Page 62 of Swan Song

Kacy can’t in a million years imagine either of her parents uttering anything so hurtful. How did Coco make it out of that life with any self-esteem intact? Kacy wants to drive to Triple Eight and give Coco a hug, but that would be weird, and Coco wouldn’t want Kacy feeling sorry for her, so Kacy calls instead.

“I loved every word,” Kacy says. She doesn’t have to make her voice sound persuasive because she’s telling the truth. “It’s brilliant, Coco. You’re a genius.”

There’s a pause, then: “Really? Really-really?”

“Really-really,” Kacy says.

Coco isn’t sure when, why, or how, but at some point in the middle of July, everything clicks. She learns to go to the Stop and Shop at seven in the morning when it’s been freshly restocked; she discovers a secret parking spot in town that’s a stone’s throw from the Born and Bread bakery; she becomes friends with Chris from Pip and Anchor, and he texts her when they have sandwich specials so that she can combine her marketing and lunch stop.

After she pays off her Visa balance, she has sixty-two hundred dollars in the bank, a veritable fortune. She returns to the Lovely and buys a few things from gorgeous Olivia—a tank, a skirt, a couple of dresses, a pair of cute sandals, a new beach bag. She makes an appointment at RJ Miller, even though the idea of spending a hundred dollars on a haircut kills her when she can simply do it herself. She tells the stylist, Lorna, that she wants to grow it out. Lorna is so skilled with her trimming and shaping that Coco vows never to cut her own hair again.

The Richardsons have also hit something of a sweet spot. The Fourth of July sail solidified their position in Nantucket society—they have invitations every night. Leslee is now a regular fourth at pickleball with Kacy’s mother and her friends, and Leslee confides in Coco that she and Bull have secured a nominating letter for the Field and Oar Club from Phoebe Wheeler and four seconding letters, including one from the commodore herself, Busy Ambrose.

“If all goes according to plan, we’ll be members as soon as next month,” Leslee says.

“Great,” Coco says—but this response isn’t enthusiastic enough for Leslee.

“The Field and Oar was founded in 1905,” Leslee says. “Its membership includes Nantucket’s oldest and most established families. You can’t just buy your way in; you have to be accepted based on personal merit. This is a very big deal.”

If it’s true that the Richardsons can’t buy their way in, then this is a very big deal. It’ll lend Leslee and Bull legitimacy. Leslee is obsessed with fitting in, with stature, with who’s who, and she’s critical of people she calls wannabes. She shows Coco an invitation she received from the dentist Andy McMann and his wife, Rachel. They’re throwing a summer cocktail party with a Preppy Handbook theme.

“They’re copying us,” Leslee cries, thrusting the invitation at Coco. “I’m surprised Rachel didn’t hand-deliver this, but I’m sure even she knew that would be a step too far. As it is, she’s stealing our idea for a themed cocktail party.” She sounds offended but also sort of delighted.

“A Preppy Handbook theme feels redundant,” Coco says. “It’s Nantucket in the summer.”

Leslee beams. “I could hug you,” she says—and then she does hug Coco, and Coco gets a full inhale of Leslee’s Guerlain Double Vanille perfume and a mouthful of her barrel-curled hair.

“So will you go?” Coco asks. “To the party?”

“Absolutely,” Leslee says, “not. Dr. Andy and Rachel are imitation crab. I could smell their weakness the moment I met them. Besides, I hear Jessica Torre is a far better dentist.”

Coco recalls that the McManns were the first people struck from Leslee’s invitation list for the Fourth of July. Cutting the invite list by half was a strategy that has made the Richardsons’ stock rise. It’s classic supply and demand: Everyone wants what they can’t have.

Everyone, that is, except for Coco, who relishes each second of her new life. She throws her head back as she cruises along the Polpis Road in Baby. The top is down, the sun is shining, she’s playing her favorite song: “I Wanna Get Better” by the Bleachers. But everything is already better, she thinks, because Lamont Oakley is her sneaky-link.

He comes by her apartment at the literal crack of dawn when both Bull and Leslee are fast asleep (they are not early risers). He parks all the way out on the Wauwinet Road, then jogs down Pocomo. (Coco has disabled the driveway alarm, with Leslee’s blessing—they both agree the chiming is obnoxious—but even so, Coco checks daily to make sure Leslee hasn’t turned it back on.) Lamont sprints along the grass on the side of the driveway so his footsteps don’t make noise on the shells. When he arrives, breathless, at her door, Coco feels like they’re working for the CIA. But the last thing either of them wants is to get caught breaking the rule now.

They’ve perfected the art of acting cordial-bordering-on-indifferent when they bump into each other at work. “Hey. S’up.” There are no winks, no lingering looks; it drives them both crazy.

When Lamont enters Coco’s bedroom in the apricot light of dawn each morning, Coco rolls over, warm with sleep, and instantly starts glowing with desire. Lamont kisses just beneath her ear; he nibbles on her hip bone. She cannot get enough of him.

The best part of the morning isn’t even the sex, it’s the talking afterward. One morning, Lamont tells Coco that every child on Nantucket is eligible to take free sailing lessons through Nantucket Community Sailing. Lamont showed a talent for it right away; he had the adaptability, the patience, and the independence. “Plus, I love being on the water,” he says. “I love weather, I love wind, I love the sound of the sails, I love tying and untying knots, I love the boats, especially the very simple Optis we learned on.”

When he got older, members of the Field and Oar asked him to crew. It was at that point he realized there weren’t a lot of Black people in the sailing-verse. “I was usually the only person of color at the Field and Oar,” he says. “Which prepared me, I guess, for the whitewashed world of sailing. When I was in college, most of the teams we sailed against were all white.”

“Did you feel like a trailblazer?” Coco says.

“Sort of,” Lamont says. “But then the kids behind me in school—like Javier and Esteban, for example—saw what I did and their parents heard about all the places I’ve been able to travel. The Nantucket sailing program is way more diverse now.”

Coco tells Lamont about her home growing up. “Nothing in our house was ever correct,” Coco says. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Something was always breaking—the porch light would go out, the downstairs toilet would overflow, the battery of my mother’s Accord would die. My mother would wash our clothes and hang them on the line, but she never folded them or put them away; we’d all just pull stuff crumpled from the laundry basket. Even my mother’s name, Georgi—that’s her whole entire name, on her birth certificate—it’s just not finished. Like, why not add the final e or a?” Coco sighs. “I remember this one time, my mother brought home steaks for dinner, these thick rib eyes that the butcher at work gave her. She mashed potatoes and boiled up some broccoli, and I made brownies for dessert. I was so excited to have a family dinner like you’d read about in a book and it was one time when Bree and her kids were in a good mood—no one was crying, no one was fighting. Just when everything was ready, my mother’s phone rang. It was Kemp, saying he’d forgotten that darts league started that night and Bree’s boyfriend, Larch, was meeting him at the bar and they wouldn’t be home until late. Georgi got so mad they were missing dinner that she carried the platter of steaks out back and threw them into our pond for the snapping turtles. She just tossed everyone’s dinner. I ran into my room with the tray of brownies, and I invited Bree’s kids in, and we locked the door and ate the brownies straight out of the pan sitting on the floor.” Coco tears up. She had been fourteen years old when this happened. She remembers because she wrote a “personal narrative” about it for a ninth-grade English assignment, and the teacher, Mrs. Buckwalter, asked Coco to stay after class. Coco thought Mrs. Buckwalter was going to report their family to child protective services—in a way, Coco wanted this to happen—but instead, Mrs. Buckwalter told Coco that she was a “very talented writer.”

Coco laughs. “I’m sorry that story doesn’t have an inspirational ending like yours. I didn’t triumph; I only survived.”

“But you did triumph,” Lamont says, kissing her eyelids, her nose, then her lips. “Because you’re here.”

Every morning when Lamont gets up to leave, Coco longs for him to stay.

“Why can’t we go to dinner one night? I know where Bull and Leslee have reservations. If they go to the Galley, we can go to the Sconset Café.”

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