The Matchmaker (25 page)

I
t was as Dabney was standing in the buffet line, eyeing the mashed-potato bar and thinking,
bacon, chives, sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions, cheddar, a dollop of sour cream,
that she saw Clendenin walk into the tent with Elizabeth Jennings.

Not possible.

But there they were. Together, indisputably together. Clen was…what, then? Dating her? Lying to Dabney?

The thick white china plate wobbled in Dabney’s hand and her vision started to splotch. She couldn’t help herself to the mashed-potato bar or the grilled lobster tail or the beef tenderloin or the luscious-looking tomatoes with burrata cheese. She couldn’t eat a thing right now; she felt like she might never eat again. But she also couldn’t move through the buffet line with an empty plate. Box was right behind her, and she knew
everyone
at this party. She took a scoop of potatoes, a lobster tail, a few spears of grilled asparagus, and a lone tomato, then she cast about for a place to sit. There were two empty seats at the Levinsons’ table, but in her present state of mind, Dabney didn’t want to eat with the host and hostess.

Someone touched her back. Dabney turned around. Clen and Elizabeth.

“Hey there, Dabney!” Elizabeth said. She looked like the cat that ate the canary.

“Hey there,” Dabney said. It hurt to make herself smile, but she did it. “Look at you two.”

Clen was wearing a crisp blue-and-white-gingham shirt with the cuff turned smartly back on his right wrist, and he had trimmed his beard. His expression, however, was one of sheer misery. He looked the way Dabney would have looked if she weren’t trying so hard to conceal how she felt.

“Dabney,” Clen said. He bent down to kiss the side of her mouth. It was like a stranger kissing her.

Elizabeth said, “Where is that naughty husband of yours? I’m still angry at him for leaving my party without saying goodbye.”

Dabney hunted around for Box; he had been right behind her in the buffet line. He hadn’t been more than three feet away from her all night long. But now, Dabney saw, he was sitting down with the Levinsons. He must have noticed Clen and peeled off. From across the tent, he beckoned to Dabney.

Dabney waved at him. “He’s over there,” she said to Elizabeth. “Go say hi.”

“I will,” Elizabeth said. To Clen she said, “Be right back.”

Dabney waited until Elizabeth was safely at Box’s side before she raised her eyes to Clen.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“What?” she said.

He took the plate of food from her hands and set it on an empty waiter’s tray. “Come out to the lawn with me so I can talk to you.”

“Are you crazy?” Dabney said. “Everyone is watching us.”

“I don’t care,” Clen said.

“Well, I do,” Dabney said. She heard the trill of Elizabeth’s laugh, but Dabney knew that no matter how witty Box was being, he also had one eye glued on his wife.

“Come out onto the lawn,” Clen said. “So I can talk to you.”

He cut a path through two tables and headed for the opening in the side of the tent and the purpling night outside.

This was, Dabney saw, a defining moment.
We all make choices.

Dabney followed him out.

You’ve been lying to me. You’re seeing Elizabeth Jennings.

We didn’t come together. We met at the entrance and she latched on to me. It was an awful coincidence.

You expect me to believe that.

I rode my bicycle. She came in Mingus’s old Mercedes, is my guess.

You didn’t plan to meet here?

Did not plan.

Who is the beautiful young woman Elizabeth is talking about?

Dabney.

Tell me! This, practically, loud enough to silence the tent—but no, it was only in Dabney’s imagination. In reality, the tent hummed with voices and laughter and the band tuning up.

My new cleaning lady, Clen said. I’ve been taking some time to get to know her.

Dabney furrowed her brow. Weeks earlier, she had sent Clen a new cleaning lady from Brazil named Opaline.

You mean Opaline?

Opaline, yes.

This didn’t sound right to Dabney. Opaline was in her late thirties and had five sons back in Rio; she wasn’t someone Dabney would consider young or pretty. She had dyed orange hair and a hard-line mouth.

Elizabeth is after you. You said she tried to kiss you.

She did try, yes. However, kissing requires two interested parties.

Why can’t you stay away from her? Tell her to go away. What are you doing? Are you trying to torture me?

No, Cupe, I’m not trying to torture you.

Well, you are! She started to cry.

How do you think I feel, knowing that you’re still living with the economist? Sharing a bed with him? You’ve been telling me you’re going to leave, but you know what, Dabney?

His use of her real name frightened her.

What?

You’re never going to leave him. I want you to be truly only mine, but you never will be. Ever.

Dabney stepped forward into Clendenin’s arms.

You jerk. You stupid, stubborn, difficult man. I have always been truly only yours.

He squeezed her so tightly that her insides screamed out in pain, and then he kissed her until her vision went black and she saw stars. She was going to faint from love, die right here of it.

“Dabney!”

Dabney didn’t bother turning around to look at Box, nor did she pull away from Clendenin. At that moment, she didn’t see the point.

S
he called CJ back three times, but there was no answer. Agnes supposed she should feel relieved. She had nothing to say to CJ anyway. She was merely glad he was alive. If he didn’t want to show up for his client, he didn’t want to show up for his client. It wasn’t Agnes’s concern.

She wished Riley would answer his phone or listen to his messages and call her back. Or Celerie. She wished her parents would come home. She had never once felt scared or uncomfortable in this house, but she felt scared now. She turned on the TV for the voices, and helped herself to her mother’s chicken salad and a cheddar scone, which she heated up and slathered with butter, but she was too agitated to eat. She could go out by herself, she supposed—to the Straight Wharf bar or down to Cru—and get a glass of champagne and some oysters. She had a wallet full of cash—Box pressed twenties and fifties and hundreds into her hand every time she left the house. She might meet someone nice, someone new—man or woman. She was pathetically low on friends.

She thought she heard a noise outside; there was a rustling like someone poking around in her mother’s hydrangea bushes. Agnes was afraid to check out the windows, then she chastised herself. Nantucket was one of the safest places in the world. Half their neighbors didn’t even lock their houses; Dabney and Box only did so because of their art.

Agnes’s apartment door in New York had four dead bolts.

Agnes scooped up her car keys. She couldn’t stay in the house alone.

She found herself involuntarily driving out the Polpis Road toward Clendenin’s cottage. He would be at home; he was a self-described hermit, and Dabney was at the Levinsons’ with Box, so there would be no danger of disrupting a rendezvous. Agnes found Clen easy to talk to. He listened in a way that so few men listened, even Box. Box heard every third word you said—only when he was talking economics was he present. Agnes understood how seductive it would be for Dabney to know that her words were being cherished and appreciated.

Agnes would talk to Clendenin.

She pulled into the driveway, but the cottage was dark, and Agnes’s heart sank. Where
was
everyone tonight? It felt like the whole world had abandoned her. The big house was lit with the usual lights, which were on timers. Clendenin had told Agnes that the family who owned it, the Joneses, weren’t coming to Nantucket at all this summer; they were going to the south of France instead.

Agnes sat in the driveway outside Clen’s cottage and rested her forehead against the steering wheel of the Prius.

Headlights swung into the driveway, which meant that Clen was home, thank God. He used the Joneses’ Volvo only when he had to get groceries or had another errand for which his bicycle wasn’t suitable.

The headlights pointed right into Agnes’s windshield, blinding her, and she realized it wasn’t Clen in the Volvo. She thought to panic—it was a lot quieter out in Polpis, there weren’t any neighbors nearby to hear her yell for help—but then Agnes assumed that the car belonged to someone who was lost and had turned into the wrong driveway. Agnes got out of her car, thinking she would help this lost soul, then leave Clen a note and head into town for a drink.

A man got out of the other car and started walking toward her.

Agnes blinked.

It was CJ.

B
ox didn’t speak, and Dabney hoped that he would believe she was working out her feelings for Clendenin Hughes, trying to find a resolution and a sense of peace, and that he would sensibly walk back into the tent.

The problem was that Elizabeth Jennings had followed Box out.

Dabney casually extracted herself from Clendenin’s arms, then she faced Box and Elizabeth head-on and said, “Everything is okay, everything’s fine. I just wasn’t feeling well is all.”

Box glared at Clendenin, and Dabney thought there might be another fistfight. She wanted to vaporize. Her mind was racing with the scandal of it all. Tomorrow, everyone would be talking about Dabney Kimball Beech; the island’s most beloved citizen, and its fiercest champion, would be revealed as a liar and a cheat.

And yet, she realized that
this
was her chance; all the other chances had been practice, trial runs. She wasn’t sure if she believed in Fate, but she was pretty sure that Clendenin Hughes had lost his arm and returned to Nantucket for a reason. He had been meant to reconcile with Dabney before it was too late.
Take things a moment at a time.

Dabney cleared her throat and aimed her words at her impossibly dignified husband. She didn’t care one bit about Elizabeth. “You told me today that you thought I might have residual feelings for Clendenin, but that you didn’t know what those feelings were. The answer is that…I’m in love with him.” She paused, wondering if she’d really just said those words. “I’ve been in love with him my whole life. I’m so sorry.”

Box nodded, but it looked like the lightbulb was slow to come on. Was there a way that Dabney could have been clearer, or kinder? Finally, he said, “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I thought I was going crazy. It’s nice to know that my instincts were correct and that my sanity, at least, is intact.” With that, Dabney watched him go, her brilliant and esteemed professor, the man who had saved her, the man who had loved her and allowed her to be herself, the man who had raised Agnes as his own, a good, principled man. Dabney decided to do him the favor of not chasing after him and exhibiting more histrionics.

Elizabeth made a noise—a sniff or a soft cry—then said, “I had no idea.”

Clen said, “Really, Elizabeth, this is none of your business.”

“I knew something was going on, too,” Elizabeth said. “On the Fourth of July I knew.” She shook her head as if to clear it, and then gave Dabney a wobbly smile. “You’ve got yourself a regular love triangle.”

Dabney thought,
Was there ever anything
regular
about a love triangle?
Maybe there was. Maybe years ago, while “overseas,” Elizabeth herself had been involved in a love triangle with Clen, or had wanted to be. What did Dabney know? Regret overwhelmed her at that moment. She had made a spectacular mess of things. As she gazed at the tent, its pearly, incandescent walls containing light and music and food and conversation, she realized that among her regrets was that she wouldn’t dance tonight.

Elizabeth said, “I’m going back in. See you two later, I guess.”

Clen said, “Have a good night.”

Elizabeth strolled back into the party with purpose, and Dabney shuddered. Her good name was about to be destroyed.

Clen said, “Well.”

Dabney said, “Well, what?”

Clen said, “You’ll have to ride home on my handlebars.”

T
here was a bottle of Grey Goose dangling from CJ’s left hand, two-thirds gone. Agnes noticed this, then his rumpled suit, which looked like he’d slept in it three days straight. His hair was standing on end, and he bared his glinting teeth. He was absolutely terrifying.

He said, “Hey, baby.”

“Hey,” she said. Her emotions surged at the sound of his voice, and at the raw physicality of him. He was here—he had skipped out on precious Bantam Killjoy and come to Nantucket to see her. There was something desperate and romantic about that, and she felt herself rethinking her decision.

He handed the bottle of vodka to Agnes and said, “You want?”

She accepted the bottle; it was icy cold. She brought it to her lips and threw back a little more than a shot, grateful for the cold burn down her throat and into her chest. Deep breath. She set the bottle down on the hood of the Prius.

What to say?

She wasn’t sure. She waited.

CJ took her face in his hands and kissed her hard, his teeth tearing at her lips. He grabbed her by the hair—it had grown past the nape of her neck over the summer—and yanked her head back like she was a doll he intended to decapitate.

“You sent back the ring,” he said.

“I…” She couldn’t talk; her neck was so stretched that the skin was taut, he was hurting her, and she was having a hard time getting air. “Let…go,” she said.

He lunged at her with his mouth, biting and sucking on her clavicle, chewing on her like a rabid dog. He was
hurting
her.

“Get off me!” she said.

CJ held her by the back of the head and grabbed her left wrist, right below her Cartier love bracelet. His grip was ironclad, a different kind of bracelet, a bracelet of fury. He shoved her up against the side of the Prius. She felt him hard against her leg, but she didn’t find it arousing. She wasn’t about to have sex with CJ here in Clendenin’s driveway.

She tried to push him away, but he only tightened his grip on her wrist.

Bruises,
she thought.
He’s going to leave bruises.

“Let go of me,” she said. He had a fistful of her hair. “You’re hurting me, CJ.”

“Hurting you?” he said. “
Hurting you?
” he screamed.“Let’s talk about who’s hurting who here. You sent back my ring! After all I’ve done for you!”

“Yes,” Agnes said, trying to placate him. “You have done a lot for me—”

“You don’t know the half of it!” he shouted. “Your little favorites, the ones you worry so much about? Quincy and…?”

“Dahlia,” Agnes bleated.

“I bought their mother an apartment!” CJ screamed. “A fucking apartment, so that they would have a home. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Oh my God,” Agnes said. CJ had bought Quincy and Dahlia’s mother an apartment? Agnes couldn’t believe it. And yet, it was exactly the kind of thing CJ did. He was insanely generous with material things, because there was some kind of deficiency in his heart.

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “That was very kind…”

“
Kind?
You think I did it to be
kind
?
I did it because
I love you
!
”

“Let go of my hair, CJ,” she said. “And let go of my arm.” She heard Manny Partida, clear as day:
I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you.

“I sent the ring back because,” Agnes said. “Because—”

“Because why?” he demanded.

“Because I don’t want to marry you, CJ.”

CJ brought her head forward, nearly to his chest, and then he slammed her head back against the Prius. Agnes gasped. In the morning there would be a lump, she thought. An egg.

“Stop,” she said. “Please, CJ.”

“Please, Charlie,” he said. “Please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie please Charlie.” He slammed her head against the car again, and then again. Agnes was confused about what was happening; she felt something warm and wet in her hair. Was she bleeding?

“You bitch!” he screamed. “After all I’ve done for you! You came up here and started screwing somebody else!”

“No,” she said. “I did not! I swear I did not!”

He slammed her head again and this time the pain made Agnes’s knees buckle. CJ lifted her up by one arm; he was going to rip it out of its socket.
Hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff.
She was going to faint.
Is your fiancé a nice guy?
There was a sticky trickle down the back of her neck, and Agnes vomited into the shells of the driveway.

“What the hell is going on here?”
Another voice, growling and bearlike. And then a high-pitched cry that Agnes knew belonged to her mother.

Darling!

CJ let Agnes go and she collapsed in a heap. She touched her head. Blood. Her left arm was numb.

She heard a struggle, heavy breathing, fists against flesh. CJ was fighting with Clendenin. Clen, who had only one arm.

Dabney cried out, “Clen, stop, you’re going to get hurt.”

Hurt,
Agnes thought.
Hurthurthurthurthurt.

The blood running down her neck was half Clendenin’s blood.

Agnes opened her eyes in time to see Dabney climbing the porch stairs and Agnes thought,
Call the police, Mom! Go inside and call the police!
She couldn’t say the words. CJ was punching Clen the way she used to see him go after the bag at the gym. Relentlessly. And yet Clen was still on his feet, still swinging his right arm.

Agnes thought back to the moment when CJ Pippin was introduced to her, in the Waldorf ballroom, with a full orchestra playing in the background and canapés being served on silver trays. Their gala benefit had been the polar opposite of the cause they were raising money for. Agnes remembered being discomfited by this, even as she knew that throwing glamorous events was how one kept the doors open. CJ had asked Agnes to dance, and afterward he had brought her a glass of champagne. Then, during the Ask, he had raised his hand and donated a hundred thousand dollars. Agnes had gushed at his generosity. He had seemed like such a hero then.

“Leave him alone, you monster!” Dabney said. She was standing on the top step of the porch and she was holding a gun.

Gun?
Agnes thought.
My mother?

It was Clendenin’s BB gun, she realized then. But in the dark, the gun looked formidable, or at least it must have to CJ because he immediately backed off Clendenin and held his hands up in the air.

“You’re crazy,” CJ said to Dabney. “Crazy insane psycho nuts. You know that?”

“Yes,” Dabney said, walking toward CJ with the BB gun and pointing the muzzle straight into his face. “I’m well aware.”

Agnes closed her eyes. She was suddenly very, very tired. She thought,
My mother is pointing a gun at CJ
. She thought,
My mother is crazy. But I love her. I love her so much.