Page 2 of Winter Solstice
“Halloween?” Grace says. She takes the invitation from Eddie and puts on her reading glasses. The reading glasses are new since Eddie went to jail, as is all the gray in the part of her hair. One of the infinite number of things Eddie feelsguilty about is causing Grace to look middle aged. “Ican’t go.”
“You can’t?” Eddie says. He feels a sense of panic. They’vebeen invited to a party by the Quinns, which may lead to an invitation to the Quinns’ annual Christmas Eve party. That wouldreallyrestore Eddie’s social credentials. Theyhaveto go. “Why not?”
“I’m working up the alley,” Grace says. “I’m in charge of giving out the candy to the trick-or-treaters. I’ve been doing it for years.”
Doing it foryears?The phrase “up the alley” annoys Eddie. “Up the alley” means Academy Hill, the former school that is now fixed-income housing for elders. It’s a hundred yards from the teensy-tiny cottage Grace bought on Lily Street, up Snake Alley. Grace has been volunteering at Academy Hill since Eddie went away. She may have worked there last Halloween and possibly the Halloween before that, but this hardly qualifies as “doing it for years.” However, Eddie holds his tongue. He promised himself in jail that, as far as Grace was concerned, he would be a new man—a kind, patient, and attentive husband. He will not belittle Grace’s charity work. He will not ask her to skip it. But what will he do about the party?
“What will I do about the party?” Eddie asks Grace.
Grace sighs and heads into the minuscule kitchen, where she pulls a bottle of wine from the three-quarter-size fridge. The wine is Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc, which retails for twelve bucks at Hatch’s. The sight of Grace pouring herselfan inexpensive bottle of wine in that pathetic kitchendepressesEddie, though he knows it’s not supposed to. He’s supposed to feel grateful that he’s a free man, that they have a roof over their heads, that they have money to send to Hope at Bucknell. Gone are the days when Eddie and Grace would drink Screaming Eagle cabernet or, on a random Wednesday afternoon, open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. The worst part is that Grace doesn’t complain; she makes the best of their compromised circumstances. The cottage is barely seven hundred square feet, and a quarter of that is a loft bedroom, which is accessed by a twisty set of stairs. Grace repurposed the back sunroom into a bedroom with a futon, a TV, and a stackable washer and dryer, leaving the loft for the twins. But once Allegra returned home from her failed year at UMass Dartmouth, she said she preferred the only other sleeping space, a narrow, wood-paneled room with a single bed. The room has a door that closes and a bigger closet. It smells of pine sap and stays cool in the summer. It’s kind of like living on a boat, Allegra says.
The houseisin town and itdoeshave a pocket garden out back, which Grace has transformed into a verdant oasis—a postage stamp of lush green lawn that she surrounded with flower beds bursting with hydrangeas, lilies, snapdragons, and rosebushes. People cutting through to town on Snake Alley always stop to admire the garden and to comment on the quaint charm of the cottage. It looks like something from a storybook, they say. It looks like the house where the Three Bears live!
Eddie is bound and determined to earn enough money to buy a bigger house. He won’t be able to afford anything as grand as the estate they used to own on Wauwinet Road—they’ll never have a home or waterfront acreage like that again—but something with a bigger kitchen, something with more than one bathroom.
Grace takes a sip of her wine. She has grown to like the New Zealand sauvignon blancs, she says. They’re bright, grassy.
“Take Allegra to the party,” Grace says. “She broke upwith Hunter yesterday, and she’s been in her room ever since.”
“She broke up with Hunter?” Eddie says. Hunter Bloch is a broker at Melville Real Estate; Hunter’s father, Hunter Sr., owns the company, and when Allegra and Hunter started dating, Eddie and Barbie and Glenn all got the same gleam in their eye as they fantasized about the two agencies merging, creating the biggest real estate concern on Nantucket. “How come?”
“He was seeing Ina, the Bulgarian receptionist at Two Doors Down, behind Allegra’s back,” Grace says. She raisesan eyebrow and lowers her voice. “Frankly, I think it was goodfor her to get a taste of her own medicine. After what she did to Brick…”
Eddie holds up a hand. “Stop,” he says. “The thing with Brick is ancient history.”
“Two and a half years is ancient history?” Grace says. “Well, I’m sure you’d like to think so.”
Eddie bows his head; he feels a quarrel coming on. Grace was sweet and steadfast while Eddie was in prison. She sent him carefully curated care packages, and she wrote long, newsy letters. She came to visit every week without fail, often with whichever daughter she could wrangle into joining her. But now that Eddie is back at home, Grace’s anger, disappointment, and skepticism float to the surface more often than he would like.
“Brick survived, didn’t he?” Eddie says. He knows that Brick Llewellyn, Allegra’s former beau and the son of Grace and Eddie’s former best friends, Madeline and Trevor, was accepted at Dartmouth, and then he won the Nantucket Golf Club scholarship, which pays his tuition, room, and board for four years. Eddie heard this from Grace, who still talks to Madeline, although their friendship is nothing like it used to be. They used to be closer than sisters. Eddie hasn’t seen or spoken to either of the Llewellyns since being released. If Eddie thought they would resume their weekly family dinners, he was apparently mistaken. The Llewellyns, most likely, want nothing to do with Eddie Pancik, making the fact of the Quinn invitation that much more important.
“I’ll see if Allegra wants to go to the party,” Eddie says.
Grace gives him a tight-lipped smile, swallowing whatever else she wanted to say with the bright, grassy sauvignon blanc. “You can ask her now. She’s in her room.”
Eddie knocks on the door of the little bedroom, which is no bigger than Allegra’s walk-in closet in their old house. “Allegra?” he says. “It’s Dad.” He nearly says,It’s Eddie,becauseEddieis what Allegra calls him at the office, and whereas at first, being addressed that way by his child felt like a bucket of cold salt water to the face, now he has grown used to it.
There’s a murmur from the other side of the door that sounds welcoming, but maybe that’s too optimistic a word. At home Allegra still displays flashes of her former self. She can be pouty, bitter, self-absorbed. Eddie eases open the door. Allegra is lying on the bed in shorts and a Nantucket Whalers T-shirt with her laptop open on her chest. She barely looks up when Eddie enters, and he wonders what she’s so absorbed with. It’s probably Facebook, right, or she’s bingeing on one of those Internet series that have no boundaries. Troy Steele, a fellow inmate at MCI–Plymouth, made Eddie watch an episode of something calledThe Girlfriend Experience,and it was no better than porn. Eddie wishes that Allegra were on Zillow, memorizing the square footage and floor plans of every property for sale on Nantucket. That’s how you get ahead!
“Hi there,” Eddie says. Allegra’s hair is messy and she’s not wearing any makeup. Her eyes are swollen like maybe she’s been crying. But she is still beautiful. “In case you’re wondering, I think Hunter Bloch is an idiot.”
Allegra grants Eddie a patient smile. “That he is,” she says.
“I’d like you to do me a favor,” Eddie says, and he tosses the invitation onto Allegra’s bed. “Go to this party with me?”
Allegra reads the invitation. “Bart Quinn?” she says. “He’s hot. I always thought he was hot, but now that he’s, like, a war hero, he’sreallyhot.”
“Hot?” Eddie says, and his spirit flags. Why does Allegra have to be so boy crazy? Why can’t she be more like Hope and be obsessed with Emily Dickinson? Why can’t she be more like Hope andactlike Emily Dickinson—locked in her garret room, writing poetry by the light of one flickering candle?
“It’s on Halloween,” Allegra says. She hands the invitation back to Eddie. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“You will?” Eddie says. For some reason this answer catches him off guard. He expected a struggle.
Allegra shrugs. “Sure. I was supposed to go to the Chicken Box with Hunter. He was going to sneak me in the back door.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. He’s suddenly relieved Allegra and Hunter broke up. The last thing he wants is for people to see his underage daughter dancing in the front row at the Chicken Box, waving her beer around, making out with Hunter Bloch, or displaying any other inelegant behavior. “Well, this will be much more fun.”
“Doubtful,” Allegra says. “But it’s something to do. Is it a costume party?”
