Nantucket Sisters (11 page)

“You look nice,” Ben tells her as she climbs into the cab of his Jeep.

Emily kisses his cheek and snuffles around his face, smelling the lingering fragrance of Barbasol. “You always look nice.”

“Better stop that or you’ll miss your boat,” Ben warns her with a smile. Ben backs out of her drive and heads toward town. All around them the gardens, moors, bushes, and trees are still green and flowering, as if summer will truly never end.

“Tired?” Ben asks, reaching over to take her hand.

“Aren’t you?” Last night they had made love and talked almost until morning, trying to postpone their parting. After a wide yawn, Emily says, “I should have brought some coffee.”

“Have some of mine.” Ben gestures toward the Styrofoam container in the cup holder.

She drinks it, savoring the knowledge that his lips touched the rim as much as she’s enjoying the taste of the coffee.

“So you’ll phone me tonight?” asks Emily.

“Sure. But you know once I’m back at school I won’t be able to call you every day.”

“I know. I’ll come to Boston as often as I can, and once I’m settled, you’ll come visit me at Smith, right?”

“Right.”

All too soon they arrive at the Steamship Authority parking lot. The
Iyanough
is waiting, a large, white catamaran hovering above the water.

“Do you have your ticket?” Ben asks.

“Right here.” Emily holds it up.

Ben joins a line of cars dropping people off at the departure shed. “I’ll park and come wait with you.”

“No. No, I’ll be fine, Ben. Just drop me off and go to work. This is the way our lives will be for four years. Coming and going, meeting and saying good-bye. I’ve got to learn not to become a soggy emotional ball of wimpiness every time.”

“This is all good,” Ben assures her as he sets the gear shift into park. “We’re going to get our college degrees, and learn how to help the island, and we’ll marry and be together forever. Remember that.”

“God, I love you, Ben!” Emily throws her arms around him and kisses him hard, tears rolling down her face. “I’m fine. I’ll talk to you tonight. I love you!”

She jumps out of the Jeep, lifts out her suitcase and backpack, and rolls her luggage to the cart to be loaded. Before she takes her place in the boarding line, she turns back to wave at Ben, but he’s had to drive off so someone else can unload. He’s going one way, she another.

She is stepping into her future.

Part Three

Shipwreck House

CHAPTER TEN

Four Years Later

Emily prefers taking the plane to the island, not because it’s faster than the ferry, but because from this height the coastline, shoals, and reefs are all visible.

In many ways, over the past four years, distance has been good for her. It has allowed her to separate herself from Ben. It’s made it possible for both of them—Ben at Tufts in Boston, Emily at Smith in Northampton—to concentrate on their studies. Their passion simmers while they’re apart. Their phone calls and emails are a mixture of visions of the future when they’re together and commonplace complaints about papers due, cranky professors, irritating classmates.

A year ago, Ben graduated from college and returned to the island to take a job with a conservation association. Emily flew down to the island with a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

This year, Emily has been honored with a fellowship to work on a master’s degree in water ecology at UMass Amherst, her own project focusing on preventing pesticides from polluting Nantucket Harbor. She’ll be part of a team assembling a report for the state officials. This might actually, in time, lead to legislative change. She knows Ben will be pleased for her, proud of her. This news is too important for phone or email, so she flies down to Nantucket to tell him in person.

When Emily steps off the nine-seater plane that bounced her through the clouds from Boston, Ben is at the gate to meet her, tall and handsome, her gypsy lover tamed by a sports coat and tie. He works for a town organization now. He’s not dreaming; he’s doing.

“Emily.” He pulls her to him.

Wrapping her arms around him, she speaks his name against his lips as his mouth crushes hers. She presses her body against his. For a moment desire ignites between them, and the world falls away.

Then a woman with a duffel bag accidentally knocks Ben on the shoulder. “Sorry,” she mutters, steaming toward the departure door.

Ben releases Emily. “Let’s go.”

“Yes, please,” Emily begs.

They walk out to his old Jeep, awkwardly, his arm around her shoulders, both of them lopsided with luggage.

“How was the flight?”

Emily shrugs. “All right. It’s November. Lots of clouds, but I could see the shoreline.”

Inside the Jeep, Ben turns to hold Emily against him. “God, you smell good. I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you, too,” she murmurs against his neck. “I want to be in bed with you right now.” His hand is on her leg, pushing her skirt up. She puts her hand on the crotch of his jeans.

“Stop.” He groans, pulling her hand away. “I won’t be in any condition
to drive.” He starts the Jeep, pulls out of the parking lot, and heads toward town, presumably to Thaddeus’s.

When he turns off onto an unfamiliar road, Emily asks, “Is this the right way?”

“A friend’s letting me have his apartment for the night.” Ben waggles his eyebrows humorously. “All night. Just you and me.”

“Fabulous.” Emily’s truly thrilled. They can’t make love in Thaddeus’s house where Ben still lives so he can save money, and she doesn’t want to do it in the barn. They’re not kids anymore. Ben’s stupid pride won’t allow him to use Emily’s parents’ house or let Emily rent a hotel room. Because of her father, she will always have more money than Ben does, but this is an issue the two of them keep avoiding.

The apartment is over the garage near a house on Hummock Pond Road. The lot is beautifully landscaped, the house and garage well maintained, so Emily’s shocked when Ben unlocks the door and she steps into his friend’s apartment. It’s not a pit exactly, but it’s basic, to say the least, and not particularly clean. The wide screen television is the only item in the large one-room studio apartment that was created within the last decade. Clearly the bed, sofa, coffee table, and kitchen table are from a secondhand shop or someplace worse.

A vase of flowers stands on the bedside table and a bottle of inexpensive champagne waits in a tub of ice in the sink. The sheets on the bed are so clean and crisp they look new—probably they are new. Emily imagines that Ben bought them and brought them over just for this occasion. They haven’t been together for a month.

She’s grateful for these thoughtful touches. Yet … the room smells of dirty male laundry.

“What do you think?” Ben’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts.

She focuses on him, on this tall, confident, proud man who makes
her heart sing. He’s so handsome standing before her in his white dress shirt, sports coat, and tie. She’s infatuated with his black hair, his mouth, his body. “Flowers, Ben, oh, sweetheart.” She presses up against him, wrapping him in her arms.

Ben makes love to her gently, slowly, touching her as if relearning her every curve and hollow. It’s cool in the apartment, but as their passion stirs and builds, they ignite as their skin slides against each other’s, slick with sweat and saliva and other hot, sweet fluids.

Afterward, they doze for a while. When they wake, they lie on their sides, gazing into each other’s eyes.

“I love you, Emily.”

“I love you, Ben.” She skims her fingers over his chest, twining the curls of his black chest hair.

“I don’t want to be away from you for so long again.”

“No. I don’t, either.” She strokes the side of his face. Is now a good time to tell him about her fellowship? “Ben—”

He turns his head to kiss the palm of her hand. “We should get married in May,” he says.

“Oh.” His words are so unexpected, they knock the breath out of her. She’s rattled. She’s thrilled, yet terrified. “Is this a proposal?”

Ben looks surprised. “Do you need a proposal?”

Pulling her hand away from his, Emily sits up in bed, leans against the wall—no headboard on this bed—pulling the sheet up over her breasts. “Every girl likes a proposal.”

“Oh, you’re a girl?” Ben sits up, too, next to her.

“Of course. I’m hardly a guy.”

“Yeah, but—a
girl
?”

Emily’s completely confused. “I don’t understand.”

“
Girls
live with their parents. They don’t earn their livings. They don’t have credit cards they pay off themselves.
Women
live with their husbands. They work and help pay the mortgage and pay off
their credit cards themselves. They have babies and take care of them. They cook dinner.”

“I know all that,” Emily snaps defensively. “I can be a woman. I am a woman. But that doesn’t mean I can’t expect other things I’ve always wanted.”

“Like what?” His voice is raspy with emotion.

“Like a proper proposal. Like an engagement ring. Like a church wedding. Like—”

“Stop.” Rising from the bed, he pulls on his pants and shirt, then pads barefoot to the sink. “Let’s sit down and talk about this.”

While Ben works the cork from the bottle, Emily opens her suitcase and takes out her robe, wrapping it around her as if the cloth were protection.

He pours the bubbly into mismatched water glasses and hands one to her. “I meant this for a celebration,” he tells her, but his voice is mild. “I guess I was premature.”

She sips the liquid. “It’s nice to have it, anyway. Anytime we’re together is a celebration.” That is the truth, for her.

“Then we should be together permanently.” Before she can respond, he continues, “But you know marriage can’t be a continual celebration—”

She interrupts him. “I’m not an idiot, Ben. I do know that. I know marriage means commitment and hard work and highs and lows and all that stuff, but isn’t that one of the reasons people have wonderful weddings? So they can start with the high? So they have some romance to remember?”

“Go on,” Ben says. “I’m listening.”

She stares into her glass, thinking. “Well, first I think there’s an engagement ring. I’d really like one, Ben. A big one, if I’m honest.”

“I’ll be honest, too.” Ben sets his glass on the table. “I want to buy you an engagement ring. I intend to do that, and I’d like you with
me to help pick it out. I don’t know about jewelry. But I can’t spend too much on it, Emily, because I’m saving money to buy us a house. You know how expensive real estate is here.”

“But, Ben, you shouldn’t be so worried. You know my parents will help us.”

Ben flinches. “No. No, I won’t take charity from your parents.”

“Don’t be silly—”

“You think I’m being
silly
?”

They’ve been postponing this argument for months, if not years. “Excuse me. I used the wrong word. I should have said, ‘Don’t be an arrogant prick.’ Let’s get it all out in the open, okay? My parents have a lot of money and you don’t. I’m used to a certain standard of living. Do you expect me to lower my standards, to live …” She stutters to a stop. “Ben, where do you expect us to live while we’re saving money for this house of ours?”

Ben rises and walks away from her. Turning back, he admits, “I don’t know. One option is to live with my parents—”

Emily coughs to cover her laugh. “Oh, sweetie, with your parents? Maybe in the bedroom where you were a boy? We could share a room? Gee, could we have our own bathroom?”

Ben flinches. “Another option is that over the winter Thaddeus and I could turn the barn into an apartment for us. It wouldn’t be large, but it would be separate.”

“But if you did that, Ben”—she slowly thinks out loud—“that would use up a lot of your savings for the house, right? To put in plumbing and electricity and heating and so on?”

“Or we could rent—” Ben begins.

“Same problem.” She wraps her arms around herself, shaking her head. “No, no, it won’t work unless my parents help out. If my parents help out, Ben, it would be so much simpler.”

“I won’t take your parents’ money.” Ben’s jaw is set.

“Okay, well, listen. Ben—there’s something else.”

Ben frowns.

Going to him, Emily puts her hand on his chest. “This is a good thing. Maybe it will help us. Ben, I’ve won a fellowship in water ecology at UMass Amherst. I’ll study there for two years. I’ll receive my master’s degree. Then, when I come back to Nantucket, I’ll deserve a better-paying job at Maria Mitchell. They know I want to work there, and—”

“So you’re not moving here for two more years.” Ben’s voice is flat.

“No. I’ll be in Amherst. Come on, we’ve lasted for four years. It’s the same. I’ll come back as often as possible, and you can come up to see me …”

Ben sinks onto the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “I don’t know, Emily.”

She sits next to him. “Honey, what don’t you know?”

Without looking at her, he mumbles, “I’ve been faithful to you.”

She blinks. “And I’ve been faithful to you. Are you saying this is all about sex?”