Page 34 of Golden Girl
Yes, much has been made of “the way Willa is”—a super-achiever, responsible, reliable, mature, a leader. She’s the youngest assistant director the Nantucket Historical Association has ever had and she will take over there in five years when the present director retires. She’ll be executive director before she turns thirty.
Or she might leave the NHA once she gets pregnant and work on her pet project, a biography of Anna Gardner, a Nantucket abolitionist who’d organized three antislavery conventions in the early 1840s (Frederick Douglass spoke at all three).
In their conversations at the kitchen island—Willa drinking herbal tea and Vivi drinking tequila over ice (Willa kept a bottle of Casa Dragones on hand just for her mother), they would talk about what path Willa’s life might take. Vivi was of the opinion that Willa could have it all—she could work at the NHA for thirty-five years and leave her stamp on the historical legacy of the islandandshe could write the biographies of Anna Gardner, Eunice Ross, and any other remarkable (and overlooked) Nantucket woman that she wanted to. She could ask for a sabbatical or she could set up flex time.
“What about kids?” Willa said. She wanted five, four at the very least, but every time she said this, Vivi groaned and said she’d feel differently about having five after the first one was born.
“You’ll get a nanny,” Vivi said. “And unlike me, you’ll use your time to write. I used the times when I had babysitters to clean or take a nap. Kids are hard, Willie, I won’t lie.” Willa can see her mother clearly: her stylish dark pixie cut, her brown eyes, the freckles across her nose, her dangly earrings. She wore clothes that were meant for a person twenty years younger but that looked good on Vivi—tight white T-shirts, skinny jeans, suede high-heeled boots. Willa was hesitant to use the wordbeautifulto describe her mother because it didn’t quite fit. She was cute, spunky,alive. And she had near-perfect instincts about people. If her mother believed Willa could do it all, then it was so.
Where does Willa see herself five years from now, at age twenty-nine?
She is the executive director of the NHA and she has just published her biography of Anna Gardner to great critical acclaim (even her fantasy does not include the book becoming a commercial success). She has three children: Charles Evan Bonham III (Charlie), age five, Lucinda Vivian (Lucy), age four and a half, and Edward William (Teddy), age three. Charlie is in kindergarten and the other two go to Montessori preschool, leaving Willa free to split her days between work on NHA business and her second book, which is about Eunice Ross, the young Black woman who petitioned for entry into Nantucket High School in 1847, nearly a century beforeBrown v. Board of Education. She picks the kids up from school and fixes them a snack of freshly baked banana bread, then they have quiet time doing puzzles and reading while Willa makes dinner. Tonight, it’s grilled steak tips, parmesan fondant potatoes, pan-roasted asparagus, a crisp green salad, and popovers, and for dessert, a strawberry-rhubarb galette. Rip comes home from work and changes into the soft gray Amherst T-shirt that Willa loves. He kisses Willa long and deep, the way he used to when they were in junior high, then he puts his finger to her lips and says, “We’ll finish that later.” After dinner, Rip gives the kids a bath, puts them in their pajamas, and supervises teeth-brushing while Willa cleans the kitchen, makes lunches for the following day, and gets the dishwasher humming. Then she goes in to read to the kids—three books per night, chosen by theme. Tonight’s theme is pigs:If You Give a Pig a Pancake, Olivia Saves the Circus,andToot and Puddle.
After the children are tucked in and on their way to dreamland, Willa and Rip reunite in front of the TV, Willa in a silk nightie because she’s lost all the baby weight and then some (she gets up before dawn to ride her Peloton on Tuesdays and Thursdays; that’s all it takes!). Rip cracks open a beer and pours Willa a glass of the Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. They start watching the first episode of the hot new show on Peacock, but before they can figure out who the main characters are, they’re all over each other on the sofa, and the silent furtiveness of it (they can’t wake the children!) makes it just as hot as the sex used to be in high school when they were under a blanket on the sofa in Rip’s basement rec room.
After that, sweaty and spent, they split a piece of the strawberry-rhubarb galette dolloped with freshly whipped cream and then decide that sleep is more important than finishing the show. They head to the bedroom; Willa picks up the novel on her nightstand, and Rip is snoring before she turns the page.
When Willa reaches up to turn off the light, she feels a tiny burst of light and energy inside of her, and she knows she’s pregnant again.
This is the life Willa wants.
It feels a long way off from the life Willa presently has, the one where she’s heartbroken and lost. Her mother is gone. Five years from now, even if Willa has attained the kind of perfection she dreams of, Vivi will still be gone. She’s gone forever. Willawill never see her again.It seems impossible. Someone snuffed out her life and then, in an act so unconscionable Willa can’t even imagine it, drove away.
Someoneon this islandgot away with murder.
Willa wants justice. There was a rumor going around that Cruz DeSantis had been the one to hit Vivi and was just pretending that he’d found her—but Willa refuses to entertain this possibility.
“People are just gossiping,” Willa says. “They don’t know Cruz like we do.”
Rip isn’t so sure. “I heard there are some funny things about his story. Even your brother thinks it might be him.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Willa says.
“I think he does,” Rip says. “I guess Cruz and Leo had a fight the night before, so maybe Cruz came over so early because he was upset, and he turned onto Kingsley going too fast without paying attention, and…boom.”
“Don’t sayboom.” Willa closes her eyes. She can’t let herself imagine the moment of impact but she can’t block it out either. “It wasn’t Cruz. It was someone else. Just keep checking with the police, please. I want them to get this guy behind bars.”
Willa is eight weeks pregnant, and although she has by now trained herself not to get her hopes up, shecannotlose this pregnancy. This is the last pregnancy Vivi knew about; this baby and Willa’s mother were alive at the same time. This pregnancy must continue; it must thrive.
Willa doesn’t feel sick, or tired, or dizzy. Her breasts might be a bit tender, but that could be because she’s constantly pressing and pinching them to see if they feel tender.
I cannot lose this baby. I cannot lose this baby.Willa knows she’s obsessing and that obsessing is bad for her. She obsesses about obsessing.
Moving into Wee Bit is a good distraction. Willa does her favorite thing: she makes a list. She writes down all the essentials they need to bring and checks them off as she packs them up. Five linen dresses for work; T-shirts; her short overalls; five bathing suits; her straw hat; her Lululemon shorts; and tanks for exercising, which she is going to do more often. And a cotton open-weave sweater because it gets chilly at night by the ocean.
Wee Bit has a sandy front yard separated from the entrance to Smith’s Point by a split-rail fence. Up over the rise is the prettiest stretch of beach on Nantucket—a wide swath of golden sand as far as the eye can see, blue-green water, gentle waves.
On her first afternoon at Wee Bit, Willa goes for a barefoot walk at the waterline. She’s the only person on the beach; it feels like she has the entire island to herself. Because she works at the Nantucket Historical Association, she can’t help but think of all the lives and stories that have played out on this island. She’s a native; this land, in some sense, belongs to her.
She picks up her pace until her heart rate increases. Blood flow is good for the baby; so is fresh air, sunshine. Can these things combat her indescribable grief?
Mom,she thinks.Where are you? Where did you go?
The waves encroach and recede over and over again, just as they did hundreds of years ago when the Wampanoag tribe swam in these waters, in the 1860s during the height of the whaling industry, in the 1920s when artists and actors from New York came to Nantucket to escape the heat of the city. The waves will keep rolling in and out for all eternity, long after Willa is gone, after her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are gone.
Willa feels dizzy.
When she heads back to Wee Bit, it’s six thirty, and despite her fantasy of a life where everything is made from scratch, she can’t manage anything more complicated than peanut butter crackers. Millie’s, a Mexican restaurant, is a short bike ride away and Willa is craving their guacamole. This is a good sign, she thinks. She has lost four pounds since her mother died.
