“Things don’t really get going at the clubs until midnight,” answers Clive. “We’ll have plenty of time.”
“What’s he written?” Claire asks.
“Who?”
“Your writer friend. What’s he written? Would I have heard of it?”
“You may have done. He wrote something that came out the other year. Won a big prize too, I think. I never got around to reading it.”
“What’s his name?”
“Winslow. Harry Winslow. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes. He wrote
The Death of a Privileged Ape
. It won a National Book Award. I loved it.”
“I didn’t like it.” It was Jodie. “You remember?” she says, turning to Larry. “I tried reading it in Anguilla? Bored the crap out of me.”
“Yes, well, my taste in literature runs toward Dick Francis and Jackie Collins, I must say.” Lowbrow Clive to the rescue, but Claire doesn’t give up so easily.
“How do you know him?”
“Harry? He’s a lovely chap. Terribly funny. Wife’s smashing. Not sure how I know them. Just do. Met them at parties, I suppose. They have a house out here. Been in her family for years apparently, though I think that sort of thing means rather less here than in England.”
“And after we go to nightclub, yes?” puts in Irina.
“Absolutely. After we’ll go to a nightclub, and you and Derek can boogie until dawn.”
T
he house is charming. Lived in, loved. It’s small, two stories, the shingles brown with age, the trim white. Cars line the drive, some parked on the grass. A little boy, the son of the family, armed with a flashlight, helps direct them. Through the tall trees, an open field is barely visible in the twilight. The air smells of salt water, the sound of the ocean just audible. Claire wishes she could come back in the daylight. She can tell it would be marvelous.
Inside is the detritus of generations. Family treasures cover the wainscoted walls. It is as though the contents of several larger houses were spilled into one. Old portraits and photographs of men with mustaches and high collars, women with straw boaters and chignons, captains of industry, forgotten cousins; paintings of prized, long-dead horses; posters; books everywhere, on shelves and stacked in piles on the floor; and model airplanes and Chinese porcelain foo dogs and old magazines and fishing rods and tennis racquets and beach umbrellas jammed in the corners. Overhead a dusty, oversize hurricane lamp bathes everything in a soft glow. Children’s toys, scratched tables and scuffed chairs and piles of canvas sneakers, moccasins, and rain boots. The whole place smells of years of mildew, the sea, and woodsmoke.
Claire is the last one in. The noise of the party pours out from other rooms. Clive puts his hand behind her back and brings her up to introduce her to a man with sandy hair. He is shaking hands with the rest of their group.
“It’s my lifeguard!” He is taller than she remembers. He wears an old blazer with a button missing and frayed cuffs. “Saved anyone tonight?”
“Just a few. They were dying of thirst.”
Claire giggles. “Clive, I met this man on the beach this afternoon. Apparently, I went swimming somewhere I shouldn’t have and could have drowned.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It was my good deed for the day, Clive,” the man says. “Good thing she’s a strong swimmer. I was afraid I was going to have to go in after her. Last year a teenage boy drowned there.”
“So you’re Harry Winslow?” Now she knows why he looked so familiar.
“I am. Who are you?” He smiles broadly. There is an old scar on his chin. His eyes are gray. A faint trace of wrinkles. He holds out his hand, the nails clean, the fingers tapered. Golden hairs curl around his thick brown wrist.
His hand envelops hers as she introduces herself, a little less confident now. She is surprised that it would be so callused. He is no longer the same man she met on the beach. He has taken on substance in her eyes.
“Well, Claire, welcome. What can I get you to drink?”
“Excuse me,” says Clive. “I see a chap over there. I’ll catch up later, hmm?” Without waiting for Claire to answer, he is gone, smelling money.
“How about that drink, then?”
Claire follows Harry inside a small living room with an old brick fireplace, painted white. She notices large, worn sofas and comfortable reading chairs. He walks to a table piled high with bottles, glasses, and an ice bucket. On the floor, a faded Oriental carpet. The rest of the party is on the porch and the grass out back. She accepts a glass of white wine. He is drinking whisky on the rocks from a chunky glass.
“I read your book.”
“Did you?” he responds. “I hope you liked it.”
He is being modest. It is an act, she can tell. One he has repeated with varying degrees of sincerity. He has had this conversation before. Many people have read his book. It has won prizes. Thousands, maybe millions of people have liked it, even loved it. The success for him is a shield, a gift. It lends him an enviable objectivity.
“I did, very much.”
“Thank you.”
He smiles truthfully. It is like a parent hearing about the achievements of an accomplished child. It is no longer within his control. It has taken on a life of its own.
He looks around. He is the host. There are others to attend to, other drinks to fetch, introductions to be made, stories to be shared. But she wants him to stay. She tries to will him to stay. Wants to ask him questions, know more about him. What is it like to have your talents recognized, to have your photograph on the back of a book? To be lionized by friends and strangers, to have your face, your hands, your body, your life? But she cannot find the words and would be embarrassed if she did.
“Where are you from?” He sips his drink. He asks the way an uncle asks where a young niece is at school.
“Just outside of Boston.”
“No, I meant where do you live now?”
“Oh.” She blushes. “In New York. I’m sharing an apartment with a friend from college.”
“Known Clive long?”
“Not long. We met at a party in May.”
“Ah,” he says. “He’s supposed to be very good at what he does. I must admit I don’t know the first thing about business. I’m hopeless with money. Always have been.”
Other guests come up. A handsome man and a beautiful woman with exotic looks and dark hair pulled tightly back. “Excuse us,” says the man. They know him. “Darling,” she says, leaning in to offer him her cheek. “Great party. I wish we could stay. Sitter,” he explains. “You know what it’s like.”
They laugh with the intimacy of a private joke, the way rich people complain about how hard it is to find decent help or the expense of flying in a private plane.
The couple leaves. “Excuse me,” Harry says to her. “I need to fetch more ice. Enjoy the party.”
“I always do what the lifeguard tells me,” she says, making a mock salute but looking him in the eyes and holding his gaze.
He turns but then, as though realizing he is leaving her all alone, says, “Wait. You haven’t met Maddy. Let me introduce you. Come with me.”
Reprieved, she follows him happily through the crowd to the kitchen. Unlike the living room, it is bright. Copper pots hang from the walls. Children’s drawings decorate an aging refrigerator. A checked linoleum floor. There is a small, industrious crowd here, some sitting at a long, heavy table, others chopping, washing dishes. On a scarred butcher block table sits a large ham. It is an old kitchen. Worn and welcoming. She could imagine Thanksgivings here.
“Sweetheart,” he says. A woman stands up from the oven, taking out something that smells delicious.
She is wearing an apron and wipes her hands on it. She is taller than Claire and strikingly beautiful. Long red-gold ringlets still wet from the shower and pale blue eyes. No makeup. A patrician face.
“Maddy, this is a new friend of Clive’s.” He has forgotten her name.
“Claire,” she says, stepping forward. “Thank you for having me.”
Maddy takes her hand. A firm grip. Her nails are cut short and unpainted. Claire notices she is barefoot.
“Hello, Claire. I’m Madeleine. Glad you could come.”
She is dazzling. Claire is reminded of Botticelli’s Venus.
“She liked my book,” he says. “Must be nice to the paying customers.”
“Of course, darling,” she says. And then to Claire, “Would you like to help? As usual one of my husband’s cozy little get-togethers has turned into an orgy. We need to feed these people, or they could start breaking things.” She shakes her head theatrically and smiles at him.
“The world’s greatest wife,” he says with an ecstatic sigh.
“I’d be happy to,” says Claire.
“Great. We need someone to plate the deviled eggs. They’re in the fridge and the platters are in the pantry. And don’t worry if you drop anything, nothing’s that good.”
“You’re a wonderful field marshal,” says Harry, giving his wife a kiss on the cheek. “I need to get ice.”
“Check the wine too,” she calls out as he leaves. “We’ve already gone through two cases of white. And where’s that other case of vodka? I thought it was under the stairs.” She begins to plate the canapés from the oven onto a platter.
“Is there anything else I can do?” Claire brings out the deviled eggs.
“Yes. Phil,” she says to the man with the dish towel, “let Claire do that for a while. Take these out and put them on the sideboard.” She turns to Claire. “Is this your first time out here?”
Claire nods. “It’s very beautiful.”
“It’s much grander now than when I was a kid,” she says, slicing a brown loaf of bread, using the back of her wrist to push her hair away from her face. “Back then most of the land around here was farms. The place across the road was a dairy farm. We used to go help with the milking. Now it’s a subdivision for millionaires. Hand me that plate, would you?”
“You’ve always lived here?”
She nods. “We came in the summers. This was the staff cottage. My family owned the big house up the drive.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens. We—my brother, Johnny, and me—had to sell it to pay estate taxes, but we kept this place. I couldn’t bear to part with it entirely. Isn’t that right, Walter?”
This is where I come in. Every story has a narrator. Someone who writes it down after it’s all over. Why am I the narrator of this story? I am because it is the story of my life—and of the people I love most. I have tried to be as scrupulous as possible in my telling of it. I wasn’t a participant in everything that happened, but after I knew the ending, I had to fill in the missing pieces through glimpses that meant nothing to me at the time, memories that flash back with new significance, old legal pads, sentences jotted down in notebooks and on the backs of aging photographs. Even Harry himself, though he didn’t know it. I had no choice other than to try to make sense of it. But making sense of anything is never easy, particularly this story.
I walk over, plucking up one of the canapés and popping it into my mouth. Bacon and something. It is delicious. “Absolutely, darling. Whatever you say.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t be an ass.” Then to Claire, “Walter is my lawyer. He knows all about it. Sorry, Walter Gervais, this is Claire. Claire, Walter. Walter is also my oldest friend.”
It’s true. We have known each other since we were children. I live next door.
“Hello, Claire,” I say. “I see Maddy’s already dragooned you into service here at the Winslow bar and grill. I refuse to lift a finger unless it’s to join the other four wrapped around a glass tinkling with ice.”
I fancy myself to be both witty and slightly indolent. I am not really either, though. It’s a persona, one I use to protect myself. In fact, I am quite boring and lonely.
“I don’t mind. I don’t really know too many people here, so it’s nice for me to help,” Claire says.
“You’re lucky,” I say. “I know far too many of the people here. That probably explains why I’m hiding out in the kitchen.”
“Walter’s a big snob. I don’t think he’s made a new friend since he was in prep school,” Maddy says.
“You know, I think you’re right. I already knew all the people worth knowing by then anyway.”
“Claire came with Clive.”
“Right, see? There you go. Just met him. Don’t like him.”
“You don’t know me,” says Claire.
“You’re right. I don’t. Should I?”
Here’s the thing about Claire: she is actually quite beautiful, but there is something else about her that makes her stand out. In this world, beauty is as common as a credit card. I will try to put my finger on it.
“That’s up to you. But we didn’t go to prep school together so it looks like I don’t have much of a shot.” She smiles.
I smile back. I like her. I can’t help myself. I tell Maddy to stop working. Maddy is always working. She is a fiend for activity.
“All right.” She puts down the knife. “That’s all the food we have in the house anyway. Just about the only thing left is the bluefish in the freezer.”
“And those are only any good if you pickle them in gin. Just like me.”
Why do I always play the bloody fool around her? It can’t be that I am showing off. No, it is Claire I am showing off for now.
“Walter, stop standing around sounding like a moron and go get Claire and me something to drink.” Maddy turns to Claire while I’m still in earshot. “You wouldn’t know it, but he’s actually a hell of a good lawyer.”
I could have left this out but I didn’t. It appeases my ego. My education was very expensive, and I am a good lawyer. I make a lot of money at it too. I don’t really like it, though. Other people’s problems at least keep me from thinking too much about my own.
I come back carrying a wine bottle. “Let’s go outside and get away from this crowd,” I say to Claire. “You come too, Maddy.”
The three of us go out the kitchen door. We stand on the damp grass. Claire has removed her shoes now too. Madeleine lights a cigarette. She is trying to quit. The party is roaring on the other side of the house. It is darker here. A large tree with a swing looms in shadow in front of us. The moon and millions of stars fill the night sky. In the distance we can see the lights of a much bigger house.
“Your parents’ house?” asks Claire.
Madeleine nods. “And to the left is Walter’s. We grew up next door to each other. But he still owns his.” It’s too dark to see my house through the thin brake of trees.