“Have you regretted it?”
“Nope. Not once. Not a single time.”
“Okay,” says Sam. She breathes a sigh of relief both inwardly and outwardly. “Okay, that’s really good to hear.”
By now the server has cleared everything but their water glasses. The line of people waiting to get a table is starting to look legit—people crowded by the host stand, people clumped up on the green grass outside the restaurant—so, before an awkward silence has the chance to set in, Sam picks up the check.
“I’m getting that,” says Alexa.
“Nope,” says Sam. “Absolutely not. If you don’t put that wallet away I’m going to throw it into Great Salt Pond, I swear to God.”
“Well, okay, then!” says Alexa. “I need my wallet for the rest of the trip, so in that case I accept. Thank you.”
They wind their way through the tables, taking a last look at the oars hung every which way from the ceiling, crisscrossing over each other, and walk outside to the parking lot.
“I’m going to go take a photo,” says Alexa. “If that’s okay. Do we have time?”
“We have time!” While Alexa is gone Sam breathes in the particular smell of Great Salt Pond and takes in the sounds of boats pulling in and departing. She’s so focused on that that when Alexa lays a hand on her bare arm she jumps.
“Hey,” says Alexa. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to thank you for letting me talk. I left home not too long after my boyfriend died—I was leaving anyway, like I said, but I left probably a little sooner than I would have. And nobody in my L.A. life knew him, or even knows about what happened, so I just don’t ever talk about it.”
“I’m glad to be talked to,” says Sam. “I really am.” She smiles.
Once they’re back in the jeep she asks, “Do you want to see a little of the island? Or head right back to your hotel? I don’t know if Uncle Timmy has plans for you, things he needs you to do.” When she lived with Timothy and Gertie, the assistants were a rotating series of young women and sometimes young men around Alexa’s age, and though Sam knew they had specific jobs and duties she never knew what those jobs were and which person performed which duties. Their work was a low hum in the background, like the buzzing of bees.
“He doesn’t,” says Alexa. “Really he hardly needs me here at all. I wanted to come, to see my family, and to see the play, and he was nice enough to call it work, and to let me come for a long stretch.”
“That’s great,” says Sam. “We’ll take the long way back, then. That way we can avoid the traffic on Ocean.” She takes a right on West Side Road, past Ball O’Brien Park, past the Island Cemetery, then, when West Side splits, a left on Beacon Hill, bisecting the center of the island. She shows Alexa the small airport, with the restaurant inside that is supposed to be excellent, although Sam has never been, and she points out the Native American cemetery. When they get to the intersection of Lakeside Drive and Mohegan Trail she stops and shows Alexa Painted Rock, explaining it to Alexa the way Maggie explained it to her: it’s a landmark that’s been painted over hundreds of times with island messages, from wedding proposals to quotes from the Beatles and a bunch of stuff in between.
“I love it!” cries Alexa. “This place is a-mazing. I can’t believe I lived a couple of hours away from the ferry my whole life.”
“I lived right across the water!” says Sam. “And after my grandmother moved away we mostly stopped coming.”
When she pulls up in front of Hotel Manisses she gives herself a mental pat on the back. Two months ago she was just getting to know the island herself; now she’s giving tours like a semiprofessional guide.
“This was really nice. Thank you, Sam. I can’t wait to see the play.”
The play! Dress rehearsal tonight! Sam’s stomach starts to flutter. She hopes it isn’t the sushi. When she accepted the role she’d let herself think about lines, and rehearsals, and costume fittings, and working with her uncle, and being onstage with Gertie—but she’d sort of forgotten that at some point there would be a real, live audience, and she could flub a line or mess up her entrance.
“Thank you,” she says to Alexa. She feels weak in the knees.
No, it isn’t the sushi. The sushi was amazing. It’s the foe of every actor who’s trod the boards: it’s good old-fashioned nerves.
The Island
On any given night on Block Island there are dozens—nay, hundreds—of tiny dramas playing out. We should emphasize that by this we mean anysummernight. In the off-season, with only one thousand year-round residents, the number falls proportionately, and you might get ten dramas, or fewer.
This particular night, there’s a wedding party in town. Not a surprise! There’s always a wedding party in town in August! The rehearsal dinner is at the Harbor Grill. Seafood risotto is the main course, preceded by crab cakes and pulled pork sliders, and followed by a scrumptious mango cheesecake. The best man gets too drunk, as best men sometimes do, and lets slip a story about the groom-to-be and a girl on the dance floor at the Omni Las Vegas during the bachelor party. “Nothing happened!” the groom-to-be tells the teary bride-to-be, protected by her cadre of bridesmaids, each with a set of daggers in her eyes. (Nothing did, in fact, happen on the dance floor that night in Vegas. Just dancing. But nevertheless: drama.)
On the far side of the island, in a little cottage on Dorry’s Cove Road, a twenty-eight-year-old woman has just taken a third test to confirm her fourth pregnancy, which will result in, if she carries to term, her first child. She’s waiting for her wife, a doctor at the Block Island Medical Center, to come home from her twelve-hourshift so she can tell her. It’s a quiet drama, rooted in both loss and hope.
On Dodge Street a writer named Anthony Puckett writesTHE ENDon the final page of a manuscript he’s been working on for the better part of two years. He pours himself a scotch in honor of his late father, whom the book is about, and who always poured a scotch to celebrate writingTHE ENDon any of his manuscripts. He calls his mother, Dorothy, to tell her he’s finally done. Unbeknownst to Anthony, Dorothy has been working on her own version of the story, and unbeknownst to both, her manuscript will hit publishers’ desks at the same time his does. Drama.
Some us have lived on this island for decades, and some of us are only here for the summer or the week or maybe even just the night. Our dramas are big and small, personal and public, instructive and destructive, like those of any community.
But therealdrama, this night, is inside the Empire Theatre as the ticket holders take their seats. It’s a sold-out show, and the diligent ushers, Maggie Sousa and her sort-of best friend, Riley, have all but a few straggling latecomers seated just before the curtain rises, revealing a vine-covered, balcony-studded villa of long-ago Messina.
Amy
