Alex helped to further her perception of safety by treating her at all times with the most meticulous propriety, so much so that she began to wonder if perhaps, that night, he really had been drunk. It all seemed like a dream to her now, or a misunderstanding whose importance she had foolishly overestimated. Mr. McKie was courteous, agreeable, mannerly, and obliging—the perfect gentleman companion in a community that would have rooted out the merest semblance of improper behavior and happily torn its perpetrator to shreds. He was also charming and amusing, and unfailingly kind to Michael; she couldn’t have asked for a more congenial friend. And if, once in a great while, some wayward, outlaw longing stirred the quiet surface of her content—well, she simply forgave herself. She was a woman, not a block of ice. Such thoughts were natural. Natural—but pointless. And hurtful. But because they hurt no one but her, she tolerated them.
The month of June passed quickly. Ben never came. She’d known he wouldn’t visit every weekend as he’d promised, but she’d thought to see him at least once or twice. But he never came, and so for Sara the long, idle days were also a reprieve from the strain of worry and distrust and foreboding. They spoke on the telephone, and she would report on the progress of the house—steady despite his continuing demands for changes; Michael’s health—perfect; the status of her social advancement—never fast or grand enough to suit him. From him she learned that he was comfortable at his club, business was good, and that the one time he’d stopped by the house to pick up something he’d forgotten, Miss Eminescu seemed to have everything under control.
She had deduced the same thing from the letters Tasha wrote to her. Her English lessons were going well, she related. She was keeping busy by doing a little sewing, not only for herself but for Sara, who had been so kind as to say that she might alter and experiment with a few of her beautiful winter garments. Sara considered this a good sign, since it meant Tasha’s wrist must be healed by now. It wouldn’t be long before she found steady employment in a fine New York dress shop—if not Mr. Lockhart’s, then someone else’s. Meanwhile she made a convenient housekeeper while the family was away, taking calls, relaying messages, and dealing with the workmen who came and went to service the new plumbing. All in all, it seemed a fortuitous arrangement for everyone.
The lazy, sun-drenched days slipped by. To please Ben, she dutifully accepted all the invitations that came her way, and was privately glad because there weren’t very many. Mr. and Mrs. Kimmel, business friends of Ben’s from the city, were particularly solicitous and always included her at dinner parties and teas and excursions into the country. But otherwise she saw few hostesses more than once or twice, and entertained sparingly herself. Instead she spent most of her time with Michael. How lovely to have him to herself, without Mrs. Drum’s interference! They did everything together. They went to Bailey’s Beach each morning at eleven for the “ladies’ swim”—only for an hour, because at noon a flag was run up to announce the gentlemen’s turn, when the ladies must disappear. She watched his hair turn nearly white from the sun, his skin a deep golden brown, and sometimes she swore she could see him growing taller. In the afternoon they did lessons, then played cards or games. Or she would read a book on the terrace while he and Gadget ran each other’s legs off in Daisy’s front yard. Mrs. Godby, the cook, liked to go home at five o’clock, so they either went out to dinner in restaurants or made sandwiches and ate them at the kitchen table.
Daisy dropped by almost every day—to “schmooze,” as Sara put it to herself. It was a surprise to discover that the champagne she’d brought over that first day wasn’t a one-time, celebratory bottle after all; rather, it was part of Daisy’s daily ration of alcohol, and often she started on it as early as two or three o’clock. But the only effect it seemed to have was to sharpen her tongue and darken marginally an outlook that was already sardonic in the extreme.
And every evening at six o’clock, while fashionable Newporters were drinking tea on the lawn or starting to change for dinner, Sara sat on a rock at Anchor Point and waited for Michael to fetch Mr. McKie from the building site. Then the three of them would amble the length of Cliff Walk and back, taking their time, stopping to stare at the “cottages” or to watch the late slanting sun dance on the ocean. It was a time to tell each other what they’d done that day, or what they’d thought, or said, or heard someone say. They looked forward to it as the hour that rounded things out, smoothed over the complexities of the day, and put everything in perspective. If the walk had to be canceled—because Sara had a social engagement or Alex had to go to New York—they all felt cheated, and the day seemed oddly unfinished.
One Saturday Alex invited Michael to go with him to Bailey’s Beach for the “gentlemen’s swim,” and after that it became a regular weekend outing for them. Sara was intrigued by Michael’s unbounded delight in the arrangement. He enjoyed going to the beach with her, of course, and they always had fun—but going with Alex raised the experience to a completely different level. Had he missed male companionship that much? It ought not to surprise her; Ben rarely did anything with him alone, purely for enjoyment. But she sensed something in Michael’s happiness in being with Alex that went beyond the simple pleasure a seven-year-old boy might take in spending time with a kind, funny, indulgent older member of his own sex. She couldn’t have put it into words, but sometimes she felt there was a kinship between them, some connection that existed on an unspoken, hardly conscious level and manifested itself in their speedy and remarkably easy friendship. She had deep, complex feelings about the situation. But it was summertime; she felt more relaxed than she had in years. She put off sorting her feelings out because she was lazy and they were too complicated.
On an afternoon early in July, thick, gunmetal clouds rolled and writhed over the bay, signaling a storm. Michael could see his walk being washed out, and he was longing to show Mr. McKie the model battleship he’d spent all day constructing out of toothpicks. Sara finally gave in to his cajoling and let him carry a message to the site, asking Alex to meet them, if it rained, at the house instead of at Anchor Point. What was wrong with that? Mr. McKie was in her employ, they’d been seen together in public countless times, Michael was always with them—just as he would be today. She could see nothing wrong in it, no social decencies flouted. At four o’clock the heavens opened up, and at four-fifteen Alex slogged up the front steps under an umbrella and knocked on the door.
At five, the sun was shining, and Sara, Alex, Michael, and Daisy were eating salted nuts and playing cassino on the side porch. Alex had never met Mrs. Wentworth and wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. Her manner was cynical and lethargic; he thought she might be a little drunk, and she kept giving him what he could only describe as “the eye.” She was nice to Michael, though, and Sara seemed fond of her. Right now, she was explaining to Sara why she—Sara—could never hope to rise in Newport society unless she made some radical changes in her style of life.
“First of all, you don’t ride. Anyone with serious social intentions—I won’t call them pretentions—rides every morning on the common from nine to ten. In, I hope I need hardly say, a new and different riding habit each day. Second, and if anything worse, you don’t own a pony phaeton or indeed any other sort of equipage at all. But a phaeton is the preferred carriage, because it has low sides, thus allowing more of one’s costume to be seen by the vulgar herd of pedestrians as one rolls along behind one’s matched pair to visit the Casino.
“And that’s another thing, my dear. You’re not seen nearly often enough at the Casino. It’s no wonder Mrs. John Shirlington did not invite you to her little fête champêtre last week in the country. Didn’t you hear about it? It was quite a rustic affair, just a tent for fifty, champagne, her best linen and crystal, four wigged footmen—oh, and my favorite touch—half a dozen rented sheep.”
The mention of sheep reminded Michael of horses. “Guess what!” he exclaimed, laying his cards down face-up—a disconcerting habit no one had been able to break him of.
“What?” said Daisy, since he was looking only at her.
“Mr. Oliver Belmont keeps his horses in his house!”
“No! I don’t believe it.”
He was still hardly able to believe it himself. “It’s true! He does, doesn’t he, Alex?”
Daisy continued to feign amazement, although there wasn’t a soul in Newport who didn’t know about Belcourt Castle, the fifty-two-room estate on Bellevue Avenue that housed, among other things, the owner’s horses.
“The whole first floor is a stable,” Michael persisted, “and each stall has a gold plate with the horse’s name on it! And every night the horses get bedded down in Irish linen sheets.”
“With the Belmont crest embroidered on them,” Alex added for color. “And what’s he got upstairs?”
“Two stuffed horses!” Daisy reacted with an appropriate mix of horror and fascination. “And he’s got dummies sitting on ’em, dressed up in medieval armor!” Even Michael thought this was going too far. But the idea of letting your horses live in your house with you seemed wonderfully logical to him, an idea to which more grown-ups ought to give serious consideration.
The game progressed in fits and starts, not unlike the conversation, which shifted suddenly to costume balls. Daisy told of a fancy masked ball in Newport a few years ago, when a wealthy couple had attempted to explain their costumes to the announcing footman at the entrance to the ballroom. The husband was dressed as Henry IV, his stout wife as a “normal peasant.” “Henry the Fourth!” shouted the footman. “And an enormous pheasant!” The story sent Michael into one of his laughing fits, which convulsed the others and put an end to the game once and for all.
“Mr. McKie, I’m having a small party next Friday night at my house,” Daisy announced over her third glass of sherry. “I would be so delighted if you could come. It’s mostly a family affair, an engagement party for my niece who lives in Boston, and quite informal. Will you be in town that evening?”
Sara watched him, wondering what he would say. She was aware that Mr. McKie had “social intentions,” as Daisy would phrase it, and Daisy herself was now persona non grata in true society because of the scandal in her past. She’d already invited Sara to the party, with great casualness—“My dear, it won’t be anything at all, mostly outside, you ought to come just so the music won’t drive you mad. But if you can’t make it, I’ll understand perfectly, it won’t matter in the least—” And so on, until Sara finally had to interrupt to say she would love to come. Daisy’s gratitude had been painful to witness.
“I have to go to New York tomorrow,” Alex answered, “but only for a few days. I’ll be back Thursday evening, and I’d like very much to come to your party.”
Under cover of her lashes, Sara sent him a soft, grateful look. How kind of you, she signaled.
It was the sort of look that could make Alex forget about breathing for a heartbeat or two. Sometimes she had that effect on him without any effort at all, just by turning her head in a certain way or laughing at something he said or dropping gracefully to her knees so that she could look her son in the eye. It hardly bothered him that what he ought to be feeling was self-reproach, since she’d completely misread his gesture to Mrs. Wentworth—not that he ever intended to correct her. Kindness had nothing to do with it: he’d accepted the invitation so that he could be near Sara.
“I’m hungry,” Michael announced.
“Impossible,” said Alex. “You just ate a pound of nuts single-handed.”
Sara glanced at her watch and saw that it was indeed time to start thinking about dinner. “Why don’t I make something for us here? Mrs. Godby left a roast, I think. Or possibly it’s a turkey.” Michael and Daisy exchanged looks. “What? Don’t you think I can do it?” Their faces remained skeptical; she turned to Alex. “I assure you I can cook, Mr. McKie. I can do eggs now, and I can make vegetables that just need boiling—” Michael interrupted with simulated gagging sounds. She frowned and opened her mouth to reprimand him.
“Too bad Mrs. Wiggs isn’t here,” he said to divert her.
“Who’s Mrs. Wiggs?”
“Alex’s landlady. She makes cornbread that melts in your mouth. Sometimes she brings him his breakfast in bed. Right, Alex?”
“Right.” Daisy and Sara were looking at him with identical expressions of interest. “She’s sixty,” he mentioned helpfully.
“Why don’t you all come to my house?” Daisy suggested. “Unlike Mrs. Godby, my cook stays to make dinner. Whatever she’s making, I’ll just tell her to make more.”
“Why don’t we go out to a restaurant?” Alex chimed in. “Shoal’s is good, or Terrier’s, that new one on Bay Street.”
Daisy looked thoughtful; Michael was all for it. Sara was privately weighing the proprieties involved in such an outing when they heard a carriage stop in front of the house. Michael bounded down the steps to investigate, and a second later he shouted from the yard, “Daddy!”
Sara pushed back her chair. “Oh,” escaped her involuntarily, but she cut herself off before the “no” could follow it. Her eyes flew to Alex’s. In that brief, urgent contact he saw alarm as naked as a cry for help, before she beat and bullied her emotions back in line and composed herself. Her steely, smothered calm was worse. Helpless, he watched her stand up and say, to no one in particular, “Well, what a nice surprise.”
A minute later Ben rounded the turn in the flagstone walk and strode up the steps, Michael trotting behind him. Amid the greetings and introductions and expressions of surprise, Alex took note that the Cochranes never touched each other. “Why didn’t you call?” Sara asked with a now-pleasant, wifely smile.
“Didn’t have time. I ran into Martin Keynes on the street in New York this afternoon and he invited me for dinner. So we came up together on the boat. It starts at eight, Sara, out in the harbor on his yacht. Better start getting ready.”
“Can I come too, Dad?”
“No.”
“Ben, Mrs. Wentworth and Mr. McKie and I were just starting to make plans for dinner. Perhaps we could all go out—”
“Look, I’ve already told him we’re coming. Sorry,” he said shortly to Alex and Daisy, who began to assure him it was quite all right; he interrupted by telling Sara, with a look of heavy meaning, “Keynes says the Shermans and the William Whitneys are coming, too.”
“Oh, the Shermans and the William Whitneys,” she repeated with exaggerated emphasis, then gave a quick, artificial laugh. “Ah well, in that case, you two had just better be running along, hadn’t you?”
She hated the embarrassed silence that followed, hated herself even more for losing control to the point of resorting to the cheapest kind of sarcasm. And she’d made Ben angry. The consequences of that might be anything.
Alex spoke up hurriedly. “I wish I’d known you were coming, Ben. I’ve got to go to New York tomorrow, otherwise I’d have shown you around the site. I guess I could put it off a day, or you—”
“It doesn’t make any difference, I have to get back myself first thing in the morning. You taking the eight o’clock? We can talk about it on the ferry together.”
“Well, I’ll be going,” said Daisy, surging to her feet. “A pleasure, Mr. Cochrane. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“That so?” His eyes flicked over her rudely. He reached into his vest pocket, found his watch, glanced at it, and snapped it closed. “I’ve heard about you, too.”
Sara reddened with anger. “I’ll call you,” she told Daisy, touching her arm. “Thanks for coming today. I’ll see you soon.” Daisy squeezed her hand and turned away without a word.
“Well,” Alex began. “I’ll be—”
“No reason why you couldn’t come to this thing, McKie,” Ben said suddenly, not bothering to lower his voice. “You know Keynes? Banking and real estate, mostly; do you good to meet him. Want to come along?”
He ought to say yes. Ogden and the other partners would value the new connection; they’d also expect him to spe
nd a social evening every once in a while with his most important client. “Thanks, Ben, I appreciate it. I think I’ll pass this time, though—I’ve got packing to do, some phone calls to make before it gets too late.” He gave a few more reasons, all stupid, but at that moment he didn’t give a damn what Cochrane thought. The bastard had his arm around Sara’s shoulders, and she was staring straight ahead at nothing, stiff and subdued. Michael stood between them, gazing up at his father with his heart in his eyes. Alex had to get out.
He could hardly look at Sara, and he cut her off in the middle of wishing him a safe trip. “So long, Michael. See you in the morning, Ben.” He whirled, hurried down the porch steps, and rounded the curve in the flagstone path almost at a run. He walked fast in the fading evening light, and he was home in fifteen minutes. A new record.
His house was a roomy shingled bungalow on the beach, jutting out from a thick pine woods that started at his back door. An open verandah ran across the long front of the house; he spent most of his non-working time there, watching the ocean from a chair or stretched out on the rusting glider. The living room had a wide front window, nearly four feet across, and so he’d turned that room into his bedroom, relegating his office to what had formerly been the dining room. There was a bathroom upstairs, as well as two other rooms he never used. The sparse furniture was old but adequate, the bed comfortable. He had no visible neighbors. The place suited him perfectly.
But tonight it depressed him. He turned on all the lights and rummaged in the kitchen for something to eat. Out of inertia, he settled on a can of beans, opened it, and carried it out to the veranda. Sitting on the railing, one leg stretched along its wooden length, he ate cold beans with a spoon and watched the moon rise.
The rough wash of low tide splintering on the shore gradually calmed him. The reasons for that prickly, nearly panicky awareness he’d felt for a few seconds while watching the Cochranes together began to elude him. It was absurd and probably arrogant to think Sara needed him for anything, especially protection. She was a strong woman, and she’d lived with her bully of a husband for eight years. He thought it unlikely that she needed anyone.