30. The Drop I
In the home theater in the basement, Caroline sets up two chairs across from each other and turns on the ring light.
“Is it okay if I film this?” Caroline says. She thinks it’s a stroke of genius to have clips of Hollis’s friends for the website. She doesn’t want this to be like The Office—that’s the most imitated format in Hollywood these days— but yes, she’s thinking exactly that.
Tatum shrugs. “I look like a dirt sandwich, but sure, have at it.”
Tatum’s hair, which was so sleek and glossy yesterday, is now damp from swimming and pulled back into a ponytail. She’s gotten some sun on her face, and freckles pop across her cheeks. She doesn’t have a swim cover-up like the other ladies; she wears a gray Nantucket Whalers T-shirt and jeans shorts, and her feet are sandy in flip-flops. (She must have missed the footbath outside the door; Hollis will have a fit, but it’s too late now.) Caroline couldn’t have styled her any better. Her look is Local Island Girl.
“Great, thank you,” Caroline says. She feels a little awkward, to be honest, but maybe only because she hung out with this woman’s son the night before and woke up in her house.
Tatum knows that Caroline and Dylan met up because right before Hollis crashed breakfast, Jack was telling Kyle and Tatum that he’d found Caroline in their driveway trying to order a Lyft, and Jack ended up driving her into town.
While Tatum was on the beach she sent Dylan a text that said: Caroline, huh?
Dylan texted back: It was one kiss. She slept on the sofa.
Tatum laughed. Dylan tells her everything, a result, she supposes, of how calmly she handled the news “I got Aubrey pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
Tatum typed: Do u like her????
She’s nice, Dylan wrote back.
There’s nothing worse than calling someone “nice,” and Tatum is
disappointed. She wants Dylan to find someone to take his mind off Aubrey.
There’s also her crazy idea that if Dylan and Caroline get married and have children, Tatum and Hollis will be sister-grandmothers—Tatum the cool one, Hollis the rich one. Tatum laughs, and Caroline gives her a quizzical look.
“I’m ready,” Tatum says. “What do you want to talk about?”
Caroline says, “Let’s start at the beginning, I guess. How did you and my mom become friends?”
Tatum says, “I can’t remember ever not being friends with Hollis. Our mothers taught kindergarten in adjacent classrooms at Nantucket Elementary, so it was a big deal when they both got pregnant at the same time because they both went out on maternity leave, and back then, you took the whole school year. They would get together a few times a week, take us for walks, push us in the baby swings, that kind of thing. And then—we were both far too young to remember this—Hollis’s mother, Charlotte, died.”
Yes, Caroline thinks. Aneurysm in the shower. Hollis was twenty-one months old.
“Tom Shaw was left taking care of this baby girl by himself. My mom, Laura Leigh, helped. Tom would drop Hollis off at our house on his way to work. So in my earliest memories, Hollis is there. She had her own toothbrush at my house, an extra pair of pajamas. My mother made the cupcakes for Hollis’s birthday, and whenever Hollis got sick, my mom was the one to come pick her up.” Tatum pauses. “In fourth grade, we had this thing called Mother’s Day Tea. We had to write poems for our mothers and read them in front of the class, and then there’d be a party with cookies and juice. I remember Hollis raising her hand and asking what she should do since she didn’t have a mother. For a second, I thought our teacher was going to cry. But then I whispered in Hollis’s ear that we could share my mother.
And that’s what we did. We were like sisters.”
Caroline needs to take a beat. “Um, okay… wow. And you two stayed close friends all through high school?”
“Oh, hell yes,” Tatum says. She studies Caroline. How can she make this child understand the way things were between her and Hollis in the 1980s?
It’s their junior year. Tatum and Hollis—and Kyle and Jack—are high-school
royalty. Kyle and Jack play football; Tatum and Hollis play softball. The four of them go to bonfires at Gibbs Pond, just like generations of Nantucket High School students before them. They eat their Saturday breakfasts at the Downyflake; they see movies at the Dreamland, then go to Vincent’s for pizza. Tatum loses her virginity first, then Hollis.
There’s one tense week when Tatum thinks she might be pregnant. She can’t buy an EPT because those are sold only at the pharmacy and Tatum’s father is the pharmacist. Tatum and Hollis plan a shopping trip to Hyannis— two hours over on the ferry, two hours back, a whole Saturday squandered so they can go to Kmart to buy a test. Tatum pees on the stick right there in the store’s bathroom with Hollis guarding the door. “What are you going to do if you are?” Hollis asks. Tatum says, “My mom will take care of the baby while I finish senior year.”
Hollis is quiet then and Tatum senses her dismay. “What about college?”
Hollis says.
But before Tatum can answer that there’s no way she’s getting rid of or giving away her and Kyle’s baby, the three minutes are up and no second line
has appeared.
Negative.
They celebrate by getting Orange Juliuses at the food court. Tatum feels a dizzying relief but she also realizes, maybe for the first time, that she and Hollis are becoming two distinct individuals.
The summer before senior year, Tatum and Hollis wait tables at the Rope Walk, where they wear the god-awful Nantucket Reds skirts that are so short the girls can’t bend over without flashing the customers; the owner claims this is “good for business.” Every night some rich dude passes Tatum a coaster with his number or the name of his yacht and a note, variations on Come join us for a nightcap! Tatum never considers saying yes, but Hollis is all for it. She wants to drink Dom Pérignon and dollop the caviar onto the blini with the mother-of-pearl spoon. She, unlike Tatum, is fascinated by wealth and privilege; she wants access to the world beyond Nantucket.
Tatum tells Caroline all this, even the part about her suspected pregnancy, which only Hollis and Kyle know about. “The definition of best friend is the person who guards the door of the Kmart bathroom while you’re peeing on
the stick and never tells a soul.” Caroline nods eagerly, and Tatum thinks she’s probably gotten all the “historical context” she can handle.
A secret even bigger than the pregnancy scare was what happened during the state championship softball game their senior year.
“Senior year, things were different,” Tatum says. “The four of us—your mom, me, Kyle, and Jack—decided we would all go to UMass Amherst together. But then one day, out of the blue, Hollis tells us that our senior English teacher, Ms. Fox, said her college essay was the best she’d read in thirty-one years of teaching.” Tatum remembers this like it was yesterday: They were in the school parking lot sharing a cigarette; the leaves on the big oak at the corner of Sparks and Surfside had just started to change color.
“She wants me to expand the list of colleges I’m applying to,” Hollis says.
“She thinks I should apply to UNC, which is where she went. UNC is the oldest public university in the country, I guess?”
“Ms. Fox wants you to go to her alma mater?” Tatum responds. “Isn’t that precious.”
“It’s in a place called the Research Triangle,” Hollis says, shrugging. “She says she can picture me there.”
Tatum is flummoxed by this. They all make fun of Ms. Fox. She dresses like a Quaker woman from the 1800s—long black skirts, prim collared blouses. Is that how Hollis wants to end up? “But you’re still applying to just UMass?”
“I might apply to UNC too,” Hollis says. “But I’ll definitely go to UMass.” She pauses. “My dad can’t really afford anything but UMass.”
Tatum relaxes; she’s pretty sure this is true. Hollis is just applying to the other school as a game, to see if she gets in.
College letters arrive in the mail on April 15. Tatum, Kyle, Jack, and Hollis all get accepted to UMass, and by lunch the next day, the whole school knows it. But as Tatum and Hollis are hanging in the hallway—Tatum wondering if they should room together, Hollis saying it’s too soon to think about that, Tatum saying, “It might make sense if we didn’t room together, that way you’d have a roommate and so would I, so we’d meet new people and could build a little empire”—Ms. Fox comes over (wearing a high- collared navy-blue dress that skims the floor) and gives Hollis a hug. “You
got into UNC!” she says. “With a full scholarship. I’m so proud of you!”
Hollis is subdued; Tatum is shocked. “Yeah,” Hollis says. “Thanks. I still have to talk to my dad about it, obviously.”
When Ms. Fox leaves, Tatum turns to Hollis. Now she knows why Hollis thought it was too soon to talk about rooming together. “UNC?” she says.
“Why didn’t you tell me you got in?”
Hollis takes a breath. “I don’t know, Tay. Because it doesn’t matter?”
“Because you’re not going there, right?”
“Right,” Hollis says quietly. “My dad will never let me. It’s, like, a twelve-hour drive from Hyannis.”
Tatum is equal parts terrified and pissed off. Who cares if UNC is the oldest public university in the country? Why would Hollis want to go to a school twelve hours away where she doesn’t know anyone? The only answer Tatum can come up with is that Hollis wants to get away—from the island and everyone who lives here. Including Tatum.
Final decisions about college have to be made by May 1, which is the same day as the state championship softball game.
Tatum decides to bring it up on their way to the game, probably because the game is being played in Amherst. “You sent your deposit in to UMass, right?” she asks Hollis.
Hollis stares out the window at Route 32. “Tay,” she says.
“What?” Tatum says, though she knows what. Hollis has decided on UNC. Tatum feels all her dreams of her and Kyle and Jack and Hollis kicking through autumn leaves on the Quad hit the sticky, gross floor of the bus with a splat.
Hollis starts to cry and Tatum says, “Why are you crying, Holly? You’re
the one who’s doing this.”
“I know,” Hollis says. “But…”
But what? Tatum thinks. She feels so duped, so dumped, that she decides to do the unthinkable.
Tatum bats cleanup; her season batting average is .322, the best not only on the team but in their division, but she strikes out at her first two at-bats and then pops up, all on purpose. In the final inning, Nantucket is up by one run and a girl from the Amherst team named Miranda Coffey goes to bat.
She’s got a platinum flattop like Brigitte Nielsen and a cold eye; she’s going to wallop the ball no matter how unhittable Hollis’s slider is. As if scripted,
Miranda sends a deep one to left field, and honestly, it’s nothing Tatum can’t handle. She sees the runner on second shooting for third, and thinks, Nantucket High girls softball, state champs two years in a row, that’s what she and Hollis have dreamed of since they were little kids hitting a Wiffle Ball off a tee. But then, a lot of things Tatum and Hollis dreamed of aren’t coming true. Hollis is going to the University of North Carolina. Hollis turns around on the mound; she’s watching Tatum, and for one second, Tatum meets her eyes in a look of sheer fury and thinks, How could you? And she catches the ball but lets it drop from her glove. The runners score and Amherst wins.
If Tatum is going to be heartbroken, then Hollis will be as well.
“I threw the game,” Tatum tells Caroline. “I’ve been ashamed about it for thirty-five years. I robbed not only Hollis but our team and our school—hell, our island—of a championship title. I was the ultimate poor sport.”
Caroline’s expression is more fascinated than horrified, Tatum thinks.
She’s getting way more than she probably expected.
“So then what happened?” Caroline asks.
“Hollis left for college,” Tatum says. “And she never came back. Not really.”
Hollis returns to Nantucket for the holidays her freshman year, but the summer after freshman year, when Tatum thinks they will both work at the Rope Walk again, Hollis announces she’s staying in Chapel Hill to wait tables at Chili’s.
Chili’s? Tatum thinks. Why would Hollis want to stay in swampy, sweltering North Carolina slinging fajitas when she could come home and make three times as much money with a view of the water? It makes no sense!
Tatum calls Hollis long-distance and begs her to reconsider. By that point Tatum’s mother, Laura Leigh, has been dead a year and Tatum’s father is dating Alison, a young woman he recently hired at the pharmacy. Tatum needs Hollis. Hollis is her sister.
“I promise I’ll go out on the yachts with you,” Tatum says, though she knows she won’t because of Kyle. “I’ll help you find a rich husband.”
“Sorry, Tay,” Hollis says. “Dru-Ann and I have decided to stay here.”
Dru-Ann, Tatum thinks. Of course. Hollis talks nonstop about Dru-Ann Jones, her roommate, whose father is some bigwig on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
“We’re working at Chili’s and conquering our summer reading list—Nella Larsen, Joan Didion, Angela Carter.”
Tatum doesn’t know or care who any of those writers are and Hollis knows she doesn’t know or care. Hollis is like a snake, Tatum thinks, shedding her old life as though it’s a skin she’s grown out of.
“So when my mom stopped coming back here over the summers, did you two stop being friends?” Caroline asks.
“No, we were still friends,” Tatum says. “But it wasn’t the same.” She pauses; she needs a cigarette. “Kyle and I got married, and your mom was my maid of honor—she and I did our dance, things were still fine. Then… your mother got engaged.”
Hollis calls Tatum to say that Matthew is finishing his surgery residency and they’ve decided to get married. Tatum wants to know about the ring, the proposal, was it romantic?
“He didn’t get down on one knee or anything,” Hollis says. “I cannot imagine him doing that.”
Right; Tatum can’t either. She and Kyle met Matthew the one and only time Hollis brought him to Nantucket. They went to the Lobster Trap for dinner and Matthew became absorbed with dismantling his lobster with precision so as not to leave a single shred of meat behind. Every time Tatum or Kyle asked him a question, he startled as though he’d forgotten he was at dinner with other people.
Hollis goes on to say that she and Matthew will be married in Wellesley, where Matthew grew up, in February—because that works best with Matthew’s schedule. Matthew’s mother, Judith, is planning the wedding.
Hollis doesn’t have to do a thing.
“Great?” Tatum says. She and Kyle had a small wedding on the beach at Brant Point, followed by a reception at the Admiralty Club in Madaket, but she made every decision herself. Tatum gets down to what she assumes is the
reason for this call. “How many bridesmaids are you having?”
“Six,” Hollis says. “You, Dru-Ann, Matt’s cousin Cora, Gretchen and Ellie from UNC, and Regency from Boston.”
Tatum has never met Gretchen and Ellie, though she knows they’re a couple, and she has never heard of Regency from Boston nor even realized that Regency could be a first name. But fine, whatever. “Just get me everyone’s address, I guess,” Tatum says, “so I can organize things.”
“Organize things?” Hollis says.
“I am the matron of honor,” Tatum says. “Right?”
What follows is a beat of silence that Tatum can only describe as loaded.
Loaded like a gun threatening to murder their friendship once and for all.
“Yes, of course!” Hollis says. “You and Dru-Ann both! I’m having one matron of honor, you, and one maid of honor, Dru-Ann.”
Tatum’s mother, Laura Leigh, was a kindergarten teacher, and because of this, Tatum was raised to share. But no, sorry, not in this instance. Hollis is supposed to choose her best friend as her maid—or matron—of honor. Best is a superlative; there can be only one. If there’s more than one person, the job becomes watered down, it means only half as much. Hollis is diminishing Tatum, and (Tatum hates herself for this) her response is to cry.
“I have known you your entire life, we’re not just friends, we’re sisters, my family took you in, my mother treated you as her own!” Tatum feels affronted not only for herself but for her mother, who braided Hollis’s hair and got the grass stains out of her softball uniform and helped her shop for a prom dress. Tatum realizes that Hollis and Dru-Ann grew close in college and she felt wildly jealous about this (and in response started hanging out with Terri Falcone more than she might have otherwise), but there’s no way Dru-Ann and Hollis are as close as Tatum and Hollis. Hollis is just impressed by Dru-Ann, or maybe she’s been strong-armed by her.
Hollis goes into damage-control mode. “I definitely want you to be my matron of honor, Tay, it’s just that Dru-Ann knows the other girls better and
she has all these cool ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“She wants to have the bachelorette party at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston with a spa day and then dinner at Sorellina—”
Tatum can’t afford the Ritz-Carlton and she doesn’t know what Sorellina is. “So what you’re saying is that she has more money and fancier taste.”
“No!” Hollis says so emphatically that it can only mean yes. She sighs.
“Please don’t be like this, Tay.”
Tatum’s tears have dried; now she’s just angry. No, not just angry— furious. “Like what?” she says, though she knows: She’s being possessive and small-minded and jealous when apparently what she should say is Great, Dru-Ann and I will divvy up the responsibilities and shoot rock-paper- scissors to see who walks in last.
Instead, Tatum says, “I don’t want to do it at all. Have fun getting married without me.” And she hangs up.
Hollis calls right back. Tatum lets the answering machine pick up. Hollis leaves a message; now she’s crying, which Tatum childishly finds satisfying.
Hollis says she can’t get married without Tatum, she’d rather elope, but please can’t Tatum understand that she’s working on a compromise here, she’s trying to make everyone happy but she feels like King Solomon’s baby (whatever that means).
The next day, Tatum decides to be the bigger person and she calls back and says fine, she’ll be the co–maid/matron of honor as long as she can be the one to walk in last.
“But it was a crushing disappointment,” Tatum says now to the camera. “I was hurt. Your mother went away and met another person who became her best friend and I stayed on Nantucket and didn’t. Hollis has always been my only best friend. Even all the years we weren’t really talking, I thought of her as my best friend.”
This story is so much… more than Caroline anticipated. She thought it would be a stroll down memory lane with sound bites she could share on the website. But Tatum has given her real stuff, heartbreaking stuff. “But it all worked out in the end, right?” Caroline asks. “Because you’re here?”
Not really, Tatum thinks. This is backstory, but it’s also front story: Things have never been the same between Tatum and Hollis. Tatum hides from Hollis every summer, runs away when she bumps into her at the grocery store, turns down every invitation to come to the house for dinner. Tatum is still angry at Dru-Ann because of the things that happened over the bachelorette weekend in Boston and also because of what Dru-Ann said to
Tatum in the bathroom at the Wellesley Country Club during the wedding reception.
Tatum won’t get into it. She’s emotionally exhausted from the demands of this weekend, from hearing about Kyle and Jack’s night out, and from trying to keep the biopsy results out of her mind, which is like holding back a wall of water. Tatum wants to go outside and have a cigarette, then go to her
room, call Kyle, and take a nap.
She stands up. Chat over.
