by Nancy Thayer
“Darcy, Kiks is howling. I’ll call you later.”
Darcy climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered the bathroom off her bedroom. It was one of the luxuries she had built in when she first inherited the house. Large, with a white tile floor and the original old claw-foot tub and a new shower and piles of thick white towels—it was her own private spa. She stripped off her clothes, turned the water on hot, and stepped into the shower.
Memories streamed down on her like rain.
2
Penelope Cotterill, Darcy’s paternal grandmother, hadn’t exactly saved Darcy’s life, but she had given her the best gift in the world—she’d made Darcy believe she was worthy of love, care, and respect. Darcy’s parents didn’t do so well at that.
Darcy’s father, Eugene, had been a well-educated, slightly reserved normal guy, the son of New York banker Eustace Cotterill and his wife, Penelope. After graduating from Yale and starting work in the city, Eugene met Lala Benton and went right off the rails.
The party-loving Lala was a glamorous wild-haired bohemian, sexy and noisy and greedy and racy. Eugene was a man idly sailing on the calm waters of a sheltered harbor; Lala was a hurricane who swept him up into her tumultuous world. They met at a party and had sex that very night in one of the bedrooms—Eugene had never had sex at a party before and he felt like quite a playboy. After that, they spent all their time together, dancing or drinking or driving too fast. Lala made Eugene feel alive for the first time in his life, and he made Lala feel safe and anchored, which was what she thought she wanted.
They got married six weeks after they met by a justice of the peace with two college friends for witnesses. Lala’s parents were glad she was someone else’s responsibility now, but Eugene’s family, including Penny, refused to take this whirlwind marriage seriously. They didn’t want to meet Lala; they didn’t invite her to visit.
So it was easy for Lala to convince Eugene to leave the stuffy East Coast to live near Lala’s family in the wilds of Chicago. Eugene worked for a bank there and Lala shopped a lot and they were both dumbfounded when Lala realized she was pregnant. Darcy was born to much celebration and joy—Darcy had an album full of photos proving that. For two turbulent years, they all lived together, playing at being a happy family. But Lala had an affair, and then another, and Eugene divorced her. Darcy was two, right at that toddling, shrieking, tyrannical untidy age when she seemed at times possessed by demons. Eugene was tired of drama by then. He paid child support for his daughter, but he went back to the East Coast and didn’t think much about her. He sent a monthly check, but never remembered his daughter’s birthday, never even came to see her.
In the early years of her life, Darcy and Lala lived with Lala’s mother and her family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Darcy’s maternal grandparents and aunts were glad to take care of her when Lala had a date, which was often; but they were a noisy, easily bored, boisterous bunch. They fought dramatically, throwing pots, weeping hysterically, yelling and stomping and then sitting down together to watch The Drew Carey Show. It was like living in a tornado, only occasionally being able to rest in the eye of the storm.
As a child, Darcy slept in three different homes, and she seldom knew which one until she was dropped off at the front door. Her main home was with Lala and Lala’s mother, Gwen, and overweight, grumbling father, Horace, who would not allow a cat in the house because of his allergies. Second, Darcy stayed with Lala’s brother’s ex-wife, Tracy, who also liked a good time and often went out to the movies or dancing or drinking with Lala while Darcy slept on a cot in the attic. Third, Darcy stayed with Lala’s sister Topaz, who was young and single and the most fun of the unruly family because when she put on her makeup, she often made up Darcy’s face, too. For Darcy to have someone’s attention directed solely to her was a kind of blessing, and Topaz’s light brisk dabs of eye shadow, blush, and lipstick were often the most affection she would receive for weeks. But Topaz worked as a bartender, and when Darcy was sent to her apartment for a few days, she spent most of her time alone. Topaz always gave her a bright purple air mattress to blow up for her bed, and instructed Darcy to put it on the far side of Topaz’s bedroom, so that if Topaz brought a “friend” home, they could use the couch in the living room. Topaz’s theory was that her bed would block any noises she and her friend made in the living room. Topaz was wrong, but Darcy never complained. She was glad to have a place to sleep and cookies and Diet Coke for breakfast.
For the first ten years of her life, Darcy hadn’t known at the end of the school day where she would go—to her grandmother’s house or to Tracy’s or Topaz’s.
Darcy became a quiet and resourceful girl who understood she had no single, steady place to call home. So she created her own home within books. If she had a book with her, she could withdraw into that world like a snail into its shell. When she was with adults, she could be quiet, almost invisible, remembering a book. When she was placed in a new school, she could shield herself from whispers and stares with thoughts of a book.
Everyone bumbled along. Darcy was cared for, in a hit-or-miss, slapdash way. By the time she was ten, her maternal grandparents were beginning to have health issues, and it all became more difficult. Then Lala met an architect from Boston who wanted to spend more time with her. So Lala packed up her things—she never collected much except clothes—and took Darcy with her to Boston. The architect wasn’t offering marriage. He found Darcy’s needs for school and food and clothes an annoying intrusion on his fun with Lala, so Lala came up with a genius idea: Darcy could live with Penelope, Darcy’s other grandmother, Lala’s ex-husband’s mother. After all, Nantucket was not far from Boston; it was in Massachusetts—it would be so easy for Darcy and Lala to see each other! Lala wrote a note to Penelope Cotterill, then phoned her, and then made the journey on the ferry to the island to introduce Darcy to her grandmother and the island.
“She’s not easy, like us,” Lala warned Darcy the day they boarded the ferry to cross the wide waters to the island. “She’s a loner, kind of eccentric, aloof. She doesn’t know how to have fun.” Worried that what she’d said would cause Darcy to refuse to live there made Lala add in a slightly frantic tone, “But she’s not mean. She’s just—quiet.”
Darcy grinned. Quiet!
Penelope Cotterill was seventy then, but was far from being a little old lady. She was tall and slender, with long silver hair she clasped to the back of her head with an amethyst hair clip. She had hazel eyes—like Darcy’s, not green or blue like her mother’s side of the family. Although she was quiet, she gave off an aura of tranquil unflappable contentment. Her clothes were expensive but simple. She wore long, slim dark skirts and long, loose cashmere sweaters for gardening; and when she visited the library or the local bookstores or attended the island’s concerts and plays and lectures, she simply brushed off any specks of dirt, added her own grandmother’s pearls to whatever she was wearing, and was ready.
Lala had met Penelope only three times, but she’d sized the older woman up quickly. And while Lala might have been unreliable, she was canny. For the visit to meet her grandmother, Lala made Darcy wear a black skirt and a white blouse. Darcy had looked like a pilgrim. A nervous pilgrim on the verge of vomiting. The ferry ride was rough. Darcy was suffering from nausea and nerves, and when she first saw her tall, elegant, meticulously dressed grandmother, it took all her courage to do what Lala had instructed, to hold out her hand.
Penelope bent forward to shake Darcy’s small quivering hand—and in an instant, with that touch, Penelope fell in love. She dropped to her knees, put her hands on Darcy’s shoulders, and pulled the girl to her. She hugged her hard.
“My dear,” Penelope said. “Welcome. I do believe you have come home.”
For the first time in her life, Darcy felt warm right down to the bottom of her soul.
After an obligatory hour of drinking tea and talking, Lala went back to Boston. After Lala left, Darcy’s grandmother took her upstairs to the
room that was to be her very own. It had a brass bed with an antique quilt and sheets smelling of lavender. It had a cherrywood desk placed beneath the window that looked over the wide backyard where hedges surrounded Penelope’s garden. It had a large mahogany dresser and an amazing piece of furniture like a table with slender drawers and a stool with a needlepoint cushion and mirrors that could be folded in so that Darcy could see how she looked from both sides. Penelope called it a vanity.
The room had a bookcase.
It had books.
“I don’t know what you’ve read,” Penelope told Darcy. “Probably you’ve read all these books, but I thought I’d put them out just in case.”
Darcy knelt before the bookcase and carefully pulled out each volume. Little Women. Jane Eyre. Nancy Drew. The Secret Garden. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She could live in this room forever!
Penelope took Darcy out the back door to introduce Darcy to Penelope’s own secret garden. She held her hand, urging Darcy to sniff the blossoms and touch the silky petals and learn the name of each flower. She took her around the small, picture-book town to introduce her to the librarians—for Penelope was a steadfast patron—and the shopkeepers. She drove Darcy to the grocery store and pushed a cart down the aisle, asking what Darcy liked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Darcy hardly knew what to say. She’d never been asked that before.
Little by little, Darcy grew to feel at home in her grandmother’s house. When September came, she started school, and her life fell into a regular pattern. Every afternoon, she returned to the place she had left that morning. She really was at home.
Darcy’s father never came to visit, and Darcy didn’t miss him—how could she miss someone she’d seldom seen? Lala visited once a month, when the weather permitted an easy passage across Nantucket Sound. After she married her architect—without inviting Darcy to the service—she came less often.
It didn’t matter. Darcy’s grandmother invited her to call her Penny, and for her first Christmas on the island, Penny surprised Darcy with a kitten. Nickel, Darcy named her, an odd name for a cat, but a kind of homage to Penny.
For the first few years of her life on the island, Darcy spent a good deal of time with her grandmother. She helped Penny tend her garden. She joined her for long walks on the many beaches or in the extensive inland moors. She accompanied Penny to the library, the local bookstores, and the island’s concerts.
When Darcy made friends at school, she was allowed to bring them over to play in her room, as long as they played quietly, or even in the garden, as long as they stayed away from the flowers. Half of Darcy’s friends had divorced parents with lives much more intrusive and hostile than Darcy’s, which helped Darcy feel better.
Eventually, Darcy’s father married a woman named Jean and moved to Florida. Lala divorced her architect and moved to Santa Fe. When Darcy first saw a picture of the birth of Venus she nodded her head in recognition. That was how she felt she’d arrived on this earth: alone, parentless, in the middle of the sea of life, with all the stability of a shell floating on a rocky sea. But just as there was a nurturing figure in the painting, her grandmother was there to receive her, to welcome her to the security of the island.
When Darcy was around sixteen, things changed. Darcy changed. Her hormones kicked in, her figure hour-glassed, and she wanted to flirt with boys. She wanted to kiss boys. She wanted…what most teenagers wanted.
While Darcy was getting faster, her grandmother was getting slower and a touch crabby and more of a disciplinarian. She gave Darcy a curfew. She took down the names of Darcy’s friends—in case, she explained, something happened to her and she needed to get in touch with her immediately. Darcy knew she was only pretending to be worried that she might fall and hurt herself and the ambulance would come, and she’d be whisked to the hospital, where the nurse would ask for her next of kin, and she’d gasp out, “My granddaughter, Darcy, but I don’t know where she is!” She thought Penny was truly anxious for herself. After all, she was seventy-six, edging toward old age. But she was also energetic and strong and she could still work like a longshoreman in her garden. The truth was, Darcy guessed, that Penny wanted to keep tabs on Darcy.
Secretly, Darcy was grateful for that. It made her feel safe to have Penny watching over her. Possibly it prevented Darcy from doing anything really stupid. She waited until she was older to do that.
When Darcy turned seventeen, she took a job in a boutique to make money for college. That was the year Penny’s age began to catch up with her. Her left hip hurt her whenever she moved, and she refused to see a doctor, insisting it was only arthritis and taking aspirin for the pain. She still worked in her garden, but often Darcy would look out the window to see Penny holding her hip as she walked or sitting on a bench, bent double, rubbing her hands together as if to press away the ache. At last Darcy persuaded Penny to visit Dr. Ruby, who diagnosed Lyme disease, caused by the bite of a minuscule insect, the tick. If it had been caught early, antibiotics would have cured Penny, but her own stubbornness had brought her an enormous loss in quality of life. Penny took painkillers, but she was constantly fatigued and suffering pain in all her joints. She was seventy-seven, and Lyme disease aged her by decades.
Darcy did everything she could to help Penny. She bought all the groceries, cooked all the meals, and cleaned the house. She got stacks of DVDs from the library—Penny was often too tired to read—and once Darcy earned her driver’s license, she took Penny for excursions around the island in Penny’s valiant old Jeep.
Bravely, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Darcy offered to forgo college and stay home with Penny. Penny burst into laughter and promised she would disown Darcy if she dared to even think of such a thing. The next day, Darcy found Penny on the phone in the kitchen; and within twenty-four hours, Penny had hired a woman to come five days a week to clean house and cook Penny a decent hot meal. She also agreed to take the antidepressants her physician had prescribed. By the time Darcy left for college, Penny was much more active and cheerful. Maybe it was all an act, Darcy thought, but Penny had made her point.
College life at UMass/Boston suited Darcy perfectly—no surprise because she was surrounded by books and people who talked about what was in those books. She majored in English literature and by her junior year realized she wanted to attend Simmons for a master’s degree in library science. Penny was thrilled. Darcy called her often and hurried back to check on her during long school holidays. She spent the holidays and summers with her, and Penny was slower, but in good spirits.
The time came when Penny could no longer hide or ignore her frustratingly merciless body. No assisted living facility existed on the island, except one that Penny called Death’s Waiting Room. She had made herself fairly adept at the computer and found and compared the various assisted living facilities on the Cape. One weekend, Darcy accompanied her grandmother to the ferry across Nantucket Sound and drove her to Sea View Village, which amazingly had a view of the sea. To Darcy’s surprise, Penny felt at home from the moment she saw it, or did an Oscar-winning act of pretending to. With relief, Penny settled in with others like her who were also withered, weakened, and dependent on the charming and capable doctors, nurses, and nurses’ aides.
Darcy drove down to visit Penny almost every weekend. She often spent an hour or so trimming the older woman’s nails and painting them an unusual color, like blue, or magenta with glitter, hoping the sparkle would brighten Penny’s days. Penny wasn’t able to trim her nails herself. Her hands weren’t steady or strong enough even to work a nail clipper. Those hands that had once dug ferociously into the soil to plant flowers; that patiently, relentlessly tugged weeds from her garden; those hands that had cooked healthy meals for Darcy and applauded when Darcy sang at a school concert—those hands had fallen limp and useless, spotted with brown age marks, trembling when she tried to lift a teacup to her lips.
In the last year of her life, everything had to be done for Penny. She could not bathe her
self, dress herself, brush her own teeth. Arthritis was causing her increasing pain. She was weak. She wore adult diapers. The nurses at the home were kind and attentive, Darcy could see that, and was grateful. Darcy always stepped out of the room when a nurse came to change Penny’s diaper and gently wash her body. Afterward, Darcy brought out one of Penny’s photograph albums and went through it, pointing to a picture of Penny in her prime.
“Your wedding dress was gorgeous,” Darcy would say. Or, “Check out this shot of you showing off the privet roots you’d dug up.” Or, “Here is one of my favorite photos, you and me all glammed up in Boston, ready to go to the ballet.”
Sometimes Penny would manage a lift of her lips. Just as often, she’d remain blank faced, too tired even to enjoy her memories.
Still, Darcy drove down from Boston in Penny’s old Jeep every weekend to visit her…although not quite so often after she met Boyz.
3
The winter Darcy met Boyz, she was taking her third semester at Simmons College. She had this “spring” semester and one more to go before she received her master’s in library science. Where she would go from there, she hadn’t decided, although she definitely wanted to stay in the Boston area. Her family was so scattered—her uninterested father in Florida with his second wife, Jean; her beloved grandmother Penny in a nursing home on the Cape; and her flaky mother, Lala, God only knew where. Darcy didn’t have the kind of family that gave advice, so she was pretty much working out her life step by step, day by day, scanning the horizon and hoping that some kind of well-marked route would suddenly unfold itself before her.
In the evenings, she worked as a waitress at Bijoux, a posh restaurant in Boston. She shared an apartment near the Gardner Museum in Boston with another UMass friend, but Rachael didn’t work because Rachael didn’t have to worry about money. Darcy’s father had agreed to pay the college tuition, but Darcy was responsible for everything else—rent, utilities, clothes, books—and she knew she could count on amazing tips at Bijoux, where she’d been working the past year.
