“The island is magical,” Love agreed.
Mr. Henderson approached the desk, one hand in his front jeans pocket, and one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee. “We’re schoolteachers in Vermont,” he said. “And Vermont is beautiful. But not like this. It must have something to do with being on an island, all that water, you know.” He looked at Love. “Do you live here?”
Here-Nantucket-the land of stars and clams, oxygen-rich air and romance?
“Yes,” she said.
Jem called his parents from the phone in Maribel’s apartment. He knew his family was waiting to hear from him. Waiting for him to come home.
His sister, Gwennie, answered the phone.
“It’s me,” he said. “Mom and Dad there?”
“That’s just great,” Gwennie said. “We don’t hear from you in six months, and then you can’t even say hello like a normal person? That’s just great, Jem.”
“Gwen, are Mom and Dad there, please? This is costing money.”
“Don’t you want to know how I am?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I’m more blood than flesh,” she said. “But I’ve gained six pounds.”
“Excellent,” he said. “No more puking?”
“Not as much. When are you coming home?”
“I need to talk to Mom or Dad,” Jem said. “Put on whoever’s in the vicinity.”
Gwennie didn’t bother to cover the receiver. “Mom! Dad!” she screamed. “Jem’s on the phone!”
His mother got on. “Jem! Thank you for calling, honey.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“How are you?”
“I’m great. It’s been quite a summer.”
“It sounds like it. I photocopied your letters for my bridge club. You don’t mind, do you? If it said something private, I blocked it out. But you really didn’t say anything too private. Everyone wanted to know about the people you were meeting. It sounds like that island is really something.”
“It is.” He imagined his letters being passed around the bridge table like a cut-glass bowl of nuts.
“When are you coming home? Daddy and I want to pick you up at the airport.”
Jem’s father picked up the other phone. “Hey, boy! We miss you down here. Feels like you’ve been away forever.”
“What’s going on, Dad?”
“I’m watching the Redskins lose and your mother’s making chili.”
“Gwennie’s just starting to get better,” his mother whispered. “She’s not purging nearly as often.”
“She said she gained six pounds,” Jem said. “That’s great.”
“I talked to Bob Beller about getting you an internship at Brookings,” his father said. “How about that? The Brookings Institution-now, there’s a high-powered place.”
Jem took a deep breath. Hearing his parents’ voices made him miss them-he pictured his house, the kitchen with the copper pots hanging, his bed and goose-down pillows, the den with the pool table and the organ that Gwennie hadn’t touched since she was nine years old. He missed it-and he wondered if maybe that was what kept him from calling all summer. He didn’t want to miss them too much.
“I’m not coming home,” Jem said. “I’m going to New York State for a couple of weeks, and then I’m going to California.” He coughed. “Actually, I’m moving to California.”
Gwennie must have been listening on a third phone because she yelled out, “He’s not coming home! I told you he wasn’t coming home and I was right!”
“You’re not moving anywhere,” his father said.
“Paul,” Jem’s mother said. “We can’t clip his wings.” She sweetened her voice. “Why do you want to move to California, Jem? That’s so far away.”
“I want to be an agent,” he said. “I want to open my own talent agency.”
“You need capital to open a business,” his father said. “Opening a business is not just something you do the year after you graduate from college.”
“I know,” Jem said. “I’ll work for someone else first, and save my money.” He thought about the fifteen thousand dollars sitting in Nantucket Bank with his name on it. He had not written home about that-his parents would think accepting Neil’s money was wrong. They would wonder what he’d done to earn it. “Anyway, I have to be in California to break into the business.”
“I was right!” Gwennie shouted. “I told you so!”
“What did you learn up there this summer?” his father asked. “That you don’t need your family anymore?”
“Did you meet a girl?” his mother asked. “Did you…did you get some girl in trouble?”
With the exception of Gwennie’s bulimia, his family was like something from the wrong decade. Did you get some girl in trouble? His mother couldn’t even say the word pregnant.
“No,” he said. “No one’s in trouble.”
“Except you,” his father said. “If you don’t get yourself home by the end of the month.”
“I don’t want to work at Brookings, Dad,” Jem said. “And I don’t want to tend bar at the Tower.” The Locked Tower: now the very name of the place gave him the shivers.
“You’re not going to California,” his father said. “I forbid it.”
“Paul!” Jem’s mother said. “We talked about this. If Jem wants to go to California, what can we do to stop him? He’s twenty-three years old.”
“I am not pleased, Jeremy,” his father said. “And I’m not sending you any money, so I hope you earned plenty up there. I’m going to call Bob and tell him to forget about the internship. Is that what you want me to do?”
“Yes,” Jem said.
“Okay, then.” His father hung up.
“Mom, are you still there?” Jem asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Her name is Maribel Cox,” Jem said. “She’s blond and pretty and nice and incredibly smart. She works at the library and she runs and she’s a terrific cook. I love her, Mom.”
“You love who?”
“Maribel Cox,” he said. “You should be happy for me because this is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me aside from being born.”
“You love Maribel Cox.” His mother sighed. “It probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. You’ve always been so levelheaded about girls.”
“I’m being levelheaded now,” Jem said. “I swear.”
“Will you call us when you get to California? Will you tell us where you’re living?”
“Do you think Dad will ever speak to me again?”
“He’s disappointed, and I have to tell you, I’m disappointed, too, crushed, really. So when you hang up you tell Maribel Cox, whoever she is, that you hurt your mother’s feelings.”
“I’ll call you and tell you where I am,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything. I’m glad Gwennie’s getting better, and-”
“That’s enough, Jeremy,” his mother said. “We love you.”
She hung up.
“Whoa,” Jem said. He punched off the portable phone and fell back into the sofa cushions. “Whoa.” He thought back to what Lacey Gardner had told him, about how children should stop hoping for their parents’ approval and just live their lives. This fortified him for a minute, but then he realized that just because Lacey was dead didn’t mean she was right.
Maribel came into the living room. “How was it?” she asked softly.
“We’re going,” he said.
Of all the guests who stayed at the hotel, Cal West was Therese’s favorite. She didn’t know him particularly well; he wasn’t what she would call a friend. He wasn’t handsome or charming, and he didn’t have any egregious personal problems for her to work out-no divorce, no untimely deaths, no emotional or psychological conditions. Nothing about Cal West stood out. He was boring.
Cal West came from Ohio, a place Therese imagined to be even more dull and orderly and monochromatic than the town she grew up in on Long Island. Ohio-the name of the state was deceptively rounded; what Therese pictured was a square of dun-colored carpeting, flat, unattractive. What did people do in Ohio? Cal West worked in the provost’s office at Ohio State University. He processed papers having something to do with collegiate life.