Golden Girl(31)

And, boy, did Savannah know how to throw a party—because that’s what Vivian Howe’s “memorial reception” at the Field and Oar Club ended up being: a party. The expansive green lawn that led from the brick patio to the lip of the harbor had a bar running along one side and a buffet along the other. We ordered Mount Gay and tonics or glasses of crisp Riesling and accepted tiny lobster-and-corn cakes dotted with avocado crème fra?che from passing trays. We were lured to the smoking grill by the irresistible scent of the lamb lollipops and riblets slathered with tangy sauce. In the center of the buffet was a tiered silver tower laden with seafood—jumbo shrimp, plump oysters on the half shell, cherrystone clams, Alaskan king crab legs. There was a wooden board, as big as a wagon wheel, featuring an artful spiral of finger sandwiches; it was so beautiful, we felt bad disrupting it, but the horseradish roast beef on tiny rounds of rye was too delicious to resist.

Sean Lee played the guitar and sang acoustic covers of Springsteen, Clapton, Billy Joel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Vivi’s favorite kind of singalong music. Although she didn’t play an instrument and could not carry a tune, she was a fiend for rock and roll. In her most underappreciated book, Summer Days Again, the chapter titles were all songs from the 1950s and ’60s.

The air was sparkling; the water shimmered; the flag snapped in the breeze. There was no view on Nantucket more glorious than the one from the lawn of the Field and Oar Club. The club was exclusive and old-money; there was a twenty-year waiting list to get in and a ruthless membership committee to persuade. The Quinboros had been members since the 1940s and Vivi became a member automatically when she married JP. She’d bristled at some of the rules—she once wore a red polo to play tennis, which was a no-no, and there was the time she accidentally spat her cocktail all over the commodore’s navy double-breasted blazer because he’d said something she found absurd. When Vivi and JP got divorced, the membership committee voted five to four against readmitting Vivi on her own. Some felt this was a harsh decision, especially since everyone knew why the marriage had ended, but Lucinda Quinboro wrote the committee a letter stating that she did not want to encounter her former daughter-in-law at the club under any circumstances.

Even when they were married, it was clear she didn’t belong here, Lucinda wrote.

Some people on the committee thought that Vivi brought a freshness and a frankness to a place that could be straitlaced and fusty, but the man with the deciding vote, Gordy Hastings, had read Vivian Howe’s novel The Angle of Light, and he was not amused by the way she’d depicted their club in that book, thinly disguised as “the Lawn and Anchor Club.” The members of the Lawn and Anchor Club were self-absorbed and obnoxious, and although Gordy’s wife, Amelia, told him to relax, it was fiction, Gordy saw through the pretense. If Vivian Howe thought so poorly of the club, he felt no need to invite her to join on her own.

And he didn’t.

Vivi’s ex-husband, JP Quinboro, had been shocked by the committee’s decision, but his girlfriend, Amy Van Pelt, who quickly replaced Vivi on JP’s arm, felt as Lucinda Quinboro did. She was thrilled not to have to worry about bumping into Vivi in the powder room.

Savannah Hamilton, whose family had been members of the Field and Oar since its inception in 1905, told Vivi she could sign under H-1 whenever she damn well pleased.



Lucinda Quinboro and her best friend and bridge partner, Penny Rosen, attend the memorial service reception, and when Lucinda orders two Hendrick’s martinis, dry, from Marshall the bartender, he says, “Right away, Mrs. Quinboro. I’ll put that on your chit, Q-ten?”

“My chit?” Lucinda says. “Aren’t the drinks free today?”

“Ms. Hamilton is picking up the tab for non–club members only,” Marshall says.

Lucinda looks around. Everyone here is a non–club member except for herself, Penny, JP, and the Bonhams. “That seems calculating,” she says.

“Oh, come off it, Lucy,” Penny says. Penny and Lucinda have been friends for five decades and Penny is the only person left alive who calls her “Lucy.” “You never liked Vivian, you had her blackballed from this club, and now you’re complaining because you have to pay for a drink at her memorial reception? Shame on you.”

“Yes, Marshall, Q-ten,” Lucinda says. She scowls at Penny. “I suppose you’ll be the person who speaks at my funeral and tells everyone how wretched I was.”

Penny suppresses a smile. The thought delights her.

“I look forward to you buying the next round,” Lucinda says.



Although it’s easy to get swept up by the food, the music, and the beauty of the day, many of us are keeping our eyes on Vivi’s children. Willa Quinboro Bonham is sitting at a table in the shade of an umbrella between her husband, Rip, and her mother-in-law, Tink. The Bonhams, like the Quinboros, are longtime members of the Field and Oar Club—Tink plays tennis, Chas Bonham sails—but unlike the Quinboros, they stay out of the sticky politics of the place.

Tink is worried about only one thing: the health and safety of her daughter-in-law, who is once again pregnant. Tink, as many of us know, is keen for a Bonham heir—preferably a boy.

“Is there anything else I can get you, dear?” Tink asks Willa. Willa has a glass of ginger ale in front of her. “What about a cucumber sandwich?”