The Matchmaker (26 page)

H
e packed a bag, nothing unusual in that; his entire life with Dabney he had packed a bag each Monday and unpacked it on Friday, his entire life with Dabney had been two lives, his life here on Nantucket with her, and his life in Cambridge—or Washington, New York, London—without her.

Had that been the problem?

Which had been his “real” life? He had never had occasion to ask himself this question, although in the early days of their marriage, Dabney used to badger him. Did he love Harvard more than he loved her? Did he love economics more than he loved her?

You are my wife,
he always answered.
I love you in a way that one cannot love a university or a field of study.

She had asked—fifteen or twenty years ago—because she loved something else more than him, someone else, the boy who had left. She had never lied to him about that. The day Box proposed, she said,
I will marry you but you must know that I will never recover from my feelings for Clendenin Hughes. He didn’t only break my heart, he stole it.

She had warned him.

Another man might have backed away. After all, who wanted to be number two? But the truth was, the specter of Clendenin Hughes had never bothered Box. Clendenin Hughes lived on the other side of the world. He would never return, but if he did, he would be faced with the ruins of what he’d left behind. He would certainly not be in any position to reclaim Dabney or Agnes.

That was what Box had thought.

Maybe if Box had been a more attentive husband, Dabney would have been able to withstand the temptation of Hughes’s return. Box was guilty of being busy and distant, of taking Dabney for granted, of leaving enough space in their marriage for Dabney to slip back and forth undetected. In better, closer marriages, he knew, there were no such spaces. Or maybe Dabney’s feelings for Hughes had grown stronger and deeper only because she had given him up. Box had never been good at understanding the complexities of other people, or even, sadly, of himself, but he did realize that unattainability was a powerful aphrodisiac, nearly impossible to battle against. It was, he thought with no small amount of irony, the simple law of supply and demand at work. We always want what we can’t have.

Box packed a bag, two bags, three bags. He was taking everything of consequence, even things he had duplicates of in Cambridge. Childishly, perhaps, he wanted Dabney to walk into this room tonight and feel his absence.

I’m in love with Clendenin. I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.

Sorry,
Box thought.
Sorry?

He could reason all he wanted, but the truth was, he was in crisis, his bank had defaulted, his personal economy had crumbled. He would leave this house. He would leave the finest woman he had ever known, indeed, the finest human being he had ever known—and yes, he still believed that. He was John Boxmiller Beech, the Harvard professor, the textbook author, the economic consultant to the President of the United States, but none of that mattered without Dabney.

H
e went down to the police station with CJ and the arresting officer while Dabney took Agnes to the emergency room. It ended up being a very long night. CJ was charged with aggravated assault, and Agnes received thirty-five stitches in her scalp and was held at the hospital overnight for observation.

When Clen and Dabney finally met back at Clen’s cottage around quarter of four in the morning, Clen poured a shot of Gentleman Jack for himself and a glass of wine for Dabney and they sat at his big oak table in the dark. Clen threw back his shot; he wasn’t feeling that great himself. CJ had bloodied his lip, bruised his cheek, and given him a nasty black eye. On her way home from the hospital, Dabney had stopped at the grocery store for a bag of frozen peas and a porterhouse steak.

“For your face,” she said.

He said, “And maybe tomorrow night, it will be dinner.”

Dabney sipped her wine. “The beautiful young woman you’ve been seeing? It’s Agnes?”

Clen poured himself another shot, but let it sit in front of him. He slowly spun the glass.

Yes,” he said. “She came out to the house looking for you, and she found me.”

Dabney’s eyes were shining with tears. Happy ones, he hoped, although he wasn’t sure. “And how has it been…between you and her?”

Clen knew that his answer was important; this had been an emotional steamroller of a night. There was no road to take but the true, straight one.

“Things between us have been lovely,” he said. He threw back the shot. “You have raised an intelligent, thoughtful, kind human being. She is your daughter, Dabney. I have absolutely no claim to her.”

“Box is an excellent father,” Dabney said. “I couldn’t have asked for better. But there are things about Agnes that are purely you.”

“I’ve seen those things,” Clen said. “Even in the short time I’ve known her.”

“Well, now that you’ve found her, don’t let her go.”

There were no words he could offer in response to that, so Clen took Dabney’s hand and led her to bed.

W
hen Agnes woke up in the hospital, Dabney was sitting in a chair by the bed. She was wearing her headband and pearls, but she looked exhausted.

Agnes said, “Have you been here all night?”

Dabney said, “No, I went back to Clendenin’s for a little while, took a shower and a nap, but I wanted to be here when you woke up.”

Agnes noted the phrase
went back to Clendenin’s
but she didn’t know what to do with it.

She said, “Where’s Daddy?”

Dabney said, “He’s in Cambridge. He caught the late ferry last night. He…had to go back.”

“Does he know what happened?”

“I called and left him a message,” Dabney said. “I’m sure he’ll call you, or come see you. He loves you very, very much.”

“I know,” Agnes said. She leaned back into her pillows. Her head hurt and she was thirsty. “You were right, Mommy. CJ wasn’t my perfect match.”

Dabney squeezed her hand. “There
is
going to be a perfect match for you somewhere down the road, darling,” she said. “That I can promise.”

CJ’s arrest got two inches in the sports section of the
New York Post,
and a call came to Agnes’s cell phone from a producer at ESPN who wanted to do a segment about “Charlie Pippin’s Fall from Grace.” Annabelle Pippin had already agreed to talk, the producer said.

Agnes did not return the call. Let Annabelle talk to the media about Charlie Pippin’s fall from grace. Agnes wanted to forget the man had ever existed.

He had been charged with aggravated assault, but he would plead down. There would be jail time, twelve to eighteen months; there would be anger-management classes and hours of community service. He had been fired from his firm. Bantam Killjoy was now being represented by Tom Condon.

It was his own fault. Agnes had broken the engagement and his heart, but there were other ways of dealing with this than bashing Agnes’s head in. CJ needed help. He would do it again to the next woman if he didn’t get help.

In the next few days, voice mails piled up on Agnes’s phone: Wilder from work called, as well as Manny Partida; Dave Patterson from Island Adventures called; Jane Meyer, Agnes’s roommate from Dartmouth, called (she had seen the
Post
); Rocky DeMotta called, saying how sorry he and the rest of the firm were; Celerie called, as did Riley.

Really, the only message Agnes cared about was the one from Riley. He said, “Hey, Agnes, I heard what happened. I’m going to give you your space, but when you’re ready, I’m here to talk. We can walk the beach and throw the ball to Sadie.”

Agnes would miss a week of work. She was taking Percocet; her head had to heal. There was lots of time to lie in bed and think.

Her mother delivered trays of food, her meds, ice water with thin slices of lemon; she brought DVDs and novels. Agnes wasn’t hungry, and she couldn’t focus to watch TV or read. The ice water and the meds were all she wanted, and the dark room and the soft pillows and the knowledge that Dabney was there. She had a repeated vision of herself and Riley walking along Ladies Beach with the sky pinkening as a tennis ball flew through the air.
Go get it, Sadie! Run!

Her mother came in and sat on the bed. She patted Agnes’s leg.

“Do you feel any better today?” Dabney said.

“Yes,” Agnes said. “Actually, I do.” Her vision was clear, her head felt lighter, the pain was lifting. She was ready to get up, to get on with it.

But her mother had something to say. “You may have noticed Box hasn’t been here.”

“He’s called me every day,” Agnes said. “He wanted to come back, but I told him not to worry. I feel better.”

Dabney took a breath. “Box left, honey. He left me, he’s gone. He found out about Clendenin…he found out that Clen and I are friends again. That we’re in love.”

“Oh,” Agnes said.

“I’ve made a royal mess of things,” Dabney said. “A fine royal mess.” Dabney started to cry into her hands and Agnes felt well enough to reach out and hug her mother. She had not been blessed with any supernatural powers or special vision, but she was able to understand that her mother loved two men at once. Agnes would forgive her for that because she knew Dabney couldn’t help it.

B
y Friday, Agnes was healed enough to stay home by herself, and Dabney could return to the Chamber. She had received numerous messages from Nina Mobley, asking Dabney to please call her—at the office or at home, no matter the time of day—but Dabney had been focused on Agnes. She had called Box daily with updates and was consistently treated to his voice mail. Aside from Clen, Dabney hadn’t talked to anyone.

At ten minutes to nine, Dabney found Nina Mobley sitting on the bench outside the Chamber office holding two cups of coffee.

Nina’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank God,” she said. “I’ve bought two coffees every day this week, hoping you would show up, and every day I had to drink them both myself. The caffeine has been hell on my nerves.”

Dabney took one of the coffees. It had been perfectly made by Diana across the street at the pharmacy, with cream and six sugars. Dabney sat on the bench next to Nina and gazed at the front of the Chamber building, which was so familiar to her that it was like looking into a mirror.

Nina said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Tell me,” Dabney said.

Nina said, “Vaughan Oglethorpe is upstairs waiting for you.”

Dabney sipped her coffee. She wasn’t sure why she felt surprised at this news. Vaughan had come to fire her. And why not? She was a tart and a floozy and an embarrassment.

“I guess I’d better go upstairs, then,” Dabney said. “He knows everything?”

“I wish you had called me back,” Nina said. “I nearly came to your house, but I thought you and Agnes deserved privacy.”

“Thank you,” Dabney said.

“Vaughan has the log,” Nina said. “I told you not to sign out. I told you I would cover for you.”

“I didn’t want you to have to lie,” Dabney said. More coffee. The coffee was the only thing that was keeping her from screaming. “You’ve got your ear to the ground. What are people saying?”

“It could be worse,” Nina said. “But you know how people on this island are.”

Yes, Dabney did know how people on this island were—they gossiped mercilessly, they tore people’s reputations apart like sharks with a bleeding seal. Her eyes fluttered closed as she remembered how brutal people had been to Tammy Block when the news about her and Flynn Sheehan hit. Dabney shuddered. She had been
responsible
for that, or partially. She alone had seen the pink aura around them.

“What have you heard exactly?” Dabney asked.

“That you admitted to being in love with Clendenin. That you’ve been seeing him secretly since he got back to the island. That you’ve been secretly communicating with him for the past twenty-seven years. That you’ve been sending him money in Asia.”

“
Not
for twenty-seven years!” Dabney said. “
Not
sending him money in Asia!” But even as she said this, she realized that where gossip was concerned, you didn’t get to make a distinction between what was true and what wasn’t.

“There’s also a rumor that you and Box have an ‘arrangement’ because Box is gay and is having a sexual relationship with the Federal Reserve chairman.”

“You must be kidding me!” Dabney said. “Someone actually said those words? Sexual relationship with the Federal Reserve chairman?”

“Yes,” Nina said. “Theater of the absurd. I don’t know where people come up with this stuff.” She stared into her coffee cup like it was a deep well. “Even weirder—someone heard that you have terminal cancer and you wanted to be back with Clen before you died.”

Oh, God,
Dabney thought. She felt dizzy then, dizzy like she might faint, and she focused on her penny loafers, side by side, as steady as the horizon.

“I wish you had called me back,” Nina said. “I would have suggested that you call Vaughan and head it off at the pass. He adores you, Dabney. He’s hard on you, yes, but like a favorite teacher. You could have explained.”

“What is there to explain?” Dabney asked. “The man has known me my entire life. He can hardly have been surprised.”

“I would have burned the log, or dropped it off Old North Wharf,” Nina said. “I might not even have had to do that. Vaughan might have forgiven you the missing hours. After all, the Chamber runs like clockwork, and our coffers are at an all-time high, thanks to you.” Nina put her gold cross into her mouth, then took it out and slid the cross along its chain. “But there was one board member, there’s always one, who wanted your head on a platter.”

“Elizabeth Jennings,” Dabney said.

Nina nodded morosely.

Dabney said, “Well, I’d better go up.”

Vaughan Oglethorpe was sitting in Dabney’s chair with his feet up on Dabney’s desk, which she found offensive. It was her father’s old
Dragnet
desk, a desk Dabney loved more than any piece of furniture or objet d’art in her home. Vaughan had the log open in his lap; he was paging through it, making notes on a legal pad. When he saw Dabney, he got to his feet.

He was seventy-eight years old, the same age Dabney’s mother would have been. Vaughan and Patty Benson had gone steady one summer; it was all gin and tonics and dinner dances at the Sankaty Beach Club and rides down the Milestone Road in Vaughan’s convertible MG, which was what he drove when he wasn’t driving the hearse for his father. He was the only person Dabney still had contact with who had known her mother well. But Patty had dumped Vaughan, and Dabney suspected he had always hated Dabney a little bit for this reason, despite his outward displays of avuncular affection.

The room smelled of embalming fluid.

She would be cremated, she decided.

“Dabney,” he said. His voice was as heavy and somber as a thundercloud. He had never been replaced as board president, she guessed, because people were afraid of him the way they were afraid of the Grim Reaper.

“Vaughan,” she said. Bright smile. Fresh-faced in her headband and pearls, although she had slept a total of ten hours all week and she was down below a hundred pounds. Maybe he wouldn’t fire her. Maybe just a warning.

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve had personal issues that have kept you from doing your job.” He held up the log. “Since Daffodil Weekend, you’ve missed fourteen full days, and the days you have been present, you’ve been out of the office a total of a hundred and ninety-two hours.”

Could that be
right
?
All those stolen lunches, entire afternoons at the beach with Clen. Days she was legitimately sick in bed. The past four days taking care of Agnes. The stupid lunch at the Yacht Club with Box. Clen Clen Clen. A hundred and ninety-two hours she had missed. She was appalled. She would have fired herself.

“The board isn’t pleased,” Vaughan said. “One member in particular. She feels your personal life has gotten in the way of your work performance.”

She wants Clen,
Dabney thought.
Hell hath no fury
. What was Elizabeth doing on the board anyway? She didn’t own or work for a Nantucket business. But she had money and influence; she was a summer person who “cared” about Nantucket. She had used her charms with Vaughan Oglethorpe, batted her eyelashes, flashed her pretty manicure, and maybe promised him a back scratch.

Still, Dabney said nothing. Was he going to drop the hammer?

He said, “The board took a vote and it was decided that it’s time to ask you to step down.”

At that instant, Dabney realized that both Riley and Celerie were at their desks, quiet as church mice, staring right into the front office, listening to every word.

“Step down?” Dabney said.

“I’m asking for your resignation, Dabney,” Vaughan said.

Asking for her resignation? Asking her to step down? She, Dabney Kimball Beech,
was
the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce. She had, with Nina’s help, turned Nantucket into the thriving business community it now was. In 1992, the Chamber had 340 members, a budget of $175,000, and there were thirty thousand visitors annually. Twenty-two years later, under Dabney’s leadership, there were 620 members, a budget of $1.2 million, and seventy-five thousand visitors annually.

Should she quote these statistics? Surely he already knew them. But it didn’t matter, because she, Dabney Kimball Beech, had done what so many great people before her had done. She had proved to be human.

“Okay,” Dabney said. “I’ll just collect my things.” She looked around the office, wondering where to start. The desks were hers, the oriental rugs, the original Abigail Pease photographs, which every single visitor to the office commented on, the green-apple-candle smell. How could she pack up that smell?

“I’m asking Nina Mobley to take over as executive director,” Vaughan said. “I assume you approve of that choice?”

“Yes,” Dabney bleated. She couldn’t imagine that Vaughan Oglethorpe or anyone else on the board cared what she thought now. She was being discarded like a piece of trash.

Suddenly, Nina was at the top of the stairs. She said, “If you’re asking for Dabney’s resignation then you might as well ask for mine as well, because I will not work here without her.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. But Nina was already collecting things from her desk. She took down the calendar from Nantucket Auto Body, which they had each consulted a hundred times a day. Dabney realized that what Nina had said was true. She would never have been able to work in this office without her.

Vaughan clasped his hands together in front of him; the false sympathy required of a funeral director rose to the surface. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Nina. Let me encourage you to reconsider.”

“I quit, too,” Celerie said, standing in the doorway of the back office. “Dabney Beech is my idol! She is my hero! I have never known anyone like her! She inspired my love for this island! She made me appreciate its uniqueness and she made me want to serve as its advocate! She made me think of it as home, and I grew up far, far away from here! I am devoted to Nantucket, but more than that, I am devoted to Dabney Kimball Beech!”

“I’m leaving, too,” Riley said. He was holding his guitar case and a copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
and the framed photo he kept on his desk of Sadie, his chocolate Lab.

“Wait,” Vaughan said. “Everyone please just wait a minute. You can’t all leave.”

Just then, the phone rang, and this seemed to give Riley great joy. He smiled widely, showing off his perfect teeth.

“With all due respect, sir,” he said to Vaughan, “you’d better answer that.”