ONE
Jackie Kennedy sails these waters. In fact, the First Lady might be looking at the same sunlit cliffs as Heddy, and the thought of Jackie in her big black sunglasses, placing a kiss on the president while their boat rounded Vineyard Sound, tickled the corners of Heddy’s mouth and made her peek over onto the deck of a wooden sailboat bobbing in the harbor. Heddy waved back at a man, shirtless and barefoot, holding a fishing line. He was no Jack Kennedy, but he wasn’t half bad, either.
Pastel-striped umbrellas lined the beach as the ferry neared the dock, and the colors were familiar, even though she’d never stepped foot on the island before. Martha’s Vineyard had become an obsession for Heddy that year at Wellesley after she’d overheard friends comparing where they’d stayed when they’d gone. But when movie star Gigi McCabe—the Gigi McCabe—posed in a barely there bikini for Look magazine, sunbathers oiled and stretched out on chaise longues around her, Heddy simply knew she had to go. (She and her roommate hid the magazine from their housemother, who called it “cheap trash” and forbade any copies in the dormitory.) Heddy had been drawn to the photo like a mosquito to a light, not because of the actress but because of all those patrician noses and straw hats, white Keds, and elegant tanned wrists. She wanted to know this fabled summer culture, those beautiful people who sailed in the morning, dressed formally for dinner, and sipped champagne at sunset at the famed Island Club.
Heddy pulled a small black notebook from her purse, pausing to take in the row of colorful Victorian houses lining the approaching town, and began to write. She was overwrought at arriving on the island, not only because she would live amid the wealthy, watching how money could take the edge off the sharpest points of life, but also because her job as a nanny would insert her into the home of a real family. There had been other well-paying options for summer jobs, of course, like the all-girls summer camp in the Catskills. But living with a family, she wrote, particularly an illustrious one, offered something the other jobs didn’t: a peek into a well-tended marriage.
When she snapped her journal shut, an envelope tucked inside drifted to the rounded tips of her sandals. She’d delayed opening the letter long enough, she thought, snatching it from the cement floor of the ferry. The enormous boat bumped against the dock as the crew began tying long, thick ropes to the pilings. She turned the thick parchment over in her hands.
To think, this whole mess was because of a boy. A Harvard boy. Maybe the scholarship committee would overlook her mistake, forgive her one small misstep and focus instead on everything she had accomplished. She was the only woman from her Catholic high school in Brooklyn to go to college. Her beloved literature professor, a mother of three who looked like Carol Burnett, had spent hours helping her to revise a short story last semester and had even written an appeal in her favor, attesting Heddy had “promise.” Promise. And now…
Heddy exhaled, slipping her finger under the envelope’s tongue and tearing it open.
Her eyes went straight to the first line: We regret to inform you that your scholarship for the 1962–1963 academic year has not been renewed due to… She didn’t read the rest, crumpling the paper up in her fist. She hadn’t believed they’d actually revoke it.
She chewed on a fingernail, then another. Maybe it was what she’d deserved. Girls like her didn’t get a do-over. Getting in to Wellesley—where the quad smelled of fresh-cut grass and the simple act of walking to class bestowed on students a responsibility to make something of themselves—had been prize enough, and receiving the check allowing her to go had been a coup. How else would she have paid? She dabbed her eyes with the back of her wrists and stared at a departing ferry, this one transporting a crowd of vacationers back to the mainland.
“A fool’s paradise,” said a young man who came to stand next to her, pushing his tortoise-rimmed glasses up his nose. He rested his elbows on the metal. Below them, a passenger ramp was fitted to the ferry’s doors, and he watched it pointedly, fidgeting in his burgundy letterman sweater, a large “H” on the lapel.
She tried not to look at him. “Looks pretty perfect to me.”
“It’s your first time,” he said, pulling on a baseball cap that was stuffed in his back pocket. “I knew it.”
He smirked at a group of college boys throwing footballs on the dock. “Pass it to me, Bobby,” he yelled, a smile in his voice.
His friends lobbed the ball toward him, making tourists on the dock duck out of the way.
He caught it and threw it back. “This island fooled me, too, once,” he said.
She smiled plainly at him, taking in the clapboard houses with tidy shutters and the charming row of ice-cream shops and clam bars near the dock. “Well, it’s just as I imagined,” she said, picking up her suitcase and bidding him goodbye.
As Heddy stepped onto the dock amid car horns and beginnings of conversations, she saw women of all ages in the latest summer fashions, many in the requisite dress of the wealthy and Jackie-obsessed: ballet flats, a pillbox hat, and clutch—all in the same color. Many were trying to catch the attention of arriving friends and relatives, so Heddy scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who seemed to be looking for her. Her eyes followed the man in the maroon cardigan sweater as he met up with his buddies, a porter wheeling his trunk behind him. He saw her staring, and his eyes crinkled, sending Heddy’s gaze down to her feet, the corners of her mouth turning up.
“Don’t worry, there are plenty more of those,” said a slim woman in navy capri pants, her loose blond curls pinned back on either side of her ears with small red clips in the shape of anchors. They matched her ruby lips. “You must be Heddy. I’m Jean-Rose, and this is my husband, Ted.”
Heddy willed herself to shake the slender fingers of her new boss, a large emerald-cut diamond on the woman’s ring finger. She’d babysat for neighborhood kids aplenty, but she’d never worked for someone so well-to-do; she hoped Jean-Rose didn’t notice her clammy palms.
“Nice to meet you. I’m excited to be here and to, you know, get to know your family.”
Jean-Rose tilted her head toward the man in the maroon cardigan. “That’s Sully Rhodes. Handsome, a little peculiar. Still, everyone’s angling for him.”
Heddy nodded, pretending to understand, feeling a flash of excitement—her new boss was already talking to her about well-connected young men.
“Now, Jean-Rose, we don’t want to lose our babysitter to someone tall, dark, and handsome on the first day.” Ted winked at Heddy.
She’d never seen someone with such dark eyes—his were nearly violet. “But you do need to meet our little prince and, of course, the queen.” Ted placed his hand on the bony shoulder of a scrawny boy standing next to him and then motioned to the little girl in a poufy dress with a towhead of curls.
The boy threw the soccer ball he was holding at Heddy’s feet, harder than he should have. Heddy pretended not to notice the ache in her toes, bending down on one knee with a smile plastered on her face.
“You must be Anna and Teddy.” Heddy extended her hand out to the stuffed monkey Anna was clutching and shook the primate’s fingers, which made the little girl chuckle and jump right into Heddy’s arms, nearly knocking her backward. “Oh, aren’t you a doll?”