Nantucket Sisters (6 page)

On warm days, she tucks herself away among bushes, only her darting eyes betraying her presence. Rabbits and deer, snakes, voles, wild mice, and wild cats claimed this land as home long before Thaddeus’s family. Spiders spin webs of geometric complexity among the leaves of the beach plum, and beneath the surface, insects of all kinds go about their lives. She’s fascinated by their movements, content to watch any of them, no matter how small.

Tilting her head back, and if the weather’s mild enough, stretching out on the warm bed of the ground, she looks up to gaze at the soaring hawks, squawking gulls, and the sparrows, robins, and wrens who nest in the trees and swoop through the air. The landed birds are here as well: quail, pheasant, and guinea hens who eat ticks and bustle out in front of cars as if they’re late for church.

As the land warms, the white flowers of Quaker ladies and shad bushes bloom in bridal profusion. In the summer, pink
rosa rugosa
and scarlet wood lilies play like children in the breeze.

The land doesn’t know who owns it. It was here before owners, and will be here after, content with itself in all seasons. The wind’s passion is as welcome as the sun’s heat, it loves equally driving rain and calm moonlight.

The land was here before people, thinks Maggie. It endures. It provides soil for the roots and tunnels and burrows, solid earth for the weight and thump of feet, safe ground for the tickle of the crawling beetle, and for the bird beating homeward with its wings.

Does it love Maggie? Does it sense her own feelings of kinship when she squats to run her hands over a boulder, as if reading a message? Maybe it does.

She is loyal to this land. She belongs to it. Yet even this ancient
land changes, has seasons, weathers, buds, and blossoms. She’s changing, too. At the end of the summer she’s leaving for Wheaton College in southeastern Massachusetts, not so very far away … but far enough. Maggie dislikes how she feels more nervous than eager.

On the first Saturday of July, Maggie stands at the end of the driveway, waiting for Emily. A red Jeep goes by, and a gray pickup truck, and a figure on a bike comes into view, then sweeps on past—a guy in bright spandex biking gear. Will the summer come when Emily doesn’t call? Everyone’s changing. Most of Maggie’s friends are having sex and leaving for college this fall. Ben is twenty, already in college in Boston. Maggie herself is leaving at the end of the summer. She knows it’s time to put away childish things, but not yet. Not just yet.

A convertible whizzes along, skidding as it turns into the Ramsdale driveway. In pink shorts and sneakers, Emily flies from the car.

“Maggie!”

They hug, nearly jumping up and down as they always do the first time they meet after a winter. Standing back, they study each other. The first few moments after a winter’s absence are like a Polaroid photo developing, slowly allowing their familiar selves to come clear through the year’s changes.

“You’re so tall!” Maggie exclaims. Emily has grown a good four inches taller than Maggie in the past year. She looks older, with her stylish, expensive haircut, and Maggie feels like a kid in her cutoff jeans and white tee shirt, her black braid hanging down her back.

“You’re so tanned already!”

“Hello, Maggie.” Emily’s mother slides out of the convertible and approaches the girls. She’s wearing tennis whites, complete with a glittering diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. Sunglasses hide her eyes, but she’s clearly studying Maggie.

“Hello, Mrs. Porter,” Maggie politely responds. She doesn’t smile or gush; she knows what Emily’s mother thinks of year-rounders.

“Look at you,” Cara Porter says. “You’ve become a stunning beauty. My God, you’re Angelina Jolie all over again.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Porter.” Maggie feels the impulse to curtsy, then chokes back a snort of laughter at herself. “Would you like to come in?”

Cara steps backward. “Thank you, dear, that’s sweet of you, but I’ve got to hurry along to the club for my tennis game. Perhaps another time.” She slips gracefully back into her Saab convertible. “Have fun, Emily.”

Maggie takes Emily’s hand, and just like that, they’re best friends again. “Come say hello to Mom.”

Emily follows Maggie inside. The air smells of flowers and baking.

“Emily! Sweetheart!” Frances hugs Emily. “How lovely you’ve become,” she says, brushing a hand lightly over Emily’s long blond hair. “The first batch of cookies will be out in a minute.”

“Great.” Maggie leads Emily up the stairs and through the hall, ending up in Maggie’s room, where they throw themselves on her bed and stare at the ceiling.

“Your mom looks fantastic,” Emily says.

“I know. She’s really happy.”

They’re getting to know one another again, their friendship is like a tapestry tucked away in a drawer. Today is the iron passing over the cloth, smoothing out the wrinkles, bringing out the pattern that makes it unique and beautiful.

“What about you? How’s Thaddeus?”

“He’s really nice. Mom’s happy, and Thaddeus continues to teach Ben all the manly skills.”

“The manly skills?” Emily arches her eyebrows suggestively.

“That’s not what I mean!” Maggie pokes Emily’s arm. “I mean about wrenches and hammers, not how to seduce women.”

Emily widens her eyes innocently. “Why, Maggie, that’s what I meant, too,” she teases.

Maggie slumps. “I hate growing up.”

“Oh, get over yourself. Enjoy it.” Emily leans back on her arms in a sensual pose.

“You’ve had sex!”

“Not yet,” Emily confesses smugly. “But almost. Karl? This dreamy foreign exchange student from Germany? We had a few dates …” Emily’s eyes glaze with memory. “But
everybody
was having sex with him and I didn’t want to be everybody. Still, we came close. And I’m glad.”

Maggie feels her mouth primp like her mother’s when Frances is miffed. “I suppose you just want to hang out at the yacht club this summer, playing tennis and sailing with guys.”

“Maggie, you brat, is that what I did last summer, or any of the past twelve, shall I count them,
twelve
summers?” Emily demands. Maggie grins, abashed, and Emily answers her own question. “I was here almost every day. Perhaps not for the entire day, but most of it. Right?
Right
?”

“Right,” Maggie concedes. “Want to go to Shipwreck House?” She holds her breath. Any day now, any moment, Emily will think she’s too old for such childish stuff.

Emily jumps off the bed. “Let’s go!”

The grasses are a sweet lush green. The harbor water winks blue and turquoise as a summer breeze sweeps over it. Shipwreck House looks slightly the worse for the winter, more paint missing from the door and window frames, a few shingles hanging sideways, but Maggie has already opened the door to let the sunshine warm the room.

“Ahhh,” Emily sighs, dropping onto an old sofa. “I’ve missed this.” She scans the room. “I know I didn’t email much, Mags, but
senior year was a killer. My parents had me taking so many APs I barely slept. And now I’ve got to get ready for Smith.”

“I know,” Maggie agrees. “I was worried all year about getting the grades I needed for those scholarships. Plus I babysat five days a week for George and Mimi West. I’ll be babysitting for them this summer, too. Their kids are cute, but I don’t know when I’ll have time to work on
Siren Song
…” She keeps her back to Emily as she fusses with an old curtain, tying it back to let in more sun. The novel they’ve worked on for the past six years seems really good when she reads it by herself, but she’s worried about Emily’s more sophisticated New Yorker’s opinion.

“I don’t know when I’ll have time, either,” Emily says. Lifting a leg, she scratches a bug bite. “I’ve been talking to Jascin about volunteering at the Maria Mitchell aquarium.”

“You have? I know how you love that place. What do they say?”

“They’ve been checking their schedules, and they need someone in the afternoon at the Touch Tank, showing things to the tourists. So I think I’m going to do it.”

“Awesome! But what about sailing and tennis?”

“I’ll have time in the late afternoon for sailing. I don’t care much about tennis. You babysit in the afternoons, right? We’ll still have the mornings to write.”

Five mornings a week, while the day turns from cool blue to a sultry gold, they write
Siren Song
, really Maggie’s book, with Emily’s advice and recommendations. Emily is learning so much by volunteering at the aquarium that she has all sorts of cool information about sea creatures to add.

When the heat invades the shed, they run out to the dock and fly into the water for a long swim. Later, they head up to the house,
gobble the lunch Frances has made for them, and speed off on their bikes to their different destinations. At night they phone each other to discuss new plotlines and details.

In some ways, it’s like it’s always been, the two of them together, Nantucket sisters, so attuned to one another they scarcely need words to communicate. Sometimes they collapse into laughing fits that last until they’re gasping for breath. Sometimes they discuss sad movies and dissolve into tears.

Sometimes they don’t go to Shipwreck House but stay up in Maggie’s room, experimenting with eye shadow and blush, painting each other’s toenails, singing love songs along to Sirius Internet Radio.

That summer, Emily realizes how much of a fantasy world Shipwreck House provides for her. Maggie wants to ignore all signs of impending adulthood, sex, and the difficult life choices streaming toward them in an unstoppable tide, but Emily can’t. As the golden season nears the end, each day with Maggie becomes more poignant, more bittersweet. Emily feels as if she’s playing games with a friend who’s stranded in a world Emily’s about to abandon.

Maggie would absolutely
scream
if she had any idea how much Emily thinks of Ben. Emily seldom sees him—he’s always working or off with his friends, but when she does catch a look at him, she’s nearly paralyzed with a mixture of terror, awe, and, in the pit of her stomach, a melting sensation that she thinks might be love.

More and more, Emily accepts Frances’s invitations to stay to dinner so she can get a glimpse of Ben. The Ramsdales don’t really sit down to dinner in the summer—Maggie’s always rushing off to babysit, or Thaddeus is gone till late bluefishing, or Frances and Thaddeus go off to someone’s house for a cookout—but somehow there’s always plenty of good food, fresh berry pies, a pot of chili,
cold salmon covered with chives from the garden, and delicious fresh sliced tomatoes. Emily and Maggie pile plates high and carry them in to eat while they watch a video. Sometimes Ben passes through, sending a squall of testosterone through the air as he shouts hello, stomps up the stairs in his work boots to shower and change clothes, and rushes back out through the house to slam into his Jeep and roar off into the summer night.

One day, toward the end of the summer, Maggie tells Emily, “I’ve got a treat in store for you. If you’re up for it.”

They’re lying on the wood dock after a cooling swim in the harbor. The sun picks off, one by one, drops of water from their skin.

Emily turns to look at Maggie, whose nose is peeling. “I’m up for anything.”

Maggie’s dark eyes glitter with mischief. “Want to see Ben’s hideout?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Ben could come home anytime, to fetch something he forgot or something for Thaddeus, and what would happen then, Emily can’t even imagine. As much as she wants Ben to notice her, she doesn’t want him to hate her.

“Thaddeus and Ben went off island today to pick up some supplies. They’re taking the late boat back.”

“What are we waiting for?” Emily cries.

The girls spring up. Without stopping to pull on dry clothes or shoes, they race along the dirt path through the heathland back toward the house and barns. Small thorns scratch Emily’s ankles as she runs, and she couldn’t care less. She’s like a bullet, focused, aimed.

Ben’s retreat is in the loft of the newest barn. No one’s in the house and all the cars are gone, so they slip through the barn door and stand for a moment, catching their breath. The air smells of straw and metal. An assortment of shovels, rakes, gas cans, buckets,
and bags of fertilizer for the garden make a maze the girls slide through on their way to the ladder at the shadowy back of the barn.

“You go first.” Maggie giggles.

Eagerly Emily grabs a rung and starts up the ladder. The wood is warm and firm on her feet and hands, and the ladder gives slightly under her weight.

She looks over her shoulder down at Maggie. “You’re sure this is safe?”

“If you’re scared, don’t do it,” taunts Maggie.

“I guess Ben does it all the time,” Emily decides. She climbs.

The ladder ends a few feet above the loft floor, making it easy to drop off onto the old wide boards. Maggie scrambles up behind her and they stand for a moment, looking around.

It’s a perfect guy’s den, drifting with dust motes, populated by spiders spinning in glittery, elaborate webs. Yet another of Thaddeus’s barely dependable wooden chairs leans in front of a desk fabricated from crates. A globe and a knife and a pair of pliers lie on the desk. On the wall a large map of Nantucket is tacked by its four corners. Makeshift bookshelves hold
Call of the Wild
,
The Great Gatsby
, and the
Silent Spring
, plus stacks of comic books and magazines. A bucket on a pulley is rigged to lift heavy items from the ground floor up.

Several bales of hay are stacked in a rectangle, sleeping bags spread over it, and a pillow without a case. The girls approach this warily. They both know what this is, because next to the bed is an empty six-pack of Budweiser and a small cardboard box which, when opened, displays an assortment of condoms.

“Ben’s,” Maggie whispers.

Emily picks the box up, loving and hating the queasy sensation in her stomach as she peers into it. “Your brother brings girls here,” she whispers.

“Well, duh. He’s had girls after him for years.” Maggie squats, lifting up the sleeping bag to see if anything’s hidden beneath it.