What I Thought Was True

After a while, she says, “Maybe you could walk down to the Ellingtons’” – she wags the spoon toward Low Road – “say hiya to Mrs. E.”

“Wait. What? Like a job interview? Now?” I look down at my fraying cut-offs and T-shirt, back at Mom. Then I run inside and come back with my familiar green-and-pink mascara tube. I unscrew it, flicking the wand rapidly over my eyelashes.

“You don’t need that,” Mom says for the millionth time, nonetheless handing me her spoon so I can check for smudges in the reflection. “No. I pretty much told her you’d take the job. It’s a good one. But I don’t know how many other people already know about it. And such good pay. Just get there, ground floor, remind her who you are. She’s always liked you.”

This is why, three minutes later, I’m toeing on my flip-flops when Grandpa Ben hurries out, his shock of curly white hair tousled. “Gwen! Take this! Tell Mrs. E. they are from Bennie para a rosa da ilha, for the Rose of the Island. Mando lagostas e amor. I send her lobsters and love.”

I look down at the moist paper sack encased in Grandpa’s faded rope-mesh bag, from which a pair of lobster antennae wave menacingly.

“Grandpa. It’s a job interview. Sort of. I can’t show up with shellfish. Especially alive.”

Grandpa Ben blows out his breath impatiently. “Rose loves lobsters. Lobster salad. Always, she loved that. Amor verdadeiro.” He beams at me.

“True love or not, these are a long way from lobster salad.” One of the lobsters is missing a front claw but still snapping scarily at me with its other one.

“You cook them, you chill them, you make the special sauce for her to eat tomorrow.” Grandpa Ben thrusts the bag at me. “Rose always loved the lagostas.”

He’s aged in the years since Vovó died, more so since Dad moved out and he moved in. Before then, he seemed as unchanging as the figureheads on a whaling ship, roughly hewn, strong, brown as oak. But his face seems to sag tonight, and I can’t stand to say no to those eager chocolate eyes. So I bundle the mesh sack onto my wrist and head down the steps.

At nearly six o’clock the early summer sun is still high in the sky, the water beyond the houses bottomless bright blue, glinting silver with reflected light. There’s just a bit of a breeze, and, now that I’m out of range of Nic’s shoes, the air smells like cut grass and seaweed, mingled with the mellow scent of the wild thyme that grows everywhere on the island.

That’s about all we have here. Wild thyme, a seasonal community of shingled mansions, a nature preserve dedicated to the piping plovers, and the rest of us – the people who mow the lawns and fix and paint and clean the houses. We all live in East Woods, the “bad” part of Seashell. Ha. Not many people would say that exists on the island. We get woods at our back and can only squint at the ocean; they get the full view of the sea – sand tumbling all the way out to the water – from their front windows, and big rambling green lawns in back. Eighty houses, thirty of them year-round, the rest open from Memorial through Columbus Day. In the winter it’s like we year-rounders own the island, but every spring we have to give it back.

I’m halfway down Beach Road, past Hooper’s house, past Vivien’s, heading for Low Road and Mrs. Ellington, when I hear the low clattery thrum of a double lawn mower. It gets louder as I walk down the road closer to the water. The rumble builds, booming as I turn onto Low Road, where the biggest beachfront houses are. The maintenance shack on Seashell – the Field House – has these huge old stand-up mowers, with blades big enough to cut six-foot-wide swaths in everyone’s yard. As I pass the Coles’ house, the sound stutters to a halt.

And so do I.

Chapter Three

At first I just have to stare, the way you do when confronted with a natural wonder.

Niagara Falls.

The Grand Canyon.

Okay, I’ve never been to either, but I can imagine.

This summer’s yard boy has climbed off the mower and is standing with his back to me, looking up at Old Mrs. Partridge, who’s bellowing at him from her porch, making imperious sweeping gestures from left to right.

“Why can’t you folks ever get this?” shouts Old Mrs. Partridge. She’s rich, deaf, and Mom’s number one candidate for undetectable poison. Not only are all the people who work for her in any capacity “you people,” most of the other island residents are too.

“I’ll work on it,” the yard boy says, adding after a slight pause, “ma’am.”

“You won’t just work on it, you’ll do it right. Do I make myself clear, Jose?”

“Yes.” Again the pause. “Ma’am.”

Old Mrs. Partridge looks up, her mouth so tight she could bite a quarter in half. “You – ” She jabs her bamboo cane out at me. “Maria! Come tell this boy how I like my lawn mowed.”

Oh hell no. I take a few steps backward on the road, my eyes straying irresistibly to the yard boy.

He’s turned to the side, rubbing his forehead, a gesture I recognize from Mom (Old Mrs. Partridge can get a migraine going in no time). He’s in shorts, shirtless . . . broad shoulders, lean waist, tumble of blond hair bright in the sun, nice arms accentuated by the bend of his elbow. The least likely “Jose” in the world.

Cassidy Somers.

Oh, I should keep backing away now instead of what I actually do, which is freeze to the spot. But I cannot help myself.

Again.

Snagging the shirt draped over the handlebars of the lawn mower, Cass wipes his face, starts to mop under his arms, then glances up and sees me. His eyes widen, he lowers the shirt, then seems to change his mind, quickly hauling it over his head. His eyes meet mine, warily.

“Go on!” Mrs. Partridge snaps. “Tell him. How Things Are Done. You’ve been around here long enough. You know how I like my lawn. Explain to Jose here that he can’t just mow it in this haphazard, higgledy-piggledy fashion.”

I feel the sharp edge of a claw nudge under my arm and slide Grandpa Ben’s bag to the ground behind me. This is bad enough without lobsters.

“Well, Jose,” I say firmly. “Mrs. Partridge likes her lawn to be mowed very evenly. Horizontally.”

“Horizontally?” he repeats, tipping his head at me slightly, the smallest of smiles tugging the corner of his mouth.

Cass. Let’s not go there.

“That’s right,” I say. “Jose.”

He leans back against the mower, head still cocked to the side. Old Mrs. Partridge has caught sight of Marco, the head maintenance guy on the island, making his final rounds with the garbage truck, and temporarily deserts us to bully him instead, railing about some hurricane that’ll never make it this far up the coast.

“You’re the yard boy on island this summer?” I blurt out. “Wouldn’t you be better off – I don’t know, caddying at the country club?”

Cass lifts two fingers to his forehead, saluting sardonically. “This year’s flunky, at your service. I prefer yard man. But apparently I don’t get a choice. My first name has also been changed against my will.”

“You’re all Jose to Mrs. Partridge. Unless you’re a girl. Then you’re Maria.”

He folds his arms, leans back slightly, frowning. “Flexible of her.”

I’ve barely spoken a word to Cass since those spring parties. Slipped around him in school, sat far away in classes and assemblies, shrugged off conversations. Easy when he’s part of a crowd – that crowd – striding down the hallways at Stony Bay High like they own it all, or at Castle’s yesterday. Not so simple when it’s only Cass.

He’s squinting at me now, absently rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb. I’m close enough to breathe in the salty ocean-scent of him, the faint trace of chlorine. Suddenly that cold spring day is vivid in my mind, closer than yesterday. Don’t think about it. And definitely not about his lips.

He ducks his head to see my eyes. I don’t know what mine show, so I direct my gaze at his legs. Strong calves, lightly dusted with springing blond hair. I’m more conscious of the ways he’s changed since we were kids even than the ways I have. Good God. Stop it. I shift my gaze to the limitless blue of the sky, acutely aware of every sound – the sighing ocean, the hum of the bees in the beach plum bushes, the distant heartbeat throb of a speedboat.

He shifts from one leg to the other, clears his throat. “I was wondering when I’d run into you,” he offers, just as I ask, “Why are you here?”

Cass is not an islander. His family owns a boat-building business on the mainland, Somers Sails, one of the biggest on the East Coast. He does not have to put up with the summer people. Not like us – the actual Joses and Marias.

He shrugs. “Dad got me the job.” He leans down, brushing grass cuttings off the back of his leg. “Supposed to make a man of me. School of hard knocks and all that.”

“Yup, we poor folk make up in maturity what we lack in money.”

A flash of embarrassment crosses his face, as if he’s suddenly remembered that, while we both go to Stony Bay High, I don’t have a membership at the Bath and Tennis Club. “Well . . .” he says finally, “it’s not a cubicle, anyway.” His sweeping gesture takes in the gleaming ocean and the swath of emerald-green lawn. “Can’t top the view.”

I nod, try to picture him in an office. I’m most familiar with him near the water, poised to dive into the school pool or, that one summer, hurling himself off the Abenaki dock into the ocean, somersaulting in the air before crashing into the blue-black water. After a second I realize I’m still nodding away at him like an idiot. I stop, shove my hands in my pockets so violently I widen the hole in the bottom of one and a dime drops out onto the grass. I edge my foot forward, cover it.

Done with browbeating Marco, Old Mrs. Partridge tramps back up the stone path, points at Cass with a witchy finger. “Is this break time? Did I say this was break time? What are you doing, lolly-gagging around? Next thing I know you’ll be expecting a tuna sandwich. You, Maria, finish explaining How Things Are Done and let Jose get to work.” She stomps back into the house. I step away a few paces. Cass reaches out a hand as if to stop me, then drops it.

Silence again.

Go, I tell myself. Just turn around and go.

Cass clears his throat, clenches and unclenches his hand, then stretches out his fingers. “Uh . . .” He points. “I think . . . your bag is crawling.”

I turn. Lobster A is making a break for it across the lawn, trailing the mesh bag and Lobster B behind. I run after it, hunched low, snatch up the bag, and suddenly words are spilling from my mouth as freely and helplessly as that dime from my pocket. “Oh I’ve got this job interview, sort of . . . thing, with Mrs. Ellington – down-island.” I wave vaguely toward Low Road. “My grandfather knows her and wants me to make lobster salad for her.” I shake the lobsters back into the bag. “Which means I have to, like, boil these suckers. I know I’m a disgrace to seven generations of Portuguese fishermen, but putting something alive into boiling water? I’m not— It’s just— I mean, what a way to go – ” I look up at Cass, expressionless except for one slightly raised eyebrow, and clamp my mouth shut at last. “See you around,” I call over my shoulder, hurrying away.

Nonchalant. Suave. But really, are there any nonchalant, suave good-byes that involve unruly crustaceans? Not to mention that the Good Ship Pretense of Nonchalance sailed several blatherings ago.

“Will I?” Cass calls after me. I pick up my pace but can’t resist a quick reverse look at him. He just stands there, arms still folded, watching me scurry off like some hard-shelled creature scrabbling over the seafloor. Except without the handy armor.

Chapter Four

I keep speed-walking down Low Road, my thoughts racing ahead of my feet. The yard boy is everywhere on island, all summer long. Cass will haunt my summer the way he preoccupied my spring.

I hear a sound behind me, rubber on sand, skidding. I turn, my breath catching. But it’s just Vivien, bouncing over the speed bump on her old-fashioned, sky-blue Schwinn with the wicker basket, legs kicked out. She looks, deceptively, like an ad for something wholesome. Butter. Milk. Fresh fruit. Her glossy brown hair is caught up in pigtails that don’t look stupid, her cheeks glowing in the heat.

“Hey!” she says. “Your mom told me where you were going. Wanted to say good luck.”

“I thought you were meeting up with Nic.”

Vivien flushes the way she always does at Nic’s name, the thought of Nic, the sight of him. Yes, things have shifted, rearranging our childhood trio into something different.

She shakes her head. “I talked him into applying for the island painting and repair gig. He’s interviewing with Marco and Tony right now. If that works out, please God, he won’t have to rely on Hoop’s connections to get sketchy painting jobs all over the state.” She rolls her eyes. “That was a good idea . . . why?”

“Hoop’s an idiot,” I say. Nic’s best friend and partner for the summer in the house-painting business, Nat Hooper, can make a disaster of anything, and Nic is far too good-natured to stop him.

I hear the zzzzzzz of the mower starting up again. It takes all my concentration not to look back over my shoulder. Did Vivien see Cass? She must’ve.

“Hey, want to work a clambake with me Friday night?” Vivie asks. “Mom and Al are catering a rehearsal dinner. Ver-ry fahn-cy. It’s on the Hill – okay with that?”

“Absolutely. Nic up for it too?”

“Oh, for sure. We’ve got the bar covered, but low on waiters and servers. Hoop’s not sure he can make it – might have ‘a hot date with a special lady.’ Although I’m thinking the special lady is digitized. D’you know any other guy who’d be willing?”

I can’t help shifting my eyes down the road. Vivien trails my gaze, and then stares back at me with a little crinkle between her eyebrows.

“Have you seen this year’s yard boy?” I ask, wary.

“Yup.” She watches my face. “I gave him the gate code when he drove in to report for duty this morning.”

“You didn’t think to mention it to me? No warning text? Nothing?”

“Oh shit, sorry.” Viv lowers her heels to regain bike balance. “I tried once, but you know how cell reception sucks here.” She sneaks another look over her shoulder. “I should have kept trying.”

I follow her eyes back to the Partridge house, where Cass has dutifully returned to mowing the lawn. Horizontally. Shirt off again, hair gleaming in the sun.

My God.

“What, Gwenners? Thinking of asking Cassidy to be a spare set of hands?” She tips her head at me, eyes twinkling.

“No! What? No! You know my policy. Hands off. Avoid at all cost.”

Vivien snorts. “You sure? Because you’re getting that glazed look that leads to bad judgment, impulsive decision-making, and a walk of shame.”

Even though it’s Vivie, no real criticism there, I can feel my face go red. I look down at the ground, kick aside a pebble. “There were only two actual walks of shame.”

Vivien’s face sobers. She flings her leg over the bike and knocks back the kickstand, moves closer. “Cassidy Somers . . . right here on the island. Just . . . watch your step, Gwenners. Be careful with yourself.” Her fierce expression is so at odds with her sweet face and my childhood nickname that I want to laugh, but there’s a little twist in my stomach too.

We all can’t be Vivie and Nic.

My cousin and my best friend have been an item since we were all five, when I ceremonially performed their wedding service on Sandy Claw Beach. Since we were more familiar with boat launchings than weddings, I bashed them both on the knees with a bottle of apple juice.

How many people, honestly, get the guy they’ve loved all their lives treating them like they’re rare and precious and deserving of adoration? Hardly anyone, right?

Still, there’s a big gap between that and some unseemly scuffling in the sand.

Or a bunk bed.

Or a Bronco.

“Gwen!” Vivie snaps her fingers. “Stay with me, here. Remember your promise. Want your dad to catch you rolling around on the beach again, like with” – she hesitates, lowers her voice – “Alex?”

I cringe, turn my back on the Partridges’ lawn. Then I hold up one hand, resting the other on an imaginary Bible. “I remember. From now on, I will not, no matter how tempted, get even close to a compromising position with someone unless I love them and they love me.”

“And?”

“And unless we’ve passed a lie detector test to prove this,” I finish obediently. “But I have to say, that’s going to be awkward. Carrying around all the equipment, setting it up . . .”

“Just stay out of the sand dunes. And far away from those parties on the Hill,” Vivien says. “When it’s real love, no equipment necessary. You just look in their eyes and it’s all there.”

“Go apply for that job at Hallmark right this instant !” I swat her on the shoulder. She ducks away, kicking the bike back into gear, laughing.

I wouldn’t pass the lie detector test myself if I didn’t say that, oh, I want what Vivien and Nic found without even having to search. I give one last look over my shoulder at the back of Cass’ uptilted head, as Mrs. Partridge once again bellows at him from the porch.

Chapter Five

The Ellington house is the last one on the beach – big, turn-of-the-last-century, graceful, stretching along the shore like a contented cat in the sun. It’s got weathered dove-gray shingles and gray-green trim, two turrets, and a porch that sweeps three-quarters around, like the tail of a cat cozying close.

Taken with all that, the carport where Mrs. E.’s Cadillac is parked looks so . . . wrong. There should be a carriage house there, an eager groom in livery waiting to take the reins of your horse.

I walk up the side path to the kitchen door, wondering if this is the correct thing to do. You never know on the island. Half the houses Mom cleans welcome her in the front and offer her a drink, the other half insist she go around back and take off her shoes.

Toeing off my flip-flops, I look down at my feet, wishing for a second I had dainty ones like Viv, or that my nails were decorated with polish and not a Band-Aid from stubbing my toe on the seawall.

Mrs. Ellington’s glossy oak side door is propped open by a worn brick, but the screen door is closed. “Hi . . . ?” I call down the shady hallway. “Um, hello? . . . Mrs. Ellington?”

A television murmurs in the distance. A porcelain clock shaped like a starfish ticks loudly. From where I am I can see the gleam of a silver pitcher on the kitchen table, a tumble of zinnias glowing in it. I put my hand on the screen door, poised to push it open, then hesitate and call out again.

This time, the TV is immediately silenced. Then I hear click/thump, click/thump coming down the hardwood floor of the hallway, and there’s Mrs. Ellington. Her hair’s whiter and she’s holding a cane, one ankle tightly wrapped in an Ace bandage, but she’s still beautifully dressed, pearls on, smile broad.

“Gwen! Your mother says you are Gwen now, not Gwennie. I’m delighted to see you.” Propping her cane against the wall, she pulls open the screen door, then holds out both hands.

I slide my bag o’ lobsters down behind my back and take her hands, her skin loose and fragile as worn silk.

“So you’re to be my babysitter this summer! How it does come round,” Mrs. Ellington continues. “When you were tiny, I used to hold you in my lap on the porch while your mother cleaned. You were a dear little thing . . . those big brown eyes, that cloud of curls.”

There’s a note of melancholy in her voice when she uses the word babysitter that makes me say, “I’m just here to be— ”A friend? A companion? A watchdog? “I’m just here to keep you company.”

Mrs. Ellington squeezes my hands, lets them go. “That’s lovely. I was just getting ready to enjoy a nice cool drink on the porch. How do you like your iced tea?”

I don’t drink tea, so I draw a blank. Luckily Mrs. Ellington steams ahead. “It was quite warm this morning, so I made a big batch of wild cranberry, which should be perfect now. Personally, I adore it cold and very sweet with lemon.”

“That sounds good,” I say, glancing around the kitchen. It looks the same as when Nic and I were little – morning-sky-pale-blue walls, appliances creamy white, navy-and-white checked cloth on the table, another Crayola-bright bunch of zinnias in a cobalt glass pitcher on the counter.

When Mom makes iced tea it’s a two-step process – scooping out the sugary powder and mixing it with cold water. Mrs. Ellington’s iced tea is a production involving implements I never knew existed. First there’s the bucket for ice and special silver tongs. Then the lemon and another silver thingie to squeeze it. Then a little slanted bowl to set the tea bag in. Then another little bowl for the squeezed lemon.

Mrs. E.’s blue-veined hand opens the cabinet, flutters like a trapped bird, hovering between two glass canisters. After a second, she selects one, the one with rice in it. The one I know from years of coastal weather must contain the salt. Rice keeps salt from sticking in the moist heat. She places it on the counter, starting to screw off the top.

I put my hand on top of hers gently. “I think maybe it’s the other one.”

Mrs. Ellington looks up at me, her hazel eyes blank for a moment. Then they clear, clouds moving away from the sun. She touches her fingers to her temple. “Of course. Ever since that silly fall I’ve been all in a muddle.” She shifts the canister back onto the shelf, takes down the other one.

Then scooping the sugar into a silver canister . . . and some sort of scalloped spoon . . . This process was obviously designed by someone who didn’t have to do their own dishes. Or polish their own silver. Mrs. Ellington again asks me how I like my tea, and I want to say “with everything” just to see how it all works. But I repeat “Cold and sweet,” so she removes a frosted-cold glass from the freezer. She blends sugar in the bottom and finally pours tea for me, then does the same for herself.

“Let’s have this on the porch,” she suggests.

I start to follow her, but remember Grandpa Ben’s gift. Just in time. One of the lobsters is again crawling for its life, this time scrabbling down the hallway toward the back door. I hastily snatch it up and put it, indignantly waving claws and all, back into the soggy paper bag.

I’d have expected Mrs. Ellington to be horrified, hand pressed against her heart, but instead she’s laughing. “Dear Ben Cruz,” she says. “Still setting those traps?”

“Every week all summer.” I open the refrigerator, shove the bag in, hoping that Houdini the lobster and its cohort will be stupefied by the cold before I have to slay them. I pass on Uncle Ben’s message, translated entirely from Portuguese.

Mrs. Ellington sets down her cane again to clasp her hands together. “Lobsters and love. Two essentials of life. Do come with me to the porch, Gwen dear – if you wouldn’t mind carrying the glasses? There we can discuss the other essentials of life.”

The porch too – just exactly the same – all old white wicker furniture with the worn, teal-colored hammock swaying in the breeze. The Ellingtons’ wide lawn fades into sea oats, sand, and then the azure ocean. To the far left is Whale Rock, a huge boulder that looks exactly like a beached humpback whale. At high tide all you can see is the fin, but the water’s low now and almost the entire rock is visible. The view’s so stunning, I catch my breath, with the feeling I always have when I see the prettiest parts of the island – that if I could look out my window at this all the time, I would be a better person, calmer, happier, less likely to get flustered with school or impatient with Dad. But that theory can’t really work, because Old Mrs. Partridge up the road has one of the best views on the island – I mean of the water, not of Cass Somers – and it doesn’t sweeten her disposition at all.