Page 56 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

The house was in the best shape they could manage, and after a few days on the market, the first real estate showing of the Whiting cottage was set to happen that Sunday afternoon. Then there were two more the following morning. If they didn’t sell right away, their father’s enormous debt would follow Virgie back to Washington. The house was listed for $175,000, a bit higher than similar ones, thanks to its pretty views and dockage along Edgartown Harbor, but after commissions and taxes, her mother wouldn’t entirely be in the clear. Sally Channing said she’d report back about the showings and share any feedback theyreceived about the house, particularly if it had to do with the presentation of their belongings.

Louisa had already dropped off the application for the loan at the Dukes County Savings Bank. Mr. Erwin called for her pay stubs and also to inquire if Aggie’s husband would cosign the loan. When Louisa had replied no, she asked if they should expect a denial. Mr. Erwin hedged. “Not yet, I have an idea. I’ll be in touch.”

That night, she and her eldest sister had whispered in the dark long after their mother’s light switched off. “Are you going to tell me why you were crying the other day?” Betsy asked.

Louisa sounded distant, even if her bed was a few feet away. “Work stuff. My boss promoted one of my colleagues.”

“Why don’t you go back, then? We can finish up here, and you can come back during Labor Day.”

Louisa flopped onto her back, sighing. “I can’t, Betts. Mom needs me here.”

“It’s such a Whiting trait, isn’t it? To assume the world won’t march on without you. I’ve been feeling the same.” It grew quiet between them after that, Betsy thinking that Louisa was right. All three sisters needed to remain until they figured out, once and for all, what would happen with the house. “I’m glad you’re staying,” Betsy admitted. For a second, she worried she was being too sappy, until Louisa rolled onto her side and whispered: “Thank you.”

On her lunch break the next day, Betsy called a midwife up island that was known as “the baby lady.” She was also the person you turned to when you were in trouble, and Betsy decided she would confide in the woman and ask about her options. She wasn’t committing either way until she had that conversation.

Somehow Betsy had managed to avoid being alone with her mother the last few days. Theirs was a disagreement hitched to invisible threads that Betsy knew had been fraying their connective edges since she was a teenager. As always, her mother worried that Betsy wouldn’t find herway, that she didn’t work hard enough at anything, that she gave up too easily and didn’t have clear goals. All it took was one pinched look from her mother that said,What is going on with you?and Betsy would feel her insides twist. Because there she was disappointing her mother all over again, disappointing her sisters too.

“We’ll talk aboutThe Awakeningon Sunday, a week from today,” Betsy told her mother and sisters that morning. “Does everyone have a copy?”

Aggie said she’d take one out of the library later, and whoever finished first would pass it on to Louisa, the speed reader of the family.

And there it was, a discussion about a book that had everything (and nothing) to do with their lives. They would commence the second annual feminist summer book club, something they hadn’t done since she was a teenager.

With her mother out to dinner with Wiley and Aggie at a barbecue with a shared acquaintance, Betsy found herself standing in the kitchen alone eating a bowl of cereal for dinner. Cleaning out the house these last few weeks had uncovered photographs that no one had looked at in years, and they’d tacked several to the front of the old Frigidaire: a photo of her mother in the hospital, a long-limbed newborn Aggie cradled in her arms. Her father rounding the sparkling point of Vineyard Haven with Edward Kennedy onSenatorial, her mother in a hot-pink caftan and big white glasses holding up a cocktail to whoever was taking the picture. Looking at them always made her parents feel like strangers, Betsy thought. She didn’t know them as individuals. She only knew them as her own.

Someone had stowed pictures in an old soup tureen in the dining room hutch, which was where Betsy had found the photo she stared at now. Her, Louisa, and Aggie posed in bathing suits on the back lawn, the picture snapped by her father just after he’d forced them to swim to the buoy and back the summer Betsy was ten. Her mother had shorter hair then, her arm around Betsy’s narrow shoulders, the two ofthem pressed together like it was the easiest thing in the world to be close. They felt like such a different family then, their paths seemingly aligned and destined to run alongside each other like rivers that would inevitably converge. They were girls whose parents expected them to act like ladies but fight like the toughest boys on the playground, and still, they’d had a softer side, where the sisters would sometimes snuggle together on the couch, reading under one blanket or taking turns making each other’s beds. The most magical days, Betsy thought, were the ones where her older sisters would invite her to tag along with them for ice cream cones in town or boy watching at the State Beach jetty. While Betsy knew that they bickered like crazy even back then, she also remembered thinking that she and her sisters would grow up to be best friends.

She thought of a conversation she’d had the day before with Wiley. After sailing, she’d gone to punch her time clock in the sailing shed on the beach, mentioning to him that she couldn’t believe James didn’t consider this place home anymore, but that she was relieved he’d gotten off the island. Wiley had placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, something her own father would have done. “You don’t move on from the past, Betts. You take it with you.”

His words had settled into her thinking overnight, and she was beginning to see the wisdom. She liked the idea that memories, whether soft or sharp, shaped us like the ocean shaped the contours of the beach. Distancing herself from her mom and sisters wouldn’t make for smoother sand along the shore; it would simply stir up the bottom, the emotions between them growing even murkier.

Betsy rinsed out her bowl in the sink. Soon someone very lucky would buy this sweet little cottage by the sea, and she and her sisters would be forced to carry the boxes in the attic into a moving van. It felt like a bad breakup, the kind that sends you to your bed feeling sorry for yourself, and Betsy wondered if you grieved a house like you did a person, if she was finally moving toward acceptance.

WithThe Awakeningtucked under her arm, Betsy climbed the stairs with a glass of chocolate milk. Passing her mother’s study, though, she heard a sniffle, then a hiccup. She tiptoed into the doorframe, then poked her head in. Louisa had her back turned, and Betsy stared at the back of her smooth, glossy hair.

“We’ve done enough, Lou. We can take a break now.” Betsy sat on the edge of the sofa; this time, she wouldn’t leave until her sister told her what was wrong.

“I just…” Louisa’s voice took a dive, and as soon as Betsy heard the quiver, she sat on the rug beside her sister.

“Is it your boss again?”

Louisa shook her head. “Seeing Daddy’s handwriting while going through his papers.” She cleared her throat. “I’m tossing anything irrelevant. Empty notebooks, anything too personal. I really need to get it done before more strange people trample through the house.”

“Can I help?” Betsy said, and Louisa nodded, moving around some of the files on the carpet to make room.

They worked in comfortable quiet, Betsy following Louisa’s instructions: pull files from the bottom drawer of the wooden filing cabinet onto her lap and riffle through the papers. Anything related to his job as senator went into the cardboard box, while everything else, unless deemed important, could be tossed. The first file Betsy opened was labeled: CORRESPONDENCE WITH THEWAROFFICE. Inside, there were several typed notes about a POW in Vietnam, a plea from her father to arrange for the release of the young man. She held it up to Louisa. “This letter, do you know if Dad ever helped him?”

Louisa scanned it. “Oh yes, you should put that correspondence aside. He told me once that he counted saving this POW as one of his greatest victories. We all went to a ceremony honoring this man—you probably don’t remember, maybe you were too young to care—I remember Dad squeezing Mom’s hand and saying, ‘This is why we do this.’?”

“He always had everyone’s best intentions at heart, even when it didn’t seem like he did.” Why did she always feel like she was convincing Louisa?

“Sure.” Louisa buried her face in another file.

The next file was labeled NIXON. Betsy flipped through handwritten notes about a phone call her father had had with the disgraced president. “Honestly, I don’t think I know the half of what he’s done. I mean, the good or even the bad.”

Louisa stacked a few typed pages and stapled them. “Passing the equal rights act for Blacks is by far the most important part of his legacy. At the last minute, eight Republican senators said they wouldn’t support it because they feared they would lose their elections back home if they voted to help Blacks. Dad went and sat with each of them, one-on-one, sometimes for hours. All but one of those senators changed their mind. I asked him once what he said to turn them.”

Betsy opened a large manilla envelope, this one without any label at all. Inside there was a single white letter. “Oh? What did he say?”

---