The Ashford Affair

by Lauren Willig

  “I had a meeting,” Clemmie began, but her mother was frowning at her left hand.

  “You didn’t wear your ring.”

  “It’s not mine anymore.” She viewed its continued presence in her apartment as a bailment rather than ownership. It was going back to Dan the next time she saw him, along with his Star Wars video, his Penn sweatshirt, and his spare sneakers. The toothbrush she had already thrown out. She had thought of keeping it for cleaning grout, but that seemed just a little too vindictive, a little too voodoo doll–esque. She didn’t want to be vindictive. They had parted friends, at least theoretically.

  Could one part friends in such a situation? There had been things said.… She had given as good as she got, but some of Dan’s observations about her character still stung. Like he should talk about being emotionally unavailable. Pots and kettles, Dan, pots and kettles.

  Her mother shot a furtive glance over her shoulder, checking to make sure there were no relatives in earshot. “I don’t see why you couldn’t have kept it on just for tonight.”

  God forbid the cousins realize that her engagement had imploded, that she was single again at thirty-four, Marjorie’s unwanted spinster daughter. It was like something out of Jane Austen. Weren’t they meant to be past this as a society? It stung even more coming from her mother, the woman who had always given her a hard line on putting career first. Until she hit thirty and the tune suddenly changed.

  Clemmie gave her mother a long, hard look. “It’s not like you liked Dan.”

  Her mother bristled. Mother did a good line in bristle. “I never said that.”

  “How else would you define ‘perhaps it’s time to reconsider your options’?”

  “I never meant— Never mind. We’ll discuss this later.”

  Mother’s response to everything: deny, deny, deny. If we pretend it’s all okay, it is!

  “Fine,” said Clemmie, moving past her mother into the foyer. “Sure. Whatever.”

  That was the problem with being a menopause baby; the usual generation gap was multiplied by two. Her mother had been a young woman during the Blitz and the mentality had stuck. Clemmie had been born when her mother was forty-four, the last gasp of a failing marriage. It had been hugely embarrassing for her mother, who had thought her childbearing years were long since over.

  It had been even more embarrassing when Clemmie’s father had left, three years later, having had enough of diapering and burping with the first round—that being practically a verbatim quote. He had left her mother for a journalist named Jennifer, twenty years younger, Californian, and blond.

  Clemmie didn’t blame him for leaving, but she did blame him for being a cliché.

  “Now you’re upset with me,” said her mother with gloomy certainty. Even after fifty years in the States, Clemmie’s mother still clung to her veddy veddy British accent, relic of a childhood spent between Kenya and London. It gave even her most mundane pronouncements a certain ring of authority.

  “I’m not upset with you,” Clemmie lied. “Let’s just leave it, okay? It’s Granny Addie’s birthday! Woo-hoo!”

  “Hmm,” said Mother. Her face suddenly changed. She stood straighter, almost moving up to her toes in her flat, sensible shoes. “Anna!” she said brightly. “Look who I found.”

  Rescued by the cavalry. “Hi, Aunt Anna,” said Clemmie, keeping her left hand behind her. “Long time, no see.”

  “Clemmie, sweetie!” Aunt Anna still wore her hair long. It was fair, like Clemmie’s, cunningly cut so that it curved forward in a way that made her seem to be leaning forward in perpetual anticipation. She had to have been seventy, at least, but the good people at Frederic Fekkai had spun silver back into gold, keeping her hair the same pale blond it had been in the wedding photos on Granny Addie’s piano. There were many wedding photos. Aunt Anna had been married no fewer than eight times. Her hair brushed against Clemmie’s cheek as Aunt Anna enveloped her in a Chanel-scented hug. “We were afraid you’d been eaten by wolves!”

  “Nope, just my desk,” said Clemmie, disengaging herself.

  “Your mother was getting worried about you,” said Aunt Anna.

  “Nonsense,” said Clemmie’s mother stiffy. No Fekkai magic for Clemmie’s mother. She wore her hair cut short, in an uncompromising gray. “Clementine works very hard.”

  “How is everyone?” Clemmie asked hastily. It was the conversational gambit of least resistance. “Do you still have Shoo-Shoo?”

  “Oh, goodness, you are behind!” said Aunt Anna.

  Clemmie’s mother looked pained. She generally did when Aunt Anna talked. After years on the transatlantic scene, Aunt Anna’s accent wasn’t quite anything anymore, not quite English and not quite American. Affected, Clemmie’s mother called it, which was rather rich coming from someone who sounded like the upstairs of Upstairs Downstairs.

  “—darling little Pekinese,” Aunt Anna was saying. “Jonathan got the Columbia job, so he’s apartment-hunting. Won’t it be nice to have him back in the city? Millie was staying with me for a bit, but she’s moved in with her boyfriend now.”

  “Isn’t she, like, ten?” Millie was one of Aunt Anna’s stepchildren, one of the younger batch, relic of her third husband—or was it her fourth? It was so easy to lose track. Clemmie could see her mother pursing her lips. It drove Clemmie’s mother crazy that Aunt Anna dragged her stepchildren to family events when they weren’t, in Clemmie’s mother’s view, family at all.

  “Oh, sweetie!” Aunt Anna laughed her tinkly laugh. “She’s twenty-three now! I know, I know, it’s too awful. But she seems very happy with her Sean. They have a place in Yorkville.”

  “Isn’t she a bit young to be living with someone?” asked Clemmie’s mother.

  “Better young than never,” replied Aunt Anna cheerfully.

  Clemmie didn’t think it was meant to be a dig, but it stung all the same. Her left hand felt very, very bare after the weight of Dan’s ring.

  Her mother sniffed. “Not everyone makes a career out of matrimony.”

  Aunt Anna winked at Clemmie. “We can’t all be lawyers, can we? How’s tricks, kiddo?”

  “Busy,” said Clemmie quickly. “Really busy. I’m in Dallas on Thursday for a deposition and then London the week after that. It’s been crazy. How’s Granny Addie holding up?”

  “Come see for yourself,” Mother said before Aunt Anna could say anything. She put a hand on Clemmie’s arm and propelled her forward toward the living room, where the cocktail hour was in full swing.

  Behind her, Aunt Anna shrugged and waved. Clemmie grinned back at her.

  The living room was crowded with men in Brooks Brothers suits and women in black sheath dresses, colorful scarves at their necks. Most were friends of the family of various varieties, rather than relatives. Clemmie’s two older brothers had settled in California with their families. She recognized one of her nieces, now in her twenties, interning with some fashion designer. Clemmie’s second-oldest brother seemed to have sent his wife as emissary, but, for the most part, their side of the family was underrepresented. Uncle Teddy, Mother’s younger brother, had died relatively young, a victim of a heart attack in his forties, but his children and grandchildren had come out in force, doing their bit to honor Granny Addie.

  There was only one thing missing from the scene. “Where’s Granny Addie?” Clemmie asked.

  Her mother looked tired. “She’s resting a bit,” she said. She had moved in with Granny Addie a few months ago, ostensibly because her lease had run out, but Clemmie suspected it was because she was worried about her. Granny Addie had professional care, a team of nurses who came in shifts, but Clemmie’s mother was of the “if you want it done right, do it yourself” variety.

  Mother nodded towards the bar. “Get yourself a drink and I’ll take you over to her.”

  “How stiff a drink do I need?” asked Clemmie, but her mother had already turned away, exchanging an air-kiss with one of Uncle Teddy’s offspring.

  Clemmie made for t
he bar.

  It was set up like all of Granny Addie’s parties, going back as far as Clemmie could remember. She presumed that the bottles had been drunk out and replaced over time—and the bartenders tended to change party to party—but otherwise it all looked exactly the same. A folding table had been placed in a corner with a white cloth over it, crowded with bottles and glasses. It was always in the same corner, a little alcove between a window facing out onto 85th Street and the door to the den. On the far side of the room, a wall of windows showcased the apartment’s glory, a view out over Central Park.

  One of the catering staff was behind the makeshift bar, briskly squeezing a wedge of lime into a tall glass filled with ice and clear liquid. Even from yards away, Clemmie smelled gin. The bartender must be mixing them strong. Good.

  There was a man waiting for his drink, his back to Clemmie. He took his drink from the bartender, slipping a few dollar bills discreetly across the cloth.

  If she hadn’t been sure who it was before, that would have clinched it. You weren’t supposed to tip at private parties, but Jon had always ignored that, wanting to make sure the waitstaff got a fair deal.

  Clemmie resisted the childish urge to flee, wishing she still had Dan’s ring as armor. Not that she needed armor. They were adults now, past that sort of thing.

  Clemmie waited until he turned, gave him a chance to see her. She nodded at him in greeting. “Hey, Jon.”

  “Hey,” said Jonathan, raising his gin and tonic. “One for you?”

  “Please.”

  She waited while he relayed the request to the bartender. Unlike the other men in the room, Jon was dressed in khakis and a blazer, rather than a suit, although he had chosen a traditional blue blazer, rather than going all professorial with tweed and patches. She remembered him here in this same room, years ago, in pretty much the same uniform, an awkward adolescent in khakis and bow tie. She would have been in patent-leather shoes, sulking over being put in a little-girl dress at twelve, the two of them trying to sneak drinks from the bar while their respective parents weren’t watching. Of all Aunt Anna’s “offspring,” Jon had been around the most, at least until he went off to Stanford for his Ph.D.

  They’d bickered incessantly as teenagers, each trying to one-up the other. Jon was three years older, an advantage he had employed mercilessly. But Clemmie was the actual daughter—well, granddaughter—of the house; she belonged to Granny Addie, Jon was there by accident. It had evened the scales.

  They hadn’t stayed in particularly good touch, but there had been vacations and odd overlaps, including that embarrassing weekend in Rome, when she had puked all over his shoes. She didn’t particularly care to remember either the state of Jon’s shoes or the random—and entirely unprecedented—events that had followed.

  They had made a deal never to talk about Rome.

  She had always thought Jon looked a bit like Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer or Harrison Ford in his early Indiana Jones days. Jon had the sun-streaked brown hair, the wiry build, the spectacles. Not her type, of course; she was more of a Kevin Costner girl, but she could see how it made Jon popular with his students, especially the female ones. The Val Kilmer resemblance was still there, but Jon looked tired. Tired and older. There was gray in his light brown hair that hadn’t been there before.

  Clemmie murmured her thanks as he passed her a glass, resisting the urge to toss back the contents.

  She lifted her glass, trying for cool. “Aunt Anna said you got a job at Columbia. Congrats. I know how few and far between those are.”

  “Thanks.” Jon’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “How’s Dan?”

  Clemmie silently held up her left hand. “If you say ‘I told you so,’ I’ll punch you.”

  After a beat, Jonathan smiled a crooked smile. “If I get to say ‘I told you so,’ then so do you.”

  “Caitlin?” Caitlin was Jon’s wife of three years. They’d been grad students together at Stanford, Caitlin doing something to do with intellectual history, Jon focusing on modern Britain. By a miracle, they’d gotten jobs together at one of the UNCs. Not Chapel Hill, but one of the other ones. “Is she—I mean, are you…?”

  Jon clinked his glass against hers. “Got it in one.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. Well, sort of. She had never been a Caitlin fan. “Pretentious” didn’t even begin to cut it.

  “Yeah, so am I. She’s keeping the house.”

  “What do you get?”

  “Shame and rage?”

  “Oooh, fun.” For a moment, they grinned at each other, united in the land of the love lost. Clemmie dropped her gaze first. Playing with the condensation patterns on her G&T, she said, “Hey, Jon, if you want to talk about it…”

  He looked pointedly at her left hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Fair point. They’d never had that kind of relationship. It was probably too late to start now. “So what do you think about those Jets?” she said heartily.

  Jon gave her a look. “You know who the Jets are.”

  They had been like this as teenagers, engaged in a constant game of one-upsmanship. “There’s no need to sound so skeptical. They’re a sports team,” said Clemmie briskly. “Duh.”

  A gleam lit in Jon’s eyes. “Which sport?”

  Oh, crap. This was what she got for not going on any of the firm’s sports outings. Clemmie took a stab. “Basketball?”

  The lines around Jon’s eyes crinkled. For the first time since she’d seen him, his shoulders relaxed. He braced a hand against the bar and looked down at her, which was pretty impressive, given that, thanks to her heels, they were roughly the same height. But, then, he must have had a lot of practice intimidating undergrads.

  “They play football,” he said, enunciating the word very clearly. “Foot. Ball. Which, in case you didn’t know, is not actually played with much ball to the foot. It’s the sport where the men in the big shoulder pads hurl an oblong object at each other. Just in case that helps.”

  “Oh, ha, ha. I knew it had to be something involving a projectile,” she said. “Cut me a little slack here.”

  Jon raised an eyebrow. “A projectile?”

  Clemmie lifted her nose in the air. “If I have to define the word for you, you shouldn’t be teaching at Columbia.”

  “Thanks, Clem,” he said. “I mean, really. Thanks. You’ve just made my life suck a little bit less.”

  High praise indeed. But she knew what he meant. “Hey, that’s what family’s for.” She could see her mother trying to catch her eye from across the room. “I should go say happy birthday to Granny Addie.”

  Clemmie had thought he would say something snarky, but he didn’t. “Yeah,” Jon agreed. “She’s a pretty special lady.”

  As accolades went, it might not have been the most poetic, but it was the more meaningful for clearly being meant.

  Clemmie got a firm grip on the slippery sides of her glass. “See you around?”

  Jon looked at her for a long, thoughtful moment before saying, “Take care of yourself, Clem.”

  It felt like a dismissal.

  It was stupid to feel rebuffed. But she did. Served her right for forgetting that Jon was still Jon. Served her right in general, for wandering around being all needy in public. Especially with Jon.

  “You, too,” she said lightly, and plunged back into the throng, accidentally elbowing a third cousin.

  She was just … off tonight. Off-balance, off-kilter, off. She felt strangely vulnerable, as though her protective coating had been peeled away, leaving only a mass of nerves and fears painfully visible to anyone who could see. Clemmie caught a glimpse of herself in the Venetian mirror over the mantelpiece and was surprised to see how normal she looked, how put together, her hair in a sleek, blond bob, the collar of her shirt folded neatly down over her suit collar, pearls at her throat and her ears. The pearls were real, as was the Cartier watch at her wrist. She looked like someone’s image of Lawyer Barbie: Professional. Expensive.

/>   That was the good thing about dark suits; no one could see the coffee stain on the sleeve or the perspiration splotches beneath her arms. Like Mother’s English accent, suits conferred an automatic air of authority.

  “There you are,” said her mother, and took her back under her wing, expertly muscling her way through the crowd to Granny Addie’s chair. Clemmie followed along behind like an unlikely duckling, taller than her mother in her heels, slender where her mother was solid. She had inherited Grandpa Frederick’s build, tall and slim.

  In contrast, Granny Addie had always been diminutive, all of five foot two at best. But Clemmie had never thought of her as small. There was something about the way she held herself that had always belied her inches, an air of authority, of solid sense. Competence, that was it. Competence. Clemmie still remembered how Grandpa Frederick, taller and older, had deferred to Addie, taking her word as the final word.

  It was, as always, a shock to see her as she was now. In Clemmie’s head, Granny Addie was frozen permanently at seventy-something, old, yes, but curiously ageless. Not like this, shrunken and frail. Her knit suit was too large for her wasted frame; Grandpa Frederick’s ring seemed to weigh down her hand.

  There was a nurse standing behind Granny Addie’s chair. She did it very discreetly, managing to do a fairly good impression of a piece of furniture, but she was still there, watching. The chair itself was a hospital chair, on wheels, incongruous among chintz and rosewood that had been unchanged in Granny Addie’s living room for as long as Clemmie could imagine.

  Clemmie felt a sudden surge of panic. It had always been Granny Addie to whom she had turned for security, Granny Addie who represented the constant and the permanent. The idea of a world without her … It wasn’t to be thought of.

  But she was ninety-nine. Not many people made it as far as ninety-nine. Even fewer people made it past it.

  “Is she okay?” Clemmie asked the nurse, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt.

  The nurse nodded. “She’s just nodded off for a bit.” Her voice was the soothing singsong of nurses and nursery-school teachers. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about.”