Page 33 of Golden Girl
I don’t even want to readGolden Girlbecause when I do, I won’t have any more Vivi to read and that’s when the loss of her will sink in. Is anyone else feeling that way?—Lloret A., Bowmore, Scotland
Reply: Me too!—Taffy H., Kalamazoo, MI
Reply: Me too!—Beth H., Sharon, MA
“So far so good,” Vivi says.
Hello! While I’m sad about the loss of one of my favorite authors, I would also like to offer a suggestion. Please will someone go back into Ms. Howe’s novels and fix the copyediting mistakes? On page 201, line 21 ofThe Photographerit says “Truman” where it should say “Davis.” Also, I’ve long been shocked that the copyeditor let the interrobangs stay throughout Ms. Howe’s work. For those of you who don’t know, an interrobang is an unorthodox combination of question mark and exclamation point. How did this happen?!!!??? (You can see from my example how unseemly this looks.) Thank you, and my sympathies to the family.—Pauline F., Homestead, FL
Reply: “Interrobang” sounds like what happens when one of my kids knocks on the door while I’m having sex with my husband. (Sorry, couldn’t resist. I like to think this is a Vivi-type joke.)—Kerry H., Grand Island, NE
“She’s right,” Vivi says. “That is the kind of joke I would make.”
Martha says nothing.
Hello, I’m new to Facebook as of right this minute. I was wondering if anyone knows how to get ahold of someone in Vivi’s family? I’m not some weirdo stalker, I promise. I went to Parma High School with Vivi from 1983 to 1987. She was my girlfriend for eleven months. I haven’t seen her since August of ’87 but I heard from the sister of my former bandmate that she passed away suddenly and I’d like to express my condolences and share my memories with the family. I also just found out that she’s a writer, and kind of famous. (I don’t read much.) I went on Amazon and read the description of her book that’s coming out next month and I would like to talk to her family about that as well. So if anyone here can help, I’d appreciate it. I don’t have a Facebook page (this is my coworker’s page I’m writing from now) but my name is Brett Caspian and I’m the GM of the Holiday Inn by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. You can call the front desk and ask for me. I’m sorry about Vivi. She was a special girl.
Oh no!Vivi thinks.Nooooooo!Brett Caspian found out about the book.
Vivi’s hunch had been correct: Brett didn’t know she was a writer. He knows now only because someone told him she died. His bandmate’s sister—Roy’s sister Renata, if Vivi had to guess.Aaaaaaaah!She realizes hownaiveshe was to think that Brett would never hear about this book. The whole world is connected; everybody knows everything, thanks to the internet. Brett isn’t on Facebook but that doesn’t mean he lives in a cabin in the woods or in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. He’s the GM at a Holiday Inn in Knoxville, Tennessee. (This seems so random. If Vivi had to guess what Brett was doing with his life, she would have said he was working on a production crew doing lights and sound for the bands they’d loved—Foreigner, Blue Öyster Cult—on their summer-outdoor-venue-reunion tours.)
Brett doesn’t sound angry in the message. He doesn’t sound like he hates her.
But he will—if he readsGolden Girl.
Vivi remembers how Brett used to wait on a bench and smoke every time she went into B. Dalton at the Parmatown Mall. He wouldn’t even set foot in the bookstore.
There’s no way he’ll readGolden Girl.
Vivi hands the clipboard back to Martha with a smile. “Better than I expected!” she says.
Willa
Willa and Rip are moving for the summer. They’re leaving their house on Quaker Road—purchased just after their wedding with help from the elder Bonhams—for a cottage situated on the beach at the entrance to Smith’s Point. Their house on Quaker Road is forty-five hundred square feet and has five bedrooms. The cottage is tiny; it’s a dollhouse. It used to be the “summer residence” for Rip’s grandparents, and Willa and Rip would ride their bikes there when they were in middle school and high school. Rip’s grandmother would serve them lemonade garnished with fresh mint, but they had to drink it at the picnic table on the deck because the house was too small for them all to hang out inside. The cottage is called Wee Bit. It has a teensy-tiny sitting room, one wall of which is a galley kitchen, a bedroom that is big enough to hold one bed and one nightstand, and a powder room with a sink and toilet. There’s a deck with a picnic table and a gas grill that Rip’s grandfather splurged on sometime in the mid-1990s, and three stairs down, there’s a flagstone patio in front of an outdoor shower. Beyond the deck and the shower are dunes with a path that cuts over and onto the beach.
After Rip’s grandparents went into assisted living, Wee Bit sat unused. Nobody in the Bonham family wanted to stay there. They were a tall family; Chas and Rip couldn’t even stand to their full height unless they were right in the center of the room where the ceiling peaked. Both of Rip’s grandparents passed away over that winter and Rip officially inherited the cottage. It was infested with mice and everything was mildewed. The floor in the sitting room was rotted; the bathroom was unspeakable. Willa thought that they could—maybe—use the cottage as a staging area if they ever wanted to throw a beach party, but Rip was set on living there.
Without telling Willa, Rip had hired Vivi’s contractor, Marky Mark, to replace the floors, repaint, tile the powder room, and update the appliances in the kitchen (three-quarter fridge, miniature stovetop and oven, microwave) and he’d bought a new bed, a queen instead of a king so there was marginally more room to move around. He also bought an AC unit. Marky Mark rebuilt the enclosure around the outdoor shower. Rip picked out a new love seat, seagrass rugs, a round wooden coffee table. When he took Willa to look at it, saying only that he’d “spruced it up,” she had been blown away. It was so much better. It was adorable, like something from the HGTV showTiny Paradise.
It was still way too small to live in.
After Willa’s second miscarriage, she started to change her mind about that, and after her third, she was counting the days until they could move out of the house on Quaker and into Wee Bit. The house on Quaker was enormous, the rooms yawning and empty, waiting to be filled with children. The house was tapping its foot like an impatient friend—What’s taking you so long? What’s wrong with you?
They move out to Wee Bit exactly one week after Vivi’s memorial service. Willa is even happier to escape the house now because all she sees is the ghost of her mother dropping by with banana bread or a bunch of chives from her herb garden or a book that she wants Willa to read so they can discuss it. Her mother never called or even texted before she popped by, which was fine most of the time. Once, back in February, Vivi let herself into the house while Willa and Rip were in the bedroom having sex. They’d heard her calling out, they’d heard her climbing the stairs, and Rip had nearly lost his erection but Willa begged him to finish because she was ovulating and he had paddle tennis that night and by the time he got home, she would be asleep.
Rip said, “She’s going to come into the bedroom, Will, and the door isn’t locked.”
Willa had shouted, “Go away, Mom, please! We’re busy!”
“Getting busy?” Vivi said. “Sorry, guys! Have fun!”
They could hear her retreat and Rip came, then fell on top of Willa, saying, “That was the ultimate test of my manhood.” And a couple of weeks later, Willa discovered she was pregnant. They called it the Bad Timing Baby until Willa started bleeding at eight weeks.
Vivi stopped by so often because, Willa realized tearfully, the two of them had become friends. They’d emerged out of the dark, confusing tunnel-maze of mother-daughter relationships to discover that they liked each other and had fun hanging out. Vivi hadn’t enjoyed a friendship with her own mother at all; they remained in the maze until Nancy Howe died, during Vivi’s first winter on Nantucket.
Vivi admitted to Willa recently that she had been worried when she gave birth to a girl because her own relationship with her mother had been so unpleasant.
“Then I realized I didn’t have to do things the way my mother did them. I could become the mother I wish I’d had.” Vivi laughed. “Your father and I quickly figured out that you were going to raise us rather than the other way around.”
