The Hotel Nantucket — Chapter no 13

13. Affirmations

July 4, 2022

From: Xavier Darling ([email protected]) To: Employees of the Hotel Nantucket

Happy American Independence Day, staff! I’m delighted to announce that front-desk manager Alessandra Powell has once again won the week’s bonus. She received a rave review from a hotel guest who said she went above and beyond on his behalf during his stay. Great job, Alessandra, you’re setting a wonderful

example.

XD

On the fifth of July, Lizbet calls Edie into the office to say she’s leaving fifteen minutes early.

“No problem,” Edie says. “I can cover things.” Edie gives Lizbet a valiant attempt at a smile but Lizbet knows she must be bitter that Alessandra won the thousand-dollar prize for the second straight week, and as soon as they all got the e-mail from Xavier, Alessandra

said she had cramps and would be going home for the day. Later, when Lizbet checked TravelTattler, she saw a glowing review from David Yamaguchi from suite 215, who specifically stated that Alessandra had made his stay “sublime.”

“You’re doing a good job here, Edie,” Lizbet says. “I hope you know that.”

These words, which Lizbet meant to be reassuring, cause a lone tear to drip down Edie’s face. She swipes it away. “Thank you,” she

says. “I love the job.”

“But?” Lizbet says.

“No but,” Edie says. “Though I did apply for a position at Annie and the Tees a few nights a week. I need the extra money.”

Lizbet frowns. Edie is already working over fifty hours a week at the hotel. How is she going to handle another job? “Isn’t that taking on a lot?”

“It is,” Edie says. “But I have student loans and…other expenses.”

Lizbet thinks for a moment about intervening with Xavier on Edie’s behalf. An extra thousand dollars would help. But somehow, Lizbet knows Xavier won’t go for it. (This isn’t a participation trophy.) Next, Lizbet thinks about posting a review on TravelTattler under a made- up name, extolling the virtues of a certain Edith Robbins. Fraud, Lizbet thinks. Finally, her mind rests on the four thousand dollars in cash that Kimber Marsh handed over earlier that week. It’s still sitting in the safe because Lizbet hasn’t had a single second to get to the bank. Embezzlement, she thinks.

“You’re so young, Edie,” Lizbet says. “Don’t you want a social life?”

“Not right now,” Edie says. “I told you in my interview, I broke up with my college boyfriend…”

“And you’re taking time alone, which is so…important.” Lizbet leans forward. Here, finally, is one of the bonding moments she’s been waiting for. “I’m not sure if you know this or not, but JJ and I broke up last fall.” She pauses. “We were together fifteen years and it ended…badly.” Lizbet wants to say more, but she won’t. “I did exactly what you’re doing. I got in shape, I found this job, I took the time alone to process and rebuild. I haven’t gone out with anyone socially since we split.” She pauses again. Should she tell Edie?

Yes, she thinks. “But tonight, I have a date.”

This brings a smile to Edie’s face—because she is the kind of sweet, generous soul who wants other people to be happy even when she isn’t so happy. “Really?” she says. “With whom?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Lizbet says. “If it goes well.”

If it goes well. Lizbet is going on a date with an extremely hot famous chef who is taking her to the restaurant that is owned by her former boyfriend and managed by the woman he betrayed her with. Some might say this can do nothing but backfire, but Lizbet has other ideas.

She’s wearing a white crocheted sundress that she bought at the ERF boutique on lower Main Street and that she knew looked good on her even before she stepped out of the dressing room and the sales manager, Caylee, whom Lizbet has known forever, shrieked, “Girl, yes!”

Girl, yes! Right after her conversation with Edie, Lizbet leaves the hotel both physically and—maybe for the first time since the place opened—mentally. She heads to the R. J. Miller Salon for a blowout.

Lorna, her stylist, makes her hair look like blond silk; it hangs in straight shiny sheets. At home, Lizbet puts on mascara, shimmering face powder, and red lipstick. She wants to wear stilettos but she has witnessed dozens of women catch their heels between the deck boards (one time, in July 2016, it resulted in a gruesomely broken ankle), so she slips on wedges.

Looking in the mirror she thinks: Breaker, not broken.

She thinks: A hundred times hotter than you’ve ever been.

She thinks: Girl, yes!

Mario knocks on her door at quarter to eight, his silver pickup idling in the driveway. He’s wearing jeans, a white linen shirt, a slate-blue blazer, and flip-flops, which in Lizbet’s opinion is the perfect outfit on any man. His smile when he sees Lizbet is so…naughty that Lizbet

flushes.

He whistles. “Do I need to say it?”

“Yes.”

“You look…wow. Just wow.”

Lizbet’s flirting skills were dormant during her years with JJ, and she needs to wake them up now. She winks at him. “I brought something for later.” She hands him a cooler bag and hopes he doesn’t think she’s being presumptuous.

He peeks inside and grins. “I like where your head is at.” He reaches for her hand. “Let’s go make people jealous.”

When Mario pulls into the parking lot of the Deck, Lizbet panics.

She’s back.

She sees JJ’s big black Dodge parked in its usual spot, and next to it is the juicy orange Jeep that belongs to Christina. Lizbet can recall dozens of times when that Jeep would pull into the Deck and Lizbet’s spirits would lift. Lizbet had liked Christina; she was charming, funny, modest. She and Lizbet would talk about wine, of course, but also about trips they wanted to take to Italy and South Africa, restaurants they wanted to try the next time they went to New York, and they both loved celebrity scandals (they were verklempt when JLo and A-Rod broke up, and Christina called Lizbet, screaming, when JLo was spotted with Ben Affleck).

Lizbet’s eye is drawn beyond the restaurant itself to the Monomoy creeks. She misses this view—the meandering paths of shallow water through the reeds and cattails, the dinghies tied up to colorful buoys, the distinctive cupola of the Nantucket lifesaving museum in the distance. There are a few kayakers out tonight, paddling through the creeks as the sunset turns the sky a soft pink. Lizbet can hear the laughter, the clinking of glasses and silverware, the happy chatter that was the soundtrack of her former life. It’s surreal being an observer, being an outsider. This isn’t her place any longer. What is she doing here?

Well, it’s too late to back out now. Mario reaches for her hand again; he must understand how difficult this is for her.

He stops right before the door. “You ready, Heartbreaker?”

She nods and they step inside.

Everything is the same. Off to the left is the arched entryway to the airy, rustic dining room. Other people might notice the cathedral ceilings, the exposed beams, the huge stained-glass window salvaged from a church in Salem, Massachusetts, at one end of the room, the plate glass on the other side offering unimpeded views across the water. What Lizbet sees is tables 25 through 40, including a twelve-top in front of the cobblestone fireplace that the staff fondly calls “the Bitch” because, well, that’s what it is. Peyton is taking orders at the Bitch and Lizbet wonders if it was a mistake not to warn her former staff that she was coming in.

Mario leads Lizbet past the dining-room entrance to the hostess station and Lizbet feels herself hanging back like a child who doesn’t want to start kindergarten. She sees the Robert Stark painting that greets every guest of the Deck—a wide canvas of bottle-green sea with one red-sailed boat on the horizon. They’re at command central, Lizbet’s former cockpit, her Oval Office, a place as familiar to her as her own bedroom. When Lizbet started working at the Deck as a server, they had a standard-issue lectern, straight out of a high- school auditorium, but Lizbet replaced it with an antique drafting table that she found at Brimfield.

“Good evening,” Lizbet hears Mario say. “Subiaco, party of two?”

Lizbet is hiding behind him, trying to summon her affirmations.

What are they? She can’t remember a single one, not even the silly one about the pineapple. She hears Christina’s voice, and while she’s too addled to listen to the exact words, she can tell Christina is fawning: My name is Christina…so honored to…I’ll tell Chef…please let me show you…

Mario ushers Lizbet forward. Girl, yes! Lizbet thinks. She smiles at Christina and says, “Hey there, how’s it going?”

Never underestimate the element of surprise. Christina doesn’t seem to recognize Lizbet at first (ha-ha—no braids), but then it lands, and Christina’s eyes ricochet between Mario and Lizbet. She fumbles the menus, and one drops to the floor. Lizbet watches as Christina crouches to retrieve it while trying to make sure her very short, very tight black skirt doesn’t hike up her ass.

Christina leads them to the corner table closest to the water, table number 1, also known as “Dirty Harry.” It’s not surprising that this is where they’re sitting, considering that, for JJ, Mario Subiaco ranks right up there with God, Santa Claus, and Clint Eastwood—though now Christina is probably wishing she could pivot and put them at table 24 in the opposite corner or even inside.

Mario pulls out Lizbet’s chair and Christina hands them menus and says, “We have a Whispering Angel rosé fountain here at the Deck. We sell our signature wineglasses for fifty dollars apiece.

They’re yours to take home and you may have as many glasses of the rosé as you’d like.”

Lizbet stares at Christina. Is she actually giving Lizbet the spiel when Lizbet was the one who dreamed up the idea for the rosé fountain in the first place, when Lizbet was the one who repurposed a salvaged garden fountain that she bought from Marty McGowan, the Sconset Gardener? That fountain is hers, not Christina’s. How dare Christina do this; she’s either clueless or being catty.

Mario waits until Christina’s finished, then reaches across the table and squeezes Lizbet’s hand. “Thanks for that, Tina. Would you mind giving us a second?”

Christina blinks. “I’m also the sommelier here…”

Lizbet nearly squawks. What happened to Goose? Did JJ fire him so that Christina could take over the sommelier job? She realizes she’s crushing Mario’s fingers and she eases up a bit. She reminds herself it’s no longer any of her business.

“So let me bring by the wine list—”

“Not just yet, Tina, thanks,” Mario says.

Take the hint, Tina, Lizbet thinks. Scram.

Christina lingers and then very distinctly addresses only Mario.

She touches the sleeve of his beautiful blue blazer with her French- manicured fingers. Lizbet realizes that it’s not beyond Christina to throw herself at Mario. “I know Chef will want to come out and say hello.”

Mario keeps his eyes locked on Lizbet’s. “Thank you.”

Another few beats pass while Christina tries to figure out what’s going on.

Finally, Lizbet gives Christina a look like a harpoon through the lungs. “Thank you, Christina.”

Christina takes a stutter-step back and Lizbet’s eyes follow, thinking she’s going to fall into table 3, which is occupied by…Ari and Lyric Layton. Ari and Lyric are deep in conversation, and Lyric is upset, wiping at her eyes, so they don’t notice Christina, who rights herself at the last minute, nor do they appear to see Lizbet.

When Christina finally heads back to her station, Mario says,

“Should we get out of here?”

“Yes,” Lizbet says, and they go.

Back in Mario’s truck, Lizbet isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

Laugh, she thinks—and she does. They walked out of the Deck holding hands, Mario leading the way, Lizbet ignoring all the people calling after her. When they reached the front, they encountered Christina and JJ having a whisper-fight, Christina no doubt saying something to the effect of Mario Subiaco showed up with Lizbet!

They were rude to me! Christina’s back was to Mario and Lizbet, but JJ saw them and said, “Whoa, hey…are you leaving, Chef?”

Mario stopped. “We’re going someplace where the service is a bit more polished.” He saluted JJ. “Good to see you again.”

JJ followed them out the door. “Wait,” he said. “Lizbet, come on, don’t be like this.”

Mario held the passenger door of his truck open and Lizbet climbed in. She waved at JJ as they pulled out.

She doesn’t know where they’re going; she doesn’t care. Mario heads into town, where people are out and about in full July revelry.

There’s a group of young women having a bachelorette party; families; happy couples and one couple arguing, which reminds Lizbet of seeing the Laytons. Lyric Layton, who is one of the calmest, most Zen people Lizbet knows, was crying at the Deck. Something must have been very wrong.

Lizbet suspects Mario is taking her to the Club Car, but they bump over the cobblestones of Main Street, so then she thinks they must be going to Nautilus. Then they pass Nautilus and Lizbet thinks, Lola? She’s with Mario Subiaco, the former king of the Nantucket restaurant world. They’ll be able to walk in anywhere.

Mario pulls down the white-shell lane behind Old North Wharf and parks in a spot marked RESIDENTS ONLY. He says, “I probably should have checked with you. Is it okay if I cook for you at my place?” He smiles. He’s so fine, Lizbet thinks. Now that JJ and Christina have been properly humiliated, she feels energized—and nervous—for another reason. She’s on a date with Mario flipping Subiaco! He’s going to cook for her!

He leads her past the cute cottages of Old North Wharf, past the famed Wharf Rat Club, past Provisions and the Straight Wharf restaurant on the right—where are they going?—and out a rickety dock over the water. Lizbet watches where she puts her feet on the old, uneven boards, thinking in her emotionally heightened state that she could easily topple into the harbor, where her wedges would anchor her right to the bottom.

The dock leads out to a lone cottage, and Lizbet looks around.

How in fifteen years has she never realized this little place was here, floating on pillars in the middle of the harbor? To the left are the grand homes of Easton Street and Brant Point Light and to the right she can see and hear the people eating on the porch at Straight Wharf.

Mario opens the door and they step back in time. The cottage feels like something out of what Lizbet vaguely thinks of as “the good old days,” that era in the 1950s and 1960s when properties were both loved and neglected, when summer homes were passed down through families and not purchased online for eight figures thanks to the dazzling 360-degree photo gallery. The cottage features a boxy, wood-paneled room that smells of the sea. There’s a gray tweed sofa and two upright armchairs, a braided rug, a dinged-up dining-

room table with mismatched chairs, a kitchen with brown cabinets, Formica countertops, a four-burner electric stove and a white icebox with a long pull-handle. There are some truly atrocious oil paintings hanging on the walls. Lizbet squints—they’re landscapes of Nantucket, no doubt the efforts of one of the former owners who took a summer’s interest in rendering the island en plein air. She can tell without checking that in the cabinets she will find Junior League and Congregational church cookbooks stained with cranberry sauce and clam juice, as well as a speckled black lobster pot and a box of frilled toothpicks purchased sometime during the Kennedy administration.

Off to the left is a door that leads to a bedroom (low bed, covered with a patchwork quilt) and another door that leads to a bathroom tiled in iridescent pink (it must have been renovated in the seventies). “This is fabulous,” Lizbet says.

Mario sheds his blazer and kicks off his flip-flops. “I’m glad you like it. Some people wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t…get it.” He has brought Lizbet’s cooler bag from the truck and he pulls out the bottle of Krug. “Let me show you the best part.” He grabs two jelly jars from the cabinet, hands them to Lizbet (they’re painted with cartoon scenes from Tom and Jerry), and opens a door that leads out to his—well, Lizbet supposes it’s his front porch. It’s a covered deck that overlooks Nantucket harbor; water laps up against the pilings beneath their feet. A ladder hangs off the railing.

“How,” she says, “did you get this?”

“Xavier,” Mario says. “I was on the fence about working at the bar, but then he dangled this place and I caved.” He expertly takes the cage off the Krug and gently pulls the cork. He pours the champagne into the jelly jars, then he and Lizbet face each other and touch

glasses. “This is more like it,” Mario says. “Here’s to you, Heartbreaker.”

By their second glass, they’re sitting next to each other on a wicker love seat on the deck, bare feet up on a wrought-iron table, gazing out at the darkening sky. The red beacon of Brant Point Light glows, then dims.

“How did you get to Nantucket from Minnesota?” Mario says. “I don’t think you’ve told me.”

“Well,” Lizbet says. “When I was at the University of Minnesota, there was a girl in my dorm who showed up to school a week late. All we knew about her was that her name was Elyse Perryvale and she was from out east. None of us could understand why anyone would miss the first week of freshman year.” Lizbet sips her champagne.

“She was tan and had this sun-bleached hair, and she was wearing faded jean shorts and boat shoes that looked like they’d been repeatedly run over by a vintage Jeep Wagoneer. And she said, ‘Sorry I’m late. My parents wanted to eke out one more week at our

house on Nantucket.’”

“Did you hate her?” Mario asks.

“I worshipped her,” Lizbet says. “I thought that was the most seductive sentence I’d ever heard. We were from Minnesota— summertime for us was going to our lake cabins and waiting in line for Sweet Martha’s at the state fair. And here was this…mermaid among us. I asked her all about Nantucket and she lent me a Nancy Thayer novel, which I devoured. The summer after I graduated, I moved out here and got a job waiting tables at the Deck, which was brand-new that year. I started dating JJ and fifteen years passed.”

“You never wanted to get married?”

“When I met JJ, I was too young to get married. Then we became sort of anti-establishment. We wanted to be like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. We thought getting married would kill the romance. But JJ killed it a different way.”

“I take it Tina is the new girlfriend?” Mario says.

“Christina, yes, our former wine rep. A woman I used to like.”

Lizbet tells Mario about Last Night at the Deck, finding the texts, their subsequent breakup.

“Ouch,” Mario says. “I’ll point out that he’s not good enough for you.”

“He was, though,” Lizbet says. She has a hard enough time understanding this herself, much less explaining it to someone else.

What she had with JJ was real. Every minute together felt like an investment in their future—breakfast, lunch, dinner, drives, walks, cocktail parties, meetings with food vendors, trips to the post office, ferry rides, the vacations to Bermuda and Napa and Jackson Hole, holidays with her family in Minnetonka and his parents in Binghamton, every movie they watched, every show they binged, every song they heard on the radio, every cookbook they tried a recipe from, every funeral they attended (there had been three), every wedding (six), every baptism (five), every beach day, every text and call, every trip to the Stop and Shop, every house they toured before buying the cottage on Bear Street, the fights and quarrels, the flat tires and dead batteries, the leaks in the ceiling and the power outages and the day the fridge died, the football games, the concerts (Kenny Chesney, the Foo Fighters, Zac Brown), the burns and cuts in the restaurant kitchen and the head colds and stomach bugs at home—all of these things had been like bricks in a

fortress that was supposed to keep Lizbet safe and happy for the rest of her life. She and JJ had inside jokes, secret code words, routines and rituals. Lizbet scratched JJ’s back every morning; she knew where his spot was, southeast of the shamrock tattoo in the center of his back that was always extra-itchy. On Sunday mornings in the winter, JJ would draw Lizbet a bath, light her scented candles, and leave her a pile of food magazines. While she was in the tub, he would go to Nautilus to pick up Caleb’s bagels with sriracha schmear and they would eat in the kitchen—Lizbet still in her bathrobe—while they listened to old Springsteen concerts. Those Sunday mornings were sacred, their version of church.

Lizbet had actually thought they would get married someday, despite their cool posturing. She wanted a marquise-cut diamond, she wanted a ceremony on the beach at Miacomet followed by a clambake; she wanted to dance in her wedding dress at the Chicken Box. They had talked about children—they wanted two—and when Lizbet missed her period in January of 2021, they were both giddy and nervous. It wasn’t exactly what they had planned—a baby arriving in September, Lizbet hugely pregnant all through the summer season—but they both grinned like crazy, calling each other Maw and Paw, naming the baby “Bubby”—and when Lizbet started to bleed at nine weeks, they cried in each other’s arms.

The sexting with Christina had started that summer. JJ had bulldozed the fortress. Worse, he’d allowed Lizbet to think that the fortress had existed only in her mind.

The ending, rather than creating a stronger place that Lizbet could launch from into a new, different, better-quality life, was an obliteration, as though fifteen years of Lizbet’s life—her prime years,

twenty-three to thirty-eight—had vaporized. She couldn’t salvage anything from them except the knowledge that she had, technically, survived.

Lizbet drinks what’s left in her jelly jar and turns to Mario. “You’re

how old? Forty…?”

“Forty-six.”

“Have you ever had your heart broken?”

Mario sighs. “Not like that. Not by a woman, romantically. But when Fiona died…”

Fiona Kemp, Lizbet thinks. Chef of the Blue Bistro. She died of cystic fibrosis at the end of the 2005 season. It’s Nantucket restaurant-world legend.

“…and when the Blue Bistro closed, my heart broke. It’s going to sound pompous as hell, but it was the dismantling of a dynasty. The bistro was the best, not because of the food or the location…it was the best because of the people. It was like a winning football team before the quarterback declares free agency and goes to a different team or like that string of golden summers at sleepaway camp before you get your driver’s license and a job making subs at Jersey Mike’s. We all knew Fiona was terminally ill and that we were living on God’s grace. But even so, when it ended, we were shell-shocked.

The dream died with Fiona, a piece of all of us died with Fiona. So yes, I’ve had my heart broken by this island. So badly that I left for seventeen years.” Mario takes Lizbet’s hand and leads her back to the railing. They watch the Steamship ferry glide majestically out of the dock; it’s all lit up, as big as a floating building.

Mario puts his hands on either side of Lizbet’s face. “I’m going to kiss you now, but I think we should both be careful.”

Lizbet laughs. “I’m never falling in love again, don’t worry.”

“Okay, then,” he says and he leans in. The first kiss is just a brushing of lips, warm and soft. Then Mario pulls Lizbet close enough that their hips lock. He kisses her again, and his lips linger on hers but it’s still tentative, like he’s making a decision. With the third kiss, Mario’s lips part and their tongues touch and a second later, they’re kissing like a couple who are destined to fall in love despite their best intentions.

Eventually Mario leads Lizbet to his bed, which is pleasingly (and surprisingly) firm. He takes his time undressing her. His fingertips graze her nipples, back and forth, back and forth, until she moans into his mouth. He kisses her under her ear, sucking a little, then whispering, “You are so beautiful to me, Lizbet.” She soon realizes there is no comparison between Mario and JJ in bed. JJ made love like a bull in a china shop—all power and bluster, no finesse; he liked to get it done as noisily and raucously as possible. Mario tends to her; he makes her ache. She wants him inside her and just when she thinks she can’t wait another second—she’s a dish on the stove that’s going to burn—he makes the next move. They rock together on the firm bed and Lizbet squeezes her newly powerful thighs around him and he cries out. The surrender in his voice is something Lizbet knows she’ll replay in her head over and over again.

He rolls off her, breathless. She’s dazzled.

“Why do we have to be careful, again?” she says.

He laughs. “I was just wondering that myself.” He stares at the ceiling for a second, then he pushes himself up and kisses her. “I said that because I have only a one-season contract. And, as I’m

sure you’re aware, there are no guarantees the hotel is going to make it.”

Lizbet pulls back like he’s run vinegar under her nose. “The hotel is going to make it.” She realizes she has no idea if this is true. Their occupancy, a month after opening, is right around 40 percent. Lizbet is too busy with the day-to-day operations to fret about this like she did at the beginning. Is the hotel losing money? Yes. But will Xavier pull the plug after only one year? Would he spend all that money just to abandon it? He said he was trying to impress two women, and one of them is Shelly Carpenter. Who is the second woman? Lizbet hasn’t wondered about this for a while. (She dearly hopes it’s not Alessandra.) “The hotel is going to be in business next year if I have anything to say about it. The hotel is going to be just fine.”

Mario kisses the tip of her nose in a way that feels patronizing, and suddenly Lizbet wants to swat him. “Okay, Heartbreaker,” he says. He pulls on his boxers and a T-shirt from Cisco Brewers.

“Come to the kitchen with me, please. I’m feeding you.”