essay by Robert P. Barsanti
He was the only man on Main Street wearing a tie. She straightened it.
The two of them were standing at the head of Main Street. The evening light was drifting down from the Pacific National Bank, through the elms, across the cobblestones, down to the Pacific Club and the masts of the sail boats tied up in the basin. The light caught him on the side of the head and left him confused.
She was many things, but not confused. Not really. She peered around, door to door, street to street, but she smiled. She touched him as if he was floating. Either he was going to keep her from slipping under water or he was going to drift away in the southwest breeze, but she made sure she kept contact. The hand, then a touch on the shoulder which slid down to the small of his back, just above his belt. If she needed to grab on, she knew where the handle was.
They were dressed up, in clothes they hadn’t worn often. They had not developed the practical habits of the costume and its demands. He had dress pants with a razor crease that ended above shoes that were too new to be comfortable. His shirt, similarly angular, betrayed the folds of the package it had been in. His tie, with the three island light houses against a deep blue background had only recently been hanging in Murray’s. He was sunburned, tussled, and just off of either a boat, a lifeguard stand, or a roof. His eyes kept looking.
For her part, she was just off a horse. Her hair cascaded off her shoulders into the middle of her back as if a reddish blond dam had broken. She moved foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder, with the functional balance of someone who was used to coaxing a large animal over a fence. She had brought a Laura Ashley dress for the evening, with a blue and white china pattern, a red ribbon that hid under the torrent of hair and a back that framed a galaxy of freckles crossed by a thick white stripe and one small tattoo of a horseshoe. Unfortunately, she was also wearing light blue shoes with about a two inch heel.
I was adored once, too, although I hadn’t had a date night like that since the Reagan administration. I was in jeans, a Whaler’s cap, and a “Carpe Diem” shirt that some yachtie had given to the Thrift Shop and then, by extension and five dollars, to me. However, I was sitting on the Town Fathers bench at the head of Main Street and felt that, by reason of location, I was a A Lord of the Island and was entitled to dispense advice. I stood and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“We’re waiting for a cab.”
“To where?” I gave him my best grandpa smile.
“The Club Car.”
I pointed to the bottom of Main Street. “You could just walk.”
He looked at her, she looked back at him and shrugged. After a quick thank you, she took off her shoes, hung them from one hand, held him with the other, and they crossed the street together.
In the confusion of August, when the traffic is at its peak, rudeness rides an incoming tide, and the ocean holds seals, sharks, and fiberglass, we forget what this island can be.
For our new visitors, like the couple, Nantucket emerges on the ferry ride as a miracle embraced by the ocean. They see things that have long since dropped into invisibility for islanders: the cobblestones, the bricks, and the ocean that lurks in the silence. Let them get away from town and they will meet the moors, the hundred miles of beach, and at least one beer garden. If all goes well on the weekend, they will leave sunburned and happy. His tie will become a souvenir and her dress will have a memory (and a stain, perhaps) sunk into it. They will put their picture on their lock screen, show all of their friends at work, and remember this dinner until the grandchildren knock on the door. This day, and this evening, will go on a short list of the best days of their lives.
For me, it is a Thursday. It’s a day when I got stuck on Old South Road twice and Nobadeer Farm Road once as I was trying to turn over a client’s rental and fix a leaky toilet. It’s a day when I couldn’t find parking at the market, couldn’t find the right milk, and couldn’t pick up the meatball sub I ordered. It was a day of enduring conspiracies in the town building, incompetence at the wind farm, and high handed privilege everywhere. All of these annoyances rise up and blind us to the other island that lives in postcards, Instagram feeds, and the eyes of the visitors. At the end of another Thursday, I fell into a chair (from the Take It or Leave It) and switched on the Olympics.
Like the young couple, almost everyone on all of their Olympic boats was having one of the best rainy days of their lives. They may get married, they may have children, they may get elected President, but this day will stand alone. And when the time comes, again and again and again, they will pull out the shirt, spread it out on the bedspread, and say, I am an Olympian.
Win, lose, or DQ, this fortnight makes a hinge moment in the athletes’ lives: they will mark it with a tattoo. In Paris, everything that happened before will meet everything that happens afterwards. So it will be for our young couple. While there may be no Olympic performance, they will leave the moors, the beaches, and the cobblestones transformed. She may dump him, move to Switzerland, and take up teaching skiing, but this weekend will remain. If once you have slept on an island, you will never be quite the same.