Golden Girl(59)

“Your song.”

“The one I wrote in high school for Vivi. I just finished the book last night and, wow, so much of what she wrote was based on what really happened with us.”

“I haven’t read the book yet,” Willa admits.

“I was hoping I could talk to you about it.”

Isn’t that what we’re doing now? Willa wonders.

“I have vacation time saved up so I was thinking about driving up there, maybe week after next? I’ll stay in Hyannis at the Holiday Inn, that’s the company I work for. Then I’ll take the ferry over to meet you.”

“You want to come here?” Willa says. “To Nantucket?”

“I have pictures of your mom and me,” Brett says. “I pulled them up from the depths of my trunk and…we look so young. I’d like to show them to you.”

Willa isn’t sure what to say to this guy. He seems legit, and maybe he was Vivi’s boyfriend in high school in Parma, Ohio. It was a time in her life that Vivi almost never talked about. It was as though Vivi’s personal history started her first week at Duke, when she met Savannah. Everything before that is, literally, sketchy—line drawings without any color or details filled in. “I have a place you can stay on Nantucket if you want to make it a real vacation and explore the island a bit.” She clamps her mouth shut, trying to imagine what Rip will say when she tells him she’s invited a complete stranger weirdo from Vivi’s Facebook page to stay in their house on Quaker Road.

“The Holiday Inn will be fine,” Brett says. “I’m used to it. So how about two weeks from tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Willa says. She feels strangely excited. She’s getting back a part of Vivi that she hadn’t even known existed. “That sounds great. Keep me posted on your travel plans and I’ll come pick you up from the boat.”

“You got it,” Brett Caspian says. “Thank you for calling me, Willa. It’ll be such an honor to meet you. One of Vivi’s kids. It said on Wikipedia that she has three?”

“Yes. I have a sister and a brother.”

“I remember her saying she wanted five kids. And she was going to name them after her favorite authors.” He pauses. “Are you named after an author?”

“Oh!” Willa says. “Yes, I’m named after Willa Cather. And my sister and brother are named for authors too.”

“See there?” Brett says. “How could I know that if I weren’t for real?”

This is exciting, Willa thinks. Brett Caspian will come and he will tell me Vivi’s secret history.





Vivi




Thank goodness she saved her nudges!

“Martha!” Vivi cries out. She goes to the green door but she’s too afraid to touch it. What if Martha takes away a precious week of viewing? Vivi throws herself across the velvet chaise and stares up at the pattern of light that the Moroccan chandelier casts on the ceiling. Normally, this calms her, but not today.

A second later, Martha materializes. She picks an orange off the dwarf tree and takes a seat on the white enamel bean-shaped coffee table with her clipboard on her lap. A peek of scarf is visible at the top of her muumuu. “What is it, Vivian?”

“I can’t let Brett Caspian go to Nantucket. I have to use one of my nudges.”

Martha puts on her drugstore reading glasses and checks her clipboard. “I would strongly advise against that.”

“Well, sorry, not sorry, I’m doing it,” Vivi says.

Very slowly, Martha peels the orange; the scent is sublime and Vivi can see the juicy flesh of the orange as Martha pulls apart the segments. The color is like stained glass, like a jewel. The odd thing is that Vivi tried to eat one of the oranges herself, but when she peeled it, it was desiccated, practically dust. Martha knows how things work, and Vivi doesn’t. It isn’t fair.

“I’m making an executive decision on this one,” Martha says. She pops a succulent orange segment into her mouth but does not offer one to Vivi. “He’s coming.”



Brett Caspian, coming to Nantucket? Meeting her kids? Eeeeeeee!

There must be a reason Martha made an executive decision. “You’re going to have to learn to trust me,” Martha had said at the beginning.

Okay, Vivi thinks with great reluctance. I’ll trust you.

Vivi is flattered that Brett remembers so much about her. He remembers that she wanted to have five kids and name them after her favorite authors!



That night, while everyone is sleeping, Vivi travels back two decades.

It’s February on Nantucket—raw and wet with winds that sound like a chain saw. Vivi and JP have two daughters: Willa (named for Willa Cather) and Carson (named for Carson McCullers; everyone mistakes her for a boy).

Vivi used to think that she wanted five children. She was so naive! She’s hanging on to her sanity now only because Willa, at three, is so mature that she will sit in her small rocking chair alongside Vivi’s bigger rocking chair and “read” her picture books while Vivi nurses the baby, and she will put headphones on and listen to her baby Spanish tapes while the baby cries.

Twenty-three hours a day, the baby is either nursing or crying.

The only hour that the baby will sleep soundly is the hour after JP comes home from work at Island Fog Real Estate. Carson’s cheek hits her father’s shoulder and she instantly conks out. This, at least, gives Vivi a chance to make dinner.