The Identicals(37)
But Harper has to drive through Edgartown—right down Main Street, in fact—to get to the Chappy ferry. There’s simply no way around it.
Before this week, Harper had loved Edgartown. There are certainly things to love about the rest of Martha’s Vineyard—the low stone walls, the farms, the cliffs of Aquinnah, the wild beauty of Great Rock Bight, the gritty fishiness of Menemsha, the Methodist campground and Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs—but Edgartown is still the crown jewel of the Vineyard, in Harper’s mind. Or maybe that’s just because of a snobby aesthetic preference she inherited from Eleanor. Edgartown is like Nantucket: it has an architectural integrity and an elegance that Harper finds powerful. The Old Whaling Church and the Daniel Fisher house are like the grandparents of town—old, white, and stately. Harper loves all the clapboard homes with the voluptuous window boxes on North Water Street. Main Street has the best shopping and the restaurants with the most delicious food. Edgartown has the prettiest harborfront and the most picturesque lighthouse.
Edgartown would be a fine place for Eleanor to open a boutique. Harper had long thought this and even suggested it once, but her mother had merely laughed.
Not on Billy’s island, she’d said. That would be the last place I’d pick.
Harper lines up for the Chappy ferry. She has to say good-bye to Brendan, not only for her own peace of mind but also because she can’t stand to think of him wondering why she’s disappeared.
How can Harper explain what exists between her and Brendan Donegal?
Harper had known Brendan when she was younger, in her twenties, and spending every spare moment on South Beach. This was before she worked for Jude. Back in Harper’s first days on the Vineyard, she scooped ice cream at Mad Martha’s and sold tickets at the Flying Horses carousel. On her days off, she cultivated a group of friends at South Beach—surfers and the girls who loved them. Among this group, Brendan Donegal was legend, the best surfer the Vineyard had seen in fifty years. He had been sponsored by Rip Curl since he was in high school, and although he had traveled all over the world—Oahu, Maui, Tahiti, Sydney, Perth, South Africa—he always spent the month of August at home on South Beach.
He drank and smoked pot at the bonfires. Everyone did.
Harper lost track of Brendan for a bunch of years. They had never been close, never hooked up. Harper had been downright thrilled when Brendan had, one day, wandered into Mad Martha’s, ordered a double scoop of shark attack ice cream (vanilla ice cream colored blue, with white chocolate chunks and raspberry swirl, a wonderfully sick joke and very, very popular), and called Harper by name.
He had returned to the Vineyard for good, people said, to establish a surfing school. But shortly thereafter, he had an accident.
He’d been high on something stronger than weed, and he’d gone out in prehurricane swells. The waves were real monsters, although presumably nothing Brendan Donegal couldn’t handle. But the combination of the drugs and the waves got him. People spotting thought he was gone. He was under forever, his buddy Spyder said. But then they saw his board pop up, and shortly thereafter Brendan became visible in the washout. Spyder dragged him out and performed CPR; the Edgartown Fire Department showed up seconds later and brought him back from the dead.
It was a tremendous story—until it became clear that Brendan wasn’t the same after that. Simple tasks eluded him. He could watch TV but couldn’t read. He could ride a bike but couldn’t tie his shoes. He could not surf, could not own or operate a surf school. That dream was over.
Thank goodness Brendan’s mother, a woman who was only ever referred to as Mrs. Donegal, was wealthy and owned a house on Chappy’s East Beach that had a guest cottage where Brendan could live; he went to occupational therapy once a week in Falmouth to try to regain at least part of what he once had.
After Harper got fired by Jude, she was left with nowhere to go during the day. It was autumn, and Harper had wanted to ride her mountain bike, but she feared that one of Jude’s work trucks would run her off the road. She couldn’t take Fish to Great Rock Bight or take yoga—too public—nor could she drink all day at the Wharf or the Ritz because Joey Bowen still had friends there.
And so, at that confusing and painful time in her life, Harper went to the place many Vineyarders go when they want to get away: Chappaquiddick. She started out by packing up for the day with Fish and heading out to Cape Poge with her surf-casting rod, but the weather soon grew too chilly, at which point Harper sought refuge at Mytoi.
Mytoi, owned and operated by the Trustees of the Reservations, is a full-fledged, beautifully maintained Japanese garden, complete with a koi pond spanned by an arched wooden bridge, a stone sculpture garden, and benches well placed for introspection, even as autumn deepens, even as snow falls in December.
It had been snowing when Harper first saw Brendan there, the snowflakes light and dry, so pretty against the steel-gray sky. Harper had gone to sit on what she thought of as “her” bench, a long red wooden seat with a curved back that overlooks the koi pond and bridge—but someone else was sitting on it. This was the first time Harper had encountered another soul in the garden. Although it was a magical place and, she thought, transformative, it was largely ignored in the off-season. Who was this, then? Harper’s first instinct was to leave—the whole point of Mytoi, for her, was solitude—but she approached. And then she saw it was Brendan Donegal.