Chapter Two Lily
Regret is a strange emotion to feel in the ice cream aisle of the largest grocery store on Nantucket Island, but there it is anyway, nestled between the lemon sherbet and the peanut butter swirl.
It’s Memorial Day weekend. I just returned to the island yesterday morning for the summer. I’m twenty-five years old, and my life feels like one long, bad turn.
The grocery store is unreasonably cold, and I shiver in my thin yellow sweatshirt, bending to read the labels.
A group of young girls walk by, laughing in hushed voices.
I can tell they’re likely under twenty-one by their outfits: They’re wearing tank tops and jean shorts despite the temperature outside.
I can also guess what they’re doing here: waiting out the line at the Chicken Box across the street, still the biggest and most popular dive bar on island.
On a typical summer weekend, the line winds all the way to the Stop & Shop parking lot.
There’s a chance they’ll get in, but more likely than not, they’ll be turned away and have to go to one of the notoriously underage spots downtown.
Luckily, the Box rarely confiscates fake ID’s, and half the fun is trying to sneak in anyway.
“Lily,” my mom says, appearing behind me. “Are you ready?”
“I’m still deciding,” I tell her.
“It’s ice cream. There are no wrong choices.”
Easy for you to say, I think. Perfect Rose Gardner, who has never made a wrong choice in her life, except maybe the one that led to my birth. Dating my father was, by all accounts, a mistake, but even that one feels slightly like my fault.
An older woman shuffles by, leaning on her cart as if it’s a substitute walker.
She’s wearing a red shawl that looks almost like a cape.
Long, mismatched turquoise necklaces hang from her neck, knotting together like roots of a tree.
She winks at me as she scoots down the aisle, stopping to buy a bag of frozen cherries three doors down.
I freeze, panicked. Does this strange woman somehow know me, or is she in the habit of winking at strangers? Regardless, I look away. The last thing I need is to run into someone I know. The only people I want to see tonight are Ben & Jerry, and even them, only in passing.
I grab a mint chocolate chip container from the freezer and absentmindedly scratch lines into the frost on the lid with my thumbnail, a nervous habit.
“Okay,” I say, letting out a breath. “Ready. Let’s get out of here. Quick.”
“You’re being so dramatic,” says Mom, but she’s smiling. She puts an arm over my shoulders, and the weight is comforting. Even still, she is taller than me.
“Don’t be worried if I suddenly sprint away. It’s just because I’ve seen someone I know,” I warn her as we walk toward checkout.
“You would really sprint out of here?”
“Absolutely. I’ll set a world record.”
Mom laughs. “You ran a fifteen-minute mile in your high school gym class. Sweetie, I love you, but you’re not exactly an athlete.”
“Well, that was before I had the motivation of avoiding further public humiliation.”
Mom rolls her eyes but I know she’s amused. She’s used to my dramatics, but this time, I’m serious.
In a town as small as Nantucket, the likelihood of bumping into someone familiar is high, and I cannot afford those odds right now. If I see someone I know, they’ll ask how I am, which will lead into one of two outcomes: me either lying or crying. I can imagine the conversation now.
How are you? “Oh, fine, I just decided to abandon my lease and crash with my mom all summer because my life is an absolute and total disaster!”
I lost my job in New York City two weeks ago.
When I saw the email, I fainted on the subway.
It was a real dramatic faint, too—cinematic even.
I almost wish there was security footage.
When I first moved to the city, I thought, like all young people think, that I was going to be something—make something of myself, become the “artist” I always dreamed of—but instead, there I was, passed out on the ground of the 4 train, my unconscious lips kissing the dirty ground.
I think about that moment now as we make our way to the front of the store. I’ve already recounted the story several times, smoothed it into a polished comedic bit.
“And that’s how I discovered rock bottom tastes exactly like the floor of the subway!” I said to Rose’s friends the night I arrived on island.
We were grabbing drinks at Cru, an upscale waterfront bar right on the docks downtown.
The chilled white wine created a pleasant condensation on the glass.
Everyone roared with laughter and I laughed, too.
A light wind was blowing off the harbor, and I could hear the honking of yachts pulling into place.
It was hard to feel the full impact of failure in a setting like that, with the breeze cooling my forehead, the wine warming my chest.
This is a skill my Great-Aunt Lottie taught me: “People can’t laugh at you if you beat them to it. The line between humor and tragedy is narrow, so for as long as you can, you might as well choose the funny story.”
However, today, it’s harder to find the humorous angle.
Maybe that’s because Lottie isn’t here to remind me of it.
The thought of her dislodges something heavy in my chest. We lost her a year ago, and yet sometimes it still doesn’t feel real.
This is our first summer without her. She fought the cancer for six years. Still, it wasn’t enough.
Rose squeezes my shoulder, as if she can sense my train of thought. “I’m going to grab some detergent quick,” she says, starting to walk away. “I think we’re running low.”
“No!” I whisper-shout. “Mom, let’s get out of here.”
She turns to face me, already searching for the aisle. “You took ten minutes to pick out an ice cream flavor and I can’t stop to grab some basic household necessities?”
She’s right, of course. Rose is always right, but it’s hard to rationalize the panic radiating in my body.
We planned to stop here briefly on my way to drop off Mom downtown to meet up with her friend.
Despite her invitation to join them, I’ve decided to stay home and chauffeur her there and back instead.
We only have one car and the cost of taxis is outrageous—sometimes up to fifty dollars for a fifteen-minute, seven-mile drive.
My reward for my services is to buy myself a pint of ice cream with the leftover gas money.
The grocery store is closing in ten minutes. Hence, this brief pit stop.
My eyes dart across the mostly empty aisles as I follow Rose.
Whenever I have friends visit, they always marvel at how ordinary the grocery store is, as if something this common, this commercial, couldn’t possibly exist on an island thirty miles out to sea, amidst the sand dunes and pink flowers and manicured hedges.
Chains were banned in 2006, so most of the other stores and boutiques on Nantucket are now independently owned.
Real tourism doesn’t start until July when kids get off from school and families swarm the island.
The only reason there’s activity at all is that it’s Figawi weekend, a sailing race that begins in the Cape at Hyannis Yacht Club and loops its way to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
Legend has it the regatta got its name in 1971 when a couple of friends had an impromptu race across the Nantucket Sound, and upon seeing the rainy, chilly, and notoriously foggy weather conditions, shouted, “Where the fuck are we?” which, with the winds and the accents, sounded a little like “Where the Figawi?”
Every other year, I would be participating in the festivities, but that was before I ruined my life.
I catch up to Rose in the cleaning aisle. She’s inspecting the shelf, looking for the fragrance-free brand she likes.
I spot a bag of pods on the lower shelf and grab them. “Here! Now let’s go.”
“It was your idea to stop at the store, Lily. And you know I don’t like the pods. The liquid detergent is better.”
“Mom, look at me.” I gesture to my outfit: old leggings, oversized sweatshirt, fluffy pink slippers. “Do I look like I’m fit to be seen in public?”
To make matters worse, my hair is pulled half back in a clip, and the curtain bangs I spontaneously asked for in the midst of my quarter-life crisis keep escaping from it, blocking my vision.
“I’m going through a personal transformation,” I told my hairdresser, pausing for dramatic effect. “I want my new hair to reflect that.”
“Okay,” she said, and then proceeded to ruin my life.
She wielded her scissors as if they were garden shears until all that was left was the ugliest topiary imaginable. And it was on my head. I thought the bangs would make me feel better, but of course they only made everything worse.
“Lily.” Rose’s “mom voice” makes a reappearance—calm but authoritarian—the same tone she used to take when I was a toddler having a meltdown. “It’s not my fault you left the house in your pajamas.”
Right now, Rose is wearing flared white jeans, raffia wedges, and a chunky tan-and-white sweater.
For not the first time, I’m struck by her simple elegance.
When I was a kid, Rose’s beauty was a popular point of teasing.
“Lily’s mom is HOT!” I remember hearing as early as sixth grade from Stephen Levinson, the very boy I had a crush on.
Once, when I was fifteen, I tried to be clever and rebutted with “I have her genes. You should date me now and consider it a long-term investment.” But even I doubted the statement as soon as I said it.
With Rose’s sleek red hair, long legs, and high cheekbones, no one with eyes and half a brain could disagree.
I always hoped I would grow up to look like her, but it seems the only feature I managed to inherit is her red hair.
Although, hers is straight and smooth while mine is curly and unwieldy.
On my mom, the color looks powerful and singular.
On me, it looks like my head is on fire.
“There it is!” says Rose now, pointing to a top shelf. She frowns. “It’s so high up, we might need to ask someone to help us.”
She looks around, searching for an available employee, but I’ve already devised a plan.
“I’ve got this,” I say, beginning to climb. I step on the lower shelf and stretch my hand up. The metal groans but stays put.
“Lily!” Mom shouts. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to get hurt.”
The detergent is just within reach. I can almost grab it. “Give me a boost,” I say.
“Lily, get down.”
This has always been our dynamic. When I was growing up, Mom used to call me her “wild little thing,” because she was always off chasing after me.
I climb another shelf and… there it is! I wrap my fingers around the handle and jut it out into the air like it’s a trophy.
“Woo-hoo!” I yelp. “And you said I wasn’t athletic. Look at me now!”
Rose is laughing but she also looks nervous. “Okay, okay. You’re right. You’re the most athletic person in the world. You would absolutely set a world record, no problem. Now, please, just get down.”
“Thank you,” I say, beginning my descent. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
I’m almost back on the ground when I hear someone call out my name.
“Lily Gardner?”
I turn around slowly, a heroine in a horror movie. In the harsh fluorescent light of Stop & Shop, I find myself for the first time in a year face-to-face with Henry Wright: my ex-boyfriend, the former love of my life, and the very last person I want to see.
He looks the same but also somehow more himself.
His back straighter and his shoulders broader.
His face filled in. His hair is shorter, cropped like a helmet, his jacket is less baggy, and his shoes are the kind of purposefully roughed-up, pre-scuffed sneakers that cost upward of five hundred bucks.
We used to make fun of that kind of thing.
I drink him in for several seconds, excruciatingly aware of my own disheveled appearance, before I can process the full image.
He’s holding hands with a girl. She has neat, short blond hair, no ill-conceived bangs in sight, a small smile, and an even smaller nose.
She wears a white eyelet sundress, and the combined effect makes her look like an angel or a ghost, depending on your point of view.
Right now, for me, it’s a bit of both. Even more terrifying, a beautiful ghost.
The girl smiles wistfully at Henry, the way people in love always smile: as if they know the secret of the universe, which of course they do. I recognize the expression, because not too long ago I used to look at Henry the same way.
Something on the girl’s hand catches the light, attracting my attention downward. On her fourth finger is the unmistakable glint of a diamond ring.
At that precise moment, my footing loses traction, my hands slip, and everything in the world comes crashing down.