Page 40 of Golden Girl
“It’ll be so great,” Savannah said when they were back in Durham packing up their dorm room. “I have a part-time job in a needlepoint store on Main Street and when I’m not working, we can hang out on Madequecham Beach. We can go to the Chicken Box and the Muse at night.”
“I’ll have to get a job too,” Vivi said.
“You’ll be writing,” Savannah said. “You’re bringing your word processor, right?”
“Right,” Vivi said, but her voice faltered because she wasn’t sure she considered “writing” a job—a job was supposed to produce income. Maybe she could write in the mornings, then wait tables or work retail. She wanted to use the five thousand dollars as a nest egg, not as pocket money to blow through during her fun Nantucket summer.
Her fun Nantucket summer! On the ferry, Vivi and Savannah sit on the top deck with the sun in their faces and the wind blowing their hair back like they’re a couple of J. Crew models. The island comes into view—sailboats in the harbor, the town skyline, such as it is, consisting of two church steeples. When the girls disembark, Savannah waves at her mother, Mary Catherine, who is driving an ancient Jeep Wagoneer with wood-panel sides. Mrs. Hamilton helps them load their luggage into the back while Savannah’s yellow Lab, Bromley, chases his tail in excitement.
“I swear, Vivian, you brought so much luggage, I’d think you were planning on spending the summer!” Mary Catherine says.
Vivi’s mouth opens. Savannah squeezes Vivi’s wrist in a way that Vivi knows meansDon’t respondand says, “You sit up front, Vivi, so you can see. I’ll sit in the back with Bromley.”
On the way to the house, Vivi cranes her neck trying to take it all in: the bike shops, the pizza place, the Nantucket Whaling Museum, a young woman in a yellow sundress crossing the street with an armload of flowers. When Mary Catherine said Vivi brought enough luggage to make her think she was spending the summer, what didthatmean?Isn’tshe spending the summer? Vivi tries not to panic, although she has nowhere to go except back to Ohio, where she’ll end up working at one of the Parmatown Mall kiosks that sell markers with disappearing ink or paper planes that fly in loop-the-loops or, even worse, she’ll be stuffing her legs into nylons and showing up at some blocky office building to become a Kelly girl.
But she has her heart set on a summer at the beach.
The Hamilton summer home, Entre Nous, is on Union Street in a row of what Mary Catherine calls “antiques.” (Vivi thought antiques were pieces of furniture or cars, not houses.) The home was built in 1822 by Oliver Hamilton. It has white clapboard siding, black shutters, a black front door with a silver scallop-shell knocker, and huge blooming hydrangea bushes flanking the “friendship stairs”—seven steps on either side of the door that ascend to meet at a landing.
When Vivi enters, she holds her breath. She knows, somehow, that this is a moment she’ll remember until the day she dies (and beyond, as it turns out!). Vivi had thought the house would be beachy, like an upscale version of the place they rented in Wrightsville during spring break, but this house has Persian rugs, chandeliers, a grandfather clock, and a huge vase of Asiatic lilies on a marble-topped table in the foyer. The dog bounds inside and sniffs at Vivi’s crotch for what seems like an indecent amount of time while Vivi tries to pry his muzzle away. Nobody else seems to notice, but Vivi feels exposed, as if even the dog has rooted her out as a stranger. The house is the grandest Vivi has ever been inside. The staircase has a runner held across each step with a brass rail and Savannah points at the scrimshaw button embedded in the cap of the newel post at the bottom of the balustrade; it was placed there when “good old Ollie” paid off the mortgage in 1826.
Vivi peers into the formal living room to the right of the stairs and the dining room to the left, each room with a brick fireplace. Savannah leads her down the hall to a library, which is everything you’d want an at-home library to be. Built-in shelves hold rows and rows of books—the requisite leather-bound kind but also the rainbow spines of popular hardbacks and an entire swath of battered paperbacks. There’s a deep leather armchair where apparently someone has been sitting recently—a copy ofMoby Dicklies splayed open on the seat. Vivi can’t help herself; she picks the book up. In the margins are notes in faded pencil.
“I was just revisiting Melville,” Mary Catherine says. “That’s the copy I studied from at Smith, if you can believe it.”
Vivi sets the book down with some reverence now. The library isn’t just for show; it’s the place where Mary Catherine can revisit Melville and reflect on the thoughts she had as a younger person. Vivi understands that she’s in a home where things aren’t put out for show; the furnishings have meaning,provenance. It’s mortifying to compare this home—Savannah’ssecondhome—to the place Vivi grew up, with its wall-to-wall carpeting, crucifixes everywhere, the long, fancy mirror at the end of the hall bought on sale from the furniture department at Higbee’s.
Vivi wishes she hadn’t sold all her books back to the student bookstore at the end of the year. She, too, wrote in the margins (this was a detriment to their resale value) and now she will never be able to revisit her musings; she will never be able to hand off her copy ofFranny and Zooeyto one of her children and say,I read this at nineteen, let me know what you think.
From now on, she decides, she’s saving her books.
Beyond the library is a huge, wide, bright kitchen, which is many different rooms in one. In front of a row of windows is a harvest table set with ten Windsor chairs. Against the opposite wall is an enormous cast-iron range with an imposing hood; the backsplash tile is painted with pictures of fruits and vegetables labeled in French:haricot vert, artichaut, pêche.There’s a plaid Orvis dog bed in the corner and beyond that a mudroom where Bromley’s leashes hang alongside yellow rain slickers. A straw market basket rests on a simple wooden bench that is probably where good old Ollie Hamilton used to sit to put on his boots.
The kitchen has a square island topped in dark marble. There’s a prep sink at one end and three barstools at the other. Someone has set out a cutting board with a block of pale cheese, a stick of salami, and a dish of purplish olives.
“Alcohol?” Savannah asks. She pulls a bottle of wine from a fridge that seems to hold only wine, and Vivi can tell it’s not the cheap stuff that she and Savannah used to buy at Kroger and drink in the dorms before they went out.
Savannah takes two wine goblets down from a rack over their heads that Vivi hadn’t even noticed and says, “Let me show you upstairs.”
The hallway of the second floor is long, with a barrel-vaulted roof. Doors that lead to bedrooms—or bathrooms? or closets?—are all closed. At the end of the hall is a rounded niche holding the most impressive model ship Vivi has ever seen. This house is like a museum; there isn’t one cheap or inauthentic thing in it.
They ascend another set of stairs to the third floor, Savannah’s floor, the renovated attic. The massive, airy, slope-ceilinged space is entirely white—walls, trim, curtains, king canopy bed. The rag rug is done in vivid rainbow stripes, and hanging on the walls is Savannah’s childhood artwork—finger-paintings, crayon drawings.
It’s a “self-portrait”—Savannah with green hair and red pants drawn like two long boxes—that finally moves Vivi to tears. She brought home school projects—turkeys created by tracing her hand, Easter bunnies with cotton-ball tails, even a tessellation Vivi slaved over for her geometry class in ninth grade—and she’s certain they all went into the trash. Vivi’s family never documented or celebrated itself because neither of her parents believed their family was worth it. They were just trying to survive, and they didn’t even succeed at that.
“What’s wrong?” Savannah asks.
Vivi can’t explain what she’s feeling without sounding petty.My mother didn’t keep my artwork. I have no personal history to display.Savannah will no doubt say she’s envious because Vivi’s parents aren’t “all over” her. Vivi has what Savannah wants: freedom.
“Your mother doesn’t know I’m staying all summer,” Vivi says. “Does she?”
“I don’t care about my mother,” Savannah says, waving a hand. “Her opinion matters not. And you don’t have to worry about sharing my bed because…” She strides over to a door that Vivi thinks is a closet and opens it to reveal another bedroom, this one just big enough to hold a double bed, a dresser, and a desk set by a tiny window. Vivi gazes out—she can see the harbor in the distance. The tiny room is perfect. It’s compact and sensible. She can write here while looking at the water for inspiration.
Tears drip down Vivi’s face. “How long does she think I’m staying?”
“Oh, it’s this stupid family rule. Houseguests get one week.”
“Why didn’t youtellme this?” Vivi says. “You said I could stay for the summer.”
