Doe knew better than to ask what the thing was, because the answer would be Nothing or It’s stupid, and Annie would change the subject. She just put on an I’m curious but it’s cool if you don’t share kind of face.
“I feel bad for Jem. She dropped off all the threads, so I don’t think she knows how bad it is. Meret gets people to do things. It’s like hypnosis or something.”
“Probably more like fear. I mean,” Doe added, when Annie looked confused, “they’re afraid she’ll burn them.”
“Yeah. Exactly. Jem isn’t like Meret. There’s this guy, this older guy, who comes to Lawlors and buys one thing—just one thing, like a peach—and he waits until Jem is free. It’s so creepy. I’m just afraid I guess.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Lucas somebody. We call him Mr. McManPants. I’m guessing he’s just playing with her. Except. I think he texts her, too. Meret knows because she’s psychic, or maybe she just guesses. She’s super jealous. It’s all, you know, material for her to punish Jem. She used to call me Rags in elementary school because she said I looked like Raggedy Ann? So I even called myself Rags, just because I wanted to own it, right?”
“That’s why you’re cool,” Doe said. She felt something winding inside her, tightening with every turn.
“Anyway we’re in high school, so we’ve all forgotten all that crap, but not Meret. She still calls me Rags! Especially if she sees me with a boy or something. Not that I’m ever with a boy. Then she pretends that we’re super-good friends and that’s why she has a pet name for me. That’s the kind of asshole she is.” Annie picked at the table. “Anyway. It’s just a pain to even be a bystander to all this stupid mean shit.”
“That’s the best summary of life I’ve ever heard,” Doe said.
42
JEM’S PHONE
From: Jemma Dutton
To: Lucas Clay
Excited but nervous about Roberta’s party hope she doesn’t cancel because of storm
…
can’t wait are we all driving together
From: Lucas Clay
To: Jemma Dutton
Not going after all sounds boring I’ve got a party on SI
From: Jem
To: Lucas
You said you were going
From: Lucas
To: Jem
Don’t you be boring too
43
Hey I have a surprise for you
Guess where I am
where are you text me back angelpie xxo
“What’s that?” Lucas lifted her phone from Doe’s hand. It was one of the habits she wanted to kill him for. She lunged for it.
“You bitch!” Lucas tossed the phone back at her. “I think you scratched me.”
Why was she here? She knew they were done. Lark was in the city for “maintenance,” which meant hair and skin. A hurricane might be coming, or at least a bad storm. Hurricanes terrified her.
As a child Shari had always thrown hurricane parties, and Doe associated high winds with adults too drunk to put up the shutters and take in patio furniture. Once a chair had blown right through their window, shattering the glass and sending the adults screaming and stumbling away, some of them laughing in hiccuping shrieks. A giant of a man had stepped on Doe’s hand with a big callused bare foot. The pain was commensurate with the gross-out quality of the injury. The curved yellow toenail had caused her to wail uncontrollably. Shari had stuck her hand in the ice bucket.
So when Lucas had texted her, saying Adeline was away and the house was his, she was tempted. She wouldn’t be alone.
Anxiously, she looked out at the wind-whipped bay. It was like a living thing, malevolent and liable to rear up and swamp her at any moment. She didn’t want to get trapped here. She had listened to Lucas robotically, idiotically, to ride out the storm. He had promised good wine; he had promised a binge watch of whatever she chose. He’d planned to be at a party on Shelter Island, but his friend Hale had been too “chickenshit” to pick him up by boat. The outdoor party had been canceled, anyway. It was typical of Lucas to tell her all this, letting her know that she was second or third choice. Yet she was here.
Lucas lay back on his elbows on the bed. “You are so mysterious with that phone.” He raised his eyebrows.
“We’re all mysterious with our phones,” Doe said. “That’s where our secrets are kept.”
Lucas laughed. “Word.”
“What would I find on yours?” Doe asked. “I bet your passcode is one-two-three-four or your birthday. Would I find out things you don’t want Adeline to know?”
“I don’t give a shit about Adeline.”
“If you hate her so much, why do you stay here?”
“Bad luck. I thought she’d be living with Mantis and I’d be crashing there on weekends. Instead she sticks me in bofuck Long Island.” He flipped through his texts.
“You know what I’ve noticed about you?” Doe asked, leaning against the dresser. “You blame Adeline for everything.”
“Everything is her fault. She gives me a job with no responsibility.”
“Please note she gave you a job. Let me guess, there might be opportunities for advancement in the Peter Clay Foundation for you.”
“No thanks. I quit this week. I had enough.”
“It can’t be that hard to get another job.”
“Excuse me, who died and appointed you my career counselor?” Lucas scowled. “I’m his son, and she gave me a crap salary.”
“You seem to be doing fine.”
“Well, I’m not. It’s ridiculous that I’m short of cash all the time.”
“So be an actor. I mean, actually commit to it. You basically just post selfies on Instagram.”
“I’m developing contacts, okay? You should see my followers.” Malice glinted in his eyes. “What about you? You girls all have pretend jobs. Then you get engaged and show the ring at the office, and within the first year you quit because you’re trying to get pregnant and it’s just too stressful. Please.”
She laughed, not because he was wrong—he had just described some of Lark’s friends—but because she wanted an end to the hostilities. He was on edge today. There was an undercurrent between them that had never been there before.
“Though I can’t see you doing that,” he said. “You’re not like the girls I know. You live here year-round, which is weird. What’s your story?”
“You’re not interested in anyone’s story.”
“Maybe if you were nicer to me you could be part of mine.”
“Even though I’m a year-rounder?” She kept her voice light. She must have been crazy to come here. She was no longer the least bit attracted to him. She missed Lark.
“Adeline’s got one, why shouldn’t I?”
Doe didn’t ask who. She knew Lucas would tell her.
“Your boss’s husband,” he said.
“Catha?”
“No, the other one. With the hunky carpenter.”
“Mike Dutton?”
“That’s the one. Bingo. Lots of blue-collar banging going on in this house.”
“Ruthie’s not my boss anymore, she quit.”
Lucas raised up a bit, interested. “She did?”
“She was kind of forced out.”
“Yeah, well, downsizing sucks, I hear.”
“It’s not downsizing. That’s just a word to you, isn’t it. Jesus.”
“It happens to be a word. You know Ruthie pretty well?”
“She was my boss, so, kind of but, you know, not friends.”
“Losing her job was pretty bad, huh.”
“Yes, Lucas, when people lose their jobs it’s bad.”
He flipped over and leaned his head on his hand to scrutinize her. “What are you, a
Marxist?”
“I’m a human with feelings,” Doe said. She stared back at him, stretched out like a lion on the veldt of a bedspread, tawny and lazy, blinking at her in his beauty, but able to take her head off. “What about Jem?”
“The hot daughter?”
She gripped the phone. “You know, you might want to consider what happens when you fuck a fifteen-year-old.”
“I’m just having fun. I like blondes with legs. Don’t worry, I like tiny little brunette girls, too. Girls I can put in my pocket.”
He patted the bed, but she ignored him. “Maybe you should rethink the flirting.”
“You’re cute when you’re jealous. Okay, okay, I’ll have the fat girl check out my corn from now on.”
“Annie isn’t fat.”
“All right, the girl with such a pretty face can take my money.”
“I’m just skeeved out at a twenty-three-year-old hitting on a kid.”
“Relax. I didn’t fuck her. She had a pool party and I went. What’s it to you?” He raised himself up and then flipped off the bed. A pillow fell on the floor and he whipped it sideways to toss it back on the bed with a hard stroke. It knocked over a water glass. Lucas ignored it and walked toward the door. “You know what’s nice about high school girls? They don’t give you any shit. Come on, let’s find the champagne. This is supposed to be fun, remember?”
Doe saw a watch on the dresser, casually thrown facedown. The back was transparent and she saw the workings, the tiny, tiny wheels and gears whirring so perfectly. It was the most beautiful object she’d ever seen. Doe reached for it. Something about it was familiar, like she’d seen it before. Yet she was sure it hadn’t been on Lucas’s wrist.
She felt her phone buzz.
From: Annie Doyle
To: Doe Callender
Hey, your mother’s here? Shari? She’s looking 4 u
She’s going to check at the museum is it open? I told her to wait here, the storm and all
From: Doe Callender
To: Annie Doyle
DON’T LET HER GO TO MUSEUM TELL HER TO STAY I’LL BE RIGHT THERE
…
please
“Are you going to pay attention to me or your fucking phone?” Lucas asked, turning back to glare at her.
Doe looked up, trying to swallow. She’d forgotten where she was, and that he was here. The rain had intensified, she could hear it pounding on the roof. The bay was dark pewter, ruffled with white.
“I have to go.”
“You can’t go!”
“I have to take care of something.” Where was her purse?
He put his hand on her wrist. “What is this shit? You’re not leaving me alone in this storm!”
His grip was too tight, making her panic. “Let go!” She pushed him and he hadn’t expected it and stumbled back, hitting a chair. She tried to get past him and he grabbed her elbow and yanked her hard so that she fell backward on the bed.
Not a good position for a woman. She felt something new in the air, like a burning wire.
He snatched her purse from the floor and swung it by the strap. “Come and get it,” he said in a singsong voice.
He was between her and the door, the only exit. She reached out for her purse and he lifted it higher, cackling in a high laugh she’d never heard before.
She wasn’t going to deal with this shit. She came up fast, the top of her head connecting with his chin. He howled and stepped back, dropping the purse.
“Bitch!” He felt his chin, his eyes wet and aggrieved. He grabbed her by the arms, and it pinched her skin.
She didn’t like being restrained. It reminded her of an old boyfriend and that made fear settle in her belly. Impulse overcame caution and she jerked her arm, flipping his wrist so he had to let go, and hit him in the face.
Her ring cut him, and he touched the blood. “What the fuck,” he said. He reached out to steady himself on the wall, and left a tiny smear of blood. “That’s my face.”
He took a step toward her. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” she said.
All she heard was their breathing. In out, in out. Everything was so clear, the water glass on its side, the pool of water, the pillow, her purse, his bare feet, his fists.
He turned and walked out, and her breath left her all at once. She felt everything drain out of her and she was trembling but she needed to find her shoes and pick up her purse.
The watch had fallen on the carpet. She considered kicking it under the dresser, but he would find it. He deserved to lose something so beautiful. Something he carelessly tossed on a dresser. She put it in her pocket, found her things, and left while he was examining the cut in the bathroom mirror and calmly saying she’d better get out or he’d fucking kill her.
44
RUTHIE RODE OUT the storm alone, huddled on the couch, clutching a blanket. Barely sleeping, alternating panic with rage that battered as hard as rain. She had never hated anyone before. She understood why it was called a “towering” rage. It made you bigger, stronger, as gigantic as a building, willing to crush whatever lay between you and your enemy.
Adeline had taken something from her that wasn’t a house, wasn’t a man. It was the past. I was never in love with you, Mike had said.
The first time he’d said it was only months after they met. Holding hands on Franklin Street, leaning into each other, and him turning to her and kissing her, saying, Watch out, I think I’m in love with you.
Watch out? A warning she’d ignored.
Did men have to do that, reframe the past into a lie, so they wouldn’t feel guilty moving on? They had the strength to break things, but not the strength to carry them.
They’d met in the mid-nineties. She was at a party at a loft downtown. She was wearing a baby-doll dress, hugely popular at the time, with tights and boots. She’d bought the dress at the Saturday flea market on lower Broadway. Her hair was pinned on top of her head. She was having a miserable time. Everyone at the party seemed to know one another, and she’d long before lost the friend she’d come with.
There was an artist who dressed Barbie dolls as all the Bond girls, then took color-saturated photographs of them against tiny fabricated settings. There were painters. Matthew Barney was expected at any moment. Everyone was gathered around a sculptor who was supposed to become the next big thing, but Ruthie no longer remembered his name, because he’d never become the next big thing. Matthew Barney had become the next big thing.
Ruthie had clutched her beer and swerved through the crowd. She was working for Peter and going to grad school at night, and she was always exhausted. She wasn’t over Joe. She half hoped he was there with Sami so that she could ignore him. She wanted to go home and polish off some cookies in her pajamas. She left, clomping in her heavy boots down the stairs, worn and sloping to the middle. Five flights down, hoping for a cab, her black coat flapping open.
At the bottom of the stairs, a man was pushing through the battered metal door. His coat was wet, and so was his hair, subduing the dark blond. When he looked up at her, she felt the impact of it in her stomach.
She smiled as she went by. She opened the door and the wind blew the wet snow in her face. She felt the tug of attraction to the stranger, but she also felt the tug of Pepperidge Farm.
She heard footsteps behind her as he hit the stairs. He went up two stairs and stopped. For a moment there was just silence. Him on the stairs, her at the open door. A taxi went by slowly, still within hailing distance if she ran out and shouted for it.
She turned.
Their eyes, as they say, met. That first look, that spark, and there is nothing better in life. Just for that moment, though. It can go all kinds of ways from there.
Mike tilted his head. “Goodbye, road not taken,” he said, so softly it was like the drift of snow against her
neck.
Ruthie, in her day, had been a sassy, accomplished flirt. She lifted one eyebrow, a skill she was passionately proud of. “So,” she said, “take me.”
She can still, if she wanted to, remember the impact of the slow, delighted widening of his smile, and how he gave her a second, more serious look, and how she saw that he appreciated his good fortune. Someone so handsome, she’d thought, wouldn’t be hers to keep, but she’d give it a whirl.
Mike had told her later that he’d lusted for her as she opened the door and watched how she didn’t flinch from the cold. How the snow had melted in her hair, how the snap in her eyes had sent a jolt of joy through him. She’d fallen for him that night, the next morning, waited for his call, waited for their casual dates, agonized over how long it would take before they spent Sundays together, and then, at last, when they were, in fact, a couple, when he had met her father (agonizing), when she had met his parents (difficult), she had a roaring fight with Peter, took a curatorial position in Philadelphia, and moved.
Mike took over her illegal loft sublet. They settled into long-distance coupledom. Marriage was never mentioned. A boat that solid shouldn’t be rocked. Ruthie got a better curatorial position in Massachusetts and moved again. More weekends, more vacations together, but Mike was a New York artist and he would never move, he said. They spent a lot of time plotting his career, talking about trends, galleries and museum shows and submitting work. They didn’t have the tedium of competition. She had no regrets about giving up her own work. She’d been surprised at how little it mattered. Bringing art to people turned out to be more important to her than making it.
Then she got pregnant with Jem. Diaphragm failure, what were the odds? Ruthie had been sure that it would be the end of the relationship. Oh, she knew Mike would say the right things, but she could not see him taking her to doctor appointments, pouring her glasses of milk. He was a kind man, but it was clear to her that he liked the people he loved to fend for themselves. She knew her need of him would signal the slow seepage of doubt into what they had. She couldn’t imagine him with a baby on his shoulder. Though, to be fair, she couldn’t imagine herself with one, either. Mom. Dad. She would say the words in her head, and she might as well have been saying orangutan or Republican.