Baby of the Family by Maura Roosevelt

Author:Maura Roosevelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

3

| 1997 |

When Nick arrived in Martha’s Vineyard that first summer, he brought with him the sinking feeling of having made an atrocious decision. With a manatee-sized camping pack on his back, fifteen-year-old Nick, who had reached six feet but still carried with him the pudgy edges of childhood, boarded a bus at the tiny airport that proceeded to take him through the sinuous roads of the island. Mist dropped from the gray sky and green leaves burst over the sandy banks of the roads, hovering above heaps of tangled branches. Biddy’s gray-shingled house was at the end of a brick path that cut through an overgrown front yard. He rang the bell four times, and after no one answered, he let himself in. “Hello?” he called. The old, damp house appeared to be empty. He wondered how much it would cost to go right back to the airport and book a flight home.

It had been Shelley’s idea that he spend the summer on the Vineyard with her. (“It’s paradise. Just rambling around the island.”) His mother and Roger’s marriage was quickly disintegrating. Although Roger had taken Nick on an extravagant trip to South America that spring, as far as he knew, his parents hadn’t spoken in months. Nick’s mother, who now seemed to spend her hours staring out at the lemon trees in their Newport Beach backyard, spacey and distraught, was initially resistant to the idea of Nick’s leaving for the summer. He had explained to her that Shelley’s mother wouldn’t be there, and it would be just her grandmother there, although he knew Biddy was far too ill and fragile now to spend more than a week or two there all summer. “And I’ll be making money working at this clam shack place. And, ah, it’s by the beach, so I can train for the swim team every day.” Things had been bad for him at school that year. He had one real friend, Jake, the only other nerd who swam. His mother knew about his social struggles, but she still didn’t want anything to do with Roger’s ex-wife. So when she gave in too quickly, Nick wondered if his mother actually wanted him out of the house, if she somehow blamed him for the sourness of her relationship with Roger, as if he had stolen the small amount of affection Roger had to bestow.

That first day on the New England island, Nick camped out alone for hours in the basement. White panels rose halfway up the walls, which were adorned with frames containing shells and maps. The rooms themselves were redolent of his half sister: beachy and rumpled yet stinking of beauty. When seventeen-year-old Shelley finally ticked down the stairs with a cigarette sticking out of her mouth, she hollered, “Whoooooop! You made it!” and threw her arms around his shoulders. Nick didn’t return the embrace; he was struck with an awkwardness he hadn’t foreseen. It was going to be the two of them in this big

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.