Golden Girl(34)

Will the kids miss her? Carson, maybe. But if Amy attended the service, everyone would be watching her because she would be in the uniquely awful position of mourning a woman she had not always spoken of in the most generous of terms. Amy couldn’t bear the scrutiny.

She raises her flute and clinks it against Lorna’s without words. All she wants to do today is drink and forget.

At some point in the future, JP will be able to think about something other than Vivi’s death. The summer will march on, the kids will adjust, Leo will leave for college. Amy will reach out to Carson—this might be a chance for them to grow closer. And JP will be free to propose. Amy just has to wait a little longer.



The champagne is gone before they know it and Lorna orders a bottle of rosé. Tommy asks if they’re thinking about more food. The oysters slipped down Amy’s throat in six briny swallows and the caviar provided three bites apiece. Amy orders two buttery lobster rolls with fries.

She turns to Lorna. “Don’t worry, this is all my treat.” She does some mental calculations and realizes that even if they stop eating and drinking now, their bill will be four hundred dollars. This lunch is extravagant, but she has reached the point of no return. “We could be dead tomorrow.”



As the afternoon wears on, the bar becomes more crowded. The demographic is handsome men, suntanned after a day of sailing or fishing, in groups of three or four. One cute guy in a Torrey Pines visor starts chatting with Lorna. He likes her accent, he says. His grandfather was an Irishman, from Wexford.

“Ha!” Lorna says. “That’s where I grew up!”

Amy tries to contribute to their conversation, piping up in her own accent—Alabama!—but her Southern drawl has dried up in the past ten years and now when she says “Y’all,” it sounds forced. She turns to the remaining warm rosé in her glass and wills one of the other gentlemen to come over and rescue her, but nobody does. She arrived on Nantucket a svelte twenty-three-year-old; now, she’s ten years older and fifteen (no, twenty) pounds heavier, and she looks…worn out. She is worn out. Dealing with JP and his kids and his mother and his struggle to find himself has been exhausting, and wondering when she will stop being the girlfriend (mistress) and start being the wife has left her disenchanted. Her light has dimmed. No wonder all the men at this bar are steering clear of her. She might as well have a sticker across her forehead that says USED UP.

She throws back some more wine just as a man in a white undershirt and a pair of tight gray suit pants takes the stool to her left. He signals the bartender, orders a Cisco Whale’s Tale, and only then seems to notice Amy.

“Oops, this seat taken?”

Amy shakes her head. She’s happy that there’s someone in this bar who doesn’t think she’s a leper, even if he’s not one of the gorgeous sailing men. Amy didn’t get a good look at the guy and she’s afraid to turn her head lest she seem too obvious, though she does notice blood on his knuckles.

She’s had so much to drink that she thinks nothing of grabbing the guy’s wrist. “Did you hurt yourself? Or…were you in a fight?”

“Fight,” the guy says. His beer arrives and he stands up and throws back the whole thing in one long gulp. This gives Amy a chance to look at him; when he finishes, he takes a long look at her.

“Oh,” he says. “Hey, Amy.”

“Dennis!” she says. Her voice sounds enthusiastic, which is strange because she doesn’t know Dennis very well. He was Vivi’s boyfriend, although Amy heard from JP that apparently Vivi and Dennis had broken up or were breaking up in stages.

Amy owes Dennis a debt of gratitude. Last June, at Willa and Rip’s wedding, JP and Vivi had danced together to the first song along with Willa and Rip and Mr. and Mrs. Bonham. It was at the top of Amy’s Worst Moments of the Relationship. Vivi fit right into JP’s arms and they danced so fluidly (hadn’t JP told Amy the very first summer that Vivi couldn’t dance?) and they were laughing and so visibly joyful that Amy thought, What am I even doing here? She might have left the Field and Oar Club altogether had Dennis not come over to her with a fresh drink, had he not rested his hand lightly on her back and clinked a cheers and whispered a joke in her ear that she hadn’t been able to hear over the music but laughed at anyway.

“I’ll have another,” Dennis says to the bartender now.

“So, wait, you were at the memorial service, right? And the reception?”

Dennis nods.

If he’s here at Cru then the reception must be over. Amy wonders if JP has called. She wonders if he missed her, if she did the right thing by staying away. She wants to know if anyone asked where she was. She is hopelessly self-centered, she realizes. Today has nothing to do with her. Today is about Vivi and the people she loved and the people who loved her. Which leaves Amy out.

Poor Dennis. Amy tries to imagine how he must feel. Vivi broke up with him and then died. It’s two completely different kinds of pain, one layered on top of the other.

“How are you doing?” Amy asks.

Dennis shrugs.

“How are the kids?”

“I didn’t talk to the kids. They were up front with Savannah and your boyfriend.”

“Oh, Savannah,” Amy says. “She must be really upset.”

“She is. She gave one hell of a speech at the church.”