“Please go away” came the response from inside. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“And you drank my tequila!” Vivi said. “Which you know is off-limits.”
“I didn’t drink the tequila,” Carson said. “I haven’t had a drink since I left the Chicken Box and that was hours ago.”
Vivi blinked. Carson sounded like she was telling the truth and she had seemed sober. “Who drank it, then?”
There was a pause before Carson said, “Well, who else lives here?”
Leo? Vivi thought. She looked at Leo’s bedroom door, which was shut tight. Leo had been going to high-school parties since he was a sophomore, but a run-in with Jägermeister had propelled him away from the hard stuff. He drank Bud Light and the occasional White Claw.
Vivi turned back to Carson’s door. “You are scrubbing that pot, young lady,” she said. “Or buying me a new one.”
After Vivi poured herself some coffee, opened all the windows, turned both sailcloth ceiling fans to high, washed the shot glass, and hid what remained of the Casa Dragones in the laundry room (her kids would never find it there), she calmed down a bit. She was the mother of three very young adults and parenting very young adults required just as much patience as parenting very young children. No one ever talked about this; it felt like a dirty little secret. Vivi had always imagined that by the time her kids were twenty-four, twenty-one, and eighteen, they’d all be drinking wine together around the outdoor table by the pool, and the kids would be cooking, clearing, and giving Vivi sage investment advice. Ha.
Vivi ties up her running shoes and stretches her hamstrings, using the bumper of her Jeep—then she clicks on her iTunes on her phone and takes off.
Carson makes Vivi’s running playlists, which she has named Nine-Pound Hammer, Strawberry Cough, and White Fire OG. (It took Vivi a while to figure out that these were all strains of marijuana, probably the ones that Carson was smoking when she made the respective playlists.)
Today, Vivi listens to Nine-Pound Hammer. Shuffle.
The first song is “All That and More,” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise. The best thing about Carson as DJ is that Vivi is exposed to music she never would have heard otherwise. Over the past few months Vivi has become an avid fan of this song; it’s both folksy and bouncy. All I ever wanted was to make you happy…
Just as Vivi turns the volume up, her phone whistles with a text from Dennis, her (almost-ex-) boyfriend, who is out deep-sea fishing. The text is a picture of Dennis in his wraparound sunglasses smiling, revealing the gap between his two front teeth. He’s holding up a striped bass. The caption says Dinner!
Vivi doesn’t answer. A week or so earlier, she told Dennis that she needed some space, and she asked him not to spend the night at her house anymore. Predictably, this resulted in Dennis giving Vivi even less space than usual. He texts and calls and “checks in” and assumes Vivi will want to grill up the striped bass he’s caught. Poor Dennis. Vivi met him three years ago when he came to Money Pit to give her an estimate for central air. (Dennis owns a small HVAC company.) The AC was beyond Vivi’s budget, but there had been chemistry between them and they started dating. Dennis works hard, plays hard, lives in the moment—fishing whenever he gets a chance in the summer, hunting in the fall, and he’s the first person to get his scalloping license every year. He loves to drive his truck onto the beach and out into the moors; he showed Vivi hidden ponds and secret coves on the island that she’d never seen before, and she has lived on Nantucket three times as long as he has. JP once called Dennis “simple,” but Vivi thinks of him as unencumbered. It was refreshing to date a man who could be happy with a good strong cup of coffee, an honest day’s work, a swim in the ocean, a craft beer, and the sunset. He made Vivi laugh, he was her fierce champion, he was terrific in bed—and for a long while, this was all she needed or wanted.
She’s not sure what happened; honestly, it was like God snapped Her fingers and all Vivi could see in Dennis was what he lacked, and everything he said and did started to chafe her. The magic is gone for Vivi and she suspects there will be no getting it back. She’s ready to be a free woman again.
The lilacs along Kingsley Road are fragrant and full; they’re peaking today and Vivi reminds herself to come back later and cut some for her bedside table. Next month, July, will be all about hydrangeas. Is another flower even photographed on Nantucket in July? Instagram would tell you no. Vivi inhales the scent of the lilacs and this improves her mood. When she gets home from her run, she will fix Carson some avocado toast with a slice of ripe hothouse tomato, a perfectly poached egg, and flaky sea salt on the excellent sourdough from Born and Bread. Food is Vivi’s love language. Carson will know she’s forgiven.
This summer, Carson is working as the head bartender at the Oystercatcher, a big old wooden shambles of a place, beat up in the best way, that sits right on Jetties Beach. There are low-slung chairs in the sand where people can have drinks while they wait to sit at one of the brightly painted picnic tables in the spacious open-air dining area. Up a few steps is the hostess station and a small stage that fits exactly one guitar player, one amp, and one mic. Up a few more steps there’s the bar, the raw bar, the kitchen, and a retail shop that sells inflatable rafts, beach toys, T-shirts, sunscreen, and candy.
Vivi went to visit Carson at the Oystercatcher for the first time in mid-May, just after it opened for the season. There were a lot of familiar faces; Vivi and Dennis stopped to talk here and there before they took seats at the bar. Carson approached, seeming uncharacteristically shy.
“Can I get you two started with something to drink?”
She was already so professional and smooth! She recited the specials rapturously, like she was reading poetry. “The chef has prepared a shellfish pizza tonight, featuring…” Yes, yes, they definitely wanted the lobster and scallop pizza and they would start with a dozen oysters, a chopped salad, and the smoked bluefish pâté.
Carson took their order without writing anything down. She looked adorable—the cutoffs, the T-shirt, a short black canvas apron tied around her waist that held her corkscrew and her bottle opener.
Carson busied herself polishing glasses, leaving Vivi to her sauvignon blanc and Dennis to his Bell’s Two Hearted IPA. The guitar player started up, singing “Wonderwall,” by Oasis. The sun was going down and it was getting chilly. Vivi considered asking Carson if she wanted her to grab her a cardigan from the car but she knew Carson would decline and, perhaps, tell her to stop acting like a mom, it was embarrassing.
Just then, Zach and Pamela Bridgeman took seats at the end of the bar. Vivi waved and Dennis raised his beer in their direction, but no words were exchanged. Pamela was the (much) older sister of Rip Bonham, Willa’s husband, so they were, sort of, family. Pamela worked with Rip in the family’s insurance agency and her husband, Zach, was an air traffic controller at Nantucket Memorial. Zach and Pamela had a son, Peter, who was in Leo’s class, though the two boys weren’t friends. At the beginning of their senior year, Peter and Leo had gotten into a fistfight at one of the Whaler football games. Peter had said something crass and pushed Leo, Leo pushed back, Peter swung, and a brawl ensued. Vivi blamed Peter—he had always been an odd, aggressive kid, and Leo was a sweetheart, a peacemaker who got along with everyone. What had Peter said to start the fight?