The High Season

  What could she say to Helen, a woman who had told her over the course of years that they were “family”? You are being a colossal shit. Your cowardice disgusts me.

  When she’d decided to apply for this job, her first directorship, she’d called her old boss. What are the pitfalls, she’d asked him. “If you want to be a director of a museum, just know you’re going to get fired at some point in your career,” he’d said. “It won’t have anything to do with your job performance. It’s usually one person who wants to make a mark. They rope in a few others who want power. If they’re rich and nasty enough, they win. Boards are basically ovine in nature. One sheep says leap over the cliff, and next thing you know you’ve got a whole lot of haggis.”

  “Naturally I’ll be a reference for you,” Helen said. “You were the best director we ever had.”

  “Well, thanks for that,” Ruthie said. “You just lost me.”

  “I know, and I’m so sorry about that. I feel terrible. Let me tell you something. I’ve lived a long time, and I know that you can’t hold back change. The good news is, you’re fabulous.”

  Ruthie stepped on the gas.

  She couldn’t fight this. She’d been in the museum business long enough to know that starting a board fight would be disastrous. Helen wouldn’t stand up for her, none of them would, because there was no reason to act on principle when social comfort was involved. The women on the board bumped into one another all summer; they served on other boards together, they went to the same restaurants, the same shops, the same parties. They exchanged the same recommendations of the same Parisian bistros. They ran into one another all over the world, or at least the parts sanctioned by their travel agents. Why would they risk unpleasantness? Just for her? They were used to listening to authority. They were trained that way, the last generation of gentlewomen (Ruthie prayed!) who were passed down from father to husband and told to dress well, set a good table, and shut the fuck up.

  22

  SHE EMAILED CAROLE—Meeting a disaster, please call me!—but the email bounced back.

  Hello darlings, I am off the grid (yes, me, can you believe it?) roughing it in the fabulous Hebrides with my kids! I’ll be back online by July 14 if we don’t get kidnapped by the Loch Ness Monster. Love and kisses, Carole

  Probably not a good idea to write Carole at this particular moment, anyway. One should fulminate with the trusted, not the trustee. She drove to Mike’s apartment. She texted him as she parked, starting to hiccup panic now.

  No answer. The man always forgot to charge his phone. She knocked on the door. No answer.

  CALL ME, she texted. And then, the absurd CHARGE YOUR PHONE!

  She drove back to Orient and turned down Village Lane. She glided past the store, past the pie shop, the yacht club, past the cottages. Her town. Her beloved town. Her house. Her beloved house. Without the job at the Belfry, how could they keep it? The second mortgage, the taxes…

  Adeline’s Range Rover was in her driveway. Plus a flash of yellow through the bushes. She pulled over and got out. Screened by the bush, Mike’s truck was parked awkwardly to the side, its wheels halfway on the lawn, almost smack into the dwarf lilac tree that Helen had given her when she’d taken the job.

  She thought he’d fixed the step, the leak, the window, the chores that had eaten up his June. It was almost six o’clock now, and he would be heading home.

  As she approached the house she heard voices from the rear, and then the sound of Mike laughing.

  “Hello?” she called, and heard the scrape of a chair.

  “We’re out back!” Adeline called.

  When she rounded the side of the house, Adeline was half out of her chair, turning toward her with a smile of welcome that faltered when she saw Ruthie. Mike was sitting back, his ankle propped on a knee. There were two glasses of white wine on the table and a bottle sitting in the thermal cooler she’d bought for summer guests. Two bottles of water sat, politely condensing. A tray of empty glasses stood next to it. A bowl of olives. Mike’s olives, the ones he made with Pernod and orange peel and fennel seed. She could smell it from here, licorice and citrus and garlic.

  “Ruthie! I thought you were Roberta,” Adeline said. “I’m expecting a caravan, actually. Lucas is meeting everyone at the ferry and leading them here. The McGreevys, a few others. You know the McGreevys, right?”

  “A little,” Ruthie said. Tom McGreevy was a blue-chip artist who lived on Shelter Island, which meant he was Hamptons, not North Fork. She’d been trying to get him to the Belfry for years.

  Adeline was wearing saffron-colored capri pants and a fuchsia silk T-shirt, making Ruthie feel like a bundle of dry newsprint in her now wrinkled black shift. The breeze brought Ruthie a scent of Adeline’s perfume.

  Mike stood. His hair was brushed, and his shirt was pressed. It took Ruthie several long seconds to realize that he wasn’t just having a drink before leaving, he was a guest at the party.

  “I should go,” she said, just as car doors slammed and they heard voices.

  “Stay for a drink,” Adeline urged. “We’re out back!” she called, and started toward the side of the house.

  “We have to talk,” Ruthie said to Mike.

  “I know.” Mike looked miserable, as if he’d already heard. You couldn’t quit a job in this town without the news going out in five minutes.

  The group suddenly swirled around the side of the house, the tall, stylish McGreevys, Lucas, and a heavyset woman with flyaway gray hair to her shoulders who had to be Roberta. She had expected a woman like Adeline, thin, supple, and expensively dressed. But this woman was tall and twice the size of Lucas. Her dress was loose fitting and the color of red clay. She should be selling her own honey in a farmers market, not attending a chic dinner party.

  Then Joe rounded the corner, nicely dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, and holding a bottle of wine. He looked surprised, then pleased, to see her.

  “You’re right, this is a spectacular view,” Roberta said in a booming voice. “I’m dying for a drink. Tom and Lilah gave me nothing. I’m parched.”

  “We had to make the ferry,” Lilah said. “The line gets so long on weekends.” The bottom three buttons of her linen blouse were open, revealing a flat, taut stomach. She was wearing a watch without hands, just the words WHO CARES.

  “Michael, will you pour Roberta some wine?” Adeline asked. “Or else she’ll be a complete grump.”

  “I’m already a complete grump,” Roberta said, popping an olive. “Michael, I hear you’re a very good cook. I’ve been trying to get Adeline to eat for ten years.”

  “Adeline doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Lucas said. “You should know that by now.”

  He doesn’t like her, Ruthie thought.

  Mike looked rattled; cooking for this group, and especially Roberta, probably unnerved him. He wouldn’t start to relax until people were midway through their entrées. Ruthie tried to puzzle this out. Had Adeline hired him to cook and then invited him to stay? Had he offered to help as a favor?

  He disappeared into the house to do something with the food, and Adeline led her around for introductions. Of course you know Tom. This is Lilah—you must see their place on Shelter Island. Roberta was so impressed with Jem. Of course you know her books. And of course you know Joe.

  Adeline headed into the house. Ruthie wished Mike would return. She wanted to ask him what they were doing here. These were summer people. These weren’t their people. What were they doing on their patio?

  “So this is Orient,” Roberta said. “I had to live through one long dinner conversation with Adeline in the city about what sneakers to buy for this.”

  “Sneakers are signifiers for sure,” Lilah said.

  “Especially for Adeline,” Roberta said. “She has to get the details right. Remember when she lived in London and had to buy a raincoa
t?” They laughed, but with affection.

  The glass was sweating in her hand, and she took a sip. She would drink one glass, and then go. Adeline and Mike returned, Mike carrying a plate of something. Adeline carried two glasses of wine. Roberta took the plate from Mike and popped something in her mouth before starting to pass it around. Adeline touched Mike’s shoulder and handed him his glass.

  Ruthie had the sensation of something dropping inside her. Was it a penny? She could taste it in her mouth, sharp and coppery.

  She hadn’t seen much. A woman handing a glass to a man. But as Ruthie watched them move toward the McGreevys, she suddenly saw what any idiot would have seen long before.

  Mike was sleeping with Adeline.

  They were not touching, they weren’t even speaking to each other, but she saw it as plainly as she saw the trees and the grass. She saw it in the way Mike stood, the way he held his glass, the way his fucking hair was combed.

  They were freshly showered, those two. Sitting out at the table earlier, having a glass of wine before the guests arrived. The domesticity of it. The postcoital contentment.

  They all knew, too. Roberta—I hear you’re a great cook, Michael.

  When had it begun? And if you wait a sec I’ll identify a hammer and a nail.

  Dad totally mocked her groceries.

  And Mike…scrutinizing him, she finally realized how nervous he was. Not to be here, in this company, not because of the meal, but to be here with her.

  Joe came up next to her with the wine bottle, and she realized her glass was empty. “I didn’t know you’d be here. It’s lovely to see you.”

  She held out her glass.

  “This is a gorgeous Sancerre,” he said.

  She stared at him, trying to make sense of his words. Instinct was stronger than cognition right now; she didn’t think she could speak. She drained the glass and held it out again.

  “Bad day?”

  She nodded. “The worst. Plus, I’m at a party where people say things like ‘This is a gorgeous Sancerre.’ ”

  Joe looked startled. Maybe she shouldn’t alienate the only person at the party who had been pleased to see her.

  Behind her she heard, “And we can never seem to get you over to dinner,” from Lilah McGreevy.

  “How cozy this all is,” she said to Joe. “And how kind of me to supply the venue.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She wanted to pick up speed and plow right into Mike, knock him down on the stones of their terrace. Their terrace! Look at the way Adeline was standing there, her expensively shod feet standing on Ruthie’s very own slate! Standing there as if this was her house! Her husband, her house!

  The group was talking the New York talk, restaurants, theater, books, music, Lincoln Center, MoMA, Met. But it was not the talk of those who went to the shows or read the books, or even those who read the reviews of the shows and the books, but those who dined with the producers, had been schoolmates with the editors, sat on the boards.

  “No, he’s actually working on a book about transparency, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but then again, he has a Pulitzer.”

  “The new restaurant with three letters. Ion?”

  “…the Ernst and Duchamp show…”

  “…bone broth…”

  “Have you seen it? We went last week, it was brilliant. Henry Higgins is played by Cherry Jones as a closeted lesbian in love with Eliza, it’s all about the self-hatred of the oppressed, it’s amazing. She was totally singing from her uterus…”

  “No, you mean Air.”

  “No, Eon.”

  And then Mike was saying, “No, it only looks like the Wall Street guys are running things. Isn’t culture what really matters now? Well, that and shopping. No, I’m serious. Isn’t that our biggest export? The creative class is really ruling the world, we just aren’t interested in power. Yet. Can you imagine if all the artists and designers went on strike? The next war could be between the suits and the talent, I’m telling you.”

  She’d heard this theory before, at other dinner parties. These people were smiling. Tom McGreevy chuckled. Adeline had the glowing look of a woman delighted that her lover was pleasing her friends.

  He suddenly looked so at home here, among these people.

  Of course, he was at home. So was Ruthie. Except she wasn’t. Ruthie had drunk a glass of wine very, very fast, but this much unsteadiness didn’t come from the gorgeous Sancerre.

  “I get what you’re saying,” Tom said.

  “Clearly we need to organize,” Lilah said.

  “Do you want to leave?” Joe asked her in a low tone. Maybe she was weaving? Or steaming? Or stamping? She didn’t know. Something new seemed to be in charge of her body. Some wild energy, an untamed, bucking mare.

  “No,” Ruthie said, and she realized that she’d shouted it.

  The heads turned. Mike looked scared. How nice.

  “No,” Ruthie said, “I haven’t dined at Eon, or was it Air…or was it Id? And I haven’t seen anybody sing from their uterus, that’s a treat I’ll look forward to, along with the galleys of the next DeLillo, the intimate tour of Matisse, that divine private concert with Joshua Bell—talk about a cultural high colonic! Right, Mike, I mean Michael?”

  Did she just shout that, too?

  Everyone was half turned, looking at her.

  “Ruthie…” Adeline said, and stopped.

  “I’m sorry, allergies,” Ruthie said. “You know. ’Tis the season. I’m allergic to entitlement. The air is just so thick with it.”

  They all faced her, frozen, drinks held, Roberta mechanically spitting out an olive pit in her hand, her eyes on Ruthie. Lucas, laughing.

  “Let me take you home,” Joe murmured.

  “I am home,” she said. “That’s the funny thing.”

  23

  MIKE’S FACE WAS the last one she registered—comically horrified, his mouth open—before she ran. She rounded the corner of the house, stumbling as though she had her shoes on the wrong feet. She struck out across the lawn. She realized she was still holding the wineglass, and she turned and hurled it at the porch. She heard the smash of it breaking. What a pleasant sound! Like tiny bells. Like the striking seconds of a quarter-million-dollar watch.

  Joe hurried toward her but stopped a few feet away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a hell of a way to find out.”

  “Does everyone know except for me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know who knows. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “I don’t need a ride. I’m not drunk. I’m sorry to spoil the party. But go back. Enjoy my view!” Why was she furious at Joe? She didn’t know. “I’m sorry. I really, really want to be alone,” she added.

  “Ruthie—”

  “Please. Please go.”

  She walked down the path, past the rocks that edged the lawn, beach stones that she and Jem had collected, the roundest, whitest ones they could find, and then carefully laid down together. She glanced behind. Joe had gone back to the party.

  Helen’s dwarf lilac had never really thrived in that spot. They’d always meant to move it. The branches with blossoms fanned out from a spindly trunk that had never grown past four feet or so. And Ruthie came to dislike its tight, selfish petals. She preferred the full-grown lilac bush, blowsy in its confidence.

  She thought of Helen’s droit-du-seigneur smile as she took Ruthie’s life in her teeth and shook it. Mindy couldn’t help being Mindy. Was it even worth it to despise her? She was just a sad thing, powering through life with the manic aggression of a person who felt unloved, even by her own mother. With that kind of need matched to that kind of money, casualties occurred offstage. Mindy’s treachery was impersonal, because Ruthie had never been a person to her at all.

  But Carole, disappearing with a blithe “see
what they have to say,” knowing the bad news was coming? Catha, whom she’d worked side by side with for five years? Helen?

  She crossed to the shed. She dug into her pocket for her keys and unlocked the door. Moist heat rolled out, redolent with damp cardboard and earth. The shed was crammed to the roof with their off-season life. Boxes full of sweaters, quilts, blankets, financial records, bathrobes, slippers, knickknacks, books, extra dishes, the second-best pots and pans. Shoehorned in there somewhere were boxes they hadn’t opened since they left Tribeca, another life. So many things that only made clutter, that caused closet doors not to close and drawers to stick, that stacked up in teetering piles in linen closets. Her life.

  It should have made her feel sad. A life small enough to fit in a shed.

  Instead it was as though she’d discovered a lost continent of rage.

  The voice came from behind her. “Can I help?”

  Lucas. Ignoring him, she wended her way through the maze, looking for the ax. There was a newly empty section where paintings had been shrink-wrapped and stacked against one wall.

  “Mike’s paintings are gone,” she said.

  He leaned against the doorframe, then looked at the dust and reconsidered. He brushed off his shoulder. “Adeline took them to the city. She was horrified that he stored them out here in all this humidity. No doubt she’ll have dinner parties and hang them in the dining room.”

  “How entrepreneurial.”

  “Yeah. He’s her new project. He doesn’t seem to mind. Can I help you with that?” Lucas reached over and shifted a box. She wriggled through the space to get to the far wall.

  He bent down. “What are these boxes marked PETER CLAY?”

  “Some things he gave me when I left,” she told him. “He chewed me out for leaving him, and then he felt guilty, so a few weeks later I got a big box of crap. Paint. A couple of canvases. I never used them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I stopped painting.”