“A Preppy Handbook theme feels redundant,” Coco says. “It’s Nantucket in the summer.”
Leslee beams. “I could hug you,” she says—and then she does hug Coco, and Coco gets a full inhale of Leslee’s Guerlain Double Vanille perfume and a mouthful of her barrel-curled hair.
“So will you go?” Coco asks. “To the party?”
“Absolutely,” Leslee says, “not. Dr. Andy and Rachel are imitation crab. I could smell their weakness the moment I met them. Besides, I hear Jessica Torre is a far better dentist.”
Coco recalls that the McManns were the first people struck from Leslee’s invitation list for the Fourth of July. Cutting the invite list by half was a strategy that has made the Richardsons’ stock rise. It’s classic supply and demand: Everyone wants what they can’t have.
Everyone, that is, except for Coco, who relishes each second of her new life. She throws her head back as she cruises along the Polpis Road in Baby. The top is down, the sun is shining, she’s playing her favorite song: “I Wanna Get Better” by the Bleachers. But everything is already better, she thinks, because Lamont Oakley is her sneaky-link.
He comes by her apartment at the literal crack of dawn when both Bull and Leslee are fast asleep (they are not early risers). He parks all the way out on the Wauwinet Road, then jogs down Pocomo. (Coco has disabled the driveway alarm, with Leslee’s blessing—they both agree the chiming is obnoxious—but even so, Coco checks daily to make sure Leslee hasn’t turned it back on.) Lamont sprints along the grass on the side of the driveway so his footsteps don’t make noise on the shells. When he arrives, breathless, at her door, Coco feels like they’re working for the CIA. But the last thing either of them wants is to get caught breaking the rule now.
They’ve perfected the art of acting cordial-bordering-on-indifferent when they bump into each other at work. “Hey. S’up.” There are no winks, no lingering looks; it drives them both crazy.
When Lamont enters Coco’s bedroom in the apricot light of dawn each morning, Coco rolls over, warm with sleep, and instantly starts glowing with desire. Lamont kisses just beneath her ear; he nibbles on her hip bone. She cannot get enough of him.
The best part of the morning isn’t even the sex, it’s the talking afterward. One morning, Lamont tells Coco that every child on Nantucket is eligible to take free sailing lessons through Nantucket Community Sailing. Lamont showed a talent for it right away; he had the adaptability, the patience, and the independence. “Plus, I love being on the water,” he says. “I love weather, I love wind, I love the sound of the sails, I love tying and untying knots, I love the boats, especially the very simple Optis we learned on.”
When he got older, members of the Field and Oar asked him to crew. It was at that point he realized there weren’t a lot of Black people in the sailing-verse. “I was usually the only person of color at the Field and Oar,” he says. “Which prepared me, I guess, for the whitewashed world of sailing. When I was in college, most of the teams we sailed against were all white.”
“Did you feel like a trailblazer?” Coco says.
“Sort of,” Lamont says. “But then the kids behind me in school—like Javier and Esteban, for example—saw what I did and their parents heard about all the places I’ve been able to travel. The Nantucket sailing program is way more diverse now.”
Coco tells Lamont about her home growing up. “Nothing in our house was ever correct,” Coco says. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Something was always breaking—the porch light would go out, the downstairs toilet would overflow, the battery of my mother’s Accord would die. My mother would wash our clothes and hang them on the line, but she never folded them or put them away; we’d all just pull stuff crumpled from the laundry basket. Even my mother’s name, Georgi—that’s her whole entire name, on her birth certificate—it’s just not finished. Like, why not add the final e or a?” Coco sighs. “I remember this one time, my mother brought home steaks for dinner, these thick rib eyes that the butcher at work gave her. She mashed potatoes and boiled up some broccoli, and I made brownies for dessert. I was so excited to have a family dinner like you’d read about in a book and it was one time when Bree and her kids were in a good mood—no one was crying, no one was fighting. Just when everything was ready, my mother’s phone rang. It was Kemp, saying he’d forgotten that darts league started that night and Bree’s boyfriend, Larch, was meeting him at the bar and they wouldn’t be home until late. Georgi got so mad they were missing dinner that she carried the platter of steaks out back and threw them into our pond for the snapping turtles. She just tossed everyone’s dinner. I ran into my room with the tray of brownies, and I invited Bree’s kids in, and we locked the door and ate the brownies straight out of the pan sitting on the floor.” Coco tears up. She had been fourteen years old when this happened. She remembers because she wrote a “personal narrative” about it for a ninth-grade English assignment, and the teacher, Mrs. Buckwalter, asked Coco to stay after class. Coco thought Mrs. Buckwalter was going to report their family to child protective services—in a way, Coco wanted this to happen—but instead, Mrs. Buckwalter told Coco that she was a “very talented writer.”
Coco laughs. “I’m sorry that story doesn’t have an inspirational ending like yours. I didn’t triumph; I only survived.”
“But you did triumph,” Lamont says, kissing her eyelids, her nose, then her lips. “Because you’re here.”
Every morning when Lamont gets up to leave, Coco longs for him to stay.
“Why can’t we go to dinner one night? I know where Bull and Leslee have reservations. If they go to the Galley, we can go to the Sconset Café.”
“If anybody sees us…” Lamont says, and Coco realizes he’s right. The Richardsons know everyone now.
There is one place Lamont is willing to take Coco: to his house to meet his mother, Glynnie. At first, Coco can’t believe it. “You’re sure?” she says. It feels like they skipped a step.
“She wanted to know why I suddenly seemed so happy all the time. And I can’t lie to my mama, so I told her about you. She asked to meet you.”
Coco and Lamont arrange to go to his house at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Coco has a little more leeway with her errands on the weekends because the Richardsons tend to sleep in even later than usual. Lamont lives in a saltbox cottage on a cul-de-sac over by the Miacomet Golf Course. The house is neat and tidy, with hydrangeas on either side of a yellow front door. As they approach, Coco hears a dog barking.
Lamont opens the door. “Molly!” he says to an English cream golden retriever who is as white and fluffy as a polar bear. “Molly, meet Coco. Coco, Molly.” He ushers Coco inside to a mudroom that is giving Martha Stewart vibes—there’s a rainbow of foul-weather jackets hanging on wooden pegs, and beneath a tastefully weathered bench are a row of boat shoes and flip-flops. They step into a bright kitchen with white glass-fronted cabinets and a white marble island with a bouquet of lilies in a green glass vase and a bowl of peaches and plums sitting on it. There’s a pie underneath a glass-domed cake stand. On the far side of the kitchen is a breakfast nook with windows that open to the backyard. And at the round table sits a petite woman wearing earbuds with her phone in front of her. Her eyes are closed behind the lenses of her glasses, but her posture is as straight as a ballerina’s.
“Mama?” Lamont says.
Lamont’s mother opens her eyes in surprise. She presses the screen of her phone and removes her earbuds. “Darling!”
“I brought Coco,” he says. “Coco, this is my mother, Glynnis Oakley.”
Coco steps forward and offers her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Oakley.”
“Dear girl, call me Glynnie,” she says. She scoots out from behind the table and gets to her feet. She’s wearing white capris and a blue-and-white-gingham sleeveless blouse with a ruffled collar. Her skin is the same light brown as Lamont’s and she has a few pronounced freckles on her cheeks. Her nails, Coco notes, are perfect ovals polished to look like milk glass. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be so I can’t get a good look at you, but you sound just beautiful.”
“Thank you for inviting me over,” Coco says.
“Lamont will make coffee. I was just listening to my audiobook—it’s quite gripping.”
“What’s it called?” Coco asks.
“Oh…” Glynnie says. “I forget the title, it’s one of those… you know. You sit down here next to me and tell me all about yourself and about this crazy couple you’re both working for. All the girls at church want the inside scoop. You wouldn’t believe the rumors that are flying around this island. All anyone wants to talk about is the Richardsons, but Lamont won’t tell me a thing about them.”
Coco looks to Lamont, who shakes his head. Coco takes the seat next to Glynnie. “Well,” she says, “I’m from a place called Rosebush, Arkansas.”
“Rosebush, Arkansas!” Glynnie says. “That sounds made up.”
If only, Coco thinks.
The best way to avoid gossiping about the Richardsons (though Coco is tempted to tell Glynnie about the Amalfi lemons; that would incite a spicy riot among the girls at church) is to ask questions about Lamont. Once Glynnie gets talking about him, she can’t stop. She tells Coco that Lamont nearly quit sailing after his first lesson at age seven because there was a bully on his boat. Coco mentions that she’s friends with Kacy Kapenash, and Glynnie leads Coco into the living room so she can show off Lamont and Kacy’s pictures from the junior prom and senior banquet. Coco wants to scream, it is just so cute; they’re so young, they’re babies. She studies Kacy’s dresses: a dusty-rose sheath for the junior prom, a black strapless gown for the senior banquet. Kacy had impeccable taste even then.
“I always secretly hoped something more would happen between them,” Glynnie says. “But for some reason, it never did.”
From there, Glynnie shows Coco Lamont’s school pictures starting in first grade, when he was missing his two front teeth, all the way to his senior portrait in his cap and gown. Next, it’s on to his sailing trophies and the collections of postcards he’s sent her from around the world. Coco keeps turning to see how Lamont is taking all of this, but he’s just chilling on the sofa with his coffee, playing with Molly, smiling and rolling his eyes.
Finally he stands up, washes out their mugs, and fixes Glynnie a ham and cheese sandwich that he covers with plastic and puts in the fridge. “We have to get back to work, Mama,” he says. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Can’t you leave Coco behind?” Glynnie says. “We’ve barely gotten started.”
