Off Season (15 page)

They walked a few more blocks, this time in silence. For all the tension between them these past days, Ben did not wonder what he would do without Jill, how he would handle this mess. He simply knew he would not handle it well.

He looked at the ground, at his wife’s feet that kept pace beside him, her polished leather pumps right-lefting beside his scruffy work boots.

“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes still focused on the brick walk. “I’m sorry I got so upset about your deal with Addie. If you want to do the shtick with your old boyfriend, that’s your decision. As long as you don’t tell them our business.”

The sound of their footsteps click-clicked again.

“I don’t
want
to do the show, Ben.” She wrapped her arms around herself, around her thin gentle middle that always seemed so fragile and lost in his arms. “What I really want is to have the last three years back. I was happiest tending the gardens and renovating the house and falling in love with you a little more each day. That’s what I would have wanted forever. But life changes. We can’t stay in fantasyland forever.”

“I thought you went back to work because you wanted to help until Menemsha House was under way.”

She was silent, then raised her eyes to the setting sun. “I did, Ben. That’s what I mean. Life changes. The things
we want can change. They can change from day to day or from year to year.”

“Or not at all,” he said.

She turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“The way I feel about you hasn’t changed, Jill.”

She smiled. “You still want to protect me. You have to learn you can’t protect me.”

“Who says?” He took her hand. It was small and smooth in his.

“You want me to run away to England.”

“No. I want you to take a little break. Visit your son.”

“Bull. You want me to run away.”

He looked down at their feet again. “Not completely,” he said. “I also want you away from here so I don’t feel the guilt that I have made your life so miserable that now you want to go back to the one you had before you met me, the one where it was all glitter and limousines and everything beautiful.”

She stopped. She turned his face toward her. “Ben Niles,” she said, her eyes locked on his, “you are such an ass.”

Rita was going as a witch because the dress was full and she couldn’t be a pumpkin because she looked positively dreadful in orange. That last observation had not come from her but from Hazel, who was definitely going to drive Rita crazy before all was said and done.

The only thing keeping Rita sane these days was that after the Halloween party, the tavern would close for the season, and Charlie would be gone to Florida. By the time he returned in the spring, the baby would have been born.

All she had to do was get through this night unscathed, her secret undetected. The witch costume should help, though beneath it her jeans were beginning to groan. Three months pregnant, and already it was apparent.

She arrived early to help Amy set up. Unfortunately, Marge Bainey had the same idea. Rita had never had the pleasure.

They stood in the dining room amid a ghoulish tangle of fake cobwebs and black-construction-paper bats. She nodded when Amy introduced her to the woman and tried to pretend it was, indeed, as nice to meet her as she said.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” said the mainlander from Falmouth, who was wearing an unnerving, teenage Cher outfit. Rita wondered if the long black tresses covered mousy gray hair, and if the tall svelte body in the fringed vest, jeans, and boots would become short, plump, and squat when the costume was removed. Miracles, after all, happened every day, or so she’d heard.

She smiled but did not acknowledge that she, too, had heard “so much” about her. “Where’s Charlie?” Rita asked, quickly, hoping that no one thought she cared about the answer too much.

“Getting dressed,” Marge/Cher replied with a cute grin that hinted she was quite familiar with the act of Charlie Rollins pulling his clothes on and off.

Rita did not mention that she, too, had been there and done that and now had a second, late-in-life pregnancy to prove it.

“I have no idea how many people will show up,” Amy said, changing the subject. She was dressed as one of the Spice Girls. Rita wondered if everyone but her would arrive as a Top 40 megastar, then or now. Her eyes scanned the room.

“I’ve been telling Amy not to worry,” Marge said, tossing back her “hair” and adjusting the beaded headband. “The 1802 Tavern is renowned for its Halloween parties.”

“How would you know?” Rita asked, not caring about the edge to her voice. “You’re from America.”

The woman laughed. Rita tried not to notice that the lines of her rib cage protruded through her slinky black body suit. “I was here last year,” she said. “It was right after I took on the Vineyard as an account.

“In fact,” the woman continued, “that was when I met Charlie.”

Slowly the words registered. A
year ago?
A tiny foot—or maybe it was gas—flutter-kicked Rita’s belly, somewhere
between the baby’s big toe and her heart. Charlie had known Marge a whole year? He’d met her when Rita and he were still—well, not dating exactly, but still sleeping together on occasion? She wondered if … 
never mind
, she told herself.
It doesn’t matter
. The flutter-kick came again. She turned to Amy. “So where are we bobbing for apples?”

Amy turned and walked toward the fireplace. Rita gladly stepped out of Cher’s aura and followed.

“I think the hearth will be perfect,” Amy said, gesturing to a huge copper pot that sat there now. “I bought two pecks. Do you want to wash them?”

“A witch is definitely the right one to wash apples” came Charlie’s voice from the stairs. The lilt in his voice told Rita he was trying to be funny, perhaps to cut the tension between his lovers, old and new, who now stood in the same space, breathing the same air.

Rita turned, determined to smile and convince him that it was okay. But then she noticed his costume: a sheepskin vest, bell-bottom jeans, and a Fu Manchu mustache. He was Sonny, to Marge Bainey’s Cher.

And the beat goes on
, she thought with quiet, resigned remorse.

By nine o’clock the party was in full swing, and Rita was exhausted from all the pretend-stuff—the pretend smiling and grinning and chatting—while trying to keep Charlie and/or Marge in her peripheral vision and hating herself for doing that; the pretend enthusiasm over costumes and beer swigging and silly games in which she once would have been an eager participant.

It was different now. She stepped outside the back door and stood in the alley, breathing in fresh air and shutting out the din behind her.

She wished she could talk to Jill. She wished they
could share the goings-on and the gossip of the party, as they had done in the old days.

But things were different now. It was like all those times when Jill was gone and Rita had walked past the house on North Water Street, with Kyle on his tricycle. The house had looked the same, even when the people inside were different, when the laughter was long gone.

It wasn’t quite the same as that now, but it was different nonetheless.

Jill and Ben were inside the tavern, Jill and Ben, the all-American couple, the perfect pair. They had come tonight as ghosts: Jill, a glamour-ghost, in a sheet with ochre ultrasuede trim and pearl-white sequins; Ben, a worker-ghost, complete with tool belt and hard hat. They were cute, quaint, and together. Rita hated that women friends could always be friends until the one thing they each longed for—a man—got in the way. It was as if once the prize arrived, a lot of other things and people got screwed up in the change.

Change
. There was that word again.

She looked up to the sky. Its autumn blackness was sharp and clear, and a sprinkle of stars punctured the canvas with radiant silver. She thought of Kyle and pictured him up there in the shape of a seagull, riding a star, watching over her.

She supposed he knew about Charlie and Marge Bainey. And that all hell might break loose in the spring when Charlie returned—married, perhaps—and discovered that in his absence Rita had had a baby that looked an awful lot like him.

She could always have the baby off-island and lie about his birth date so Charlie wouldn’t know it was his. So Charlie wouldn’t know it was another Kyle.

If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn she heard Kyle say, “Once was enough, Mom. Even though we did okay, don’t cheat this baby out of a father.”

The old back door hinge creaked. Rita blinked in the darkness. The two young men who worked for Jill—Jill had introduced them, what were their names?—stepped outside. Then they laughed and linked arms and kissed each other on the lips. On the lips? Hadn’t Jill said Amy had a crush on one of them?

“Lose someone?” Rita asked.

The young men jumped. Their arms fell to their sides. The one with the ponytail smiled. “Sorry. It’s so crowded inside, we were looking for a way out.”

“Looks like you found it.” Where was Amy? Did she know that the two men were with each other in … the biblical sense? Not that she cared, but Amy …

The ponytailed one pulled off a three-cornered hat that was supposed to make him look like a revolutionary soldier. But he looked more like the ruffle-shirted Paul Revere of the 1960s rock band the Raiders, than the one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea Revere.

“Great party,” he said. “Have you seen Amy?”

She shifted her gaze from the Minuteman to his partner, who was dressed as a clown, complete with a large flower painted atop his bald head. “The last time I saw her, she was judging the costume contest.”

He laughed. “Well, if you see her again, tell her we took off and thanks for the invite.”

Rita did not ask where they were “taking off” to, and what they’d take off once they got there.

“We’ll catch up with her later. Okay?”

It amazed her how blasé the younger generation was about relationships. “I’m afraid I can’t tell her anything because I’ve forgotten your names.” She could simply have said “the young men who work for your mother,” but she felt a stupid need to make them as uncomfortable as she could, as if being nasty would protect Amy from getting hurt.

“Jimmy and Devon,” he replied.

Devon squeaked a horn that was tied to his belt.

Jimmy laughed. Then the two sauntered off.

As Rita watched them walk away, she wondered what would have happened if Kyle had lived, if he would have ended up loving Amy and if they would have married. Then Rita wrapped her arms around herself and headed back inside, because though change always was sure to come, she didn’t have to like it. Not one damn bit.

“Last call of the year,” Charlie announced with what Rita recognized as hope that the crowd would start to dwindle.

She removed her pointed black hat and wove her way to the bathroom, letting someone else handle the last round of drinks. In the nearly thirty years that she’d worked there, Rita had paid her dues.

Once in the ladies’ lounge, she sat down on the small sofa and unpeeled her boots, grateful for the quiet and the escape from the crazy people. Holding her legs out, she wriggled her toes. As if in response, the baby seemed to wriggle his. She could not remember if Kyle had been active at three months.

Lifting her dress, she unzipped the fly of her jeans and rubbed her belly. “Slow down there, partner,” she said. “After tonight we’re home free.”

Her stomach seemed bigger tonight than last night, bigger, even than this afternoon. Hauling herself up from the sofa, she went to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. With her dress raised to her breasts, Rita smoothed her hand over her mound, then stood sideways to examine its size.

She let out a low whistle. Yes, it was definitely a good thing that Charlie would be gone tomorrow. Because there was no way he could look at her and not see what she could see.

“Rita!”

Rita’s hand froze over her belly. In the mirror she saw Amy emerging from a stall. Slowly she lowered her dress, but it was too late. Amy’s eyes were stuck to Rita’s baby belly, like peanut butter to marshmallow, like oatmeal to ribs.

With her best effort at nonchalance, Rita turned to Jill’s daughter. “Hey, kid,” she said, “I thought you were doing last call.”

For the second or two during which the Spice Girl Amy did not reply, Rita ran through about a hundred scenarios in her mind.

My mother’s cooking has made me fat
.

Menopause, Amy. Just you wait and see
.

Think I’d better sign up for the gym
.

The scenarios came, and all of them stank. Besides, reality would soon be undoubtedly evident, and she couldn’t lie to Amy.

She could deflect the conversation by saying she’d seen the video boys together. But that might hurt Amy, and she couldn’t do that, either.

The only answer, then, was to tell the plain damn truth.

“Well,” she finally said as Amy dragged her eyes from Rita’s stomach up to her face, “looks like I’m caught. Red-handed, so to speak, as opposed to red-headed. Which I am, too, though not for long because Doc Hastings won’t let me dye my hair again until my term is over.”