The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard by Michael Callahan

Author:Michael Callahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

October 2018

Kit sits in the small conference room, the long table littered with heavy textbooks, volumes, and folders spewing out photocopied articles, photos, sketches, and myriad other historical ephemera about the first ladies of the United States. Ratings for Signature with Lucinda Cross have been soft, and its host has decided some lighter feature fare is in order to goose viewership. What is going unsaid is that Lucinda’s contract is up for renewal in a few months, and she needs to show some positive momentum. Which means eyeballs. To her credit, she refuses to plumb the depths of the culture for a cheap win—an intern who suggested a segment on supermodels battling climate change was quickly silenced—which has led to this multipart series on first ladies, “the women behind the men,” from Martha Washington onward. Kit had meekly suggested broadening the scope, perhaps doing a series on female trailblazers and including women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Margaret Sanger, but Lucinda had dismissed it. (“No one wants a tour of noted lesbians of the twentieth century,” she remarked drolly.) Lucinda has assigned Priya to help. So they have divided the list of first ladies, calling historians and searching for story hooks to weave the narratives of these disparate women together. Which is how she now finds herself in this moment, frantically scribbling notes about dresses, teas, and the occasional assassination.

“Well, you look like you’re having fun,” Priya says, walking into the room carrying a midsized bulletin board. She’s wearing a bright tangerine jumpsuit accented with a particularly busy Pucci scarf and way too many bracelets. She looks like a fashionable Creamsicle.

“A blast,” Kit answers, leaning back in her chair and tossing her pen onto the yellow legal pad. “Did you know Caroline Harrison founded the Daughters of the American Revolution?”

“Alas, women who look like me are not eligible for membership in such institutions. We were just the ones colonized. But I can tell you that Nellie Taft planted the first cherry trees in Washington. Perhaps a more enduring gift than the old DAR.”

Kit puts her face in her hands. “I so don’t want to be doing this right now.”

“I know,” Priya says, propping up the bulletin board. “Which is why I brought you this.”

“Which is?”

“Motivation. To get you back to what you really should be doing.”

Kit knits her eyebrows in confusion as Priya flips the board around, revealing its contents. It’s a crazy mix of Post-its, diagrams, timelines, photos, and notecards. There’s a photocopy of the picture of Nan and the mystery man, a map of Martha’s Vineyard, the flyer for the play. It looks like a mash-up of a serial killer’s manifesto and a blog on Pinterest. Kit looks closer, sees a series of pictures of Nan as Mercy Welles, selected factoids from her own nascent investigation into that mysterious summer.

“Here is where we are so far,” Priya is saying, and Kit notes the “we” in her statement. She has leaned on Priya for background help and off-the-books

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