Page 62 of The Book of Summer

“Come on, Lizzy C. Cliff House has been in your family for generations. It’s not just a house. It’s a lifetime.”

“Yeah but what’s a lifetime but memories and photographs? She can keep those!”

“I suppose,” he says. “But memories are so much more vivid when you’re in the spot they happened instead of relying on your brain to paint the picture.”

“Gee thanks, that’s not depressing at all.”

“You know how it is,” he says, and gestures to the view. “When was the last time you thought about this place?”

“Hussey House,” Bess says with a smile. “Or what once was Hussey House, since you’ve demolished it with your greedy, money-grubbing schemes.”

“I am a greedy bastard, aren’t I? Imagine, wanting to eat and put gas in my car.”

“Must be nice!”

“Bottom line, if you don’t have the anchor, what is your memory but a ghost?”

Bess shrugs and then peels the label all the way off her bottle.

“To be honest,” Evan says, “I’ll be sad to see Cliff House go, too. I have my own set of memories, ya know.”

“I’m sure you do. We both do. Some better than others.”

Evan finishes off his beer. As he grabs a second, Bess watches two seagulls dive at each other, then flap away.

“I’ve never told you this,” Evan says. “But my great-aunt used to work at Cliff House.”

“What?” Bess says, spine straightening in surprise. “She did?”

“Yep. My grandfather’s sister.”

“When was this?”

“Ages ago. In the forties. She married later in life, but before that was a maid at Cliff House. My aunt said Ruby was a real firecracker.”

“Really?” Bess laughs and sets down her beer. “Grandma Ruby? I find that hard to believe. She was a bit of a groundbreaker, a feminist in her way. But very muchin her way.Stone-faced, stoic. ‘Firecracker’ is not a word I’d use. Cissy’s a firecracker. Ruby was… an aircraft carrier. A battleship gliding into the harbor.”

Then again, Bess frequently teased her grandmother about her very Bostonian, “low-heeler” persona. Ruby always answered with a tee-hee and a sip of gin, and so Bess took her grandmother for the very best of sports. In retrospect maybe it was because she knew otherwise.

“According to Aunt Jeanne,” Evan says, “Ruby and her brothers palled around with a bevy of good-time girls and boys. Constantly getting into scrapes and shenanigans and forever winning sporting events at the club.”

“Are you serious?” Bess says, laughing again. “Ruby complained about Cissy’s athletic, rough-and-tumble nature. I never guessed Grandma was at all sporty.”

“She was an amazing tennis player, apparently.”

“That’s incredible.”

“My aunt might’ve been the help, but she adored the ‘young ones at the big house.’” Evan thinks for a moment. “Although there was some European girl she didn’t care for. Anyway, it all sounded like a constant party. Until the war happened, of course. Then all bets were off.”

“Wow,” Bess says, staring down at the flatbed and the nails discarded in the grooves. “It’s weird how people change.” She looks up. “Good thing I’m my predictable, same self.”

“The same!” Evan says with a cough. “I can think of five ways right now that you’re a completely different girl than the one who walked the stage at Nantucket High.”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

“You haven’t touched that beer.”

He taps the open, full bottle sitting beside Bess’s foot. The man, he is not wrong.

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