Cape Cod (6 page)

Names like Nickerson, Doane, Crosby, Snow, Sears, Eldredge, Cahoon, Bigelow, and Hilyard appeared on businesses all along Routes 6A and 28. For three centuries they had been appearing on fishing boats, masters’ logs, cranberry boxes, saltworks, salvage vessels, the rosters of the U.S. Lifesaving Service, and before anything else, on primitive purchase and sale agreements signed with the Indians.

In most Cape families, there had been Tories and Whigs, solid citizens and scoundrels, empire builders and clam diggers, geniuses and inbreds, and they had formed an aristocracy of strong backs and stiff spines, because nothing came easy on a peninsula surrounded by the sea. It was still said among the Bigelows who ran a Hyannis service station that while the Kennedys had the compound, the Bigelows had the history.

They were not close-knit clans. There were simply too many of them, and after three and a half centuries, some branches were so far apart they had nothing in common beyond their intertwined names. The Bigelows of Bourne barely knew the Dickersons who fished out of Provincetown, or the Bigelow who kept law offices in Boston and Barnstable. But they all knew Dickerson Bigelow, because he made it his business to know all of them. And he invited all of them for the glorious Fourth.

His house had been built in the 1840s, when American architects were looking to classical forms for inspiration and American shipbuilders were creating classical forms of their own. A forebear had invested a sea-made fortune in Shiverick & Sons Shipwrights, then built a Greek Revival house overlooking the harbor where the Shivericks built their clippers. The shipyard was gone, but the house still stood, monument to the same Greek ideal of beauty through efficiency embodied in the clippers.

Geoff thought that way about things. It was the way architects thought.

He liked the library best of all the rooms. The ancient Oriental gave it a sense of history. The books mellowed it, though Dickerson seldom read anything beyond the real estate section. And the artwork reminded Geoff that he was not the first of his family to mix with the Bigelows.

While he waited to hear Dickerson’s proposal, he sipped a beer and studied the painting above the fireplace.
Reading the Compact
had been painted by Geoff’s great-great-uncle Thomas Hilyard in 1895 and purchased by State Senator Charles Bigelow, Dickerson’s grandfather.

Americans had been taught that the creation of the Mayflower Compact was one of the pivotal events in the history of democracy, and artists usually poured the golden paint all over the ship. Tom Hilyard had painted a day so shrouded in mist you could almost smell the damp wool on the dark and brooding figures. The only splash of color was the red quill that Ezra Bigelow offered to Jack Hilyard, and for ninety-five years, people had been arguing over that: was Jack raising his hand to take the quill or to ward Bigelow away?

“That painting proves that our families have been cooperating since the
Mayflower.”
Douglas Bigelow ambled in wearing his white trousers and green golf shirt.

“If you believe
that,”
answered Geoff, “you’ve never looked at the painting.”

Douglas slipped the bottle of beer from Geoff’s hand, took a sip, then handed it back to him. “It shows a Bigelow and a Hilyard making history.”

Geoff wiped the mouth of the bottle and drained the beer. He liked Douglas, who was as tall as his father, not nearly as broad-beamed, and far more subtle, except in the choice of his second wife, she of the short skirts, long legs, and gold jewelry heavy enough to bench press.

“How’s your golf game?” asked Geoff.

“Long drives, accurate irons, putts like pool shots. How’s my sister?”

“Glad to be here for the glorious Fourth—”

“And ready to go back to Boston next week.” Janice came in and dropped onto the sofa.

“That’s not going to happen.” Dickerson lumbered after her, a beer bottle working in his right hand, the necks of two more twined into the fingers of his left. “Now that you’ve moved back, we’re going to keep you here.”

Like a bishop offering his ring, he held out his left hand and the younger men each took a beer. Dickerson touched his bottle to theirs. “To the future”—he pointed his bottle at the painting—“and the past.”

“And the proposal?” Geoff leaned on the mantel.

“Jan, I know why you love this guy. He comes right to the point.” Dickerson sat behind his desk and looked Geoff and Janice up and down. “Nice white tennis shorts on both of you, a powdery pink jersey for the girl, navy blue for the boy.” He glanced at his son. “You, too, in all your golfie stuff.”

“
Leisure
wear,” said Douglas.

Dickerson looked at his khaki trousers and shirt. “In my
leisure
I like to dress like an old fisherman.”

“You never fished for money in your life,” said Janice.

Dickerson ignored her. “I remind me of where we came from. You remind me of where we’re going.”

“Grow up, grow old, and die to make room.” Bad joke. Geoff knew the moment he said it. Bad hearts and gallows jokes didn’t mix.

But Dickerson didn’t acknowledge the joke. Only the row of pill bottles on his desk—isosorbide, 10 mg., propranolol, 20 mg., dipyridamole, 50 mg.—acknowledged the heart attack. He leaned on his elbows and looked at Janice. “Honey, you know how happy 1 am that you’ve decided to move back so Geoff can make a go of his own firm.”

“Geoff decided. I’m going along with it.”

“Whatever… We’re happy. We want you to be happy, too.”

Geoff felt the backs of Dickerson Bigelow’s unread books closing in around him. “The suspense is killing us. What is it that will make us happy forever, and what do I have to give up to get it?”

Dickerson looked at his son. “In the family for seventeen years and still he doesn’t trust us.”

“He knows that if we let him in on this deal, we’re not doing it because he’s the brother-in-law.” Douglas slipped a golf ball from his pocket and began to roll it between his fingers.

“It’s because he’s the best architect in New England, right?” cracked Janice.

“It’s because I’m Rake Hilyard’s nephew.”

“Cynic!” Dickerson Bigelow pushed himself away from his desk and went to the window. Outside, his ancient mother was carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres toward the back lawn. “I raised a generation of cynics, Ma!”

“Because they grew up around men like you, Dick.”

“Never misses a beat,” said Janice.

“Neither does her granddaughter,” added Geoff.

“And we both love them both,” said Dickerson, “just like we both love Jack’s Island.”

“There’s a difference between love and lust.”

Dickerson looked at Janice. “Why did you have to go and marry such a smartass?”

“Because I knew that some day, you’d want to do business with him. So stop insulting each other and talk like grown men.”

Love and lust had been known to serve each other well, Geoff knew, and if this offer meant a good commission, which would mean a little freedom, Geoff could stand a little of Dickerson’s lust.

While the party went on outside, Dickerson talked. Douglas rolled the golf ball between his fingers and clarified. Geoff sipped his beer and acted impassive, as he would in any negotiation. Janice listened, and when she thought her husband too impassive, she asked questions.

The Bigelows wanted to develop Jack’s Island. The Hilyards resisted. That much had been known for years. During the mid-eighties boom, the Bigelows didn’t even bother to try to develop their side of their island. It wasn’t worth the fight with the town and the abutters when there was so much money to be made on the rest of the Cape.

But the boom was over. Real estate prices had turned in a big way. No one was buying middle-priced homes in subdivisions hacked from the scrub pine. Planning boards and conservation commissions were getting tough. And the people of Cape Cod, who shared watershed and coastline but who had always acted as fifteen towns going in fifteen directions, had voted a County Commission to contend with development.

The only land certain to sell—or worth the fight—was waterfront. In a bad market, scarce things kept their value. Douglas said they could squeeze thirty to thirty-five premium-priced one-acre lots out of the island, each one worth three to five hundred thousand once it was perked and permitted. And once they put houses on the land, the profits would double.

“Geoff, sell us your land, convince Rake to sell,” said Dickerson, “and you’ll design the development we want to call Pilgrims’ Rest.”

“Modern luxury inside, Pilgrim ambience outside,” added Douglas. “Like…
Star Wars
meets the seventeenth century.”

“What about the permits?” asked Geoff. “The town and county will put you through hell to develop that island.”

“We’re grandfathered.”

“Grandfathered?” said Janice. “How?”

Douglas unrolled a map of Jack’s Island, subdivided into scores of 5000-square-foot lots. In the corner was a legend, in the fountain-pen script of someone who had learned handwriting in the old school: “Plan of Land for Pilgrim’s Rest at Jack’s Island, Brewster, Mass., owned by Elwood Hilyard, Zachary Hilyard, and Heman Bigelow, January 9, 1904, Scale 1″ to 100′, Charles Berry, C.E., Orleans, Mass.”

“I dug this up at the Barnstable County Courthouse,” explained Douglas. “They did plans like this for land all over the Cape. Most of them came later than this one, and they were seldom followed up on. This one was forgotten after the Hilyard House burned, but these things retain their weight.”

“What good does it do us?” asked Janice.

Dickerson tried to say something, but Douglas was doing the talking now, and he talked right over his father. Since Dickerson’s heart attack, Douglas had done so much talking, and done it so fast and so well, that Dickerson didn’t even try to top him.

Douglas took his putter from the corner and used it like a pointer above the map. “The genius who laid this out divided the island like a pie, with everybody getting a quarter-acre. If we don’t alter the roads or lot-lines, just combine lots to build bigger houses, we have a strong case. I’ve already gone after several building permits on my side of the island, just to test the waters.”

“What did Uncle Rake say about that?” asked Geoff.

“That’s when he started his eminent domain drive,” answered Doug. “He wants the town to take the whole island.”

“He’s getting senile,” grunted Dickerson.

Douglas dropped a golf ball onto the floor. “If the town rejects Rake, then it’s up to you, Geoff. Convince him to sell, and you’re in for a fee of a million five—six percent of projected construction costs—plus payment for your piece of land, which may be worth two mil more.”

Geoff looked at Janice. Through the telepathy of marriage, they heard the arguments without speaking them: Imagine the prestige. Imagine the income. And it wasn’t like he’d never thought of it himself. He had moved to the Cape to create buildings that respected the Cape’s history and ecology, whatever that meant. Here was his chance. Besides, if the island was going to be developed, who better to design it?

But Janice knew what else he was thinking, and she said it for him. “This would kill Uncle Rake.”

Dickerson grunted, as though his daughter’s remark might kill him. “Nothing could kill
Uncle
Rake.”

“I need to think about this,” said Geoff.

“Take a week,” said Douglas.

Janice looked at her brother. “Does he get this offer in writing?”

“In writing!” Dickerson half-rose from his chair, then dropped back as if reminding himself not to get angry. “This is
family
, kids.”

But Geoff did not notice Dickerson’s effort at self-control. He pointed at the painting.
“They
got it in writing.”

Douglas tapped the ball across the rug. “You don’t know of anything else they got in writing, do you? Like a book?”

Geoff didn’t, and he didn’t puzzle over it, either. There was too much else to think about.

iii.

In real estate, three things mattered—location, location, and…
Cornhill Road in Truro, views of Cape Cod Bay and Little Pamet marsh, walk to beach, older home, needs TLC
. Geoff and Janice had read the ad when they were first married. They liked the idea of having a place thirty miles from Jack’s Island, forty from her father’s house. Now the house was an even older home—a living, breathing money pit—but it had appreciated so much that they called it an antique.

They unloaded the car, then gave the kids flashlights, and off they all went toward the crest of Cornhill.

“Nothing makes a kid happier than a flashlight,” said Geoff, “except being up past bedtime.”

“Nice to be a kid again.”

“Nice to have nothing to think about.”

Janice took his arm. “Too bad it’s not the case.”

“Too many things to think about. That’s one of the nasty things about pushing forty. That and less sex.”

She stopped and put her hands on her hips.

“Just a joke,” he said.

She was one of the better things about pushing forty. There was a new hardness at the cheekbones, and the lines were leathering in around her eyes and mouth. But she still had great legs and one of those forthright Yankee faces—a little long in the jaw, a little pinched around the nostrils, never ravishing, but handsome when simple beauty faded. Too bad she was so damn stubborn.

He took her arm, and they walked in silence for a time, following the flashlight beams that danced ahead like fireflies. Then Janice said, “I think you should do it.”

In the distance, someone set off a machine-gun string of firecrackers.

“Sell out my uncle?”

“Talk to him. Tell him the world won’t stop because an old man wants to keep things the way they were in 1928.”

“You’re sounding heartless.”

“You’re
thinking
the same way.”

He slipped his arm from hers and hurried to the crest of the hill, where dozens of happy, half-lit people were singing the ooh-and-ah chorus to the bass thump of distant fireworks.

Around the rim of the bay, the oldest towns in America were celebrating its birth. To the west, above Plymouth, fireworks blossomed and faded like flowers on a distant mountain. To the south, where the land dipped below the horizon, nothing could be seen but white flashes. To the north, over Provincetown, you could almost touch the colors dancing against the blackness.