Page 9 of Nantucket Longing

“I’m not in the business of asking people to come to The Copperfield House like this,” Greta said finally, clicking her fingernails on the table.“But I have a sense you could really use it.If you want to.”She paused and arched her eyebrow.“We’d have a room ready for you as early as November.You could stay till the end of January.What do you say?”

Madeline shook with fear.But before she could overthink it, she heard herself say, “Yes.”

Greta didn’t show any emotion.She took a sip of matcha latte and turned to gaze out the window.A skateboarder rushed past, his hair a blur out behind him.

“How I miss Nantucket,” Greta said.“The only danger in going there is the fact that you’ll struggle to ever leave again.”

Madeline laughed.It didn’t seem like a real danger.

But now, sitting at the bonfire so many months later, with Henry’s hand on her thigh and Greta’s laughter in her ears, Madeline recognized Greta’s warning.

How could she ever leave all of this?

ChapterFive

Diana

April 1999

Diana’s father was diagnosed with lung cancer the same year that Diana met Allen Willis and fell in love.It was whiplash of the highest degree: the most joy Diana had ever felt alongside the very worst of devastation.In her father’s pickup, she drove him to and from cancer treatments and frequently skipped school to make sure he was all right, to clean the house, to cook their meals, and to cry quietly in her bedroom and wonder if anything would ever be all right again.Diana’s father’s job offered months of sick pay, which was incredible and unexpected, but because their health insurance wasn’t exactly impressive, Diana had to take two after-school jobs, which left her exhausted and unable to make good grades.

It was the tail end of her junior year.Diana was closing up the diner, untying her apron, counting out her tips, when a handsome guy a few years older than her came in and begged for “one last burger with fries.”Diana said the kitchen was already closed.When he pushed it, saying he was starving and he loved this diner so much more than he loved any other diner in the Detroit area, Diana raised her chin, flared her nostrils, and said, “I don’t care where you eat your burger!If I stand for another thirty seconds, my feet will explode!”

It was funny to hear herself talk like that.Strangely, she suddenly pictured herself like Barbara Nowak—the proud and beautiful mother she hadn’t seen in nearly ten years.She knew the reality was different; she was a diner server in Detroit, Michigan, with no prospects and barely any money in the bank.She wasn’t Barbara Nowak, the world-renowned pianist from the once great Soviet Union.

Diana still hadn’t come to terms with her departure from Poland, but she didn’t exactly have the time to sit down and think about it, did she?

The guy who wanted a burger so desperately looked deflated.He tugged at his dark curls and said, “I’m really sorry, miss.I really am.I got so distracted with my own stupid mess of a life, and I saw you in here, looking so kind and, you know, pretty, and I just thought, heck.Maybe talking to you could be nice.But I see that I’ve overstepped.And I’m sorry.I really am.”

Diana kept her face stoic.But there was something about the honesty that melted off him, something rare.

He furrowed his brow.“Why don’t you come out with me?There’s another burger place a few blocks away.You can sit down before your feet explode.You can tell me everything that’s on your mind.”

Diana glared at him.

“Or!You can just sit and eat and go home after,” the guy said.“Man, I can’t stop putting my foot in my mouth, can I?”

He certainly could not.But Diana couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked her out like this.So she shoved the rest of her tips into her pocket, locked up the diner, and walked down the road with this man, aged twenty-one, named Allen Willis.She found out that his grandmother was Polish, and that his father was an English immigrant, and that he’d been born and raised in Detroit and “hated it here.”He dreamed of going somewhere else.Diana was too exhausted for her own dreams.But that night over burgers and fries, she let herself fall into the soft blue pools of his eyes.She let herself listen to the beautiful ways he thought about his future.And when the clock struck one that night, she found herself kissing him in the front seat of his car with her eyes closed.

She didn’t tell Allen about her father’s cancer until their seventh date.They were picnicking on Lake Eerie, and Allen was wearing sunglasses that made him look like Tom Cruise.Diana considered breaking up with him right here and now to preserve how perfect it had been since they’d met.She knew that letting anyone get to know her meant letting things get messy.Could Allen handle it?

It turned out that Allen could.That night, he held her as she cried, and he came over the following week to meet her father for the first time.They had beers and laughed on the back porch, watching the sunlight dim across the neighborhood.After Allen left, Diana sat with her father right where Allen had been, and her father said, “It’s good that you’ll have someone to take care of you after I’m gone.”Diana told him not to talk like that.

But it turned out her father was right.It was only four months later that he died.After they buried him, Diana dropped out of high school and moved in with Allen, who wasn’t as kind after the first year and was only about half as kind as that after two.But what could she do?Where could she go?And she loved him so desperately.She cleaned his house and cooked his meals and—on the one occasion—when he hit her, she agreed that it had been her fault.

Diana got pregnant in 2001—only a few months before September 11th changed everything and made Diana so fearful that she couldn’t sleep at night.She’d only lived in Manhattan briefly, but she had nightmares of walking the streets as fire and ash filled the sky.Allen lost his job and then got a new and “better” job that kept him out of the house sixty to seventy hours a week.When he was there, he was angry and saying things like, “We never should have gotten pregnant; we shouldn’t bring a baby into this world.”He always passed out drunk after that.Diana usually left him on the couch, where he’d snore all night through.

In early 2002, not long before the baby was due, Diana got up the nerve to go to the nearest library and search for her mother on the internet.Because she was perpetually poor and perpetually busy, Diana had never really operated the internet and felt that it was something newfangled that was bound to disappear soon.When she got there, she put her fingers on the keyboard and immediately thought back to the piano, another set of keys she’d once understood.Back in Poland, she’d learned how to type, but the keyboard had looked different to this one.Her heart fluttered.Maybe she was too stupid to do this.

Finally, she managed to type her mother’s name: Barbara Nowak.

Immediately, the search engine flooded with images of her mother—images ranging from decades ago to just a few months.The woman in the photos was just as regal and well-dressed and professional as Diana remembered her.There was no sense on her mother’s face that she’d lost her daughter.There was no sense that Barbara was spending a single moment missing her.Had Diana’s father been right?Had Barbara wanted her gone?

After about three hours of searching, Diana tracked down a phone number for Barbara’s agent.She wrote it down in a notebook and drove home, where she vomited into the toilet for another thirty minutes before she passed out in bed.When she woke up, she heard Allen in the living room, raving and roaring about a sporting event on the television.Diana felt she was going insane.She asked Allen why he wasn’t at work, and he reminded her it was Sunday and asked her why she was so dumb all the time.Diana hardly reacted.She took the phone into the bedroom and said a small prayer before she dialed the phone number of her mother’s agent.It rang and rang across the Midwest, past the East Coast, through England, and on toward eastern Europe.A secretary answered in Polish.It struck Diana as odd, although it made perfect sense.She was accustomed to English-speaking receptionists, to American voices answering with, “Hello, how may I help you?”But this was Polish, Diana’s mother tongue, which she’d hardly spoken since her father died.Diana answered with a shaking voice and said, “Hello, I’d like to speak to Barbara Nowak?”

The receptionist laughed gently.“You can send fan mail.There’s an address I can give you.”And then she said, “Where are you from?Your accent is strange.”

Diana felt her baby moving and kicking and wondered if it was because the baby sensed this call to their homeland.

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