Pray for me, brother, the captain had written, for the worst is yet to come.
No doubt those words had been true enough when they were written, Cadmus thought, but the passage of time had made them truer still. Crime had mounted upon crime over the generations, sin mounted on sin, and God help them all—every Geary, and child of a Geary, and wife and mistress and servant of a Geary—it was time for the sinners to come to judgment.
VI
The conversation between Rachel and Mitch was surprisingly civilized. There were no raised voices; no tears on either side; no accusations. They simply exchanged disappointments in hushed voices, and agreed, after an hour or so, that they were failing to give one another joy, and that it would be best to part. Their only difference of opinion lay in this: Rachel had come to believe that there was no chance of reviving the marriage, and it would be best to start divorce proceedings immediately, while Mitch begged that they give one another a grace period of a few weeks to turn the decision over and be certain they were doing the right thing. After a little discussion, she said she’d go along with this. What was a few weeks? In the meantime they agreed to keep any discussion of the matter to a very small circle, and not consult lawyers. The moment a lawyer was brought into the picture, Mitch argued, any hope of reconciliation would be at an end. As to living arrangements, they would keep it very simple. Rachel would stay in the Central Park apartment; Mitch would either go back to the mansion or take a suite at a hotel.
They parted with a tentative embrace, like two people made of glass.
The following day, Rachel got a call from Margie. How about lunch, she said; somewhere grotesquely expensive, where they could linger so long over dessert that they could go straight on to cocktails?
“Just as long as we don’t talk about Mitch,” Rachel said.
“Oh no,” Margie said, with a faint air of mystery in her voice, “I’ve got something much more interesting than him to talk about.”
The restaurant Margie had chosen had been open only a few months, but it had already won a spate of four-star reviews, so it was packed, with a line of people all vainly hoping they’d get themselves a table. Inevitably, Margie knew the maître d’ (in a much earlier incarnation, she later explained, he’d been a barman at a little dive she’d frequented in Soho). He treated them both royally, taking them to a table which offered a full view of the room.,
“Plenty of people to gossip about,” Margie said, surveying the faces before them. Rachel knew a few of them by sight; a couple by name.
“Something for you to drink?” the waiter wanted to know.
“How many martinis do you have?”
“We have sixteen on our list,” the waiter replied, proffering the document, “but if you have some particular request . . .”
“Bring us two very dry martinis to start. Straight up. No olives. And we’ll look at the list while you’re bringing them.”
“I didn’t know you could mix so many martinis,” Rachel said.
“Well I’m quite sure after the third or fourth you can’t tell the difference,” Margie said. “Oh look . . . the table by the window . . . isn’t that Cecil?”
“Yes it is.”
The Gearys’ lawyer, who was a man in his early sixties, was leaning across the table gazing at a blonde, decorative woman a third his age.
“That’s not his wife, I presume?” Rachel said.
“Absolutely not. His wife—what’s her name? Phyllis, I believe—looks like our maître d’ in bad drag. No, that’s one of his mistresses.”
“He has more than one?”
Margie rolled her eyes. “When Cecil shuffles off to heaven, there will be more women at the graveside than are walking Fifth Avenue right now.”
“Why?” said Rachel. “I mean, he’s so unattractive.” Margie cocked her head a little. “Is he?” she said. “I think he’s quite well preserved for his age. And he’s fabulously wealthy, which is all a woman like that cares about. She’s going to get a little sparkly something before lunch is over. You just watch. She’s counting the minutes. Every time his hand gets near his pocket she salivates.”
“If he’s so rich, why does he go on working? Couldn’t he just retire?”
“He only has the family as clients now. And I think he does that out of loyalty to the old man. Garrison says he’s very smart. Could have been the best of the best, Garrison says.”
“So what happened?”
“The same thing that happened to you and me. He got dragged into the Geary family. And once you’re in there’s really no way out.”
“You promised, Margie. No talking about Mitchell.”
“I’m not going to talk about Mitchell. You asked me what happened to Cecil I’m telling you.”
The waiter was back at the table with the martinis. Margie was intrigued to know what a Cajun Martini—number thirteen on the list—was like. The waiter began to describe the recipe, but she stopped him after half a florid phrase.
“Just bring us two,” she said.
“You’ll have me drunk,” Rachel said.
“I need you a little tipsy,” Margie said, “for what I’m going to tell you about.”
“Oh my Lord.”
“What?”
“You were right,” Rachel said, nodding across the room in the direction of Cecil’s table. Just as Margie had predicted the lawyer had taken out a slim box from his pocket, and was opening it to let the blonde see her reward.
“Didn’t I say?’ Margie murmured. “Sparkly.”
“It used to happen all the time in Boston,” Rachel said.
“Oh that’s right, you worked in a jewelry store.”
“These men would come in and they’d ask me to choose something for their wives. At least they’d say wives, but I got the picture after a few weeks. These were older men, you know—forties, fifties—and they’d always want something for a younger woman. That’s why they’d ask me. It was like they were saying: if you were my mistress, what would you like? That’s how I met Mitchell.”
“Now who’s talking about Mitchell? I thought he was verboten.”
Rachel drained her martini. “I don’t mind. In a way I’d sort of like to talk about him.”
“You would?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“What’s to talk about?” Margie said, “He’s your husband. If you love him, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too. Just don’t depend on him for anything. Get your own life. That way he hasn’t got any power over you. Oh, look, that’s a pretty sight.” The waiter, who’d appeared with the next round of martinis, thought she meant him, and smiled dazzlingly. “I meant the drinks, honey,” Margie said. The smile decayed somewhat. “But you’re sweet. What’s your name?”
“Stefano.”
“Stefano. What do you recommend? Rachel’s very hungry, and I’m on a diet.”
“The chefs specialty is the sea bass. It’s lightly sautéed in pure olive oil with a little cilantro—”
“I think that sounds fine for me. Rachel?”
“I’m in the mood for meat.”
“Oh,” Margie said, with a cocked eyebrow. “Stefano. The lady wants meat. Any suggestions?”
The waiter momentarily lost his cool. “Um . . . well we have . . .”
“Maybe just a steak?’ Margie suggested to Rachel.
Stefano looked flustered. “We don’t actually serve a straightforward steak. We don’t have it on the menu.”
“Good Lord,” Margie said, thoroughly relishing the young man’s discomfort. “This is New York and you don’t serve a simple steak?”
“I don’t really want steak,” Rachel said.
“Well that’s not the point,” Margie said, perversely. “It’s the principle of the thing. Well . . . do you have anything that can be served rare?”
“We have lamb cutlets which the chef offers with almonds and ginger.”
“That’s fine,” Rachel told him. Grateful to have the problem resolved,
Stefano beat a hasty retreat.
“You’re mean,” Rachel said to Margie once he’d gone.
“Oh, he enjoyed it. Men secretly love to be humiliated. As long as it isn’t too public.”
“Have you ever thought of writing all this down?”
“All what?”
“Your pithy observations.”
“They don’t stand up to close scrutiny, honey,” she said. “Like me, really. I’m very impressive as long as you don’t look too closely.” She guffawed at this. “So now, drink up. Number thirteen’s really rather good.”
Rachel declined. “My head’s already spinning,” she said. “Will you stop teasing me and tell me what all this is about?”
“Well . . . it’s very simple, really. You need to take a vacation, honey.”
“I just came back from—”
“I don’t mean a trip home, for God’s sake. That’s not a vacation, it’s a sentence. You need to go somewhere you can be yourself, and you can’t be yourself with family.”
“Why do I think you’ve already got something planned?”
“Have you ever been to Hawaii?”
“I stopped over in Honolulu with Mitch, on our way to Australia.”
“Horrible,” Margie said.
“Australia or Honolulu?”
“Well, actually both. But I’m not talking about Honolulu. I’m talking about Kaua’i. The Garden Island.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh honey, it’s simply the most beautiful place on earth. It’s paradise. I swear. Paradise.” She sipped her martini. “And it so happens that I know a little house in a little bay on the North Shore which is fifty yards from the water, if that. It’s so perfect. Oh you can’t imagine. Truly, you can’t imagine. I mean I could tell you about it and it’d sound idyllic, but . . . it’s more than that.”
“How so?”
Margie’s voice had become sultry as she talked about the house; now it was so quiet Rachel had to lean in to catch what she was saying. “I know this is going to sound silly, but it’s a place where there’s still just a chance that something . . . oh shit, I don’t know . . . something magical might happen.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Rachel said. She’d never seen Margie this way before, and found it strangely moving. Margie the cynic, Margie the lush, talking like a little girl who’d thought she’d seen wonderland. It almost made Rachel believe she had.
“Who does the house belong to?”
“Ah,” she said, raising her index finger over the rim of her glass, and giving Rachel a narrow-eyed smile; “That’s the thing. It belongs to us.”
“Us.”
“The Geary women.”
“Really?”
“The men are forbidden to go anywhere near the place. It’s an ancient Geary tradition.”
“Who started it?”
“Cadmus’s mother I believe. She was quite the feminist, in her time. Or it may have been a generation earlier, I don’t know. The point is, the house isn’t used very much any longer. There’s a couple of local people who go every other month and mow the lawn and trim the palm trees, dust a little, but basically the place is left empty.”
“Loretta doesn’t go?”
“She went just after she and Cadmus first got married. So she said. But now she just stays right here with him, night and day. I think she’s afraid he’s going to start changing the will behind her back. Oh . . . speaking of legal matters . . .” She nodded across the restaurant. Cecil and the blonde were rising from the table. “He’s going to have a busy afternoon. She looks like the acrobatic type.”
“Maybe she’ll just lay back and let him get it over with,” Rachel said.
“I know how that feels,” Margie replied.
“I hope he doesn’t look in our direction,” Rachel said as Cecil headed for the door.
“I rather hope he does,” Margie said, and as luck would have it at that very instant Cecil glanced back across the restaurant and laid eyes on them. Rachel froze, still hoping Cecil wouldn’t recognize them. But Margie, murmuring oh good under her breath, raised her arm, replete with empty martini glass, above her head.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Rachel said. “He’s coming over to talk to us.”
“Just don’t mention Kaua’i,” Margie said. “That’s our little secret.”
“Ladies,” Cecil was saying. He’d left the blonde at the door. “I almost missed you, tucked away in the corner.”
“Oh you know us,” Margie said. “We’re the shy, retiring types. Unlike . . .” she glanced back toward Cecil’s girlfriend “ . . . what’s her name?”
“Ambrosina.”
“Well that’s a bit of a mouthful for such a precious little thing,” Margie said.
Cecil glanced back at his conquest. “She is precious,” he said, with surprising sincerity.
“And extremely blonde,” Margie replied, without any apparent irony. “Actress, is she?”
“Model.”
“Of course she is. You’re helping her get started. How sweet you are.”
Cecil’s smile had faded. “I must get back to her,” he said. He looked over at Rachel. “I heard from Mitchell this morning . . .” he said. “I’m sorry things aren’t going well.” He reached up and oh-so-lightly wrapped his hand around Rachel’s wrist. “But we’ll sort it all out, eh?” Rachel glanced down at his encircling fingers. He removed his hand, his manner effortlessly shifting into the paternal mode. “If there’s anything you need, Rachel. Anything at all, to make things easier.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Oh I know,” he said, as though he were a doctor reassuring a dying patient. “You’ll be just dandy. But if you need anything . . .”
“I think she gets the message, Cecil,” Margie remarked.
“Yes . . . well, it’s lovely to see you, Rachel . . . and Margie, always wonderful . . .”
“Really?”
“Really,” Cecil replied, and headed back to his girlfriend, who was looking decidedly pouty.
“I think the drinking’s finally catching up with me,” Margie said, staring after the lawyer as he put his arm around the blonde and escorted her out.
“Why?”
“I was just looking at Cecil’s face, and I thought: I wonder what he’s going to look like when he’s dead?”
“Oh, that’s not very nice.”
“Then I thought: well I just hope I’m there to find out.”
VII
i
Rachel called Mitch that evening and told him she’d seen Cecil, pointing out that he’d broken the terms of their agreement by talking to a lawyer. Mitch protested that he hadn’t been seeking legal advice. He thought of Cecil as a surrogate father, he said. They’d talked about love, not about the law; to which Rachel couldn’t help but observe that she doubted Cecil knew a damn thing about love.
“Don’t be mad at me,” Mitchell begged. “It was a genuine mistake. I’m sorry. I know it must look like I was going behind your back, but I wasn’t. I swear I wasn’t.”
His whining apology only irritated her further. She wanted to tell him he could take his apology and his lawyer and his whole damn family and go to hell. Instead, she found herself saying something she hadn’t planned to say.
“I’m going away for a while,” she told him.
The statement surprised her almost as much as it surprised Mitchell; she’d not been aware of making a decision either way about going to Kaua’i.
Mitchell asked her if she was going back home. She said no. Where then? he asked her. Just away, she said. Away from me, you mean, he said. No, she replied, I’m not running away from you.
“Well where the hell are you running?” he demanded.
There was an answer, right there on her tongue, ready to be spoken, but this time she governed herself and said nothing. It was only when the exchange with Mitchell was over, and she was sitting on the balcony, looking over the park and thinking about nothing in particul
ar that the unspoken reply came onto her lips.
“I’m not running away,” she murmured to herself, “I’m running toward something . . .”
She shared this thought with no one, not even Margie. It was silly, on the face of it. She was going off to an island she’d never heard of before, on the suggestion of a woman whose blood was seventy percent alcohol. There was no reason for her to be going, much less to sense any purpose in the journey. And yet she felt it, indisputably, and the feeling made her happy. So what did it matter if the source of the feeling was a mystery? She was grateful to have some measure of lightness back in her heart, and content to take pleasure in it while it lasted. She knew from experience it could be gone without warning, like love.
Margie made all the arrangements for the trip. All Rachel had to do was be ready to leave the following Thursday, with all her business in New York done and dusted. Once she got to the island, Margie predicted, she wouldn’t want to be talking on the telephone. She wouldn’t even want to think about the city, or even her friends. There was a different rhythm there; a different perspective.
“I almost feel as though I have to say goodbye to the old Rachel,” Margie said, “because believe me, she’s not coming back.”
“Now you’re exaggerating,” Rachel said.
“I am not,” Margie said. “You’ll see. The first couple of days, you’ll be restless, and thinking there’s nothing to do, there’s nobody to gossip about. And then it’ll slowly dawn on you that you don’t need any of that. You’ll be sitting watching the clouds on the mountains, or a whale out at sea, or just listening to the rain on the roof—oh my Lord, Rachel, it’s so beautiful when it rains—and you’ll think: I don’t need anything I haven’t got right now.”