In 1968 I came to Martha’s Vineyard from New York City in a VW bus with five children and a yellow
cat. Friends in Blue Hill asked why on earth had I deserted Maine. For the hitchhiking, I told them, at least till the twins get licensed. I’m tired of spending so much of the summer in the car.
The rambling rented house overlooked the beach. My sons claimed the master bedroom where a spinning wheel was perched by the fireplace across from the curtained four-poster double bed.
“Unless you want it, Mum,” the sixteen-year-old said in a fit of mannerliness.
I didn’t. No argument from the big girls, who wanted the upstairs bathroom with two sinks and many mirrors, never mind that they’d have to share the second floor with their five-year-old sister.
I chose a small room near the front door, handy for letting out the cat in the morning. And stifled the dread I’d felt seeing the spinning wheel: the house had come late to the summer market at low rent after the owner’s weaver-wife died in April. Ghosts don’t exist, I told myself, only we who go to bed alone imagine them.
I wanted us to enjoy our summer with few obligations – hitchhiking liberated us. I turned the four older children loose upon the landscape and gave rides to many others. Mine were to be home for dinner unless they checked with me during the day.
One afternoon as we climbed the path from the beach the youngest asked, “Will the others be home?”
“They know it’s lobster tonight, what do you think?”
“Oh, they’ll be home all right. Can I pick out mine?”
“You bet you can, you helped carry them.”
The sisters, sixteen and fourteen, showered while the stereo played “She’s Leaving Home” from Sgt. Pepper at max volume, over and over again. Were they telling me something? In the kitchen the twelve-year-old boy fed a small frog to the snake borrowed from a friend gone off-Island for two weeks.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that in here,” I said, averting my glance from legs twitching like whiskers on the snake’s mouth.
“What’s the problem, he’s in his aquarium.”
It was only a garter snake, only a frog, bad example to shudder at the sight in front of the five-year-old. “Please put him back on his shelf.”
“Okay, okay. I got a ride today with someone said a person died in this house. Did you know that?”
“No.” A maternal evasion.
“The spinning-wheel woman. And guess what, she died in our room!” he exclaimed gleefully, then made a face at his little sister. “So don’t you go messing with my stuff in there!”
“Who wants your smelly old stuff anyway?!”
Cole slaw and corn bread made, water on the boil, seven o’clock and time to cook the lobsters, but no sign of the sixteen-year-old boy. His twin sister called friends at Chilmark Pond; he’d been there canoeing but left before lunch.
The younger boy ran down to the beach. He returned breathing hard. A guy had seen the twin boy at 5:30 at the pool of a house down the road near West Tisbury. That family, with seven children, was “way cool,” and their place a social magnet.
“Was he alone?”
“Yeah. Asleep.”
“Stoned?”
Eyes rolled. Dumb question.
My mind scrolled through bad scenes. He’d tripped, banged his head, and fallen into the pool. He’d hitched a ride with a drunk; there’d been an accident.
I told the girls to keep the water going in the lobster kettle. Numb with dread, I telephoned the house down the road. The father sent a scout who reported there was nobody at the pool. I thanked the man and apologized for interrupting dinner.
I hung up and the telephone rang. The children’s father was displeased to have gotten a busy signal when I knew he’d call tonight. He talked to four children and asked about the older boy’s math summer work. I said he’d be home any minute; I’d have him call.
I phoned the Chilmark Community Center. They were setting up for square dancing. My son wasn’t there: some joker said the crowd he hung out with was probably in Oak Bluffs getting older guys to buy them beer.
The twin girl said we should call the police, maybe there’d been an accident. The younger boy said that was making too big a deal and Dad might hear about it. I got his drift. The middle girl said if we started cooking maybe he’d turn up. The youngest chased the cat.
I called the Chilmark police. The day’s only vehicle incident involved a ninety-six-year-old man leaving the Menemsha Store who’d backed over a neighbor’s dog. I started the lobsters. The big girls and the younger boy laid newspapers on the table and set it with forks and lobster tools. The five-year-old charged back to us whimpering and gasping. The cat had climbed the curtains and jumped down on the boys’ bed and Something Moved. “A ghost, I think.”
Timing lobsters, I told her briskly not to be silly, while panic scratched my brain like mice in the attic. This was too weird, was it dangerous here, where was my boy? The youngest huddled against me as I split lobsters in the sink. Her brother called her a crybaby; the sisters said he was mean, I told them to go wash their hands.
I heard laughter and ran to the bedroom doorway. The twin girl held a flashlight whose beam revealed her brother peering from under heaped bedcovers.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“You’re in so much trouble,” said the middle girl.
“Mum’s been calling all over for you,” said his twin.
“She thinks you’re drowned or dead or something,” said the younger boy.
“When she sees you, you’ll wish you were.”
But in the kitchen, when his little sister ran to him, all I said was, “Call your father. Now.” And resumed cracking lobster, my glasses fogged by tears and steam.
None of the people I bothered laughed at my frenzy over a boy so briefly lost and found. So I’m still here seasonally from shadbush to aster, long after those children stopped having to hitchhike.