What I Thought Was True

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  Angela drags the equipment to the back of the Bronco, while Mom reaches into the Igloo cooler stationed there and extracts a Diet Coke.

  Then, to me, under her breath, Mom says, “I hope we did okay. Those Robinsons are so particular. They always give it the white glove treatment after I leave and there’s always something we left undone, so ‘in all good conscience we couldn’t pay you the full rate.’ Good riddance, I say.”

  I think I hear Mrs. E. calling me, but all is still when I creep up the stairs and press my ear to her door. Just as I get back down, Henry Ellington comes in, wearing a beige cashmere cable-knit sweater tied around his neck, carrying a briefcase, and accompanied by a scholarly-looking man with thinning red hair, whom he introduces as Gavin Gage, “a business partner.” Mr. Gage is one of those people who don’t look at you when they shake your hand, glancing everywhere around the room instead.

  Henry fishes a list of out of his pocket, written on the back of a bank deposit envelope, directs me to go to Fillerman’s Fish Market after the grocery store because they have the “freshest salmon.” Grandpa is always ragging on Fillerman’s, saying they soak their fish in milk to get rid of the fishy smell from being sold too old. For a second, treacherously, as if Dad’s words on Sandy Claw let loose a snake in my mind, I look at the one-hundred-dollar bill Henry has handed me and wonder how much of it I could keep if I hit up Grandpa or one of his cohorts for salmon instead. It’d be a service—the salmon would definitely be better.

  “I’ll bring you all the receipts,” I say hastily, cutting off that train of thought.

  “Of course.” Henry loosens the sweater, draping it over the kitchen chair. “A shot of bourbon, Gavin? Gwen, take Mother’s car.” He slides me the keys, anchored by a carved wooden seagull.

  I should not be intimidated by Mrs. Ellington’s car, but even after our market drives and sightseeing tours, I still am.

  The interior is cream-colored leather, the outside shiny ivory paint. It’s like it’s just left the showroom. I start to edge uneasily out of the driveway, tires crunching on clamshells. I feel as though I’m driving a gigantic marshmallow on wheels.

  Just then the dark green Seashell Services truck wheels up, parking with a squeal. Tony gets out the front and Cass hops out the back, which is already heaped with hedge clippings. Tony shouts some words I can’t hear, jerking his chin to the passenger seat of the truck, and Cass ducks in and emerges with a weed-whacker. Tony leans over, cupping his hand around Cass’s ear to say something, jerking his head toward the Robinson/Tucker house. Probably he’s passing on the same information that Mom did. That they are demanding and high-maintenance. It strikes me how funny it is that Cass is no doubt as rich as the Robinsons, if not more so. But, in just about a month, Tony and Marco have accepted him as an island guy. They didn’t see him last night, though, piling into the Porsche, careless, laughing, comfortable, every inch the aristocrat.

  Cass waves the whacker, pumps it in the air, and Tony claps him on the back. Then they both burrow into the boxwood bushes, no doubt looking for electrical outlets. As I start to drive away, I allow my glance to stray to the rearview mirror, linger on Cass’s backside. Tony’s plumber butt is much less appealing.

  He wasn’t wearing gloves. Cass!

  I hurry through the shopping list, frustrated because Henry has specified on the list that all these things need to be bought in particular places all over town. For God’s sake. In addition to the fish at Fillerman’s, there are rolls that can only be bought at a bakery in White Bay, then all this other stuff from Stop & Shop. Then Garrett’s Hardware for some kind of cedar plank for grilling the salmon. Which takes forever, because I can’t find it, the store is a bit of a mess, and the cute redheaded guy behind the counter gets totally distracted when some chick walks in wearing cut-off shorts. Plus I find myself lingering in front of the work-glove display. Should I? No, that would be weird. Very weird. Then sorbet and meringues at Homelyke, and then the liquor store, where Henry wants Prosecco. I don’t even know what that is, except that I’m not old enough to buy it, and Dom D’Ofrio, who works there, knows that all too well. I tell him it’s for my boss and he just rolls his eyes. “Never heard that one before.”

  An hour and a half later, sweating, I loop the Cadillac back into the driveway, where Henry’s Subaru is still blocking the circular drive. I’m hauling the various bags into the kitchen when I hear his distinctive voice from the front hall. “This, obviously, is an Audubon. Great-Grandfather Howard, my mother’s side, invested heavily in art. We have several more at the Park Avenue house.”

  “A print,” Gage’s voice says firmly. “Have you had the others authenticated?”

  “No, naturally I came to you with this first. How can this not be an original?”

  There’s a scraping sound, as though Mr. Gage is taking it off the wall. “Here. See. Henry, I assure you, you aren’t the first generation in any family to find your finances in arrears. Just yesterday I was sent to White Bay to take a look at a Tiffany necklace that had supposedly been handed down in the family since the 1840s. All the stones were paste. Useless. It happens more often than you’d think. By nature, my business is very discreet, so you don’t hear a thing. I have a client in Westwood who had copies painted of all the fine art in the house. His parents had been famous collectors. Told his wife he was nervous about theft and was putting the paintings in storage and displaying the copies. Sold the originals to me.”

  “Sounds like a great marriage,” Henry Ellington says drily. “The point is, what do we have here of any value?”

  I got paper bags, not plastic, and am setting them down really gently, hoping they won’t rustle and alert Henry to my presence, which I’m pretty sure is not wanted. I’ve had a lifetime of hearing “Other people’s stories, Gwen. All we owe them is a clean house and a closed mouth.” But it’s hard to close your brain. What’s going on?

  “Henry, you know I’ll do all I can for you. Some of the furniture is of worth. The Eldred Wheeler Nantucket tea table in the foyer would amount to about eight hundred dollars. So would the Walnut Burr table here in the dining room. The china cabinet Meissen vase on the fireplace mantel would be about three hundred. The most valuable asset I’ve seen is the Beechwood Fauteuil armchair in the sunroom. That would be just under two thousand.”

  Henry says, “Gavin,” in a hoarse voice, then clears his throat. “None of that adds up to anything of significance, not to mention the fact that Mother would notice if the dining room table and her favorite chair disappeared. I’m sure you understand my position.”

  They’re standing just on the other side of the kitchen door. My heart is jack-hammering in my chest. I feel like I’m about to be caught, fired in disgrace, as though I have stolen all the valuable things in the house. I bend over carefully, pick up the three grocery bags I’ve already carried in and inch back out the kitchen screen door, so grateful it doesn’t squeak like ours at home.

  Then I stomp up the stairs, slam it open loudly, walk thunderously into the kitchen and call, “I’m finally back! Sorry, Mr. Ellington! There was—traffic on the bridge and um, Garrett’s was out of the cedar plank, so I had to look around. Mrs. E. isn’t up yet, is she?”

  Tops of his cheekbones flushed, Henry swings open the kitchen door. “No, not at all, Gwen. Haven’t heard a peep from her. She usually sleeps over two hours, doesn’t she?”

  I’m sure I too am totally red in the face. As I pile up the grocery bags, I knock over the cut glass vase of hydrangeas. It scatters across the table, nearly tumbling off, and the water drips onto the floor. I grab the roll of paper towels and clean up as Henry turns to the wet bar, asking Mr. Gage if he wants a refill. He doesn’t, but Henry sure does. While he’s rattling ice on the counter and breaking it into little pieces with this weird hammer thing, Mr. Gage says, “If I may look around a bit more? The upstairs?”

  “The view is lovely from there,” Henry says in a slightly too-loud, overcompensating voice, similar to the one
I probably used a second ago. “But Mother is sleeping. Perhaps you can wait until she wakes up.”

  I’m stuffing the groceries into the refrigerator like the efficient, upright, honest servant I should be, rather than the shifty, eavesdropping one I’ve apparently become. My hands are shaking.

  Then someone else’s hand falls on my shoulder.

  “Er. Guinevere.”

  I turn to meet Henry Ellington’s eyes.

  “Mother’s told me what a hard worker you are. I appreciate your—” He clears his throat. “Tireless efforts on her behalf.”

  He reaches into his pocket, pulls something out, then flips it open on the kitchen table, bending over it to write.

  A check.

  “Rose Ellington is not easy,” he says. “Used to certain standards. You meet them. I think you deserve this . . . a little extra.”

  He folds the check, extends it to me.

  I’m frozen for a second, staring at it as if he’s handing me something far more deadly than a piece of paper.

  After a moment, as though that’s what he had intended all along, Henry sets the check down on the kitchen table, on the dry, clear spot between where I spilled the water and where I put the groceries. As though it belongs there, as much as they do, as natural, as accidental, as those.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “He’s robbing her blind,” Vivie says. She hangs a hard left in the Almeida’s van, throwing both Nic and me against the passenger doors. “He’s divorced, right? He cheated with the underage babysitter and now her family’s asking for hush money, his ex took him to the cleaners even though she was having it on with the doorman, he’s broke because he’s embezzling from his boss, and he’s counting on Mommy to bail him out. Without her knowing.”

  “Wow. You got all that from what I just told you?”

  “Drama Queen,” Nic says.

  “I’m not.” Viv jerks the wheel, tires squealing, to turn onto Main Road. I land hard against the door.

  “Why wouldn’t he just ask her for the money?” I say, righting myself, kicking upright the bag of quahogs at my feet—we’re doing a clam boil for St. John de Brito Church tonight.

  “Those guys never talk to each other,” Nic says. “I swear, we were painting the dining room at the Beinekes’ today. Place was draped in sheets and stuff, and Hoop and I are doing the edging, but Mr. and Mrs. Beineke and their poor granddaughter are still eating in there. It’s all ‘Sophie, can you ask your grandmother to pass the butter’ and ‘Sophie, please tell your grandmother we are running low on salt,’ even though the table’s four feet by four feet and Grandma and Gramps can hear each other perfectly. They just let everything important stay unsaid.”

  “The question is, do I say anything?” I ask. “Or should I—”

  “Left up here!” Nic interrupts, pointing right.

  Viv turns left.

  “No—that way!” Nic points right again.

  Viv swears under her breath, making a U-turn that tosses Nic and me against the doors again.

  “Do you think this is a handicap, Vee?” Nic asks. “Do you think the academy won’t take me because I always have to make that little L thing with my hand?”

  “Maybe you’ll get a special scholarship,” Vivien says, patting his shoulder, squinting at me in the rearview. “Gwenners, the thing is, you don’t really know anything. You’ve worked for them for a few weeks. They’ve had a lifetime to complicate and screw up their relationship. Don’t get involved.”

  Don’t get involved. Don’t think about it. Nas histórias de outras pessoas.

  Thinking those thoughts is starting to seem like the snooze button on an old alarm clock, one I’ve hit so often, it just doesn’t work anymore.

  “Gracious, Gwen, where are you today?” Mrs. E. waves her hand in front of my face, calling me back to the here and now. On her porch, nearly at the end of the day. A day I’ve spent daydreaming about Cass and preoccupied about Henry, going through the motions with Mrs. E., who deserves better.

  “Clarissa Cole tells me the yard boy, dear Cassidy, is teaching your brother to swim.”

  The island grapevine is evidently faster than a speeding bullet. Mrs. E. rests a hand, light as a leaf, on my arm. “Oh, uh, yeah—yes. He’s got a lesson tomorrow.”

  “Would it be too much to ask if an old Beach Bat could come along?”

  “To swim?”

  “Merely to observe. I spend too much time in the company of the elderly, or”—she lowers her voice, although Joy-less the nurse has not yet arrived, having called to say she’ll be late, and somehow making that sound like my fault—“the cranky. I’ve missed several days with the ladies on the beach—just feeling lazy, I’m afraid. It would be a pleasure to see how your dear boy handles this.”

  “He’s not my dear boy, Mrs. E. We just go to school together.”

  She looks down, turning the thin gold bracelet on her wrist, but not before I catch the flash of girlish amusement. “So you say. Well, I was a young woman a very long time ago. I cannot, however, pretend that I haven’t noticed that while the neighbors on either side have grass that is growing rather long and paths that are a bit overdue for weeding, my own yard has never been so assiduously tended.”

  Have to admit, I’ve noticed that too. And when he called to figure out a time for Em’s next swim lesson, there was a certain amount of lingering on the phone.

  Cass: “So I should go . . .” (Not hanging up) “Uh . . .”

  Me: “Okay. I’ll let you go.” (Not hanging up) “Another family thing?”

  Cass: (Sighing) “Yeah. Photo shoot.”

  Me: (Incredulous) “Your family thing is a photo shoot?”

  Cass: “Stop laughing. Yes. We do the annual photo for my dad’s company website, you know . . . It’s a tradition . . . sort of an embarrassing one, but . . .”

  Then all at once, I remembered that. Mr. Somers and the three boys. I couldn’t see her, but Cass’s mom must have been there too. Standing on the deck of their big sailboat tied off the Abenaki pier, white shirts, khaki pants, tan faces. Cass bending his knees to try to rock the boat, his brothers laughing, me starting to climb down the ladder to clamber aboard. Dad catching me and saying, “No, pal, you aren’t family.”

  “You still do that?”

  “Every year,” he said. “I may be the black sheep, but apparently I photograph well.”

  His tone was light, but I heard something darker in it.

  Silence.

  I could hear him breathing. He could probably hear me swallow.

  Me: “Cass . . .”

  Cass: “I’m here.”

  Me: “Are you going to do it? What your family wants? Say it was all Spence, go back to Hodges?”

  Cass: (Long sigh. I pictured him clenching his fist, unclenching.) “This should be easier than it is.” (Pause) “Black and white. He’s my best friend. But I’m . . . My brothers are . . . I mean . . .”

  It’s not like him to stammer. I pressed the phone closer to my cheek. “Yeah?”

  Cass: “I’m not Bill, the financial whiz kid. I’m not Jake, the scholar/athlete.”

  Me: “Why should you be?”

  Cass: “They want the best for me. My parents. My family.”

  At that point, Mom came into the room, sighing loudly as she took off her sneakers, flipping on the noisy fan. I told Cass to wait, took the phone outside, to the backyard, lay down in the grass on my back, staring at the deep blue sky. We had never talked like that to each other. His voice was so close, it was as though he was whispering in my ear.

  Me: “I’m back. And the best thing for you is?”

  Cass: “The whole deal. An Ivy. A good job. All that. I may not be as smart as my brothers, but I know that it . . . looks better . . . to graduate from Hodges.”

  Here’s where I should have said that it didn’t matter how it looked. But I couldn’t lie to him. I knew what he meant. Instead, I asked, “Is that what matters? Looks? To you.”

  Another sigh.
Then silence. Long silence.

  I remember Cass’s brother talking to him outside Castle’s that day. Saying Spence would always land on his feet.

  Me: “Wouldn’t Spence be able to bounce back? He’s pretty sturdy. And didn’t his dad get the expulsion off his record?”

  Cass: “Well, yeah. But if I sold him out, that would be on my record. In his head. In mine. I mean, who the hell would that make me?”

  My next thought was unavoidable. That you ask? That you worry? Not who I thought you were.

  Finally, Cass: “Okay, I really do need to go.”

  Me: “Yeah, me too. I’ll hang up now.”

  (No hanging up)

  Cass: “Maybe if we do it on the count of three.”

  “One. Two. Three.”

  I don’t hang up. Neither does Cass.

  Cass: (Laughing) “See you tomorrow, Gwen.” (Pause) “Three.”

  Me: (Also laughing) “Right. Three.”

  Both phones: Click.

  Mrs. E. insists that we drive her Cadillac to pick up Emory and then head to the beach for his lesson. Emory is clearly astonished being in a car that doesn’t make loud squealing noises, like Mom’s, and where the seats are overstuffed and comfortable, not torn up like Dad’s truck. “Riding. A bubble,” he says, mesmerized, stroking the smooth puffy white leather. “Like Glinda.” His eyes are wide.