“Yes, I’m sure you find that very amusing,” Belinda said. “But the fact is, this used to be my house. I was married to Deacon longer than either Laurel or Scarlett, and I deserve respect.”
She delivered this last sentence with her usual dramatic flair, as though it were a line she was rehearsing. There were so many things about the woman that bothered Angie. She would have had an easier time listing the things about Belinda that she found inoffensive.
Her mother had nice hair.
She had great taste in clothes.
She had once hosted Saturday Night Live, and she had been much funnier than Angie had expected.
Once upon a time, Belinda had discovered a maternal streak inside her—like a vein of pure silver running through rock—and she had traveled through the dusty, dry forever of the Australian outback, where Angie had been left to be raised in an “orphanage for native peoples.”
But this maternal streak had dried up or disappeared at some point during Angie’s youth, when Belinda had chosen her career over parenthood again and again and again—on location, on location, on location. She had filmed in Vietnam for The Delta for four months! She eventually won the Oscar, but who cared?
“If you’re that unhappy,” Angie said, “why don’t you move to a hotel? Call Cliffside.”
“I want to be here with you, darling,” Belinda said. “And I wanted to say a proper good-bye to your father.”
Hayes, Buck, and Laurel tactfully wandered out to the back deck, leaving Angie and Belinda alone in the kitchen.
“A proper good-bye to your father”? Most likely she had come to make certain that no one was talking about her.
“There’s nothing you can do for me,” Angie said. “I mean, you can’t bring him back.”
Belinda twisted her hair in her hands and held it to the top of her head. This was her nervous gesture; Angie had always thought it revealed the conceited little girl Belinda must have been. “I know exactly how you feel, darling. I lost both of my parents.”
“You don’t know exactly how I feel,” Angie said. “You left your parents right after high school and you never spoke to them again. Your father died in a plane crash, and Dad had to force you to go back for the funeral. You didn’t attend your mother’s funeral because you were on location in Scotland. All you have ever cared about is your career, Mom. You never cared about your parents. You never loved either of them the way I loved Deacon.”
“You and Deacon were very close,” Belinda said, as if she were conceding a point. “But it was a little…”
“A little what?”
“A little unnatural,” Belinda said. “You two were together all the time, night and day, at work, at home, at your Tuesday-night dinners together. You had one night off a week! You should have spent it with friends or a boyfriend. You should have been out dancing or going to the movies, not tending to your father’s emotional crises.”
“I didn’t tend to his emotional crises,” Angie said, though her voice faltered. That had been exactly what she did, week in and week out. They cooked for themselves and drank too much, and when the clock struck eleven or midnight and Angie told Deacon he should go home to Scarlett, he had said, “I can’t go home this drunk. She’ll kill me.” And then he would drink some more.
But her mother’s being right, or partially so, only served to infuriate Angie. “I’m not doing this. I’m not going to have you tell me that you know what I’m feeling because you lost your own parents! You hated your parents, and you hated Deacon, and I’m sure you’re glad he’s dead!” She swallowed. She was cotton mouthed and really needed a glass of water.
“Angie, please,” Belinda said. “Lower your voice.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Angie said. She couldn’t handle another piece of emotional baggage. She missed Deacon. She needed Joel to call. Angie stormed out of the kitchen. Her roller bag was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She had packed things for three days, but could she reasonably stay in a house with her mother for three days?
She pushed open the screen door, enjoying the sound of it smacking the frame of the house behind her. She nearly tripped on the rotting board in the floor again and almost went flying down the steps of the porch headfirst, but she managed to steady herself. She ran down the driveway, but at the bottom, she was at a loss, and the sun was hot. She was thirsty. This wasn’t the city—there was no corner deli, no Burmese place, no Starbucks. Down the road a bit was the Sankaty Head Beach Club; it had a vending machine out back that they used to sneak sodas from as kids. Or Angie could go back to the house and take the antique pickup truck that Deacon had bought to replace the Willys jeep. The truck was in the garage, but the keys were hanging on a peg in the kitchen, and Angie didn’t want to go back inside.
She pulled out her phone. She would call Joel. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to hear him call her Ange. Was it possible that she had fallen for the man simply because of the way he said her name? Did that happen to other people?
All her life Angie had felt as though her heart was a rock, dense and impenetrable. But with Joel, the rock had broken open and revealed itself to be a geode, lined with glittering crystals.
She dialed Joel’s number. Her call went immediately to voice mail. Angie hung up.
Should she text Hayes and tell him she was going back to the city alone? The thing was, she didn’t want to go back to New York. She loved Nantucket more than anywhere else in the world. They always went in August, but Angie thought it was even more beautiful now, in June. She wanted to be with her brother and Laurel and Buck. She wanted people she could talk to, people who had known Deacon. And they were going to scatter the ashes; Angie couldn’t miss that.
The sun was hot, and Angie could smell and hear the ocean. Living the life on Nantucket: Deacon should be here, fishing and swimming. Tonight, the sun would set off the back deck, and he wouldn’t be here to raise his glass, or to clap as if for God: Another day well done, Sir. Deacon’s days were over.
Angie screamed, as loudly as she could. Aaaaaaaayyyyyaaahhhh! Eeeeyyyyyaaahhh! Eeeeeeeaaaaayyyyyah! She screamed so loudly, her throat hurt. There was no one to stop her. Could they hear her back up at the house? Probably not.
Aaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeyyahhh!
If she screamed like this in Manhattan, her neighbors would call the police. She would be evicted or arrested. Or committed. One more thing Angie loved about Nantucket: she had the freedom to scream.
Yoooooooohoooeeeeahhh!
A car appeared around the bend, a silver Jeep Wrangler with the top down. The driver was a big, bearded bear of a man wearing Blues Brothers sunglasses. Instantly, Angie heard Deacon’s voice in her head: “It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.” To which Angie had been trained to respond: “Hit it.” But instead, Angie clamped her mouth shut and stared down at the road, willing the person to pass so that she could go back to losing her mind. Much to her enormous consternation, the Jeep stopped in front of her.
“Hey,” the guy said. “Are you okay?”
Angie nodded at him mutely, thinking that if she pretended she didn’t speak English, he might drive away. Then she noticed what looked like a mason jar of iced tea in his console. Or maybe it was whiskey over ice. Either way, she needed it. She was so thirsty.
“Could I possibly have a sip of that?” she said. “I’m parched.”
Parched? she thought. What on God’s green earth had made her say that? Customers ponied up to the bar at the Board Room all the time and announced to Dr. Disibio that they were “parched,” and they all sounded like douche bags. Because of this, Deacon had put “parched” at number eight on the Stupid Word List.
The guy handed her the jar. “This? It’s sun tea, unsweetened, with mint and lemon. I brewed it myself.”
“That sounds really good,” Angie said. “Do you mind?” She took the jar from him, and before she knew what was happening, she had downed the entire thing. Angie was so thirsty and the tea was so light and lemony that it was like drinking the nectar of the gods.