The Love Season Part 2

This is the place? her father asked incredulously, eyeing the mind-boggling array of bras and panties. The bras on display right in front of them were 36 triple-D-beige, black, lacy, and leopard print. Renata wasn't sure this was the place; she had never been bra shopping before. She wanted her mother, or any mother at all, and at that moment she hated her father for not remarrying, for not even dating.

They found a saleswoman. GLENDA, her name tag said, like the good witch from The Wizard of Oz. She took one look at Dan and Renata-embarra.s.sed father and skinny eleven-year-old daughter who bleated like a lamb, "Bra?"-and whisked Renata into the dressing room while she discreetly snuck over to Juniors to fetch an a.s.sortment of training bras. Renata emerged, twenty minutes later, with three bras that fit; she wanted to wear one home. Her father, in the meantime, sat slumped in a folding chair until it was time to pay. On the way out, he started to cry. Renata didn't ask what was wrong; she couldn't bear to hear the answer. His little girl was growing up, and where was Candace?

Where was Candace?

When Renata and Cade started dating, Renata told him the story of bra shopping. That, she said, sums up the way things are between me and my father. He loves me too much. He feels too responsible. He is weighing me down. I am weighing him down. I have been his daughter and his wife, you know what I mean?

But you don't mean...? Cade said.

No, Renata had said; then she wondered if her relationship with her father was too nuanced to explain to another human being or simply too nuanced to explain to Cade. She was pretty sure that Cade's relationship with his parents was cut-and-dried; it was normal. They took care of him; it was a one-way street. Cade didn't feel the need to escape them. What Cade wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be just like them.

Renata gazed out across Nantucket Sound. Her guilt was eating her for breakfast. She blew the Beach Club a kiss, then turned and ran for home.

10:40 A.M.

She was out again, on foot. It was unheard of: Marguerite Beale out of her house, twice in one day. And that was just a start; later she would have to go to the Herb Farm. She would have to drive.

But for now, the meat. Picked up, directly, from the butcher at the A&P. And while Marguerite was in the store, she bought olive oil, Dijon mustard, peppercorns, silver polish, toilet paper. It all fit in one bag, and then it was back out into the August sun. Marguerite was wearing a straw hat with a pink satin ribbon that tied under her chin. She felt like Mother Goose. The liquor store was next.

She went to the liquor store on Main Street, steeling herself for interaction; she had known the couple who owned the store for decades. But when she entered, she found a teenager behind the cash register and the rest of the store was deserted.

Marguerite wandered up and down the aisles of wine, murmuring the names under her breath. Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Cha.s.sagne-Montrachet, Semillion, Sauvignon, Viognier, Vouvray. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what each wine had tasted like. Wine in the gla.s.s, b.u.t.tery yellow, garnet red, jewel tones. Candace across the table, her shoulders bare, her hair loose from its elastic.

"Can I help you?" the teenager said. He moved right into Marguerite's personal s.p.a.ce. He stood close enough that she could see the white tips of his acne; she could smell his chewing gum. Instinctively she backed away. She was browsing the wine the way she browsed for books; she wanted to be left to do so in peace.

"Do you know what you're looking for?" the teenager asked. "Red or white? If it's red, you could go with this one," He held up a bottle of something called ZD. Marguerite had never heard of it, which meant it was from California-or, worse still, from one of the "new" wine regions: Chile, Australia, Oregon, upstate New York. Even fifteen years ago, she had been accused of being a wine sn.o.b because she would only serve and only drink wines from France. Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, Champagne. Regal grapes. Meanwhile, here was a child trying to peddle a bottle of...merlot.

Marguerite smiled and shook her head. "No, thank you."

"It's good," he said. "I've tried it."

Marguerite raised her eyebrows. The boy might have been seventeen. He sounded quite proud of himself, and he had an eager expression that led Marguerite to believe she would not be able to shake him. Which was too bad. Though maybe, in the interest of time, a good thing.

"I've come for champagne," Marguerite said. "I'd like two bottles of Veuve Clicquot, La grande Dame. I hope you still carry it."

Her words seemed to frighten the boy. Marguerite found herself wishing for Fergus and Eliza, the proprietors. They used to rub Marguerite the wrong way from time to time-a bit pretentious and very Republican-but they were profoundly competent and knowledgeable wine merchants. And they knew Marguerite-the champagne would have been waiting on the counter before she was fully in the door. But Fergus and Eliza were curiously absent. Marguerite worried for a minute that they had sold the store. It would serve her right to squirrel herself away for so long that when she surfaced there was no longer anyone on Nantucket whom she recognized. It was scary but refreshing, too, to think that she might outlast all the people she was hiding from.

The boy loped over to the wall of champagnes, plucked a bottle from the rack, and squinted at the label. Meanwhile, Marguerite could spy the bottles she wanted without even putting on her bifocals. She sidled up next to the boy and eased the bottles off the shelf.

"Here it is," she said, and because she was in a beneficent mood she lifted a bottle to show him the label. "When you're a bit older and you meet a special someone, you will drive her out to Smith's Point for the sunset with a bottle of this champagne."

The tips of his ears reddened; she'd embarra.s.sed him. "I will?"

She handed him the bottles. "That's all for today."

He met her at the register and scanned the bottles with his little gun. "That will be two hundred and seventy dollars," he said. He shifted his weight as Marguerite wrote out the check. "Um, I don't think I'll be buying that champagne any time soon. It's expensive."

Marguerite carefully tore out the check and handed it to him. "Worth every cent, I promise you."

"Uh, okay. Thanks for coming in."

"Thank you," she said. She picked up the brown bag with the bottles in one hand and the groceries in the other. Back out into the sun. The champagne bottles clinked against each other. Should she feel bad that she hadn't selected a Sancerre to drink with the tart and a l.u.s.ty red to go with the beef? It was grossly unorthodox to drink champagne all the way through a meal, though Marguerite had done it often enough and she'd noticed any person in the restaurant who was brave enough to do it. But really, what would her readers in Calgary think if they knew? Champagne, she might tell them, was for any night you think you might remember for the rest of your life. It was for nights like tonight.

Her hands were full, true. She had a pile of things to do at home: The aioli, the marinade for the beef, and the entire tart awaited, and Marguerite held out hope for a few pages of Alice Munro and a nap. (All this exercise-she would pay for it tomorrow with sore muscles and stiff joints.) But even so, even so, Marguerite did not head straight home. She was out and about in town, which happened exactly never and she had done so much thinking about...and if she had really wanted to escape her past, she would have moved away. As it was, she still lived on the same island as her former restaurant, and she wanted to see it.

She lumbered down Main Street and took a left on Water Street, where she walked against the flow of traffic. So many people, tourists with ice-cream cones and baby strollers, shopping bags from Nantucket Looms, the Lion's Paw, Erica Wilson. Across the street, the Dreamland Theater was showing a movie starring Jennifer Lopez. Marguerite harbored a strange, secret fascination with J.Lo, which she nourished during her daily forays into cybers.p.a.ce. Marguerite surfed the Internet as a way to keep current with the world and to combat the feeling of being a person born into the wrong century; she needed to stay somewhat relevant to life in the new millennium, if only for her Canadian readers. And cybers.p.a.ce was alluring, as addictive as everyone had promised. Marguerite limited herself to an hour a day, timing herself by the computer's clock, and always at the end of the hour she felt bloated, overstimulated, as though she'd eaten too many chocolate truffles. She gobbled up the high-profile murders, the war in Iraq, partisan politics on Capitol Hill, the courses offered at Columbia University, the shoes of the season at Neiman Marcus, the movie stars, the scandals-and for whatever reason, Marguerite considered news about J.Lo to be the jackpot. Marguerite was mesmerized by the woman-her Latin fireworks, the way she shamelessly opened herself up to public adoration and scorn. Jennifer Lopez, Marguerite thought, is the person on this planet who is most unlike me. Marguerite had never seen J.Lo in a movie or on TV, and she had no desire to. She was certain she would be disappointed. After a second or two of studying the movie poster (that dazzling smile!) she moved on.

Down the street, still within shouting distance of the movie theater, on the opposite side of Oak Street from the police station, was a shingled building with a charming hand-painted sign of a golden retriever under a big black umbrella. THE UMBRELLA SHOP, the sign said. FINE GIFTS. Marguerite's heart faltered. She ascended three brick steps, opened the door, and stepped in.

If what the girl wanted was the whole story, the unabridged version of her mother's adult life and death and how it intersected with Marguerite's life and how they both ended up on Nantucket-if that was indeed the point of tonight-then Marguerite would have to go all the way back to Paris, 1975. Marguerite was thirty-two years old, and in the nine years since she'd graduated from the Culinary Inst.i.tute she had been doing what was known in the restaurant business as paying her dues. There had been the special h.e.l.l of her first two years out when she worked as garde manger at Les Trois Canards in northern Virginia. It was French food for American congressmen and lobbyists. The chef, Gerard de Luc, was a cla.s.sicist in all things, including chauvinism. He hated the mere idea of a woman in his kitchen, but it was the summer of 1967 and he'd lost so many men to Vietnam that, quite frankly, he had to hire Marguerite. She had been, if judged by today's standards, egregiously hara.s.sed. The rest of the kitchen staff was male except for Gerard's mother, known only as Mere, an eighty-year-old woman who made desserts in a cool enclave behind the kitchen. Initially, Marguerite had thought that Mere's presence might help ameliorate Gerard's wrath, his demeaning tirades, and his offensive language. (The worst of it was in French, but there were constant references to the s.e.xual favors he would force Marguerite to perform if every strand of her hair wasn't caught up in the hair net, if the salad greens weren't bone-dry.) But after the second day, Marguerite deduced that Mere was deaf. Gerard de Luc was a fascist, an ogre-and a genius. Marguerite hated him, though she had to concede his plates were the most impeccable she had ever seen. He made her instructors at the CIA seem slack. He knew the pedigree of every ingredient that entered his kitchen-which farm the vegetables were grown on, which waters the fish were pulled from. Fresh! he would scream. Clean! He inspected their knives every morning. Once, when he found Marguerite with a dull blade, he threw her mise-en-place into the trash. Start over, he said. With a sharp knife. Marguerite had been close to tears, but she knew if she cried, she would be fired or ridiculed so horribly that she'd be forced to quit. She imagined the dull blade slicing off Gerard de Luc's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. Yes, Chef, she said.

Sometimes, staying in a less-than-optimal-or in this case a savage and unsafe-situation was worth it because of what one could learn on the job. In the case of Les Trois Canards, Marguerite became tough; any other woman, one of the cooks told her, would have left the first time Gerard pinched her a.s.s. Marguerite's tolerance for pain was high.

She left Les Trois Canards after two years, feeling seasoned and ready for anything, and so she moved to restaurant Mecca: Manhattan. During the summer of 1969, she worked as poissonier at a short-lived venture in Greenwich Village called Vite, which served French food done as fast food. It folded after three months, but the sous chef liked Marguerite and took her with him down a golden path that led into the kitchen at La Grenouille. Marguerite worked all of the stations on the hot line, covering the other cooks' days off, for three magical years. The job was a dream; again, the staff were mostly Frenchmen, but they were civilized. The kitchen was silent most of the time, and when things were going smoothly Marguerite felt like a gear inside a Swiss watch. But the lifestyle of a chef started to wear on her. She arrived at work at nine in the morning to check deliveries, and many nights she didn't leave until one in the morning. The rest of the staff often went out to disco, but it was all Marguerite could do to get uptown to her studio apartment on East End Avenue, where she crashed on a mattress on the floor. In three years she never found time to a.s.semble her bed frame or shop for a box spring. She never ate at home, she had no friends other than the people she worked with at La Grenouille, and she never dated.

Marguerite left Manhattan in 1972 for a sous chef position at Le Ferme, a farmhouse restaurant in the Leatherstocking District of New York. The restaurant was owned by two chefs, a married couple; they hired Marguerite when the woman, Annalee, gave birth to a daughter with Down's syndrome. For the three years that Marguerite worked at Le Ferme, the chefs were largely absent. They gave Marguerite carte blanche with the menu; she did all the ordering, and she ventured out into the community in search of the best local ingredients. It was as ideal a situation as Marguerite could ask for, but Le Ferme was busy only on the weekends; people in that part of New York weren't ready for a restaurant of Le Ferme's caliber. Marguerite even did her own PR work, enticing a critic she knew in the city to come up to review the restaurant-which he did, quite favorably-but it didn't do much to help. The restaurant was sold in 1975, and Marguerite was left to twist in the wind.

She considered returning home to northern Michigan. Marguerite's father had emphysema and probably lung cancer, and Marguerite's mother needed help. Marguerite could live in her old room, bide her time, wait to see if any opportunities arose. But when she called her mother to suggest this, her mother said, "Don't you dare come back here, darling. Don't. You. Dare."

Diana Beale wasn't being cruel; she had just raised Marguerite for something bigger and better than cooking at the country club or the new retirement community. What were the ballet lessons for, the French tutor, the four years of expensive cooking school?

I'm sending you money, Diana Beale said. She didn't explain where the money came from, and Marguerite didn't ask. Marguerite's father had worked his whole life for the state government, and yet all through Marguerite's growing up Diana Beale had magically conjured money with which to spoil Marguerite: weekend trips to Montreal (they had bought the grandfather clock on one trip; Diana Beale spotted it in an antique store and paid for it with cash), silk scarves, trips to the beauty parlor to shape Marguerite's long hair. Diana Beale had wanted Marguerite to feel glamorous even though as a child she'd been plain. She wanted Marguerite to distinguish herself from the girls she grew up with in Cheboygan, who taught school and married men with factory jobs. And so the mystery money. Only then, at the age of thirty-two, did Marguerite suspect her mother had a wealthy lover, had had one for some time.

What should I do with the money? Marguerite asked. She knew it was being given to her for a reason.

Go to Europe, her mother said. That's where you belong.

Marguerite could barely remember the person she had been before April 23, 1975, which was the day she stepped into Le Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris and found Porter fast asleep on a bench in front of Auguste Renoir's Les Parapluies. She could remember the facts of her life-the long hours working, the exhaustion that followed her everywhere like a bad smell-but she couldn't recall what had occupied her everyday thoughts. Had she been worried about the stalling of her career? Had she been concerned that at thirty-two she was still unmarried? Had she been lonely? Marguerite couldn't remember. She had walked across the museum's parquet floor-it was noon on a Tuesday, the museum was deserted, and the decent had let her in for free-and she'd found Porter asleep. Snoring softly. He was wearing a striped turtleneck and lovely moss-colored linen trousers; he was in his stocking feet. He was so young then, though already losing his hair. Marguerite took one look at him, at his hands tucked under his chin, at his worn leather watchband, and thought, I am going to stay right here until he wakes up.

It only took a minute. Marguerite paced the floor in front of the painting, bringing the heels of her clogs firmly down on the parquet floor. She heard a catch in his breathing. She moved closer to the painting, her feet making solid wooden knocks with each step; she swung the long curtain of her hair in what she hoped was an enticing way. She heard muted noises-him rubbing his eyes, the whisper of linen against linen. When she turned around-she couldn't wait another second-he was sitting up, blinking at her.

I fell asleep, he said, in English, and then he caught himself. Excusezmoi. J'ai dormi. J'etais fatigue.

I'm American, Marguerite said.

Thank G.o.d, he said. He blinked some more, then plucked a notebook out of a satchel at his feet. Well, I'm supposed to be writing.

About this painting? Marguerite said.

Les Parapluies, he said. I thought I was going to London, but the painting's on loan here for six months so I find myself in Paris on very short notice.

That makes two of us.

You like it? he asked.

Paris?

The painting.

Oh. Marguerite said. She tilted her head to let him know she was studying it. She had been in Paris for two weeks and this was the first museum she'd visited, and here only because the Louvre was too intimidating. The little bald man who owned the hostel where she was staying had recommended it. Jeu de Paume. C'est un pet.i.t gout, he'd said. A little taste. The hostel owner knew Marguerite was a gourmand; he saw the treasures she brought home each night from the boulangerie, the fromagerie, and the green market. Bread, cheese, figs: She ate every night sitting on the floor of her shared room. She was in Paris for the food, not the art, though Marguerite had always loved Renoir and this painting in particular appealed to her. She was attracted to Renoir's women, their beauty, their plump and rosy good health; this painting was alive. The umbrellas-les parapluies-gave the scene a jaunty, festive quality, almost celebratory, as people hoisted them into the air.

It's charming, Marguerite said.

A feast for the eyes, Porter said.

When Marguerite entered the gift shop, she was overpowered by the scent of potpourri. Mistake, she thought immediately. It was a special corner of h.e.l.l, standing in a s.p.a.ce that used to be her front room, that used to have a fireplace and two armchairs, walls lined with books, and a zinc bar with walnut stools. Now it was...wind chimes and painted pottery, ceramic lamps, needlepoint pillows, books of Nantucket photography. Marguerite tried to breathe, but her sinuses were a.s.saulted by the scent of lavender and bayberry. Her groceries and the champagne weighed her down like two bags of bricks.

"Can I help you?" asked an older woman, with tightly curled gray hair. A woman about Marguerite's age, but Marguerite didn't recognize her, thank G.o.d.

"Just looking," Marguerite squeaked. She wanted to turn and leave, but the woman smiled at her so pleasantly that Marguerite felt compelled to stay and look around. It's n.o.body's fault but your own, Marguerite reminded herself. Your restaurant is now one big gingerbread house.

Porter Harris, his name was. An a.s.sociate professor of art history at Columbia University, on his spring break from school, working on an article for an obscure art historian journal about Auguste Renoir's portraits from the 1880s-how they were a step away from Impressionism and a step toward the modernist art of Paul Cezanne. Marguerite nodded like she knew exactly what he was talking about. Porter laughed at his own erudition and said, "Let's get out of here, want to?" They went to a nearby cafe for a beer; Porter was thrilled to find another speaker of English. "I've been staring at the people in Renoir's painting for so long," he said, "I was afraid they would start talking to me."

The beer went right to Marguerite's head as it only could on an empty stomach on a spring afternoon in Paris when she was sitting across from a man she felt inexplicably drawn to.

"Marguerite," he said. "French name?"

"My mother is an avid gardener," she said. "I was named after the daisy."

"How sweet. So what brings you to Paris, Daisy? Vocation or vacation?"

"A bit of both," she said. "I'm a chef."

He perked up immediately. Marguerite had always found it odd that when she first met Porter he was asleep, because his most p.r.o.nounced trait was that of abundant nervous energy. He was exceptionally skinny, with very long arms and slender, tapered fingers. His legs barely fit under the wrought-iron cafe table. Marguerite could tell he was the kind of person who loved to eat but would never gain a pound. He lurched forward in his seat, his eyes bulged, and he lit a cigarette.

"Tell me," he said. "Tell me all about it."

Marguerite told. Les Trois Canards, Mere, vite frites, La Grenouille. Before she could even brag about her crowning achievement, Le Ferme, he was waving for the check.

I am boredom on a square plate, she thought. And that is why I am single.

It would be a lie to say that Marguerite had not entertained any romantic notions about her trip to Paris. She had fantasized about meeting a man, an older man, a married man in the French tradition, with oodles of money and a hankering for young American women to spoil. A man who would take her to dinner: Taillevent, Maxim's, La Tour d' Argent. But what happened was actually better. Porter paid the check, and when they were back on the street he took both of her hands in his and said, "I have a question for you."

"What?"

"Will you make dinner for me?"

She was speechless. I love this man, she thought.

"I'm being forward, yes," he said. "But all I've eaten for the past three days is bread, cheese, and fruit. I will buy the groceries, the wine, everything. All you have to do is-"

"You have a kitchen?" she whispered.

"My own apartment," he said. "On the boulevard St.-Germain."

Her eyebrows shot up.

"It's a leaner," he said. "Last minute, through the university. The owners are in New York for two weeks."

"Lead the way," she said.

Now that was a dinner party, Marguerite thought. Beef tartare with capers on garlic croutons, moules marineres, and homemade frites, a chicory and endive salad with poached eggs and lardons, and creme caramel. They drank two bottles of Saint Emilion and made love in a stranger's bed.

All week she stayed with Porter, and part of the following week, since he didn't have to teach until Friday. Porter was funny, charming, self-deprecating. He didn't walk so much as bounce; he didn't talk so much as bubble over like a shaken-up soda pop. As they zipped through the streets of Paris, he pointed out things Marguerite never would have noticed on her own-a certain doorway, a kind of leaded window, a model of car only manufactured for three months in 1942, under the n.a.z.is. Porter had found himself in Paris on short notice, and yet he knew a tidbit of history about every block in the city. "I read a lot," he said apologetically. "It's the only thing that keeps my feet on the ground." Marguerite liked his talking; she liked his energy, his natural verve, his jitters, his nervous tics; she loved the way he was unafraid to speak his bungled, Americanized French in public. She liked being with someone so zany and unpredictable, so alive. He raced Marguerite up the stairs of Notre-Dame; he bought tickets to a soccer match and patiently explained the strategy while they got drunk on warm white wine in plastic cups; he bought two psychedelic wigs and made Marguerite wear hers when they visited Jim Morrison's grave in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Every night she cooked for him in the borrowed apartment on the boulevard St.-Germain and he stood behind her, actively watching, drinking a gla.s.s of wine, asking her questions, praising her knife skills, fetching ingredients, filling her gla.s.s. While the chicken roasted or the sauce simmered, he would waltz her around the kitchen to French music on the radio. Marguerite, at the advanced age of thirty-two, had fallen in love, and even better, she liked the man she was in love with.

He made her feel beautiful for the first time ever in her life; he made her feel feminine, s.e.xy. He would tangle his hands in her long hair, nuzzle his face against her stomach. They played a game called One Word. He asked her to describe her mother, her father, her ballet teacher, Madame Verge, in one word. Marguerite wished she had spent more time reading; she wanted to impress him with her choices. (Porter himself used words like uxorious and matutinal with a wide-eyed innocence. When they visited Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach's bookstore opposite to Notre-Dame on the Ile de la Cite, Marguerite raced to the First Oxford Collegiate to look these words up.) In the end, she said savior (mother), diligent (father), elegant and uncompromising (Madame Verge).

"That's cheating," he said. Then he said, "And how would you describe yourself? One word."

She took a long time with that one; she sensed it was some kind of test. Charming, she thought. Witty, talented, lonely, lost, independent, enthralled, enamored, ambitious, strong. Which word would this man want to hear? Then, suddenly, she thought she knew.

"Free," she said.

Even as she looked back from this great distance, it was nothing short of miraculous-the way that meeting Porter Harris had changed the course of Marguerite's life. But then, as suddenly as it began, it ended: He flew back to New York. Marguerite traveled all the way out to Orly, hoping he would ask her to come back to the States with him, but he didn't, which crushed her. She had his telephone number at home and at his office. He had no way to reach her. She stayed in Paris.

But Paris, in the course of ten days, had changed. The place that had been so mysterious and full of possibility when she arrived was unbearable without Porter. She wondered how long she had to wait before she called him and what she would say if she did. She had given him the word "free," but she wasn't free at all, not anymore. Love held her hostage; it made her a prisoner. She returned to her bed at the hostel; she went back to eating bread, cheese, figs. April turned into May; Paris was warm. Before he left, Porter had given her a copy of The Sun Also Rises. She hung out in the Tuileries and read and slept in the afternoon sun.

And then, after two excruciating weeks, the owner of the hostel knocked on the door of her room. A telegram. DAISY: MEET ME IN NANTUCKET, MEMORIAL DAY.-PH Marguerite moved through the shop into the back room, the saleswoman on her trail. This had been the dining room. Eighteen tables: On a crowded night, a Sat.u.r.day in August when every seat was taken, that meant eighty-four covers. Marguerite closed her eyes. There was Muzak playing, a rendition of "Hooked on a Feeling" on the marimba. But in Marguerite's mind it was laughter, chatter, gossip, whispers, stories told and told again. In Marguerite's mind the room smelled like garlic and rosemary. A spinning card rack stood where the west banquette used to be, next to a display of scented candles, embroidered baby items, wrapping paper.

Porter had found the s.p.a.ce; he'd been looking around the island for a place to put an art gallery. He brought Marguerite to the building as soon as he picked her up from the ferry dock. He kept saying, I want to show you something. You're really going to love it. Really, really, really. I can't wait to show you. Marguerite was a bundle of nerves. Did Porter know what she would like or not like after only ten days together in what now seemed like a fairy-tale city on the other side of the Atlantic? She was so ecstatic to be back in Porter's presence that she didn't care. On her first ride through town she didn't notice a single detail about Nantucket other than the weather: It was gray and drizzling. Porter pulled his Ford Torino up onto the curb and ran around to open Marguerite's door.

You're going to love this, Daisy, he said. And up the three brick steps they went, hand in hand. Porter pulled out keys and swung the door open.

A narrow room, empty. A bigger room behind it, empty. A lovely exposed brick wall, two big windows.

What is it? Marguerite said.

Your restaurant, he said.

In that moment, Marguerite had many times mused, lay the conundrum of Porter Harris. They had been in each other's presence for less than two weeks and he was making the gesture of a lifetime, offering that s.p.a.ce to her. And yet Porter's commitment to her began and ended with the s.p.a.ce. The restaurant had, in many ways, taken the place of a marriage, taken the place of children. The s.p.a.ce was what Porter had to offer (and, little did she know then, all he had to offer). At the time it had seemed a miraculous thing. Marguerite had dreamed of her own restaurant, she was ready, certainly, and she would ask her mother for the down payment. (It was unfathomable, but the building had cost only thirty thousand dollars.) Her life was starting over. That was how Marguerite felt when she'd stood in this room for the first time: She felt like she was being born.

Marguerite returned to the front room. Time to go. She was being self-indulgent; she had to get home. But her conscience p.r.i.c.kled; she didn't feel she could leave without purchasing something. A refrigerator magnet quipped, HOW TO LIVE ON AN ISLAND: EXPECT COMPANY. No, no. But then Marguerite saw them by the door, in a bra.s.s stand. Umbrellas. She wished they were cla.s.sic black with wooden handles, like the umbrellas in Renoir's painting. Instead, they were blue and white quarter panels, and on the white it said, NANTUCKET ISLAND, in blue block letters. Marguerite shifted her parcels and plucked one from the stand.

"I'll take it."

The saleswoman beamed. Marguerite pulled out her checkbook. She had no use for an umbrella, as she never left her house in the rain, and she had a visceral aversion to any piece of merchandise that shouted the name of the island. She had lived here for more than thirty years. Why would she need to announce the name of her home on her umbrella? Still, she wrote a check out to the tune of...seventeen dollars.

"The Umbrella Shop," Marguerite said. "A curious name. Do you know where it came from?"

The saleswoman folded down the top of the shopping bag and stapled Marguerite's receipt to it. "Quite frankly," she said, "I have no idea."

10:53 A.M.

It was the powers-that-be in the student life office of Columbia University that had brought Renata Knox and Action Colpeter together in Finnerty 205, although Renata suspected another force had been at work: Fate, or the hand of G.o.d. The name on the letter Renata received two weeks before she left for Columbia was Shawna Colpeter. "Freshman," it said, and it gave a home address of Bleecker Street, New York, New York. Renata pictured Shawna Colpeter as a girl raised one of two ways in Greenwich Village. She was either a child of traditional hippies or a child of extraordinarily wealthy hippies. Any which way, Renata was intimidated. The people she knew who grew up in Manhattan went to private school (Trinity, Dalton, Chapin) and they prided themselves on attending fashion shows, rave clubs, charity benefits of which their parents were cochairs. They were grown-ups in teenage bodies; they were cynical, world-weary, impossible to impress. They looked down on suburbia, the Home Depots and Pizza Huts, cheerleaders, beer parties in the woods, driver's licenses. With ten thousand cabs at one's disposal, who needed a driver's license?

When Renata reached Finnerty 205 with her father in tow-hauling boxes and milk crates and all of her hanging clothes in six separate garment bags-Shawna was on her cell phone, crying. Renata was grateful for this for several reasons. First of all, Renata was positive that she, too, would cry when it came time to say good-bye to her father (and certainly her father would cry). Second, it showed Renata right off the bat that the person she was going to share a room with for the next nine months had a soft spot somewhere. Third, and most important, it gave Renata a chance to get over her shock at Shawna Colpeter's physical appearance. Shawna Colpeter was black, and although it mattered not one bit, there was still an adjustment to be made in Renata's mind, because Renata had not been thinking black. She had been thinking pale and unwashed and Greenwich-Villagey looking. She had been thinking ennui and devil-may-care; she had been thinking pot smoker; she had been thinking orange gla.s.s bong on top of the waist-high refrigerator.