“But we don’t have one of these!” the oldest boy—what was his name?—shouted. He held up a silver Colibri lighter.
“What is that?” Claire said. “Let me look at it.” She flipped it open. Flame. “It’s a lighter.”
Matthew filled with dread. There was a typical rock-star move: buy a ten-year-old boy a hundred-dollar Italian lighter so he can take up smoking weed in the basement with style.
“Mom, give it back!” the kid said. “I want it!”
“You’re going to burn the house down,” Claire said. She was laughing, sort of. It was strained. Matthew could not look at Jason. The worst thing was that now Matthew would have to fire Ashland. A lighter? What had she been thinking?
“What else is there?” Matthew asked nervously. A bong? A handgun?
There were two Louis Vuitton silk scarves for the girls, as well as some Chanel eye shadow in the blue palette. Claire looked like she was going to pop a vein. She would never run off with him now. In the box for the baby, Zack, was a remote control Ferrari Testarossa. That was a hit with everyone except the baby. Jason, especially, seemed enthralled. Max exhaled, relaxed a little bit. Okay, Ashland could keep her job.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Claire said. “We have iced tea, water, milk, chocolate milk, juice—OJ, pomegranate, and apple-cranberry—or I could make coffee. Espresso, cappuccino, regular, decaf . . . ?”
Matthew was dying to ask for a beer. Just one cold beer—the situation was unusually stressful, so he deserved one beer. He wouldn’t get drunk. He was a gin man; beer, for him, was like juice. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask; Claire would be disappointed in him, and she would know how weak he really was, unable to last ten minutes without a drink. He opted for coffee, and Claire made a pot.
The evening wore on. Matthew wanted to be with Claire, and Claire alone—it was Claire, after all, that he’d come to see—but Claire’s house was a circus, it was the boardwalk on an August night, it was an obstacle course. Matthew was introduced to the nanny, a Thai girl named Pan, who had the chicken pox. She stood across the room bowing to him, and he thought of Ace in Bangkok. (In the end, he had given her five thousand dollars to help her pay for college.)
“Sawadee krup!” Matthew said. He could say hello in forty languages. Did Claire know this? Pan giggled and ducked back into her room. Matthew would much rather have talked to Pan, but Underwhelming Jason was right there at his side, dogging him.
“That’s right, man, you toured in Asia. What was that
like,
man?”
What was it like? Matthew could talk about this all day. He had played for people with totally different belief systems—Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus—but Underwhelming Jason, like every other American man, wanted to talk about the girls, the perks, the money. Matthew needed a drink. He needed some quiet time, alone, with Claire. He found it hard to believe that mankind had created the iPod, a ten-ounce slab of plastic that could play twenty thousand songs, but had been unable to invent a way to travel back in time twenty years, to the happiest days of your life, and allow you to stay there.
Claire!
She fussed over him—put out a bowl of Nilla wafers, his favorite, and brought him a bag of frozen peas for his eye. It grew later, and finally she excused herself to put the kids to bed.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said before she went upstairs. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“But you’re coming back downstairs, right?” he said. Desire had thickened his voice. He sounded, to his own ears, like he was tipping his hand.
Jason grew silent and looked at Claire.
“Yes,” Claire said. “I’ll be back down to say good night.”
He was nuts, he thought, believing that he might have some time alone with Claire when her husband was in the house. It would be smarter to wait until the morning, when Underwhelming Jason went to work. However, much to Matthew’s delight, Jason retired first (he was an early riser, he said, by way of apologizing, it seemed). Matthew shook Jason’s hand, giddy to see him go. The feeling of being in a time warp intensified. How many late nights had Matthew and Claire sat up watching a movie, waiting for Sweet Jane to go to bed so they could fool around?
Left alone to his own devices, Matthew hunted through the fridge for a beer. Nothing. There was a bar in the living room, a beautiful built-in bar with rows of sparkling glasses, but the cabinets were empty of everything but mixers and garnishes. Claire had done her homework. It was an act of love, he knew, a demonstration that she cared about his well-being, but it was maddening. He wouldn’t survive another minute without a drink, so he sneaked quickly to the fridge in the garage. Empty!
He returned to the living room, defeated, and shaking from too much caffeine. The Thai au pair appeared in her nightgown. He noticed her necklace—a tiny silver bell—and he reached out to touch it. “That’s pretty,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. She was covered with plump red spots. “I get you anything?”
I need a drink!
he thought. He could enlist the au pair to help him! But Claire would know, she would find out, and she would be so disappointed, or maybe, like Bess, she operated on zero tolerance and she would ask him to leave.
“I’m all set,” he said. “Thanks!”
Pan bowed, and Matthew repaired to the back deck. The tender, bruised skin around his eye throbbed with pain. He was a rock star, and the world was his oyster. He could have anything he wanted. But could he have Claire? He was as spoiled as a child—Bess had said this time and again. He was used to instant gratification. The best things in life, she’d said, are the things you have to wait for.
Well, he had waited twenty years for Claire. He could wait ten more minutes, couldn’t he? Was she feeling the same way he was? Would she leave with him? He wanted to know, now!
Tomorrow, he thought, he would have a drink.
H
e was
here,
in her
house
. She still had a hard time believing it. The Second Coming of Matthew.
He was waiting for her on the back deck, his elbows resting behind him on the railing, his legs angled forward. He was in jeans and bare feet, watching for her.
She grinned. He was here! It was him!
“God,” he said. “You are still so beautiful.”
That voice. It had always been his voice more than his looks that had captivated her.
He put an arm around her and she leaned into him. It was friendly and comfortable; they were sliding back into their old identities, their teenage selves.
“It is
so
great to see you.”
“I know,” she said. “Honestly? It’s like we were never apart.”
He gave her a squeeze. They didn’t say anything else for a while, though there were things she might have asked him, things she wanted to know—about Bess, about his drinking problem, about his famous affair with Savannah Bright—but it was better, somehow, to pretend for a minute that none of that had ever happened. She wanted to forget Lock and Jason and the kids inside and just try to locate her old self. She wanted to be that girl on the boardwalk, in the dunes eating lobster, jumping into the passenger side of the yellow Bug. She wanted to rest in Matthew’s arms and pretend, for five minutes.
He smelled the same. Was that possible? He had, as a teenager, smelled like whatever brand of discount laundry detergent Sweet Jane favored, and secondhand smoke from his older sisters’ cigarettes. And that was how he still smelled. She looked up at his face, a face she had most frequently seen, in the past twelve years, on the screen of VH1. He started humming in her ear, and then the humming turned into singing. He was very softly singing “Stormy Eyes” in her ear. A private concert for Claire. He had written the song for her the week before they parted ways. “Stormy Eyes” became his first hit.
He held her face. She was crying now—of course she was crying. He couldn’t sing that song to her and not expect her to cry. And then he kissed her. He kissed her slowly, carefully, and she thought of Matthew on the dark bus, a sudden, surprise superstar. “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” Matthew, with his guitar slung across his back; Matthew the night they played strip poker and he got so, so jealous.
That girl of mine makes me crazy.
Matthew standing beside the examining table: Claire was pregnant, she knew it, Matthew was going to have to sell the Peal, and she was going straight to hell.
Anemia!
Matthew onstage at the Pony, Claire standing behind him, banging the tambourine against her hip like Tracy Partridge—he was already gone from her, she could see it, even before Bruce introduced himself, before they drove to New York in Bruce’s Pinto and Bruce bought Claire a cheeseburger and Coke at a turnpike rest stop. She could have held on tighter, she knew that, but she let him go, and look what happened. He became a star. And as a star, he’d come back to her. Here he was.
Could all these thoughts be contained in a single kiss? It seemed impossible, but yes.
He pulled away. “I love you, Claire. I want you to come with me when I leave.”
She was confused. “And do what?” she said.
“Live with me. Marry me.”
“Matthew?” she said. The idea struck her as funny, and then it struck her as sad. He was so lost. And she was lost, too, more lost than he knew.
“Will you?” he said.
“Oh,” she said. Oh, oh,
oh!
Dear, darling grace of God. He was asking her for real. He meant it. “I wish I could. Believe me when I say, a part of me wishes I could.”
“Your kids can come with us. We’ll get a tutor—lots of people do it on the road. It will be good for them to see other countries, to learn other languages, experience other cultures.”
“Matthew,” she said, “I have a life here.”
“You’ll have a life with me. Please? I need you.”
“You need someone, but that someone isn’t me.”
“It is you. You’re telling me you don’t feel it?”
She felt something. What was it? Vestiges of old heartache, intense nostalgia, delight at seeing him, at touching him, at hearing him tell her she was still beautiful. A part of her wanted to run away with him; a part of her wanted to escape the turmoil she’d created, just leave, run off, go on tour, take the kids or leave them behind, get out of there. She had a lot of feelings, but she did not mistake any of them for love.
She kissed him on the tip of his nose. He still had the scar—measles, age seven. She hadn’t seen him in forever, but she knew him so well; she knew what was best for him. He had not wanted to go to California to record the album; he didn’t want to leave her. She said,
If you don’t go now, you’ll miss your big chance!
They fought about it; she insisted.
You have to go!
He couldn’t figure out why she was pushing him away. Things should have been the other way around: he should be wanting to go, she should be begging him to stay. Things were backward. He went, he wrote “Stormy Eyes,” he became a rock icon.
He may have forgotten all this. She would remind him in the morning. She laid her head against his chest. In there, his heart was rattling.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she said. Someone had told her this recently, but who was it?
She felt Matthew relax, as if he believed her.
She Knocks It Down
S
he woke up with a burst of adrenaline, as if someone next to her had rung the bell. This was it. Post time!
Jason had gone to the Downyflake; he would have breakfast, check on things at the work site, and be back by ten so that Claire could head to the tent to decorate. He’d left a note on the counter:
Look outside.
She looked: there was a crowd of people on the cul-de-sac in front of their house. What were they doing there?
“Autographs,” a voice said behind her. Claire turned. Matthew peered over her shoulder out the window. “They’re here for me.”
“They are?” Claire said. “Really?” This she had not predicted—that people would know Matthew was staying here, that they would come here, camp out with their cell phones and their iPods, hoping to see him, touch him, talk to him.
“Really,” Matthew said.
“It happens everywhere you go?”
“Everywhere.”
“Your eye looks better.”
“Does it?”
“No,” she said. He smiled, but she knew he was hurting. The problem, she decided, was that they had never had proper closure. Their relationship was a campfire that had smoldered for years; it had not been doused. Matthew was lonely without Bess, he was a hostage to his alcohol addiction, and he was grabbing for Claire because she was stable. Or so he believed. But they couldn’t go back to Wildwood Crest in 1987, no matter how much either of them wanted to.
“What would you like for breakfast?”
“A Bloody Mary.”
“Matthew.”
“I’m kidding.”
“You promised me you’d be sober for tonight.”
“I’m kidding!”
Claire grabbed his arm. Upstairs, she heard Zack crying. “I would make you miserable.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said.
She touched his cheek, carefully, below his black eye.
“I love you, Claire,” he said.
And she said, “I know.”
She was a get-it-done machine. She had yet to nail down a babysitter, but as she was flipping a tower of pancakes for Matthew and the kids, it dawned on her. She stepped outside. The gawkers were gathered on the cul-de-sac like a Greek chorus. Claire approached three teenage girls and asked if any of them could babysit that night. All three had planned to crash the gala to hear Max West sing, but one—the oldest, most together-looking one, Hannah, her name was—agreed to babysit if she could get her picture taken with Max West.
“Done,” Claire said. “We’ll need you at five.”
She was the Energizer Bunny. She was stage manager, den mother, multitasking superwoman. She tied five hundred silver balloons to the backs of chairs, she centered flower arrangements and smoothed tablecloths, she reviewed the timetable with Gavin, she inspected the greenroom—no alcohol in there, right? Right. She folded programs, she called Jason twelve times—Shea had a birthday party from one to three, the present was wrapped, he just had to drop her off and pick her up, and Zack could sleep in the car. J.D. was going to the fiskes’ house; Ottilie was not allowed to wear the eye shadow Matthew had brought, no matter how convincingly she made her case. No TV for the kids today, and no cigarettes for Jason.
“I’m going to need you to be charming tonight. Talk to people, make conversation, even though you hate it, okay, Jase?”
“Okay, boss,” he said.
Claire avoided the prep kitchen. Siobhan would put her to work, and although she didn’t have time to punch out five hundred rounds of brioche with a biscuit cutter, she would be too cowardly to turn Siobhan down.
Claire did not see Lock, nor did she see Isabelle.
When she drove back to the house to pick up Matthew, she found him commingling with the gawkers on the cul-de-sac. Had any of them given him alcohol or weed? She was suspicious, but she didn’t have time to investigate.
“We have to go!” she said.
In the car, Matthew said, “Are you breathing?”
Claire said, “If we don’t haul ass, we’re going to be late.”
He said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”
They picked up Terry and Alfonso and drove back to the tent for the sound check. This time, Claire did look for Lock and she did look for Isabelle—no luck—and she felt a flash of self-righteous indignation. Where were they? Why weren’t they helping—the executive director and the event cochair? Claire checked the greenroom again while Matthew was onstage.
No alcohol in here, right? Right.
Claire went to her hair appointment. She had her head tipped back in the sink and hot water rushing over her scalp when the stylist said, “You seem kind of tense.”
Right, Claire thought. Could she even begin to explain? Today was the day, tonight the night; it was the culmination of a year’s work. So much had happened, so much had changed. She had changed. She had spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars (thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars). She had experienced all of the stress and heartache promised to her at the beginning, and then some. And in eight hours, it would be over. Claire would be in bed. The thought should have been the source of enormous joy and relief, but instead, Claire felt depressed. All that anticipation and buildup and preparation, and like everything else, it would end. They would be left with . . . what? A pile of money. Hope and happiness for kids who needed it. That was the whole point.
G
avin arrived at Isabelle’s house at five o’clock. They had time for one drink, and then they had to go: Gavin had myriad responsibilities at the tent. The gala would not come off properly without him there, directing. He should skip the drink and proceed posthaste to the tent, but Isabelle had been adamant—
Come at five, we’ll have time for one drink
— and Gavin found her impossible to deny.
She was sitting on the bench by the koi pond in the foyer when he arrived. He didn’t have to knock; the front door was wide open and she was waiting for him, dressed in a stunning red valentine of a gown, with her hair like a waterfall over her shoulders. She raised her face when he walked in, and he could tell she’d been crying.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She all but collapsed in his arms. Hopes for a light, breezy—and quick—drink went down the drain.
“I just got off the phone with my ex-husband,” she said.
He didn’t have time for this. He had to get to the tent; there were fifty volunteers currently donning black T-shirts and eating a staff meal of hot dogs and macaroni salad, donated by the Stop & Shop, waiting for him to give them their orders. Gavin knew nothing about the business of ex-husbands, or of emotional intimacy in general. Call him self-absorbed—that was probably true—but no one else’s problems had ever captured his full attention. But in this case, his reticence was well founded. He had to get to the tent! Run the gala! Isabelle was the cochair; she should know this.
“Is everything okay?” he said.
“He ostensibly called to wish me good luck tonight,” she said. “But every time we talk, we get sucked down into the same old emotional quagmire.”
Gavin was holding her tentatively. She was warm in his arms, and she smelled like powdered sugar.
“I made such a fool of myself last fall,” she said. “There was another man. I was in love with him; he said he was in love with me. In fact, he said he was in love with me first, and that was why I fell in love with him. But he was a compulsive liar. He couldn’t leave his wife, never had any intention of doing so, despite frequent promises to the contrary, and then he claimed that he was staying with her for financial reasons, that he loved me but he couldn’t let her put him through the wringer. And he had kids, a retarded daughter in a home, and two boys at Collegiate. He didn’t want to lose them . . .” She stopped. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Uh,” Gavin said, “sure.” He took a deep breath. The koi pond made bubbly noises at his feet, and he watched the fish darting through the water. It might have been better if he’d been born a fish. The world of human beings, of relating to them in a meaningful way, bewildered him. (Lock and Claire, Edward and Siobhan, the guys who’d led him astray at Kapp and Lehigh, poor Diana Prell in the broom closet, even his own parents—he had never understood them.) He didn’t know how firmly or gently to hold Isabelle. She had thrust herself upon him, but he’d been holding her now for a few minutes. Should he let her go or pull her closer? “But we should probably leave soon.”
She raised her face to him. “Would you kiss me?”
It was official: he was flustered. How many times had he chastised himself for not kissing Isabelle on the night of the invitation stuffing, when they were alone, standing close together under the intoxicating spell of the moon garden? That had been a painful moment of cowardice on his part, a missed opportunity. But this was different. The sunlight was intense, and Gavin’s every muscle and tendon was alert with the pressing need to
get going!
He was always on time (his father’s fault:
To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten
). There was no time for kissing, and yet Isabelle was poised—eyes fluttering closed, face raised, lips parted ever so slightly. Gavin was a man; he did not need to be asked twice. He kissed her. The kiss was soft and sweet; she was a cookie, a confection. He had in the past been too aggressive with women, but that was perhaps because other women had not been as delicious as Isabelle.
She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. She laid her head against his chest. He touched the shining curtain of her hair. “I’m looking forward to tonight.”
“Yes,” he said. “Me, too.”
G
avin was the man in charge. He had the clipboard with one thousand names and one hundred table numbers. He had the timetable. He had the notes for Lock’s remarks and Adams’s remarks. He had organized the volunteers. He was the point person for the production staff, for Siobhan and her crew, and for Max West in the greenroom.
“If you have a question,” Lock heard a woman wearing a black volunteer T-shirt say, “ask that cute guy in the madras pants.”
Lock had a question. He had a series of questions. There was, according to Ben Franklin, more than fifty thousand dollars missing from their bank account. Fifty thousand dollars! Lock had spent the whole day poring over the financials—while Gavin was at the tent, organizing—just in case Ben Franklin was truly losing it. But no: Lock saw the cash skimmed from every deposit, and it made him sick. Not only would Gavin be fired (and possibly arrested), but Lock might lose his job as well, for not paying attention. Or he might be implicated in the whole scheme. It was unthinkable, that Lock’s name would be dragged through the mud for this.
Lock was the first person to get a drink at the bar. He ordered glasses of white wine for himself and Daphne, and a Coke with a cherry for Heather, but the whole time he kept his eye trained on Gavin, who was clearly in his element with his clipboard and his earpiece. Basking in his own self-importance. How could Lock feel anything but grossly betrayed? Betrayed one minute and hypocritical the next. Lock was hiding his own cache of sins—and it was for this reason alone that Lock had decided to wait until after the gala to confront Gavin. He would do it quickly and kindly—not only to minimize negative press toward Nantucket’s Children, but also for Gavin’s sake.
Lock drank his first glass of wine quickly. Across the green expanse of field, he saw Claire. She was stunning. Damn it! The sight of her pained him. The dress she wore was light green and gold, and it draped around her body in such a way that Lock could easily picture her nude underneath the lacy material. Her legs looked amazing because of her high heels, and she negotiated with the heels gracefully, even in the grass. Her hair had been straightened and smoothed, and it fell around her face in beautiful lines. She was luminous, a movie star. Everyone was looking at her; everyone wanted to talk to her. Lock felt a surge of jealousy—she was his!
Lock got another drink. He had to be careful; he didn’t want to have too much before he gave his remarks, thanked everyone for coming, and started the PowerPoint presentation. But his mind was careening one way and then another; it was a sled without a rider, whoosh, down the mountain, down a double fault line—Gavin, Claire, Daphne, Heather. Around him, the cocktail hour was in full swing. Everyone was chatting and laughing. He had to get out there and shine—that was his job. He wanted, first, to find Daphne and Heather. Daphne needed monitoring, and Lock didn’t want to squander a single second with Heather: she was leaving for school in two days. But there were people to talk to. They appeared, one after another, popping up in his path, hands to shake, connections to establish or reinforce. He wanted to keep his eye on Claire. And Gavin.
He oozed schmooze, but his mind was a runaway. He spied Isabelle French looking lovely in a red dress. Isabelle was another wild card; she had been so upset, so offended by the slight in the magazine. She had told Lock that she would see the gala through to the end, but then she was resigning from the board. Withdrawing her financial support. It would be another stain on Lock’s record.
Lock saw Daphne and Heather talking to one of their neighbors. Daphne held her wineglass aloft for Lock to see. He repaired to the bar to get her another drink. Daphne! Claire! Isabelle! Gavin!
Gavin!
When Lock approached the bar, Gavin was standing there alone. He was slouching against the bar in an uncharacteristically casual way, as though he were playing a part in a western. When he saw Lock, he grinned. “This is great,” he said. “All these people. It’s amazing.”
Lock had overestimated his own kindness. He could not stand to listen to Gavin utter one word about how exciting the gala was when the man had single-handedly robbed the cause of more than fifty thousand dollars. As Lock looked at Gavin now, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place—Gavin’s skittishness around the office, his sense of proprietorship over the finances, his anxiety about getting to the bank at lunchtime, and the way that, when he returned from the bank, he looked like the cat that had eaten the canary. Lock had actually wondered if Gavin had a crush on one of the tellers at the bank, so obvious was the change in his demeanor, from businesslike to slaphappy. It had been Ben’s granddaughter Eliza who had called Gavin into question in the first place. She took special notice of the Nantucket’s Children transactions because her grandfather was on the board of directors. Why did Gavin walk with so much cash? Thousands of dollars, she told Ben.