Page 44 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Louisa turned her head away from them, but Virgie detected the slightest of smiles. Maybe things had finally thawed between her and Charlie; he had taken her to the soda fountain for a milkshake yesterday, even if Louisa’s patience still ran thin with her father.

“That’s the spirit,” Virgie said, a competitive ferocity taking hold of her as well. “Let’s pummel each other.”

Charlie angled his body in the direction of the lighthouse. “Ready, Whiting girls. GO!”

There was the sound of five bodies splashing into the cool water, followed by the pull of their arms and the suction of their collective breathing. Virgie swam hard, stopping after a few minutes to check on Betsy, all her daughters hauling forward. Halfway to the buoy, Betsy yelled for help, and Louisa swam right by her, ignoring her like she was in an Olympic race with Aggie and Charlie.

“Mommy, the life preserver, it’s heavy. Can I take it off?” Betsy treaded water, her lips blue and trembling.

Virgie treaded beside her; what was the point of competition if someone was going to get hurt? That was the part Charlie forgot sometimes. “I’ll take the life vest. We’ll swim together.”

She and Betsy swam in sync, Virgie slowing her stride; it wasn’t worth trying to win against Charlie now. Her youngest had more stamina than she would have thought, and still, minutes from the buoy, the other three shot past them on their way back. On an inhale, Louisa glimpsed Aggie ahead, and she kicked her feet with a vengeance.

Betsy panted, steadying her hand against the bottom of the buoy to rest. “Do you think Louisa could have swum this when she was ten?”

Virgie wiped the water off her face, wishing that Betsy would stop comparing herself to her older sisters. Virgie hoped she didn’t spend alifetime figuring out she was her own person. “Louisa can barely catch a ball with the boys in gym.”

Betsy laughed, water specks like crystals on her eyelashes. Her chest was heaving. “I prefer to play with boys. Is that because I’m more athletic?”

“Maybe,” Virgie found herself saying, although Betsy had taken four years of tennis and still couldn’t serve properly. “Someday when you get older, you’re going to see that playing with boys helped you navigate relationships with men. You will learn how to make things seem like their idea, even if it is entirely your own.”

“So I’ll be a good wife?”

“You’ll be a good human.” A fish nipped at Virgie’s foot, an unsettling feeling that made Virgie want to get swimming again. “I know that you and James are good friends, but there’s so much more to life than falling in love.”

“I’m not in love with James!”

“Of course you’re not, but it’s okay if you secretly are. It’s how Daddy and I had started out—close friends who fell in love.”

Once again, mother and daughter swam in sync, slow and steady. As Virgie watched her daughter push through her fatigue, determined to finish, she was filled with so much hope for Betsy’s future. She was pushing through the current, through the cold, through the discomfort.

Before Charlie left that evening, they ate dinner as a family, the water lapping a deep, vibrant blue. Hamburgers and corn on the cob. Crisp chardonnay.

Freshly showered, her husband came downstairs smelling of aftershave, his dark hair pushed back from his golden tan.

“What are you girls going to do this week?” he said, after asking Virgie where she got the corn; it was the sweetest they’d had yet this summer.

Virgie relaxed into her glass of wine, relieved that he’d made peace with her desire to remain on the island without him. Her mind glazed over with victory, and she lost track of the conversation, the girls piping in with upcoming plans of a lifeguarding demonstration and an art fair.

The citronella candle flickered, a stinging sweet smell puncturing the salt air.

Charlie leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. “It was so entertaining swimming with you girls today. You girls competed like Olympians.” Charlie’s smile was always so big and hearty, with the kind of shine that could feel like it was meant only for you.

They all giggled. Betsy ran inside and raced out with scissors, paper, and colored pencils, drawing gold and silver medals to cut out in an impromptu awards ceremony. Charlie played along, handing them out while crossing his eyes and talking like a goofy television announcer, calling Louisa “dogged but most ready to get out of the water”; Aggie, “speedy and determined to make waves”; and Betsy, “small, mighty,” then he paused for dramatic impact like the comedian Bob Hope, “and diving into the case of why the race isn’t fair. It’s never fair.”

After a round of goofy applause, Betsy falling into her father, holding her tummy with laughter, the girls yelled over one another, playfully appealing their designations. The children moved over to the grass, Aggie and Betsy doing cartwheels while competing to come up with the best swimming pun.

Virgie sensed Charlie staring at her. “This was fun,” he said. “Way more fun than what I’ve been doing.”

They clinked wineglasses in what felt like a celebration of the perfect summer night. Virgie’s mind drifted to her article, the one she planned to ask Wiley to publish. How would her husband’s adoration shift once he saw her words printed in a big city newspaper?

How much would he let her push—how much would he try to pull her back?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Three days after Charlie left, Virgie finished typing “Flying Lessons” while Aggie and Betsy were at sailing, reading it over to check for errors. It needed a second set of eyes, and while she planned to ask India Knight to read it—she and the woman had talked on the phone yesterday about forming a women’s political group on the island—Virgie wanted her eldest daughter to read it first. If the words resonated with Louisa, then the article would resonate with other young women. Virgie couldn’t help but fantasize that her daughter would admire her for not being afraid to educate young women on the realities of their burgeoning selves. Because it wasn’t enough to help women like Pamela Sunday by giving her a job; Virgie wanted to help as many women as possible see that it wasn’t just their lives that mattered, but the ways in which they lived them. Each decision—to attend college or not, to quit a job or not, to persevere in a man’s field or not, to have a child or not—added up to a belief system. It seemed too many women put the car in drive and accepted whatever they drove past. Herself included.

This morning, with puddles still lining the streets from last night’s rain, Virgie decided she would surprise her eldest daughter at thebookshop with her article—and mint-flavored iced tea. A small treat she could enjoy on her twenty-minute break. Stirring in a lemon slice and sealing the mason jar with a wax cover and elastic, Virgie glanced in the mirror on her way out. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail too casual for Washington, her black clamdiggers and Keds giving her a youthful edge. The lace dress she wore the night they hosted the Knights had been put in a bag with other dresses she thought Pamela Sunday might like for church or a future job. One never knew what direction life would take you.

---