Page 2 of The Identicals
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 looksvacated,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 theVineyard Gazettesports 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.
Harper sighs. Drew is working the beat tonight. He makes double time on weekends, but with all the bozos out drinking too much and enjoying the first days of the summer season, is it worth it? He’ll go on thirty calls, she bets, and twenty-seven of them will be drunk and disorderlies and three will be accidents involving taxi drivers who haven’t learned their way around yet.
The third man remaining in Harper’s life is her precious, damaged friend Brendan Donegal, who is exiled over on Chappy. Harper wants to let Brendan know that Billy has died, but Brendan can’t manage texting anymore. Like twenty-six killer wasps, the alphabet swarms him. He uses his phone only to tell the time.
Nothing from Dr. Zimmer. Will Harper be forced to call? She calls Dr. Zimmer all the time because she has had many legitimate questions about her father’s condition—liver failure, kidney failure, congestive heart failure. Billy Frost’s end has been a series of failures.
Surely no one will fault Harper for calling Reednow,after her father hasdied.But she has an uncomfortable premonition. She waits.
Billy Frost is dead at the age of seventy-three. Harper takes a stab at writing his obituary in her mind as the nurses come in to clean him up and prepare him for the fun-filled ride to the morgue.William O’Shaughnessy Frost, master electrician and avid Red Sox fan, died last night at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, in Oak Bluffs. He is survived by his daughter Harper Frost.
And… his daughter Tabitha Frost… and his granddaughter, Ainsley Cruise… and his ex-wife, Eleanor Roxie-Frost, all of Nantucket, Massachusetts. What will surprise people the most? Harper wonders. That Billy has a daughter identical to but completely different from the cute screw-up who delivers packages for Rooster Express? Or that Billy used to be married to the famous Boston fashion designer Eleanor Roxie-Frost, more commonly known as ERF? Or will the shocker be that the other half of Billy’s family lives on the rival island—that fancy, upscale haven for billionaires? Harper’s twin sister, Tabitha, hasn’t set foot on Martha’s Vineyard in fourteen years, and Harper’s mother, Eleanor, hasn’t been here since her honeymoon, in 1968. Harper’s niece, Ainsley, hasneverbeen here. Billy had been sad about that; when he wanted to see Ainsley, he had to go to Nantucket, which he did, religiously, every August.
You sure you don’t want to come with me?he used to ask Harper.
I’m sure,Harper would say.Tabitha doesn’t want me there.
When will you girls learn?Billy would reply, and Harper would mouth along with him.Family is family.
Familyisfamily,Harper thinks. That’s the problem.
Nothing back from Reed. Harper imagines him eating pie. Reed’s wife, Sadie, is famous for her pies; her mother used to have a stand along the side of the road, and Sadie has capitalized on that artisanal pie-making endeavor and turned it into a gold mine. She rents a small commercial kitchen and storefront in Vineyard Haven—it’s a scant mile from Harper’s duplex—and cranks out the pies: strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry-peach, lobster pot. A lobster pot pie costs forty-two dollars. Harper knows this because, near the end of his life, Billy Frost became a fan. One of his female admirers (and there were many) dropped off a lobster pot pie all warm and fragrant and filled with claw and knuckle meat in a thick sherry cream sauce under golden pastry, and Billy declared that he had died and, against all expectations, gone to heaven. When Billy got really bad but could still eat, Harper had felt it her duty to buy him a lobster pot pie. She had entered the shop—the Upper Crust—with trepidation, knowing she was most likely going to come face-to-face with her lover’s wife for the first time.
Harper was forearmed, but seeing Sadie had come as a shock. She was far shorter than Harper had expected; her head barely cleared the top of the pie case. Her hair was cut short like a boy’s, and her eyes bulged, giving her the expression of a cartoon character perpetually caught by surprise.
Sadie didn’t seem to have any idea who Harper was. She displayed no wariness, just a pleasant smile that revealed a gap between her two front teeth. Harper knew that some men found a gap like that sexy, although Harper never understood the attraction. If her own teeth had looked like that, she would have beat it straight to the orthodontist.
“Can I help you?” Sadie had asked.
“My father is dying,” Harper blurted out.
Sadie’s eyes popped a little more.
“He wants a lobster pot pie,” Harper said. “It’s the one thing he’s been asking for. Mrs. Tobias dropped one off last week for him, and he can’t stop talking about it.”
“Mrs. Tobias is an excellent customer,” Sadie said. She tilted her head. “Is your father BillyFrost,by any chance?”
