By his own admission, Thatcher “hadn’t exactly been celibate” over the past twelve years, but there had been no one special, he said, and Adrienne decided to believe him. The only other woman Adrienne wanted to talk about as they lay in bed late at night was Fiona.
“Fiona was never my girlfriend,” Thatcher said. “I’ve never even held her hand. I tried to kiss her once when we were fifteen but she pushed me away. She said she didn’t want me to kiss her because she was dying and she didn’t want to break my heart.”
Fiona had cystic fibrosis. It was a genetic disease; Adrienne had looked it up on the Internet. Mucus was sealing Fiona’s lungs like a tomb. She was thirty-five years old, and losing lung function every year. Over the winter, she had decided to put herself on the transplant list, and that was why this was the final year of the restaurant. If she got a lung transplant, if she survived the lung transplant-there were too many ifs to worry about running a business. Thatcher had mentioned a doctor at Mass General, the best doctor in the country for this disease. To look at Fiona, Adrienne would never know a thing was wrong. She was a pistol, a short pistol with a braid like the Swiss Miss and freckles across her nose. A pistol wearing diamond stud earrings.
“What was it like being friends with her?” Adrienne asked.
“I’m still friends with her.”
“Growing up, I mean. What was it like?”
“It was like growing up,” Thatcher said. “She lived in my neighborhood. We went to school together. She cooked a lot and I ate what she cooked. We drove to Chicago for concerts in the summer. She had boyfriends, but they all hated me. One of them siphoned the gas from my car.”
“Really?”
“They were jealous because we were friends. Because, you know, I would eat over there during the week and I walked into her house without knocking, that kind of thing. Once a month or so, she would go to the hospital-sometimes just to St. Joe’s but sometimes up to Northwestern and I was the only one who she let come visit.”
“And what was that like?”
“It was awful. They had her on a vent, and the doctors were always worrying about her O2 sats, the amount of oxygen in her blood.”
“Who knows that she’s sick?”
“Some of the staff know, obviously-Caren, Joe, Duncan, Spillman, and everyone in the kitchen-but it’s the strictest secret. Because if the public hears the word ‘disease,’ they shun a place, and in that case, everyone loses. You understand that.”
“I understand,” Adrienne said. She nearly told Thatcher that Drew Amman-Keller knew. He knew and was keeping the secret just like everybody else, but Adrienne was afraid to bring it up. She still had his business card hidden in her dresser drawer. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Of course not. I trust you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you.”
“Does Fiona know about us?”
“Everybody knows about us,” Thatcher said. “Which is fine. When the public hears the word ‘romance,’ they come in droves. The phone rings off the hook.”
“We’ll have to beat them back with a stick.”
Thatcher tucked her under his chin and buried his face in her hair. “Exactly.”
If Will Novak was too soft, and Kip Turnbull too hard, then Michael Sullivan, the third man Adrienne dated, was just right. Sully was the golf pro at the Chatham Bars Inn, where Adrienne worked the front desk. Unlike Will and Kip, Sully was Adrienne’s age, he had a degree from Bowdoin College, and he, too, was living the resort life with the reluctant backing of his parents, who lived in Quincy, forty-five minutes away. Sully had valued one thing above all others for his entire life and that thing was golf. Adrienne first noticed him on the driving range smacking balls into the wild blue yonder. He was tall and freckled; he wore cleats and khakis and a visor. Adrienne met him a few nights later at a staff party where she tried to impress him by reciting the names of all the golfers she knew: Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Payne Stewart, Seve Ballesteros.
“Everyone you named is either dead or on the seniors tour,” he said.
Still, he asked her out and they went to the Chatham Squire for drinks after her shift one night. Adrienne found him easy to be with. On days when she was free, he let his tee times go; he cancelled lessons so that he could take Adrienne out to lunch, and eventually, he arranged to have the same day off as she did each week. He told her he loved her after only three weeks-and he had all the symptoms: he lost weight, he lost sleep, and he shunned his friends. He wasn’t sure what was happening, he told her one evening as they walked Lighthouse Beach at sunset, but he thought this was “it.”
The summer as Sully’s girlfriend flew by-days at work, nights eating ice cream at Candy Manor and strolling down to Yellow Umbrella Books where they bought novels they never found time to read, partying on the beach with people from work. Bonfires, fireworks, summer league baseball games, days off cruising around in the Boston Whaler, strolling in Provincetown, whale watching. Adrienne loved the flowers that arrived at the desk, she loved waking up in the middle of the night to find him staring at her, she loved it every time he picked up the phone to cancel a golf lesson. She loved his dark hair, his freckles, the way his strong back twisted in the follow-through of his golf swing. The e-mails to her father that summer were full of exclamation points. “I’ve met a guy! A guy who treats me the way you are always telling me I DESERVE to be treated! I am having the time of my LIFE in this town!”
At the beginning of August, Sully drove Adrienne to Quincy to meet his parents. His father was a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his mother had spent many years working as a nurse before she quit to stay home and raise six boys. His parents had both grown up in south Boston and they had stayed there. They lived in a huge Victorian house that was filled with photographs and crucifixes and needlepointed Irish blessings. Sully’s mother, Irene, was a lady of about sixty with red hair and a huge bosom. She hugged Adrienne tightly to her chest the moment Adrienne stepped out of the car and, in essence, never let her go. (Adrienne still sent Irene Sullivan a postcard every few months.) They sat on the sunporch and drank iced tea and ate shortbread and Irene filled Adrienne in on the business of her six sons. “God didn’t bless me with a daughter,” she said, “but I’m thankful for the boys. They’re good boys.” Kevin, the oldest, was a priest; Jimmy and Brendan were married with sons of their own; Matthew lived in New York City. “Matthew’s a homosexual,” Irene said, breaking her shortbread into little pieces. “Not what his father and I wanted, but he has a friend who comes for the holidays. I figure I already have six boys, what’s one more?” Then there was Michael, then Felix, the youngest, who was a freshman at Holy Cross. Irene brought out pictures of all the boys at their first communion, then in their Boston Latin football uniforms. She brought out pictures of the grandsons, and a picture of Matthew and his boyfriend in Greenwich Village with their arms wrapped around each other. “And here are some of Mikey.” All of the pictures showed Sully golfing-in Scotland, in British Columbia, at Pebble Beach. “He has a gift, no question,” Irene said, sighing. “But we wish he would settle down.”
Adrienne left the Sullivan house feeling like she could move in and become part of the family. When they got in the car to leave there was waving and blown kisses; Adrienne had Irene’s shortbread recipe in her purse.