Girls of Summer(10)

“Start your own shop,” Rachel said calmly.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” She’d been divorced from Erich for years, and yet the insecurity he had somehow subtly slipped into her mind still ruled her thoughts, her heart, her very self. When she looked in the mirror or sat at her computer, she was afraid she didn’t look right, couldn’t think right.

“Lisa. You are raising two fine children who are almost off to college. They will have lives of their own. Your work in the shop has proven you know what women want. Vesta’s customers and your customers will keep coming. They know you and they respect your taste. By now, you know all about the financial side of the business as well as the public side. You can do this. You really can.”

“I really can,” Lisa repeated like a mantra. Rachel believed in her, and that made Lisa believe she could do this.

And she discovered that she really could.

With huge helpings of encouragement from Rachel and her other friends, Lisa negotiated with the owner of the building to take over the rent, and changed the name of the shop to Sail, which was very Nantucket and had all the letters of Lisa’s name plus a hint of the enticing word sale. She held a grand champagne opening right in the middle of July and started off with a whopping profit. She hired college girls to help her in the summer, and after a few months of driving herself insane, she hired an accountant to do the books, because she did know how to keep the books, but she couldn’t be in two places at one time. She was at her best buying clothes and matching them to her customers, a talent that had started when she was a child, making outfits for her dolls.

   Soon she was a successful businesswoman, just like all the whaling wives who had run Petticoat Row back when Nantucket was a whaling town.

At the same time, Juliet and Theo were in high school, and their bodies developed, and their personalities changed. They were often sarcastic, secretive, and cranky. Juliet was tight with her clique of girlfriends and she was either with them or on the phone with them, but she still made good grades and was usually good-natured.

Theo was not so easy. His best friend from preschool, Atticus Barnes, had been a good, smart, levelheaded kid, and Lisa liked having him around the house. But when the boys started ninth grade, Atticus stopped coming around so often, and when he did, he was sullen and preoccupied. Rumors went around that Atticus was doing pot and maybe more. Lisa worried that he would be a bad influence on Theo, and in a way, she was right.

For years, even though he thought he was hiding it, Theo had a crush on Beth Whitney, a pretty girl whose mother had died when Beth was three. Of course—it was always the way of things, wasn’t it?—Beth and Atticus started going together. Damn, Lisa thought at first, but later, after chatting with other mothers in the grocery store and during football games, she changed her mind. The other mothers thought it was wonderful that Atticus had a girlfriend. Now he would cheer up.

But Atticus didn’t cheer up. The summer he was seventeen, he committed suicide with an overdose of OxyContin. His parents found a letter on his desk at home, telling them he couldn’t go on. Telling them where they could find him, at a lonely spot on the moors. Telling them he was always cold. Asking them to bury him in his down comforter.

   It was a terrible time for Paula and Ed Barnes, for Theo, for Beth, and for the entire community. At the celebration of Atticus’s life, Lisa had approached Mack Whitney, Beth’s father. She didn’t know him well. He was ten years younger than she was, a well-liked island man who had married his high school sweetheart, Marla. A carpenter who specialized in renovating older houses, he had a sterling reputation for honesty and excellent work. When they were only twenty-one, Marla gave birth to a daughter, the lovely Beth. Three years later, cancer took Marla’s life and left Mack a widower.

Now this, the suicide of the boy Beth was going with.

Lisa wanted to say something to Mack, but words were so hollow. “Mack. I just wanted to say hello. This is so sad. I don’t know if you know, but Theo was a good friend of Atticus and of Beth.”

“Yes,” Mack replied, staring straight ahead. “Yes, I knew that. The three were over at our house a lot. Atticus could be really funny.”

“I know,” Lisa agreed. She almost felt the sorrow steaming off the tall, broad-shouldered man beside her, and she wondered how much sadness he could carry. First his wife, and now his daughter’s boyfriend. She had never gotten to know Mack, partly because she was busy with her shop, but also because she knew how many women his age, and younger, single and divorced, had tried to help him after Marla died. Lisa’s friend Rachel, who knew everyone and everything, had laughed about the casserole brigade that had swarmed around Mack that first year. No woman had seemed to interest him, and as the years passed, Mack developed the reputation of a man who was obsessed with his work. He did show up for any function involving his daughter, and Beth got good grades in school, was always well dressed, and appeared to be a happy, normal girl.

   Now and then a rumor would speed around the gossip circuit like an electrical flash that Mack had been sighted in a restaurant with some summer woman, but another sighting with the same woman never occurred. The few times Lisa had run into him, he had seemed content, but reserved.

“I just want you to know that Beth is welcome at our house, anytime.”

“That would be great, Lisa,” Mack said. “Beth likes Theo a lot, and she worships Juliet.”