It’s not fair! Ava’s ardor for Nathaniel has been cranked to a ten out of ten since the day she met him. He showed up at the Winter Street Inn one day the spring before last to build Mitzi a set of pantry doors. And not just any pantry doors-Mitzi wanted mahogany inlay and a fancy cutout featuring wooden forks and spoons. She had seen similar pantry doors at her friend Kai the Massage Therapist’s house, and Kai had put Mitzi in touch with Nathaniel Oscar, maker of fancy and special pantry doors.
Ava had been the one to answer the door when Nathaniel knocked. For her, it was love at first sight. He wore jeans and a tool belt and a pressed red-and-white striped oxford shirt and a red fleece vest and a faded red visor from Cisco Brewers. When Ava opened the door, he was clenching a pencil between his teeth, which he dropped expertly into his hand so that he could flash a smile at Ava.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Nathaniel. Are you Mitzi?”
Ava had laughed at that. “I’m Ava!” she said. “Ava Quinn?” She thought the name might resonate with him. The Quinn family was pretty famous on Nantucket-because they owned the Winter Street Inn, because they threw the huge Christmas Eve party, because Ava taught school and knew everybody, and Kevin worked at the Bar and knew everybody else, because Bart was in the police blotter two or three times a year for screwing up in spectacular ways, and because they were all related to Margaret Quinn of the CBS Evening News. But Nathaniel just smiled. Ava Quinn was just another pretty girl who opened the door to him and swooned.
She led him to the kitchen and showed him the doorless pantry in question and asked him if he wanted a glass of water or a Coke or a beer.
He lit right up. “I’d love a beer. But only if you’ll join me.”
Ava opened two Whale’s Tales, and then Nathaniel got to work measuring. Ava felt like an idiot just standing around watching him, so she took her beer to the next room and started playing Chopin on the piano. Chopin was show-offy, perfect when trying to make a first impression. She then switched to Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” which he would recognize if he had an ounce of culture at all, and then she sailed into Schubert’s Impromptu in G-flat. By the time she finished, she was perspiring, and Nathaniel was standing in the doorway, wide-eyed with awe.
“Wow,” he said. “You can really play! And the Impromptu is my favorite.”
And Ava thought, Did he really just say that?
Yes: Nathaniel Oscar, maker of fancy and special pantry doors, was born an aristocrat. He grew up in a family manse on Clapboard Ridge Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, he attended Greenwich Country Day School, then St. George’s, in Newport, then Brown University, then Duke Law School. But the summer before he was to start a job with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, he visited Nantucket and decided he never wanted to leave. He apprenticed himself to a genius woodworker named Paul Pitcher, and when Paul died suddenly of a brain aneurysm, Nathaniel took over his business. Paul Pitcher used to listen to classical music in the workshop, Nathaniel said, and the habit stuck.
Nathaniel loved old things, fine things; he used salvaged materials whenever he could. His work was refined and elegant; it was pedigreed and expensive. When Nathaniel delivered the bill for the fancy and special pantry doors, Kelley hollered. But by then, Ava and Nathaniel were dating, and the rest of the family was half in love with him as well. When Margaret visited Nantucket in August, she took Ava and Nathaniel to American Seasons for dinner. Nathaniel told Margaret about spending his junior year abroad in Gambia, where he dug wells and implemented clean-water programs, and Margaret was smitten.
Marry him! she told Ava.
And Ava said, I’m trying!
She had lured Nathaniel in with her piano playing and then got him even closer with her stories of the kids at school. He loved kids, although he didn’t seem to be in any hurry for his own. But somewhere along the way, they stalled, or Ava did. She doesn’t remember anything going wrong, and they never fought-mostly because Ava tried really, really hard to be agreeable-but after they had been dating eight or nine months, Ava noticed Nathaniel seeking a little more personal space. He went out some nights with guys on his crew, he took a Greyhound bus trip to Seattle to see “friends from prep school,” and there was no mention of Ava flying out to meet him. And then, in October, he told Ava about his reconnection with the dreaded Kirsten Cabot, which corresponded exactly with Kirsten’s impending divorce from a friend of Nathaniel’s named Bimal, who was Indian, had a British accent, was fantastically wealthy, and was a very nice guy besides, according to Nathaniel. Ava wished that Nathaniel had reconnected with Bimal instead of Kirsten, although she wasn’t at all surprised that Kirsten had reached out to Nathaniel. Nathaniel was the One Who Got Away to every one of his ex-girlfriends. What could be more romantic than a man who had eschewed corporate law for a life doing custom woodwork on Nantucket Island?
Ava told herself not to feel jealous of Kirsten Cabot. After all, Nathaniel was up front about the reconnection on Facebook; it wasn’t like he was hiding anything. Ava, however, found herself stalking Kirsten Cabot on Facebook and Twitter. Kirsten owned an upscale clothing boutique in Greenwich Village called Choice, and Ava visited the Choice Facebook page and even “liked” it. There were photos of Kirsten on the Facebook page, and in every single one, she looked beautiful. Ava spent long minutes staring at the photos, enlarging them, minimizing them, trying to make Kirsten look less beautiful. Wasn’t her smile too wide, too toothy? Wasn’t her ass a little square? No, that wasn’t a winning strategy-Kirsten was drop-dead gorgeous, stunning, a knockout. She was the kind of woman men stared at, turned their heads for. Hot.
At that moment, Ava’s cell phone rings. The screen says NO.
It’s Nathaniel.
NO, she thinks. She shouldn’t answer.
But she just called him. She can’t pretend that she’s now suddenly unavailable.
“Hello?” she says.
“Ava?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Did you call?”
“Yes,” she says. “I wanted to make sure you made it there safely.”
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, of course I did.”
“Okay,” she says.
Long pause.
He says, “So, how’s your holiday?”
Where to begin? The stark truth overwhelms her. To tell him about her family quite literally falling apart will be such a turnoff, he might never come back to her. She wants to tell him something happy, something fabulous.
“I’m headed to the airport,” she says.
“You are?” he says.
“I’m flying to Boston,” Ava says. “And then my mom is taking me to Maui for a few days.”
Throat clearing. He gets flustered any time he remembers she is Margaret Quinn’s daughter.
“When did this come about?” he asks.
“This morning,” Ava says. “We’re staying at the Four Seasons.”
“You are?” he says. “When are you coming back?”
“Next week sometime?” she says. “I can’t remember, exactly.”
“Oh,” he says, and she knows that, somehow, she’s reached him. She says, “What are you doing?”
“We’re headed to the Cabots’ for cocktails,” he says.
Ava takes a second to digest this, then feels like she’s been one-upped. She has been one-upped, of course, because she’s not headed to the Four Seasons in Maui with her famous mother. She is headed back to the Winter Street Inn kitchen to make the salted-almond pinecone. And later, she will be banging out “Jingle Bells” on the piano while 150 voices sing along off-key, making Ava want to cry.