“Minneapolis, Madison, Petoskey, Chicago, Indy, and Pittsburgh.”
“For the love of Pete,” Savannah says. “Skip those places and go home.”
“I want to,” Vivi says—oh, does she want to! “But I can’t.”
“Will you get fired?” Savannah asks. “No. This tour is something you took on voluntarily, Vivi.”
“I agreed to it,” Vivi says. “And you know how I am.” Vivi sticks it out; she isn’t a quitter. She does what she says she’s going to do. Even if there were only ten people, three people, one person at each of her events in this final stretch, she would still show up. Because that one person has expectations—maybe she, like some of the others Vivi has met, traveled a long distance to get there. Maybe she has been looking forward to the event for weeks. Maybe it’s her dream to meet a real author and get a book signed. Vivi isn’t going to let her down.
At this point, Vivi thinks, the readers are her family.
A week later, Vivi steps off the elevator at the Drake Hotel in Chicago to see Savannah standing in the lobby. Savannah links her arm through Vivi’s and says, “I’m coming to your event and then we have a nine-thirty impossible-to-get reservation at Topolobampo. Mr. Celtics is friends with Rick Bayless.”
Vivi gets home on the fourteenth of October and moves directly into a tiny cottage on Lily Street. It has one closet-size bedroom for Leo and a loft where she sticks the girls. Vivi sleeps on a futon in the back TV room. They eat dinner around the coffee table in the living room. There’s one bathroom with a shower stall. They’re right on top of one another and Vivi loves it.
But…the kids are different. JP has been spinning a wild tale of Vivi’s “abandonment.” He refused to confirm the date that Vivi was coming back or even if she was coming back and the kids bought into this despite Vivi’s daily assurances that she would be back on Nantucket on October 14, long before Halloween. The kids alternately cling to her and mouth off （Carson）， calling her an “absentee parent.”
She meets Amy for the first time at Leo’s football game at the Nantucket Boys and Girls Club. It’s the first week of November on a bright, crisp autumn day and Vivi is tucked in among her sports-parents friends in the bleachers like an apple in a barrel. She has regained her equilibrium; all the loneliness she suffered through on the road has been forgotten like the pain of childbirth.
Watching eight-and nine-year-olds play football is two steps forward, one step back. It’s easy to get distracted, and Candace Lopresti says brightly, “Hey, is that JP’s new girlfriend?”
Vivi turns to see JP, wearing his obnoxiously preppy Ralph Lauren green suede barn jacket, walking up the sidelines of the game. He’s holding hands with a blonde wearing a cute tartan miniskirt, navy tights, and navy ballet flats. JP must have misrepresented the peewee football game as something Amy needed to dress up for. Vivi sighs. Amy is as blandly pretty as Vivi expected; the inappropriate outfit choice serves to make her a tad more likable. Vivi climbs over Candace, Joe DeSantis, and her other friends to go introduce herself. She has always preferred the high road. Besides, she’s with her people and she knows she looks good. She’s wearing her best jeans, her cutest warm boots, a creamy sweater, a down vest, a pom-pom hat, cashmere fingerless gloves, and round Tom Ford sunglasses purchased for her by Savannah on the Miracle Mile.
“Hey, guys,” she says. She makes sure her voice is friendly and warm. She smiles and extends a hand. “You must be Amy. I’m Vivian Howe—it’s nice to meet you.”
Amy’s hand is cold and limp. She’s in a peacoat, no hat, no gloves.
“Hi,” she says. She’s studying Vivi behind the lenses of her aviators, that much is clear, and Vivi gets the feeling she was expecting someone else—someone bitchy and monstrous. Oh, well.
“Do you want to come sit, Amy? I can introduce you around.”
“No, thank you,” Amy says. She looks up at JP.
“We aren’t staying,” JP says. “We’re going out to lunch at the Brotherhood.”
Must be nice! Vivi thinks. “Well, it was kind of you to stop by.”
“I love football,” Amy says. “I graduated from Auburn, where game days were huge. The fraternity guys used to wear coats and ties, and some of the tailgates had crystal and china and candelabras.” She pauses, seemingly caught in a reverie. “Nobody does football like the SEC.”
“Yeah, our tailgating scene here is sadly lacking,” Vivi says. “No candelabras.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Though some of the moms put Kahlua in their coffee.”