The Castaways (40 page)

Phoebe shook hands with five eager-faced strangers standing in a semicircle. She bumped into Dr. Richard Flanders, the school superintendent, who enveloped her in the folds of his considerable person. She could smell his aftershave, and her right arm was cut off from the rest of her body, and she feared her missing arm was going to spill her champagne, or even drop it.

“That’s a great thing you did,” Flanders said.

Phoebe said, “Thank you.”

This didn’t feel right. She should have donated the money for the path anonymously, but that hadn’t been possible because of the Tess and Greg connection. So now she was saddled with her good deed; it was making her uncomfortable in a way she hadn’t predicted.

She saw her people, her dear friends and her husband, huddled together with their backs turned aggressively to everyone else, including the server, who was trying to offer the Chief a stuffed quail egg. They were talking among themselves in a serious, deliberate way that Phoebe had seen before. They had talked that way when Tess and Greg died; they had talked that way when Tess lost her baby; they had probably talked that way on September 11 when they realized Reed had died. They had closed ranks and were speaking in undertones.

Phoebe suddenly understood why they had the rule of no gifts. It was too complicated emotionally to give and receive things when there were so many tight, overlapping connections between the eight of them. They were too close, and gifts required fairness and reciprocity.
Here you go, this is for you. Oh, thank you, I love it.
A simple idea, but not simple with them. Gifts would inevitably cause a mess. Phoebe had caused a mess. They found her gift offensive. They were offended that Phoebe had thought of this tribute and then executed it without their input. Andrea—of course!—would never allow Tess’s and Greg’s names to be attached to something without her approval. Addison would be pissed because Phoebe had spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars without asking him. (But she was prepared for this; some of that money was money that she’d earned herself, and then invested wisely with Reed.) Still, Tess had been Addison’s lover, he was the executor of the will; Tess and Greg belonged to him. And they belonged to Andrea. But that, in a way, was why Phoebe had done this secretly. Tess and Greg had been Phoebe’s friends, too, and she wanted to honor them
her
way, without input from the people whose connections to them were believed to be more important.

Phoebe broke into the circle, ready for her flogging. Sure enough, Andrea was crying.

“I’m sorry,” Phoebe said.

Andrea swiped at her nose. “It was beautiful,” she said. “A beautiful gesture.”

Jeffrey said, “Delilah is going to kick herself for missing it.”

Addison pulled Phoebe in close and kissed her temple. “You’re a genius,” he said.

B
y nine o’clock she felt she had done her duty. She had drunk two glasses of chardonnay, she had eaten six hors d’oeuvres, she had listened to Phoebe’s speech, which honored Tess and Greg in a way that Andrea herself should have thought of had she not been so pathetically inward-looking, and she had wept a few tears without breaking down. She had even danced with Eddie to their favorite Sinatra tune. In Andrea’s mind, she deserved a bronze star for outstanding courage.

But now she was ready to go.

“Already?” Ed said. “It’s only five minutes to nine. The band is playing until midnight.”

The thought of having to hold herself together for three more hours nearly brought Andrea to her knees. “I want to go home,” she said.

“Another hour,” Ed said.

“Now,” Andrea said. “Poor Kacy—”

“Delilah’s not even here yet, so poor Kacy nothing. And when the twins do get home, she’ll put them to bed and make fifteen dollars an hour for watching TV.”

“Ed,” Andrea said, “I can’t stay.”

Addison approached them, holding a drink. He was glassy-eyed.

“Are you drunk?” Andrea said.

“Exhausted,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Something on your mind?” the Chief asked.

Addison said, “If I thought I could sneak out of here without Phoebe’s beheading me, I would.”

“My savior,” Andrea said. “Will you take me home?”

The Chief’s eyes lit up. “Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Addison said.

“You’re okay to drive?” the Chief asked.

“I’m okay.”

“I’ll drive,” Andrea said.

“Are you coming back?” the Chief asked Addison.

“Not if I can help it,” Addison said. “Phoebe has her own car. She came early, she has to stay late.”

“I’ll stay with Phoebe,” the Chief said. “And Jeffrey. And Delilah is coming.”

“She better be,” Andrea said. “She doesn’t get a free pass to miss this if I don’t.”

“We’ll cover for you,” the Chief said. He kissed Andrea goodbye.

Andrea took off her shoes and walked barefoot with Addison to his car. Addison was whistling, as happy as she was to be sprung free. They climbed into his Mercedes, which had deep, soft seats and the intoxicating smell of expensive leather. There was an empty highball glass in the console.

“You drank on the way out here?” she asked.

He said, “Don’t tell the Chief.”

She said, “Well, please don’t kill us on the way home.”

He said, “Would it really matter if I did?”

She looked out the window, at the moors rushing by. It was a beautiful night, there was a moon, the party had been nice, Phoebe’s gift was inspired—and yet Andrea had a hard time feeling anything. Would it matter if she died tonight?

She said, “Tess had a lover.” Her breath put a mist on the car window.

Addison said, “Do you want to come to my house and have a glass of wine?”

“Okay,” she said.

P
hoebe was the star of the evening, and it was good to see. She was glowing like her old self. She caught Jeffrey’s eye, pulled away from a group of people he didn’t know, and glided over to him. Her dress was silver, and her eyes picked up some of the sparkle.

“Where is your wife?” she said.

Jeffrey checked his watch. “Her plane gets in at nine-fifteen.”

“Her plane?” Phoebe said.

“She took the kids to the movies,” Jeffrey said.

“The
movies?
” Phoebe said. “Why tonight?”

Jeffrey shrugged. It was hard to explain to someone who didn’t have kids. “Tonight was the night. Anyway, I’m going to get her at the airport. I’ll be back with her in half an hour.”

“You’d better be,” Phoebe said. “The band is playing until midnight.”

Jeffrey got to the airport at ten minutes past nine. It was a Friday night in August and the place was abuzz—planeloads of businessmen from New York, Boston, Washington, walked into the terminal and were greeted by pretty wives, shouting children, frenzied golden retrievers on leashes. Jeffrey had had two cocktails at the party, which had affected him oddly. He was unaccountably anxious. He wanted to see his wife come off the plane with the four kids. There had been moments today when he had questioned his own good judgment about letting Delilah go in the first place. Was she mentally stable enough to travel with four kids? She had seemed better the night before. She had cooked, they had made love, eaten the pie. It had been fine, it would be fine; Jeffrey had no reason to worry, but he wished he’d stuck to beer.

He sat and sat. The stream of businessmen slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Jeffrey looked at the clock; it was quarter to ten. He checked at both airlines. Any more planes coming?

No, sir, that was the last section.

Jeffrey called Delilah’s cell phone. The call went straight to voicemail.

He called their house. No answer. Then, he called the Kapenash house. Kacy answered the phone.

“Kacy?” Jeffrey said. “Is Delilah there? Are the kids there?”

“No,” she said. “They’re not home yet.”

“Has Delilah called you?”

“No,” Kacy said. “She said they’d be on the nine o’clock flight.”

“I’m at the airport,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve been here forty minutes. They weren’t on any of the planes.”

“And you called Delilah?”

“Got her voicemail,” Jeffrey said. He hadn’t talked to her since that morning. “Okay, let me try to find her.”

Jeffrey called Delilah’s phone again and again was shuttled to voicemail. “Goddamn it, Delilah, call me!” he said.

He couldn’t go back to the party without her—Phoebe would be angry, the lovely balance she’d achieved would, possibly, collapse in a lopsided heap of unnecessary worry and upset—and so he went home. He hated drama; that was the farmer in him. He liked things that were steady and reliable: the seasons, weather that fell into patterns that could be predicted, cycles of the earth. Plant a seed, watch it grow and bear fruit, harvest the fruit, allow the plant to wither, die, and nourish the soil for the next planted seed.

Of course, there would be a reasonable explanation: they had missed the showing of the movie they were supposed to see so they had to wait for the next showing; Delilah got stuck in traffic on the way home, or they got sidetracked by a Chuck E. Cheese or a roadside fair and missed the last flight. And Delilah, as usual, did not make sure her cell phone was charged and it ran out of power. Fine.

But he did not feel fine. What he felt was a gnawing sense of unrest. Since Tess and Greg had died, their home life had been a brewing storm. Jeffrey knew this, but he was busy at the farm. It was August. Jeffrey had always maintained that there was no difference between July and August other than that July was corn and August was tomatoes, but every day the farm market proved him wrong. The place was packed. The line at the deli was a dozen people long, Joanna, the baker, was making five dozen triple-berry pies a day, and the corn bin was filled with three hundred fresh-picked ears one minute and empty an hour later. Jeffrey couldn’t focus on anything but survival. Pick the corn, the herbs, the flowers, the beets and cucumbers and summer squash and zucchini and carrots, the lettuce and kale and turnips. Tend to the gourds and the pumpkins, the dahlias and chrysanthemums. Water, reap, sow. Pray that Delilah would hang in there until January, when Jeffrey took four weeks off and could give proper attention to her emotional crisis. But he wasn’t an idiot. He had sensed that things were about to break. He was watching out of the corner of his eye. Delilah was a pendulum. Manic and hyperalert one minute, weepy and despondent the next. Why on earth had he let her take the kids off the island?

At home the house was quiet. He opened the fridge and found it clean and stacked with food. Was Delilah planning a party? Had she meant to have people over here, after the event? There was a case of cold Heineken lined up like green glass soldiers in the bottom drawer, and Jeffrey grabbed one.

There was a note on the kitchen counter, which he hadn’t seen when he’d rushed in at six-thirty to get dressed. A note? It was a regular white index card. Written in black Sharpie, it said,
This does not mean I don’t love you, I do, that’s forever. Yes and for always.
He read the index card again. It was a lyric from “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” Greg used to sing the song all the damn time and Delilah sang along in harmony. The first third of the suite was, in Delilah’s estimation, the most perfect song ever written.

Was this note meant for him? It was in Delilah’s handwriting. Was it old, or had she meant for him to find it tonight? He tried her cell phone again.

You have to go, no matter what. Promise me.

The back of his throat ached. He went upstairs to the boys’ rooms. In both rooms, the beds looked like they had been made up by chambermaids at the Ritz-Carlton. The dressers were tidy, drawers pushed all the way closed. He opened the drawers. Were there clothes missing? The drawers did look emptyish, as they tended to when Delilah let the laundry slide.

Jeffrey took a deep breath.

He did not like drama, nor did he like to jump to conclusions. But he didn’t like the way things were stacking up: a fridge full of food, the clean house, pretty beds, neat dressers, the note. He had thought things were getting
better
. He had congratulated himself; he had waited out Delilah’s instability and the storm had cleared. Delilah was correcting. But no.

T
he house was impeccably clean, but Addison straightened up anyway. He wiped dust out of a wineglass. Andrea drank chardonnay. Addison had a whole wine cooler full of whites, and there, on the bottom shelf, were two bottles of his favorite Mersault, the wine he and Tess had drunk at lunch at Nous Deux, the wine Addison swore he would never drink again. He opened the bottle.

Tess had a lover.

He looked in the pantry for snacks. Mixed nuts, a box of Bremner Wafers. Did they have any cheese? He checked the fridge. No cheese.

He tasted the Mersault, poured a glass for Andrea, then decided he would pour a glass for himself even though he had vowed never to drink it again. He handed Andrea her glass and put the nuts in a bowl. Andrea said nothing. He should put on music.

He said, “Where should we sit?”

She said, “Oh, Jesus, Add, I don’t give a shit.”

This was somehow exactly the right answer. It struck the right tone: they were going to be frank with each other. Addison was going to suggest they sit out by the pool, but that seemed too pleasant. There were two barstools at the counter. Addison sat, then Andrea sat, and Addison set the bowl of nuts equidistant between them.

“So,” he said.

“Let’s not talk,” Andrea said. “Let’s just drink for a while.”

Addison nodded. Fair enough, he thought. The effects of six Jack Daniels had hit him; he was now officially drunk. Andrea probably needed ten more drinks before she was ready to hear what he had to tell her. But Addison couldn’t wait. He said, “I was having an affair with Tess. I was in love with her.”

Andrea drank her wine. She said nothing.

She drank the whole glass in three minutes; Addison was timing her. He refilled her glass; his hand was shaking. He wanted her to say something, but he was afraid of what she would say.