Working at a start-up is exhausting—that’s how she puts it to everyone who asks whenever she travels home to the suburb where she grew up. Regardless of how unglamorous the reality, her parents' friends look impressed when they find out she’s living in the city, employed at a company that’s frequently cited in Forbes and Business Insider: a “hot” place to be, as her father’s friend Everett puts it. He tilts his old-fashioned at her, the ice rattling around the almost empty glass. Everett’s words are a little slurred as he says, “You’re in exactly the right place! Good for you for getting that pedigree. You got a head on your shoulders!” He nearly shouts the last bit, and she leans back to avoid any errant splashes of bourbon. Before she can respond, he’s shaking the glass in the direction of his wife, who’s wearing the exact same outfit she wears to every social function—regardless of the season or occasion: maroon tweed skirt, white turtleneck, black cashmere cardigan with a lizard-shaped brooch. Two tiny emeralds wink as the lizard’s eyes; when she was little, the brooch terrified her, keeping her from falling asleep some nights.
The conversation repeats all evening. Admiring glances, impressed smiles in the direction of her parents, as if they themselves are responsible for her every achievement. Well, she thinks honestly, I guess in a way they are. The best part of this party—an annual October gathering held by the Mackenzies which features a loosely fall theme that, as far as she can tell, is an excuse for Mrs. Mackenzie to buy as many decorative gourds as possible—is the buffet. They were never allowed to skip the party growing up, but once or twice, she or one of her siblings missed it thanks to a field hockey trip or a sleepover or a bad cold. On those rare occasions, they’d beg their parents to bring them home one of the tiny square biscuits topped with a swipe of grainy mustard and a thick slice of salty ham. Her father once brought two and forgot one, discovering the squashed biscuit inside a paper napkin in his jacket lapel the following week when he dropped off his dry cleaning.
The biscuits are stacked on a silver tiered platter off to the side. She avoids the cold sliced sirloin with horseradish sauce and the potato gratin oozing with cheese. Both are excellent, but she and her siblings have a strategy, carefully honed over years of overindulging. First, two biscuits. Next, a stack of Carr’s water crackers and a generous dollop of the homemade Boursin cheese flecked with parsley and chives. Finally, the famous crab pinwheels which feature a ribbon of warm crab dip inside a spiral of buttery puff pastry.
The bar is stocked with bourbon, gin, and vodka—Mr. Mackenzie has a known affinity for craft whisky and she sees a cluster of bottles prominently displayed that she assumes are something special. The labels read like a match-up of Scottish rugby teams: Old Forester, Chapin & Gore, Willet Pot, Glenfarcas, Aberlour. People are lined up for glasses of the signature Mackenzie punch: a innocent-looking combination of apple cider, hard cider, bourbon, and Cointreau that her father groans about the morning after every year. (“Lethal,” he mumbles at the breakfast table as he grips his temples, swearing nothing will soak up the hangover except her mother’s cheddar biscuits topped with a fried egg and several slices of crisp bacon.) Crystal carafes next to the punch bowl hold mounds of sparkling sugared cranberries. She watches as the youngest Mackenzie sibling—six-year-old Tatum whose curved cheeks still hold a whisper of her baby fat—reaches up on tiptoes and takes a handful, popping two in her mouth and pocketing the rest in the front of her smocked tartan dress.
She’s waylaid multiple times on the route from the bar to the living room, where her sister is trapped in conversation with their kindergarten piano teacher, a wizened slip of a woman whose strictness still terrifies them to this day. (“I swear,” her sister said earlier on the drive over, “I’m always expecting her to march me to the bench and make me play scales, and I’m 28! Plus honestly, I’d be too scared to say no.”)
Each brief interruption repeats the same question-and-answer about her life and job. She nods politely and decides it’s easier to play the role they want to hear, so she offers up bite-size anecdotes: My office has team happy hour every Friday! and The perks are incredible—last month I got taken out to dinner at No. 9 Park and to a Red Sox game in the same week. This last one she tells to Colby Barrett, an acquaintance of her parents who is known to be a deeply obsessive sports fan (“rabid, which seems fitting given his parenting style,” her mother deems him uncharitably).
What she would say, if she were being honest, is that the best part of the past six months has been the time away. At the end of each summer, her company holds a mandatory “grande vacance”, which is really just a week off, but the founder of the company—as one of her many irritating quirks—fancies herself European because she spent one summer in Provence. As a result, instead of the lazy slide into juuuust shy of zero productivity that plagues so many companies come August, her entire office scrambles to tie up loose ends and check off project deadlines before setting an out-of-office email response and heading out for seven blissful days.
Summer in the city, which she’d never before had the pleasure of experiencing close at hand, is pretty wretched. Towers of concrete trap the heat and the asphalt on the streets seem to shimmer. There’s a ripe smell hanging in the air: sweat and trash and exhaust fumes. The stores blast frigid air conditioning, so you’re always too cold or too hot, but never just right. She takes runs along the Charles and eyes the water, wishing more than anything that she could jump in and escape the tepid jelly jar of heat she feels trapped inside.
Everyone at work has glittering, cocktail-spangled plans that whisper of shade and verdant lawns and wide stretches of sandy beach. A week on Vinalhaven in Maine, sitting on the screened-in porch at the evenings, drinking gin & tonics and eating stoned wheat thins with Brie cheese. A cottage on the edge of Lake Michigan. Sunny days at a beach house on Cape May, the nights spent on the boardwalk eating funnel cake and cotton candy. Sailing a Laser around Amangansett: parties at the Surf Lodge and sprinkle-covered soft serve cones at Southampton Fudge Company. One girl is flying home to California, bringing two coworkers, and they’ll spend the week biking around vineyards and drinking wine in the hazy, syrupy-golden light of Sebastopol.
None of her friends have a week off; her sister—who would otherwise be her partner in travel—is working too. Most people have already taken their summer vacation by now. What? she thinks. Stay alone in my apartment, sunbathing in the sticky humidity on the Esplanade? The idea depresses her. Everyone else will come back a week later, looking sun-kissed and relaxed and energized, and she’ll have nothing to say except that she finally tried the pork and cabbage dumplings at Dumpling Daughter in Kendall Square and that she took herself out to sit at the bar and eat the iconic baked Alaska at Oleana. Alone! On a Friday night of summer week! It sounds pathetic even considering saying it. (She does, however, almost weaken here, thinking that a bite of the frozen dessert with its signature stripes of chewy macaroon, coconut ice cream, and passion fruit caramel crowned with toasted meringue might be worth the humiliation of having had nowhere to go.)
Instead, she looks at the map. She considers what’s within driving distance: Her roommate has a weathered hunter green Saab that she offered up for the week. She traces the words Cape Cod and thinks of striped beach towels and the smell of coconut sunscreen and iced tea with a wedge of lemon and turkey sandwiches with mayo on squishy white bread, gritty with sand. She thinks of the sensation of slightly sunburned skin against cool, crisp cotton sheets. She thinks of pink palm-printed Lilly Pulitzer sundresses and the white sail of a Sunfish and dune grasses waving gently in the breeze.
Flipping through listings, she finds a little B&B in Eastham and plans to spend a night there before driving up to Provincetown for the rest of the week. She books a hotel called the Salt House Inn, which looks like a page of out a magazine spread on Hamptons dream real estate: all whitewashed wide plank floors and high ceilings and exposed beams. This initiative makes her feel both proud and nervous, and then immediately embarrassed to feel pride at such a basic, tiny act. What am I, twelve? She chastises herself. Of course she can book her own hotel and travel alone!
The Saab barely looks big enough for her overstuffed duffel bag, but her roommate assures her it can hold her bike too, if she takes the front wheel off. Her navy and white Cannondale 11-speed is one of her most prized possessions, and it fits snugly with no room to spare.
She sets off after work the following afternoon: windows down, singing loudly to Sam Smith songs and relishing the sensation of being free—nowhere to be, no one to call, no one to consult on decisions.
Just before 8 PM, she pulls into the parking lot of the B&B. After collecting her key (a heavy, old-fashioned brass tool that looks like it should open a steamer trunk), she hops again in the car and circles back to a little ice cream shop she had passed a mile or two west. The neon sign says Nauset Ice Cream and the shop is empty save for a bored-looking teenage girl behind the counter and a mom with two young kids who clamor for her attention in front of the toppings bar.
She hangs back, tiredly eyeing the menu and debating between peppermint stick, Cape Cod cranberry, and black raspberry chip before settling on a cup of the black raspberry and perching on the curb in the parking lot to eat it slowly. Ice cream for dinner seems like a particularly apropos way to kick off a week of summer vacation, and she feels better already.
Waking up in the B&B feels like being back at home. The smell of coffee wafts up from downstairs and there are voices—indistinct and comforting—coming from the room next door. The shower is the size of a very small closet and has an ancient-looking faucet that dribbles out burning hot and freezing cold water in turns. Her skin flushed red from the steam, she dresses quickly, gathering her toothbrush from the bathroom and her book from the nightstand, and heads down to the kitchen.
The owner of the B&B is standing at the stove, talking to two guests and her college-age son who’s home from Amherst until mid-September. As she flips a pancake, she notices the interruption and smiles, motioning to a basket of warm peach muffins on the countertop. The guests—a middle-aged couple wearing matching lightweight khaki hiking gear—are intensely keen on finding where to kayak and bird-watch, so she picks up a muffin and slips out with a quick wave to start the rest of her drive.
Pulling into Provincetown feels like coming home, though she’s never been there before. Their vacations were Nantucket (beach), Aspen (skiing), the mountainous forests of Big Sky in Montana (horseback riding and occasionally fly fishing), the impossibly turquoise waters of Jost Van Dyke and Tortola (rum punch to escape the Massachusetts winter).
She supposes it’s the familiarity: All the scrub oak and pitch pine and highbush blueberries growing in the sandy soil reminds her of the Nantucket weeks. The water is just barely visible from the center of town, which is bustling with summer visitors.
Every morning she rides her bike along the winding paths that hug the coastline. She swims in the kettle ponds down near Truro. She eats granola with strawberries and Greek yogurt in the sunny courtyard of the inn—the combination is so unusually good that she asks the girl at the front desk to find out what’s in the granola, because three such ordinary things shouldn’t taste that memorable. The next day, the chef peeks his head out of the kitchen to explain the trick: lemon and lime zest in the yogurt; chopped mint on the strawberries.
She worried she might feel melancholy in the evenings when families and couples on dates crowd the restaurants, but she doesn’t. She likes to sit at the bar and read her book, always ordering something appropriately fancier than she’d cook at home in her tiny galley kitchen. At Blackfish, down past Corn Hill Beach, she almost asks for the panko-crusted sole before seeing the bartender set down a steaming bowl of pasta in front of the man next to her: a salty-looking fisherman type with a bushy beard. He sees her eyeing the dish and leans over to confide in a deep, rumbling voice, “Tuna bolognese—best pasta you’ll ever eat.” He’s close to right: the sauce is rich and comforting and familiar, with fennel seeds and jammy tomatoes, but tinged with seafood instead of beef. She twirls her fork through the fresh pappardelle, making sure each bite has a bit of the mascarpone and lemon confit garnish.
On Thursday she takes a longer bike ride than usual and spends the day watching seals pop their heads up at Herring Cove Beach. Ravenous by 7 PM, she finds her way to Local 186 and orders the Southern Belle burger: juicy and rare topped with fried green tomatoes, queso fresco, and a creamy white BBQ sauce. What does one drink with fried green tomatoes? she wonders, and realizes a second later that she’d accidentally said this out loud. A few minutes later, the bartender hands her a tall glass of amber-colored fizz. With a wink he says, “the Femme Fatale”—which turns out to be a potent combination of gin, St-Germain, lemon, and sparkling wine. She feels warm after three sips, although she’s not sure if it’s the gin or the sunburn she got from the five hours at the beach.
She likes this adventure for herself. She likes watching the sailboats bob in the pastel pink haze of sunset. She likes buying a small bag of chocolate non-pareils at the candy shop and eating them with her toes in the sand. She likes the novelty of somewhere new that also seems like home.
What she doesn’t realize while she’s jogging the dirt paths before breakfast or tucked in bed reading or wading knee-deep into the ocean is that he’s there too.
He’s a block away, eating fried clams at the Lobster Pot, while she takes the first bite of her burger. He’s body-surfing with three college friends at Coast Guard Beach while she drives past. She misses him by miles sometimes, other times only by seconds: He’s sitting outside at a picnic table tearing into the famous dirt bomb muffins at Cottage Street Bakery while she stands inside in line, debating between a cranberry poppyseed or apple crisp muffin to go with her iced coffee.
She doesn’t know that the white soft-top Jeep that zips past her on Cahoon Hollow Road is him, his then-girlfriend riding in the passenger seat in a black bikini with a towel wrapped around her waist, a girlfriend who will end up being his first but not his best, the sort that leaves a mark in how much they teach you but ends up living in London married to a base guitarist named Darren in a vast glass-and-leather filled loft, so you really don’t consider them the one that got away.
Their lives are still separate threads: They run parallel then touch for a brief moment before pulling apart again like train tracks.
Years later, when they piece this together, when they’re such a part of each other that a version before she knew him seems impossible, like they must have defied physics and known each other all along on some atomic level, she will wonder if she felt a frisson of electricity every time their bodies neared. She will wonder about other times they might have been in each other’s orbit: a coffee shop in New York City, a hike up Mount Monadnock, the Delta lounge in Heathrow Airport.
Recipe Note: It may seem wildly fussy to go through all of the trouble of toasting sugar just for this recipe. After all, can it really make much of a difference in flavor? The answer is yes, it absolutely can, but if you’re not up for it, just use an equal amount of regular granulated sugar. You can toast the sugar with the nuts as I direct below, but I actually usually do it when I’m par-baking pie or quiche crust because I just use the sugar and nuts in place of pie weights (this is convenient for me because I make a lot of quiche, but I realize that might not apply to you!)—if you’re confused about the addition of nuts, here’s why: Toasting sugar is a pretty common baking technique. It adds a nutty, caramelized flavor to the sugar which is great in baked goods. I figured it would be even nuttier if I toasted it alongside nuts. I tried it initially as an experiment to see if the nuts infused the sugar with flavor, and they do. I’m going to keep experimenting with this to see if other ingredients would do the same (citrus, fruit, etc.).
Toasted Pecan Sugar Dirt Bomb Muffins
Makes 18 muffins
For the toasted sugar
2 cups (396g) granulated sugar
2 cups pecans
For the muffins
120g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
226g (2 cups) white whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
277g (1 cup) milk
For the topping
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
To make the toasted sugar: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Place the sugar and pecans on a rimmed baking sheet and toast until the sugar begins to turn a pale amber color—this usually takes me close to 45 minutes, and I stir occasionally, but keep a close eye on yours as times will vary.
Remove the sugar from the oven and let cool. Once cool, sift out the toasted nuts and reserve for another use. Measure out 198g (1 cup) of toasted sugar for the batter and 99g (1/2 cup) for the topping, and reserve the rest for the next time you bake.
To make the muffins: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and line two muffin tins with paper liners.
Whisk together the flours, nutmeg, cardamom, and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter with the cup of toasted sugar until fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes on medium-high speed. Add the vegetable oil and mix for another minute.
Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each.
Add the flour mixture and milk in three additions, alternating between each, starting and ending with the flour.
Mix until the batter just comes together smoothly.
Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin pans, filling each one about 3/4 of the way full. You should get about 18 muffins out of the batch.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops feel set and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. These muffins don’t take on too much color, so rely on touch rather than sight.
Remove from the oven and transfer the muffins to a wire rack to cool fully.
To finish the muffins: Melt the butter in a shallow bowl.
Whisk together the reserved 1/2 cup of toasted sugar from above with the cinnamon and nutmeg.
Roll each cooled muffin in the butter (really dunk it, don’t hold back!) and then roll it in the sugar mixture to coat it entirely. Continue until all the muffins are coated.