Page 21 of The Hotel Nantucket
Chad needs to be at work bright and early tomorrow. He willnotshow up hungover.
“Good seeing you guys,” Chad says.
“Man, what’s going on?” Bryce says. “You didn’t open a single snap all day and now you won’t go out with us?”
Chad knows his behavior must seem strange. He’s never been the ringleader of this group—that has always been Jasper—but in summers past, he’s gone along for a good time.
“Where were you all day?” Jasper asks.
“I…” Chad says. He could tell these guys he got a job, but there would be follow-up questions like “Where?” and “Why?” Chad is supposed to be having one last summer of carefree leisure before starting at his father’s venture-capital firm, the Brandywine Group, in September. How can Chad explain that not only is he working this summer, he’s achambermaid?He spent today in rubber gloves, learning about disinfectants. “Maybe I’ll meet you guys later.” He reaches for the doorknob so there can be no mistake: he’s not going anywhere with them.
Eric cracks a big, high smile. “Chad must have himself a lady friend. Look at his ’fit—did he even comehomelast night?”
Jasper and Bryce start catcalling—“Bros before hos, man, but no worries, we’re gonna dip”; “We’ll hit you up later”—as Chad slips into the cool air of the foyer and closes the door behind him. Leith is coming down the stairs; she flips him off and heads for the kitchen without a word. His sister has recently earned her doctorate in the silent treatment, which hurts because they used to be friends.
A second later, he hears his mother, Whitney. “Chaddy?”
If she’s calling him the world’s worst nickname—Chaddy—then she’s already into the chardonnay. Chad pokes his head into the kitchen and sees Whitney standing at the island with a large, uncorked bottle of Kendall-Jackson in front of her.
She flutters a piece of paper in his direction. “Pretty please,” she says. “Market for Mom?”
He takes the list:8 wagyu steaks, 3 lbs. bluefin tuna, 2 lbs. lobster salad, Comté cheese, truffled potato chips (6 bags).
“This is a lot of food,” he says. “Are we having company?”
Whitney shrugs and casts her eyes down into the golden promise of her wine. “Things for dinner.”
Chad’s father won’t arrive on the island for another few weeks; he’s busy closing a deal. Leith consumes only two things—hard-boiled eggs and Diet Dr Pepper—and Whitney eats even less than that. Yet his mother always stocks the fridge like the offensive line of the Philadelphia Eagles are coming for dinner. When she goes to the trouble of cooking, 90 percent of the food is pitched straight into the trash (neither of Chad’s parents believes in leftovers). But most of the time, Whitney can’t be bothered to cook. Instead, she pours wine, microwaves a bag of popcorn, and gets lost in Netflix or she meets “the girls” at the yacht club, and the groceries sit in the fridge until they grow a slimy film or greenish-gray fur. This never bothered Chad; he never evennoticeduntil Paddy went on a tirade about the “conspicuous waste” of the Winslow household.
He’ll buy three steaks, the cheese, and one bag of potato chips, he decides.
“I got a job today,” he says.
“You did not.” These are the first words Leith has spoken to him since May 22.
“At the Hotel Nantucket,” Chad says. “Cleaning rooms.”
His mother blinks.
“I wanted to do something,” Chad says. “To make things right.”
“Your father is handling it with the lawyers,” his mother says.
“Iwanted to do something. Get an honest job, make my own money to give to Paddy.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Whitney says.
“Wait,” Leith says. “You’re serious? You’re going to clean rooms at the hotel? You’re going to be a…a…”
“Maid,” Chad says. He watches his sister smile, which is nice because she has such a pretty smile and he hasn’t seen it in a while. But then she dissolves into hysterical laughter that quickly becomes more hysteria than laughter and finishes as ugly sobs. She takes the closest thing she can find—a coffee mug with a picture of a dachshund on it—and throws it at him, hurling it like she’s trying to get a lacrosse ball into the net for the game-winning goal against a longtime rival. She misses Chad; the mug smashes against the tile floor.
“You! Can’t! Make! Things! Right!” she screams.
Chad leaves the kitchen and heads out the front door with the list clenched in his fist.
His sister is correct—he can’t make things right. But he’s going to die trying.
Since arriving on Nantucket last August and moving into the guest cottage behind her brother’s house on West Chester Street, Magda English has established a tidy and modest routine. She attends the seven-thirty service at the Summer Street church every Sunday morning; she occasionally meets the church ladies (led by the sanctimonious and nearly unbearable Nancy Twine) for afternoons of “crafting”; and she cooks—soups, stews, and rice dishes, all of them diabolically spicy.
