Page 10

Edgartown

Carole King played on the turntable, the smell of garlic and lemon wafting through the screen windows.

Virgie spooned spaghetti and clams into mismatched bowls, while Louisa carried each serving out to the patio, where Betsy finished setting the wrought-iron table with a pitcher of water and napkins.

Sometimes Aggie was so preoccupied with mothering that she barely noticed what they were doing, like now, as she held the baby in one arm while trying to tie a daisy-patterned bib around Tabby’s neck.

The toddler used her tiny fingers to separate strands of plain pasta.

After making sure everyone had what they needed, Virgie took her seat, passing around Kraft shaker cheese.

She arranged a yellow legal pad beside her plate, and while each sister slurped, moaning in delight at the nostalgic flavors, they listened to their mother chatter on about what they needed to do to sell the house.

Her hand trembled as she scribbled names beside the tasks, and it was then that Betsy could see that her mother projected a brave face, but this wasn’t going to be a simple matter of packing up and moving.

“We need to clear the shelves of all the dishes and random coffee mugs and simplify the cupboards.” Her mother sopped up the broth with a piece of garlic bread.

“Then we’ll get rid of anything expired in the pantry, so no one knows how filthy we live.

” They all pretended to laugh, knowing their mother was such a stickler with expiration dates on food, it bordered on compulsive.

Virgie put her head in her hand, her fingers pinching the smooth triangle below her collarbone, the skin splotchy and red.

“Oh yes, and I have to go through Dad’s files, too, for the Senate Library. ”

“I’ll do it, Mom,” Louisa said, pressing her hand on top of her mother’s, and it was like a tightness in her mother’s fingers visibly loosened. Betsy thought: What a suck-up!

“Thank you, honey. I appreciate that.”

Betsy shot Aggie a pinched look to see if she thought the conversation strange—their mother giving them a to-do list without details of when the house was going on the market.

“Mom, you still haven’t told us what happened. Why do we have to sell the house?” Aggie plucked a rogue piece of spaghetti off Tabby’s frilly dress.

Louisa lowered her fork. “You did say you would tell us at dinner.”

Virgie’s face had that distant look, as if she were taking in their image like a deep breath. “I’ll never forget how good you girls are being to me. I love you all so much.”

“I love you, too, Mom,” Aggie said.

“Me too,” said Betsy, and they all looked to Louisa, who smiled warmly.

“Ditto.” That Louisa was here for the week and not rushing back to the firm meant something to Betsy, and she was certain it meant something to their mother too. “So, what is it? Why are we selling?”

Her mother peeled off her denim shirt, hanging it on her chair, her beaded earrings swaying as she moved.

She struggled to get comfortable. “Well, I think it had always bothered Daddy that we never bought a house of our own, which is why his white lie didn’t bother me.

He liked to think he bought me this house, in a way.

When my uncle died, we paid the back taxes on the house and took it over. ”

Louisa folded her arms against her chest, peevish in tone. “So it’s perfectly normal for a man to reinvent the details of his life to woo voters, is that what you’re saying?”

“Don’t be smart.” Virgie passed her eldest the garlic bread. “Sometimes stretching the truth makes for a better story.”

Aggie motioned for her mother to get on with it. At the dock, the American flag flapped off Senatorial .

“After the funeral, the lawyers told me Dad had taken a loan with Chemical Bank against the house, which was news to me.” Virgie pursed her lips, looking irritated.

“I thought I could manage the payments, it’s not like I don’t have an income.

But then I started receiving loan payment notifications from a private firm in England, and what the lawyers discovered is that your father took out an off-the-books loan from someone across the pond, then got the Chemical Bank loan.

He effectively owed $150,000, and he hadn’t paid back anything. ”

Betsy pushed away her dinner plate. “But there must be some money left. Enough to keep them from taking the house away.”

“Or the lenders can wait.” The sight of Louisa chewing at her fingernail meant things were bad; her sister had done the same at their father’s funeral.

None of them moved.

“The lenders have been waiting on me since Dad died. It’s been a year, and they’ve made clear they want their money. They can force the sale of the house, and they are.”

“There must be some other way.” Betsy didn’t like seeing her mother so willing to give up. “You can’t just walk away from this place.”

Aggie stood and placed the baby in a bouncy seat. She moved behind her mother’s chair, reaching down and lacing her arms around her mother’s neck. “She wouldn’t be telling us this if she hadn’t tried finding a solution already.”

Her mother raised her arms up to hug Aggie back. “I’ve tried, girls.”

The buoy bell chimed. Betsy could hear the quiet lap of the water against the dock. She gazed at the lawn where she’d played tag and trapped fireflies in plastic cups on summer nights. Was she the only one who couldn’t imagine leaving this place behind?

“Let’s get the house on the market by the end of July,” her mother said, pulling her date book closer and counting the weeks. “That gives us about a month.”

Aggie had returned to her seat, pulling Tabby on her lap now that the baby was happily gurgling and sucking on his tiny fist. “I thought you said we could stay through Labor Day. Henry was coming for a week in August. Remember?”

Betsy was equally surprised; she’d let go of her apartment in the city. “I quit my research job for this, Mom.”

Her mother pushed a long chunk of her wavy hair behind her ear. When had their mother taken off her wedding ring? “I’m going to call a Realtor, and we’ll hash it out. We’ll insist we close in September.”

They couldn’t help but groan, knowing that they would have to disappear into the recesses of the house every time a potential buyer walked through. No novels on the coffee table. No dishes in the sink. People standing in your house while you overhear them talking about where they’d put their sofa.

It brought back those low feelings Betsy would get when her family moved from one rental house to another.

Her mother loved inhabiting a new house, seeing the possibilities in every room, whereas Betsy had trouble saying goodbye to the place they were leaving behind.

She’d run her hands along the barren walls, feeling how heavy the uneven plaster rippled with memory.

She swore she could feel the house breathing under her palms, that it was telling her not to worry, a piece of her would remain preserved inside for good. That she could always return.

But she never did. You weren’t supposed to go backward. Her mother had taught her as much. You needed to look ahead.

After five days on the island, the tender ache Betsy had felt for Andy when she arrived had been replaced with a longing for her father.

She saw him everywhere she looked, whether it was in the hammock in the yard, where he’d often lay and read presidential biographies, or in the brilliant blue sky, which reminded her of the two of them sailing on Senatorial on clear, windy days.

Walking down the sidewalk, she imagined herself on her father’s broad shoulders in her early years, and then later, how he’d taken her arm when they headed to a fundraiser at the yacht club as she balanced in her first pair of wedge heels.

The thoughts had come to her in the oddest of times, while stirring pancake batter or rising on her heels to smell a rosebush, and they’d come even though her mother had kept a busy schedule of activities to occupy Betsy and her sisters those first few days.

Her mother had even skipped her writing schedule these last two days and shuttled them to various windswept beaches for shell combing or swimming.

It had left the sisters with a wormy feeling, knowing they had so much to do for the house sale but no one was doing it, while also offering the reassuring sense that they were on vacation.

Betsy knew she couldn’t be the only one who saw the irony: If given the choice, they probably wouldn’t have chosen to be together this way, and yet it hadn’t been as terrible as she thought it would be, even if she and Louisa still spoke to one another in clipped tones that made clear they were annoyed with each other.

It was all compounded by the reality that Louisa was supposed to leave that weekend to return to work in Washington on Monday. No one felt ready for her to go.

Their mother had gone to bed early that Friday night, warm humid air falling over them like a blanket, and the sisters had gathered in the Adirondack chairs on the lawn around ten.

Aggie sipped a gin and tonic, both of her kids asleep inside.

“Is anyone else worried about Mom? I get the feeling that she’s a glass with hairline cracks. ”

Louisa nodded. “Press hard enough and she’ll shatter.”

Betsy’s mother had been acting strange, like some kind of extra positive cheerleader.

Earlier, she’d talked about Aggie’s new middle-part haircut like it made her a more powerful presence, which was odd because it was just hair .

After that, her mother had carried on about how she’d never slept so well with her girls all home.

Then: “Your father wouldn’t believe how much the beach improved in town; the sand is the widest I’ve ever seen it. ”

Her psychology professors had a word for this nonstop talking and energy: manic.