“No!” Gavin said. He was hunched over, trying to convey the immediacy of his distress. “I can drive. I’ll just . . . I need to get home.”
“Go!” Rosemary said. “I’ll call in a little while, to check on you?”
He kissed her cheek. “You’re a doll. I’m so sorry to—”
“Go,” Rosemary said.
He humped through town, head down, pulling hasty, nervous drags off a cigarette, muttering to himself, praying this was all a mistake, a bad suspicion. Did all criminals suffer from such paranoia? They must! Forty-nine thousand dollars. Yes, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he’d blown it. But maybe not. God, he couldn’t stand it. He hurried.
He fumbled with his keys at the door. His hands were shaking. He was not particularly quiet; it had not occurred to him that Lock would still be in the office—it was nearly eight o’clock—but when Gavin was halfway up the stairs, he heard voices. Lock was here. Shit! Gavin considered turning around and leaving, but no, he couldn’t: he had to check that letter tonight! So what could he tell Lock he was doing? Getting a phone number, maybe, or an e-mail address. Would that be plausible? As Gavin rifled through possibilities in his mind, he became alerted to the fact that something unusual was afoot in the office. There was bumping and banging, heavy breathing, a woman’s voice. Gavin stopped where he was on the stairs and flattened himself against the wall, the way he’d seen people do in the movies. Who was in the office? He and Lock were the only ones who had keys. Gavin cocked his head, straining to hear. The noises seemed to be coming from the conference room. A woman talking, or crying, or moaning. She was saying Lock’s name. So Lock was here. A second later, Gavin heard Lock say, clear as a bell, “Oh, Claire, Jesus!”
Okay, Gavin thought. Okay. He had walked in on something, a big-time something between Lock and Claire. Gavin felt like he was spinning. It just wasn’t possible, was it? He had entertained the idea that Lock was hiding something—and an affair with Claire had crossed Gavin’s mind, though he’d immediately dismissed it—but to have unearthed it now, like this, was hideous. He must leave. But Gavin was confused, both horrified and curious, like a rubbernecker at a traffic accident. He continued up the stairs, quietly, silently, velvet gloves, velvet slippers. He would peek, get visual confirmation, and then beat it.
He crept to the top of the stairs, at which point he heard, very distinctly, the sound of Claire crying. He peered around the corner into the conference room. There they were. What Gavin saw was Lock’s back—he wore only his yellow dress shirt and a pair of boxers. His pants were in a pile a few feet away. He was standing at the conference table. Claire was sitting on the table with her bare legs wrapped around Lock’s back and her head buried in his chest. She was crying; he was shushing her.
Okay, Gavin thought. Enough. Too much. He was leaving! He tiptoed like mad down the stairs; he could not wait to get outside. Carefully, he eased open the door (it was telling, he thought, that they had locked it behind them). They had a system, a ritual; this was a
thing
that Gavin had uncovered, a real thing! He might have felt excited by this—amused, smug, self-satisfied (he
knew
Lock was hiding something!). He might have felt relieved that he wasn’t the only person he knew gone wayward; he might also have recognized the value of his new knowledge, its bargaining power. But first what Gavin felt was shock, followed quickly by sadness, disappointment, disillusionment. It was like learning there was no Superman, no such thing as a true hero. Lock and Claire. Gavin shook his head as he barreled through the dark night toward his car (his interest in the letter, like that, had been zapped).
He couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
She Tells Her
C
laire tried to make amends. With Jason, this meant apologies on the hour—apologies in person, messages on his voice mail, a note stuck to the steering wheel of his truck. It meant placing herself in servitude. She cooked his favorite things: fried chicken, pasta with sausage and basil, his mother’s corned beef, chocolate chip cookies. She folded his T-shirts, she had a beer cracked when he walked in the door, and she put the kids to bed herself every night so that he could watch TV. Still, Jason slept in the guest room or on the sofa; still he spoke to her in a furious, clipped tone, but by the following weekend, the debacle of the party had been absorbed into the sponge of their life together. There was too much going on to dwell on it. Jason returned to their bed, he reached for Claire as though nothing had happened, and afterward, as she lay awake, she was amazed at what a marriage was able to sustain. It could sustain horrible fights; it could sustain her, desperately in love with someone else.
Claire’s relationship with Siobhan was another story. Claire had not spoken to Siobhan in ten days. Ten days! It was long enough to make Claire think that perhaps Siobhan was gone for good. Claire had tried everything; she had even called Edward Melior about the catering bid.
Edward, who was always charming, was decidedly curt and businesslike on the phone. This may have been a reaction to Claire’s strident tone (which she had promised herself she wouldn’t take, but she had a hard time suppressing it).
“Edward? Claire Crispin. I heard you picked a caterer.”
“Yes . . .”
“I heard you picked À La Table.”
“Yes, we—”
“Unfortunately, Genevieve told Siobhan . . .”
“Yes, I know all about it.”
“It would have been a good idea to have called Siobhan right away, you know. So she didn’t have to hear it on the street.”
“I did call. I left her a message on her office phone.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
“She doesn’t check the office phone in the winter,” Claire said. “You know that.”
“I don’t know that. It was the number she put on the bid.”
“You could have tried to reach her at home.”
“I didn’t feel comfortable doing that, Claire. For obvious reasons.”
“I’m the event cochair, Edward. You could have called
me
and told
me
about your decision. Then I could have called Siobhan and smoothed things over.” Claire paused. “In fact, I have to say, I’m a little surprised that you didn’t call me, you know, to check with me, before you handed Genevieve the golden apple.”
“It sounds suspiciously like you’re pulling rank on me, Claire,” Edward said. “Are you? Because I was under the impression that when you asked me to spearhead the catering, you meant that my committee and I were to meet, review the bids, and choose a caterer. It sounds as if what you actually meant was that I, as the head of the catering committee, should have acted more like a cardboard cutout while you, the cochair, picked the caterer that you wanted. And everyone knows you wanted Siobhan.”
“Of course I did, Edward.”
“Genevieve came in nearly forty-dollars-a-head under. Do you get it? We saved almost forty grand by going with À La Table.”
“I’m sure Siobhan would have come down in her price if we talked to her about it,” Claire said. “The thing about using Island Fare is that you know you’re getting a great product.”
“I don’t like where this conversation is headed,” Edward said.
“Fine. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. What’s done is done. The real reason I’m calling is that I’d like you to call Siobhan and apologize.”
This was met with hearty laughter. “For the record, Claire, I did contact you when the committee made a decision. I sent both you and Isabelle an e-mail. Isabelle got right back to me.”
“I’d really appreciate it if you—”
“Good-bye, Claire.”
There was no point in taking the problem to Lock or Adams, because Edward was right: he was put in charge of catering, it was his job to pick a caterer, he had a fiduciary responsibility to Nantucket’s Children to take the best menu plan at the lowest price, and in this case, that bid was from À La Table. Claire could not argue with saving forty thousand dollars for what would be a similar catering experience. Edward had e-mailed both Claire and Isabelle when the committee made its decision; the fact that the e-mail came in during the ten-day period when Lock was gone and Claire had put a moratorium on checking her e-mail could not be held against Edward. Isabelle had gotten back to him within fifteen minutes. Claire had been copied on that e-mail as well. It said, simply:
fine. Fully trust the committee’s judgment.
Edward said he left Siobhan a message on her office phone, the phone number on the bid. This was reasonable. The fact that Siobhan had bumped into Genevieve at the farm market and Genevieve had chosen to gloat was just bad luck. That Claire had asked Edward to apologize to Siobhan was perhaps out of bounds, but Siobhan was her best friend and Claire desperately wanted to make things right. She had no boundaries.
Claire left messages on Siobhan and Carter’s home phone, and she left messages on Siobhan’s cell phone, both simple (
I’m sorry. Call me
) and more elaborate (there were two messages, left in tandem, that documented Claire’s phone conversation with Edward). Siobhan did not answer; Siobhan did not return the calls. Claire finally stopped by Siobhan and Carter’s house on Saturday morning, a week after the party. Liam answered the door and told Claire, with a straight face, that his mother was upstairs lying down. Claire considered sitting in her car across the street until Siobhan emerged, but that fell into the category of stalking, and knowing Siobhan, she’d call the police and get a restraining order.
The Irish were so damn stubborn! Siobhan was waiting for the one thing Claire was not willing to give her: a confession.
I am having an affair with Lockhart Dixon. The affair has been going on since September and I have been keeping it from you.
Claire saw Julie Jackson at pickup, and Julie gave her a weird (sympathetic? angry?) look. Claire smiled and waved as though everything were fine, but inwardly she groaned, praying that the substance of her and Jason’s fight had not made its way around the party. How mortifying! They should put their house on the market now.
As Siobhan’s silence entered its second week, Claire gave up. She even saw Siobhan’s car outside the skating rink—Siobhan was watching Liam’s or Aidan’s hockey practice, so she was a sitting duck—but Claire didn’t bother stopping. Claire had been ostracized on the playground as a child just like everybody else; she knew that she would not remain on the outs forever. She had lost her best friend, but so had Siobhan. Siobhan would come around eventually—this was what Jason said on the subject. He was barely speaking to Claire himself, but he had enough mercy to tell her this: if it went on much longer, he would call Carter and set up a family meeting, an airing of grievances. This sounded like something he’d learned from watching
The Sopranos,
but Claire appreciated his willingness to intervene if need be.
Claire consumed herself with Lock—four times in one week, five times in nine days. If he was the reason her life was going down the tubes, then she wanted, at least, to be with him. In the hot shop, she worked crazily on what she now thought of as the g.d. chandelier. She spent all day Monday and all day Tuesday trying to pull out a second arm, eight hours of work, 163 tries. She was rewarded with not one but two arms that made it into the annealer. Claire wasn’t sure at first, but when she held them up to the sublime sphere of the body, she saw that they fell perfectly, better than perfectly; they dripped and twisted like the trajectory of a flower petal falling to the ground, like a happy or peaceful thought flowing from the mind to the page. Claire thought,
This g.d. chandelier is going to be the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever done.
Elsa, of Transom, had called again, asking for two dozen of the
Jungle Series
vases, and although the vases would have been easier, not to mention good money, Claire turned her down.
I don’t have time right now.
Claire was cheating on Jason with Lock; she was cheating on her career with the chandelier; she was cheating on her
life
with the gala.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Sent: April 29, 2008, 11:01
A.M.
Subject: Seating
Dear Claire,
Just to give you the heads up, I have called Lock and purchased a $25,000 table for the gala. I feel it’s important that, as cochairs, we support the gala in the biggest way possible, and one way we can do that is by purchasing the most expensive tickets. I noticed, from looking at the list of tickets sold last year and the year before, that you and your husband bought $1,000 tickets and sat in the back. You will understand, no doubt, the importance of sitting up front this year—we can take tables side by side—in the $25,000 section. I just buy the table myself and invite people to sit with me. (It’s expected, in turn, that they will make a large donation to the cause.) However, it is perfectly acceptable to ask the people sitting at your table to pay for their seats, which is what you may prefer to do. I have purchased my table now because summer is nearly upon us and the time has come to
start selling tickets
and it’s always better/easier to do this when one has bought tickets oneself.
Thx!
Isabelle
Claire stared at the computer screen, dumbfounded.
That night, she had nothing to make for dinner, so she threw eggs into the skillet with chopped-up deli ham, shredded cheddar, half-and-half, chives, and halved cherry tomatoes, and she served this with buttered wheat toast. Jason regarded his plate with disbelief and said, “What’s this?”
She said, “We didn’t have anything else in the house and I didn’t have time to go to the store.”
Jason said, “Why didn’t you call for pizza? I could have stopped on my way home and picked it up.”
At the mention of pizza, the kids started to clamor, even Zack, who didn’t know what pizza was.
Claire stood up from the table and glared at Jason. “Fine,” she said. “Get pizza.”
That night, as Jason climbed into bed, he said, “Do you want me to call Carter tomorrow so you can settle this thing with Siobhan?”
Claire reread the e-mail in the morning and found it just as egregious. She had cashed in a once-in-a-lifetime favor and gotten Max West to play for free, she had spent a month of Sundays in the hot shop, working on the g.d. chandelier—and now,
now,
Isabelle had basically set forth a mandate that Claire cough up
$25,000
for the concert. Claire got it: hard work and favors were one thing, but when it came down to it, one’s contributions were measured in terms of cold, hard cash.
Twenty-five thousand dollars: it felt like a dare.
It was the first week of May, and every day had brought a cold, steely rain. This was comforting. Claire retreated to the hot shop and blew out a pair of vases; she was too aghast and distracted to work on the g.d. chandelier. The awful thing was, she could see Isabelle’s point. Claire had agreed to be cochair, she had taken on that responsibility, and it would be naive of her not to understand that part of the responsibility was fiscal. But Claire could not swing it. Two tickets at $2,500 was $5,000; this would be an
extreme stretch
for them. (It would have been more palatable had Claire been producing income over the past four months with a paying commission, instead of slaving over the g.d. chandelier.) To take an entire table at $25,000 was out of the question, for a number of reasons. Let’s say Claire paid for the table up front and then asked the people sitting with her to kick in for their tickets. She would (a) never have the guts to ask for the money and (b) never find anyone she was friends (or even acquaintances) with who would agree to pay that much, even if she were gutsy enough to ask. She was offended that Isabelle had checked on her past ticket purchases. Claire and Jason had not sat in the “back”—they had sat in the middle, and last year they sat with Adams and Heidi Fiske. Adams Fiske, president of the board of directors, hadn’t even bought a $2,500 ticket. He was back in $1,000-a-head land with all the other normal people. Claire could not think of anyone she knew who would be willing to cough up $2,500 for a seat. Certainly not Carter and Siobhan (it was safe to say at this point that they wouldn’t go at all), not Brent and Julie Jackson, not Tessa Kline, not Amie and Ted Trimble, not Delaney and Christo Kitt. Possibly Edward Melior—but Claire had just alienated him, so no. Possibly the clients of Jason’s who owned the house in Wauwinet, but did Claire really want to sit—on one of the most important and glamorous nights of her life—with clients whom she barely knew? She did not. She wanted to be with her friends. So . . . she would not be taking a $25,000 table.
But to say so would be to say a bunch of other things as well. She would be saying that she didn’t have the same means as Isabelle French, which would be a blow to her pride. But why? Claire had grown up in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, where her family had been decidedly middle class, the middlest of middle class. In comparison, she and Jason lived the life of royalty—the house, their businesses, the opportunities for their four kids, the au pair. They had every material thing they needed and many they wanted, but they did not have $25,000 to spend on one evening out. No one Claire knew did—and that was perhaps the dicier issue: in not taking a $25,000 table, Claire felt she was cementing the differences between summer people and locals. Isabelle French and her compatriots from the city had more money than Claire and the wonderful people who shared her foxhole. They had a lot more money—why pretend it wasn’t true? They were all donating to the cause—raising money for the hardworking families of Nantucket—just in varying degrees.