Here's to Us

EPILOGUE: ONE PERFECT DAY

He’s going up to Nantucket to say good-bye.

He has seen this coming for months now, but it feels like a fresh wound. It was either the restaurant or the house, and to lose the restaurant would mean putting forty-seven people out of work and watching his life’s dream go up in smoke. There really wasn’t a choice.

He has also blown his third marriage. Deacon knows he should be proud that his union with Scarlett has lasted as long as it did, and that they created a being as exquisite and clever as Ellery. And now, he is sober. The strongest thing about him is his willpower.

He plans a trip out of the city, one last visit to Nantucket. He wonders if he can make the time as sweet and pure as the day his father first took him to the island. He will try.

He decides to take the slow ferry, the way he and Jack did so many years earlier. Forty years have passed, but he can still recall his wonder. Deacon buys a cup of coffee and takes it up to the top deck. Over the years, people have maligned the slow ferry-it’s easier and faster to take the fast boat or to fly-but Deacon enjoys it. The trip feels like an old-fashioned adventure. He pays close attention as the island comes into view, and then, as they grow closer, he squints. Are there seals lounging on the jetty? Yes, one. Deacon waves his empty cup; the seal barks.

He has brought no luggage, just his sunglasses, his phone (the battery about to die), and his wallet. He longs for his old Willys jeep, but it gave up the ghost the summer before. The mechanic that Deacon called to resuscitate it said it was a lost cause. The frame was rusted through, the engine shot. It would have cost Deacon $15,000 to replace and repair it, which was far more than the beater was worth.

Be grateful for all the years she gave you, the mechanic said.

The old, funky pickup he bought to replace it is at the house, and so Deacon has to take a taxi. The first one in line is an incredibly sweet 1965 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors-with a driver who is dressed like a pirate. Who is this guy? He seems a little theme-parkish to Deacon, but maybe the kid’s just a scrappy entrepreneur. Deacon will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Deacon says, “Take me to the end of Hoicks Hollow Road, please.”

The driver is wearing a long velvet coat despite the warm day, and his dark, greasy hair hangs to his shoulders. He’s wearing an eye patch too, of course, so with his one beady eye, he stares at Deacon for a long moment in the rearview. He says, “Are you Deacon Thorpe?”

“Afraid so,” Deacon says, and he nearly laughs. A pirate who watches cooking shows! “Now, to Hoicks Hollow, please. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“Huh?” the driver says.

“It’s from Monopoly?” Deacon says. “The board game?”

Blank look.

“Never mind,” Deacon says.

The air on Nantucket is rich the same way that heavy cream is rich. Is there more oxygen in it? Deacon wonders. It smells of pine and salt. Today is a drop-dead stunner with plentiful sunshine and a sky so blue, it breaks his heart. It’s beauty, ultimately, that hurts Deacon-his inability to match it, his inability to be worthy of it, his inability to hold it in his heart.

Pirate heads out the Polpis Road, past farmland and split-rail fences. They pass the tiny, rose-covered cottage that sits at the bend in the road. Tourists stop to take pictures of this cottage all day long, which means that Deacon, as a seasoned islander, should be immune to its beauty. But the cottage, draped in a lush blanket of ‘New Dawn’ roses, is too pretty to ignore. Seeing it fills Deacon with joy.

Pirate drives past Sesachacha Pond.

“It’s taken me thirty years,” Deacon says, “but I finally learned how to pronounce the name of this pond. Seh-sack-a-ja.”

Pirate barely nods; he probably couldn’t care less, but Deacon is proud of himself. For decades, Deacon has stumbled over the name, sounding as though he had a mouth full of marbles. But JP broke it down into syllables, and now Deacon sounds like a Wampanoag native. JP is an ace with things like that: he can identify every shorebird, every species of tree and shrub and he can tell what kind of fish is on the line-bluefish, striped bass, or bonito-just by the way it tugs. The guy is frankly amazing, and Deacon would love nothing more than to somehow hook him up with Angie. He can’t choose Angie’s life for her, but how miraculous would it be if she fell in love with JP and moved to Nantucket year round? She could open her own restaurant here, take winters off to travel, and maybe give Deacon a grandchild.

Deacon spots Sankaty Head Light. When Ellery was little, he used to tell her it was a giant peppermint stick. He misses Ellery desperately-the way she smells after a bath, the freckles that dust her nose.

Pirate puts on his turn signal and takes a left.

Good old Hoicks Hollow Road, Jack had said. Used to be my home away from home.

When Pirate drops Deacon off, Deacon gives him money for the fare, plus a twenty-dollar tip. “Get yourself a parrot,” Deacon says with a grin.

Deacon changes into a bathing suit and a long-sleeved T-shirt and grabs a beach towel from the linen closet. He pulls a bike out of the shed-Laurel’s bike is how he always thinks of it-and throws the towel in the basket. He pedals down Hoicks Hollow Road to the Sankaty Head Beach Club. He and Belinda languished on the wait list for more than ten years, and then, the summer after they split, Deacon received a letter of acceptance, which he turned down because the application had Belinda Rowe’s name on it, and it was no secret that private clubs preferred whole families to broken ones.

Ray Jay Jr. had still worked at the beach club when Deacon and Laurel first bought American Paradise. Deacon used to see him occasionally coming and going in a little white Ford Escort, smoking a cigarette-but Deacon had never been comfortable enough to reintroduce himself because he didn’t want to tell Ray Jay Jr. that Jack Thorpe had left shortly after their visit to Nantucket and Deacon had never seen him again. Then Deacon read in the Inquirer and Mirror that Ray Jay Jr. died of a heart attack-and there went the last person on Nantucket who had remembered Jack Thorpe other than Deacon. It was sad but also something of a relief.

Deacon walks into the beach club through the swinging front doors, and he feels an old, familiar sense of not quite belonging. He has no idea if this part of his plan is going to be successful, but what the hell, he’ll give it a shot.

The blond, round-faced teenager at the check-in window is too young to be a fan, and she turns a skeptical glower on Deacon when he admits that he’s not a member but rather a person on a nostalgic mission, and that he’d love to have lunch. He says he’s an old friend of the former manager, Ray Jay Jr.

“I don’t know who that is,” the teenage girl says. “I’ll get my boss.”

The boss is a young man-about Hayes’s age-with a trim beard and rectangular glasses. Deacon nearly laughs. Now he has seen it all-hipsters have infiltrated the Sankaty Head Beach Club! But from ten yards away, Deacon notices a look of recognition cross this fellow’s face.

“Hi there, I’m Claude,” he says, offering a hand. “What can we do for you, Chef Thorpe?”

Deacon shakes Claude’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Claude. I came here for lunch forty years ago with my father, and I’d love to do it again today.”

Claude nods. “The pool just opened for the season on Monday. It would be our honor to have you as a guest of the house for lunch.”

The Sankaty Head Beach Club has changed very little in forty years, although there are now new chaises and new canvas umbrellas and new towels-yellow and white striped. Deacon sits at a table overlooking the pool, which is smaller and paler than he remembers. He orders a double cheeseburger, fries, and a frosty Coke.

“Are you sure I can’t get you a beer?” Claude says.

“I’m sure,” Deacon says. As soon as Claude leaves to put in Deacon’s order, Deacon takes off his shirt and walks to the edge of the pool. At the far end is a woman with twin girls a few years younger than Ellery, both of them wearing water wings. The lifeguard is a strapping college kid wearing red trunks and a gray hooded sweatshirt, spinning his whistle. The sun goes behind a cloud, and Deacon shivers, but he tells himself to toughen up. He has bigger worries than cold water.

He dives in.

After lunch, he thanks Claude profusely and signs autographs for the two line cooks in the back-and then he’s back on his bike, and it’s off to the beach in Sconset.

The weather is still fine and sunny, but it’s spring, not summer, and Deacon isn’t sure how long he’ll last at the beach. He sets his towel in the sand and charges into the water. It makes the pool at Sankaty feel like a bathtub, but Deacon isn’t deterred. He swims out, letting the waves crest over his head. This is it, he thinks. His last day on Nantucket for the foreseeable future. Of course, one never knows what will happen. Maybe a big investor will pop up, maybe Deacon will finally finish his cookbook, maybe, bit by bit, the Board Room will become more profitable and Deacon will be able to buy another house on Nantucket.

But it won’t be the same; this he knows. American Paradise was where he raised Hayes and Angie and Ellery. That was the house where he lived with his three wives, the most beautiful, complicated women he has ever known.

Deacon swims until his limbs are numb with the cold. He’s having some stomach pains; possibly he swam too soon after eating. He climbs out and collapses on his towel in the mellow late-afternoon sun.

It’s the golden hour. Deacon can remember watching his father walk toward him from down the beach; he can still picture the inscrutable expression on his father’s face. It was sadness and regret, Deacon supposes. His father might have wished he’d lived his life another way or been a more noble man-a better husband, a better father.

Deacon is overcome with emotion. Everything comes to an end-the day ends, the summer ends, an era ends. In a minute or two, Deacon will get on his bike and pedal back to American Paradise, where he will sit on the back deck, smoke a cigarette, drink a cold Diet Coke, and watch the sun go down.

But before he does that, he will stay and enjoy the last of the day’s warmth and the sound of the waves hitting the shore.

He thinks of the words he wanted to say to his father so many years earlier.

Let’s stay here, Dad. Please, let’s just find a way to stay.