Page 43 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

“Stifling rules.” Virgie sniffed. “I want them to be confident. I want them to learn to live on their own terms. Why does that make you so afraid?”

“Because everyone is watching us.” Charlie was resolute, his speech slowing to make clear she should listen closely. “I want to run for governor, maybe president. I must consider how we’re seen. How all of us are portrayed.”

Listening to him was like watching the harbor at low tide, the gunky shells and muddy sand creeping out from the pretty blue water. Charlie was a moderate Democrat, but he believed in the Equal Pay Act. He’d supported the Freedom Riders. He’d scoffed at separate water fountains for Blacks and whites. How would his daughters spending time with colored children reshape him in the public image?

“You’re losing sight of who you are,” Virgie whisper-yelled; she didn’t want the girls to hear. “When you pander to voters like this, they can sense it. What happened to True Charlie? The Charlie that speaks only the truth. Remember him?”

“I’m still true. You know that I am.” He smiled at the memory. It was a nickname given to him the year he gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention; people still wore True Charlie buttons when they came to his political rallies. “But a man’s home is different from a man’s work, and times are different. There are video cameras following us now, not just reporters with steno pads. My personal life needs a water-tight seal. There can’t be anything, not a single thing, to distract from my policies.”

“They’re having the time of their lives, Charlie. You tell me how their summer should be different.”

“Sailing is good. Clamming. They can swim and attend the Ag Fair on each other’s arms. Put them in modest one-pieces on the beach, be sure they’re spending time with other educated young women their age.”

“And what if they don’t want that? What if they want to sail in a bikini?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, impatient. “They don’t know what they want. They’re kids. Girls.”

The Ladies Tea, his daughters, her writings: it all needed to suit his needs. She stared off at Chappaquiddick, the way some houses were tucked into the tree line, hidden. “The tea is set for the eighteenth, and don’t expect talk of campaign issues. I’m going to talk about our girls. I’m going to talk about what’s important to women.”

He studied her profile. “Everyone loves a good family story, assuming that’s what you mean.”

“Sure, dear. A family story.” Virgie thought of the article she’d been working on. It was like a Fireside Chat for young women. It was her whisper, her battle cry. “I’ll tell a very good family story.”

After midnight, after the girls were asleep, Charlie came into bed, sliding his arm around her. She turned over to face him, her eyes rising to meet his in the moonlight. His voice, an apology. “Please come back to me, Virgie. We can disagree, but it doesn’t mean you ever need to leave for good.”

The buoy bell rocked with the waves. Virgie loped her arms around his neck. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be married to someone who had a mother to call, a brother to play golf with, a sister to anchor you to something more than your wife.

Her frustration from earlier remained fresh, and still, her heart grew tender. He was right; they could disagree and remain close. Shekissed him, feeling the neediness in how he kissed her back. After a few moments, she pulled away, whispering: “I’m right here.”

The following afternoon, Charlie gathered their daughters on the patio after he returned from a round of golf with a friend. His ferry left that evening after dinner, and she wondered if they would ever discuss the elephant in the room, how she wasn’t returning to Washington with him. They’d gone about the rest of their day in the passive-aggressive manner of a happy couple subtly avoiding serious topics, talking casually about things like the striped bass derby, a shared craving for chowder at Nancy’s, an island clam bar. On the patio, he stood in his bathing trunks and flip-flops, the girls sitting on the grass beside him, their knees pulled into their chests.

Virgie was too curious not to wander over and sit in a nearby Adirondack chair, close enough that she could hear what he was saying, but not so close that she couldn’t pretend to read her book.

Charlie had the muscular legs of a soccer player, even if he hadn’t played since his coed days. He pushed his wide hands into his shorts’ pockets. “You see that buoy out there?” he said. A half mile, maybe less, out in the harbor was a red chiming one; the sound of it was the soundtrack to their island life. “You’ve seen me swim back and forth from that buoy many times. Well, your mother thinks I don’t take you seriously because you are girls. So we’ll prove her wrong. If I had boys, I would demand that they swim with me, so now I’m demanding the same thing of you.”

Louisa glared at her mother, which made Virgie snap-shut the novel she’d been rereading,The Awakeningby Kate Chopin; she planned to make each of her girls read this feminist classic.

“Don’t blame me for your father’s cockamamie plans,” Virgie said. She knew what Charlie was doing in suggesting the endurance swim. This was his apology; he wouldn’t say sorry, he’d show it, by proving toVirgie that the girls could be free and strong and empowered without doing all the things he’d disavowed.

Well, two could play this game. “I’m in too,” she said, pulling off her sundress to reveal a conservative navy-blue one-piece. She’d swum to the same buoy more than a hundred times in her lifetime, at least a dozen times with Charlie, who would insist she time him so he could beat his score.

“Good.” Charlie’s smile turned up; his eyes shining. He’d mistaken her acceptance as submission.

She steeled her voice. “Let’s show him, girls, that we can be as hardheaded when it comes to getting what we want.” No matter what he said, Virgie wouldn’t enforce Charlie’s paranoid rules about the children’s friends or insist on a formality for their lives in case a reporter glimpsed them having fun, wearing a bikini, or playing with a colored child.

It was a long way out there, and she imagined Betsy struggling halfway. “I think Betsy should drag a buoy behind her, just in case,” Virgie said.

Betsy stomped her bare foot on the grass. “It will slow me down. I can swim just as good as Louisa.”

The sea would chill them to their bones this time of year. “This isn’t about you and Louisa; this is about you being able to make it.”

Charlie agreed about the buoy, and Betsy huffed into diving position at the end of the dock, a Styrofoam bullet strapped to her back. “We’re not trying to get the best time,” Charlie said, even though they were. “What’s important, girls, is that you finish.”

“I do not want to do this.” Louisa had tucked her hair into a swimming cap.

Charlie smiled at her like she’d delivered a round of applause. “Oh, Louisa. You’re our leader. We’re all trying to keep up with you. Don’t let us down.”

“Besides, you’re finally getting Daddy’s attention.” Aggie held her hands over her head in diving stance. “Enjoy it. I’m going to cream her, Dad.”

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