The Hotel Nantucket (89)
“Yes, that was the night I was there,” Lizbet says. “I saw Lyric at table three. She was crying.”
JJ clears his throat. “Speaking of that night, what’s up with you and Mario?”
Lizbet would love to say that things with her and Mario are hot and steamy but she just shrugs. “I ended it.”
JJ fiddles with the strap of Lizbet’s sundress, and she falls prey to memories of JJ zipping her dresses, clasping the hooks and eyes, fastening her necklaces. He could look at any outfit and tell her where they went the last time she wore it, what they ate, what they talked about, who they saw. His memory is his superpower, and it always made Lizbet feel like he was paying attention. He had loved her, that was the thing. She knew he loved her. So how the hell did Christina get to him?
“What happened?” JJ says.
“I wasn’t ready.” She waves at Leigh and points to her glass. (She’s like a woman in the throes of childbirth: I will take the epidural after all!) But this thought leads her exactly where she doesn’t want to go: her brief pregnancy, the unprecedented joy, the intimacy she felt with JJ when the (three!) of them were nestled in bed. She acknowledges that she wasn’t the same after she miscarried. She stopped having sex with JJ; she kept him at arm’s length, pushed him away. She’d felt so confused—she was mourning something she hadn’t realized she’d even wanted.
The drink arrives, delivering icy numbness. After a sip, she says, “I couldn’t let myself trust anyone again.”
JJ takes her face in his large, warm hands, pulls her in close like he’s going to kiss her, and starts talking, his voice nearly a chant, the words coming out in an almost unintelligible rush: I made a huge mistake, I messed up, it won’t happen again, I swear to God, Libby, I love you and only you and I always have and I always will. We both love a good comeback story, right, and I want to be the best comeback of all, I will do anything on earth if you just please, please marry me, be my wife, we will try again for children or we will adopt or we’ll do both, life is a crazy adventure, it’s a road trip, I don’t want any other woman in the passenger seat or in my bed but you, Lizbet Keaton. Please. Please listen to me. I love you.
The words road trip remind Lizbet of how, when they were driving to upstate New York to see JJ’s parents or halfway across the country to Minnetonka to see hers and JJ was at the wheel, he would turn the radio down so Lizbet could sleep (she, meanwhile, always kept the radio blaring while she was driving). She hears the words in my bed and thinks about how JJ liked to leave a bed unmade—the pillows askew, the comforter spiraled into a double helix—but Lizbet couldn’t stand it and so, for fifteen years, JJ made the bed properly, covers drawn tight, pillows stacked.
He loved her. Where is she ever going to find someone who loves her like that again?
She draws the breath of surrender, ready to say, Okay, fine, I give up, you win, I’ll come back. But then, over JJ’s shoulder, she sees the front door to the restaurant open and a woman walk in. Lizbet blinks. It’s Yolanda. Lizbet won’t be able to handle it if Mario follows Yolanda in. But the person who comes in behind Yolanda is another woman. It’s Beatriz.
Huh, Lizbet thinks.
They’re at the lectern, talking with Orla, the proprietor of Proprietors. They’re all laughing. Beatriz puts an arm around Yolanda and kisses her cheek. Orla plucks two menus off the lectern and leads Yolanda and Beatriz upstairs to the second-floor dining room, and as they ascend the stairs, Yolanda and Beatriz are holding hands.
Holding hands? And then it clicks.
You know why Yolanda is always in the kitchen, right? Zeke said.
And why she was always with the Blue Bar staff on Tuesdays and why she asked for Tuesdays off in the first place and why Mario was so openly affectionate with Yolanda. It occurs to Lizbet that maybe the “thing” Yolanda needed Mario’s help with was the surprise the kitchen staff arranged for Beatriz’s birthday: they all chipped in and flew Beatriz’s mother from Mexico City to Nantucket.
“Are you okay?” JJ asks, following Lizbet’s gaze over his shoulder.
The reason Yolanda is always hanging out in the kitchen isn’t Mario; it’s Beatriz. “Take my trout home,” she says. “I have to go.”
She hurries down the brick sidewalks of India to Water Street, moving as fast as she can in her wedges, thinking, It’s Tuesday, his day off, he’ll be out somewhere or entertaining another woman; he’s Mario freaking Subiaco, for God’s sake. But Lizbet keeps going. She takes a left down the white-shell path behind Old North Wharf and sees Mario’s silver truck.
He’s home.
This nearly propels Lizbet back to Proprietors, back to JJ and safety. (It’s ludicrous that she considers JJ safe after what he did to her; familiar might be a better word.) But every inspirational meme that Lizbet has stuffed inside her hollow places like a girl desperately padding her bra tells her to move forward.
Not on fighting the old.
But on building the new.
She strides out the long dock without wobbling or faltering and when she reaches the door, she takes a breath and acknowledges that this could be a very awkward moment.
But she knocks anyway.
There are footsteps, then a pause, and then Mario opens the door. He’s wearing gym shorts, a gray T-shirt, his White Sox cap on backward. He’s so handsome that Lizbet steadies herself against the shingled wall of the cottage. She peers over his shoulder. There’s a beer on the table, an open pizza box, one plate.