The Identicals(2)
But what really makes the Vineyard special is the people. The Vineyard boasts a large and active population of middle-and upper-class African Americans. We have Brazilian churches. We also have celebrities, but you would never recognize half of them because they have to wait in line at “Back Door Doughnuts” and sit in traffic at Five Corners in Vineyard Haven just like everyone else.
Most of us have only been to Nantucket for one reason: the Island Cup. We won’t say anything about the football game itself, because no one likes a braggart, but every time we visit to cheer on our high school players, we can’t help wondering how our fellow islanders can bear to live on such a flat, barren, and foggy rock so far out to sea.
Still, there is a connection between us that’s hard to refute. Geologists suspect that as recently as twenty-three thousand years ago, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod were all part of one landmass. It might be easier to think of us as sisters—twins, even—birthed by the same mother. We like to think of Martha’s Vineyard as the favorite.
But then, of course, Nantucket likes to think of herself as the favorite.
MARTHA’S VINEYARD: HARPER
Reed Zimmer isn’t on call at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, June 16, when Harper Frost’s father, Billy, draws his final breath. Dr. Zimmer is at a picnic at Lambert’s Cove with his wife’s family; apparently they hold the same party every year at the start of summer—bonfire, potato salad, chicken blackening on the portable Weber grill. Sadie Zimmer’s brother, Franklin Phelps, is one of the Vineyard’s favorite guitar players—Harper always goes to hear him when he’s playing at the Ritz—and Harper imagines Dr. Zimmer, his feet buried in the cold sand, singing along with Franklin to “Wagon Wheel.”
Harper is still at her father’s bedside when she sends Dr. Zimmer a text. It says: Billy is gone. She imagines his shock followed by his guilt; he promised Harper it wouldn’t happen tonight. He told her that Billy still had time.
“Check in on him as usual,” Dr. Zimmer had said that afternoon when he rose from Harper’s bed, the white sheets tangled from their lovemaking. “But feel free to enjoy your weekend.” He had looked out her window at the lilac bush, which overnight, it seemed, had exploded into a show-offy bloom. “I can’t believe it’s all starting again. Another summer.”
Feel free to enjoy your weekend? Harper had thought. She hated when Reed talked to her as though she were merely his patient’s daughter, a virtual stranger—but isn’t she a stranger to him, in a way? Reed only sees Harper when she’s sitting by her father’s hospital bed or when they’re making love in her duplex. They don’t go on dates; they have never bumped into each other at Cronig’s; Reed claims he has never noticed her driving the Rooster delivery truck, even when she waves at him like a woman drowning. Harper and Reed have been sleeping together only since October, and so she isn’t sure what ‘another summer’ means to him. Today offered the first clue: his wife’s parents, the elder Phelpses, are now in residence at their house in Katama, recently arrived back from Vero Beach. There will be family obligations, such as this picnic, when it will seem as though Reed is living on another planet.
Harper waits a few moments before texting anyone else. Her father is right here, but he’s gone. His face is slack; it looks vacated, like a house where there’s no one home. Billy died while Harper was talking to him about Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox; he took one great shuddering breath, then another, then he looked right into Harper’s eyes, into her heart, into her soul, and said, “I’m sorry, kiddo.” And that was it. Harper put her ear to his chest. The machine issued its sustained beep. Calling the game. Over.
Reed doesn’t text back. Harper tries to remember if there is cell reception at Lambert’s Cove. She is always making excuses for him, because of the three men now remaining in her life, he’s the one she’s in love with.
She sends the same text—Billy is gone—to Sergeant Drew Truman of the Edgartown Police Department. Harper and Drew have been dating for three weeks. He asked her out while they were both on the Chappy ferry, and Harper thought, Why not? Drew Truman belongs to one of the most prominent African American families in Oak Bluffs. His mother, Yvonne Truman, served as a selectman for more than ten years. She is one of the five Snyder sisters, all of whom own brightly colored, impeccably maintained gingerbread cottages facing Ocean Park. Harper remembered Drew back when he was a high school athlete featured every week in the Vineyard Gazette sports pages. He then went to college and the police academy before coming home to Dukes County to serve and protect.
Harper had thought that dating someone new might ameliorate the agony of seeing a married man. She and Drew have gone out six times: they’ve eaten Mexican food at Sharky’s four times (it’s Drew’s favorite, for reasons Harper can’t quite comprehend), they had lunch once at the Katama airstrip diner, and their most recent date was a “fancy” night out at the Seafood Shanty—surf and turf, water views, singing waiters. Harper knows that Drew expected sex at the end of the night, but Harper has been able to hold him off thus far, citing her dying father as the reason she can’t be intimate.
Drew is keen to introduce Harper to his mother, his brother, his brother’s wife, his nieces and nephews, his aunties, his cousins, his cousins’ children—the whole extended Snyder-Truman family—but this, too, is a step Harper isn’t ready to take. Part of her does yearn to be taken in, fussed and clucked over, cooked for, admired and petted, even argued with and looked askance at because her skin is white. In short, there is appeal in being “official” with Drew. But the harsh reality remains: Harper loves Reed and only Reed.