The Family Fortune (19 page)

I wasn't sure how to approach Jack Reilly. At first, all I did was watch his house, but I never saw anyone come out or go in. Since the house was on the same side as mine, it was harder to keep an eye on it than it would have been if he had lived across from me. I decided that if I didn't see anyone go in or out in three days, I'd go and knock on the door.

The day my surveillance would have ended, I was going out for a walk, and as I locked my door, I turned and there was a man coming out of the house where Jack Reilly was squatting. This man was almost bald, with a scrawny chicken neck. He held a
notebook in his hand and he was wearing a lumberjack jacket and the type of black-and-white-checked pants chefs wear.

Since I was only going for a walk and had no special destination, I didn't see any harm in following him. He wasn't the Jack Reilly I'd pictured, but maybe he was a friend of Jack's. Maybe he, too, was squatting in the neighbor's house. Perhaps I could find something out about Jack Reilly from him.

The man huddled against the wind and walked toward the center of town, where he went into a seaside restaurant and sat at the bar. I followed him in and took a booth. I wished I had brought something to read so I wouldn't look conspicuous. I would have made a terrible detective, and every time I tried anything remotely related to detection, I appreciated Hope Bliss more.

I ordered a beer for stamina and worked up the nerve to send one over to the man at the bar who was now scribbling in his notebook with a cheap ballpoint pen.

The man took the beer, looked at the bartender, then turned toward me. The look he gave me was both wolfish and questioning, which may be the appropriate look to give a strange woman in a virtually empty restaurant who buys you a beer.

He got up and came over. He held his beer up in a toast and thanked me. I bowed my head and smiled shyly. I didn't know if I was feeling shy or if I felt that this was the look I must produce, like some misguided Nancy Drew. I was proud of myself for tracking him to a public place so there'd be less chance for trouble. And I was still hoping that this man wasn't Jack Reilly, that the whole thing was some mistake.

“Would you like to sit down?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, and slipped into the booth across from me.

“I'm…” And then, of course, I paused. He had applied to the foundation. He'd know my name. “Lindsay Maple.”

“JR,” he said.

“JR what?”

“Just JR,” he said. “Like Cher or Madonna.”

I nodded and sipped my beer. Where to go from here? Now I was stuck with an unattractive squatter who was wearing two different patterns—plaid on top and checks on the bottom. At least if this JR wasn't my Jack Reilly, there was still hope.

“I see you're writing,” I said, and pointed to his notebook.

“I'm a writer,” he said.

“What kinds of things do you write?” I asked.

“Stories.”

“You living here for the winter?”

“It's quiet here.”

“Where do you live?”

“Gingerbread cottages.”

“Amazing, me too,” I said. His teeth, when he smiled, were nicotine-stained, and he pulled out a packet of Nicorette gum. “Look, I have to ask you something. I heard that a guy named Jack Reilly lived near us in the gingerbread houses. Ever heard of him?”

He looked up, pressed his lips together, then smiled.

“I'm Jack Reilly,” he said.

“You said you were JR,” I said.

“JR, Jack Reilly.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And you're Jane Fortune,” he said. “You make a terrible sleuth if that's what you were trying to do.”

I blushed.

“How do you know me?” I asked.

“How do you know me?” he answered.

“I've been looking for you,” I said. “You submitted a story to the
Review
.”

“And that's how I know you. I saw your picture on the Internet.”

“There's a picture of me on the Internet?”

“Several. I knew you were living a few doors down. I knew who you were when you followed me in here and bought me this drink.”

“Why didn't you say so?”

“I thought I'd let you play out your game. Didn't want to disappoint. Why were you playing it anyway?”

“I thought you might be dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because you're squatting in that house.”

He nodded. “It wouldn't be the first time. I believe that empty out-of-season homes should be used by the people who need them. Doesn't make me dangerous.”

“But it's stealing,” I said.

“Depends how you look at it.”

“I look at it as stealing.”

He smiled. I could see how the woman at the Butterfly Museum might have been taken in by him. He had a way of talking that made you feel like you were a precious stone sitting in the palm of his hand.

“I have some of your things,” I said.

“What things?”

“A letter from a nice lady at the Butterfly Museum, a couple of books, and a notebook.”

“My notebook. I've been looking everywhere for it.”

“The woman in Lynn gave it to me.”

“She's a piece of work, isn't she?” Then he paused and his brows came together. “Why were you there?”

“I told you. I've been looking all over for you,” I said.

“Why?”

And then I said it, though it didn't come out the way I wanted it to: it wasn't the grand announcement I had planned. Grand announcements didn't feel right with this Jack Reilly.

“You won the damn contest—you won the fellowship,” I said.

“That's great,” he said as if it came as no surprise. “But why didn't you contact me at my post office box?”

“Believe me, if you'd put it on your story I would have. I wouldn't have spent the winter tracking you all over New England.”

He hit the side of his head with the flat of his hand.

“We artists,” he said as if this were some sort of excuse for being a flake. “You gonna turn me in for squatting?” he asked.

“It's none of my business, I guess, but I already told my friend Isabelle, and she's not so forgiving about things like this. She's a year-round resident, and I think she feels personally responsible for the entire island.”

“I'm screwed,” he said.

“Maybe not. The fellowship doesn't usually start until June, but there's no reason why it couldn't start earlier. It is for the struggling artist.”

“That would be me,” he said.

 

Jack Reilly packed up his stuff that afternoon and came over to say goodbye. So it hadn't been love at first sight. The hope I'd been holding broke into shards and I spent the afternoon walking carefully around them to keep from getting cut.

Maybe he wasn't going to be
my
next big thing, but that wouldn't keep him from being the next big thing in literature. I could help him. Wasn't that my job?

By the time he walked away to the ferry with his battered backpack, I was feeling better. My Jack Reilly fantasy was gone and now I could get on with my life, whatever that meant.

Life on the Vineyard, if I were to admit it, was too quiet for me, and without my fantasy for company, lonely. When I walked down the street I looked with longing at “Help Wanted” signs and tried to picture myself answering phones in an insurance company or slinging scrambled eggs across a counter in a diner. I imagined myself as a bookseller or a salesclerk in a gift shop that sold scrimshaw.

One afternoon I went down to Isabelle's bakery and asked for a job.

Isabelle wiped her palms against the front of her apron. She had a dusting of flour across her cheek.

“I need a job,” I said.

“You have a job, Jane,” she said.

“What job?”

“The foundation. You have the foundation. You don't need to work in a bakery.”

“But you're wrong. I do. I need to get my hands dirty.”

“Maybe you should try to write. You're so good with words. There would be no Max Wellman without you—and how many others—Jessica Lowe, Marylou Patter, Axel Bonner.”

“They all would have made it without me,” I said.

She shrugged. “We'll never know for sure, will we, because they had you.”

“Please, I want a job.”

“I think you've lost your mind.”

“That's okay with me. I'm tired of my mind.”

“I can't pay you much.”

“Don't pay me at all.”

“I have to pay you something.”

“When do I start?”

“Tomorrow, I guess.” She looked skeptical. “We start at four, but you can come in at five.”

“Five?”

“In the morning.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. I was somewhat deflated, but no matter. I could wake up early. If Isabelle had done it all these years, then so could I.

 

It was dark when I woke for my first day on the job, and I questioned my earlier impulse. I felt groggy and headachy. I bundled up against the cold and walked through the dimly lit streets until I saw the lights of the bakery. When I arrived, Isabelle was already there with her workers, Doris and Salvador. The ovens were burning and the kitchen smelled of brown sugar and cinnamon. It was all so warm and cozy, I could have nodded out right there, but Isabelle set me to work filling muffin tins. Most of the jobs I did at the bakery were monotonous, but after a few weeks I got used to
the work and began to like it. I'd let my mind wander. Sometimes stories would come to me from things I saw in the shop. I imagined a relationship between Doris and Salvador. As far as I knew, they were barely acquainted, but in my mind I created a love story of passion mixed with impediments. Poor Doris in her hairnet and Salvador with his stormy eyebrows—I doubt they would have liked it if they'd known what I was thinking.

I established a routine. I woke up at four and got to the bakery at five. I worked at the bakery until noon, covered the morning rush, then walked the island all afternoon. At first, one mile of walking in the cold wind made my throat feel like tin and I'd rush home to a warm fire and woolly socks. After a while, though, I was hiking all over the island, mile after mile. Between that and my work in the bakery I could feel my body getting firmer, trimmer, stronger. I wouldn't need to cover anything this summer.

Early evenings I worked on foundation business, and when everything was finished for the day, I took out the journal Max had given me and I wrote. Yes, it was my dirty secret. At first, I wrote only journal entries, but then I started writing this story.

Jack Reilly kept in touch. He had fixed the front steps of the house in Hull. He was building some bookshelves and he was writing. He said his book was going to be great. Sometimes he sent me pieces through the mail, pieces typed on an old manual typewriter, even though there was a computer in the house. Jack asked for advice, but he rarely took it. I envied Jack Reilly his unrestrained confidence. He was so sure of his greatness. Did that make him greater?

 

I dutifully called Priscilla once a week. She still couldn't understand why I'd prefer the loneliness of the island to a winter in the city.

“I met the Goldmans at a party,” she said. “I've been spending some time with Emma. She's a knitter. She says that knitting is very popular with Hollywood celebrities, not that that matters to me, of course. I can
take a celebrity or leave one alone. Speaking of celebrities, her brother Max came by once while I was there. He's not very talkative, is he? I would describe him as morose.”

“Morose?” Max was many things, but that wasn't one of them.

“Was he alone?” I asked.

“Yes. Emma says he's been acting strangely—not like a man in love—if any of us can tell what a man in love is supposed to act like. But Emma says he's either engaged or close to it. That girl Lindsay is home with her parents now. They say she's had a complete personality change. Of course, I didn't know her before and a head injury can be a serious thing. Maybe that's why Max is upset. You know, you throw your lot in with someone and then they change. It could be disturbing.”

If I had been managing to keep even a sliver of hope alive, it died then, gasping on the little matchbox bed I had so carefully crafted for it.

“And Charlie found Max a house. Just what he wanted. That Charlie is a genius. I read a review of Max's latest book. The reviewer used the word
excrement
. Hardly a compliment. Have you read the book?”

“No.”

“I think I'll pick it up. See what all the fuss is about. Good thing you didn't hitch your wagon to his star.”

Over the years, I had often told myself that Priscilla had the best of intentions. After all, Pris was my mother's best friend and I assumed they'd think alike as far as I was concerned. When my mother died Priscilla was like a bandage I placed over my grief. At first, I relied on Priscilla's judgments and opinions with a blind faith, but I was beginning to see that Priscilla had her own agenda. It was important to Priscilla that I never change. So long as I remained the same—a somewhat inept, dependent spinster—she could be the savvy one, the worldly one, a lady of great taste and sophistication—and even a femme fatale. These undermining quips of Priscilla's weren't new, I had just refused to notice them, because if I did, it would change how I felt about her. Now I couldn't help noticing them and each little jab drove us farther apart.

The next week I didn't make my call to Priscilla. I was tired of the duties of good breeding.

At the end of the week, Pris called me.

“I haven't heard from you,” she said. I knew she didn't like to pay for long-distance phone calls, even though she could easily afford them. It was a vestige of a time when long distance was considered a luxury. “Jane, is something wrong, dear?”

“Why would you ask that?”