Nash had a different kind of energy and a different sort of charisma. He was a tall, silent man, genial, courteous, easygoing, but guarded. Nash was a challenge. When they made love, the sex was intimate, thrilling, intense, but when it was over and they lay side by side, Nash was silent. He held her hand, but he didn’t speak. She had tried to talk. “That was amazing,” she’d said, knowing that her words were a cliché even though they were true. All he’d said was, “Good.” Good? It had seemed with Boyz that she’d been pulled immediately into the inner circle of his life, his thoughts, his family, his dreams. With Nash, she was still an outsider. Even when they were making love, part of him held back.
When they went out together, Nash was witty, gentlemanly, and amiable, and he gave her plenty of compliments, but something about him was distant. He told Darcy he had an unremarkable past, growing up in the ’burbs of Boston with a professor father and a quilt-maker mom. He spent Christmas with them. He cared for them, sure, but he’d left the nest. He had moved to Nantucket this winter, and he thought he’d like to stay here for the rest of his life, but on the other hand, Colorado and Vermont called to him, so next winter he might take off for a week or two to ski. Nash was four years older than Darcy. He never talked about having a family. He seemed content with his bachelor life in the apartment he rented over his friend Lois Cooper’s garage.
Content. That was it. Nash was content with himself and his lot in life, and it puzzled Darcy. It challenged her—she wanted to break though his invisible wall. She wanted to make him discontented. She wanted to make him go wild for her, tell her he loved her, that she held his life in her hands, he needed her….
Ridiculous. Nash didn’t hold her life in his hands. She didn’t need him. It was her bratty vanity wanting him to feel those things about her.
The clock on the South Church tower struck eleven times. Time for bed. Darcy gathered her peach pit and went into her house. She missed Nash. Some nights, especially when the spring gales howled over the ocean to batter against the houses, Darcy and Nash would sit together in the living room, her feet on his lap, both of them working on crossword puzzles.
“What’s a five letter word for ‘green energy’?” she would ask.
He’d answer immediately. “Solar.”
“Ha! I thought it was something like spinach!” They would laugh together and go quiet again, absorbed in their puzzles but together.
Darcy wished he were here right now, not even for sex, but to sleep with, to curl up against, relaxing into the safety of his body, the sense of belonging she had when his arm was around her, holding him against her, his breath warm on her neck.
—
Saturday, as Darcy strolled home from the library, she spotted a familiar figure on the brick sidewalk. Mimi crept along with her cane, head down—always wise no matter what age, because the Nantucket sidewalks were uneven, with bumps where tree roots shoved the bricks upward and sudden holes where entire bricks had come loose and disappeared.
“Hi, Mimi,” Darcy called as she drew near.
“Darcy!” Mimi put a hand on a picket fence to steady herself. “How pretty you look!”
“As do you. I think we have the same taste in clothes.” They were both wearing floral-printed summer dresses.
Mimi laughed. “But maybe not the same taste in shoes.”
Darcy wore beaded sandals with a small heel. Mimi wore huge clunky rubbery support boats.
“Tell me, Darcy, how was your day? Is it overwhelming in town now? Do you get to read to the children or are you stuck with administrative duties?”
“Oh, gosh,” Darcy said, remembering. “I was going to bring you some children’s books. So, yes, I’ll admit it is overwhelming in town. That’s my excuse for being forgetful!” She laughed with Mimi. “Look, would you like to come sit in my backyard and have a glass of lemonade with me?”
To her surprise, Mimi said, “Hm. I don’t know.” Her eyes twinkled. “Is lemonade all you’ve got to offer?”
It took Darcy a moment. Oh. “I’ve got wine, and I can make a mean margarita.”
“Ah. Good. In that case, I’d very much like to sit in your backyard.”
Darcy took her arm. Slowly they made their way beneath the rose-covered arbor into her garden and settled Mimi in a chair, cane in her hand.
“I’ll be right back with some drinks.”
From her kitchen window, Darcy observed Mimi surveying her garden, pleasure glowing on her face as she observed the flowers—larkspur, foxglove, phlox, all the old favorites. She also noticed that Boyz’s car was not in the driveway and no people of any age or size were in the garden on the other side of the hedge. Good.