The Beach House (2 page)

The first time Everett brought her to their summer house, Nan had no idea what she was letting herself in for. She had barely heard of Nantucket. Had vacationed only on the Jersey Shore, knowing little of what she later came to think of as “old America”—the true Yankee families, the old-money families, whose ancestors had sailed over on the
Mayflower,
and who could trace their families back hundreds of years.

Her own parents had been English, had sailed to New York hoping for a better life than the one they left behind in Birming-ham, and had moved to Ossining because of a distant cousin who lived there.

She had been this naive little girl, still known to all as Suzanne, who hadn’t known what to expect when Everett brought her home. There was no Googling to find out about the Powells, no one who could have told her the family was famous in Massachusetts for funding the majority of the renovation that has made Cape Cod what it is today, no one who could have explained the money she was marrying into, the privilege and history that came with the Powells.

She married Everett because she loved him, and as a wedding present his parents bought them an apartment in New York City. Nothing fancy, she would say years later, but it was utterly fancy, and for the first two years of their marriage Nan would wake every morning and think she had died and woken up in a Grace Kelly movie.

Nowhere did she feel this more than at Windermere. Built in the 1920s, just off Baxter Road in the village of Sconset, it stood high on a bluff, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, its shingles gray and weary from being buffeted by the wind, but its lines graceful and elegant, the porches, in the old days, always abuzz with people.

Not a huge house, Windermere now sat on nine perfect acres. Originally a modest saltbox, over the years various careful additions had turned it into a stylish estate. The developers had started to circle, like vultures looking for their kill. The house would be torn down, Nan knew, if she ever let them get their hands on it, and it was a place that held too many important memories for her to let it go that easily.

It was the Powells’ summer house—their idyllic retreat from Memorial Day to Labor Day each year—a home filled with naked children, clambakes on the beach, and so much joy.

It was one of those naked children who caused her name change, that very first trip. “It’s Suzanne,” Everett kept saying to the little three-year-old—someone’s daughter, or cousin, or something—who kept trying to drag her off to build another sandcastle. “I want Nan to come,” the little girl kept saying, and Everett had laughed, so handsome then, his blue eyes crinkling in his tanned face. “Nan,” he said, turning to Suzanne. “Nan in Nantucket. I like it.” And since that time she had only ever been called Nan, had mostly forgotten her given name; she often found herself crossing out Nan when filling in forms that requested her full name, only realizing at the end that she hadn’t written Suzanne.

When Nan thinks back to those early days at Windermere, she can almost hear the tinkling of drinks being poured and the musicians playing, she can almost see the fairy lights strung up around the house, the lanterns hanging from the trees, people laughing and drinking and dancing.

There were dinner parties that went on all night, Everett’s parents—Lydia and Lionel—the first to lead their guests through the dunes for their notorious midnight swims, the shrieks from the guests as they hit the cold water audible almost in the center of town.

Friends were always coming to stay, often not leaving for entire summers at a time, but Windermere was big enough, and the overspill could always stay in one of the four cottages on the far edges of the compound.

Two of the cottages were sold off after Lionel died and Lydia developed Alzheimer’s. Lydia eventually went into a nursing home in Boston and Nan tried to visit her there as often as she could, sometimes bringing her son, until it became too painful, toward the end, when Lydia wasn’t even a shadow of her former self but a tiny, shrunken, white-haired old lady, whom Nan once walked straight past when she went to visit.

Everett had died by that time, or, as Nan put it for so many years, had gone. She had woken up one morning and the bed had been empty, which was not particularly unusual—he would often wake up and go for an early morning swim—but it wasn’t until he failed to return that her heart quickened with a trace of anxiety.

She went down to the beach, and still she remembers that she knew, knew from the moment she turned over and saw his side of the bed empty, that there was something not quite right.

His T-shirt was roughly folded, weighted down by his father’s watch. No note. Nothing. And the sea was particularly rough that day. Nan had stood and looked out over the waves, listening to the ocean crash around her as a tear rolled down her cheek. She wasn’t looking for him, she knew he had gone.

She just didn’t know why.

It turned out to be no coincidence that Everett’s grandfather had won Windermere in a poker match. Gambling, it transpired, skipped a generation and landed quite solidly on the shoulders of Everett.

Nan knew he loved his poker games, but had no idea they were anything other than fun, anything other than a reason to spend a night out with the boys, drink a few single malts and smoke a few cigars, or whatever it was they did.

But after he died, all those years ago, she received phone calls from the banks, then from various people to whom he clearly owed money, and, finally, from his accountant.

“It does not look good,” he had said.

Luckily, there were assets. The two remaining cottages on the edges of Windermere were sold, and then, a few years later, the New York City apartment. A big decision, but she had always loved Windermere, had loved the thought of making it a permanent home, and Michael was young enough that she thought he would benefit from a quieter life, a life that was simple, in a place they had always adored. It was in the late seventies, and she got so much money for the apartment she thought she would be fine forever.

“I leave it in your hands,” she had said to her stockbroker with a laugh, knowing that a pot that sizable would be fine.

Nan doesn’t have a stockbroker anymore. Stockbrokers used to be revered, but she doesn’t know anyone who calls themselves a stockbroker these days. These days she hears the summer people use phrases like M & A, bond derivatives and, perhaps more than anything, hedge funds. She still doesn’t understand what a hedge fund is, knows only that the people who are building the biggest houses on the island, the husbands who fly in for the weekend in private jets and helicopters, joining wives, nannies and house-keepers, all seem to work in hedge funds.

She has her money in a hedge fund herself. Every month she receives a statement, but mostly she forgets to open it. Her mail has a tendency to pile up on a kitchen counter before being swept away into a cupboard somewhere, for Nan has no patience for the prosaic—bills bore her, and the only envelopes that are opened and responded to immediately are handwritten, and personal.

Today her financial adviser is coming for lunch, although Nan thinks of him less as a financial adviser and more as a friend. Not that he is much of either—she has not seen him in person for four years, and he doesn’t advise her particularly, other than to have told her, all those years ago, that the hedge fund she subsequently invested in was a good one, started by one of the brightest traders at Goldman Sachs, and would be a wonderful place for her to put some money.

The phone is ringing when she walks in. She dumps the hydrangeas in the sink, and grabs the phone, running the water as she picks up.

“Hi, Mom.” It’s Michael, ringing, as he so often does, on his way to work.

“Hi, my love. How are you?”

“Tired. It’s hot and muggy and revolting in the city. I’m deeply jealous of you on the island—is it beautiful?”

“Not yet.” Nan smiles. “But it will be. Why don’t you come out? I miss you. It’s too quiet here with just me rattling around.”

“What about Sarah? Do you still have Sarah?”

“She still comes once or twice a week to help me out,” Nan says, “and I love having her around, but I miss my family, miss this house ringing with the sounds of people having fun. Remember when you used to come up here with all your friends for the summer? Remember how much fun it was? Why don’t you come up with some people? Wouldn’t they all kill for a vacation on Nantucket?”

Michael laughs. His mother never changes. “They would undoubtedly kill for a vacation on Nantucket, if only they could take the time off work. And most of them are married now, with kids. It’s different. They can’t just sweep their families up and bring them out.”

“But why ever not?” Nan is genuinely perplexed. “I adore children, this is the perfect place for children.”

“I know that, but it’s just . . . hard. People are busy, everyone’s running all the time. But I would love to come. I’d love to see you. I can’t make it up at the moment, the bosses are away for another week or so and I need to be here, but maybe I can come at the end of the summer.”

Nan turns off the tap and reaches for a cigarette.

“Oh Mom. You’re not still smoking.”

Nan ignores him. “How are things going with the girl . . . what’s her name? Aisling?”

Michael smiles. “Interesting. I like her. Still very early days but so far so good. She’s fiery. Independent. You’d like her.”

“I’d love to meet her.” Nan is careful not to ask too much. “Bring her.”

“Maybe I will. What are you up to today?”

“Making lunch. Andrew Moseley is coming.”

“Your financial adviser?”

“Exactly!”

“Is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It seems unusual for him to travel up to see you.”

Nan shrugs. “I think, after four years, it’s probably just due. Anyway, lovely to have some company. I’m making delicious salads straight from the garden, and Sarah has promised to drop off a lobster salad she made yesterday.”

“Sounds yummy.” Michael instantly pictures the table set on the deck, his mother’s ballet slippers kicked off as she curls her legs under her after lunch, cradling a large tumbler of white wine in one hand, a ubiquitous cigarette in the other. “Don’t drink too much.”

Michael says good-bye with a sad smile, clicking his phone shut as he reaches his bike which is chained to a lamp post outside his apartment on 94th and Columbus. As he does so he is unaware of the admiring glance he’s given from a tall blond walking her dog.

Michael has always been unaware of his appeal, taken for granted his large green eyes, inherited from his mother, his easy smile, his all-American clean-cut looks.

At forty-two he looks much like the college football player he used to be, tanned and rangy, and utterly comfortable in his skin.

He undoes the lock and secures his helmet, slipping the phone into his backpack and weaving off down Columbus, making a mental note to phone Sarah, just to make sure that Mom is okay, to make sure that someone is looking out for her, that she isn’t quite as alone as she sounds.

"Tell me about how you met.” Dr. Posner leans back in his chair and looks over at them, sitting at opposite ends of the sofa, the elegant brunette tucked awkwardly into the corner, twisting a strand of her shoulderlength bob nervously as she darts glances toward her husband, who sits still, staring at the floor.

The husband is slim, dark-haired, with coal-black eyes that occasionally rise to meet Dr. Posner’s, eyes filled with sadness and pain.

They are a handsome couple. She early to mid-thirties, he early forties, Dr. Posner guesses. She wears printed Capris, ballet slippers, a crocodile purse at her feet and a cashmere wrap bundled on her lap in case the air-conditioning gets too strong. The husband is in jeans and a polo shirt; he is clean-cut, darkly good-looking with a light spring tan and a body that shows he goes to the gym at least four times a week.

They look as though neither of them has ever had a problem in their lives. Young, fit, beautiful, what could possibly be wrong? Although, of course, Dr. Posner knows better.

Why else would they be here?

“Tell me why you fell in love,” Dr. Posner says, watching how the man shifts nervously. “Tell me what brought you together.”

Bee looks over at Daniel, and as he meets her eyes they both smile slightly, and Bee begins to talk.

“I was doing a house share in the Hamptons,” Bee says, her eyes misting a little at the memory. “It was this house that had looked wonderful in the pictures, but once we got there it had basically been trashed by the people before us—”

“It was a wonderful pool, though,” Daniel interjects, and Bee nods with a smile.

“It was.”

“So, you were both in the house together?” Dr. Posner asks.

“No.” Bee shakes her head. “Daniel was staying a couple of houses away, but it wasn’t a house share, he was with family friends.”

“I was horrified at the house shares.” Daniel grins properly, for the first time since walking in. “All these people drinking and partying, everyone single, all looking around frantically to see if someone better had just walked through the door.”

“And you weren’t?” Dr. Posner looks at Daniel.

“No. That scene has never been my thing. My parents had these friends who had a house in Amagansett and they were away for the summer and said we could use it.”

“They knew they could trust Daniel.” Bee laughs. “Anyone else would have trashed it in a day, but Daniel spent all day walking around with a vacuum in one hand and a broom in the other, scouring the floors for stray grains of sand.”

Daniel shrugs as he laughs, as if to say, she knows me so well.

“You’re fastidious?” Dr. Posner asks.

“He’s a clean freak,” Bee says. “He’s the only man I know who makes the bed every morning and does all the laundry.”