Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

Of note was that it was Thursday, which meant the Nantucket Standard came out, just as it did every week. We rushed to the Hub to get our copies, wondering who had written the article and whose quotes had been used and how the matter would be spun, considering that the accident had involved the son of the publisher of the paper. We were stunned to find no mention at all of the accident or of Penny’s death, except for a dry three-sentence blurb in the police blotter stating that at 12:53 a.m. Sunday, there had been a fatal one-car accident on Hummock Pond Road, which was still under investigation.

That’s it? we thought. Nothing else?

Some people were outraged. Nantucket had only one newspaper. Didn’t it owe its citizens a report of what had happened? But other people understood. No one really knew what had happened. Mrs. Yurick, the elementary school music teacher, felt that Penelope Alistair’s life should have been eulogized. Her picture should have been splashed across the front page. Some people thought that Jordan Randolph was trying to sweep the whole matter under the rug because Penelope had been driving his son’s car. Others suspected that Zoe Alistair had asked Jordan not to run a story at all-and could anyone blame Jordan if that was in fact true? There was talk that he was waiting to see if Hobson Alistair would recover before he published anything.

“There will be a story eventually,” someone said. “Next week or the week after. We just have to wait.”

Day 6:Al Castle checked out of the Liberty Hotel in Boston, where he had been staying in order to keep an eye on Zoe Alistair from a respectful distance. There was still no change in Hobby’s condition, and Al was needed at home. Lynne was having a hard time with Demeter. She was acting strangely. The Randolph boy had apparently been calling five or six times a day, but Demeter refused to speak with him. And when he rode over on his bike, she locked herself in her bedroom and refused to see him. There was something he wanted to talk to her about, but she didn’t seem interested.

Day 7:Claire Buckley and her mother, Rasha Buckley, took Al Castle’s place in Boston. Rasha Buckley knew Zoe Alistair only slightly. She said to some of us, “Surely there are other people closer to the Alistair family, whose presence there would offer more comfort?” But no one else stepped forward, and Claire was desperate to go. She approached Zoe Alistair in the waiting room, with Rasha trailing ten feet behind her. Rasha and Zoe had had nice conversations half a dozen times over the years; they’d seen each other that spring, on prom night. Zoe had gone over to the Buckleys’ house, where the kids were gathering for pictures. Hobby was wearing a tux jacket and a bow tie with a pair of madras Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. He was dazzling. Claire wore a white lace sheath and hot-pink satin heels to match the plaid of Hobby’s shorts.

Rasha and Zoe had stood shoulder to shoulder, beaming at their children, taking pictures with their iPhones. Hobby had brought Claire a bouquet of white roses and calla lilies instead of a corsage.

“They look like they’re getting married,” Zoe had said.

“Don’t they?” Rasha asked. She had smiled wistfully. Because what mother wouldn’t want her daughter to marry Hobby Alistair?

Rasha’s first report from the hospital was that Zoe seemed to be disappearing. She was thin, pale, and trembling. Her dark hair, always so stylishly cut and tipped with reddish highlights, was matted; she didn’t smell that great. She wore gray sweatpants and a gray Nantucket Whalers T-shirt that belonged to Hobby.

Rasha learned that there had been no change in Hobby’s condition.

But at that moment Rasha decided there would be one change, at least: Zoe was going to eat something. Rasha knew that the woman was a chef, that she appreciated good food, and that after a week of sustaining herself on nothing but crackers from the vending machine, she must be hungry. Rasha walked up Cambridge Street to Whole Foods and got one container of chilled summer squash soup and another of Asian chicken salad. She got freshly made hummus and Burrata cheese and bruschetta topping and a whole grain baguette and a pint of fresh raspberries and some bars of dark chocolate. She returned to the hospital with these riches, but by that point both Zoe and Claire were in the room with Hobby. Touching him, talking to him. Rasha herself was able to peek into the room and see Hobby, his left side bandaged like a mummy, his majestic form in repose as if he were a fallen king.

Zoe smoothed the hair off of her son’s face.

Rasha had heard people say less-than-generous things about Zoe Alistair, but at that moment she saw nothing in her but strength and grace.

Day 8:We began to wonder about a funeral for Penny. Her body was at the Lewis Funeral Home on Union Street. Zoe had decided on a burial instead of cremation. But when?

Zoe ate half of the summer squash soup and ten raspberries. This was her first meal since the accident, and it was significant enough news to make the email chain.

Day 9:At ten o’clock at night, phones rang across the island. Annabel Wright, the cheerleading captain, whose family lived out in Sconset, had gotten permission to ring the bells of the Sconset Chapel.

Hobby Alistair had opened his eyes! He had regained consciousness!

You would have to be a mother to understand. But how many mothers really could? There were some, Zoe knew this. There were mothers in the world who had sick children, sometimes more than one. There were mothers in the world with sons or daughters in Afghanistan or other war zones, sometimes more than one child. One killed in action, one still fighting.

That was Zoe.

Penny was dead, but Zoe had done some mental yoga and put that information aside for now so that she could focus on Hobby. Ever since the day the twins were born, this had been her modus operandi. Set one down, pick the other one up and nurse her. Give one a bath, put the other one on the soft bathroom rug and let him cry. Help one with her homework, let the other one sit and complain. Watch one play basketball, ask the other to sit in the stands and cheer. Zoe was one woman facing two sets of needs. Splitting her attention had never worked. The kids knew this: either they had her or they didn’t.

For nine days she had given Hobby all of herself. A gatekeeper wielding a long, sharp machete lived in her mind: no other thoughts but of Hobby.

Zoe talked to the doctors. She talked, tersely, to Al Castle: “No change,” she said. “No change.” “Penny will be buried, not cremated.” “No change.” “Tell Jordan not to run a story-nothing, not one word.” “No change.”

Only a mother could be so single-minded. She went back over every second of his life. Everything! Holding him for the first time-just him alone, while the doctors were still pulling out Penny. His eyes squeezed shut, his tiny fist jammed in his mouth. They were twins, but he was technically her firstborn. He had made her a mother. In the first moment of holding him she had felt that magnificent rush of love, powerful and terrifying.

Hobby smiling for the first time, Hobby eating peaches from a jar, roly-poly Hobby, too chubby to pull himself up. His sister was already cruising around the room by holding on to the furniture. He would watch her and start to cry. Zoe had captured it on film. There had been one rare night a few months earlier when both Hobby and Penny were both home for dinner, and Zoe made shrimp and grits, their favorite, and after dinner she pulled out the old videos from when they were babies: Hobby sitting on the floor like a potted plant, bawling his eyes out, and Penny toddling circles around him.