Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  I let her into my home, she thought. I allowed her to care for my children.

  That last recollection caused a jolt of fury to form and radiate from somewhere deep inside. It took hold of her face. She clenched her teeth and felt herself redden. It reached her fingertips, and her hands made tight fists. Maren would have loved nothing more at that moment than to knock the smug look off Khaki’s face. It was not compunction that kept her from doing so, but rather fear that it might release some of her anger, and that anger was her greatest friend.

  “Get dressed and get out of here,” Maren growled. “You are fired.”

  “You can’t fire me. I don’t work for you.” Though Khaki’s voice had a note of bold confidence, Maren saw her glance at Oliver. He was still slumped against the wall, hand over his face. If he wasn’t devastated, he knew well enough to give a good impression of it. Whatever he had done, he would not help Khaki now, though Maren found little satisfaction in this.

  “Oh, I can fire you, Khaki. I’ll say it again: You’re fired. Get. Out.”

  “You don’t belong with him, Maren,” Khaki said. “You never did.”

  Maren nearly smiled at the confirmation of what she had always suspected, but no one had dared say out loud. No matter how far Khaki’s family had fallen, she did feel entitled to be with Oliver, because she was something Maren was not and never could be. She was one of them, one of Oliver’s people.

  Maren took a step closer and stared at Khaki intently. Khaki tried to keep her shoulders square and chin up, but she scooted back—the smallest movement, yet a sign of weakness Maren relished.

  And then Maren felt Dorothy’s hand on hers. She had just enough self-control to realize she should let Dorothy take over. She retreated, and Dorothy stepped forward.

  “Listen, honey,” Dorothy began, in her most condescending tone. “I don’t know you from a hole in the wall—”

  “She’s Lady Trumbull’s daughter,” Maren said, emphasizing Lady as derisively as she could manage. Dorothy didn’t even know the Trumbulls, but she took her cue. Her eyes went wide, and she laughed scornfully.

  “Oh, that’s absolutely perfect. We have Lady Trumbull’s daughter here. Well, Miss Trumbull, I think it’s time you hopped off your high horse, because there is exactly one way for this scene to end, and it’s with you getting out of this room. Take your clothes, dress in the bathroom, and leave.” She made a little shooing motion with her hands, as if Khaki were a bothersome pest, rather than a cancer on Maren and Oliver’s marriage.

  Khaki stayed put.

  “What, pray tell, are you waiting for?” Dorothy asked slowly, as if Khaki was unfathomably stupid.

  Khaki glanced at Oliver again. She finally seemed to realize he would not lift his eyes from behind his hand. She slid off the bed, grabbed her clothes and purse from the floor, tossed them into a little weekend bag, and headed for the bathroom, head still high.

  They waited in a horrible suspended animation for Khaki to get dressed. When she emerged from the bathroom, she looked back toward the bedroom, perhaps hoping Oliver would acknowledge her. He did not. They finally heard the click of the door as she closed it behind her.

  When she was safely away, Dorothy looked from Oliver to Maren.

  “I’ll be by the clock in the lobby,” she said.

  “I’m right behind you,” Maren replied, her eyes narrowed and fixed on Oliver, whose face was still obscured by his hand. She did not speak until Dorothy left.

  “I do not want to see you for the rest of the summer,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “Don’t come up to Haven Point.”

  “Maren, please. Please let me talk to you.” Oliver’s eyes finally emerged from their exile to reveal an expression of utter ruin. Maren set her jaw, determined not to melt or begin to ask the million questions, the answers to which some part of her craved.

  “What, Oliver? What could you possibly say?” she asked instead, coolly.

  “I have made the most terrible mistake, Maren, the most awful mistake. Can I just try to explain?” He put his palms up toward her, like a man begging on the street.

  “Explain? You think you can somehow explain how you let that woman insinuate herself into our home and lives, how you allowed me to trust her? And then, while I’m up in Maine with your children, and your mother … you do this? With her, of all people?”

  “This has only just happened, and it was to end here. I knew … It’s not been all this time, please.…”

  “Good-bye, Oliver.” She walked out the door.

  She spent the night at Dorothy’s apartment on East Eighty-first. Dorothy was willing to accompany Maren back to Maine, but Maren needed time to think and was beyond grateful for what Dorothy had already done.

  She arranged for Gideon to pick her up in Bath and boarded the train north. The mugginess that had stalled over the northeast had lifted overnight, and as she stared out the window, the nearly blinding brightness felt like an affront. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  As the train rattled and shook and hissed its way north, she relived the previous thirty-six hours—not in a linear way, but in snapshots, agonizing bursts. The image of Harriet so indiscreetly talking about her to Frances at the cocktail party felt like it was from weeks before. Her mind darted to the long walk down the hallway of the Waldorf. As anxious as she had been then, it was the last time she had a prayer this was all a mistake.

  Khaki’s words—You don’t belong with him, you never did—played and replayed in her mind. Not since Caroline Sturgeon described Pauline’s supposed ambitions for Oliver’s marriage had Maren heard anything indicating her lack of pedigree was an issue with him. When she occasionally wondered if the women of Haven Point looked down on her for her unexalted upbringing, she would scold herself for such silly self-doubt. But what else besides the Trumbull blood, tarnished but still blue, could possibly have tempted Oliver?

  She tried to banish the image of Khaki, lounging on the bed as if she belonged there, but it kept returning, and each time she felt the horror afresh.

  She managed to cling to her anger, so preferable to rawness and despair. She gleaned a scrap of satisfaction in having outsmarted Oliver and Khaki, and her ability to keep it together—no yelling or wailing, no rending of garments. She savored the image of Khaki’s cool mask slipping to reveal hints of humiliation in the face of Dorothy’s brilliant performance. Maren knew she was indulging a regressive, adolescent pride, but that and rage were all that stood between her and a vulnerability too awful to contemplate.

  Pricking through it all, like a thin line of light through nearly closed curtains, was the idea she should not have told Oliver to stay away. But when that thought obtruded, she drove it out as if exorcising a demon.

  * * *

  “Your husband has called twice,” Irina said when Maren arrived at Fourwinds early that evening. Her tone suggested this had been a great inconvenience. “He said to call him.”

  Maren managed to thank her and went to fetch the children from Georgie’s.

  “I’ll come over once mine are in bed,” Georgie promised.

  Two hours later, they sat in the living room, Maren sunk deep in her chair, relaying the whole horrendous tale.

  “Good heavens.” Georgie shook her head. Maren had been so glad for Dorothy’s partnership and caressing ways, her great hug and tears when she said good-bye, but Georgie’s matter-of-fact Yankee manner suited her now. “What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe we’ll be like Harriet and James Barrows. I told him I didn’t want him up here the rest of the summer.”

  She had been unwilling or unable to consider what would come next. She could not imagine forgiving Oliver. However, a Barrows scenario in which they essentially lived separate lives seemed no better. Divorce was unthinkable.

  “You and Oliver aren’t like James and Harriet,” Georgie said, her tone and expression so aghast, Maren was tempted to believe her. “He didn’t even love Harriet when they got mar
ried.”

  “Seems we’re not so different from them after all. Is everyone still talking about us?”

  “I haven’t heard. I hate to say it, but Harriet will keep it alive.”

  “Naturally. No one knows it was Khaki, do they?”

  “Probably not. I doubt Betsy has even met her. Khaki hasn’t been here in years. Besides, if she’d recognized her, she would have told Harriet who it was. Just steer clear of people for a while. You never want to go to parties anyway. They’ll find someone else to talk about soon enough.”

  “I wish that were true, but if I disappear, people will talk more. I need to get back in the swing of things soon. Starting with the art show party on Friday, I guess.”

  “You’ll go?” Georgie sounded half surprised, half impressed.

  “Pauline is going, so I have to anyway.”

  “Can’t Irina take her?”

  “No, she’s off on Fridays.” Maren smiled weakly. “I think that’s when she plots against the Bolsheviks.”

  “Okay. I’m not sure you have to do it, but whatever you think is best.”

  The art show was the Ladies Auxiliary’s big annual fundraiser. Professional artists from the region and amateurs from Haven Point sold their works over one weekend. It kicked off with a well-attended preview cocktail party.

  Maren had been tempted to escape to her parents’. She often took the kids to Minnesota, but these visits were usually after Christmas. The idea of being on the farm during pre-harvest held a powerful nostalgic allure, but she knew leaving would only produce more chatter. Haven Point admired a kind of muscular confidence. Georgie had it, of course, but it was so much a part of who she was, she didn’t even see it. Georgie could not understand that Maren needed to make a credible show of strength, so people would either believe Betsy had been wrong, or if not, that Maren was tough enough to handle whatever was happening.

  Maren could not abide being pitied as Haven Point’s resident Woman Scorned. She had to think like Finn Donnelly, who never cared what people thought. She had to show her teeth, not her belly.

  She struggled with insomnia that week, haunted in the early-morning hours by the vision of Khaki in Oliver’s hotel room, but during the day her attention was consumed by the labor of behaving as if nothing was wrong. She had never felt the women of Haven Point really knew her, and this accrued to her benefit now. They did not seem to notice the traces of unhappiness that were surely telling on her face.

  Oliver called repeatedly over the next few days. Maren let the children talk to him, but when they tried to hand her the phone, she put on a smile and said to tell him she’d call back.

  Billy did not sense anything amiss, but Annie, for all her high spirits and energy, had an interesting brand of sensitivity. It wasn’t that she cared what people thought of her. She was almost pathologically impossible to insult, in fact. But she picked up signals and rhythms, and as Maren learned that week, was masterful at sniffing out small signs of trouble. When Oliver called for the fourth time, Annie confronted her.

  “Mommy, why aren’t you talking to Daddy when he calls?”

  “Oh, I’m just too busy right now, love,” Maren said, making a great show of cleaning one of the pantry shelves. Annie did not look satisfied, though.

  On Thursday, the night before the party, Maren finally called Oliver.

  “It’s Maren,” she said when he answered.

  “Maren…” He sounded surprised and grateful.

  “Oliver, please stop asking the children to put me on the phone. I cannot talk to you right now, and it’s confusing them.”

  “Maren, please. I want to come up. I don’t have to stay at Fourwinds, but I want to talk to you.” His tone was pleading, but he spoke quickly, as if he knew his window of opportunity was small. Her stomach pitched, and she felt her resolution flicker, but she steeled herself.

  “No, Oliver. No.” She hung up the phone.

  * * *

  “Pauline, you can’t bring Sassafras to the art show party,” Maren said when Pauline descended the stairs with the monkey on her shoulder.

  “Why not? Sassy behaves for me, don’t you, Sassy?” Pauline replied, her tone playful. She nudged Sassy with her nose.

  Sassafras did tend to stick close to Pauline when they were out. Besides, Maren did not have the energy to fight. Georgie looked a little surprised when she and Cappy picked them up in the LaSalle, but Maren just shrugged and rolled her eyes.

  At the start of the party, Sassafras was actually a wonderful distraction. Maren expected whispering and significant looks when she entered, the kind of disturbance in the field she and Dorothy had detected the previous weekend, but all eyes were on the monkey, who was quite popular with anyone who didn’t have to share a house with her. Haven Point also had a soft spot for its eccentrics, and an aging widow with a monkey certainly qualified. The perception, however wrong, that Pauline was a grieving eccentric widow gave her even more latitude. A cooing crowd formed around her.

  Pauline stood with a languid smile and allowed the monkey to be adored. Sassafras seemed wary of the attention and intent on staying with Pauline, so Maren detached herself to walk around the show.

  The room was divided by temporary pegboard walls into miniature galleries. This was one of the rare Haven Point events that was open to the general public, so it was crowded enough for Maren to browse without engaging in conversation.

  She had chosen a blue floral sundress, the most cheerful in her closet, and did her best to keep up the mask she’d worn that week, a studied air of nonchalance she hoped conveyed a message: There is nothing of particular interest in my life right now.

  She was fairly sure no one knew she’d gone to New York. As a week had passed, the rumor had had a chance to grow stale. If she could get through the evening with a convincing air of contentment, she might succeed in casting doubt on it.

  Maren spotted Harriet across the room. She wore a bright pink suit, and her hair had been coerced into a gravity-defying beehive, with a little pink bow stuck preposterously right on the top.

  She looks like a poodle, Maren thought.

  Harriet stood near the small podium, examining a sheet of paper, too busy preparing for her moment in the spotlight to notice Maren. Gilby Gregory, who was in charge of the art show committee that year, had attracted more artists and run the operation competently. Harriet was still head of the Ladies Auxiliary, though, and she would grab all the glory.

  Maren wandered over to the east side of the room, where the sculptures were on display. She stopped to look at what Tilly Barnsworth had created. Tilly was a Haven Pointer but considered herself one of the serious artists, apart from the dabblers. She was in her sixties, a little fireplug of a woman, tiny but tough. The fact that her works never sold well at the Haven Point art show only cemented her view of herself. Haven Point taste was obviously too pedestrian for her genius.

  This year’s creation was a large red clay sculpture. Other artists were satisfied with tables to show their works, but Tilly had set hers atop a pedestal that looked like a Greek column. Tilly, who always gave her works cryptic names, had placed a card next to it that read Warning.

  It took Maren a moment to puzzle out that the sculpture was meant to be a bell buoy. The fiery yellow cylinder at the top was the light. Four legs reached down to a half-spherical base. Inside, she had hung an absurd little bell that looked like it came from a Christmas decoration. She was asking fifteen dollars, extortionate by Haven Point art show standards.

  The whole sculpture looked bottom-heavy and tippy, as if it might roll off the pedestal at any moment. Tilly seemed prepared for this possibility, in fact. She stood nervously by its side, glaring at anyone who got too close.

  Maren felt someone materialize by her side and turned to see Finn Donnelly smiling down at her. She returned his smile, though her eyes immediately scanned the room for his wife. She had wanted to like Mary Pat Donnelly, but had found she could not. Haughty and bad-tempered, Mary Pat had qui
ckly earned a reputation for poor treatment of anyone she considered her inferior. A few years before, Clara had witnessed Mary Pat berating a young checkout girl at the grocery store in Phippsburg.

  “Mighty wrathy, that one,” Clara had said, when she shared the story with Georgie and Maren. They had privately referred to Mary Pat as “The Mighty Wrathy” ever since.

  She was not hard to spot this evening, overdressed in a full-skirted polka-dot taffeta dress, her smile close-mouthed and taut. For the moment, fortunately, she was occupied in conversation and not looking their way.

  “Hello, Maren,” Finn said. “Are you admiring this great work?” He had a glint in his eye as he gestured toward Tilly’s sculpture.

  “I am. May I introduce you to the artist?” Maren said, with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head in Tilly’s direction. His eyes brimmed with amusement, knowing Maren had saved him from whatever he might have said next.

  They might not have attracted Mary Pat’s attention, but through the corner of her eye, Maren saw that Harriet had noticed them. If she wasn’t careful, others would, too. Finn commanded attention wherever he went—even here, where most would have preferred him to feel invisible.

  Maren did not see Finn often, but whenever she did, he invariably stood a little closer and looked at her more admiringly than he should. As a rule, she found an excuse to step away. As badly as she wished to avoid becoming the object of gossip, she was finding comfort in his presence this once. He was unlikely to know anything about her and Oliver, and there was tonic in his appreciative, sparkling eyes, his flirtatious ways.

  “Are you buying or just window-shopping?” Finn asked.

  “I’ll come home with something. I always do, though we hardly have room for more art.”

  “What usually sells well?” Finn asked.

  Always the businessman, Maren thought.

  “Lobsters,” Maren replied.

  “Lobsters?”

  “Yes. Anything with a lobster in it. A painting, a ceramic plate, a sculpture. Oh, red barns sell, too. It used to be lighthouses, but those are considered common now.” Maren laughed.