Nantucket Nights (14 page)

But things at home were odd, different. Instead of a regular family dinner—everyone sitting around the dining table, bright and chattery—the dining room was lit only by candles, and it was just Theo’s parents and Jennifer eating shrimp scampi from the fine china, drinking wine from the crystal. The three of them smiled at him when he walked in. His place was set.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” his father asked.

“What?”

“Your mother made scampi, and you’re old enough to enjoy it with some chardonnay,” his father said. “Trust me, it’ll wake your palate right up.”

“I’m having some,” Jennifer said proudly.

Theo shed his jacket and took his seat at the table. He watched his father pour golden wine into the glass. His mother passed him the linguine, then the scampi, then Caesar salad. He piled his plate high. He was starving.

“Where are Luke and Cass?” he asked.

“They wanted to eat hot dogs in front of the TV,” his mother said. “So I let them.” She shrugged. “I figured if they wanted to eat like kids, then the four of us could eat like adults.”

“I wish we could do this every night,” Jennifer said.

“I guess,” Theo said. He sipped his wine and the taste exploded on his tongue. He hadn’t kissed Antoinette, not once the whole time. He picked up his fork—heavy, the silver—and ate.

“I hear you’ve been playing some terrific baseball,” his father said. He reached into the salad bowl for a crouton. “I promise I’ll make it to the next game.”

“Me, too,” Jennifer said.

Theo looked at his parents and his sister. Their faces glowed orange in the candlelight.

“You all look really beautiful,” Theo said.

No one seemed surprised by this. His mother smiled at him. “So do you, sweetheart,” she said. “So do you.”

That dinner was a divine gift. A sign. He didn’t feel alien in his house at all; he’d made love to Antoinette and then he’d gone home and drunk chardonnay and eaten scampi by candlelight with his parents and his sister. It all seemed part of a contiguous whole. He was eighteen years old. An adult.

So why not go back the following day? The only obstacle was Brett and Aaron, and they were thrown off track like a couple of stupid dogs.

“I can’t go anywhere after practice,” Theo said. “I have to take my sister Cassidy to the
library”

Brett and Aaron winced in sympathy.

Theo reached Antoinette’s at a quarter to six; he had an hour, which seemed like plenty of time. He was glad for the parameters. When he pulled into her driveway, he allowed himself the luxury of looking around. There was a half-moon window high up on the front of the house, a deck off the back with built-in benches, an outdoor shower. Patterned shingling, a crisp brick chimney. A neat pile of wood was stacked next to the house and leaned against it, a red-handled hatchet. Did she chop her own wood? The lawn around the house was greener than it should have been in April, and freshly edged around clumps of daffodils. Did she mow her own lawn? Theo had the urge to pick a daffodil and take it inside, but then he ridiculed himself. He was an ass.

The main door stood open and Theo peered inside. The living room was growing dark. Two candles on the coffee table were lit. Theo took in the details of the room: the fireplace, the bookshelves crammed with books, the jewel-colored Persian rug. Theo stepped in and closed the door behind him. The half-moon window threw a shape of fading light onto the wood floor.

And then he heard music, a flute, and Antoinette appeared. It was like she grew out of the floor. She was reaching and stretching and waving her arms, kicking her legs in long, fluid arcs. She was dancing. Theo held his breath. She moved her body in amazing ways, bending backwards while her arms fluttered forward. She wore black leggings and a man’s white undershirt. No bra. The T-shirt was threadbare; it was as good as wearing nothing at all, and when she bent backwards he was reminded of the night before and how she’d taken him.

He stood where he was, feet planted on a bamboo doormat until finally she collapsed in a heap on the floor, breathing hard. Theo wasn’t sure what to do; he didn’t know if she’d seen him or not. He wanted to think the dance was for his benefit, but he sort of doubted it, and he didn’t want to scare her or have her think he was spying on her. He waited until she composed herself, and then he retreated a few steps and knocked on the inside of the door. She turned her head slowly to him, her face unsurprised. So she had known he was there, after all.

“You said you had something to show me,” he said.

“Did I?” she said. Her hair was wild around her face, and she tried to secure it in a bun held together by what looked like a chopstick, but strands sprang free. She plucked the T-shirt away from her chest and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Do I? Maybe I do. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Sure,” he said, afraid to move. He watched her take two crystal glasses out of the cabinet and a bottle from the fridge. “Is that chardonnay?”

“It is,” she said. “Do you like chardonnay?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, good.” She nodded at the sofa. “Let’s sit down.”

Theo moved to the sofa. He tried to breathe, to relax. “I liked your dance.”

“Did you?” she said, in a way that made it sound like she couldn’t have cared less. He wished he had a word to describe how it made him feel. Well,
aroused,
it aroused him, but he couldn’t tell her that.

Antoinette handed him a glass of wine and he took a long swill. He looked at her books. Could she really have read them all? “I’m reading
The Scarlet Letter,”
he said. Then he remembered Hester Prynne and the
A
for
adultery
and he closed his eyes. Why had he said that?

“Let’s have a toast,” Antoinette said. “To your return.”

They clinked glasses. Theo took another swallow.

“Now, what was it I wanted to show you?” Antoinette said. “Oh, yes, it was something in the bathroom. Come with me.” She pulled him up by the hand.

The bathroom was huge and fancy with a green floor. Theo saw her toothbrush, her baking soda toothpaste, a pink disposable razor. One of her dark hairs curled on the rim of the sink. Theo tried not to look any further. Being in the bathroom with her embarrassed him.

Antoinette lifted a seashell off the back of the toilet and handed it to him. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s a shell,” Theo said. “A whelk shell.” It was white as a bone with a perfect crown, and the faintest hint of peach inside.

“You gave it to me,” she said.

“I did?”

“A million years ago. I took you and your mother to Tuckernuck Island, and you found that shell on the beach. Your mother asked you what you wanted to do with it, and without hesitating you marched through the sand and gave it to me. You were only three years old.”

“And you kept it?” he said.

“I hadn’t gotten a gift like that in a long time. Nor have I gotten one since.” She touched his lips and then she kissed him. She tasted smoky and sweet, and the word
persimmon
came to his mind, though he had never eaten a persimmon, or even seen one, for that matter.

They made love again, and Theo thought of his little boy self on the beach at Tuckernuck, handing the thing most precious to him at that moment to Antoinette, and in thinking about that he felt even more like a man.

He returned again the next day, and the next. At first it was as if his hour with Antoinette were pure fantasy, a visit to another planet where there were no rules, where nothing mattered except their attraction to each other. But then, as more days passed, the opposite became true, and Theo’s life at school and at home turned into the fantasy—a false life, a lie he was living until six o’clock came and he was driving along Polpis Road toward Antoinette’s house.

Baseball season ended. At the awards banquet, held upstairs at Arno’s, Theo was named “Outstanding Infielder.” His parents glowed with pride, and Theo walked to the front of the room as everyone applauded. He took the trophy from Coach Buford and saluted the crowd with two fingers, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was like he was watching himself, or wondering what Antoinette would be thinking if she were watching. He’d won an award at a stupid high school sports banquet where they’d eaten stuffed chicken breasts and ice cream sundaes. So what? He left his trophy on the table on purpose—it was too childish to take home—but his father noticed it and carried it out to the truck for him.

Theo took Gillian Bergey to the junior prom. Her parents belonged to Faraway Island Club, so that was where they ate—in the club dining room that smelled as damp and mildewy as the hull of a ship. They double-dated with Gillian’s friend Sara Poncheau and Sara’s date, a kid named Felipe from Marstons Mills. The rest of the people eating at Faraway Island were older, the age of Theo’s grandparents, and they smiled kindly at the prom couples. Theo sweated in the white dinner jacket he’d rented from Murray’s. Two months earlier, going to the prom with Gillian and eating at the Faraway Island Club had seemed like a good idea. Now he couldn’t wait for it to be over.

During the shrimp cocktail, he asked, “Do you think this club has any black members?”

Felipe, who was Hispanic, said, “Shit, no, man! Don’t you see all these granddaddies looking at me like I’m the busboy?”

Theo nudged Gillian with one of the black plastic shoes that came with his rented tux. “What do you think?”

Gillian was a pale blonde whose skin looked translucent next to the electric blue satin of her dress. Two red circles surfaced on her cheeks. “I have no idea, Theo. I’m sure everyone is welcome.”

“I’m not sure,” Theo said. “I mean, look around. Everyone is white.”

“Everyone on Nantucket is white,” Gillian whispered. “Please don’t make an issue of it. I’ll be embarrassed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” Theo said. He wondered how he had ever found Gillian attractive enough to have sex with. She was so pale you could see her veins. Theo pointed the tail of a shrimp at her. “And FYI, baby doll,
not
everyone on Nantucket is white.”

Theo danced with Gillian three times at the prom; then he drove her out to the post-party at Jetties Beach. She changed her clothes in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and that would have been the time to make his move—when she was out of her dress but not yet into her shorts and T-shirt—but Theo waited politely outside the Jeep, standing guard, wishing he smoked cigarettes, wishing that he was not at his prom at all, but with Antoinette instead. He took Gillian home without kissing her or feeling her up or anything. Gillian seemed disappointed by that and on Monday she told her girlfriends that he was a jerk, but Theo didn’t care. All he cared about were his afternoons with Antoinette.

In June, after school ended, Theo started his job at Island Airlines, and he fell into the habit of stopping by Antoinette’s on his way home. The only conceivable danger was his mother showing up unannounced. But at that time of day, she was busy with other things: chauffeuring one of the kids, making dinner. She did ask him once, “You’re not still hanging out at the Islander, are you, Theo? After work? You know I don’t like it.”

“Not the Islander,” Theo said. He had a foolproof answer all prepared. “I’ve been exploring the island. Looking at the architecture. I want to study architecture when I go to college, and I thought I might as well get a head start.” He pulled a book out of his backpack titled
300 Years of Nantucket Architecture’,
he’d checked it out of the Atheneum with his sister Cassidy’s library card. “So I’ve been driving around, studying.”

His mother thought he was a wonder. She told his father about the book over dinner.

His father perked up when he heard the word
architecture,
but otherwise seemed distracted. He was busy, especially after he got Ting in June, and Theo understood his father would never notice if he disappeared for an hour each day.

In this way, it was surprisingly easy.

What wasn’t as easy was being in a relationship with an actual woman. With Antoinette.

At first, it was just sex. Seeing her, Theo would get a stubborn erection and Antoinette would make love to him until he cried out, or just plain cried, so grateful was he for the incredible pleasure, a pleasure bordering on pain. Sex made him feel alive, and feeling alive brought on a new fear of death. When he drove, he always fastened his seat belt.

By the time school ended, the sex wasn’t enough. Theo wanted to
know
Antoinette, he wanted her to talk to him, he wanted her to listen to him. Theo worked his job at the airport—loading luggage onto planes, taking luggage off planes, telling passengers to follow the green walkway—and he became distraught at how little he knew about Antoinette. He looked around her house each night and picked up an object and studied it, hoping for clues. He memorized a few of the titles on her bookshelves and bought them from Mitchell’s Book Corner:
Go Down, Moses,
by Faulkner,
Continental Drift
by Russell Banks. He read these books, wondering what they meant to Antoinette, what she gained from them. He didn’t tell her he was reading them.

He started asking her questions at the end of their hour together, simple things.

“What did you do today?”

“What did I Jo?”

“Yeah, you know.” He propped himself on one elbow on her bed. “What do you do in a normal day? You never talk about it. You must have a routine.”

“Oh, Theo,” she said. And she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he said. “I want to know what you do. Is that so odd? To want to know what my—” He almost said “girlfriend,” but when the word was on his tongue he realized how wrong it would sound. “—my lover does all day?”

“How does it feel,” she asked, “to be an eighteen-year-old with a lover?”

 “It feels great,” he said. “But you’re avoiding my question.”

“What question is that?”

“See?” he said. He punched one of her feather pillows like it was someone’s face. He felt himself losing patience. “What the hell do you do all day?”

She got out of bed and put on a plain black cotton sundress with skinny straps.