Island Girls: A Novel

by Nancy Thayer

  “I see.” Genevieve tapped her lip with a long, perfectly filed silver fingernail.

  Jenny and Tim waited.

  “No.” Genevieve shook her head. “No, I don’t like this idea. Someone’s feelings are gonna get hurt. I don’t like having to choose one person over the others. Those artist types are already sensitive enough. No. You two design a prototype and e-mail it to me by the end of this week. We’ve got to get the site up and running before August.”

  Jenny glanced over at Tim. They both took a deep breath, then smiled at Genevieve.

  “You got it,” Jenny said.

  Genevieve stood up in a ripple of turquoise. “All right, then. I think we can do most of this by e-mail, okay? You have my e-mail address?” Reaching in a drawer, she took out two cards and handed them over.

  Jenny and Tim stood up. Genevieve sashayed out of the room.

  Jenny looked at Tim. “So. How are we going to do this?”

  “Let’s go to my office,” Tim suggested.

  Jenny started to object, then remembered that her office was in her bedroom.

  It was all too complicated to explain right now, how she couldn’t put an office downstairs because the house wasn’t wholly hers and her stepsisters were living there this summer. She didn’t want to spend the money to rent a space on Nantucket yet. Besides, most of her clients contacted her online and she’d meet them at their place of business. She seldom needed a face-to-face meeting. Tim’s office was in a building in a minimall on Airport Road. “Fine,” she agreed.

  Tim held the door open for her as they walked outside into the sunshine. “I’ll meet you there.”

  She nodded. In her car, she gave herself a moment to compose her roiling emotions. Why did that man get her so revved up? She’d have a heart attack and die someday arguing with him over something like the size of a font.

  Meg lay on her towel in the sand, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves against Jetties Beach. She’d been waiting almost twenty years for this moment. Next to her was her beach bag, stocked with bottled water, sunblock, and a book that so far, surprisingly, she had no interest in reading. It was just too sweet to lie here feeling the sun on her skin.

  Because it was early June, the air was a perfect temperature, in the high seventies and cooled by an occasional sea breeze. Other people had their own spots established up and down the beach, but it wasn’t as crowded as it would be in July and August.

  Perhaps by then she would have managed to lose enough weight so that her bust wouldn’t bulge out of her suit like too many pillows in a case.

  Perhaps not.

  Did she eat as sublimation for sex? She’d talked with friends about this enough. She hadn’t been a chubby teenager. Well, she hadn’t been thin, either. She’d just been nicely rounded. She’d been that way in college, too, and when she was working on her master’s.

  Of course she’d dated. She’d even had flings. Kind of. In her deepest heart, she knew that for years, perhaps most of her twenties, she’d been obsessed with literature, poetry, and women writers. Her two best friends, both graduate students, got married; Meg was a bridesmaid for both of them. Kyla married another grad student who was working toward his PhD and expected Kyla to be his cook, housekeeper, and general gofer. Winnie married a studly mechanic who looked like sex in tight jeans and didn’t know who Edgar Allan Poe was. Winnie now had two adorable children, and her dreams of her own PhD and a career teaching English literature had evaporated.

  Meg didn’t want either one of their lives. As Louisa May Alcott had said, “I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.”

  But Meg wanted children. And she had to admit she wanted them with a husband, a man she admired and desired, who would cherish his children, and all she asked was that he be intelligent. Well, kind would also be a good quality.

  Would she give up teaching to be a wife and mother? Why should she have to? If only she could meet an insurance agent, or the manager of a Home Depot, or a mailman. A good guy with a steady job and a steady, kind, reliable heart. Was that too much to ask?

  It was some comfort that Arden and Jenny weren’t married or engaged, either. Back in the old, old days, when the three of them were on the island for that first summer after their father married Justine, it was already clear that Arden was the man magnet. Of course, she was fourteen, with boobs and curves, while Jenny was the stick she still remained and Meg had looked like a plump little kid.

  Now that Meg allowed herself to sink back into the memory, she marveled at how much fun that long-ago summer had been.

  After breakfast, the three girls would gather up their beach bags and hurry along the narrow lanes to Jetties Beach. They’d toss down their stuff—beach umbrella, sunblock, and cooler of cold drinks—and dash into the surf. They’d have swimming races, contests to see who could stay under the longest; they’d build extravagant sand castles; they’d beachcomb; they’d fall asleep on their towels, returning home red as lobsters. They were always giggling at something, anything, a woman’s jiggling bosom, a boy’s smile—everything seemed hysterically funny.

  After lunch, they’d walk into town to check out books from the library or buy fashion magazines and ice cream. In the heat of the afternoon, they’d sprawl in the backyard, reading and snoozing, or if it was raining, they’d play games. Monopoly. Scrabble. Clue. In the evening, they might go back into town to see a movie or just to hang around Main Street, people watching, listening to the street musicians, giggling at how cute the guitarist was.

  Meg didn’t remember them fighting, not that first year.

  It was the next year, when Arden was fifteen and she and Jenny were twelve, that everything changed.

  Arden had cut her long red ponytail into a short asymmetrical mess that fell in her eyes. She had three holes in her left ear, two in her right. She wore heavy eye makeup, black fingernail polish, and slutty clothes. While Jenny and Meg were still singing songs from the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast, Arden was blasting the house with Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

  The three girls had seen each other about once a month over the winter, when their father took them all out to dinner and a play or a movie, so Meg was aware of how Arden was changing, but living with her in the Nantucket house was a whole new experience. Meg expected Arden to favor her over Jenny; after all, Meg and Arden were half sisters, not stepsisters. But Arden treated Meg with the same disdain as she treated Jenny. It was confusing, and it hurt.

  When they first arrived on the island, as they lugged their duffel bags up the stairs, Arden said to Meg, “I’m taking the back bedroom this year.”

  “But I choose the back bedroom,” Meg protested. “I can pretend I’m a writer there.”

  “Tough. I’m taking it.”

  Meg changed tack. “Your bedroom is so much prettier, with all the mermaids. You’ve got so much more space.”

  Arden had whipped around and hissed at Meg, “Yeah, and I can lie there and hear Dad and Justine talking and laughing. The happy married couple. They always make me turn down my music.” She stormed past Meg, dragging her luggage, down the hall, into the back bedroom, and slammed the door.

  Unhappily, Meg had moved into the mermaid bedroom, which was pleasant, she had to admit. She didn’t know why Arden had been so upset, but she didn’t have a portable CD player, and she didn’t listen to Nirvana. She was twelve, but a young, unformed twelve, continuing her lifelong obsession with reading. More and more aware of her weight, she didn’t want to go to the beach as often, or out for an ice cream cone. Jenny got cranky because Meg was always reading. Arden was either out of the house or locked in her room, and she refused to play any board games, ever, which limited what Meg and Jenny could play. Meg could overhear her father and Justine arguing about the girls: Justine wanted Rory to make Arden be polite and Meg stop being such an introvert. Rory reminded Justine she was talking about teenagers.

  By July, the atmosphere in the house was radioactive. Arguments erupted. Doors were
slammed.

  Since Justine cooked for all five in the family, she insisted that the three girls take turns cleaning the kitchen after dinner. One night Arden wandered into the house shortly after seven, when the others had just finished their evening meal and were still sitting around the dining room table.

  “Where have you been?” Rory demanded.

  “Walking.” Arden shrugged, reaching over to pick up a carrot from Meg’s plate.

  Justine said, “We’ve finished dinner.”

  Arden tossed her head. “Fine. I’m not hungry.”

  “It’s your night to do the dishes,” Jenny reminded her.

  “Since I didn’t eat, I shouldn’t have to do the dishes,” Arden countered.

  A silence fell, the calm before the storm.

  “I cooked enough food for you. I set a place for you. It is your turn to do the dishes.” Justine spoke calmly, but anger made her voice tremble.

  “I don’t agree,” Arden responded, cool as ice.

  Justine made a small gasp. She shot Rory a black look. When he didn’t speak, Justine shoved back her chair, rose from the table, and approached Arden. “While you’re living in this house, you’ll do as you’re told.”

  Meg rushed to intervene. “I’ll do the dishes tonight. Really, I don’t mind.”

  Arden gave a fake bitter snorting laugh. “Oh, Christ, Meg, you’re such a pussy!”

  Justine slapped Arden’s face. “Don’t you use that language in my house.”

  Arden went white, tears shimmering at the edges of her eyes, lips trembling. Meg jumped up from the table and rushed to put her arms around her.

  “Don’t you hit my sister!” she spat at Justine.

  Eventually, Rory had resolved the argument by laying down the law: Whether or not Arden ate with them, she had to do the dishes on her night.

  From then on, Arden’s presence in the house created tension. Meg went to the library more or hid in her room, reading. She began to sneak candy bars into her room to nibble. She felt a void deep inside she couldn’t seem to fill.

  Meg lay on the beach in the sunshine, a grown woman shaken to her core by memories. She warned herself: Stop right there.

  Years had passed since that horrible summer. At boarding school and college, Meg had met girls whose families made her own look enviable. World literature had shown her families who killed one another for land, money, or power. What she’d gone through was nothing to cry about. It was only complicated and it had been unfair, but life was complicated and unfair. God, she said to herself, stop whining.

  Suddenly the sun was too hot, and her back hurt from lying in the sand. She began to gather up her stuff.

  As she did, a blonde woman, fortyish, spread out her towel next to Meg and slathered sunblock on her arms.

  “Hi,” she chirped pleasantly to Meg.

  Preoccupied, Meg replied briefly, “Hello.”

  “Oh, am I disturbing you?” the blonde asked.

  “What? Oh no, not at all. I just remembered something I’ve got to do.”

  Meg rose, picked up her beach bag, and tracked up through the hot sand, wondering why the other woman had seemed disappointed at her departure.

  EIGHT

  Justine had always been a beauty. She’d nurtured this quality with careful nutrition, yoga, exercise, spa treatments, manicures, pedicures, and, in the past five or so years, weekly visits to the hairdresser. Clothes shopping had been a serious occupation for her, and she’d utilized great taste, not to mention money, in decorating their large, historic Belmont house to perfection.

  Now she wandered around the perfect house in a stained robe, her hair lank, tipped with split ends. Makeup hadn’t touched her face since she returned from Rory’s funeral, and as far as nutrition—well, she was getting most of that from wine.

  How would she get through the rest of her life without Rory?

  How was she going to get through the next hour without Rory? He was the love of her life.

  They’d met at the perfume counter in the Natick Mall Lord & Taylor. Rory was looking for a present for a client, he told her, an older woman who had just purchased a posh town house. He wanted something classy, and his glance at her let her understand he knew she was all about classy.

  Tall, wide-shouldered, blue-eyed, and red-haired, Rory exuded confidence, joie de vivre, and sexuality. He laughed easily, his eyes twinkled, and when they touched—so Justine could spray perfume on his wrist—angels sang.

  He took a long time selecting his gift—Chanel No. 5—and returned the next day saying he needed to buy perfume for his secretary’s birthday.

  The third time he came, he told her with an honest nervousness that he was buying a present for his wife. Perhaps they could talk? He’d like to talk. Rory took her to lunch.

  She was thirty. She’d had a child out of wedlock, little Jenny, who was now nine and had never had a father. Nothing tragic, Justine confessed, only foolish. She’d made a mistake when she was in college and became a single mother at twenty. She’d married once when she was twenty-five. Her husband had been not exactly mean to his stepdaughter but cold. Cold to five-year-old Jenny. That marriage hadn’t lasted a year. After that, Justine had sworn she’d never marry again.

  Rory told Justine he was thirty-nine, a successful real estate broker, and husband to a nice woman named Cyndi. Together they had a little girl, Meg, just nine years old.

  “We each have a daughter nine years old,” they said to each other in a kind of awe, as if this formed an unbreakable bond between them.

  Rory had been married once before, briefly, to a woman named Nora, and they had a daughter, too, twelve-year-old Arden. “Classy name,” Justine told him.

  “She’s a classy kid. Smart as a whip, too. I don’t see her as often as I’d like, but every other week and most of the summer Arden stays with Cyndi, Meg, and me.”

  “You all get along?” Justine asked.

  “As well as any family, I suppose.” Rory had hesitated, then sat back in his chair and regarded her helplessly. “What are we going to do?”

  Heart aching, Justine aimed for lightheartedness. “We’re going to finish our lunch and go our separate ways. You’ll start buying your perfume elsewhere.”

  They were married a year later, after Rory’s no-fault divorce from Meg’s mother, during which he agreed to let Cyndi have the Boston house, her Lexus, and a whopping pile of money. He kept the Nantucket house, the house he’d first bought with Cyndi.

  They introduced the three girls to one another gradually, starting off on fun social occasions where their attention was sidetracked and they could perceive the reality in a kind of sideways fashion. Movies, theme parks, museums, aquariums were all visited before they brought the three girls into their Nantucket house for the first sleepover.

  Although, of course, Jenny was already in the house.

  A quiet, shy little girl, Jenny was considered something of a puzzle by her caregivers and teachers. At day care, she ignored the other children, finding a corner for herself where she built tiny intricate worlds out of all the broken bits of toys the other children ignored. When she started kindergarten, she was assessed and deemed to be quite intelligent. She could talk; she just didn’t. She learned to read and do math early. She colored between the lines. She never acted out. She wasn’t a problem, so she was overlooked at school. While Justine didn’t ignore her daughter, by the time she returned home from standing on her feet behind a counter all day, she was too exhausted to do much more than microwave Kraft mac and cheese for Jenny and collapse on the sofa with a glass of wine.

  Rory Randall was like the sun shining on a plant that had lived struggling in the shade. With his booming voice, easy laugh, and entertaining manner, he lit up their lives. He was a generous, loving, intuitive man. The first year of their marriage, he took much of the summer off so he could stay at his Nantucket house and help Jenny learn to swim and sail. Jenny blossomed like a rose in June.

  Justine had never known that
people could be so happy. Jenny was smiling, laughing, making friends at school, getting invited to birthday parties, bringing girls home! Justine realized her own heart had been trapped in a cage of anxiety and caution: She had hardly done anything for fear of doing something wrong. Justine adored Rory. He was her hero, her champion, her prince.

  In her happiness, Justine secretly vowed to be loving to Rory’s other two daughters, even if Arden, the older, bratty one, was a challenge. The first summer on Nantucket, they invited Arden and Meg to come stay for most of the summer. This length of time would give them a chance to know one another, Rory decided, and Justine wanted to make Rory happy.

  The first year wasn’t so bad. Rory kept them on a madcap schedule of swimming, sailing, and tennis lessons. He enrolled them in art and science courses. He set up jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table. He brought home videos and took them to movies at the Gaslight. The girls squabbled sometimes, but they laughed together, too. Rory was happy, and Justine was happy for him even though she was overwhelmed with buying groceries at the crowded stores and feeding all five of them three meals a day.

  Then it all changed. During the school year, Arden transformed from a sullen girl into a rebellious slut.

  Every time Arden came over to spend the night with Meg and Jenny, who still played with their American Girl dolls and took riding lessons, the difference increased. Arden’s skirts got shorter. Her shirts plunged lower. Suddenly her auburn hair had purple streaks in it. She tossed around curse words like confetti in spite of Justine’s admonitions. She made jokes about condoms and blow jobs.

  Justine was horrified. She’d been a rather racy little teenager herself, back in the day, but nothing like this, and she hadn’t even had sex until she was nineteen, at which point she got herself knocked up. She tried having private counseling sessions with Arden, talking with her about the pressures of adolescence, but Arden only stared at Justine with shark eyes.

  During the school term, it was tolerable. Arden ignored the younger girls to tap away on her computer or watch videos while Jenny and Meg hung out together, and when Rory came home from the real estate office, they all sat together at the table, eating dinner like the books said to, one big happy blended family. Justine talked to Rory about Arden, but he dismissed what Justine interpreted as serious signs of a personality disorder as the normal teenage desire to be different.