A Summer Affair (39 page)

“What are you doing here, Edward?” she asked.

“Oh,” Edward said. He smiled; he had a smile for every occasion, and this one was his “pretending to be innocent” smile. “I was just helping Siobhan fill the wontons.”

“Really?” Claire said. This was the Edward who would eat peanut butter on a roof shingle and who couldn’t tell white Burgundy from lighter fluid?

“She’s in the weeds,” Edward said. “And who wouldn’t be? She is saving our asses, taking the gala on at the last minute.”

“Indeed she is,” Claire said. She glanced at Siobhan to see how she liked being talked about in the third person. Siobhan’s mouth was a tight little pucker, and her freckled nose twitched like a rabbit’s. “I came for that very same reason. To see if I could help. Can I help?”

“I’m fine,” Siobhan said. “I think I’ll just finish up here myself.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “I have a showing at one, anyway.”

“Are you sure you don’t want any help?” Claire said.

“I’m sure.”

Edward jingled change in his pocket. “I may just stay and help Siobhan finish this.”

“I thought you had a showing at one,” Claire said.

“I do.”

“You should go,” Siobhan said.

“Don’t you want me to stay?” Edward asked.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Go!” Siobhan said. “Both of you!”

O
n Wednesday, Gavin went to work, against his better judgment. It was a gamble, one that was almost as quickening as the act of stealing the money in the first place. Had Lock spoken to Ben Franklin? Would the office be stormed by federal agents? Would Gavin be led away in handcuffs? These were real possibilities, he knew, but Gavin’s gut instinct was that he would be safe for at least one more day, and he hoped this was all he would need to figure things out. He had been up all night thinking it through, and he had arrived at a shocking conclusion: He didn’t want to leave Nantucket. He didn’t want to flee to Southeast Asia or anywhere else. And so he had to figure out a way to put the money back. To unsteal it. This was harder than it might seem. He had pilfered the money over the course of a hundred transactions. He couldn’t just deposit the lump sum now. The duffel bag, which contained $52,000, was in the backseat of his Mini Cooper, which was parked, locked up tight, on Union Street. What Gavin needed was for Ben Franklin to back off. Once the gala was behind them and all the summer people went home, Gavin would find a way to quietly square the books. But he couldn’t do it now, with everyone breathing down his neck.

Lock strolled in at five minutes to nine. He looked at Gavin and grinned. “We won at tennis,” he said.

And Gavin, who had decided in the wee hours that the most important thing was not to call any attention to his plight, threw this resolution out the window immediately. “Did you ever catch up with Ben Franklin?” he asked.

“No,” Lock said. “To be honest with you, I don’t have time to deal with him right now.”

“I hear you,” Gavin said. “He’s not quite right upstairs anymore, anyway. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do know it,” Lock said. “I’ll advise Adams to find a new treasurer in the fall. But nobody will want to do it.”

“Nobody,” Gavin echoed. The phone rang.

“Time to get to work,” Lock said.

O
n Wednesday, Ted Trimble called to say that the chandelier was wired.

“Do you want to come get it?” he asked Claire.

“Yes,” she said.

From the car, Claire called Lock at the office. Things had been stilted and businesslike between them since the catering fiasco, but if anyone should go with her to get the chandelier, it was Lock. And so she asked: Would he go with her to Ted Trimble’s shop and pick up the chandelier? Would he help her deliver it to the rec fields? (They would store it in the concession stand, normally used for Little League games, because it could be locked.)

If I move it myself,
Claire said,
I’ll break it. I’m so nervous about Saturday, I’m shaking.

You have no reason to be nervous,
Lock said.

And yes, he said. He would come help her.

Ted Trimble’s shop was unoccupied when Claire pulled in. A note on the door read:
Claire, it’s upstairs!
Claire walked up the hot stairs into a cavernous room filled with light fixtures and wires and extension cords and bulbs and stove burners and sections of slant-fin radiator. There were two desks in the center of the room, back-to-back: one for Ted’s secretary, Bridget, and one for his wife, Amie, who did the bookkeeping—but neither Bridget nor Amie was around. The fans were running and the radio was on; it was murderously hot. Claire hadn’t had time to get lunch, and the climb up the stairs made her dizzy.

She heard Lock call up from the bottom of the stairs. “Hello?”

“I’m up here,” she said. She did not see the chandelier. She heard Lock reach the top of the stairs, and she said, “I can’t find it.”

“It’s right here,” he said.

She turned as he lifted the chandelier from a white box. Lock held the chandelier from the top, where Ted had affixed a silver chain; at the end of the chain was an inverted sterling silver bowl that held the wires. The chandelier dangled from Lock’s hands; it twirled, even in the still heat of the room.

“God,” Claire said.

“It’s gorgeous,” Lock said. He traced the arc of one of the chandelier’s arms with his finger. “It is absolutely gorgeous.”

Claire knew what the chandelier looked like; she had its shape and form memorized. She had spent more time with this piece than with any other piece in her career. And yet when Lock held it, when she gazed at it from afar, it was like seeing it for the first time. That deep, luscious pink, those twisting, draping arms—it was glorious. It was graceful; it was, as far as glass went, a work of genius.

Claire felt her eyes burning with tears. She was thinking of all the hours that had gone into the creation of that goddamned chandelier—the effort, the energy, the hours that she could have spent,
should have spent,
doing other things: tending to her children, her marriage, her life. The chandelier was the opposite of where she had failed; it was where she had succeeded. And in two days, she would sell it to the highest bidder.

“I don’t know if I can let it go,” she said. “I don’t know if I can part with it.”

“It will be in safe hands,” Lock said softly. “It will be in my hands. I will pay whatever I have to in order to get it.”

This sounded like one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to Claire; the words were meant to comfort and to compliment. Claire thought back to the first auction meeting, when Lock began his campaign to get her back to work. It had been an idea then—and now it was a resplendent reality, dangling from Lock’s hands. Just as their attraction to each other that first night had been a tiny seedling of thought, of curiosity. And now what was it? It was as complicated and as fragile as the chandelier.

What was left unspoken, of course, was that the chandelier would hang in the house that Lock shared with Daphne; it would grace the meals they ate together. It would never hang in the house that Lock owned with Claire. Lock would never own a house with Claire; they would never be together. This, suddenly, was as obvious and oppressive as the heat in the room. Even though Lock would most likely buy the chandelier, Claire would never see it again.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “This heat is making me dizzy.”

“Right,” Lock said. “I’ll help you get this to the rec fields.”

They tucked the chandelier back into the box and padded it with Bubble Wrap. They closed the box and sealed it with electrical tape. It was safe. Lock carried it down the stairs with Claire following behind on unsteady feet. Lock set the box in the back of Claire’s Honda Pilot.

Claire said, “Would you drive?”

Sure. He took her car keys, got behind the wheel of her car, adjusted the seat. They were alone in her car on legitimate gala business; every other time they had been alone in her car, it had been illegitimate business, the business of their love affair, and this thought made it too awkward to speak, even though Claire had things she wanted to tell Lock: about Isabelle’s adamant silence, about her own anger over what had happened with the catering. Claire couldn’t speak, but she wanted him to speak. She had fallen in love with him—the silver belt buckle and the bald spot and his deep reservoir of kindness and generosity and the new idea of herself that he had given her. The viognier, the Bose radio, the gardens at Greater Light, kissing him on the chilly cement steps—she had felt like a teenager again, like a person, a woman desirable to him and to herself. It was not tawdry or careless. It was real. She wanted a life where she could reach out and straighten his tie, where they could share a sandwich, where they could stand in line together at the post office, his chin resting on her head. The worst thing about adultery—their kind, anyway—was that that life was never going to happen, and it was so, so sad.

She stared at him. His cheek, his ear, the creases at the corners of his eyes—she knew every inch of him intimately. But he said nothing. Nothing!

The silence was oppressive. If Claire opened her mouth, she knew what would come out.
This is pointless. We have no future. We’ll never be together, not properly. Continuing is emotional suicide. What are we doing? How can it possibly be worth it?

We have to stop.

We should never have started.

Lock pulled into the parking lot of the rec fields. The tent was up now, a white elephant, a spaceship.

Lock cleared his throat. “It was nice to see you.”

At eight thirty the next morning, there was no sign of Pan, and Claire, because she was busy cleaning up breakfast and deciding how to attack the problem of Isabelle—should
she
apologize for the
NanMag
article even though she didn’t write it?—let the kids run around outside in their pajamas. Claire knocked, tentatively, on Pan’s door. This was highly unusual. Claire couldn’t remember another time when Pan had been even five minutes late; it simply never happened.

There was a groan from inside, which Claire took as a cue to open the door. Pan lay in bed with her hair in her face. The room was stuffy; Pan never opened her windows because she found even summer nights too cold.

“Are you okay?” Claire said. In her mind, she launched automatically into a Hail Mary. Not two days before the gala, not today, when Claire had a list a mile long; not tomorrow, when Matthew was coming; and certainly not Saturday, when Claire would be unavailable from start to finish.

Pan groaned. Claire approached the bed. There was a half-eaten bowl of rice on the dresser.

“Pan, are you sick?”

Pan pushed her hair out of her face. “I feel hot,” she said.

Claire gasped. Pan was covered with red spots.

On the way home from the doctor, with Pan leaning limply against the car door—Tylenol, the doctor had said, baths with baking soda, bed rest—Claire called Isabelle at home. No one answered, so Claire left a message on the machine.

“Hey, Isabelle, it’s Claire. Listen, will you call me when you get this message, please? It seems odd I haven’t heard from you this week, and I just want to make sure we’re all set with the event.” Pause. Mention the elephant in the room? “I know you were upset about the magazine article, and honestly, no one was more shocked that you weren’t mentioned than I was. It’s awful. An egregious oversight. I’ll say something to Tessa. Okay, call me, please.”

Claire hung up, then dialed Isabelle’s cell phone.

Again, no answer. Again, Claire left a message.

“Hey, Isabelle, it’s Claire.” She paused, thinking:
I find your behavior discouraging and immature.
“Call me when you get a chance!”

O
n Thursday, when Lock walked into the office, he stopped first at Gavin’s desk. Slowly, Gavin raised his eyes from his work.

Lock said, “Is it true that you’re going to the gala with Isabelle?”

“Yes.”

“Daphne told me that, but I didn’t quite believe it. Isabelle invited you?”

“I didn’t invite myself.”

“Of course not. Well, good, I’m glad you’re going with Isabelle. You’ve worked hard, and you deserve it.”

“I’m sure it seems odd to you . . .”

“Not odd at all,” Lock said. “Have you decided what you’re wearing on Saturday?”

Gavin said, “Navy blazer, white shirt, madras pants, loafers.”

“Tie?” Lock said.

“No,” Gavin said. “But you should wear one, as the director.”

Lock nodded and moved on to his desk. Gavin let his breath go. The most crucial thing, he’d decided last night, was to get the money out of his car and into the bank, into the Nantucket’s Children operating fund. If it was in the fund, no one could accuse him of stealing it. But Gavin couldn’t just show up with $52,000 to deposit, could he?

C
laire had said she would come at two o’clock to help, but she didn’t show up until four, at which point Siobhan was at the end of her rope.

Claire said, “Sorry I’m so late. You’re not going to
believe
what happened!”

Did the woman think she was the only person with problems? Did she think she was the only person who was insanely busy? One thing was for certain: since she’d decided to cochair the gala, Claire had cornered the market on drama. Siobhan said nothing, and Claire stood there expectantly, waiting for Siobhan to bite. Siobhan would not bite! Siobhan was tired of the way things worked in this friendship, with Claire’s problems constantly taking top billing. She would not ask! She was in the middle of poaching six hundred lobsters, a hot and thankless fucking job: you had to rip the claws off the poor buggers before you dropped them in, otherwise the whole mess tasted like rubber bands. Siobhan would make Claire rip the claws off. Just thinking this made Siobhan smile, which Claire took as her cue to proceed.

“Isabelle isn’t speaking to me because of that stupid article in
NanMag
.”

Siobhan didn’t know how angry at Claire she really was until she decided, in that split second, to take Isabelle French’s side. “Well, she wasn’t mentioned at all. Not once.”