by Nancy Thayer
“Wow,” Jenny breathed. “What a change. Thanks a lot. How did you do that?”
“Tomorrow. I’ve got to go. Have fun.” Arden rushed out.
Jenny dropped her digital camera into a small clutch bag and headed out, walking into town to meet Tim at the East End art gallery. She didn’t miss the admiring looks shot her way as she passed, and her spirits lifted. On Nantucket, the arts group was lively and sophisticated, internationally famous and edgy. The East End Gallery had once been a fisherman’s shack. Tonight it would be crowded with millionaire art connoisseurs.
The gallery was already packed by the time Jenny arrived. Inside the shack, the artwork was displayed—tonight paintings by Gay Held and Michael J. Moore. Outside, tables were set up with a tuxedoed bartender pouring drinks and another laden with cleverly exotic finger foods.
“Well, hey.” A stranger wearing bright yellow linen slacks and a patchwork blazer approached Jenny. “You look like you could use a drink.”
The guy was good-looking enough and he knew it. Jenny quickly decided he was a creep. “Sorry, I’m busy.” She stepped away.
Inside the gallery, she took time to study the paintings and took several shots of the crush of people grouped in front of the artwork.
“So you are working.” Tim squeezed through the crowd to stand next to her.
“Of course,” Jenny retorted, puzzled.
“Your friend in the fluorescent slacks didn’t think so.”
Jenny glared. “What’s your problem?”
“Well, you don’t look exactly professional,” Tim said accusingly.
“Well, you do sound exactly like an asshole!” Jenny shot back, nearly shouting to be heard in the crowd. She cold-shouldered him and pushed her way between partiers to get out to the fresh air. For some reason, his words had upset her. She thought she was going to cry.
She stood in line to get a glass of white wine. The evening was still hot, the sun only slightly lower on the horizon. The throng pushing in and out of the gallery made her glad she’d worn the tank top.
Deciding to act professional even if she didn’t look it, she stepped back and began to snap photos.
Tim came up to her. He did look professional, in a crisp white shirt and a navy blazer. “I’m sorry,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he continued, “Really. I apologize. I don’t even know why I said that.”
“It’s fine,” Jenny told him coldly. “What do you think of the show?”
“It’s great. In fact, I saw a picture by Gay Held that should be on the ‘Paintings’ link of the site.”
“The one called Monomoy?” Jenny asked.
“Yeah, I think so. How did you know?”
“It’s my favorite. Kind of hard-edged, not all dreamy.”
Tim took her arm. “Come on. Let’s be sure it’s the same one.”
He led her into the gallery again. The crowd was thinning out so they were able to stand side by side, looking at the painting.
“Yeah,” Jenny said. “That’s the one.”
“I’ve already got a quote from Gay about her work.” Tim held up his pad. “Listen to this. ‘The horizon line is a consistent theme in my work. It represents a place of rest and the notion of infinite beginning.’ ”
“ ‘ “A place of rest and the notion of infinite beginning,” ’ ” Jenny repeated. “What a fabulous quote. That’s what Nantucket is for people.”
Tim smiled at her, and she smiled back. Collaborators. With an infinite beginning.
Arden had drawn up an Excel spreadsheet of island events, and all that July, she volunteered to help with fund-raisers—the Maria Mitchell Association Science Museum, the Nantucket Historical Association Whaling Museum, A Safe Place, the Atheneum, the Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum. Willing to do any job, no matter how small or inelegant, she got to know all sorts of people, from the locals on the island to the wealthiest summer residents. She discovered she had a talent for simplifying events as well as houses.
“Don’t set the bar up right here,” she suggested sweetly to a trustee as she helped ready a party for The Homestead in the backyard of a brilliant gardener. “Put it over by the roses, so people aren’t clogged in a bottleneck just getting in. This way, too, they’ll get to see more of this magnificent place and they’ll be happier, more likely to donate.”
“Don’t spend your money on scotch and bourbon,” she told a committeewoman planning a party for a private school fund-raiser. “Most of your guests are young parents. Only older people drink the hard stuff. The young marrieds want wine, maybe some Prosecco, even beer. They’ve been out on the water all day, they’re stopping by here on their way to dinner, they have little kids who’ll wake them at six tomorrow, they don’t want to get bombed.”
Because she was a minor celebrity herself, people listened and took her advice. She became sought after. By the end of July, her cell phone and e-mail were stuffed with messages.
She piled up guests for her show.
The Safe Place benefit was held at a benefactor’s house on the cliff overlooking the gleaming sweep of the harbor. A large wooden deck with benches built into the railings extended into the green grassy lawn. Both deck and lawn were packed with women in silk, satin, and sparkling gems. Arden wore her fuchsia dress that night, the one with a short, flouncy skirt and a diamanté flower at the waist. Tight, brief, flashy, it was dynamite on her and she knew it.
Palmer had complimented her on it when he picked her up for the evening, but now as he approached her over the deck, his smile was amused.
“Arden,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Winkie Linden.”
Arden’s breath caught in her throat. Winkie Linden was the widow of a former Massachusetts senator, dressed as always in her trademark black with a necklace of diamonds and pearls. Winkie herself was a jewel, a grande dame of eighty with pearly white skin, a nose like an eagle, and brilliant blue eyes. Briefly, she assessed Arden in her showy frock, and then, to Arden’s relief, she held out her hand.
“I know about your show, Miss Randall. I’ve been meaning to contact you. I’ve got a rambling old summer house that’s been in the Linden family for years. The Linden Society has taken all they consider relevant to their museum, but the house is still absolutely crammed with dusty old artifacts that don’t leave room for anything new. I wonder, is this a project you could work with?”
Stunned, Arden replied, “I think so. Tell me more.”
“Oh dear. Let’s see. Old portraits of ancestors who were senators in Massachusetts in the 1800s. My grandmother’s wedding gown. An early set of gardener’s tools. Even”—Winkie smiled—“corsets and flapper dresses.”
Arden nearly clapped her hands. “Oh, what fun. Yes, absolutely, we could do something on Simplify This. It sounds like we could do a miniseries and tie it in with our historical show, Nest Eggs.”
“A miniseries?” Winkie’s smile broadened. “What a pleasant idea.”
“When could I come talk with you about it?” Arden asked. She took the widow’s information just as another one of the late senator’s admirers approached to introduce Mrs. Linden to his family.
“Well done,” Palmer whispered to Arden as he strolled down to the lawn with her.
“You brought her to me,” Arden told him. “Thank you for that.”
“ ‘You can lead a horse to water,’ and so on,” Palmer replied. “If she hadn’t taken to you, she would have cut you dead. She’s always been that way, makes snap decisions and acts on them. Obviously, she liked you.”
“I’m surprised,” Arden said. “This dress is rather flashy.”
“You look very nice in that dress,” Palmer told her.
“Nice?” Arden challenged.
“Would you like a stronger response?” Palmer challenged back.
An almost-famous singer, young and radiant, sidled up to Palmer. Placing a ring-studded hand on his arm, she said in a syrupy voice, “Thank you so much, Mr. White, for getting me that gig on Channel Six.”
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Arden arched a knowing eyebrow at Palmer and drifted away, leaving Palmer in the young woman’s eager hands.
Arden didn’t want to intrude on Zoey’s territory, but could she help it if some younger people invited her to simplify their homes? When, at another benefit, Ludmila Soares, the fourth and most exotic wife of the owner of a major football team, confessed she was overwhelmed with organizing the summer home at the same time she took care of her two-year-old while she was five months pregnant, how could Arden not offer to help?
Ludmila, who had been a model, adored being on camera and was thrilled to show off her child and the seven-thousand-square-foot house she and her husband spent two weeks in every year. Another big catch for Arden.
To her delight, Arden was also making friends on the island with some of the clever businesswomen who ran the poshest shops in town. She didn’t want to take the time to go to Boston to search for clothes to wear to the galas, parties, dances, and cocktail hours, so she stopped in at Zero Main to have Noel fix her up, and frequently drifted into Moon Shell Beach, where she got to know Lexi Laney, whose sensual silks and drifting shawls were not the sort of thing Arden could wear on television, but felt divine on hot summer nights. After observing the women who clustered in Lexi’s store, Arden asked Lexi if she could take her out to dinner.
“Consider it business,” Arden told Lexi, although she sensed a kindred spirit in the delightful workingwoman.
One late July evening, at a restaurant down by the harbor, Lexi and Arden settled by a window, ordered, then sat back to enjoy their vodka tonics.
“Business first,” Arden said frankly. “I have a show in Boston—”
“Of course. Simplify This. I watch it all the time.”
“I knew I liked you.” Arden laughed. “I’m wondering if you have any suggestions for people with summer homes that might need an organizational touch.”
Lexi sipped her drink. “Maybe. Let me think about it, okay? I have a question for you.”
“Oh?”
“What’s the deal with you and Tim Robinson?”
Arden let her gaze drift out over the boat basin, where yachts tied up to the docks bobbed in the calm water. “I go out sailing with him now and then. He’s handsome, he’s nice, he’s smart—”
“But no chemistry, right?”
Arden checked Lexi’s face. “Right. How do you know? Oh, are you interested in him?”
Lexi laughed. “Not at all.” She held out her hand. “Haven’t you noticed this?” She waggled a twinkling engagement ring. “I’m going to marry Tris Chandler. He runs a boatyard out in Madaket, and you’ve probably seen his teenage daughter, Jewel, in my shop. Anyway, yeah, I’ve seen you out with Tim on the water. That’s why I asked.”
“We’re just friends,” Arden said. “I’ve been too busy working to think of anything like romance.”
“What about Palmer White?”
Shocked, Arden barked with laughter. “You do notice things, don’t you?”
Lexi lifted an elegant winged eyebrow. “I’ve seen you at a lot of parties recently. Sometimes you’re with Palmer. He’s obviously hot for you.”
“He’s egotistical and insolent.”
“Yeah, like Tommy Lee Jones with a tasty touch of George Clooney. He’s a man, honey.”
Arden sighed. “You’re right. Palmer is an actual grown-up in a world of overgrown boys. He’s powerful; he’s used to getting his own way. I suppose he’s sexy, too … but really, I don’t want to get involved.”
“Why not? How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-four. No, I haven’t been married. No, I don’t want children. I relish my career. The funny thing is,” she added thoughtfully, “my two sisters are thirty-one and they haven’t been married yet, either. Our father was Rory Randall—”
“I remember Rory. What a dreamboat. Handsome, and he could charm the birds off the trees.”
“He could charm women into bed,” Arden added cynically. “I suppose having him for a father made all three of us shy of trusting men.”
“I understand.” Lexi confessed, “I was married before. I was young, naïve, and reckless. It ended disastrously. I want to take my time with Tris before getting married again. He’s divorced, too, so we’re in no hurry.”
“It sounds like right now you have it all,” Arden said.
Lexi smiled. “You know, maybe I do.”
SIXTEEN
For Meg, seeking refuge in books had started in boarding school, after she understood that not only had her father abandoned her for Justine and Jenny, but her mother had come to look at her with a kind of gentle regret, as if Meg were a tattoo she’d foolishly collected long ago.
Meg had found solace in the results of her intellect and hard work. She won praise from her teachers, and she became part of a gang of friends equally industrious and academic. Early on, she had decided that she wanted to be a teacher.
It was second nature for Meg to immerse herself in her work. Here on the island, she established a working routine and stuck to it, and gradually it encompassed her like a comfortable old quilt.
She rose every morning at six, crept out of the house in shorts and a tee shirt, and went for a half hour’s run while the air was still sweet and cool. Back home, she prepared a cup of coffee, a piece of toast, and some fruit and took them up to her haven at the back of the house, where she opened her laptop, spread out her notes, and began to work.
The more she wrote, the more she became engrossed in her subject and even infatuated with it. May and Louisa May were sisters, talented, affectionate, competitive. The words flowed from her mind as she tapped away on her laptop, and real time ceased to exist as she lost herself in the past.
By three in the afternoon, she was flat with exhaustion. It was an effort to raise her body off her chair, to slip out of her shorts and tee, wet with perspiration from the heat and humidity of the little back room. She’d shower, put on one of her fabulous new sundresses, clip back her hair, and go out into the day, which filled her with a sense of sympathetic kinship, for much of Nantucket remained as it had in the nineteenth century when the Alcotts lived. Meg strolled the cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks, toured the historic houses, or sat in the library garden reading.
She couldn’t resist being in touch with Liam. He had become so much a part of her life and her work. His voice brought her back to her real world, full of eager students, self-absorbed professors, worried administrators, and books—books online, on e-readers, on the shelves of libraries. But Meg made it clear when they talked that she couldn’t deal with what had happened between them, that she didn’t want to discuss anything as personal as a relationship, and he honored her request, as she’d known he would. So nearly every day she phoned Liam, or he phoned her. They e-mailed constantly, exchanging news about their work. Meg did not allow herself to think of him as anyone other than a colleague.
In the evenings, she, Arden, and Jenny took turns cooking dinner. Somehow this time of day had acquired a gentle feel of camaraderie. The sisters fell into the habit of enjoying a glass of wine out in the garden, or if the weather was rainy, in the living room, a more formal room than the den. They spoke about their work, but not in vague monosyllables. They each tried to explain to the others what it was they were doing, why they were excited about it, what the challenges were, what had been accomplished that day.
One stormy night, after a gloomy, chilly day, Jenny made a fire, Arden concocted hot chocolate from scratch, and they curled up in the living room to listen to Meg read the page she had written that day.
Meg read, “Love and work. For most of us, our lives are defined by love and work. It is a fortunate woman who loves her work and a blessed woman who does not find herself torn between them.”
“Whoa!” Arden spoke first. “That’s intense.”
Jenny cocked her head. “Can you take some criticism? I think your writing sounds a bit old-fashioned, maybe stuffy. I wouldn’t get through it.”
Meg chewed the end of her pencil. “Yeah. I can see that. I guess I’m picking up the style of the times when Louisa May Alcott wrote.”
“What you need is some newfangled media training. Or at least an attitude adjustment,” Arden told her, shifting to straighten a pillow behind her back. “No one knows about May Alcott, but everyone’s familiar with Louisa May Alcott and will be fascinated to learn more about her. Also, you’re delving into the topic of sisterhood, and God knows the world is full of sisters with complicated relationships.”
“Arden’s right,” Jenny agreed. “Lighten it up a bit; make May’s story more—what’s the word?—accessible to the normal person.” Seeing Meg’s quiet retreat into reflection, she added, “I’m not trying to be harsh.”
“I know,” Meg said thoughtfully. “I’m thinking about what you’ve said.”
These two women were paying the ultimate compliment: giving her their full attention, and their considered opinions. What she liked was sitting in this old house with the wind battering the windows, the rain slanting sideways at the walls, the fire flaring on the andirons, and the aroma of hot chocolate in the air; they might be the Brontë sisters.
For a moment, she felt at home.
At the end of July, Meg planned a picnic dinner for the three Lily Street women. When Arden and Jenny were ready in the sandals and swimsuits Meg had insisted they wear, she popped into the driver’s seat of the Jeep and drove them all down to Jetties Beach.
It was six o’clock. The children had been taken home for baths and dinner and bed, leaving the long swath of golden beach relatively peaceful. The evening was still, with drowsy waves sliding against the shore and a few sailboats becalmed in the harbor.
Meg spread the blanket, planting the coolers on two corners, and knelt to open one while she used the top of the other as a table. Shaking a thermos, she poured daiquiris into tall plastic cups and handed them around. She laid out a platter of finger foods—salty wrinkled olives, Brie on crackers, little tomatoes and carrots, marinated artichoke hearts, bluefish pâté.
