Nantucket (24 page)

Perhaps the lesson of the dream was that you just had to deal with things. “Wine glass,” said someone whose face he never saw. “Good thinking.”

Andrew went back into the bedroom he seemed to be sharing with Janis and let her hold him until he stopped shaking. “Who were they after?” she said finally. “And well done, by the way.”

“Shiva, I suppose,” he said. “I think there was only one of them.”

“There is never only one,” said Janis. “And George is also an obvious target.”

They lay in each other's arms for a bit. It had not previously occurred to Andrew that she was the Governor's protection detail. This did raise a question though: why had she let Andrew go into the hall? Perhaps to help him maintain the edge Wall Street required.

“Do I need to do anything else?” said Andrew.

“Given that you're still alive, no.”

When he woke up, it took Andrew a minute to remember
that none of what he thought he remembered had happened. It was a dream. Dreams were poems, according to Rosemary. When they pulled up at his house, he forgot his dream for the second time.

George said he needed to talk to Janis and went up to the study. Presumably he intended to consult her about Judy, as Rosemary had “suggested.” Rosemary said she needed to find “Cynthia Jane.” She told Andrew he was in charge of lunch and walked away. Another command. Sally said she'd help but Andrew ignored her offer and immersed himself in hamburger cookery, which he was actually pretty good at.

Shiva materialised in the kitchen. He'd been lying on his bed, wide awake, not having died but having slept for no more than twenty minutes. “Where's Judy?” he asked.

“Out in the garden, talking to Joe,” said Sally. She continued to hang around.

“And Cathy?” said Shiva.

“Back in her room,” said Sally.

“I suppose at some stage you'll be wanting to get your clothes,” said Andrew. Knowing she was a prostitute made him want to be polite to her, but he feared it kept sounding like he was telling her to leave.

“Mostly I've been wearing Cathy's,” she said. “My own things are in the servant's room – so let me know when it would be convenient for me to go in there.

“But no hurry,” she added. “I assume I'll be here until tomorrow or Tuesday. There will be a lot of clean-up. It won't be hard to get a mid-week plane ticket, will it Andrew? Or if you and Cathy are flying to New York, I could drive your car to the ferry and take it back there for you later.”

Andrew found this speech remarkable. Joe was sitting in
a far corner of the garden, trying to figure out how to make Sally both rich and happy, while Sally reassumed the role of domestic servant. And like a good domestic servant, she was ignoring the fact that Cathy and Andrew were in the process of separating. She was ignoring everything that had happened in the past two days, if you thought about it. “Maybe you should set the table,” he told her.

Minutes passed. Andrew made a tossed salad, made hamburger patties, thought about his daughters. One was angry and one was not. Florence had always been accommodating, even when she was three years old. If you told the two of them, “Change of plans. We're not going to the circus today after all,” Florence would look up at you like an angel and say, “Next week?” Eleanor would turn bright red and break a lamp.

In a corner of his consciousness, he saw Sally go out onto the porch, stare at the ocean for a while, sit down in one of the wicker chairs. The thought floated past that she was probably exhausted from the burden of pretending to be Cathy, and now that Cathy had returned, from the burden of pretending everything was fine. Was he supposed to do something about that – and if so, what?

On Friday, Sally had had control of him. “Suffering instructs,” she had blithely told him, and it was clear who would be doing the suffering. Now he had control of her. She was a supplicant, asking to be given a chore to do so she wouldn't feel awkward. “Control” was a word, and a concept, that sometimes had erotic content, but just now it didn't seem to. Just now it had to do with the accidents that control our lives. Andrew had married Cathy because he thought he ought to, even though abortions could be legally obtained. Cathy had seemed to be keen on the idea. Neither of them had had a clue about the
other – and they chose to regard their foolishness as romantic.

Cathy had turned out to have both of their daughters' temperaments at once. She went along, and then was angry that she had, which produced in Andrew an endless cycle of hope and disappointment. Shiva was right – was it Shiva or someone else? – right that we have several natures, which “manifest” at different times. He might have added that we have alternative fates, which take control at different times. Andrew didn't know much about Indian philosophy. Perhaps he should look into it. It occurred to him in a languorous way that perhaps everyone at the house party was part of one collective consciousness. This was succeeded by the less peaceful thought that in a collective consciousness, everyone would share everyone else's happiness but also everyone else's pain.

15

As if to demonstrate this proposition, everything then happened at once.

George reappeared. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “Can't someone else worry about the hamburgers?”

“They'll be ready in a couple of minutes,” said Andrew.

“No one but you will be ready for lunch in a couple of minutes,” said George.

“What am I supposed to do, then – take them off the grill half cooked and finish them later? That works with steak but not with hamburgers.” He might have added that George's co-conspirator Rosemary had insisted he start making lunch, but just then Rosemary came in.

“You realise that young woman is sitting on the porch weeping?” she said.

“Sally?” said Andrew.

“Of course,” said Rosemary.

“I need to talk to you, old friend,” said the Governor in that famously persuasive voice he had. He wasn't interested in Sally's problems.

Cathy burst into the kitchen. “Andrew,” she said without
preliminaries, “Florence is engaged. She just called. I said you'd call her back right away.” She was radiant.

“His name is Richard, right?” said Andrew.

“Of course it is, you silly man,” said Cathy. She was ten years younger.

Rosemary turned away and went outside again. She wouldn't have liked that flashback to a happy marriage.

“I'd better call,” said Andrew. He handed the Governor the hamburger turner.

“I left my phone in our bedroom,” said Cathy. “Just hit ‘recent calls.'”
Our
bedroom.

“I am not a hamburger chef,” said George to the retreating Andrew.

As he went up the stairs, he thought he heard Cathy saying, “Be a good sport, George,” which would have made him laugh if he hadn't been so full of uncertainty. No one had ever gotten George to do anything.

At the top of the stairs he heard quiet sobbing. It was coming from the tiny study. He could hear it through the door. His good angel told him he couldn't ignore it. Janis – he assumed it was Janis – was in the tiny study in service of the deal, in service of his fees. She was in Nantucket serving the Governor. Whatever had just passed between them had made George need to talk to Andrew. Florence was presumably happy. She could wait five minutes. He opened the study door.

Janis looked up. “I'll be all right in a bit,” she said. “I do apologise. No, come in. It's your house.” She wiped her eyes. Andrew closed the door. He sat down across the desk from her. “The Concert of Nantucket has hit a speed bump,” she said, attempting a laugh.

“Go on,” said Andrew.

“I guess I thought I would be part of the deal,” she said, “after Lydia's dramatic appearance.”

“Do you want a hug?” said Andrew impulsively. He probably knew what she was going to tell him.

“Yes, but I'm not entitled to one,” said Janis. She'd almost recovered her competent professional tone. “Let me explain.”

“Not required,” said Andrew. He felt foolish having offered to hug her, but she didn't seem to hold it against him.

“If I tell you what happened, I can put it behind me. And you're easier to talk to than anyone else.” She gathered herself together. “I mistakenly assumed, based on Lydia's professed readiness to let the Governor divorce her – rather than the other way round – that what happened last night could be the start of something. The Governor and I would gradually ‘come out' as…good friends. At the appropriate moment, we would become more than that. Publicly, that is. Sounds silly when I say it, but girls have dreams.

“I was startled when he and Rosemary went to the store the minute Lydia left. He should have wanted to talk to me.”

“You and George did sleep together last night, right?” said Andrew, remembering his dream.

“As did you and Lady Rosemary,” said Janis.

“Doesn't sex trump talking?”

“Yes and no,” said Janis.

Andrew knew it was absurd to let doubts about Rosemary creep into his own brain.

“I knew it was absurd to worry about the Governor going off with Rosemary,” said Janis. “And I am very good at not worrying about things I can't do anything about. So I sat up here drafting.”

“You didn't share your worries with Judy?”

“Of course not,” said Janis. “She was glowing with happiness. I sent her to quiz Joe about pre-nups. But then the Governor reappeared and began explaining why Judy shouldn't go away with Shiva. Like he was Judy's father or something.”

“Which he is.”

“Her technical father,” she said with a smile. “Her biological father. But he hasn't paid much attention to her up to now. I mean, she's happy about it, but I have to say it was pretty slack not make some sort of contact in all those years.”

“He paid her tuition.”

“She got scholarships.”

“They were made to look like scholarships,” said Andrew.

“That's illegal. He would have gotten a tax deduction for a charitable contribution to Harvard when what he was really doing was spending his money on something he wanted. I don't honestly think either the Governor or Harvard would have done that.”

“Neither of us has seen his tax returns...”

“They aren't the point,” said Janis. She paused and smiled at him. “And you and I don't need to be arguing. The point, as it affects
me
, is that I don't think he was talking about Judy and Shiva. He was talking about George and Janis. Judy is too young, he said. Shiva is too old. He isn't that well, even if he looks healthy. He could leave her a widow in only a few years. Shiva has a position in the world that would expose Judy to ‘uncomfortable journalistic attentions.' That was his phrase. Judy has her whole life ahead of her. Marrying Shiva would shut off too many possibilities.” Janis slowed. “That sort of thing. No thought being given to Judy's feelings, actually.” She paused again. “It came to me that he was breaking the news slowly.”

“No more four-poster bed,” said Andrew.

“Oh, I might sleep with him tonight.” She laughed. “It would be a way of kissing my dream goodbye.”

“Well, I wouldn't make any assumptions,” said Andrew. “He suddenly had an urgent need to speak to me. It's hard to know what's going on in his head.”

“The Governor is a world-class politician,” said Janis. “You never really get to see what he thinks.”

“But he has to know you're in love with him,” he said.

“What difference would that make?” she said. “Hundreds of women think they're in love with him.”

“They don't work in his office,” said Andrew. “They haven't devoted every waking hour to him for – what is it? – three years. Have you even had a date with someone else in all that time?”

“Umm,” said Janis.

“I'll take that for a ‘no.'”

“Close enough,” she said. They sat in silence for a moment. “You know, the thing is,” Janis continued, “I'm probably not in love with him, or not in the way adults ought to be. I took the job because it seemed exciting, and then I became intoxicated with the situation. I became the heroine of my own invented love story – something my mother distinctly warned me about.”

“Because she'd done the same?” said Andrew.

“Good guess,” said Janis. “So I suppose the real reason I was crying was out of embarrassment.”

Andrew wanted to ask a question but he hesitated. “Did you start to cry before he came downstairs?”

“Of course not,” she said.

There was a knock at the study door. The Governor stuck his head in. “It's OK,” he said. “I don't need to talk to you after all, Andrew.” He looked at Janis. “I talked to Shiva. He
understands. And lunch may be ready.” He stepped back into the hall and closed the door.

“You see?” said Janis, who now seemed to be in complete control of herself. “This is not about Judy. But I've got to prevent him from messing things up for her.”

“You think she should actually marry an Indian prince who is older than her father?” said Andrew.

“Quite possibly,” said Janis. “She's good with grown-ups. She entered Harvard when she was fifteen. If she thinks it will work, it will probably work.” She paused. “And she doesn't have to marry him tomorrow. At least she ought to get to see a tiger.”

Andrew started to have a thought about how admirable Janis was, pushing her own disappointment aside to worry about her friend, but he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be calling Florence.

“Come down to lunch as soon as you feel up to it,” said Andrew. “We can talk some more if you want this afternoon – or we can put this whole conversation down the memory hole if that's easier for you – but right now I have to make a phone call.”