Page 77 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

“We know about the house on Nantucket, Mom.” Betsy pulled her father’s letter out of her denim shorts pocket and handed it to her mother, giving her a moment to read it. Virgie shifted in her seat, then crossed her legs.

Her mother put down the letter. “Yesterday, while you were in Nantucket, my editor at Doubleday said he would give me an enormous sum for the book that I’m writing.”

Betsy felt her temples begin to pulse. “When I asked you, you said you were journaling, that it wouldn’t turn into anything.”

Her mother handed her back the letter. “Because I wasn’t sure what I was writing, but then it started to become something special on the page. I sent eighty pages to my editor, and he wants it. He wants it fast before everyone’s memory of Daddy fades.” Her mother swept her gaze at Louisa, then Aggie, then Betsy, where she lingered. “I won’t have the entire sum up front, but I talked to the bank, and they will give me a six-month extension on the house if I pay them a quarter of what we owe. I was going to tell you tonight.”

Louisa gave her mother a sideways glance. “But isn’t that your entire advance? You’ll need money to buy groceries, pay your electric bills.”

“It will get us through,” her mother said.How?Betsy wanted to ask.You’ll be short anyway.But this was her mother: She always believed everything would work out all right in the end. Maybe Betsy needed to absorb some of that blind optimism.

“So what is the book about?” Aggie asked. She’d been on the phone with her husband an hour before, whisper-yelling into the phone in the kitchen:I shouldn’t have to ask permission, Henry.

No one had touched the hors d’oeuvres. Their mother shooed a fly buzzing around the dip.

“It’s a memoir, but I will write nothing about the Nantucket business and nothing that will embarrass you, if that’s what you’re worried about. This is my story to tell, girls, and I have an important one about my years with your father in Washington and on this island. Even as I’ve been writing it, I’ve realized how much of your father and me didn’t make sense. Yet we were just right. I need to do this to make things right between us.”

Louisa stood, tossing her napkin over the cheese plate. “Can we cover this stuff? The bugs are landing.” She paced the patio.

“Sit down, Louisa. You’re all out of sorts.” Her mother fiddled with the top button on her dress bodice, one of three pearl inlay circles that glistened in the fading sunlight.

Louisa did as she was told, squeezing her arm with her opposing hand. “Dad had a child with that woman. I saw the house on Nantucket. I’m pretty sure he loved her.”

Betsy watched her mother closely, how her features sharpened, then loosened, like she wanted to yell but found a calmer voice. Her mother would treat this as one more unfairness she’d need to explain to the girls about the world. “That discovery years ago, that conversation with Melody. It was a pain I never thought I’d come back from. But girls, I had the three of you, and mothers can’t just stop doing their job because we have a bad day or even a bad year.” She used her finger to draw a snaking line along the tabletop, staring down at it as she spoke. “Charlie and me, our marriage was a long road that was riddled with potholes. I didn’t have a job, other than raising you all and supporting your father’s career ambitions. There weren’t as many options for me then as there are now, and also, I did still love your father in myown funny way. Enough that I decided to stick with him, so I didn’t split the family up.” She sighed. “Couples stay together either because they’re afraid to be alone, or because they love one another, no matter the mistakes or how gray the hair or wrinkled the skin. I knew I had to make a choice about your father when I discovered Melody, and while I didn’t condone it, I did use it to my advantage.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Betsy frowned.

“Let her talk,” Aggie said.

Her mother’s eyes were so blue they were like robins’ eggs. She held up the novelThe Awakening. The cover depicted a woman in her nightgown, white and ethereal, ghostly, and floating. “It may not seem like the right moment to talk about the book, but I’d like to.”

Betsy looked off to the water; her mother had once again hijacked the conversation. Still, she tuned in to what her mother was saying.

“I relate to the main character, Edna, so much. She marries Mr. Pontellier without understanding how much of herself she’ll have to give up. I did the same, but once I discovered your father’s secret life on Nantucket, his other secrets too, I had no reason to hold back in my work, even if my early essays made him uncomfortable. But this news about Melody changed everything. I had no reason to placate him anymore, and I did as I wanted. I decided to be strong for all three of you instead.”

“That summer when I was fifteen, the summer we went flying with Wiley,” Louisa started. “Was that when you found out about Melody?”

Betsy remembered how her mother had stayed in bed for two days when they returned from Nantucket, how Betsy had begged her to play Parcheesi or Scrabble, go get an ice cream. But her mother hadn’t budged from under her cool sheets.

Virgie seemed surprised that Louisa guessed correctly. “After I stood in Melody’s kitchen, after all I’d done for your father, I swore I would mother you girls by being everything I’d been afraid to be. I would write uncensored and without apology. So I wrote about familiesand marriage and the economy and the workplace, all from a woman’s point of view. Dad hated it. Boy, did he hate it, but what could he do? He was devastated that I knew about Melody, and I had it over him for the rest of our lives.”

Betsy felt the melancholy of grief settle into her bones. “So you bribed him?”

“Bribe is a nasty word,” her mother said kindly, twiddling with her long hair. “I used the information to urge him onto my side.”

As Betsy memorized her mother’s delicate silhouette, she could see that she’d gotten her mother wrong all these years. As a teenager, Betsy had thought her mother self-absorbed; her father had suggested as much through various complaints about the inconvenience of his wife’s career. Her writings were too revealing, too personal, too provocative.

But Betsy wasn’t sure that was true anymore. It was her mother’s articles—both essays and reportage—that had given her the armor to survive her husband’s disappointments, his preoccupation with serving in the Senate, and of course, his nasty mistake. Writing wasn’t just a distraction for her mother. It had been her power, and Virgie had changed the way women thought about their place in the home and at work by talking about all the issues no one wanted to talk about. It was Virgie’s own mistakes that had informed much of her parenting too. Writing about inequality had helped her level the playing field in her own household.

Betsy flipped throughThe Awakening, scanning some of the lines she’d underlined lightly in pencil. She looked up, her mother staring at her from across the table, curious. “Edna’s ‘awakening’ came from expressing her sexuality with that man at the resort, but your awakening, Mom, was finding your voice. So many women watched you gain self-ownership as you wrote yourself into their hearts and minds. Your words gave them courage to take charge of their own lives as they watched you take charge of yours.”

“Yes, honey, I think that’s right.”

From upstairs, the baby cried, but Aggie remained in her seat, transfixed. “Not only that, you gave us a model for building our own sense of self. That’s why I became a marathoner. I called Henry this week and told him I’m putting my name in for the New York City race in October.”

Louisa raised an eyebrow. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Good for you, honey. Who will watch the baby when you train?’?” Aggie buried her face in her hands, like he didn’t get it. “I told him I’d hire a babysitter, and he said he supposed that was okay.”

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