Elin Hilderbrand - The Beach Club

Tiny arrived at the church, and with a man no less, a young man with a ponytail and a mustache.

“Mack,” Tiny said, “this is Stephen Rook.” She looked at Stephen. “This is Mack.”

Mack shook Stephen Rook’s hand. He wondered if this were Tiny’s boyfriend.

Tiny said, “Stephen is my husband.”

“Your husband?” Mack said. “I didn’t know you were married, Tiny.” He smiled apologetically at Stephen Rook. “She never tells us anything about her personal life.”

Stephen Rook raised his hand as if to say, Hey, that’s cool , and Tiny said, “Stephen is deaf, Mack.”

“Whoops. I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“He reads lips,” she said.

“Thanks for coming,” Mack said.

Stephen raised his hand again, and escorted Tiny into the church.

Many of the people at the service were elderly friends of Lacey from back in the day. They shook Mack’s hand, explaining how they knew Lacey from Sankaty, or the Yacht Club, or how they used to shop in Lacey’s hat store. Lacey’s doctor and dentist came from Boston, and so did the Iranian doorman from her Boston apartment building, a slight, dark-skinned man named Rom. Rom whipped out a Polaroid of Lacey standing with his children in front of the Charles River. “She always said she loved Nantucket best,” Ron said. “Now I’m here, I see why.”

The current class president from Radcliffe arrived with a female friend-Meaghan and Meredith-Mack couldn’t tell them apart once they introduced themselves. They called Lacey “Ms. Gardner” and said they were planning a fund-raising drive to start the Lacey Gardner Scholarship Fund for young women business owners. Mack was amazed. Here he was certain he knew Lacey better than anyone else, and yet he hadn’t met half these people.

Then, just as Mack was about to head inside, Jem and Maribel walked up. Maribel wore a black linen dress, her blond hair pulled back in a clip, no makeup. She looked beautiful. Jem had on a navy blue double-breasted blazer, like something a sea captain would wear.

“Mack,” Maribel said. She smiled sadly and hugged him, and Mack shut his eyes and squeezed her, thinking how if things were different, she might be coming to this church to marry him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry.”

When they separated, her eyes were red; the crying had begun. “Me too,” she said.

Mack shook Jem’s hand. Mack wanted to thank him, and he wanted to toss him off the church steps. But before he could decide between the two, the church bells rang, and the three of them stepped into the sanctuary.

Mack hated organ music, he hated the cloying smell of funeral flowers. He hated coffins and pallbearers, although if Lacey had asked him, he would have carried her coffin on his back. Fortunately, though, Lacey had requested cremation, and Therese kept the urn of Lacey’s ashes tucked under her arm next to her pocketbook. After the service, they were going to scatter the ashes at Altar Rock.

Mack sat in the front row of the church next to Bill and Therese. Behind him, he could hear people crying. The priest, Father Eckerly, spoke of Lacey’s life: her years at Radcliffe, her tenure working for the State Health Department, her marriage to Maximilian, her shop on Main Street. Her model life as a Catholic, and as a working woman who was also a devoted wife.

“Lacey provided us with many lessons about how to live,” Father Eckerly said.

Mack shifted in his seat. He hated funerals because they all reminded him of the funeral service for his mother and father. His parents were rolled down the aisle of Swisher Presbyterian in matching coffins. Wendell gave the eulogy. He spoke of what a tragedy it was, how unfair, Mack, only eighteen, robbed of his parents. The church was packed with people-family, friends, neighbors, kids from school, farmers from as far away as Davenport and Katonah. They were there to pay their respects, but somehow the tragedy overshadowed his parents’ simple, good-hearted natures. Somehow, his parents got lost in all the sadness.

After the ceremony, they buried Mack’s parents in the cemetery behind the church. Mack watched stone-faced as they lowered his parents into the ground. When the minister threw a handful of dirt onto the coffins, Mack cut through the crowd and walked back to his house, which was over a mile away. He sat alone in his bedroom until his uncle came and fetched him. “They want to see you at the luncheon,” his uncle said. “You’re all that’s left of this family and people want to see you.” Mack went to his aunt’s house, where everyone said it was the saddest thing they’d ever known to happen, it was the saddest funeral they’d ever attended.

The problem with funerals, Mack decided, was that they never did a person justice. Father Eckerly could drone all day about Lacey’s balancing act of career and home-a woman before her time-but that didn’t get at the real Lacey. The real Lacey drank Dewar’s from the stroke of five o’clock until bedtime, she listened for hours without judging, she defended love and the strength of the human spirit.

Mack closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he would do without her.

By the time they made it to Altar Rock, Mack felt better. He drove Love and Vance in his Jeep, Bill and Therese and Tiny and Stephen followed in the Cherokee, and Rom and the two Radcliffe women wanted to come along as well-so Mack suggested they take Lacey’s Buick. The three cars twisted through the moors, which were just starting to turn red. Autumn was less than a week away. Mack ascended the steep hill to Altar Rock-the highest point on the island. He parked, picked the urn of Lacey’s ashes off the front seat (Therese gave the urn to him after the ceremony, saying, “I think Lacey would want to ride with you”), and climbed out of the car.

When Mack first read Lacey’s will, he wondered why she wanted her ashes scattered at Altar Rock-why not scatter them into the water at the Beach Club? But as soon as he stepped out of the car, he understood why. The panorama was spectacular-from here he could see Sankaty Lighthouse, Nantucket Harbor, and in the distance, Great Point Light. If they scattered Lacey’s ashes at the Beach Club, the water might carry her away. But when they scattered her ashes here, she would become one with Nantucket.

Mack waited until the group gathered into a semicircle, then he opened the urn. He expected ashes, like from a cigarette-he thought fleetingly of Clarissa Ford-but these ashes were chunky and hard, like pieces of coral. He took a handful and passed the urn to his left, to Bill. Bill took a handful and passed the urn to Therese, and so on, until the urn reached Rom and Rom had to turn the urn upside down so that the last few pieces of Lacey’s remains came loose in his palm.

Mack turned to Bill. “Do you want to recite a poem?” Mack whispered. “Or should we, I don’t know… should we all say something?”

Therese leaned over. “Why don’t we each pick a spot and say something privately before we scatter?”

Mack raised his voice. “Okay, uh…everyone can pick a spot and say something privately and then, I don’t know…bombs away, I guess.”

Love and Vance faced Sankaty Light, Bill and Therese faced south toward the airport, the Radcliffe women turned to the harbor. Tiny and Stephen Rook tossed their ashes out over the moors. Rom threw his into the air like a baseball.

Mack held his ashes. His hands were sweating and the ashes left a white, chalky residue. He stood next to the stone marker for Altar Rock, wondering what he could possibly say to Lacey, or to God. Lacey had no grandchildren, Bill and Therese had no son, Cecily had no brother, Maribel had no father, Andrea had no husband-and Mack had set himself down among these people like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. He filled their gaps and they filled his. But now some of the pieces had disappeared, leaving Mack exposed. Lacey was gone. Whatever Mack held in his hand-the ashes of her bone, her heart, her brain-he wanted to keep, in a jar, or a sugar bowl somewhere. He wanted to keep this last little part of her with him.