ChapterOne
The Flying Horses Carousel was the oldest and most iconic carousel in the United States. Its regal horses bucked their front hooves up, arching their backs as they circled round and round, marking time with the circus music. How many times had these same horses charted the same course? How many children had ridden around, their eyes alight with excitement, ice cream caked to their chins, their skin tanned from summertime bliss?
In twenty-five minutes, Mallory’s ferry would depart the island. Motherly guilt had led her to this carousel, where she perched the nearly-two-year-old Zachery on a horse, wrapping her hands around the pudge of his stomach to make sure he didn’t fall. He smacked his hands joyously on the grand neck of his horse and looked at everything with buggy eyes. Off to the side, his grandmother, Elsa, snapped photographs as the breeze off the Vineyard Sound fluttered through her hair. It was the second week of June, mere days before the official start of summer. Mallory wished that time would stop its forceful push forward.Why couldn’t it always stay just like this?She was only twenty-five. Her son was nearly two and always willing to be held atop a carousel horse, blissful with happiness.
“How was that?” Elsa cried, ecstatic as Mallory carried Zachery off the carousel a few minutes later. “I think he loved it!”
Mallory laughed, swiping a single tear from her cheek. She only planned to be off the island for three days.Why did it feel like this insurmountable mountain of time?
“Zachery won’t remember three days of your absence, honey,” Elsa told her coaxingly, reading her mind. She lifted Zach from Mallory’s arms and adjusted him against her as they headed back toward the ferry docks.
Initially, Mallory had planned to take her car to New York City, but since she normally only drove on the island, the thought of five-plus hours on the highway, speeding along the continent, terrified her. Elsa had convinced her that there was a daydreamy quality to bus time, that she could read and write in her journal or just do some old-fashioned “thinking,” all without the normal chaos of motherhood or her secretary work at the Katama Lodge and Wellness Spa.
Mallory checked her phone right before stepping on the ferry to find a text from Zachery’s father, her on-again, off-again boyfriend and ex-fiancé, Lucas.
LUCAS: I’ll pick him up around one.
LUCAS: Let your mother know.
Mallory had to take extra care not to roll her eyes into the back of her head. Lucas always needed everything to be on his terms. The idea that anyone else had a schedule for their day was beyond him.
“Do you mind being at home around one? That’s when Lucas can pick Zach up.”
Elsa grimaced. “That should be fine.” Her opinion of Lucas seemed to diminish by the day. “Good of him to take his son for the weekend while you’re out of town.”
Mallory’s stomach twisted. It was bad enough that she and Lucas seemed to find every reason to bicker these days. She didn’t need her mother to point out her failings, reminding her that maybe getting pregnant with the first guy she’d ever dated wasn’t exactly a “goal-oriented life plan.” At least she’d moved out of their apartment last summer. At least she’d given herself time and space away.(Even if they had gotten back together, again and again.)
“I love you!” Mallory cooed to Zachery, kissing his cheek, his lips, and the top of his downy curls.
“And we love you back,” Elsa said. “Remember to give Alexie the goodie bag.”
“I’ll try not to eat all the snacks myself,” Mallory joked.
“Okay...” Elsa’s dark blue eyes became stormy oceans. “Tell her we miss her. That we wish she’d come home.”
“Since I’m only her sister, I can’t legally give her such a hard guilt trip,” Mallory tried to joke. “But I’ll do my best.”
Once on the ferry, Mallory tilted her head back and allowed the warm coastal breeze to sweep across her cheeks. Her arms hung lax at her sides, grateful for these toddler-free moments. Her heart seemed to creep out of her chest, headed back toward the Vineyard, back toward her son.
Focus on the present. You’re twenty-five years old, and you’ve been given the gift of a full weekend in NYC with your little sister. Cherish this. You won’t get it back.
Mallory boarded the bus in Woods Hole, tossing her backpack in the seat beside her and staring out the window. As they crept further away from the island, a sense of unease came over her. The highways seemed cracked and sunburnt; any nature she saw seemed bent out of proportion, as though anything off the island was incapable of growing properly.
The first bus took her to Boston, where she changed over to a Greyhound and headed southwest toward NYC. The bus was slated to arrive at four-forty-five, at which time Alexie would pick her up and take her “on an adventure of a lifetime.”
Mallory could only half-trust it, especially when Alexie sent a text message around noon explaining that she needed a bit more time to set up her exhibition.
ALEXIE: Do you mind just coming to the gallery instead? It’s easy to find. Manhattan is just a grid.
Mallory’s stomach churned with worry. Didn’t Alexie realize that Mallory was about as “green” as could be, an islander through and through and more fearful of the outside world by the day? It wasn’t that she wanted to be this way; it was just the natural course of things.
Alexie was only a year younger than Mallory, yet had always talked a big game about her future. As Mallory had breezed through high school, dating Lucas and partying at the beach, Alexie had signed up for extra-curricular activities, been elected class president, competed in speech and debate events, won the local art show, and eventually been accepted into three Ivy League schools: Brown, Yale, and Princeton.
Ultimately, Alexie had been drawn to the art school at NYU, thinking that she wanted to use her immense talents and intellect to take charge of the art world and “become something special.”
It wasn’t that Mallory didn’t love and appreciate Alexie’s art. It’s just that she didn’t completely understand it. It was modern art to the ultimate degree, stuff like upside-down chair sculptures with pompoms at the end of each leg, paintings that were burned at the edges, and performance art pieces that involved Alexie screaming in a room for seventeen minutes straight. Of this, Elsa once asked, “Does she know that Yoko Ono already did stuff like that?”
MALLORY: Sure. I can figure out where it is.