knew she couldn?t even pedal past the boneheaded off islanders
without losing her checkers. She decided to take the long way
32/395
home. She turned around and headed back toward the center of
town, passing the movie theater, the ferry, and the library, which,
with its Greek temple architecture, stuck out like a sore thumb in a
town that otherwise was an ode to four-hundred-year-old Puritan
architecture. And maybe that?s why Helen loved it. The Atheneum
was a gleaming white beacon of strange smack-dab in the middle
of forget-me-now drab, and somehow, Helen identified with both
of those things. Half of her was no-nonsense Nantucket through
and through, and the other half was marble columns and grand
stairs that just didn?t belong where they had been built. Biking
past, Helen looked up at the Atheneum and smiled. It was consoling
for her to know that she might stick out, but at least she didn?t
stick out that much.
When she got home, she tried to pull herself together, taking a
freezing-cold shower before calling Claire to apologize. Claire
didn?t pick up. Helen left her a long apology blaming hormones,
the heat, stress, anything and everything she could think of, though
she knew in her heart that none of those things was the real reason
she had flipped out. She?d been so irritable all day.
The air outside was heavy and still. Helen opened all the windows
in the two-story Shaker-style house, but no breeze blew
through them. What was with the weird weather? Still air was
practically unheard of in Nantucket?living so close to the ocean
there was always wind. Helen pulled on a thin tank top and a pair
of her shortest shorts. Since she was too modest to go anywhere
dressed so scantily, she decided to cook dinner. It was still her
father?s week as kitchen slave and technically he was responsible