A Summer Affair (7 page)

A few days later, Claire and Siobhan went on one of their rare girls’ nights out, just the two of them, eating cheeseburgers and
frites
and drinking wine at Le Languedoc. There was a viognier on the wine list, and Claire’s mind flickered to Lock and how she had wanted, more than anything during that meeting, to please him. She ordered the wine, but she did not bring up the topic of Lock Dixon with Siobhan, because if she had, Siobhan would have teased her. Siobhan had something of the schoolyard bully in her. She taunted, she poked, she prodded; she was always making outlandish suggestions and daring Claire to join her. It was commonly understood that Siobhan was naughty and Claire was nice; Claire was sweet and Siobhan was spicy; Siobhan carried the pitchfork, Claire wore the halo. Siobhan cursed like a sailor and danced on tabletops. Claire carried spiders outside instead of smushing them in a paper towel like a normal person. Siobhan was the one people wanted to be stuck with on a deserted island; Claire was the choice if the plane was going down and there was only one parachute. She would hand it right over.

“Let’s go to the Chicken Box,” Siobhan said now. “Find a couple of hot guys and go dancing.”

“No way,” Claire said.

Siobhan frowned. Her darling square glasses slipped down her nose. “You’re no fun,” she said, inhaling her wine. “Why couldn’t I have gotten a sister-in-law who was fun? You’re a boring bore.”

Yes, Claire felt like a boring bore, but she also felt virtuous, and doubly so because she knew Siobhan wouldn’t go looking for trouble on her own, and she was correct. They paid their bill; they went home to their husbands.

The next day, at hockey practice, Siobhan’s son Liam got slammed against the boards and suffered a gruesome break in his arm. Carter flew with Liam to Boston, where he was going to be operated on, while Siobhan stayed home with Aidan and cried and worked her way around the rosary beads.

Surgery,
she said.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Cutting up my baby. Putting him under.

Claire went to the grocery store while the kids were at school, with the idea of getting a chicken to roast to take to Siobhan and Aidan, as well as some Oreos and ice cream to cheer them up. The store was quiet and nearly empty.

Claire was relieved that she and Siobhan had not misbehaved the other night. Unlike the Crispin brothers, Claire and Siobhan were Irish Catholics and hence were united in the belief that when you did something bad, something bad happened to you.

But what if that
wasn’t
true? Claire thought as she wandered down frozen foods in search of Häagen-Dazs. What if things weren’t connected? After all, Siobhan had behaved like a saint, and Liam still got hurt.

Claire heard a harsh laugh. She looked up and, at the other end of the aisle, saw Daphne Dixon. Ooooooooohhhh. Very bad. Claire could spend hours having conversations in the Stop & Shop with nearly anyone, but Daphne Dixon was someone Claire did her best, now, to avoid. She wanted to duck behind the tall display of dog food and disappear, but Daphne spotted her. The laugh, which sounded like the cackle of a satanic rock star, seemed to be aimed at Claire.

“Hi,” Claire called out. She waved but made no motion forward. She could get away with just this, perhaps—a wave and pivot—and at the expense of Siobhan’s ice cream, she was out of there. She did get a gander at Daphne, however, and was surprised to find that she looked fabulous. She’d had her hair colored so that it was very dark, and she wore a white tank top and a quilted jacket and a gold medallion necklace that glinted against her tan breastbone.

The first time Claire had ever laid eyes on Daphne Dixon had been ten years earlier. Claire was pregnant with J.D., and she and Jason were at a pool party. Claire was miserable, first of all because she was wearing a maternity bathing suit the size of a circus tent, and second, because everyone was drinking Coronas and margaritas except for her. Jason, who had never gotten the hang of being a sympathetic partner in pregnancy, was especially drunk. He pointed across the pool at Daphne Dixon, who was wearing a tan bikini that made her look nude, and said, “That woman has beautiful tits.”

She may indeed have had beautiful tits, and Jason may only have been making an innocent observation as he claimed, but once you’ve heard your husband say that a woman had “beautiful tits,” you could never give that woman a 100 percent endorsement.

Somehow, though, Daphne had won Claire over. Later, at that same party, Daphne cooed over Claire because she was pregnant. Daphne and Lock had a five-year-old daughter named Heather, and Daphne confided that she had very much wanted a second child, but she’d suffered complications after Heather was born. When she found out Claire was a glassblower, she went wild. She loved glass; she was a devotee of Dale Chihuly. She would love, someday, to see Claire’s work. Okay, Claire thought. (Claire worshipped Chihuly, too.) Daphne knew what she was talking about.

A year or so later, Daphne and Heather started spending more time on the island. Daphne enrolled Heather in the elementary school, and Lock commuted to Nantucket from Boston on the weekends. Claire saw Daphne every so often and they chatted about preschools and swim lessons and the commissions Claire was working on. Then Claire got pregnant with Ottilie, and Daphne, again, was interested and attentive. She even dropped off a tiny pink sweater at the hospital with a note that said, “As soon as you’re ready for a girls’ night out, call me!”

The Daphne Dixon that Claire remembered from those days was extremely normal and good-hearted. She was lovely, really.

Claire stopped in the chicken section and threw the biggest roaster she could find into her cart. She was afraid to look behind her.

“Claire?”

Claire turned, very slowly. Daphne was right there, inches from Claire’s face. Claire could smell Daphne’s perfume and something else: vinegar. The salad dressing, maybe, from Daphne’s lunch. Claire thought it again:
Ohhhhhhhhhh, very bad.

“Hi,” Claire said. She hadn’t seen Daphne Dixon in ages; her voice should convey more excitement. Instead it contained false enthusiasm, dread, the old, useless guilt, and fear that what was coming was not going to be pleasant. “Daphne, how are you?”

“Fine fine fine fine fine fine fine,” Daphne said, in a way that made Claire, like J.D., think,
Mental patient.
“I’m fine. Lock told me you’re chairing the gala this year.”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I am.”

“You know why they asked you, right?” Daphne said. “Right right right?”

“Right,” Claire said. “Because—”

“They want Max West,” Daphne said. “But Lock doesn’t think you’ll be able to deliver.” They’d been talking for ten seconds, and already Daphne had landed a jab. The most pronounced result of the car accident was that Daphne had lost the filter between the appropriate and the inappropriate. She had lost her ability to finesse social situations, to turn a blind eye, candy-coat, lie. “So Lock has a call in to Steven Tyler, from Aerosmith. We knew him a little in Boston.”

“Okay, but I’m pretty sure that—”

“And the other gal, Isabelle French? She’s making some calls to people on Broadway. Though frankly, I think she’s pretending to be more connected than she actually is.”

“I’ve never met her,” Claire said. “We have a meeting, though, next week.”

“I want you to tell me if Isabelle French makes any overtures toward my husband. Will you tell me?”

“Overtures?”

“If she touches him, or if they spend time alone together. I want you to call me. Between you and me, that woman is a viper. Here, I’m going to give you my card.” Daphne rifled through her purse, which was also quilted. She was wearing jeans and a pair of suede Jack Rogers sandals. She looked great, but this was just plain old deception. Daphne pulled out a business card and handed it to Claire. It was white, with Daphne’s name and various phone numbers printed in navy. Claire had never known anyone to have a business card just for herself, as a person. It was unusual, right, an affectation of the wealthy? The card should read
Daphne Dixon, Crazy Person
or
Daphne Dixon, Mental Patient
so that you would know never to dial the numbers. Even if you did see Isabelle French grabbing Lock Dixon by the necktie and planting a kiss on his lips.

“Okay,” Claire said. “Will do.”

“I mean it, Claire,” Daphne Dixon said. She tucked her very dark hair behind one red ear. Why was her ear so red? Agitation? She was standing so close to Claire that Claire could see the delicate purple veins of Daphne’s ear. “I want you to call me if you see anything, if you
suspect
anything. When I say ‘viper,’ I mean
viper.
She kissed another woman’s husband in front of everyone on the dance floor of the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom last spring. And it is a well-known fact that Isabelle French wants to fuck my husband.”

Claire laughed. She did not find that statement funny at all, but there was no point in further engaging the woman. Agree—
Yes, Daphne, you bet! I’ll let you know!
—and extricate yourself from the conversation. Get the hell out of there!

“You bet,” Claire said. She pushed her cart all the way to the ham, bacon, smoked sausages, pickles, and sauerkraut. She could feel Daphne Dixon behind her, but she was afraid to check. She stopped, feigning interest in sauerkraut, thinking that rather than have Daphne Dixon shadow her through the store, she would let Daphne pass her. She fingered a package of sauerkraut—Claire liked it, but no one else in the house did—and then she studied a jar of kosher dills.

“Pickles?” Daphne Dixon said. Claire was so spooked, she nearly dropped the jar. Daphne was right up against her back. “You’re not pregnant again, are you, Claire?”

Again, Claire laughed. “No,” she said.

“You’re sure? That was one of the things I said to Lock. The problem with asking you to cochair is that you’re always getting pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“At least you’re having sex,” Daphne said. “Which is more than we can say about yours truly. And if you’re having orgasms, then you’re really one up on me.”

Claire was annoyed to find her interest piqued by these statements. Lock and Daphne didn’t sleep together? So
did
Lock have a thing for Isabelle French? Was Claire stepping right into the middle of a messy situation? Friend from college, divorced . . . what if it had been Isabelle at the cozy meeting the week before, and not Claire? Would something have happened between them? But Claire had to cut bait here. Daphne was like an unsightly piece of toilet paper that Claire had dragged out of the ladies’ room on her high heel.

“Do you ever shower?” Daphne said. She sniffed in Claire’s general direction, and Claire looked down at her clothes: yoga pants, ratty sneakers, a white T-shirt that had turned pale gray and had a juice stain on the sleeve that looked like a gunshot wound. She had done some yoga positions that morning, she had attempted the sketch of the chandelier, she had had twenty phone conversations about Liam’s arm—what the doctor had said, the impending surgery—but she had not showered. Should she explain to Daphne about Liam, Siobhan, Children’s Hospital, the roast chicken? She didn’t smell like flowers, certainly, but did she stink? It was true that you couldn’t smell yourself. Maybe she did stink. But Daphne stank, too—like vinegar.

“I do shower,” Claire said, “though I haven’t yet today. I haven’t had a chance.”

“That’s the other thing about Lock asking you to chair the gala. Everyone knows you’re stretched out like old gum. Four kids, one of them a baby, and you let your career go down the tubes . . .”

“My career didn’t go down the tubes,” Claire said.

“Lock and I love your glass. But now it’s gone.” Daphne snapped her fingers. “Dust. Vapor.” She took a deep, dramatic breath. “We need the gala to succeed, Claire. We need someone who can give it a
dedicated effort
.”

Claire felt tears prick her eyelids. And that was the problem, now, with Daphne: she told you the unadulterated truth about yourself until you cried. She didn’t do it to be mean; she simply couldn’t help herself. Minutes earlier, Claire had been thinking about how things weren’t connected, how there was no tit for tat, no retribution for one’s actions visited on one from above—but maybe she was mistaken. This verbal assault right now was one small piece of payback for everything that had happened the night of Daphne’s accident. The irreparable damage that had no name was this: Daphne was now rude, and not only rude but mean; she forgot things easily; she repeated herself a hundred times—whole thoughts and ideas as well as individual words. It became a verbal tic, this repetition; it became a stutter. She had remarked to Julie Jackson, while her head was still swathed in bandages, “I can see everything now. Everything is crystal clear.” But that seemed to mean she had complete disregard for the rules of polite society, for small talk, for being thought of as kind and amenable. Instead, she was sharp-tongued and venomous; she was notoriously brutal. Nobody liked Daphne Dixon anymore; she set out to sting people, like a wasp. She was her own doppelgänger now, after the accident. She was a bowl of cream gone rancid.

It was always Claire who stuck up for her.

She’s not that bad, really. When she’s on her medication, she’s perfectly fine.

The guilt, old and useless, was tar in her hair; it was an invisible thread snarled around her heart. Claire had bought the last drink, she had not
absolutely insisted
that Daphne get into the taxi, and a woman’s personality had been forever altered. Daphne was somebody else now, and Claire blamed herself.

Here, in the chilly outer ring of the Stop & Shop, Claire was receiving her just deserts: Daphne was holding up a mirror and forcing Claire to look. How can you chair the gala when you can’t even get a shower? When you were careless in the hot shop and put yourself into preterm labor? When you won’t face the fact that your baby isn’t now, and may never be, right? How can you give it a dedicated effort?

“My nephew broke his arm playing hockey and was medevaced to Boston,” Claire said. “I have to go. I want to make Siobhan some dinner.”