Chapter Twenty Lily
The next Tuesday at work, I decide I’m tired of receiving Theo’s cold shoulder. It’s already the last week of June, summer is rapidly disappearing, and I’m letting it slip away.
He’s standing by the water cooler with Emily when I approach.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
Emily looks at the two of us, raises her eyebrows, and then walks away, arms raised in the air. “I’ll let you two have some space.”
I still don’t know what’s going on between the two of them, if anything, but I no longer have the energy to care.
I miss my friend, and I don’t want to squander the rest of the summer over a silly disagreement.
Seeing Rose and Thomas interact last night showed me how easy it is to let a small miscommunication snowball.
“Of course,” says Theo. His thick eyebrows bunch together, and he looks concerned as the two of us make our way to the outside porch.
Summer light bounces off the white seashell-lined pathway and is momentarily disorienting. I squint into Theo’s eyes and take a steadying breath.
“I know everything has been weird since the bonfire, but whatever I did wrong, I want to apologize. Hanging out with you has been the best part of my summer, and I miss it.”
I watch in real time as Theo’s face softens. All of the intensity and bravado drops. “I miss it, too,” he says. After a pause, he asks, “So, are you back with him?”
He lightly kicks a wayward piece of crushed seashell, sending it flying into the green grass.
For a moment, I’m confused by what he means. “Henry?”
Theo nods. “Yeah, I saw the two of you talking at the bonfire. Did he call off the engagement?”
The idea seems so suddenly absurd that I laugh. “No, of course not. We were just talking and catching up. He’s getting married.”
“It seemed more intimate than just catching up,” says Theo, still looking at the shells.
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t have talked at all, but no. I can assure you that there is nothing going on between me and Henry.”
As I say the words, I feel a sharp edge in my chest. Even though I know it’s true, it’s hard to admit that Henry is truly gone.
Theo nods. “Okay, just wondering. It seemed like you were playing a risky game there.”
“It’s over,” I say again, assuring myself as much as him. “I mean, it never really started. Nothing happened. But it’s over.”
A few members from the club walk by, tennis bags on their tan shoulders. We move out of the way and smile at them. I wait until they’re out of earshot to speak again.
“Friends?” I hold my hand out to Theo.
His big, uneven smile is back, the one I’ve grown to love. “Friends,” he says and takes my hand.
The rest of the week, everything goes back to normal. Theo gives Rose and me another pickleball lesson. We’re still awful, but at least this time, we’re slightly less awful.
On the Fourth of July, he joins us after practice to the Great Point Lighthouse to cross off the second item on Lottie’s list. Rose drives the Jeep on the beach, and Theo helps me take the roof off so we can get a better view.
The sun is up, the sky is blue, and the choppy waves are mere feet from the tires.
Every couple of minutes, a seal pops its friendly, smooth head above the water.
We arrive at the white-brick, remote lighthouse a little after noon, surrounded by hot sand dunes and sharp green seagrass.
We plant beach chairs into the sand. Rose packed Something Natural iced teas and squished turkey sandwiches: a beach picnic.
We cross number seven off the bucket list, as well.
Staring out at the water, I think about riptides: how they can take you, quick and fierce, and the only option is to let them. You cannot fight the current. All you can hope is that it takes you far enough out that maybe you can swim sideways back to shore.
Later in the afternoon, Rose has to meet a client, but Theo and I are still off from work.
We decide to head downtown for ice cream at the Juice Bar.
The streets in town are packed with summer visitors, and every few seconds, a biker or vacationer pops onto the narrow streets in front of the car.
It’s clear that summer is in full swing.
By the time we arrive at the ice cream store, the line is halfway down the block and it’s begun to rain.
“Do you want to check out the Whaling Museum instead?” Theo asks once I park. The cobblestones are already becoming slick with rainwater.
“I’ve never been,” I admit, surprised at the suggestion. The Whaling Museum is a small establishment about the history of whale hunting on Nantucket. It’s only a few rooms.
Lottie was a schoolteacher and continued to sub the fourth and fifth grade until a few years ago when she retired. She always reminded us that beneath the island’s tourist-friendly facade was a rich, surprising, and often devastating history.
Lottie reveled in the island’s natural beauty, but she never forgot the suffering beneath her feet: the twelve thousand years of human interaction, the Indigenous people who settled here long before the whaling industry and colonization took over.
I’m surprised that given Lottie’s love for history she never suggested a trip to the museum.
“Come on,” says Theo. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
Five minutes and twenty-five dollars each later, we are standing in front of a giant graphic of a right whale being impaled.
“Is this what you had in mind?” I tease Theo.
The building itself, with its white columns, looks more like a historical home than a museum, but once we’re inside, I’m surprised by how much there is to consume.
We attend a talk about eighteenth-century whaling practices, marveling at the intricate patterns of scrimshaw art, reading about the sinking of the Essex—the shipwreck that inspired Moby-Dick.
I’m fascinated by the scrimshaw art in particular, the unlikely combination of brutality and delicate beauty.
I try to picture the whalers in the grimy quarters belowdecks, carving intricate designs into the teeth and bones, making gifts for their wives and children back home, all while engaging in the violent practice of whale hunting up above.
In one room is a series of gold-framed portraits featuring prominent historical figures of Nantucket’s past: Island People: Portraits and Stories from Nantucket.
In another, installations about the Nantucket of today include a life-size mannequin of a “modern tourist.” The prop is clothed in pink pastel pants and a gingham button-down, a sweater around its neck. It looks a lot like William.
Theo goes to shake its hand. “Ah, my good friend, Chad!” he says, grabbing the mannequin. “It’s been so long, I’ve missed you.” The arm falls out of its socket. “Oh, shit!” He looks around, but no one has seen.
Our wet sneakers squeak against the linoleum floors as we walk around the museum, laughing the whole time. Between exhibits, I tell him about what happened with Rose and Thomas.
“You really crashed a wedding?” says Theo, sounding impressed. “Badass.”
“It was a terrible idea,” I admit. “I probably shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“How has everything been at the cottage since then? Have you talked to Thomas?”
“I’ve seen him a few times in the garden and waved, but we haven’t spoken. I’ve been trying to give him his space.”
Rachel left yesterday. She dropped a note on my windowsill. “Thanks for trying,” it read.
I’ve been wondering if Thomas is going to leave the island early. I wouldn’t blame him if he cut the rental short. After all, it was what Rose originally wanted.
Theo and I walk into a room made up of old brick that looks almost soft to the touch, like the entire facade is one bad storm away from crumbling.
A sign on the wall tells us that it is a preservation of the original building that stood here, an 1847 spermaceti candle factory.
Throughout it are exhibits about Nantucket’s other original industries such as boatbuilding, coopering, and blacksmithing.
A ginormous forty-six-foot sperm whale skeleton hangs from the high ceilings, open-mouthed.
“Have you ever heard the story of how deer came to Nantucket?” I ask Theo as we stare up at the whale.
He shakes his head no. It’s a story I know well from Lottie, and recounting it makes me feel closer to my great-aunt.
“Basically, after Nantucket broke off and became an island, deer were quickly hunted to extinction by the early sixteen hundreds. Then, on a random June day in 1922, three hundred or so years later, some fishermen found a buck drowning in the Nantucket Sound. They took pity and rescued him, bringing him to the island and releasing him into the woods. They named him Old Buck.”
I tell Theo the rest of the story, how for four years, Old Buck was alone on the island. Then the town surmised he was lonely, clinically depressed even. They purchased a pair of lady deer for Old Buck to choose from. He impregnated them both immediately.
“Classic male,” says Theo. “Disappointing.”
When the two does arrived by ship, they were greeted by a cheering crowd at the wharf.
And like that, the population boomed, and with it, a long and controversial conversation about hunting season commenced.
In 1932, poor Old Buck was killed in a car collision but his legacy continues in his many, many descendants today.
Now the deer population is out of control and Nantucket has some of the highest incidence of tick-borne illnesses in the United States. All because some fishermen took pity on poor Old Buck.
“That’s a crazy story,” says Theo when I’m done. “It sounds made-up.”
“I like it because it reminds me of the best and worst of the island.”
I like to think Old Buck is a cautionary tale about the ramifications of man’s interference with nature but also a celebration of our uniquely human proclivity toward the sentimental.
It is the cheering crowds at the dock when the two does arrive, but also the pragmatic brutishness of hunting season years later—how narratives easily form around the singular but are reduced or ignored in a collective.