ruth said.
“What if he isn’t? This is your only shot at something like that, Ruth,” Missy said. “I’ll work your shift tonight. Go home. Use my desktop. Write your essay.”
So that was what Ruth did. She went home and picked up a book she’d read numerous times—Moby-Dick, as it happened—and wrote a theoretical and philosophical essay that, she thought, the Yalies would like.
She sent it via email to Quentin, who sent it to his father, who sent it to his connection at Yale.
And the night before Quentin was set to leave Nantucket for the summer—and leave Ruth’s life forever, she thought—he showed up at the restaurant and gave her the official letter of acceptance.
Tears in her eyes, she left the restaurant halfway through the dinner course and didn’t look back.
Years later, she’d still remember the tables she abandoned, without bothering to get their glasses of wine or check in the kitchen for their appetizers.
She wondered what they thought had happened to her.
It was the beginning of her brand-new life. All she could do was leap.