The High Season

by Judy Blundell

  “Of course we’re losing her. She’s a teenager. And we broke up. Don’t you think it’s sort of ludicrous for us to leave town together?”

  Mike grinned. “Hey. We’re divorced, but we’re family.”

  A spark ignited in that tinderbox that was Ruthie’s heart. It continually infuriated her that Mike was so adept at disarming her.

  Which could be reason number two for why they were apart.

  Reason number one? He’d decided that he wasn’t in love anymore. (“I don’t need a pal,” he’d said to her. “I need a destiny.”)

  “We struggle so much just to keep it all going,” Mike said. “We’re still not happy.”

  “That’s why you left, so that we’d all be happy. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Mike. “Look…”

  A helicopter passed overhead, not loud enough to drown his voice, but he stopped.

  So she obeyed him. She looked. The way he stood, half turned toward her, his hand flat against the screen door, ready to push. A man always half on his way out a door.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow? So we can talk?”

  “Talk about…”

  “I don’t know, a rethink. Really talk.”

  The world shut down into quiet. There was something in his face she hadn’t seen in a long time. He was really looking at her, for one thing. So much of the end of a marriage was exchanging information without eye contact. “I’ve got Spork tomorrow.”

  “It’s over at five. After we can go to the Drift.”

  The Spindrift was the place they jokingly referred to as “the bad news bar,” a local dive where once they had commiserated about disasters over drafts of beer and free hard-boiled eggs and peanuts. Sometimes that was dinner. Tim would slide the jar of mustard down the length of the bar and Mike would catch it in one hand. Outside light would be falling, Jem would be at a friend’s, the twilight would last forever, their kisses would taste of hops and yolk.

  “Sure.” The bar is not a signifier, she told herself. It’s just a bar.

  Sound rushed in. Tires crunching over gravel. Adeline Clay swung down the driveway in her Range Rover, three hours early.

  2

  IF ONE END of Long Island was a fish mouth ready to chomp on the barb of Manhattan, the tail fin was the East End, split down the middle with Shelter Island between the two. Let the billionaires have the Hamptons on the South Fork, with the shops and restaurants and parties that re-created what made them so exquisitely comfy in Manhattan. The North Fork was two ferry rides away, and it showed. It was farm stands on actual farms. It was pies and parades and stony beaches that hurt your feet, banging screen doors and peaches eaten over the sink. Orient was the morsel at the end of the fork, the village clinging to the narrowest ribbon of land, where light bounced from bay to sound and the air was seasoned with salt.

  Summer was the crucial season, when the population bloomed and the streets came to life with bikes and dogs and city cars. There were no famous faces in Orient, only famous résumés. There was one country store with world-class baked goods, the yacht club was a former potato shack on a wharf, the dress code was old sneakers. Transportation was bicycles, no helmets needed, just like the old days. But all that shabby hid a secret life of the moneyed, serious cultural class. In the summers there were writers and publishers, artists and gallerists; there was a sizable-for-a-hamlet lesbian population and a smattering of architects. When a lesbian architect rented their house for two weeks last August, Mike had called it the Orient Apotheosis.

  Ruthie had been surprised last November when Dodge had called from the city, saying that Adeline Clay was looking to rent in Orient for the season. Usually they cobbled together summer rentals in two-week increments. It seemed a watershed kind of change, someone that glam leaving the Hamptons for the North Fork. Not only was Adeline rich, she was visible, well known as one of New York’s most stylish older women, photographed at openings and benefits, all the places rich and famous people posed in front of logo-scattered backdrops together.

  Ruthie and Mike had speculated endlessly about why Adeline would be interested in the amount of downscale their house represented—money problems? facelift recovery?—but in the end when the check came they celebrated with bottles of beer on the deck. Bundled up in down jackets and scarves, they clicked their Rolling Rock bottle necks to toast summer and another year of solvency. Inch by inch, they would pay back the bank loans and launch Jem into the world. Adeline Clay was the gateway to the now impossible American dream: a college education without debt, a comfortable retirement, an edge.

  * * *

  —

  ADELINE WORE A delicate blue-and-white-striped shirt with rippling oversized ruffles down the front, white jeans, sandals, and enormous sunglasses. Impossibly thin, she resembled a well-tailored dragonfly. A purse the size of a small suitcase hung on her forearm. Her highlighted hair was short and cut cleverly around her head. Her outfit whispered, I am rich, and this is appropriate summer attire, because this is as beachy as I am willing to get.

  From the passenger side a young man slithered out, one tennis-shoed foot at a time. He dislodged a paper napkin from the seat, and it pirouetted prettily on the breeze, fluttering like a heraldic flag. He did not stoop to pick it up.

  Ruthie thought of two words she never used. The first was lithe. The second was louche. This must be Adeline’s stepson, Lucas Clay. She’d last seen him when he was a toddler, when she’d worked for his father. He must be about twenty-two or -three now. And every inch beautiful: wheat-colored hair, broad chest, narrow waist. Even from here she could tell he’d inherited his father’s startling light-blue eyes, the ones that photographed almost white.

  Jem looked up from her phone, then down again quickly, her cheeks flushing, as Lucas shot her a tilted, lazy smile.

  Ruthie noticed she was still clutching the bag of garbage. She dropped it off the side of the porch in what she hoped was a surreptitious move.

  “I’m at the end of the world!” Adeline called.

  Ruthie had met Adeline twenty years before, when Ruthie had been studio manager for the legendary artist Peter Clay, one of a few male painters whose work was often described by (mostly male) critics as “seminal.” One night in Tribeca the studio assistants had all gone out for drinks with Peter and the blonde who had broken up his marriage. At first Ruthie hadn’t thought Adeline was beautiful, but by the end of the evening she’d realized that none of them could stop staring at her face.

  Adeline had been in her thirties then, Ruthie knew. Peter was in his sixties, into his second marriage, and with a toddler. As his studio assistant Ruthie knew firsthand that he’d never been faithful to his first wife, or his second—the breadth of his cheating had been legendary—but he had fallen hard for Adeline and they had stayed married until his death on 9/11. Not in the towers or on a plane, but in an emergency room, of cardiac arrest. For a famous person, it was not a good day to die. For the next year, people would say, “Oh, he’s dead?” No one had time to mourn the passing of the merely famous on that day. It was the one day in America that only ordinary lives counted.

  It could be said that Adeline Clay had been unlucky in marriage (if being married to a world-famous narcissistic genius could be classified as unlucky), but lucky in widowhood. Peter had left her wealthy, but as his reputation continued to increase (cited as one of the top five influences on young artists, even now) and her own management skills improved, she had grown even richer, forming the Peter Clay Foundation and becoming a powerful force in the art world.

  Most people are awkward when approaching someone from a distance. They quicken their pace, or pretend to check their watch or their phone. Adeline took her time, her gaze roaming over the façade of the house, most likely noting every flaw.

  Ruthie imagined how she would have handled the same maneuver. Most likely she would have waved when she g
ot out of the car, then immediately regretted it and felt foolishly overeager. She would have quickened her step, then tripped on a flagstone. She would have made a funny face. By the time she’d reached the porch, she would have defined herself as an overly apologetic, frantic lunatic.

  Ruthie knew that Adeline, like her, must have inhaled paint fumes in downtown lofts, drunk too much wine, gulped down truck exhaust on Canal Street. She was at least ten years older; how did she manage to look younger than Ruthie? As a museum director Ruthie spent most of her time knocking on the doors of the privileged, looking for funding. She was familiar with various forms of surgical help. But Adeline’s face didn’t look yanked and manipulated to approximate a younger human. The work had been done skillfully, as though with nail scissors. She resembled a twig-sized ballerina twirling in a jewelry box, lit by soft light and pink satin, breasts little plastic bumps.

  “Sorry about arriving so early. We hitchhiked a ride on a bird to East Hampton with a friend. I had the car brought there, and I just hopped over on those two adorable little ferries. It reminded me of Greece!”

  “It’s not a problem,” Ruthie lied. “We were just leaving.” Summer renters usually didn’t want the whiff of owner around, let alone coffee. A note explaining about garbage and recycling, beach chairs and parking permits, a drawer full of restaurant menus—that was all the greeting renters desired.

  “Would you have time to show me the house before you go?” Adeline pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. Her eyes were an unclouded green, her eyebrows perfect. “Lucas, do you want to see the house?”

  Texting, he waved a hand that must have meant, No, go ahead, because Adeline lifted her shoulders and started up the stairs. She tripped over the loose board on the second step, then frowned down at the chipped polish on a toenail. Ruthie felt the mood tilt into frost.

  “Don’t panic. Lucky for you, I’m a carpenter.” Mike crouched down and inspected the board. “Needs to be fixed.” Then he looked up and smiled.

  “Ah,” Adeline said, “so you’re one of those astute carpenters I hear about.”

  “That’s right,” Mike said, standing. “And if you wait a sec, I’ll identify a hammer and a nail.”

  They smiled at each other, and, just like that, Adeline’s ice melted away. Mike had that effect on women. There might as well be a puddle on the floor, but Ruthie would be the one to clean it up.

  “Won’t take long,” he said. “I can come out later today, or I can let you have the long weekend to settle in and come out on Tuesday.”

  She waved in the general direction of her Range Rover. “I was so happy to avoid the expressway. I get so nervous in traffic. I grew up in California, you’d think I wouldn’t be intimidated by a few cars. But I’ve lived in New York so long I’ve forgotten how to drive.”

  That night in the bar—Peter had called Adeline my farmer’s daughter. His arm slung around her neck, his face telegraphing the fact that he was besotted. Ruthie had been in her mid-twenties then, and had thought, Ew. She’d been repelled by the sight of Peter’s paint-stained, veiny hand on the smooth skin of Adeline’s shoulder. She’d assumed that Adeline didn’t love him, that she was playing the Manhattan game of advancement by seducing a rich and famous man. Adeline had been a waitress at Lucky Strike in SoHo, one of the beautiful young women who took your order in thin T-shirts with the sleeves rolled to reveal their tiny, tight biceps. That night Ruthie had wished Peter’s morning breath on Adeline; she’d smelled it often enough.

  But Adeline was talking, and Mike was listening. “All this week I’ve been dreaming of the Long Island Expressway. You know those landscaping trucks with a chain on the back that’s supposed to hold all that lawn equipment in? I kept seeing a lawnmower crash through my windshield.”

  “I know how it is,” Mike said, even though Ruthie knew he didn’t. Only women were afraid of highways and lawnmowers. He stood like a doorman, holding the screen door ajar, and smiling at Adeline.

  “I hate driving to Manhattan,” Ruthie volunteered. “Once I ended up in New Jersey by mistake. Went right over the George Washington Bridge.”

  That was usually the signal for Mike to complete the story, how she’d called him in tears from Hackensack. It had been a dinner party staple for years. “Well, you made it,” Mike said to Adeline.

  “It feels like you’re at the very edge of things here,” Adeline said. She stopped short as they walked inside. “Yes,” she murmured. She toured the room, trailing her hand on a sofa, stopping at the view. “You can’t see another house. And the plantings!”

  “Catnip,” Mike said. “Yarrow.”

  “I knew when I saw the photos. I knew I could live here. I love your taste. It’s just the right mix of sophistication and quirk.”

  Adeline Clay, whose Manhattan apartment had been showcased in Architectural Digest, was a fan of her quirk.

  “The house was built in stages,” Mike explained as they toured the kitchen with nods from Adeline and “Only four burners?” when she saw the stove. “The original structure was built in, we think, the 1780s. That little office off the kitchen was once a birthing room.”

  “Really.”

  “I inherited it from my great-aunt Laurel.”

  Ruthie felt a slight sting. Mike had always said we inherited it. When did it become I? At this point, the house was so leveraged and mortgaged that it was joint property.

  “Let’s just say it was in a state of extravagant deterioration. We did most of the work ourselves. Put in the laundry room, all-new bathrooms, bumped out the back.”

  “You should see me with a sledgehammer,” Ruthie said.

  Adeline approved of the guest suite downstairs, perfect for Lucas, who had just graduated from Brown and was working at the Clay Foundation that summer. He’d be coming out on weekends. Upstairs she poked her head into the smaller of the guest bedrooms. “If you knocked down this wall, this could be a dressing room for the master.”

  “Terrific idea,” Ruthie said, thinking, A dressing room?

  Adeline stopped in front of one of Mike’s paintings, hung in the hallway, a black-and-white abstract not typical of his work. Mike was a colorist. “Oh, I like this very much. Who’s the artist?”

  “That would be me,” Mike said.

  Adeline swiveled and regarded him, then looked at the painting again, as though comparing the two. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a painter.”

  “Seems like the rest of the world feels the same,” Mike said.

  “Let me show you the laundry.” Ruthie turned the corner into the stairwell. She waited for them on the stairs, trying to follow the murmured conversation, but the overheard word “transactional” propelled her the rest of the way downstairs to check her emails. It was going to be a long day. Spork was the first summer fundraiser for the museum, and she had a million details to take care of.

  A text twinkled in from the vice president of the board, Carole Berlinger. Can you come out later this afternoon? Deets for the house plus a chat. 3pm? Carole would also be her landlord for the summer. She’d offered her guesthouse to Ruthie for a discounted rent. For once, Ruthie and Jem would have a luxe summer rental. The “plus a chat” was mildly worrying. Chats, for Carole, always seemed to involve the latest Mindy maneuver.

  She texted back Sure just as Mike and Adeline came downstairs. “Lucas is a bit put out that I didn’t take a place in the Hamptons,” Adeline was saying. “That’s where his crowd is. Orient is a little too slow for him.”

  “We pride ourselves on that particular quality,” Mike said. “We take our time.”

  “Well, that’s what I prefer, but…I think it will be good for him. He likes a scene. He’s decided he wants to be an actor.” Adeline gave a little laugh. “Don’t they all.”

  “We can give you quiet if you want it,” Ruthie said. “But there are some events you might enjoy. L
ots of artists, dealers, architects…of course you know Dodge. He’s right down the road. Everyone basically is right down the road. The Belfry picnic is tomorrow, everybody goes. The official name is Summer Fork, but we all just call it Spork.”

  “The Belfry…”

  “The Belfry Museum—I’m the director. You drove by it on Main Road, right before the turnoff into the village. The white building with the barn in back.”

  “Oh! I think you told me, didn’t you. Must be fun to run a little museum.”

  “We’re small but scrappy.”

  “Frankly I came out here to avoid as much as I can,” Adeline said.

  “Well, if you change your mind, just drop in. I left a couple of tickets for you in the kitchen.” As the director of a nonprofit, Ruthie knew how to go a half step beyond politesse without venturing into pushiness. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?” she asked. “My brain is a colander. I forget everything. I tell myself it’s either hormones or a tumor.”

  Adeline didn’t smile; she looked concerned, as though she were casting about for the name of a good specialist. Please like me, Ruthie thought desperately.

  Adeline crossed to the window and looked out at the sea. “It’s like I’ve stowed away on a ship. I can be myself here. In the Hamptons, summer vacation is an oxymoron.”

  Ruthie was confused for a moment. Her hesitation was part surprise that Adeline had made a joke, and part relief that Adeline had not just called her a moron. Then Ruthie was afraid that Adeline thought she didn’t get her joke. She wondered how she could work oxymoron into a sentence again, just to prove she knew what it meant.

  Adeline moved a bowl just a quarter inch to the right, then placed her hand on a chair in a proprietary way, her fingers stroking the back. Ruthie felt a sudden, sharp irritation. Stop caressing my wood, she wanted to say.

  “It’s just adorable,” Adeline said. “This is such a delightful surprise.”