A Year Straight (16 page)

“Mom! Don't put that out into the universe! You're ruining everything!” I screeched, stomping around like an overtired six-year-old.

“I'm sorry, honey.”

“That's it, end of conversation,” I said, flailing around and racing up the street toward the car.

I'd had enough of dating. I was ready to find a real, true love (or to marry for money, whichever came first).

That night over dinner at the inn, the topic of my future folksinger husband came up again.

“I'm sorry honey, but I just don't see it,” my mom said.

“I don't care what you see or don't see, Mom, just stop saying it out loud. You're jinxing it,” I said in the calmest voice I could feign in my state of rage.

And then...

“I don't know,” she said, gazing off into the distance as if suddenly spotting a pirate ship sailing toward shore, “I just had this vision of you falling for some guy who works in a kitchen.”

I glared at my mom and gulped down the last of my wine. When we'd both destroyed our dessert, I tucked her in for the night and headed down to the bar to see Alexis. She was polishing the last of the wine glasses. I grabbed a napkin and helped her.

“You ready for another Vineyard adventure?” she asked. “We're going into town, to Back Door Donuts. They sell fresh donuts out the back door at midnight. Hence the name.”

“Are you kidding me? I just ate a five-course meal,” I said, holding my stomach.

“Go get your shoes on.”

“Will Banyan be there?”

“You never know. It's a small island.”

“I'll be right back.”

Five of us piled into Alexis's '85 Land Cruiser and headed down-island toward town.

“Alexis, why is it called down-island,” I asked, “if we are actually traveling north?”

“It's related to which way the wind blows.”

“Don't forget we have to pick up Day Time on the way,” one of the cooks said from the back seat.

“Who's Day Time?” I asked.

“You haven't met Theo?” Alexis asked, seeming surprised. “He's the daytime cook. As fate would have it, the nighttime cook is named Theo, too. So they're Day Time and Night Time to us.”

“Nope, never met him,” I said.

We pulled into Theo's driveway and out bounced this young, energetic guy in a Mets cap and old-school Nike high-tops. He took his hat off and twisted his wild mess of brown hair into a soccer player bun. He had (almost) the build of a
soccer player, too. At about five foot ten, he was well proportioned; toned with just enough padding to make for good cuddle material.

“Hey-yo! Whoa, there are a lot of us. We can take my car instead,” he said, swinging his keys around and heading toward a white Caravan.

“Ha! Nice car, Day Time
Dad,
” I chirped.

“Uh, Alexis, who is this ? Making fun of my car already. It's a little far to walk from here, you know.”

“This is Elena, my friend from New York,” Alexis said, linking her arm in mine.

“Oh, you're from New York?” he asked.

“Well, I grew up in Connecticut, but I've lived in Brooklyn for—”

“Ohhh, Connecticut,” he teased, and closed the driver-side door before I could finish. I slid open the back door and fell into the van, littered with damp beach towels and magazines.

“Wow. Are there seat belts back here or what?” I asked, digging around the cracks of the seat for a buckle.

“There should be.”

“Oh yes, here it is, right underneath this Justin Bieber CD.” I waved it around for everyone to see before handing it to him.

“That's my cousin's.”

“That's what I would say, too,” I replied.

“Wow. I like you!” he said.

“I like you, too!” I exclaimed, meaning it.

We drove down to the donut place, a caravan full of cooks and waiters singing along to Led Zeppelin.

“Did I see a pool at your place?” Alexis asked Theo as we wound our way toward town.

“Yep.”

“No way. We are so going back there later tonight. Will your family mind if we take a midnight dip?”

“They'll be sleeping. We'll just have to keep quiet.”

At the donut shop, Theo offered me a bite of his apple strudel.

“No thanks,” I said, not wanting to offend him. “But it does look delicious.”

“Come on,” he said, holding it under my nose. The scent of freshly baked apples was tempting. “It's so good.”

“No, really. But thanks.”

The third time he offered me a bite, I said, “Look, I'm allergic to apples. And nuts. You're basically trying to kill me.”

“Well that's not going to work. All apples or just cooked apples ? All nuts? Maybe it has something to do with trees. Tree fruits and tree nuts?”

I'd been warned that my thirtieth birthday would be a turning point, after which it would take me three days, not one, to recover from a night out. As the year had unfolded, that had turned out to be true. In addition, I was introduced
to new creaky aches and pains and the mysterious emergence of allergies.

“Nah, I'm just getting old,” I said, smiling.

“Let's go to Balance,” Alexis said, tossing her sticky cruller wrapper in the trash.

Balance was a bar close to the ferry dock in the center of town. It was a bit of a tourist trap, but on the Vineyard, the year-rounders all know one another, so Alexis greeted the bartender, and those of us who weren't driving were offered beers on the house. I scanned the bar for Banyan. He would have stood out at six foot four, but he was nowhere to be found. I'd primped for nothing. Back at the inn, I'd changed into my favorite shirt for the outing, just in case. In the midst of the rowdy crowd, Theo emitted an essence of calm. He was the eye of the storm. It was in the way he stood so confidently, comfortable in his body. And it was the way he made me laugh. I wanted to be near him.

Over songs by Oasis and Coldplay, Theo and I shouted to each other about food, New York City, and climbing trees as kids.

“One time,” I said, leaning in closer to his ear, “I climbed a tree in our front yard. It was a pine tree, just like tons of trees I'd climbed before. I made it to the top and then almost back down again. But when I reached the lowest branch, I froze. It wasn't even that far from the ground, but for some reason I got scared and yelled to my mom, who was somewhere inside
the house. ‘Mom, Mom!' It took several shouts before she came running outside, my little brother in tow. They started laughing at the sight of me hanging helplessly from the branch with only a four-foot drop below.

“‘Elena, what's wrong? Just let go. You're close to the ground,' they said. I couldn't let go. Eventually, my mom came over and helped me down. I was ten at the time, and we'd recently watched
Challenger
explode on takeoff. I had learned that we don't live forever. We would all die; not right then, but someday. And that kept me clinging.”

“My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer when I was five,” Theo said. “And we moved from Nicaragua, where my mom is from, to New York to be with her. My family was very open about it, explaining to me that she was sick and that she was going to die soon. It didn't scare me. I was sad, of course, but I understood that it was a natural part of life. People tend to underestimate kids. I remember the last time I saw her. No one told me it would be the last time, but I knew. I wanted to tell her I was going to miss her, but I was too shy to say it. And then she died. But even at age five, I knew that she knew. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

Then he flashed me a huge smile that I returned, suddenly dizzy. I headed to the ladies' room to collect myself. While waiting in line for my turn, I realized I was still smiling.

Along with Alexis and another cook, Sal, we left the bar
and headed back to Theo's house for a swim. We pulled into the driveway with the headlights off, so as not to wake one of his nine family members up from Manhattan for the weekend.

“Poolside,” Theo whispered, returning from the dark garage with an armful of towels. The four of us tiptoed down the wooded trail, trying our best not to snap any loud twigs. Sal, who'd had one too many beers at the bar, got snagged on some prickers and uttered a stifled, “Shit!” We all bounded down the rest of the trail suppressing hysterics.

Theo playfully flipped the sign on the pool door from WELCOME to BEWARE. Below the letters was an illustration of a group of women swimming in the buff. He explained that his great-grandmother had made the sign for her afternoon women-only skinny-dipping tea parties. Cool family, I thought.

“Okay, turn around and don't peek,” I said, slipping out of my jeans. Theo turned around to face the opposite direction, but Sal slumped in the lawn chair, staring blankly through me. You couldn't see much by the light of the moon anyway. In honor of Theo's great-grandmother, I tossed off my shirt and dove into the deep end. Theo joined me shortly after, doing a half dive, half cannonball in his boxers. The pool was cold, so Sal and Alexis refused to join and instead witnessed our underwater races from their seats. Theo grabbed my toes when I was winning, and we both resurfaced laughing and choking on chlorine.

And that was it. No kiss. No groping underwater in the dark. Just a ton of fun. When I pulled myself out of the pool, I felt lighter than I had in a while, even as I shivered under the weight of my cold, wet hair.

I got dressed, gave Theo and Sal (who had passed out) a hug goodnight, and left with Alexis.

“That was so much fun. Theo is a really cool guy,” I said.

“Theo is awesome. A better match for you than my cousin, actually.”

“No, no. I don't mean like that. He's just—”

Then Alexis pulled over to the side of the road abruptly and turned off the headlights of the car.

“Look! An owl. See it up there on the telephone wire?” she asked, pointing.

“Where? I don't—oh! Wow, how did you see that?” Its white chest was barely visible against the night sky.

“I love owls. I can spot them a mile away,” Alexis said.

We sat and watched the owl for several minutes. As my vision adjusted to the dark, I could make out its head turning from side to side, looking around, most likely for food. We are all on a search for something.

I
n the morning, it dawned on me that I'd forgotten my phone by Theo's pool. On my way to join my mom for breakfast, I signaled to him from outside the kitchen window. When he stepped out onto the porch, his eyes, the color, how they sparkled in the sunlight—I nearly fell backward off the porch at the sight of them. During the prior evening's outing, it was too dark to notice his eyes, their blue-green hue that precisely matched the Atlantic as seen from the cliffs up the street from the inn. I found it hard to form a sentence.

“I, I think you may have my phone,” I stammered. Theo stared back at me with the same stunned expression I must have had. At his side was Pedro, the son of one of the employees, a precocious seven-year-old who followed Theo everywhere, the two of them speaking a mélange of Spanish and Portuguese, their common mother tongues.

“Oh. Well, um, why don't you come back to the kitchen at seven when I get off work, and we'll go and get it together?”

“Okay.”

Pedro stood there staring up at us with an expression that said, “What the heck is wrong with you guys?” Then he handed Theo the ring from a game where the goal is to swing it on its rope and have it catch on a hook on the opposite wall. Theo tried it once, missed, and ran back inside. Pedro looked at me, shrugged, and handed me the ring.

After my breakfast of pancakes minus the blueberries, a custom order to piss off the kitchen staff, my mom and I walked down the steep cliff-side trail to the beach. There were very few people, save the random solitary elder nude male sunbather. The seagulls performed nosedives, impressing us with their consistent catches. The sandpipers did their sprints alongside the shore, leaving a trail of the tiniest footprints to be washed away by the waves. It was a perfect day. My mom and I were getting along great. In general, we get along really well, but there is always the possibility that I can become annoyed with her for no reason whatsoever. I think that's pretty normal, but I was grateful for a day where it didn't even bother me when she stopped to meditate on a big slab of driftwood.

“Go ahead, Mom. I'll be over here hunting for shark's teeth.”

Following another hour or so on the beach, a few hours of work, and one bike ferry ride to The Bite for its famed fried
clams, it was finally time to meet Theo. My mom trekked up to the lighthouse to catch the sunset, and I went to fetch him from the kitchen.

“Want to follow me in your car?” He asked. “Once I get the van home, someone's bound to steal it, and you'll be stranded there along with your phone.”

“Sure,” I said, giddy at the thought of being stranded with him.

As we pulled into the driveway, I could see into the kitchen through the bay window at the front of the house. His entire family was sitting down to dinner.

“You coming or what ?” Theo asked, walking toward the door.

“Yep.”

Sure enough, all nine family members were assembled around a giant dark wood farm table, and every single one of them looked up when we entered the room.

“Hey guys,” Theo said. “This is Elena.”

“Please, join us!” his aunt said, sliding her chair over a few inches, making room for me.

“Thanks, but we've got plans,” Theo said, saving me.
We do?
Theo knelt down to greet his nephew, who was eating Cheerios off the tray of his high chair.