Off Season (10 page)

“Jill,” the agent replied matter-of-factly. Not “How are you?” or “What have you been doing the last three years?” or “I’m sorry I blackballed you.” Simply “Jill.”

“I’ve been thinking about your offer.” Jill closed one arm across herself, shielding her naked vulnerability from the woman who had cost her so much. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea. For me to fill in for Lizette.”

Again silence loomed—silence, dead air, the unnerving stalled space that was one of Addie’s tactics in subtle manipulation. It was a tactic Jill detested.

“Would it be for the whole month of February?”

“Plus a week in December for preshow publicity. And, yes, of course, the whole month of February.”

February was prime time in the ratings wars of TV land, the critical time when midseason replacements were administered as booster shots, when season specials and
heavy hitters were pulled out of the darkness in order to position each station for the almighty advertising dollar.

“When do you need a definite answer?”

Addie sighed loudly. “Well, I can’t wait forever. This is network, not local.”

Yes, she knew that. It was a RueCom show, produced by Maurice Fischer, the ratings wizard, and aired on those stations that had not given her stories from Vineyard Productions the time of day, night, late night, or fringe.

“If you don’t want it, I need to find someone else,” Addie continued in a voice that suddenly sounded close to sincere. “I was only trying to do you a favor.”

A favor. Yes, Jill wanted one, too, but one that involved a link to a powerhouse attorney. She closed her eyes and swallowed a small, shallow swallow. She pictured herself on the set beside Christopher, a fake smile on her face, an ache in her stomach.

All for the sake of sweeping the sweeps. Or so they would think.

Jill McPhearson on the set with Christopher Edwards would be one hell of a way to sweep.

So they needed her.

But she needed them—maybe more.

“Send me a contract,” she replied, then said a quick good-bye without second-guessing why she had done it or how long she could keep it from Ben.

Thanks to Jimmy O’Neill the audio master, Jill got a shooter to work with them on Cranberry Day, a pro out of Albany with whom he’d once traveled.

She took the call in the garden shed and was grateful that it was from Jimmy: Jill had nearly forgotten the job was imminent, she’d been so immersed in chopping back hydrangea and painting the back porch and blasting her way through other physical busywork chores. Anything to try and forget about the rest of her life. Anything to try and forget that soon she was going to ask Addie about an attorney, and that she’d done something certain to make Ben more angry at her than he already was.

Anything to forget she’d be doing
Good Night, USA
, as if she were picking up her life where she’d left off, which she was most definitely not doing.

She told Jimmy she’d book the videographer—Devon Pike was his name—at the Beach Plum Bed & Breakfast. Then she hung up the phone, wiped the moisture of fine-misting rain from her brow, and sighed, just as Amy appeared at the doorway of the toolshed.

“I saw Ben at the tavern,” she said. “What’s going on?”

Jill leaned against the wooden workbench and pulled off her gloves. She wasn’t sure if Amy meant what was going on overall, why was Ben at the tavern at ten in the morning, or why had he not slept at home last night. Most probably her daughter wasn’t interested in Jill’s progress disassembling the dried-up gardens of summer.

“Did I tell you I’m doing a segment on Cranberry Day? It should be unique. Maybe more cable programming will want it.” She turned to the workbench and cleaned off the trowel and old hand clippers.

“That’s not what I meant,” Amy replied. “Ben stayed at the tavern last night. Why?”

Jill kept cleaning tools. It was easier than looking her daughter in the eye because, unlike her son, Amy adored Ben. “The coolest stepfather you could have found,” she’d said to Jill the night they’d told the kids they’d decided to marry. But what would Amy think if she knew about … this? Would she defend her cool stepfather? Or would she look at him differently, wonder what the truth was, no longer want to be in his presence?

She wanted to tell Amy and yet …

Still, she could not lie. “Ben and I had an argument.”

“Jesus, Mom,” Amy said, an accusatory tone springing forth, a tone that reminded Jill of Amy’s early teenage years when her daughter had believed that anything, everything that went wrong or merely awry, had to, in some way, have been Jill’s fault.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Jill responded with quick defensiveness. She dropped the tools in a peach basket and pulled off her rubber boots. “It’s nothing we won’t resolve.” She still was not looking at her daughter. “Marriage is no easier than dating, Amy.”

Immediately she was sorry she’d said that. Amy often complained that there were no decent boys on the island, which Jill suspected was simply an excuse not to date anyone seriously, something that, as beautiful and intelligent as
her daughter was, Amy had not done. Ever. It was as if her experience with Kyle had left her frightened of men or of getting involved. Which seemed so out of sync for such a beautiful girl with so much style and so much, well, pizazz.

“Well, what are you going to do, Mom? You can’t leave him down there.”

“I did not leave Ben anywhere, Amy. He went of his own volition. In fact, it was his idea. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get cleaned up. I want to go over to the studio and take care of some things.”

“But, Mom—”

“Did Ben say where he was going?” she asked.

Amy shrugged. “Menemsha, I guess.”

The very name of the place that had once made Jill joyous about Ben’s dream now curdled her insides. She turned around. “Don’t worry, honey, it was nothing. Just a small argument.”

“It was big enough for him to leave home.”

Jill forced herself to look into her daughter’s eyes. “We’ll be fine, honey.” She hoped she sounded more convincing than she felt. “It takes more than a lovers’ quarrel to break up true love.”

Rita smiled. “Mom, I’m pregnant.” She stood alone before the full-length mirror in her bedroom, studying her face as she practiced breaking the news to Hazel.

The smile was not right. It was too smartass.

She frowned.

“Mother, I’m pregnant.” No, too serious.

She lifted her chin. “I’m going to give you another grandchild, Hazel.” No, too stupid.

Rita sighed and dropped onto the bed. This would be so much easier if she didn’t feel like a scared seventeen-year-old again, or that she’d be labeled the town pump again—loosey-goosey, easy-make, slut. This would be so
much easier if her mother had just stayed in Florida like most ordinary women her age.

Running her hand over the small, bump-in-the-road mound that had begun to form in her belly, Rita remembered that Hazel was, always had been, anything but ordinary. Not until her mother had left for Florida had Rita begun to appreciate her for what she’d been—a mother who, no matter what, had always found ways to support her daughter and her illegitimate grandson, ways to protect them from the gossip piranhas, and ways to help her stay just ahead of the wolves at their paint-peeling door.

The “ways” that Hazel had found may not have been conventional, but they had worked. There had been favors given and taken to and from tourists—male tourists, of course; there had been that infernal bunking with neighbors, a week at a time, enabling them to rent out their house in season for a few extra bucks. Through it all, there had been Hazel. Never-give-up, pain-in-the-butt Hazel, who had helped Rita raise Kyle with open-arms love.

Rita hadn’t realized those things until Hazel was gone. Gone only to Florida, thank God, not gone as in dead like Jill’s mother.

All Rita knew now was that if her mother was planning to move back, she had to be told what the future would hold, and she had to be told sooner rather than later.

Rita hauled herself from the bed and headed for the stairs, about to tell her mother, for the second time in her life, that her daughter had been dumb enough not to keep her legs crossed.

“It’s Charlie’s, isn’t it?” Hazel asked from over the tops of her reading glasses, her eyes dancing with excitement instead of piercing with anger the way they had the last time, way back when. She dropped the book she’d been reading into the basket next to her chair. It was a collection of
Henry Beetle Bough essays. Rita wondered if Hazel was brushing up on the Vineyard past in order to make way for the future. “Rita Mae?” she demanded. “That baby has Charlie Rollins for a father, doesn’t he?” She pointed at Rita’s stomach.

“I do declare, Mother,” Rita said, “you must be a soothsayer.”

Hazel let out a loud guffaw. “Some people just have the right biological connections.”

Hazel, of course, did not know that Rita had “connected,” biologically speaking, with two other men besides Charlie. She briefly wondered if Hazel, too, had experienced an abortion or two back in her tourist-hopping days.

“Yes, well, whatever you call it, the connection seems to have worked.”

Hazel stood up and gave her daughter a hug. “Another baby. This is wonderful, Rita Mae. And this time the baby will know its father.”

Rita stiffened and stepped back from her mother. “Not yet, Hazel,” she said sternly.

A frown sharpened Hazel’s seventy-eight-year-old forehead. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Charlie, Mother. This is between me and him.” She sucked a small breath through her teeth. “And I don’t know yet what I’m going to tell him.”

Hazel groaned and sat back down on the chair, the wooden frame creaking. “You’re forty-six years old, Rita Mae. Haven’t you learned anything all these years?”

“Yes. I’ve learned that I’d be no good at marriage. I’ve told you a thousand times that I’m not like Jill.”

“And what about Jill? Does she know?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Rita huffed a small huff. “Mother, please. Jill might wish otherwise for me, but I’m sure that even she knows I’m better off on my own. As will be the baby.”

Plucking at the rollers in her red-rinsed hair, Hazel pursed her matching red lips. “Well, missy, you’re forgetting one thing.”

Rita put a hand on her hip and waited for the next comment that was surely forming right now in her mother’s quick mind—too quick for her age, too sharp for a senior.

“You’re forgetting about Mr. Rollins. This is a new century, Rita Mae. Fathers have rights that they didn’t have back when Kyle was born.”

Florida was definitely a much better place for her mother. Maybe Rita would buy her another mobile home. One with a bigger
suit
of rooms, where she could live out the rest of her meddlesome days.

“Well, believe it or not, you don’t know everything, Mother. For instance, you don’t know that Mr. Rollins has himself another woman. I’m sure he is no more interested in marrying me than I am in marrying him.” She spun on her heel and headed toward the kitchen.

From the living room, she heard Hazel mutter.

Rita snapped on the tap and filled a glass of water.

“I said,” came her mother’s raised voice, “when is the blessed event?”

Rita took a big gulp then closed her eyes. “April,” she answered quietly. “The end of April.”

As Jill drove along Beach Road toward Oak Bluffs, she wondered how soon they’d know when the trial would be. She needed to decide if she should tell Ben before or after they found out—before she told Addie or after they’d lined up an attorney, a John Grisham hero who would get to the bottom of this and know what to do to vindicate Ben.

Before or after. Either way, he was going to be angry.

She set her jaw squarely and fixed her eyes on the narrow road. She told herself it didn’t matter how angry Ben was. They could not pretend that this was not happening.
They could not pretend that everything was fine. Pretending was the worst way to live life, Jill had long ago learned, because sooner or later it caught up with you. The pretending stopped, the game was over, and usually the pain was worse.

She wondered how long Ben would stay at the tavern.

She wondered if this was going to ruin her marriage.

Then she wondered how intense the anxiety level would be back on the anchor desk with Christopher, and how she would survive it. And if she was selling her soul to save the man she loved.

Her gaze drifted off to the right, then to the left. The afternoon sky was clear and blue and uninterrupted by the summer colors of parasails, tourist blankets, and striped beach umbrellas, and the air unpolluted by assault sounds from boom boxes, car horns, and the scrape of skateboards on pavement.

Instead, the beach was sandy white, protected by the bike trail on one side and by the small, grassy dunes on the other, and all was autumn-peaceful. Yet everything she saw and everything she felt was muted by the sorrow that veiled her heart. She blinked and fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

Ben was in his old workshop behind the house in Oak Bluffs, guiding a buzz saw through a sturdy two-by-four, determined to replace the old window frame that he’d been meaning to replace for six years.