Page 17

Edgartown

Virgie had never cared for sailing, and she rarely socialized at the Vineyard Yacht Club unless Charlie was in town.

Throwing an informal dinner party, inviting a cross-section of local couples and Washington types, and tossing conversation starters out for the table to tackle was her sweet spot.

Most of the time she was busy flitting from guest to guest, refilling cocktails and making a few minutes of casual chatter before racing back into the kitchen to check the roast. Maybe she would have an untraditional dinner party and invite several women on the island for dressy cocktails rather than the usual slate of couples.

Make her chicken à la King, serve wine in long-stemmed glasses, and talk about how much the island has changed.

Virgie heard the voices of the children walking up from the docks near the spot where they beached their dinghies. As she made small talk with some of the other mothers, she hunted the group for her girls.

“Virgie? Is that you?” An American flag flapped off the yacht club entrance.

She turned to find Wiley Prescott, the newspaperman who had put her in touch with her New York editor last summer.

“Wiley! How lovely to see you.” She took in all six feet of his khaki canvas jumpsuit, which made him look slightly ridiculous, like he was a professional airman. “Is that an aviator suit?”

He tugged at the front of his shirt pocket; air goggles stuffed inside. “Yes, I’ve been offering lessons out at the airfield. Everyone wants to learn how to be a flyer these days.”

“The result of growing up on war stories, I suppose.” If he’s teaching at the tiny airfield, it’s likely he’s purchased it too , Virgie thought; he and his brother were quietly buying up so much of the island.

“Are you teaching at the yacht club as well? The girls were so excited to start today, except Louisa, who is working at the bookshop.” She was babbling. “Are you here for the week?”

“I’m here for the summer. I’m a kid in that respect.” Wiley ran his hand up the back of his closely shorn hair, his nose his most dominant feature. “I heard you quit the column?”

Wow, news travels fast , she thought. Her cheeks turned the color of the cherries she bought at the market that morning. “Sorry,” he said. “Industry gossip.”

She lowered her eyes to the ground, feeling like a bird with a broken wing; she hadn’t quit. She’d been forced to quit. There was a very big difference.

“Charlie felt like it was interfering,” she said, hoping that she hid her bitterness well enough. “I’ll start it back up after the election is over.” Now that the column was popular, they could certainly assign it to another writer. She shifted in her striped espadrilles.

“Well, if I were you, I would ask Charlie why his wife giving practical advice to suburban housewives is so dangerous.”

She bristled. Virgie didn’t just give advice.

She encouraged women to be better versions of themselves.

A friend said reading Virgie’s advice was like hearing the ultimate truth; her answers had started to get whispered at the beginning of PTA meetings.

“I don’t think Charlie’s opinions are your business, thank you very much. ”

He put his hands up like someone was trying to shoot, disarming her with his smile. “Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t traipse through another man’s house.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Virgie could see Betsy running with James, who was dragging a rain jacket on the ground behind him. “So you’re giving flying lessons? Could someone with a fear of heights learn to fly?”

Wiley took a moment to realize that she was the person interested.

“For certain. Flying has a way of changing your perspective on just about everything. You might like it.” Virgie didn’t think he was flirting, and yet she was aware that someone might mistake it as such and she took a step to one side, putting distance between them.

“Can I bring my girls?” she said. Charlie would hate if she and his daughters went up in Wiley’s plane. Betsy affectionately rammed into her, and Virgie wrapped her arms around her little girl.

“Hi, kiddos.” Wiley playfully punched at James’s shoulder, then did the same to Betsy. “Of course the girls can come. Just let me know the day.”

“Are you that free? Don’t you have a paper to run?” Virgie knew the answer. When you had family money like his, there were plenty of other people you could pay to keep the paper humming.

He grinned, patting his chest pocket for the silver pen and small spiral steno pad that he kept tucked inside.

“They dread my return in the fall since I’ll carry in lists of ideas about how to improve everything from the employee files to front page headlines.

But that’s summer for you. It’s all about the fresh start. ”

Maybe this summer could be her fresh start.

He waved goodbye, and Virgie waved back.

She wouldn’t give Charlie a chance to forbid her from flying lessons—she wasn’t even certain of the cost—because she wouldn’t tell him until after the fact.

Watching Wiley go, she considered the differences in the two men: how Wiley was tall and lean and without Charlie’s film-star smile that made people wonder who he was.

Still, Wiley had a way of talking that suggested he’d remain calm no matter what, even if the plane was nose to the ground.

They began to walk home, Betsy peppering Virgie with stories of high winds and big waves. “Oh, Mom. We have to feed James. His mom forgot to pack him lunch.”

The boy kicked at a stone. “I’m not hungry.”

“I gave him half my sandwich,” Betsy said, which made Virgie squeeze her daughter’s shoulder. She was kind to a fault, and when she loved someone, she loved them fiercely.

Aggie, trailing behind, caught up to them with a Black girl in tow. “Can I ride bikes to Junie’s house this afternoon?”

Virgie studied Junie, a tall, lanky girl with short braids in her hair. “Hello, Mrs. Whiting,” the child said. “My mother is home from the laundry and said I could bring a friend over.”

Virgie felt wary of her daughter taking a thirty-minute bike ride to the next town, since they’d be riding along main roads. But Aggie was fourteen now, and she promised to be extra cautious. “Sure, dear. Sounds wonderful. Go get your bike but be home by dusk.”

Sometimes mothers had to have faith in the unknown.

That Saturday, they spent the day at the beach to give James another chance to practice swimming and the girls a languorous day in the sunshine.

By three, the group walked damp towels and the cooler back to the car.

Her daughters rolled down the windows of the steamy station wagon, a satisfied-looking James in the front seat beside Betsy.

Falling into the front seat with a satisfied laugh, Virgie started the ignition of the car and pulled out of the parking spot, the girls singing along to the radio, “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts, a jolly sense of summer overtaking all of them: Life can be a dream, sweetheart.

As her foot pressed on the gas, a flash caught the corner of Virgie’s eye. There was some kind of fast movement, like a bird flying right beside her window. On instinct, she slammed her foot on the brake, Betsy and James knocking their heads hard against the dashboard.

There was the scream of a child.

Now the girl was lying on the ground next to a bicycle, and Virgie, pupils dilating, didn’t remember putting the car in park or getting out of the front seat.

Only that she was suddenly on her knees on the pavement, scanning the child for broken bones, bloody cuts.

She looked for the rise and fall of the child’s chest.

The girl opened her eyes, stunned, rubbing her elbow, her face contorting like she might cry.

Virgie reached for her tenderly. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

The child looked okay, shaken up maybe, but without serious injury. “I tried to get out of the way.” The girl had been riding in a bathing suit and bare feet; it was a miracle she hadn’t scraped her legs worse or hit her head.

“So my car didn’t hit you?”

The child shook her head. “No, I don’t know. I fell.”

Virgie collapsed against the station wagon, tilting her head back to meet the metal door. “Let me take you home. We can put your bike in the back.”

Louisa and the girls had crowded next to them, watching, and Louisa had raised the child’s bike up to stand.

“My mommy is right down the way,” the child said, taking her bike and pointing it in the opposite direction. “We’re here from Nantucket. We live there.”

Everyone held their breath as they watched her pedal away. Count to five. Breathe in, breathe out. At some point, Betsy had taken her hand, their palms pressing together.

Virgie had seen the oddest thing in that girl.

Charlie always said you could see someone’s entire life in their eyes.

At the dinner table, he liked to repeat a story about a woman in the Catskills he met while touring the Beech-Nut factory.

He said he knew this woman without knowing her a single day, since her eyes were an icy-blue mirror into the heartache she’d had as a war widow providing for three boys.

When he’d asked her what she’d needed most, she didn’t say money or food or a new house.

“I need my kids to have an education,” she’d said, her mouth in a frown, “so they don’t have to do the work I’m doing now.

I don’t want them to know what a broken down back feels like.

” (Of course, Charlie very publicly sent this woman a check for one hundred dollars to go toward her son’s vocational school tuition.

Photo on the front page of the Herald .)