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Authors: Harrison Young

Nantucket (19 page)

BOOK: Nantucket
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“But you were supposed to tell him I'd gone away to… think about things. You were supposed to…explain.”

Andrew could see that Cathy was getting embarrassed. She didn't know Rosemary, who was holding her husband's hand and watching the scene unfold. She didn't know Cynthia, even if she recognised her from television.

“Did you show him the note?” Cathy said to Sally.

“The note permitted various interpretations,” said Sally. She wasn't the least bit defensive, Andrew noticed. “It seemed to me that another speed bump on your daughter's road to adulthood would throw him less off balance than confronting the truth about your sexuality. And to tell the truth, I thought it would be fun to pretend to be you. And make him pretend as well. You have a nice house. I wish it was mine.”

“You thought you'd audition for the role?” said Cathy. “Since I was leaving the company, that is.”

“It was a long shot, but yes.”

“It didn't work, I see,” said Cathy, looking down at Andrew and Rosemary's intertwined hands.

“No. But it's been an interesting weekend.”

“How long did you get away with it? Did you have to sleep with him?”

“Cynthia discovered the fraud,” said Sally, not answering Cathy's questions.

“I found pictures of you,” said Cynthia.

“Dressed rather differently,” said Rosemary.

Rosemary squeezed Andrew's hand, which he took as an instruction not to intervene.

Cathy looked around the room. “But there aren't any pictures at all,” she said. “Did you throw them out, Andrew? That wasn't fair.”

“Sally hid them,” said Rosemary. “So she could pretend to be you.”

“Well, I hope you enjoyed it,” said Cathy. “The position's available. I'm not me anymore, as I expect everyone can see.”

“You're the same person,” said Cynthia softly. “All this” – she gestured at Cathy's clothes – “it's just wardrobe.”

Andrew decided the previous evening's release of emotion must have been cathartic for Cynthia. She'd been soft and feminine all morning. She was seducing Cathy, if you came down to it. And it was working. At some level Cathy liked it, even if she didn't know how to respond and was in consequence as abrasive as ever.

“I suppose they wouldn't let you look like this on the air,” said Cathy. She laughed, presumably at herself. “I'm not sure it even works in my own home – if this still is my home. Is it, Andrew? You've cleared away the photographs. Have you sold the house?”

“There hasn't been time,” said Rosemary. “And you're the one who left.”

Andrew felt it was unnecessary of Rosemary to intrude, but Cynthia spoke before he could. “I like the hair,” she said. She spoke as if she and Cathy were alone. “Your head is a good shape,” stroking Cathy's head almost unconsciously. “But no, my audience definitely isn't there yet.”

“Where do you plan to sleep?” asked Rosemary. “I'll change the sheets.”

“I think that's Sally's job,” said Cathy curtly, not looking at the “au pair.” It wasn't clear whether it was Sally or Rosemary she was trying to put down. Both of them, probably.

“I'll help you,” Rosemary said to Sally.

“Maybe we can talk later,” said Cynthia, still trying to soothe Cathy.

“What about?” said Cathy. She had more anger and adrenaline in her system than she could cope with, Andrew could see.

“Wardrobe if you like,” said Cynthia. “I'm an actress, remember?”

“I thought you were a journalist,” said Cathy.

“Not to my friends,” said Cynthia. Having planted the seed, she then drifted away. Wardrobe, Andrew repeated to himself. Cathy had made Sally try on her clothes, which involved removing clothes. Cynthia intended to do the same with Cathy.

Cathy and her startling costume continued around the room. “This explains a lot,” said the Governor of Massachusetts. Andrew was close enough to hear the conversation.

“You mean my refusing to let you kiss me?” said Cathy. “I was thirteen, remember.”

“That and other things,” said George. “I'm a politician, remember. I have instincts. Andrew is my oldest friend. Do I need to say more?”

“No,” said Cathy.

“Then let me introduce you to my daughter.”

Cathy looked surprised and then laughed. “Oh, George,” she said.

“Thank you for having me,” said Judy, looking at Cathy without embarrassment.

“Where's Lydia?” said Cathy.

“Being angry with me,” said George.

“Tell her it's a lousy strategy,” said Cathy. “Not that I've got a better one.”

“I gave up trying to persuade her of that a long time ago,” said George.

“I'm going to help wash dishes,” said Judy.

“I gave up trying to be married to Andrew forty-eight hours ago,” said Cathy. She must have known he could hear her, Andrew decided.

“Why did you come back?” said George. They'd known each other forever. He could ask that question.

“To talk to Andrew, I guess.” She didn't look at him.

George looked around. “There are a lot of people in the way just now.”

“I knew that would be the case. I was counting on Andrew's billionaires being here, to be honest, so as to make my announcement irrevocable. I guess that was the point of this stupid outfit too. I've chickened out a number of times in the past – about talking to him, that is.”

“Perhaps you and Andrew should go for a walk,” said the Governor. “We can manage without him for a while.”

There comes a point when the string-players tire and the music slows. Having sat in silence, the horn then sounds its sad notes. Cathy closed her eyes for a moment. “All right,” she said.

Andrew let go of Rosemary's hand and took a step in Cathy's direction as casually as he could.

“Lighthouse?” he asked. “Sun at our back coming home.”

“I guess,” she said.

They'd walked on that beach many weekends, often holding hands. They didn't hold hands this time. They didn't speak. Andrew waited for Cathy to initiate. He figured she was the one who needed to offer an explanation. He was angry, of course, if relieved. He'd absorbed a lot of rejection over the years.

“I'm angry too,” she said at last, reading his mind.

“Clearly,” said Andrew, more sharply than he intended.

“Not at you, sweetie, though of course I am. There's nowhere else to put the anger. But what I'm really angry at is having wasted so many years not having love.”

“I loved you,” he said. It was approximately true.

“It wasn't the love I wanted.” She paused. “I prefer women. I'm not even bisexual. There, I've said it.”

“I know. I expect I knew from early on. People generally know things and pretend they don't. Judy did that. I'll have to tell you that story. I kept busy, so neither of us would have to acknowledge our mistake.”

“I kept busy too,” she said. “I reckon I've done a hundred weekends worth of house guests.”

“That's probably right.”

“I looked at myself in the mirror one morning, soon after I'd finished nursing Florence. We were still living in Brooklyn then. We still didn't have any money but you seemed to be doing well at work. I figured you'd be a good provider for our daughters. This is the life you bought, I told myself. It was on sale. You can't return it.”

“Maybe you should have,” said Andrew.

They walked in silence for a while.

“I'm sorry there wasn't more sex,” said Cathy.

“Not your fault,” said Andrew.

More silence.

“There wasn't sex for me either,” she said. “Just copulation. But that was my responsibility. Oh, sweetie, if I talk any more I'll probably just hurt you.”

More silence.

“I seem to have a relationship,” said Andrew cautiously, “with Rosemary. I think you met her.”

“The gorgeous English woman? How amazing. Sorry, I didn't mean that as a put-down.” And then: “I don't have a relationship with anyone.”

“I didn't mean to gloat,” said Andrew. “And yes, it is unexpected. And, yes, I have been unfaithful to you in the past two days.”

“Not knowing where I was? How could you do that?”

“It just happened. If it is any comfort to you, it's never happened before.” Or not completely, he added silently.

“There was that woman,” said Cathy.

“The one you kissed last summer?”

“I called her once. A few weeks later. I hung up, though, when she answered the phone. That was all.”

“Sally?” said Andrew, and then wished he hadn't.

“She did try to seduce you, didn't she?”

“She mostly made me nervous,” said Andrew. He wanted to build some distance between himself and Sally, at least in Cathy's mind.

“I should think so,” said Cathy. “Anyway, what I did with Sally is irrelevant. I'd already decided to leave. I was just trying to achieve escape velocity.”

“She said you kissed.”

“We did more than that.”

“She didn't tell me that.”

“Well, we already know she lies, don't we?”

“You realise she's a prostitute?” said Andrew. “An engaging and creative one, but still.”

“That's why I hired her,” said Cathy.

“You
wanted
her to seduce me?”

“It would have been an excuse for leaving you. When I hired her I didn't have a plan, though. I was just doing what you'd told me to – as I always have. Hire someone skinny and voluptuous, you said, someone to keep me company, who you could fantasise about. Go to a nanny agency, you said. Fuck that, I said. I was desperate – which called for desperate measures. I bought one of those magazines with quote personal classifieds. She was the third woman I interviewed and I thought she was perfect.”

“She was,” said Andrew. “She got you to let go.”

Cathy didn't respond. “Tell me about what happened when you arrived and I wasn't there,” she said.

Andrew recounted the events at the airport, her proposition, the fifteen seconds he'd had to decide, Sally explaining “intimacy without sex” as she undressed. He tried to make the story amusing, which was something he knew how to do. Cathy laughed. Andrew laughed. Laughing reminded them both of times they'd had fun together. They both began to cry, hugged each other, regained their composure, continued to walk.

It was still early. There was no one on the beach, though there probably would be soon.

“I don't think we'll make it to the lighthouse,” said Andrew.

“We never have,” said Cathy. “Except when we were herding house guests.”

They turned around and walked back.

“What do you want me to tell people?” said Cathy as they
got near the house. “What are we both going to say?”

“We say we had twenty great years but our paths have separated. Those who care about either of us will accept that. We don't owe anyone an explanation. We all have failures we'd rather not elaborate on. I'm being fired Monday, by the way, or so it appears. But that's fine. I'll get over it. We have enough money.” He walked on a bit. “But as to how we conduct ourselves, sometimes a bear just needs to go into its cave, wait out a winter of self-mockery and grief, and hope to emerge a better bear when the snow melts.”

“I expect to be good at self-mockery,” said Cathy briskly. She got impatient whenever he tried to be eloquent. “Perhaps I should be the one to talk to Eleanor,” she said.

“That might be best,” said Andrew. “I'll call Florence.”

They were a hundred yards short of the wooden steps, the tunnel through the bushes and the house. Andrew stopped. “What are your plans?”

“I don't have any plans.”

“My billionaires are leaving this afternoon, but I'd arranged to stay until tomorrow morning, to help you and Sally clean up.”

“That was a nice thought, sweetie.”

“The relationships have gotten a bit jumbled, though, so I don't honestly know who's doing what. Do you want to stay here?”

“Could you stand it? I'm suddenly exhausted.”

“It's your house too.”

Now that he and Cathy were declaring defeat, Andrew's brain was flooded with memories of roads not taken. “You go in,” he said to her. “I need to walk a bit more.”

Venetia of the flannel pyjamas had opened the door on
time and let Andrew in when he stood on the doorstep of her tiny house in a fashionable neighbourhood at two o'clock in the morning. She was wearing slacks and a sweater. “I was afraid you'd come,” she said. They hadn't discussed it after the first night.

“Didn't you want me to?” he said.

“Of course I did. It's gratifying when men want me.”

“But…?”

“I'll give you a cup of tea, or a whiskey if you want. Yes, perhaps we ought to have a drink. But then you have to leave.”

He wasn't utterly surprised. She poured Glenmorangie into two glasses. They both drank it down in a single gulp.

“You aren't ready for a man who cries?” he said. He knew that wasn't it.

“I'm not ready for a man who's married and has a daughter, who lives in New York, who I am in grave danger of falling in love with.”

“One kiss?”

She nodded her head to say yes.

He'd walked the twenty blocks to his hotel, letting empty taxis pass him.

When Andrew was made a partner and bought the house in Nantucket with the intention of giving his own house parties, it was called “Spouter Cottage” – a
Moby Dick
reference. He wanted to change it to “Guilty Memories,” which would have been a Venetia reference, but he never actually suggested it. Cathy maintained that giving your house a name was pretentious. And to be honest, the memory of Venetia had still been painful.

BOOK: Nantucket
11.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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