Golden Girl(39)
Vivi stopped by so often because, Willa realized tearfully, the two of them had become friends. They’d emerged out of the dark, confusing tunnel-maze of mother-daughter relationships to discover that they liked each other and had fun hanging out. Vivi hadn’t enjoyed a friendship with her own mother at all; they remained in the maze until Nancy Howe died, during Vivi’s first winter on Nantucket.
Vivi admitted to Willa recently that she had been worried when she gave birth to a girl because her own relationship with her mother had been so unpleasant.
“Then I realized I didn’t have to do things the way my mother did them. I could become the mother I wish I’d had.” Vivi laughed. “Your father and I quickly figured out that you were going to raise us rather than the other way around.”
Yes, much has been made of “the way Willa is”—a super-achiever, responsible, reliable, mature, a leader. She’s the youngest assistant director the Nantucket Historical Association has ever had and she will take over there in five years when the present director retires. She’ll be executive director before she turns thirty.
Or she might leave the NHA once she gets pregnant and work on her pet project, a biography of Anna Gardner, a Nantucket abolitionist who’d organized three antislavery conventions in the early 1840s (Frederick Douglass spoke at all three).
In their conversations at the kitchen island—Willa drinking herbal tea and Vivi drinking tequila over ice (Willa kept a bottle of Casa Dragones on hand just for her mother), they would talk about what path Willa’s life might take. Vivi was of the opinion that Willa could have it all—she could work at the NHA for thirty-five years and leave her stamp on the historical legacy of the island and she could write the biographies of Anna Gardner, Eunice Ross, and any other remarkable (and overlooked) Nantucket woman that she wanted to. She could ask for a sabbatical or she could set up flex time.
“What about kids?” Willa said. She wanted five, four at the very least, but every time she said this, Vivi groaned and said she’d feel differently about having five after the first one was born.
“You’ll get a nanny,” Vivi said. “And unlike me, you’ll use your time to write. I used the times when I had babysitters to clean or take a nap. Kids are hard, Willie, I won’t lie.” Willa can see her mother clearly: her stylish dark pixie cut, her brown eyes, the freckles across her nose, her dangly earrings. She wore clothes that were meant for a person twenty years younger but that looked good on Vivi—tight white T-shirts, skinny jeans, suede high-heeled boots. Willa was hesitant to use the word beautiful to describe her mother because it didn’t quite fit. She was cute, spunky, alive. And she had near-perfect instincts about people. If her mother believed Willa could do it all, then it was so.
Where does Willa see herself five years from now, at age twenty-nine?
She is the executive director of the NHA and she has just published her biography of Anna Gardner to great critical acclaim (even her fantasy does not include the book becoming a commercial success). She has three children: Charles Evan Bonham III (Charlie), age five, Lucinda Vivian (Lucy), age four and a half, and Edward William (Teddy), age three. Charlie is in kindergarten and the other two go to Montessori preschool, leaving Willa free to split her days between work on NHA business and her second book, which is about Eunice Ross, the young Black woman who petitioned for entry into Nantucket High School in 1847, nearly a century before Brown v. Board of Education. She picks the kids up from school and fixes them a snack of freshly baked banana bread, then they have quiet time doing puzzles and reading while Willa makes dinner. Tonight, it’s grilled steak tips, parmesan fondant potatoes, pan-roasted asparagus, a crisp green salad, and popovers, and for dessert, a strawberry-rhubarb galette. Rip comes home from work and changes into the soft gray Amherst T-shirt that Willa loves. He kisses Willa long and deep, the way he used to when they were in junior high, then he puts his finger to her lips and says, “We’ll finish that later.” After dinner, Rip gives the kids a bath, puts them in their pajamas, and supervises teeth-brushing while Willa cleans the kitchen, makes lunches for the following day, and gets the dishwasher humming. Then she goes in to read to the kids—three books per night, chosen by theme. Tonight’s theme is pigs: If You Give a Pig a Pancake, Olivia Saves the Circus, and Toot and Puddle.
After the children are tucked in and on their way to dreamland, Willa and Rip reunite in front of the TV, Willa in a silk nightie because she’s lost all the baby weight and then some (she gets up before dawn to ride her Peloton on Tuesdays and Thursdays; that’s all it takes!). Rip cracks open a beer and pours Willa a glass of the Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. They start watching the first episode of the hot new show on Peacock, but before they can figure out who the main characters are, they’re all over each other on the sofa, and the silent furtiveness of it (they can’t wake the children!) makes it just as hot as the sex used to be in high school when they were under a blanket on the sofa in Rip’s basement rec room.
After that, sweaty and spent, they split a piece of the strawberry-rhubarb galette dolloped with freshly whipped cream and then decide that sleep is more important than finishing the show. They head to the bedroom; Willa picks up the novel on her nightstand, and Rip is snoring before she turns the page.
When Willa reaches up to turn off the light, she feels a tiny burst of light and energy inside of her, and she knows she’s pregnant again.