Page 40 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

“What time?” There were still breakfast dishes in the sink and laundry drying on a line outside. Louisa was having a sleepover with one of the Post girls, and Betsy and James had begged to stay up and catch fireflies.

“His plane will land at six thirty, ma’am. Guests will arrive at seven. Sorry, Mrs. Whiting, for the trouble, he asked me to set this up at the last minute.”

“It’s okay, dear. You are only doing your job.” She’d been unable to hide the irritation in her voice. Hanging up, she immediately dialed Pamela Sunday to see if she could come and help cook. An hour later, Pamela arrived in a fraying pea-green housedress with orange flowers, stubbing out a cigarette on the front steps when Virgie answered the door. She agreed to prepare a crudités platter, reheat New England clam chowder Virgie would fetch from the local chowder house, and prepare steak Diane with green beans. This would give Virgie time to finish cleaning.

At six thirty, Virgie, wearing a lace sheath with daisies at the neckline, called her three daughters into the living room, sending James home; they’d been pouting about the change of plans all day, even if Betsy hadn’t stopped talking about all of the things she couldn’t wait toshow her father. Already, Aggie was furious because she’d had to cancel plans to see a movie, and Louisa and her boy-crazy friend, Sylvie Post, would be here for the duration of the dinner party.

“You will need to stay upstairs until our guests leave. Louisa, you and Sylvie can have your room, and Aggie, you and Betsy should read or play a game in Betsy’s bedroom. Don’t come down unless you must, and if you do, please greet our guests politely.”

“You already told us this, Mom.” Louisa smoothed her pleated skirt. “Can we go now?”

“Remember, keep your voices down. These are important friends of your father’s, and we don’t want them to think we’re a bunch of hooligans.”

Aggie raised her hand, her face stone-cold. “I’m just curious, Mom. Why do we care so much what people think of us?”

Virgie inhaled an impatient breath, preparing to offer up her canned response to this question. Dad is a public servant. He’s chosen by voters. For a voter to choose you, they must trust you, and trust starts with the home. If a man cannot run a household, then how can he run a country? Instead, she said: “Hush. Now go find something to do.”

They were finished with the crudités platter, everyone already draining their first glass of wine, and Charlie hadn’t arrived. Virgie had covered nearly every topic she could think of with India and Russell Knight, while slipping into the kitchen to check on Pamela, who was waiting to reheat the soup. The Knights were Washingtonians by way of London, India retaining her British accent, and thus far, they’d spoken about a recent trip they took to Acadia National Park in Maine. They discussed their young children, who were seven and nine, and the sleepaway camp they attended in the Adirondacks. Virgie knew that the couple recently rented a dairy farm in rural Chilmark, and Russell would travel back and forth in summer between the British Embassy in Washington,where he was the ambassador, and the island. That had been a surprise. An ambassador from England. It was only recently that more political types had started visiting the island, thanks to the Kennedys owning property nearby in Cape Cod, and still, it surprised Virgie how politically connected the summer population was beginning to feel.

Russell had a crown of dark hair parted to one side. He glanced at his watch. “Any update about the senator?”

Virgie breezed into the kitchen to get the bottle of wine, pretending that she didn’t hear some kind of scuffle upstairs in one of the bedrooms. “Perhaps there was some air traffic,” she said, smiling at the couple when she glided back in the living room. “Perhaps we could take a walk down to the dock and I’ll show you Charlie’s sailboat.”

Everyone seemed relieved to leave the formality of the dining room. As the women’s heels click-clacked down the slats, Virgie tried to keep up a lively commentary about various spots on the island they must visit. The couple explained they’d chosen the farm since India had grown up summering in the Cotswolds; she wanted her boys to be able to roam free in summer like she had. “Catch grasshoppers with their hands and such.” India’s hand went to her garnet earrings. “I’m not typically this fancy.”

Virgie chuckled at the woman’s long satin dress and strappy sandals. “Me neither. I despise wearing heels or anything with a zipper up the back in summer.”

When Russell climbed onto the boat to look around, India turned to Virgie. A piece of her dark hair fell from her loose waves. “I love your Dear Virgie column,” India said, sipping her wine. “The newspaper announced a replacement last week. Did they cancel you, or did you choose to walk away?”

“I’m just taking a break.” It still hurt to say it.

“Oh, good, because I loved what you were doing in the column; your advice was so liberating. There’s a hunger for that kind of writing these days. One of my friends recently applied for a job at anewspaper in Philadelphia and she was told the newsroom was no place for a woman. She did talk them into hiring her for the overnight shift, but don’t you see? You’re alreadyin the newsroom.”

“I’m only giving relationship advice. Editors only let women cover fashion and gardening, maybe the odd feature on relationships.”

India turned her back so her husband couldn’t hear. “Your advice was empowering and rebellious. All the mums at my son’s school were talking about the parent conference ideas.” India paused. “You need to keep going.”

If India had perceived that Virgie’s column had been a subversive way to instill women with feminist ideology, then maybe it had been. Why was that a problem for Charlie? Isn’t that what they’d stood for: helping the disenfranchised have a voice. “Thank you. I appreciate the support. Do you work?”

Virgie realized that she’d written India off as an ambassador’s wife. It was rude and went against everything Virgie believed.

“Yes, I worked with a woman barrister with ties to Parliament. We lobbied for years on getting women access to the Pill in the UK, and we got it passed too. Well, for married women, but we still need all women to be able to buy it. I’ve had to pull back on my influence, since Russell was named ambassador this year. It’s all too political, but I have a like-minded circle in Washington. We should gather a group of women on the island. As you know, there are a few rather influential people here, of both sexes.”

“I would like that very much.” Virgie thought she heard a car and looked up to see if it was Charlie, but it wasn’t. “I wrote a Dear Virgie column devoted to the Pill, you know, whether a mother should talk to her eighteen-year-old daughter about it. Caused quite the stir.”

“I saw that. See, you were onto something, something bigger than relationship advice. Because you weren’t forming a commission or fighting for equal pay, like Betty Friedan, which is critical too. You were quietly making a difference by shifting public opinion. Yourcolumn was beginning to normalize conversations that no one is certain it’s okay to talk about.”

“I would like to shout more in that column.” Virgie touched the bracelet on her wrist, a delicate gold chain with a tiny ruby charm; her father had bought it for her mother for her thirty-fifth birthday, but then she’d stopped going to her meetings and as a form of punishment, he’d given the bracelet to Virgie. She wore it as a reminder of her mother’s longing to get better and her father’s harsh judgments.

India looked at her with empathy, and for a moment, Virgie wondered if she could see the pain that sat like a well inside her own heart, so well-hidden she barely let it surface.

“We all would like to yell, and there are women in Washington yelling for us,” India said, with a gentle nod of her head. “But that’s not always the answer. Sometimes we get further with a whisper.”

For a moment, Virgie fell still, the two of them nodding at the truth of her sentiment: a woman could holler, but not too loud or no one would listen. Perhaps every time Charlie had read her words, he’d felt as though she was hollering at him. How could she explain you could love a man fully and still feel angry with him for slighting you? An upside-down feeling overtook her; these last few weeks on the island she’d tricked herself into believing she was in control. But this dinner party, the sense that everything in her life needed to halt on account of Charlie, reminded her that she’d accomplished nothing. She could stand on the tallest mountain in the world and hold a sign reading IDEMAND TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. The only thing that would matter was whether Charlie allowed her to stand there.

A light flashed in the upstairs bedroom, and a ruckus carried through the open windows, children laughing and jumping about on the floorboards. Forcing a smile, Virgie excused herself and raced inside to where Pamela stirred the soup. “Should I serve now?” The woman fiddled with the corner of her eyelet-trimmed apron with her other hand, glancing outside.

“No, not yet.” Virgie kicked off her heels and took the crooked steps two at a time. She pushed open the door of Louisa’s bedroom, but she and her friend Sylvia were quietly listening to records. In Betsy’s bedroom, it was another story. Attempting to separate themselves from each other, her daughters hung sheets to isolate one half of the bedroom from the other. One of the sheets was balanced on a lamp, which had come crashing to the ground. James poked his head out from under the bed.

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