Trophy House (9 page)

Reluctant to make us sound like one of those magical couples in the
New York Times
' Vows column on Sundays, where every bride and every groom are so brilliant, funny, original, free of spirit, different (or “special”), I still maintain that our first conversation was nothing other than brilliant, funny, free of spirit, “special.” We talked about ourselves, mostly as a means of getting the outward layers peeled away quickly. He was divorced, had been for some time. There were two children, one in college, the other in high school. “My ex and I are on pretty good terms, considering.” I was glad he didn't tell me that they got on much better now that they were no longer married. (Of course people get on better after the divorce; they don't have to clean up the other person's emotional shit.) I told him, as briefly as I could, about Tom and Beth and Mark, determined to make the fantasy of being single last longer than the few hours embracing it.

I had planned to order something I had never cooked and maybe not even tasted. So I ordered a quail salad, and when I looked at the six bird corpses arranged prettily on a nest of mesclun, their legs no larger than Q-tips, I wasn't sure I wanted to eat the poor little things. David must have seen me hesitate. “We could order you something else if you don't want to eat that,” he said.

“I'm going to try,” I said. “Either I eat them, or they get thrown out with the coffee grounds. Do you think people working in the kitchen ever help themselves to the food left on plates?” He said he certainly hoped not but wouldn't be surprised if they did. He asked me if I'd read George Orwell's book about being a dishwasher in Paris, with roaches and rats running around the kitchen. “After I finished it,” he said, “I never wanted to eat in a restaurant again. Yet here we are!” I told him I'd read the book and had had the same reaction. The funny thing was that the quail were too small to have any discernible flavor; I might as well have been eating tiny bits of anything from the bird family. We shared a pastry for dessert. By the end of the meal, when the maitre d' came over to pull out our table—and although I hadn't summoned the nerve to ask about the missing finger—I wanted to hug David and lick his ear. But I behaved myself in the manner of a married, middle-aged book illustrator who wants more work and no funny business.

“Where are you headed?” David asked as we left the restaurant.

“Back to your office,” I said. “I left my portfolio there, remember?”

His cell phone sang. “Excuse me a second,” he said. He talked into it, said something about a meeting at three. I looked at my watch. It was almost a quarter of three.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Life would be a lot less complicated without these contraptions. But you know, I've begun to feel naked without it.”

Naked? “I'll just pick up my things and be off.”

“Would you like to know what I'm thinking right now?” he said. “I'm thinking you're the most attractive woman I've ever seen.”

Now I know what I look like, and while I'm quite sure no one would turn away from me in horror, I also know that compared to a truly beautiful woman—let's give her a ten—I barely make a six. My chin is a little weak, my nose a little crooked, my eyes pale rather than saturated. I should take off about fifteen pounds and strangle the gray hairs that have started to appear like weeds in a neglected lawn. Well, I thought, either he's nuts or he's smitten.

I looked down girlishly; felt girlish.

“That's a statement, Dannie,” he said. “It doesn't require an answer.”

With this extravagance he had jumped way over the line I myself was not prepared to cross. What did he have in mind? He had paid me one of the two compliments a woman most wants to hear, the other being “You're the smartest woman I've ever met.” Did he want to tell me he liked the way I looked and leave it at that—a compliment no more significant than if he had told me he liked my shoes—or did he want to cut short the journey from cozy lunch to bed? I thanked him in a faint voice and did not turn my head to look at him.

“Jesus! Watch out!” David yelled, grabbing my arm and yanking it so hard I nearly fell over. “That kid on a bicycle almost killed you.”

“What kid?” David pointed to a boy on a bicycle, wearing a black leather jacket, already halfway up the block, speeding blithely to his next delivery. David seemed more shaken than I was. Of course, he'd seen the near miss. I hadn't.

“If he'd been driving a car, I would have got his license. Damn.”

“I'm fine, David, really, he missed me.”

“By inches.”

“That'll do it.” I wanted to look cool, unconcerned, even as my heart was racing and my mouth had gone dry, while David told me about how he'd been hit by a cyclist on Seventh Avenue a few years earlier and landed in a hospital with a serious concussion. “It happened just the way it happened a minute ago,” he said. “They thought I might be brain-damaged. But I was okay.”

When we got back to his office, David insisted that I sit down and drink some water. He rang for Ashley, who didn't seem all that happy about being a gopher. “Where did you say you were staying?”

“Well, actually, I'm planning to take the five o'clock train back to Boston.”

His four fingers and a thumb fiddled with something on his desk. “That's a pity. If you were staying another night, I'd say let's have dinner together.” His suggestion, falling just short of an invitation, was so graceful that I nearly told him that I'd do it, I'd stay over and do anything that came into my head, consequences or no. I got up, gathered my things, shook hands with David, who said, “Hey, I'll walk you to the elevator.”

“Thanks so much for the wonderful lunch.”

“And the close call,” he said.

On the train heading north I tamped down my excitement and prepared for reentry into the familiar. The image of David kept undercutting my best intentions. I couldn't let myself believe that I might have fallen for a near stranger. I was fifty-three; this sort of thing had gone out of my life years earlier. What the hell was I thinking?

B
ETH SOUNDED URGENT
and mysterious when she called to ask if she could come over to the house on Whitman Street; she had something she had to tell me. I reminded her that this was her house too. “You have a key. What's up?” She said, “I'd rather wait 'til I see you in person.” She had piqued my curiosity, adding a couple of drops of anxiety. I've learned not to count on news being good.

There are dozens of me, waiting in line in the drafty building, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to read the newspaper I've brought with me without bothering the Dannie in back or in front of me. Sometimes I think I know what I'm waiting for; other times I'm baffled. When I finally reach the window, what am I going to find? Will I be told that I haven't filled out the proper forms? Will I be issued a visa for Italy or, God forbid, Afghanistan? Will I be asked to hand over a two-hundred-dollar fine for infraction of some obscure rule? Who's on the other side of the window? Waiting patiently, I am wife, mother, artist (when I allow myself this name), neighbor, home owner, food shopper, bed maker, laundress, cook, weeder, tire changer, etc., etc. But when I sense something amiss in the life of one of my children, mother empathically elbows her way to the front of the line. However muted, alarms have gone off.

So I put David Lipsett and the ecstasy I dreamed of sharing with him on hold.

“I've taken a job in New Hampshire,” Beth said almost as soon as she came in through the front door.

“What kind of job?”

“It's at a sort of halfway house for kids who've been in trouble?” I wondered whether she meant halfway in or halfway out. “It's to keep them from getting worse. They've been on drugs, they've had minor scrapes with the law. Some of them are what's called ‘incorrigible'?”

“You don't have any experience in that kind of work,” I said, immediately regretting it.

“They're very shorthanded,” she said, narrowing her eyes in a way I recognized as reflective of hurt. “They'll take almost anybody.”

“Are you going to get paid for this?”

“Not quite a living wage,” she said. “But housing's thrown in. So that makes up for the chintzy salary.” She described the housing: a co-op arrangement, with private rooms for everyone and a common kitchen and living room. It sounded to me a bit like the halfway house the bad kids were in. It occurred to me that this might be some kind of penance she was doing, but for what? What did she think she had done that required what involved a personal sacrifice?

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You mean, am I hungry? The answer is yes.”

“I'll make us something,” I said, glad to be occupied in a physical task. “Sorry, I should have asked earlier. It's past lunchtime, isn't it? But that's not what I was going to ask. I was going to ask you why you're taking this job? It's not exactly your line of work.”

“You think I'm going off the tracks, don't you? And it probably has something to do with Andy. But it isn't that. It's just that at the magazine I was doing such shitty work. Sometimes I felt like a slut or something. I suppose this job at Bellmont Hill—that's what the place is called—will be good for me. And maybe for the kids. I like children.”

Well, I'd never heard her say this before. It might even be true. But I was skeptical of her plan. I wanted to remind her that if she wanted my approval she didn't need it and probably shouldn't be asking for it. She was thirty years old.

“You're not asking for my approval, are you?”

“Of course not. I just wanted to let you know what I'm going to do.”

“You're not eating your salad,” I said.

“I guess I'm not very hungry.”

I decided to tell her about New York, minus the heart of the story. Beth seemed minimally interested and then told me she hoped that one day she and I could do a book together. It would be basically a picture book, with photographs of trophy houses on the Outer Cape. “You'd take the pictures,” she said. “I'd do the text.”

I turned the idea on its head: “How about a book of genuine Cape houses? Not even the kind I have. But like the Wirths', on Slough Pond, and the Perrys', on Lieutenant Island?” The idea had taken hold. “When do you want to start?” I asked. “Maybe you weren't listening to me, Mom. I'm taking a new job. I can't quit before I even show up for work.” I could see she had misinterpreted me; I could also see that her response was perfectly reasonable. I'd put my foot in it again. Why does Beth bring out the worst in me?

As she was getting ready to leave, Beth asked, in the most casual, offhand manner, if her father and I were okay. “Why do you ask?” She shrugged and said, “Just a feeling. No big deal. It's not any of my business, really,” she said. She frowned. “I forgot to tell you,” she said. Andy had sent her an e-mail. He was working for an outfit that put on events for charities and other organizations that wanted to call attention to themselves. “Sounds like a perfect fit,” I said.

 

I told Tom I was thinking of going to Truro the following weekend.

“Oh? Sorry I won't be able to come with you.”

“That's okay,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

“You know that committee I'm on, the one that interviews candidates for that rare open slot in the department? We agreed to meet this guy on Saturday morning. It was the only day the man could make it—he looks awfully good on paper.”

I nodded. “You don't mind?”

“I do mind. I could use a day or two of R & R.”

My response, drawn out of a habit of thirty years, was automatic. I went over to him and put a hand on his arm. Once, this juncture had produced sparks. I was surprised now that it produced nothing at all, as if his arm belonged to a corpse—or was it my hand that had no life left in it? I wanted so badly to feel something that, without meaning to, I half-choked on the word “Tom!” “What's the matter, Dannie?” he said. “Did I do something?” I told him of course not. Which one of the two takes the blame for letting the tape run out and failing to insert another?

 

The Truro house smelled lovely, like an ancient pine pillow along with something a little bit off, like the shells of tiny creatures. I opened a window and a cold bay breeze filled the rooms, freshening the air inside. I looked out the window, trying to get the two parts of myself to make up and form one whole. I was sure I could do this here and I did feel a little better. I phoned Raymie. Mitch answered. After identifying myself, I said I'd like to speak to Raymie. I could hear him call “honey”—that must be Raymie. “Hi, honey,” I said. She asked what I was doing in Truro. Her voice sounded different—a little strained.

I asked her if she'd like to come to my house for lunch the next day. “Why don't you come over here?” she said. “I've got this huge refrigerator full of goodies. Mitch won't mind. He said he'd like to see you.”

We went back and forth until finally I agreed.

The next morning I worked hard on a new project and actually produced one page out of five attempts that didn't make me want to throw up. Work does not grow easier. When I finally looked at the clock, I saw that it was time to quit.

Should I change my grungy Truro clothes, the old jeans and the stained sweatshirt threadbare at the neck? I decided I would, then changed my mind. I said goodbye to Marshall (assuring him I'd take him for a walk later), left the house and walked down the beach and then up the stairs to the Brenner house. I took a deep breath: “Hello?”

Raymie opened the sliding door and came out to meet me. She hugged me. “I'm so glad to see you, Dannie. God, I've missed you. Come on in.” I smelled musky perfume on her neck. As soon as she stepped back, I realized that she had transformed herself into a Ralph Lauren girl—crisp, clean, yet outdoorsy in perfectly creased and spotless designer chinos, a heavy coral pink turtleneck sweater with flecks of silver in it and a pair of unscuffed Docksiders over crew socks. On her wrist was a gold chain bracelet with a charm hanging off it that probably read
TO HIS HONEY FROM HER MITCH
. Her hair was brushed straight and looked to me as if it had spent some time in a beauty parlor, getting spitted and polished. Clothes remake the woman.

I nearly said, “Raymie, is that you?” I suppose she could have gone another way: jeans that hugged her butt, high heels, a tight shirt (wasn't that how she had described Ruthie at the P'Town restaurant?). But Mitch had halfway figured out that Truro was not Miami and had opted for L.L.Bean, Eddie Bauer and the more or less WASPy style. Halfway because, as I noted earlier, every item of clothing was spanking new or clean or free of anything that makes a thing look worn. The classiest gent I know in Truro—someone with a true Cape Cod heart in his chest and a laid-back style that has nothing to do with the hard work it takes to write plays—seems, to a stranger, like a man who spends his mornings rummaging through Dumpsters.

“Mitch is on the phone—as usual,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I could hear Mitch talking in a room off the living room, which had been supplied with furniture not really hideous but far too large. The leather couch, for instance, could have held six adults side by side, the armchair facing it, two. Substantial, they were built to last a thousand years. Raymie invited me to come into the kitchen while she finished working on our meal. “Mitch wanted us to have lobsters,” she said. “So that's what we're having.”

It was one of those times when things are over the top but you're glad anyway. Mitch's voice grew louder, although I still couldn't hear what he was saying. A minute later, he appeared in the kitchen, a white sweater draped across his shoulders, its sleeves tied together over his breastbone. His eyebrows seemed bushier than ever. Leaning on an ebony cane with a silver handle, he said hello to me. I thought I saw a smirk flash quickly across his features. I stuck out my hand, which he shook.

“Got everything straightened out?” Raymie asked.

“Sonofabitch is still holding out on me,” he said. Then, to me. “We don't want to talk business here, do we? How are those beasties coming along, honey?”

“Another few minutes, Mitch,” Raymie said. I tried to read the extent of her affection for him but was unable to pierce her chirpiness. I've probably spent far too much time trying to decide whether or not human leopards can change their spots. Some people seem to be able to do it. These are the folks who start out as scamps and end up as pious purveyors of virtue, like Charles Colson, the man who lied for Richard Nixon, preaching the Gospel from jail. And other species, like the man who started out a rabbi and ended up as a NASCAR driver. Are these genuine changes, or are they simply the flip side of an overfocused personality? While I dealt with my lobster—they had the right little forks and picks to pry out the claw meat—I tried to get a read on Raymie and found her nothing but insistently and charmingly attentive to Mitchell Brenner. She did all the serving and clearing—just as she had in her B & B. Except now it was accompanied by the sort of affectionate gesture or tone of voice you save for someone near and dear to you. I couldn't imagine that she was in love with him, failing, perhaps, to empathize and only judging from my own heart. I could no more love this man than I could Dick Cheney, our vice president, a man with money motives so obvious they stuck out like the needles on the back of a porcupine. What was change anyway? Had B been lurking inside A all those years and finally got out? Or had B killed A and snatched his body? I looked at Raymie, listened to her speak, watched as she ever so lightly brushed Mitch's cheek with her hand, and I could not, for the life of me, understand what she was really up to.

The meal was pleasant enough. Mitch didn't do anything obnoxious. It was just his attitude—arrogant, dismissive, humorless—that bothered me, along with his tying almost any subject one of us brought up to money. Real estate, of course, but
swimming
? At one point, as Raymie and I were comparing bodies of water in which to swim—bay, ocean, pond—he educated us on the economics of what he called the “swimsuit industry” and how it relies chiefly on winter sales because rich women go south when it's cold and don't mind paying a hundred bucks or more for a tiny piece of spandex or whatever it was swimsuits were made out of, and on and on, Raymie composing her features into tolerant enjoyment: “Doesn't the dear man know a lot about a lot of things?” I couldn't wait to get away, my distress fed both by Raymie's new persona and Mitch's sensibility.

And then he surprised me once again, by looking out over the bay and sighing with obvious pleasure. And it wasn't just the lobsters, and the raspberries Raymie served for dessert, it was the waterscape below and stretching to the horizon. It was a calm day and the seabirds rose and fell, afloat on light currents of air. How could a man like Mitch like what I like? It almost made me angry.

“I ought to be getting back,” I said.

“Oh, stay for a while,” Raymie said. I noticed that Mitch didn't echo the invitation. “Well, maybe I'll stay a few minutes.”

“You gals do your thing,” Mitch said, “I've got a couple of calls to make.” He disappeared into the room where he'd been on the phone earlier, leaving Raymie and me with a shitload of things unsaid. But how can you ask your bosom friend what she's doing with a man like Mitch? As for Raymie, she no doubt felt my disapproval, the way you always know when someone close to you hates what you're doing but refuses to say so.