Cort was interesting. A sea hermit of sorts, with a tinkering, handy sort of intellect, Cort, fifty-three, lived on the island year-round. Like Wes, Cort had rowed for Sill and then Princeton, but dropped out the summer following his freshman year, the summer after he moved into his parents’ guesthouse in Polpis and fell violently in love—with fishing. It was like rowing minus all the yelling and other people and physical agony. It was like boating for pleasure, but with a purpose. There was something cyclical about it without being repetitive, a surprising sort of predictability. He loved the weather, the exposure to the elements, the misty predawn, the torrential sun glittering on the waves, the Crayola pastels, the gray cumulonimbus; he loved the speed, the salty wind, the way it smelled and tasted; he loved what he caught—that tasted even better—and the unbelievable self-sufficiency of it. He loved the solitude. He loved being so profoundly alone and yet amorphously, indelibly connected. Cort had found himself in the darkened seas. It was the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this was the key to it all.
Wes’s grandparents were not, strictly speaking, pleased about the whole not-returning-to-college situation, but they didn’t panic either, figuring a winter in Nantucket would shatter some illusions and Cort could return the following year. When he phoned them shortly before Memorial Day in 1982, saying he had news he wanted to deliver in person, this indeed was the news they expected to hear. He’d made a reservation for them all at a new restaurant in town called Tashtego’s. It was not until his mother declared her scallops divine that Cort revealed he’d borrowed against his trust fund to buy the restaurant. In the ensuing years it flourished, and he bought two others, becoming the preeminent restaurateur on the island. If you saw “Cort’s Catch” on the menu at any of his establishments, it meant he’d had a good morning on the water. Cort had never married. In what was probably the only circumstance under which it was cool to be in your middle fifties and living with your parents, he still occupied the guesthouse.
The Jeep circled up to the estate and Cort went to go fix drinks, giving Wes and Diana plenty of time to unpack—but when she fleetingly dropped her bag and returned to Cort, Wes followed suit. The sound of her mirth tinkling upstairs in his absence would have been worse, somehow, than its full thrust in the same room. Wes’s mother, Agatha Young Range, put on her customary show of making everyone else wait twenty minutes for her appearance before entering like a reluctant sovereign, graciously prepared to receive tribute in spite of a feigned disregard for pomp. Her measured response to Diana’s ovations, while warm and polite, felt faintly retributive, and Wes sensed a subtle shift on the terrace. Cort handed Wes a mint julep and took a seat to the right of Agatha.
Seeing Agatha and Cort together sometimes felt like an anthropological study, the way you could precisely follow and compare the forces of nature and nurture at work shaping them. You could almost see his shaggy-dog hair hiding under her expertly processed lob. Both had the same fine bone structure and cerulean eyes. Their joint tendency to carry a little extra weight conveyed similar commitments to pleasure with different environmental manifestations. Cort was heavyish-set in the hard, muscular way that often settles in the midsection and indicates gastronomic overindulgence tempered by plenty of physical activity. Combined with his dermal patina—a variegated, dark red-brown that had a damaged sort of youth to it—he was the picture of rustic gentility. By contrast, Agatha had aged in an indoor cat sort of way. There was a seared-fois-gras texture to her plumpness, the result of resolute inactivity on top of too much Fancy Feast. It was a deceptive softness, however, encasing a shrewd woman: observant and seriously minded for a socialite. Like Cort, in her cool self-possession Agatha exuded the glamour and cool of someone far more physically attractive. She had navigated her husband’s demise with a grace and maturity that, counterintuitively, is rarely witnessed in full-blown adults. A little cellulite was not going to unravel her.
Plenty of people disliked Diana, often for her sheer likability, but Agatha was the only person Wes had found to be Diana-immune on arrival. She’s nice—that was what his mother said after their first meeting, which was more or less her reaction to all the girls he introduced. Initially this had driven Wes bananas, frustrated by his own inability to explain Diana’s singularity and the wild attraction he found so patently self-evident. He’d felt vindicated when, over time, Diana weaseled into Agatha’s affections, winning her love, if not entirely her respect—but Wes had also come to appreciate the limits to this in-law kinship, that there was at least one person who he could confidently tell himself unequivocally preferred his company to his wife’s. His mother smiled at him, as if to confirm this. Because on the whole Agatha smiled seldom, when she did, it had the feel of a benediction. A ship launched from his chest, down to the sunless sea. For the first time in hours he felt he could breathe, the salty wet air clinging to the inside of his lungs like life itself.
As his mother nestled deeper into her chair, listening to Diana tell a story—one Wes had heard before, but which, he had to admit, brimmed with hilarity—she gave him her secret nonverbal analysis: solid content, garish style. Cort’s body, meanwhile, heaved in waves of laughter Wes found contagious in spite of himself. At the climax of her chronicle, Diana surprised Wes, grabbing his hand in the emphasis of some point, letting it linger there, turning her head toward him in the kind of tease that made him forget everything he didn’t like about her. As her thumb pressed into his skin, a tender feeling collided with his latent shame and he thought that maybe he should tell her what happened, that she would understand. Yes, confession would absolve his sins. Wes inhaled, trying to make space, letting the affection wash over him, squeezing Diana’s hand. She smiled at him, and it was easy to mistake his intention to tell her for the sense that she’d already forgiven him. Wes’s mother told an anecdote from his childhood with an adoring look. Cort handed him another mint julep. The dam broke, and he overflowed with fondness for all of them.
And so Wes tentatively allowed himself to burrow into the familial routines of Nantucket—a Xanadu that, on weekends like this, when his grandparents weren’t there, felt a great deal like home. Mornings on the boat with Cort, lunch by the pool, sunny spots of greenery blossoming with the last of the daffodils. The Velvet Underground & Nico album on infinite loop. A solid row on the erg machine. Outdoor showers, crisply warm. A Whale’s Tale Pale Ale, maybe rounding into a nap. Drinks on the terrace and retold stories, Diana’s walloping laugh echoing beneath the waxing moon. Some nights Cort would have one of his chefs stop by to cook up the daily catch; on others Cort would do it himself. Either way everything was fresh and simply prepared and paired well with the wine. Wes almost always slept brilliantly up here, with nothing but the blankets between Diana’s snugness and the cold breeze of the outer air. Whatever vague guestly best-behavior-type discomfort Wes felt around his grandparents, he had to admire their taste in duvets.
Sunday morning, Diana joined them on the boat, bedecked in the sunwashed regalia of a true Nantucketer, hand-me-downs from Wes himself, found who knows where. The ratty polo dated back to Sill. Weather-wise, it was a textbook perfect day: warmly cool, clear sun, breezy. And yet there was something too bright about it, something raw and overexposed. The water reflected everything like a mirror, almost blindingly, as the spangling sun shifted like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Climbing aboard, Wes nearly fell off the gangplank.
—You better watch your step! Diana said, coming toward him.
Her presence there on his uncle’s boat, wearing his own old clothes, so wholly submerged in his life—there was a graphic discomfort to it, a knottiness that, yes, recalled their legal union, but also another, far deeper bond; the true fusion of selves of which that societal transaction is symbolic but imperfectly correlated. He felt reason slipping away from him, seeing their division grow together. It almost felt like, looking at her, he was looking at his own reflection, not just at his wife or even his partner but an image utterly inseparable fro
m himself—a phoenix of his own ashes, the heroine in his blood.
There was a sudden clarity and congruence to Wes’s predicament. He understood, quite abruptly, why his friends always made such messes of their relationships. Perversely, it was because those relationships mattered to them, mattered deeply. It was easy to break up with girls who had been little more to him than pleasurable fashion accessories. It was easy to take them out, treat them with respect, and politely set them aside. Things got messy only when women were no longer interchangeable, when they were an inextricable part of oneself. Many (many) women were lovable on their best day. Only Diana was lovable to him on her worst, through endless circular arguments and maddening mind games. Wes and Diana were unhappy. They were both terribly unhappy together, he knew—but he could not even conceptualize her absence: it amounted to a sort of suicide. His infidelity was the twisted explosion not of cruelty or apathy but of an overdeveloped sort of love: a sick, needy adulation borne of his very inability to let her go. Wes loved Diana furiously, possessively, even though their marriage didn’t really work.
The epiphany’s shame reduced him to terror, his head bobbing and weaving with the swells as the boat made for open water. Oh, how he loved Diana! What had he done? Gone looking for something he wanted to seek but didn’t actually want to find. And for what? The thrill of the chase? Some orgastic, receding green light? Wes wished it had eluded him. He had outrun his own self; he had dove in after an idol, and drowned for a mere mirage. For the first time he saw in Vivien a plain art, that primordial temptress of Woman the history of the world makes it so very hard to discredit. It was all deeply unsettling. But in this world, it is not so easy to settle these plain things. Plain things are the knottiest of all.
—Is something wrong, Wes? Diana called from across the deck, as if she could see his mind.
His stomach reeled with the boat. How could he have thought he could tell her? It had been a selfish impulse to want to unburden himself. What would hurting her accomplish? That night had been merely a symptom of the disease that was all the other days of their marriage. No, he was going to fix the presuppositions and resentments, the circular fights, those sticky, toxic communication patterns. He was going to clean up after himself and close the bathroom door. He was going to be a good husband, the charming person he’d been with Vivien. Putting in the daily work—that would be harder than confessing, he assured himself.
—It’s nothing at all, he said.
There was a splash in the midground off to starboard. A mighty fountain forced itself up in a swift half-intermitted burst, followed by a threshing flail.
—Oh my god! Is that, like, a whale?
—Very like a whale, Cort admitted, grinning at her.
—Look, there’s another! Or maybe it’s the same one.
This time Diana had her phone ready, and succeeded in capturing its fanning tail.
—Here, get one of me, would you please? she asked Wes.
She handed him her phone and backed up against the railing. They were pretty far out now and cruising at a fair clip. It was getting choppy and he struggled to frame her properly on the screen.
—Too much boat and not enough ocean, she complained. Ugh, half of these are blurry.
Diana tried another pose, and then another. Normally Wes had a limited tolerance for playing photographer, but he obliged her every instruction and angle. Still dissatisfied, she tried moving closer to the stern, one leg out to sea, throwing her hands up in an off-kilter V, giving Wes a whiplash girlchild wave, clowning around as if she’d won something. The boat hit a swell and lurched abruptly. There was a splash in the foreground off to starboard, then the shadow of a dome floating midway on the waves.
—Oh my god, Di—! Cort—Cort—stop the boat! Stop the boat now!
Diana’s ego bore the largest brunt of her fall; they fished her out and counted only a couple of minor bruises. Cort was furious at first, but by the time they got home and were no longer wet and chilly, the episode was allowed to become one of those legitimately terrifying situations that is roaringly funny in retrospect. Wes had captured such a sensational shot of the fall, or the imminent pre-fall, rather, that it prompted Diana to redownload Instagram. She posted the picture captioned solely with the hashtag #ACK. Even for Diana, it got a shocking number of likes.
CHAPTER XV.
Is it possible to be more than one person at the same time, to cast ourselves in multiple roles and to play them all well? When Diana reviewed the month between Nantucket and Paris in her mind, it possessed an undeniable montage quality, even as it lacked the technique’s customary power of synthesis. It was, rather, like a montage of montages, as if a film student had spliced together several individually coherent mosaics from different movies entirely. Days at Olympia and nights of overindulgence oscillated between Rudy-esque determination and Push It to the Limit hedonism in the mold of Scarface—unless Dale was in the scene, at which point painfully abstinent Hungry Eyes yearning took over for Dirty Dancing: E-IM edition. On lighter workdays Diana would try to burn off her sexual energy in a run, literally ascending the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps like the great hero of montage himself. Intensity built on intensity in a shaky, indecisive kind of way. She was Rudy and Tony and Baby and Rocky.
The Tuesday following her return from Nantucket it occurred to Diana that perhaps Dale was slightly less good-looking than she’d appraised him the previous week, but also that she somehow liked him, this week, even better. In describing all the pleasures of her weekend to him, she realized there had been something missing in it, and was strangely glad to be back in Philadelphia. After work, without quite knowing why, she made a stop at Sephora.
• • •
At team dinner a week later, Dale gave an astonishingly accessible critical introduction to Anna Karenina for an audience who, with the exception of Raj, had never read the novel. Privately, Dale encouraged Diana to rectify this grave inadequacy in her literary education post-haste. When she made a show of downloading the Kindle edition on the spot, Dale beamed.
—Excellent; you can read it on the train, he said. Wait, wait a minute, did you get the right translation?
His smugness knew no end. He really was intolerably likable.
The next day produced a third consecutive Wednesday tête-à-tête at “their” backgroundless bar. Diana and Dale talked for hours, closing the place down, wandering around the city after that. She liked immensely being alone with him. There was an awkward, prolonged goodbye in front of the Sheraton this time. Finally Diana backed through the doors, achingly alone. It was well after 3:00 a.m., and it took almost another hour for her heart rate to slow to the point of sleep. When Diana woke the next morning, she was seeing double. Needless to say, this required an obscene quantity of Maximum Strength Visine.
On Monday, June 8, Dale and Diana went out for sushi together in Old City after happy hour, and opted for the sake tasting. When the little rows of ceramic glasses arrived, Dale swished the sake around in his mouth like a connoisseur, wearing a mask of faux pretension that did not entirely cover his genuine pretentiousness.
—Well, my, my—Ms. Whalen, here we have a fine vintage, a very fine vintage indeed—hits the tongue with an imperial mélange of orange peel and cellophane balanced by an—sniff—Instagrammed coffee aroma. Notes of questionable decisions, old newspapers, and desiccated Sea-Monkeys. The aftertaste? A smooth oil, quite ready to lubricate some raw fish.
Diana tittered and preened, very like a good date, before launching into a little mock review of her own. The backgroundless bar could not wait for Wednesday. They were drinking in unprecedented quantities, she realized, not out of any sort of social anxiety—being in each other’s company was almost terrifyingly easy and natural—but as a pretext to spend time together in the first place. There was nothing improper about grabbing drinks with a coworker, even if it evolved into grabbing a bite. So long as alcohol was involved in a public place, Dale and Diana might safely be alone together.<
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The ensuing Wednesday, the team went to karaoke. Dale asked Diana to indulge him and sing something from Evita, but Diana had never heard of it and excused herself to the stage before he could rectify this deficiency. She had a voice that demanded to be seen, bopping around on the stage in her mod little shift. That she chose “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”—truly the K2 of karaoke songs, second in height to Whitney Houston, but on certain technical metrics more challenging—put a definitive end to every side conversation. The entire bar started whooping and hollering, cheering her on. Dale only half-smiled, standing out in the crowd not for his enthusiasm, but his relative motionlessness, as she positively brought down the house.
This was the same week that Dale started referring to all sorts of things as being Whalenesque. She wondered if he might feel something more than self-satisfied intellectual lust for her, if maybe he had for a while. One has to apply a certain pressure, a certain force on another human being in order to cross the grammatical line from noun into adjective.
The team met with Prudence Hyman on Tuesday, June 16, to review their latest versions of the operating model and blueprint—the latter being the deck Diana had put together in the first week of the project and basically sat on since. (She was not entirely sure how Dale was functioning from, like, a physical, sleep-deprivation perspective; he actually had work to do most days, unlike Diana, whose primary job at the moment was merely to appear busy, passing any actual assignments on to the all-too-willing Eric Hashimoto.) PH’s unequivocal approval of their interim deliverables meant dinner would be a blowout, followed by drinks at the team’s now go-to establishment, a Center City lounge and taproom called Clock, where Diana regularly commandeered the jukebox. That night everyone—including Parker Remington—got sufficiently obliterated and took it to the dance floor. From a pelvic-gyration perspective, Diana was the least inappropriate member of the team that night, she assured herself. But when she went over to the jukebox to choose the next song, she dropped a quarter. Dale picked it up.
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