Silver Girl (21 page)

“God, yes,” Connie said. Now that he had basically given her permission, she opened the wine and poured herself a hefty cup. She said, “Meredith, do you want wine?”

“No, thanks,” Meredith said. She was standing by the trap, watching Dan as he put on heavy work gloves and pulled the lobsters out one by one, securing thick blue rubber bands on each claw. He then set the disenfranchised lobsters in an industrial-size white cooler that he had pulled out from the hold. Meredith seemed mesmerized by this work. Well, it wasn’t anything she would have seen on the French Riviera.

Connie took her wine up to the bow, and lay back in the sun.

Despite her best intentions, she must have fallen asleep because when she next looked up, the lobster trap was gone and the cooler with the lobsters had been tucked under the seats at the stern. Dan had his fishing pole out, and Connie saw that Meredith held the other fishing pole; she was standing next to Dan, reeling in her line.

Connie sat up. She had to pee.

She heard Meredith say, “So there was one time at the pool at Princeton where I dove like that for Freddy, only I was better then because I was younger and I had just been in training. And I was thinking that Freddy would be impressed, that he would think I was so talented, so athletic, so limber—I mean, even from a
sexual
standpoint it should have turned him on, right? But instead of being impressed, he… well, I didn’t really understand his reaction. He was nonplussed. He didn’t like watching me dive for some reason. And so I stopped doing it. There were times in subsequent years when we were at someone’s pool and there was a diving board and I would whip out a front two and a half like I did today—it’s a deceptively easy dive—and Freddy would seethe. He accused me of showing off. He was threatened by my diving. I should have seen that as a sign.” Meredith cast her line back out; her reel whizzed. “Why didn’t I see that as a sign?”

Dan laughed. “Hindsight,” he said.

“Hindsight in my case was worth about fifty billion dollars,” Meredith said.

Connie reached for her wine. It was warm. She ditched it over the side and stumbled to the back of the boat for more.

Dan and Meredith were so deep in conversation that they didn’t even notice she was awake. She poured another cup of wine and wondered if Dan
liked
Meredith, then decided not. All their lives, boys had enjoyed talking to Meredith—she was smart, quick, funny—but Connie was beautiful and that had always trumped smart.

Even Freddy Delinn had once—yes, he had once made a pass at her. Connie had banished that memory—she thought, permanently—from her mind.

She secured her wine in one of the round cup holders situated conveniently around the boat, then she climbed up onto the side and dove in. Smack! Again, the water came too fast. Her chest burned and her scraped knee stung. She let herself drift down into the cool depths and she peed, sweet release. She knew there was sea life below her—all of those lobsters for starters and probably a lot of other sinister creatures. That far out, maybe even sharks. But the wine and the nap gave Connie a lethargy that made her want to float beneath the surface for a minute.

Seven or eight years earlier, Freddy had brought Connie a cocktail on the deck of the house in Cap d’Antibes. Wolf had been out jogging, and Meredith had run into town to an antiques store to take a second look at something she’d wanted to buy. That part of the story made sense in Connie’s memory, but Freddy bringing her a cocktail—a very cold, very crisp gin and tonic with lots of lime—had been a surprise, because Freddy didn’t drink. So the drink was a flirtation; Connie had sensed that right away. And there was something about the look on Freddy’s face when he brought it to her. Connie had always felt insecure when visiting the Delinns—in Manhattan, in Palm Beach, in France—because of money, she supposed. It was impossible, in the face of all that money, to feel that one measured up. And so, to compensate, Connie flaunted her beauty. On the evening that Freddy brought her the drink, she was already dressed for dinner. She was wearing a long patio dress in an orange and pink paisley; the dress had a plunging neckline, putting her breasts on display. At home in America, Connie would only have worn that dress privately, for Wolf. But this was the south of France, where everyone seemed determined to show off what they had.

Freddy was still in his robe. He had looked appreciatively at Connie’s breasts, and he let Connie catch him looking, which seemed a brazen thing to do. He gave her the drink, she sipped it, they leaned together on the railing that looked down the cliff over the Mediterranean.

Then he turned toward her and she meant, as a grasp at light conversation, to ask him what his ethnic background was. The name “Delinn” was French, right? But just then, Freddy said, “You’re an incredibly beautiful woman, Constance.”

Connie was rendered speechless. She nodded, though barely. She wasn’t struck by Freddy’s actual words—people had been telling her she was beautiful her whole life—but by how he said it. He had said it with
intent,
as though he meant to carry her up to his bedroom and make love to her right that second. He had used her full name, Constance, which made her feel sophisticated. And then he leaned in and kissed her, and with one deft hand, he cupped her breast, which was thinly sheathed behind the silk of her dress. She felt a stab of arousal and she made a gasping noise. She and Freddy separated and stared at each other for a fierce, hot second, then Connie left the deck. She took her drink up to the guest room, where she sat on the bed, waiting for Wolf to return.

Even now, what struck Connie about that encounter was Freddy’s confidence, his authority, his sense of entitlement as he reached out to kiss her and touch her body. He had no qualms about putting his hands on something that did not belong to him.

Connie felt arms close in around her, and she squirmed, confused and afraid. She was being pulled to the surface.

“What?” she choked.

Dan was in the water next to her, holding her roughly under one arm. “Thank God,” he said. “I thought you were drowning.”

“Drowning?” she said.

“You fell in dangerously close to our lines,” he said.

From the side of the boat, Meredith waved. “Are you okay?”

“I didn’t fall,” Connie said. “I dove in.”

“All I saw was the splash,” Dan admitted. “But you’ve had so much wine, I was worried.”

So much
wine?
Connie thought.

“I’m fine,” Connie assured him. She swam away from him, toward the ladder on the back of the boat. There was the name again.
Nicky.
What a weird afternoon.

They stayed on the water until well after five o’clock. The sun mellowed in its slant, and Connie, despite the fact that she was being watched like a teenager, finished off the second bottle of chardonnay, though not by herself. As they motored back into the harbor, Meredith agreed to a glass. Connie and Meredith sat in the bow of the boat together, and Dan turned on some Jimmy Buffett, and the gold dome of the Unitarian Church glinted in the sun, and Connie decided that it had been a good day.

Meredith turned to Connie as Dan was tying the boat up in the slip and said, “You were right. I’m glad I came.”

Once on land, they made a plan. Dan would drop them at home and return at seven o’clock for a lobster dinner.

Connie liked this idea. What she liked, she realized, was being back on her home turf. She started by making herself a very tall, very cold, very citrusy gin and tonic—reminiscent of the one prepared for her by Freddy Delinn—and carried it with her into the outdoor shower. When designing the shower, Wolf had built a special shelf for Connie’s dressing drink, a feature that was, in her mind, the utmost in civility. She took a long shower, then wrapped herself in a towel, freshened her drink in the kitchen, and headed upstairs to dress.

Meredith popped out of her room and said, “I checked around the house and the car. Nothing happened while we were gone.”

Connie waved a dismissive hand. “Of course not.”

She put on a white cotton sundress and let her hair dry naturally. She moisturized her face—she had gotten a lot of sun—and applied mascara. Her hand wobbled with the wand, and the makeup smudged, and Connie cursed and got a cotton ball to wipe the mess away and start over.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, she put out crackers and Brie and a hunk of good cheddar and a jar of truffled honey. She poked a fork into three baking potatoes and accidentally stabbed her palm. She turned on the oven, though she hated to do it on such a warm evening. She refreshed her drink, and Meredith appeared and Connie said brightly, “Tanqueray and tonic?”

Meredith said, “I’ll stick to wine.”

Connie realized there was still a bottle in the cooler. She hadn’t emptied the cooler; the picnic things were still in there, now sitting in two inches of water. She pulled out the container of potato salad and the thermos of soup. Were the sandwiches okay? Veronica, Connie’s mother, would have tossed them. She couldn’t abide leftovers, especially not in the form of sandwiches that, however well wrapped, would be a touch soggy. But Wolf had been raised in a more abstemious household with parents from the Depression era, and he never threw food away. So, in Wolf’s honor, Connie put the sandwiches in the fridge.

She said to Meredith, “I wish we had blueberry pie. One should always have blueberry pie with a lobster dinner, but I don’t have time to run out and get a pie now. So we’ll have to eat these cupcakes for dessert.” Connie pulled the plastic wrap off the top of the cupcakes, and the icing smeared. She wondered briefly what her mascara looked like.
You’re an incredibly beautiful woman, Constance;
that was what Freddy had said so many years earlier, but no woman was beautiful with smudged makeup. Freddy’s voice had been serious and stagy, as though he were a movie star born and bred, instead of some poor kid from upstate New York. The icing on the cupcakes—peanut-butter icing—was an unfortunate shade of brown, Connie realized now. It looked like…

She still had to shuck the corn, put on water for both the corn and the lobsters, tear greens for a salad, whip up a dressing, and clarify three sticks of butter. She gulped the rest of her drink and poured another and squeezed what was left of the lime into it. She heard someone say,
Really, Connie, another
drink?
And she looked up, thinking it was Meredith, but Meredith was at the back door watching Harold frolic in the waves. Meredith had washed her hair and put on her white shorts and navy tunic. She hadn’t worn that outfit since the evening she’d been photographed in it, so Connie was happy that she felt okay putting it on, and besides, she looked good. The sun lit her up like a statue. This had been Wolf’s favorite time of day. The room was starting to spin, but no, Connie didn’t have time. Water for lobsters and corn, salad dressing, set the table. Find the lobster crackers and picks. She wished they had blueberry pie.

At the stroke of seven, there was a knock at the door. Dan was one of those prompt people. Wolf, too, had strived for promptness, but Connie consistently made him late. She came by it honestly; her parents had been late to absolutely everything.
Late to my own funeral,
Veronica used to say. Wolf would get so mad, and as much as Connie didn’t like to think about it, she and Wolf had fought. Connie took a fortifying gulp of her drink despite the fact that her vision was blurring and her heels kept slipping off the backs of her espadrilles. The water for both the corn and the lobsters was boiling—too early, if they were to enjoy a proper cocktail hour—but the salad looked crisp and fresh, and the salad dressing was complete, though Connie’s fingertips now smelled like garlic. Meredith had set the table for three.

Dan knocked again. Connie hurried to the front door and nearly turned her ankle. Stupid shoes.

She opened the door and there was Dan, showered and handsome in a white shirt and jeans, which was Connie’s favorite outfit on any man. He was holding a bakery box in one hand and a large paper bag that contained the lobsters in the other hand. He held out the bakery box.

“For dessert,” he said.

Connie took the box. It was a blueberry pie.

“Oh!” she said. She looked at Dan, thinking,
This is incredible, the man read my mind.
It was more than a lucky guess; it had to be fate. They were simpatico. Dan knew that a lobster dinner needed blueberry pie. “Thank you!”

She took a stutter step backward and nearly lost her balance, but Dan grabbed her arm. She said, “Whoa, geez, these shoes. I’d better take them off before I break my neck. Come in, hello.” She moved in to kiss him, hoping for a kiss like the one he’d given her that morning, but this kiss was perfunctory and dry. He seemed somewhat less enchanted by her than when he’d arrived to pick them up for the boat trip. Quite possibly, Connie thought, he didn’t even want to be here. Quite possibly, he’d only come out of a sense of obligation, because he had the lobsters.

As Connie headed back into the kitchen, she tried to figure out what she’d done that day to put him off. Maybe he’d decided he just didn’t like her. She liked
him;
she liked that he was prompt. She liked that he had brought blueberry pie.

She said, “Can I get you a drink?”

He said, “Sure. Do you have any beer?”

Beer again. Connie hadn’t thought about beer. She checked the fridge and found two green bottles of Heineken in the back, thank God, bought by one of her houseguests, probably Toby, before he quit for good. Toby used to drink beer even after his first try at rehab, because he claimed beer wasn’t alcohol. Drinking beer was like drinking juice, Toby said. It was like drinking milk. Toby was an alcoholic, as purely and classically as their mother, Veronica, had been, but he’d beaten it now. He was sober. Connie pulled a beer out, opened it, poured it into a glass and watched it foam all over her counter.

Dan was out on the deck with Meredith, admiring the water. Meredith pointed out Harold’s dark head. She said something and Dan laughed. Connie wondered again if Dan liked Meredith. Maybe they would be a better couple. But that was silly. Connie was glad to see Meredith outside on the deck. She hadn’t ventured out to the deck since the photograph. Connie supposed she felt safer with Dan around. A man.