Page 15 of The Identicals
Ainsley is delighted to see that Aunt Harper drives a vintage navy-blue Bronco that has been impeccably restored. Since Ainsley has been dating Teddy, she has logged in a lot of hours watchingBarrett-Jackson Live.
“Is this a sixty-eight?” Ainsley asks.
“It is!” Harper says. “Good eye.”
“I thought you were hiring a car,” Eleanor says.
“Martha’s Vineyard Executive Transport was booked,” Harper says. “I assure you, I did call them. I’m sorry, Mommy, but you’ll have to slum it.”
“Sit up front, Mother,” Tabitha says. “Ainsley and I will squeeze in the back.”
Ainsley doesn’t want to squeeze in anywhere with Tabitha, but she obliges because her grandmother is a senior citizen and belongs up front.
The back of the car is basically a Dumpster for coffee cups, old issues of theVineyard Gazette,greasy paper bags that look and smell like they might contain half of a week-old tuna-fish sandwich, chew toys, and empty airline-size bottles of Jägermeister. Tabitha tries to wrap up all the junk in a sheet of newspaper just so she can find a place to put her feet in their eight-hundred-dollar shoes. The backseat has a sheet over it, but the floor is covered with dog hair.
“Do you have a dog?” Ainsley says. She has been asking Tabitha for a dog ever since she could talk.
“Fish,” Harper says.
“You have a fish?” Ainsley says.
“A dog named Fish,” Harper says. “He’s a Siberian husky.”
“That’s certainly an odd name,” Eleanor says. “It sounds like something your father would dream up. You always were exactly like Billy.”
“I’d love to give you a tour of the island—” Harper says.
“I want a tour!” Ainsley says. She had sort of been dreading this day, but already the payoff has been tremendous. Her mother’s and grandmother’s obvious misery has cheered Ainsley up.
“—but we really don’t have time,” Harper says. “The reception starts at noon, and your ferry back is at—”
“Not soon enough,” Tabitha murmurs.
“Four o’clock,” Eleanor says. “But I feel we should return to the dock no later than three fifteen, don’t you, Pony?”
“If not earlier,” Tabitha says.
Harper snorts. “She still calls you Pony?”
“Who isshe?” Eleanor asks. “The cat’s mother?”
Harper catches Ainsley’s eye in the rearview mirror. “You know the story behind that nickname, right?”
“Please don’t,” Tabitha says.
“Mom wanted a pony,” Ainsley says.
“Your mother not only wanted a pony, your mother alsobecamea pony,” Harper says. “For most of third grade. Ponytail, brown shetland sweater, brown corduroys. She neighed and whinnied. She trotted, cantered, and galloped. She did everything shy of eating hay. The way people were able to tell us apart that year was that your mother acted like a horse and I didn’t.”
“I remember it differently,” Tabitha says.
“We must leave the reception at three o’clock sharp,” Eleanor says. “You needn’t worry about driving us. I’ll happily pay for a taxi.”
Ainsley looks out the window, trying to take it all in. There’s a pond, a bridge, a field. It looks like Nantucket, but it’s not Nantucket.
“Six towns,” Harper is saying. “Seventeen thousand year-round residents. The greatest ice cream in the world at Mad Martha’s.”
“You’ve never tasted the ice cream at the Juice Bar,” Ainsley says. “Or have you? Have you ever been to Nantucket, Aunt Harper?”
