The Matchmaker (14 page)
Dabney had been expecting to leave a message on the machine; guys like Jack never answered their office phones, especially not during the summer. She was surprised when Jack picked up.
“Coppah heah.”
“Hi, Jack,” Dabney said. “It’s Dabney Kimball!”
Dabney told Jack that he had won the raffle at the last Business After Hours and that the prize was a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Hatch’s liquor store, and could Jack come into the office and pick it up that afternoon?
She knew Jack would not turn down free beer.
“Hell yeah!” Jack said. “I’ll be theah at three o’clawk.”
Dabney was delighted when Nina appeared at work wearing a sassy red tank dress that slowed off her cleavage. Nina rarely dressed like that. It was almost as if she knew.
At two thirty, Dabney said, “I’m going to take a late lunch. I should be back in an hour or so.” She signed out on the log.
Nina said, “I don’t know why you do that.”
Dabney said, “I’m a goody-goody.”
Nina said, “Well, you used to be. I’m not sure I would use that term to describe you anymore.”
Dabney said, “I think Jack Copper is stopping by to pick this up.” She dropped an envelope on Nina’s desk.
Nina said, “What is it?”
“A gift certificate for Hatch’s. He won it in the raffle at the last Business After Hours.”
“No, he didn’t,” Nina said. “Hal Allen won the raffle.” She squinted at Dabney. “You weren’t even
at
the last Business After Hours.”
“Make sure Jack gets that,” Dabney said. “He’s coming at three to pick it up.”
“Dabney,” Nina said, “what are you doing?”
But Dabney was halfway down the stairs, and she pretended not to hear.
When Dabney returned an hour later (after going out the Polpis Road to spend “five minutes” with Clen), the office was filled with green smoke. Dabney raced up the stairs, as panicked as if she’d set the building on fire.
The front room, where Dabney and Nina sat, was thick with the green fog, but Nina’s desk was unoccupied. Dabney poked her head into the back office. Both Celerie and Riley were on the phone, yammering cheerfully away, oblivious to the atmospheric disaster right outside the doorway. Of course, Dabney reminded herself,
they
couldn’t see it. Only she could.
She waved her arms until Celerie put her call on hold.
“Yes, boss?” she said.
“Where is Nina?” Dabney said. “She’s not at her desk.”
Celerie shrugged. “She was here a minute ago, talking to some guy in a white visor.”
Dabney zipped back out to the front office, waving away the pea-green soup, and checked the log. Nina hadn’t signed out, but Nina wasn’t the stickler about it that Dabney was. She might have left with Jack to get a coffee, or a drink.
Then Dabney thought she heard a noise coming from the conference room. Dabney hoped she was imagining it. She had to check. If the conference room was empty, then she would run down the street to the Anglers’ Club.
She opened the door to find Jack Copper and Nina hooked together at the hips and at the mouth, leaning against the table used for board meetings. The green smoke was so thick that Dabney could barely see them, but she could tell they were seriously going at it.
“Hey, you two!” Dabney said brightly.
Immediately, they separated, and the air cleared enough for Dabney to see the stricken look on Nina’s face.
“Nina, I need to talk to you for a second,” Dabney said. “And, Jack, you can go. You got what you came for, right?”
Jack tugged at the bottom of his fishing shirt and adjusted his visor. “Um…yup,” he said. “See you later.” He beat a hasty retreat out of the conference room. Dabney waited until she heard his footsteps on the stairs before she closed the door. The air had cleared dramatically.
“God, that was embarrassing,” Nina said. “I feel like I’m sixteen again and you’re my mother. Why didn’t you
knock
?
”
“I didn’t know where you were,” Dabney said. “I was worried.
“Worried about what?” Nina said. “We were just kissing. That
is
why you called him up, right? That is why you paid a hundred dollars of your own money for a second gift certificate, right? That is why you told him to come at three and conveniently exited stage left at two thirty. Right?”
“Right,” Dabney said. “I’m sorry.”
“No,
I’m
sorry,” Nina said. She looked out the window, down Main Street, at the receding figure of Jack Copper, hurrying away. “That’s over, for sure. He’ll never come up here again. Now if I want to see him, I’ll have to hunt him down. Thanks a million.”
“I actually did you a favor,” Dabney said.
“A favor?” Nina said. “
You
get to go out and have fun. You’ve seen Clen practically every day since Box has been in London. And do I say a word about it? No! Because you are my best friend and I want you to be happy. But you don’t feel the same way about me.”
“I do, though,” Dabney said.
“You don’t!” Nina said. “You set me up just to tear me down.”
“When I got to the office, I saw green smoke,” Dabney said. “Just like with George! Jack Copper isn’t a perfect match for you, Nina.”
“I don’t
care
if he’s a perfect match!” Nina said, her voice louder now. “I just want a man to pay attention to me! I just want to have fun! Isn’t there a third category? Where you see happy-for-now yellow? Or a peaceful blue? Or a pulsing-hot red?”
“No,” Dabney said. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Well, too bad,” Nina said.
“I want to find you someone special,” Dabney said. “Someone right. Someone for forever.”
“I don’t want someone for forever! I want someone for
today
!
And you just chased him away!”
“You
do
want someone for forever,” Dabney said. “I know you do.” She welled up with tears. “And even if you don’t want it, I want it for you.” Tears streamed down Dabney’s face. She had been so sure Jack Copper would work, but no—he was the wrong choice. Dabney’s instincts were way off.
Nina plucked Dabney a tissue. “Dabney,” she said, “what is wrong with you?”
But Dabney wasn’t sure.
S
he had a group of ten bikers heading out to Quidnet Pond. Six boys, four girls, all of them strong riders except for a child named Dalton, who hailed from New York City (Park Avenue between Sixty-Ninth and Seventieth) and who attended Collegiate. Dalton had gruesomely chapped lips and one of the reasons he was lagging behind and holding up the group was that he had to stop every three to four minutes to apply his SPF 30ChapStick. That, and his bike helmet—which Agnes noted was the most expensive bike helmet money could buy—didn’t fit properly and kept slipping forward into his eyes. He had nearly had a collision with the girls in front of him thanks to said helmet.
Agnes hated to admit it, but she wasn’t very fond of Dalton. She had snapped at him earlier, telling him he had to keep up or he would be demoted to the nine-year-olds’ group. It wasn’t a very nice thing for her to say. She wasn’t really angry at Dalton—he was merely annoying—she was angry at CJ. CJ had canceled coming up for the weekend; the room at the White Elephant hadn’t come through, and that apparently was a deal breaker.
“I don’t see why you can’t stay at the house,” Agnes had said. “Box is in London and my mother is never home.”
“I won’t be comfortable,” CJ said. “I won’t be relaxed. And if I’m going to spend time with you, I’d like to be both of those things.”
Uncomfortable and ill at ease because of Dabney,
Agnes thought. If Dabney had been in London, CJ would have come.
He said, “I’d like you to come to New York this weekend.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” he said.
She had tried to come up with a reason. She
could
go to New York, but she didn’t want to. CJ would be on the phone all weekend anyway, negotiating the never-ending Bantam Killjoy deal. BK had been drafted by the Jaguars, but he was unhappy; he wanted to be out West. CJ was trying to get him to Kansas City or San Diego. Or at least that was what Agnes thought was happening; she had sort of lost track.
“I’m on
Nantucket,
CJ,” she said. “I’d like to go to the beach. Enjoy summer.”
“We can enjoy summer in the city,” he said. “We can walk in Central Park and put our feet in the fountain. We can go to a Yanks game. We can get reservations at any restaurant in the city. You want me to book at Le Bernadin? Minetta Tavern?”
“Um…” she said. “Maybe next weekend?”
“It doesn’t even sound like you want to see me,” CJ said.
“I do,” Agnes said. She had then sung out a chorus of apologies that she didn’t quite mean.
At the turnoff for Quidnet Road, Agnes gathered her campers. There were some fun personalities here—Archie, Samantha, Bronwyn, and Jamey (boy) and Jamie (girl). But everyone was hot and thirsty, the water bottles were down to the last inches, and the kids were eager for a swim and lunch.
Agnes gave the final directions—slight left onto Quidnet Road, half a mile to the pond, lock up, head to the beach, stay together, no one in the water until Agnes blew the whistle—and they all waited for Dalton to catch up. He was forty yards back, ChapStick break.
Just then, Agnes’s attention was snared by the sight of the Impala barreling up the Polpis Road. Her mother, sunglasses on, was at the wheel, singing. Agnes caught the strains of the Rolling Stones’ “Hang Fire.”
Agnes waved. She shouted, “Mom! Mom!” But the Impala cruised past; Dabney was too intent on where she was going to notice her only child.
Where was she going? Agnes couldn’t very well follow her.
The campers were intrigued. “Was that your mom?” Samantha asked. “Like, your Mom mom?”
Agnes realized that to her campers, she probably seemed too old to have a mother.
“Was that her
car
?
” Archie asked. “A 1967 Chevy Impala?”
There was a motorhead in every group. Agnes nodded. “That was my mom,” she said. “My Mom mom. And yes, that’s her car.”
“Your mom must be
cool,
” Archie said.
That night at dinner, Agnes waited until Dabney had finished her first glass of wine and poured her second before she asked. Again, it looked like her mother had gotten sun. The freckles on her cheeks were plentiful and pronounced.
“I saw you on the Polpis Road today,” Agnes said. “By the Quidnet turnoff? I was with my campers. Where were you going?”
Dabney took a bite of her grilled salmon with homemade dill sauce, then made a face of ecstasy. Agnes had to agree: her mother cooked like a goddess. Agnes had gained three pounds since she’d been home.
Dabney said, “The summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college, I got a flat tire on Main Street.” She dabbed her lips and took a sip of wine. “In the Nova. I popped it against the granite curb right outside of Murray’s Toggery. And no sooner had I gotten out of the car to look at the damage than a police car pulled up.” Dabney smiled. “And it was Grampy!”
“Oh,” Agnes said.
“What are the chances my own father would wander by at the exact moment my tire popped? I was very happy to see him, even though he made me change it myself. You remember what your grandfather was like.”
“Mom,” Agnes said. “Where were you going today?”
“I just thought of that story because of how funny it is to run into, you know, your parents, or your kids, when you’re out doing other things, living your life.”
“Mom.”
Dabney lifted a spear of asparagus with her fingers and nibbled it. “I had lunch at Sankaty Beach Club,” she said.
“Really?” Agnes said. This didn’t sound right. Dabney didn’t like to go to the Sankaty Beach Club, because her mother, Patty Benson, had been a member there, and thus Dabney had decided the place was cursed. “I thought you refused to eat there.”
“Well,” Dabney said, “I did today.”
D
abney was out of the office when Marcus Cobb came in to register with the Chamber. Marcus Cobb was actually Dr. Marcus Cobb, an ophthalmologist, who was setting up a practice on Old South Road.
A real eye doctor!
Nina thought.
He was of medium height, had a shaved head, and was dressed in a shirt and tie. Nina loved a man in a shirt and tie, probably because she had grown up on Nantucket, where nobody wore a shirt and tie except for the high school superintendent and the insurance guys across the street.
Nina said, “You know, I could use a pair of glasses. I haven’t been able to see clearly in years.”
This made Dr. Marcus Cobb laugh. He thought Nina was kidding.
Genevieve:
When I first met Dabney, I was twenty-one and she was seventeen and we worked together at Nantucket Cotton, a T-shirt shop which was the most successful retail spot on the island. I was from Canada, I had just graduated from McGill with a useless degree in French language and literature, and I had come to Nantucket because I had accidentally fallen in love with my cousin’s husband. I came from a large Catholic family and my mother, who was positively
verklempt
with me, told me to leave the country and pray to God for forgiveness.
I took the first job I was offered; the T-shirt shop was desperate for help. Dabney, although four years younger than me and still a teenager, was my manager. The owner, a man named Ed Law, told me I was to listen to Dabney and take all my direction from her. She was, he said, the best employee he’d ever had.
Dabney was a cute girl—she always wore jeans, loafers, opera-length pearls, a headband, and, during her shift, a pink crewneck T-shirt that said
NANTUCKET NATIVE
in navy letters across the front. Ed Law had had the T-shirt custom made for her, she said. And I thought,
Wow, Ed Law is a cool dude
.
Dabney was the one who told me that Nantucket Cotton was the highest-grossing retail space on the island, outearning even the galleries and the jewelry stores. Every visitor to the island wanted to leave with a souvenir, Dabney said. A T-shirt was lightweight, inexpensive, and practical. Ed Law had been the first person on the island to branch out beyond the name of the island. He created a T-shirt satirizing the first line of the famously lewd limerick. The T-shirt said:
I AM THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET.
We sold thousands.
What I quickly learned about Dabney was that not only was she a good manager—she was organized and fair with our work schedule, responsible with the cash register and the “bank,” and she led by example with her work ethic (she folded a T-shirt better than I’d ever seen it done, and stacked them in order of ascending size, which wasn’t mandatory by Ed Law’s standards, but that was how Dabney liked it done)—she was also a superstar when it came to customer service. She engaged the customers, and asked where they were from and where they were staying. She had encyclopedic knowledge of the island and would always suggest restaurants to people, or off-the-beaten-path places to bike and picnic. People loved it! Most customers ended up buying extra T-shirts because of Dabney, and then Ed Law got the idea to sell tourist maps for three dollars apiece, and Dabney would customize the maps for everyone who came in based on their individual needs and desires.
“You should work for the Chamber of Commerce,” I said.
She beamed at me. “You’re right!” she said. “I should!”
“But what would Ed Law do then?” I said. And we laughed.
Dabney had a boyfriend named Clendenin Hughes, who would wait for her at the end of every shift. He would sit on the bench out in front of the shop and read until Dabney was finished. Then he would take her hand and they would walk off.
I worked with Dabney for three summers, until I had an ill-fated love affair with Ed Law. I had just earned forgiveness for my cousin’s husband, when I had to start all over again. After leaving Nantucket Cotton, I waitressed at the Atlantic Café, and then I decided I needed a “real job,” and I was hired as a receptionist by Ted Field, who at that time was so new to the island, he made me feel like a local.
Meanwhile, I continued to get involved with married men, despite my best efforts to avoid them. It wasn’t me; it was them. They lied to me. Ed Law had insisted he was separated, on the verge of divorcing—not true at all. When Dabney was graduating from Harvard, I was dating Peter the Fireman, whom I later discovered had…a wife and two kids in Billerica, Mass. And when I found out Dabney was pregnant, I had just broken up with Greg, a pilot from Bermuda. Married.
I could ask for forgiveness all day long, but it wasn’t helping. It was like an affliction, or a disease I was carrying.
I saw Dabney at the grocery store—in the middle of February, in the middle of the night—her belly about ready to burst. I gasped at the shock of it. Hugely, roundly pregnant, Dabney Kimball, who had been so responsible with the cash register.
She was buying chocolate ice cream. She looked over and saw me, but she did not smile.
“Oh, hi, Genevieve,” she said.
My heart swelled with affection. Dabney was one of the only people who pronounced my name correctly, with four syllables. Ge-ne-vie-eve.
I said, “What’s this? Is the baby…yours and Clen’s?”
She looked at me with flat eyes. “No,” she said. And then she walked away.
Well, one can’t work as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and not hear all the gossip: yes, it was Clendenin’s baby, no, it wasn’t Clendenin’s baby, it was someone else’s, a summer kid’s, then no, it wasn’t the summer kid’s, it was Clendenin’s after all. Probably, maybe Clendenin’s, nobody was sure, and Clendenin himself was gone, off to be a reporter in the Sudan.
When the baby was born, I knew her name and weight within the hour: Agnes Bernadette, seven pounds fourteen ounces, eighteen and a half inches long. But there was no announcement in the paper.
And I thought,
How did the sweetest, smartest, most together young woman I had ever met end up like this?
For a baby gift, I special-ordered a tiny pink T-shirt that said
NANTUCKET NATIVE
in navy letters across the front. An inspired gift, I thought. Dabney sent a card on her monogrammed stationery: Love the T-shirt…so many good memories…thank you for thinking of us. But that was the last I saw or heard from her for a while. At that time, Ted Field was not her doctor.
Then, a few years later, I received an invitation to Dabney’s wedding. She was getting married to an economics professor from Harvard! I was thrilled for her, if a little jealous. I was dying to meet someone suitable—someone single—and get married.
Dabney and Box wed at the Catholic church and held the reception in the backyard of Dabney’s grandmother’s house on North Liberty. It was a wedding exactly like one would expect for Dabney—there were lots of roses and champagne cocktails and tasty hors d’oeuvres and a string quartet played Vivaldi, and Dabney looked beautiful in an ivory lace dress. She was in photographs with everyone, including the caterers and the valet parkers. Agnes wore a little pink dress that matched the color of the roses and I thought,
This is a more fitting ending for someone as magnificent as Dabney.
Just before we were to be seated for dinner, Dabney grabbed my arm.
“I’m moving you,” she said.
“What?” I said. I held a place card that said Indigo Table, which Dabney snatched out of my hands.
She said, “I haven’t been a very good or attentive friend the past few years, I know that. But I am going to make up for it now. Follow me. I want you at the Pink Table.”
The Pink Table was up front, at the edge of the dance floor, where the orchestra would soon be playing. I felt like I was on an airplane, getting bumped to first class, or at a hotel being upgraded to an oceanfront suite. I hoped Dabney wasn’t moving me solely because she felt guilty about neglecting our friendship. We had had a great time laughing in the shop about “the Man from Nantucket,” but we had also bonded on serious topics—her mother leaving, her all-consuming romance with Clendenin, my unwanted role as the “other woman.” I loved Dabney, I was always going to love Dabney, no matter where I was seated at her wedding.
Then I saw Brian. Blond guy with nice broad shoulders and little glasses.
“Genevieve,” Dabney said. “This is Box’s second cousin once removed, Brian Lefebvre. He just graduated from Harvard Law School and he’s setting up a practice on the island.”
Lefebvre,
I thought.
He’s French. Harvard Law School. Moving to Nantucket.
I took a seat next to him and smiled. It all sounded good, but I was wary.
“Nice to meet you, Brian,” I said. “I’m Genevieve Martine.” We shook hands. He seemed very nervous, which I found charming.
Dabney said, “I’ll let you two get acquainted. I have to go smile for the camera.”
I saw Brian reach out and touch Dabney’s arm. I saw him mouth the words
thank you,
and I busied myself with unfolding the pink linen swan on my plate and placing it neatly in my lap.
He said, “So, Genevieve…” Off to a good start because he pronounced my name perfectly. “What do you do on the island?”
“I’m the office manager for Dr. Ted Field’s family medical practice,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “And are you…single?”
“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”
He nodded his head emphatically. “Yes,” he said.
He wasn’t wearing a ring, but as I had learned, this meant nothing.
“Really?” I said.
“Well,” he said.
And I thought,
Yep, here it comes. He’s separated, but divorce is pending. He’s married, but his wife lives overseas. He just said he was single because he was stunned by my beauty; what he really meant was that he is married.
“I was married,” he said. “A long time ago. Five years ago. It lasted seven months, no kids. I like to think of it as taking a mulligan.”
“A mulligan,” I said. “Like in golf.”
“Right,” he said. “Where you get to start over without being penalized.”
I narrowed my eyes, still skeptical. “But you are divorced, right? Legally divorced?”
“Not only divorced,” he said. “Annulled.” He leaned closer to me and whispered, “I’m Catholic. The annulment was very important to my mother.”
I couldn’t believe it. I said, “You’re telling me the truth, right?”
He said, “Dabney told me to bring my divorce papers along to show you. She told me to bring my annulment signed by the bishop. But I thought she was kidding.”
I laughed mightily at that. “She told you to bring your divorce papers?”
He smiled and blushed and in that moment was just about the most adorable man I had ever laid eyes on.
And then I realized what was happening. We were at the Pink Table. Pink—of course!