Off Season (12 page)

“They can’t come because Carol Ann and John are coming,” Jill said wearily. “It’s a family dinner.”

“Oh, Mother, that’s absurd. We’re hardly the Cleavers. Besides, no one does family dinners anymore.”

Jill stood up, went to the cabinet, removed a large mug, and dropped in a tea bag. “Maybe it’s time to reinvent that.”

“But Mom, it’s rude. You drag this guy to the island. You can’t just ignore him.”

Oh. So it was Devon, the bald one, the one she’d
dragged
from Albany.

“Jimmy is perfectly capable of entertaining Devon,” she said. “Besides, they have work to do.”

“Well, I still think it’s rude.”

Jill pressed a hand to her temple. “Amy, please. I’m tired. Tell me how your day was. How’s the Halloween party coming?”

Amy averted her eyes the way she did whenever she was exasperated with her mother. “I decided to do the whole place in black light and decorate only in Gothic and glow. I hope you can manage to get there and not be out of town.”

Black light, Gothic, and glow. Her daughter definitely had creativity. Not without guilt, Jill wondered if Amy’s talents would go undeveloped on the island and subsequently be lost.

Ignoring the hint of sarcasm that had crept into Amy’s voice, Jill said, “Ben and I will be at the party. It sounds really great.”

“It’s not great, Mom. But it’s the best I can do here on the Vineyard.”

She didn’t sound as if she were complaining, but still, Jill could relate.

“You’re not trapped here, Amy. You know that.” She wasn’t sure she was saying that to reassure herself or her daughter.

“I know, Mother. I’m here because I want to be. I don’t need that other stupid world. Why won’t you believe that?” She turned on her platform sneakers and clomped from the room.

Staring after her daughter, Jill wondered how it was that Amy knew herself so well, when Jill, twenty-eight years older, often didn’t know herself at all. She took her tea from the microwave and wondered if her daughter would lose some of that unbending allegiance to the island once she learned what had happened to Ben, once she learned what was going to happen if her mother, Mrs. Cleaver, did not reacquaint herself with that other stupid world.

It was getting into the best scallop season, when the tiniest Nantucket Bay scallops were reaching their peak of melt-in-your-mouth sweetness. Jill hoped scallops would put the family in a wonderful mood and take the edge off the news she and Ben had to tell—and help Ben be more comfortable in telling it.

She also wondered why her middle name had not been Pollyanna.

Late that afternoon she had left Devon with a preliminary edit of the Cranberry Day story, hurried to the fish cooperative, then raced to the produce market, determined to create a magnificent dinner, even if it could not cushion the news. The important thing was that they were moving forward, telling the children, doing something that would make her feel more in control of the otherwise bleak situation.

It would be out in the open, there would be no secrets, and they could
talk
about it like normal, grown-up adults who had nothing to hide from the people they loved.

Then Jill could talk to Addie. Then she could secure a top-notch attorney who would make everything right. And then maybe some of the drawn, puttylike paleness would leave Ben’s face.

She was taking homemade blueberry buckle from the
oven when the telephone rang. She glanced at the clock: five-forty-five. Only forty-five minutes until John and Carol Ann arrived. She almost let the machine answer the phone, but it could be the studio: Devon or Jimmy might have a question. Setting the hot dish on the butcher block counter, she picked up the cordless.

It was not the studio, it was John.

“I hope you haven’t gone to a lot of trouble,” Ben’s son-in-law said, “because we can’t make dinner.”

Jill’s gaze fell on the blueberry buckle. It looked as sumptuous as any her mother had ever created. “Oh,” she replied. “Is everyone all right?”

The pause that followed could have been Jill’s imagination, but she did not think so.

“Yes, well, I have some work to catch up on. And Emily has a cold. We hate to leave her with a baby-sitter.”

Jill wanted to say that their family was more important than John’s work, and that she didn’t believe for a minute that Emily had a cold. She wanted to ask what was really going on. But John was Ben’s son-in-law, not hers, and Jill still was unsure what position was expected of the stepmother to a nearly thirty-year-old woman with a family of her own.

“Well,” she said, “that’s too bad. Can we reschedule?”

There was that pause again.

“Let me get back to you, okay? We’re so busy.”

She decided this was bull. “Ben needs his family, John.”

“So do I,” John replied. “If he intends to tell Carol Ann, I can’t stop him. But I honestly feel he should keep this to himself and not drag her—or us—into it.”

Staring at the blueberry buckle, she was surprised it did not explode into flames—an incendiary response to the heat and anger that now flared inside her. “You’re wrong, John. You’re not being fair.”

“And another thing,” John added. “Don’t count on the kids going with you to Sturbridge. I think they should stick close to Carol Ann and me until this mess blows over. If Carol Ann knew the truth, I’m sure she’d agree. Take care, Jill.”

He hung up as unexpectedly as he’d called.

Jill sat there a moment, listening to the dial tone. Then Amy appeared in the kitchen.

“What time does the rest of the family arrive?” she asked coolly.

“They don’t,” Jill answered. “Carol Ann and John can’t make it.”

“Great,” she said, her voice shifting to normal as she swooped down on the dessert. “Maybe I’ll run some of this over to the studio. Is it blueberry?”

Ben was learning to kill time. He’d replaced the windows in the Oak Bluffs workshop, visited the contractor who was going to handle the house foundations at Sea Grove, gone out to the job site and walked around a few hundred times pretending to be checking things out though there was nothing yet to check and wouldn’t be until they broke ground in spring.

He wondered if this was how he’d kill every day from now until the trial, then decided all he really needed was to kill this day, at least until dinner.

He still didn’t want to tell the girls. But Jill was insistent, and he did not have the strength to argue, or the brains to sort it out and make a rational decision himself. He used to have brains. He used to have a quick mind that could calculate the cost of a high-ticket renovation right there on the spot, a mind that could visualize every post and every beam of a job before it was a job. But since his arrest, he often couldn’t remember where he’d left his keys. And worse, he often didn’t care.

When he arrived back in Edgartown, he parked the car and walked up the path to the house. Instinctively, he went to the kitchen. Jill was there, sitting silently. Amy stood at the counter shoveling something with blueberries into a refrigerator container.

Jill looked up. “They’re not coming,” she said.

He slouched against the doorway. “Not coming?” She must have meant Carol Ann. She must have meant John.

She shook her head.

He glanced over at Amy, who seemed happy, unaffected by the knowledge of his problems. Carol Ann was probably happy, too. Perhaps he’d been right to leave them out of this.

He turned to Jill, who looked as tired as he felt. “This isn’t going to work, is it?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I guess not.”

Amy loaded the container into a paper bag. “What’s not going to work?”

“Nothing,” he said. He needed to ask Jill what really had happened, why dinner had been canceled, and if it was because of John. He needed to ask, but he could not ask with Amy right there.

He pulled off his baseball cap, hating this cloak-and-dagger stuff, hating that he could not even be himself in his own goddamn house even though technically the house was his wife’s and not his.

“Well,” he said steadily, “I guess that means all the more scallops for us.”

“Not me,” Amy said. “I’ll be in Oak Bluffs.” She picked up the bag, grabbed her jacket, and blew out the door.

He turned back to Jill.

“Let’s not talk about it,” she said, standing up. “I’m sick to death of talking about it, so please, not tonight.”

When Rita called in the morning, Jill was sitting in the bedroom, trying to decide when—how—she would tell Ben that she’d agreed to do
Good Night, USA
after all. They had not made love since that day in the workshop; despite their bond and what she’d thought was their love, the day-today edge was not going away. Last night’s aborted dinner had not helped. Nor had matters improved later, when she’d told him that his grandchildren would not be going to Sturbridge Village. He had gone to bed quietly at a quarter to eight.

“So I haven’t told Charlie yet,” Rita was saying. “Now it looks as if I won’t have to, if he’s in Florida all winter. With that woman.”

Jill tried to focus on what Rita was saying. “But it’s not right,” Jill said into the phone. “He should be given the choice.” Though the words conveyed her true feelings about Rita’s situation, Jill had an anesthetic feeling of being one person on the surface and another underneath. Friend on the surface, tormented soul beneath. Public persona versus reality. Once it had been an acceptable way of life. But then the stakes had not been as great
because she had not really cared. Or loved. “Maybe Charlie’s testing you,” she added. “To see if you’ll notice that he’s gone.”

“He asked me to find a winter renter for his apartment. That hardly sounds like a test. Which reminds me,” she added, “what about Amy? It would be perfect for her, Jill. And it’s only two blocks from you.”

“No,” Jill said without hesitation. “I told you, she’s too young.” She was beginning to feel like the “broken record” her mother had always referred to when Jill asked for “permission” to do things with Rita.

Can I go to the movies? Can I go to the dance? Can I go to Illumination Night without a chaperone this year?

No
.

No
.

No
.

Don’t ask anymore. I’m not a broken record
.

Fast-forward another generation. Different sound system. Same record.

“God, Jill, I don’t understand you. When you were her age, you left the island. You were totally on your own.”

“Maybe I want her life to be easier than that. Maybe I want to protect her a little more. Besides, she’s not as mature as I was.”

“Bullshit. She’s probably more mature. She’s been through more.”

Jill made no comment.

“She’d be happier, Jill. And Charlie would be thrilled.”

And then she realized whose agenda Rita had in mind. And why. “Wait a minute,” Jill said. “If Charlie’s apartment is rented, he might be more inclined to leave the island for the winter. Then you could be sure of avoiding him, right?”

What followed was silence—sweet, “so there” silence.

“You say you don’t understand me, Rita. Well, I can
say the same for you. You’re pushing Charlie into that other woman’s arms.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jill, stop overreacting. I’ve already told you I’m not going to marry him, so what’s the difference?”

Jill closed her eyes and wondered why she was arguing with her best friend over things that really didn’t matter to her. She was so tired, worn out from talking and analyzing and trying to figure out how to do what and when. “Forget it,” she said. “Do what you want.”

“I’m not working at the tavern now. I’m staying home to oversee my mother, who’s begun knitting booties. Anyway, keeping my distance from Charlie should help.”

“What about the Halloween party?”

“I told Amy I’d be there. Guess I’ll go as a pumpkin.”

“Rita—”

“No more advice, Jill. I know how you feel.”

She paused a moment, then said, “No, Rita, I said before, whether or not you tell Charlie is your business. I just want you to remember that life, that
relationships
, are fragile. Even friendships.” She felt herself grin. “But I guess we’ve proved that.”

Suddenly Ben came into the room holding what looked like a FedEx envelope. His teeth were clenched, and his gray eyes were dark.

He stared at her a moment, then said, “Hang up the phone.”

She looked at the envelope. And then she knew.

“Rita, I have to go,” she said slowly, then clicked off without saying good-bye. She sat there, eyes glued to her demise, waiting for Ben to erupt as he probably would. As he probably should.

“What the hell is this?” He tossed the cardboard envelope in her lap.

She looked down at the white, orange, and purple. The tearstrip had been torn, and the contents were exposed.

“I thought it was something for me,” Ben said. “Bids for Sea Grove. I thought wrong.”

For the first time since she’d known Ben, Jill felt fury. And it was coming from him. “Ben, I—” she began, “I did it for us.”

“For
us?”
Surprisingly, he did not shout, but his voice shook, and he had not moved, not a muscle, not a breath. “You lied to me—for us? Please explain how lying to me is going to help
us.”