The High Season

by Judy Blundell

  Why not? She’d done worse.

  All she wanted was to wake up tomorrow and feel clean. She’d fix the eggs and toast and be able to look into her daughter’s eyes for the first time this summer. How can you be present in your life if you’re not really looking at the ones you love?

  She realized that Jem was waiting.

  She swallowed. “I’ll take you.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. I think I still have some pull over there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Ruthie felt something clean wash through her at the hopeful look on Jem’s face. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” she said. Ah, a truth! She would take back the lies, one at a time.

  55

  DOE STOOD ON the back lawn of the Belfry, looking out at the party. It was an incredible success, exactly as Lark had envisioned.

  Lark had instructed everyone to dress in an “almost color,” and the lawn was awash in pale floaty dresses and beautiful shirts, blue lanterns hanging from the trees. The inflatables—pool toys and giant animals bobbing from compressed air—dotted the lawn and were tethered with bright ropes. The bouncy castle was ignored except for those who had consumed a few too many signature cocktails. There was vegan food and black cod and sushi, there was prosecco mixed with Aperol, and party favors were pareos from Calypso, tied with ribbons and stacked, ready to be handed out as people left for their cars.

  It was nothing like a Belfry event, nothing at all. Ruthie never could have committed this much money to one party. She saw board members, but none of the usual local crowd. The question of whether these new glittery people would ever become a base of support for the museum was not considered. Doe could see Mindy in the crowd, beaming with the excitement of having a New York Times photographer at the Belfry. Gloria was by her side, the only person dressed in glaring white.

  The girl nobody could take their eyes off wore a long dress with embroidered flowers that seemed to only whisper the color apricot. Her hair was loose and golden, her feet in the creamy laced flat sandals that everyone was wearing this summer because Lark had been photographed in them. Doe had been the one to take the shot and post it.

  Daniel was there, in off-white pants and a pale-blue shirt, standing with his Hamptons girlfriend, the TV journalist. Doe scanned the crowd and saw Catha at the food table with the scowling husband nobody liked, she couldn’t remember his name, who was filling his plate with the lobster mac and cheese—weird, because she thought he was kosher. Nobody else was eating.

  Arms slipped around her from behind. “Why are you hiding?” Lark asked in her ear.

  “I don’t recognize anyone. And you gave me the night off, remember?”

  “Daddy hired the photographers so that you wouldn’t have to work. He can be sweet, you know. In the last two days I think he invited everyone he ever ran into in his life. As usual, it’s his party. Help me face it. You look positively gorg, by the way.”

  Doe had allowed Lark to buy her the dress. They’d searched and searched in the shops of East Hampton until Lark was satisfied. She pronounced the color exquisite—somewhere between iced butter and crème fraîche, she said. It fit Doe perfectly, having been altered by Lark’s tailor. A fifties look, very Audrey in Sabrina, a tight bodice and a full skirt with hidden pockets in the folds. Lark had the tailor add them, remembering that Doe had said a dress with pockets was her ideal.

  Doe allowed herself to be tugged. They walked out onto the lawn, arms around each other’s waists, and waded into the crowd of posing people having the last fun of summer. So many photo ops for her Instagram. Not tonight. She would not take out her phone, not once, no matter who showed up.

  “Oh my God, Alec Baldwin is here,” Lark said.

  “Lark!” Daniel beckoned.

  “Oh, shit, the summons,” Lark said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Catha had joined Mindy and Gloria, leaving Awful Husband to go back for seconds. Mindy had a look of concentration on her face that probably had to do with holding her stomach in.

  Doe enjoyed the start of surprise on Catha’s face when she saw her, arms linked with Lark. Mindy looked displeased, and Gloria, teeth clenched with the effort of being amusing, didn’t notice anything at all.

  This was enjoyable, more than enjoyable, an actual high, having board members focus on her as more than an afterthought, having them wonder why her arm was through Lark’s, why Daniel knew her so well.

  “Look around at this party,” Daniel said. “Amazing. You can see that Lark is a visionary. I think she’s going to do incredible things.”

  “Incredible,” Mindy echoed. “The Belfry is transformed! It’s like a breath of fresh air!”

  If there was a cliché floating by, Mindy would always spear it and serve it up on a platter.

  In her pocket, in an organza bag with a silver ribbon, she had the perfect present. She was waiting until the end to give it to Lark. How funny it was that she’d had it all along. My father’s watch, she would say. Sorry I don’t have the box.

  56

  RUTHIE AND JEM lurked at the edges of the party. They had underdressed. Beautiful young women and men drifted by in silky fabrics the color of moonlight on water, or a heat wave white-blue sky. Ruthie piled up the metaphors in her head as Jem seethed next to her, because Ruthie had forgotten the whole “dress code empyrean” thing, and Jem was wearing her Isabel Marant blue sweater. Ruthie herself was in a black tank and black capris, which unfortunately and exactly matched the wait staff uniforms. Three men had already handed her an empty glass. If it happened again she’d either throw it against a wall or bring it to the kitchen.

  No one talked to them except Dodge, cheerful about the exalted response to his crazy menagerie and on his way to another party on Shelter Island. Ruthie glimpsed Daniel Mantis chatting with Mindy and Catha and stayed on the other side of the party, back under the trees. She hoped they would never know she was here. Tobie had gotten her in, saying no problem, she was going to get fired anyway.

  Here they were, but where was Lucas?

  The Peter Clay—her Peter Clay—was dramatically lit, visible in the closed museum. She watched the valets, lounging now. Everyone had arrived, even latecomers, and there was already a trickle of people leaving.

  Jem scanned the crowd but did not move. Ruthie wondered why she had wanted so badly to come. She had suggested that Jem take a selfie she could Instagram at least, but Jem had vehemently snapped “Not yet” at the suggestion.

  It must be a boy. Why else would Jem be here, taut and expectant, scanning the guests? Was it that boy who made her laugh? The one she had never mentioned again? Maybe one of the servers? Ruthie wanted to snatch Jem’s phone, where all the answers lay. If only parents could get over this ethical thing and spy like a government.

  Ruthie remembered that—to be fifteen, to be so intent on desire that you could believe with all your heart that just being seen by the object of your crush would be enough. Enough for everything else to fall away.

  Just as she had felt, seeing Joe at Daniel Mantis’s party at the beginning of summer.

  She wasn’t fifteen. It was no longer possible to be engulfed in desire, to be luminous with it, to use it as a beacon to draw your lover.

  “Who is it?” Ruthie finally asked, unable to keep quiet. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Nobody,” Jem said. “God.”

  “You’re looking for God?”

  “Mom, stop.”

  Suddenly Lucas was there, fuming behind the wheel as the valet took too long to run up to his car. The valet opened the door and a blond woman in a flowered print dress got out.

  “Somebody else didn’t get the memo,” Ruthie said, nudging Jem. Then she recognized the perfect pair of breasts, the tan. Doe’s mother…Sherry? Shari. It didn’t seem like Lucas to be kind enough to escort a mom to a party. She r
emembered back at the coffee shop, she’d left Lucas alone with Shari and sped to her car. Lucas had offered to buy Shari a muffin…

  Jem focused intently on the pair. “Is that his date? She’s old!” She had the incredulous tones of a teenager unable to believe that a middle-aged woman had the right to exist and wear stilettos.

  “Not a date, I don’t think,” Ruthie said.

  Lucas caught sight of them but quickly turned. Shari gave a pleased wave. Unlike Lucas, she seemed delighted to be at the party. Lucas stalked past, turning his head away and pretending not to see them.

  “Let’s go now, Mom? Please?”

  “You said you didn’t—”

  “I know but can we please go now?”

  “Just wait here for a minute, I have to talk to someone. Then we’ll go. Promise!”

  Ruthie hurtled across the grass, heading toward Lucas, who was now standing alone with a glass of champagne, surveying the crowd. A few yards away Shari was transfixed by a drunk man straddling an inflatable raptor.

  She yanked Lucas behind a bobbing hyena. “Don’t start,” he said. “Just be cool, for once.”

  “We have to stop this now.”

  “Stop?” Lucas closed his eyes for a moment. “You need to stop. What are you doing here?”

  “I saw the painting, you little shit! What’s it doing at the Belfry?”

  “Daniel has it on approval, he thought it would be a great idea to showcase it, so I said sure.”

  “You idiot!” she spat, and Lucas’s eyes darkened. “Daniel Mantis? Don’t you realize the kind of scrutiny this puts you—us—under? It’s one thing to get it out of the country, but this is the stupidest way possible to sell it! Didn’t you think of that?”

  “Don’t call me an idiot,” Lucas said.

  “You are an idiot! You pulled me into this—”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Okay, it was my decision, I’m not blaming you for that. But I’m blaming you for this…recklessness. It will be in the Times, every curator in the country will want to see it!”

  “Exactly! You’re the idiot. You can’t see how perfect it is. That horrible painting of Adeline, and Daniel owns it? It’s going to be glorious. She’ll see it everywhere!”

  Ruthie stared at him, aghast. “This is some sort of freakish revenge thing for you? Is that it?”

  “And what is it for you?”

  Was it revenge? She had never thought of it that way. It had felt like necessity. Then again, she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Of course it was revenge.

  She was wrong. It drained out of her, all that stupid wasted effort of shaking her fists at a world where only beauty and money mattered. She didn’t have to live in that world, even if it was right next door.

  Ruthie let out a breath, a long exhalation. “I don’t think I could hate anyone as much as you do.”

  “Says the woman with the ax.”

  “You have to cancel the sale. Tonight.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “You are. You’re going to go over there right now and tell Daniel that you changed your mind, that the painting has too much sentimental value.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’ve got news for you. You don’t own that painting. I do. It’s just canvas and paint and a stretcher, and they all belong to me. Remember the word under the paint?”

  “I know, that’s the funny part.”

  “Don’t you think if it’s ever x-rayed they’re going to wonder why it was underneath a portrait of his lover?”

  “No. It’s obvious. My old man was a shit!” Lucas drained his champagne. “Okay, so you’re pissed. I recognize that. But is it worth going to jail for? If you confess, I’ll just say you sold me the painting. Who wouldn’t believe it? Poor Ruthie, out for revenge. You’re the one with the motive.”

  “You are despicable.”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you really think Daniel will believe you and not me? You’re a nobody. You’re a middle-aged woman without a job or a husband. Who’s going to give a fuck?”

  She walked away, over the lawn, back toward the Belfry. His words didn’t touch her. She was too busy thinking. She had miscalculated. He wasn’t afraid of what she could do.

  Big mistake.

  “Where have you been?” Jem pulled at her arm. “Can we go now?”

  “Look, they’re bringing out the cake. Get us a couple of slices, okay?” Ruthie looked over at the museum. If she didn’t do this now, tonight, she’d never get the chance again. “We’ll take them and leave. I’ll be right back, promise!”

  Jem’s protest floated away in the gathering dusk as Ruthie hurried across the blue lawn. The valets were busy now. People were walking to their cars, some of the women shaking out their sarongs and throwing them around their bare shoulders. The temperature was dropping.

  She stopped. Through the window she saw Joe Bloom cross the room and examine the painting, Daniel Mantis behind him.

  Daniel gestured; Joe nodded. He moved from one spot to another, looking, looking. Up close and far away. The way a curator looks. He picked up the painting and examined the back.

  It was then that Ruthie remembered what she should have remembered a month ago, that she had told Joe that Peter had sent her a box of supplies from the studio. She had asked him about selling a luxury item. How could she have forgotten that?

  He had picked up her hand. He had seen blue on her finger.

  She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe.

  Joe walked back to Daniel in the middle of the room. They spoke while Ruthie tried to limn each tiny movement of two men standing in a room, talking.

  What was she doing, standing here in the dark with her mouth open.

  Just continuing on her criminally stupid path. It had to stop.

  57

  IT WAS LATE, and the party was dying. Dying not out of inertia, but from the sweet exhaustion of a good time at the end of summer. The valets were running now because after lingering long at the party everyone was suddenly in a hurry, the fringes of their gifted pareos fluttering in a quickening breeze.

  Daniel had left, the celebrities had gone, the board ladies had followed, and the last string of duty had been cut. Lark and Doe slipped away across the lawn to be alone. They lay on benches and looked up into the shadows of the trees. The blue-bulbed lanterns had been lit, and they swayed with every gust, flashing through the dark green like shots of phosphorescence in a watery world.

  Their hands occasionally brushed each other’s as they reached for their champagne flutes in tandem and sipped. The champagne was ice-cold and filled with the same radiant fizz as the stars in the night sky over their heads. Doe felt herself floating in a deeply pleasurable state of intoxication, where tomorrow was far in the distance and summer was spinning on.

  Lark tipped her head back. “I’m delirious,” she said. “Usually I get drunk at a party, or bored, or I feel useless. But tonight I feel as though everything in my life that’s wrong has been solved. Like I’m a kid again, and my nanny says tomorrow is a new day.”

  “It’s a teachable moment,” Doe said.

  “Failure is how we learn.”

  “Good job!”

  They giggled.

  Lark sat up to face Doe. Her smile was slow. She touched Doe’s eyebrow, the one with the scar she said she got playing lacrosse, only it was from tripping over a pool chair to get to Shane. Blood in her eyes, blood in the water as she fought her way to him.

  “It’s all because of you,” she said. “You encouraged me. This feels so right. You said I could shape the job to my life, and you were right. You said I can do anything. Do you know what a gift that is?”

  “Well. Not everything. You’re not a farmer.”

  “You wench,” Lark said. “Thanks for brin
ging up my worst failure.”

  “It’s not a failure,” Doe said. “You learned things that you’re going to use.”

  “I like how I am when I’m with you,” Lark said. “It’s like…having someone believe in you. That’s totally a new thing for me.”

  “What are you talking about, ethereal it-girl Lark Mantis?”

  “I don’t want to be a hashtag. That stupid seekrit-hamptons account made me into some sort of icon of vacuousness.”

  “Hey, it made you into a brand.”

  “Please. It made me into a joke.”

  “No, it—”

  “Daddy’s right, it’s time I got serious.”

  “Okay, let’s get serious. It’s time for your present.” Doe sat up.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to. But, hooray!”

  Doe reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the present. “It’s the thing I love the most,” she said. “It belonged to my father.”

  Lark unwrapped it carefully from the tissue paper, smoothing the silver satin ribbon. She withdrew the watch and held it up.

  “For the girl who has more than everything,” Doe said.

  “Oh, honey. Are you sure? This is amazing. It’s a Patek Philippe!” Lark turned it over in her hand. “Vintage?”

  “Vintage.”

  “It’s gorgeous. But…I can’t accept your father’s watch.”

  “You have to. It’s the best thing I have to give.”

  “No, the best thing is that you wanted to.”

  Doe leaned over and fastened the watch on Lark’s wrist. “You see? Perfect.” Doe was taking a chance, but she wasn’t worried. Even if Lucas were to see it, he wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t dare.

  “I love it so much.” Lark took the ribbon and wound it around Doe’s ring finger. “Will you marry me?”

  Doe looked down at her finger, at the silver ribbon twisted around it, two girls playing fairy tale. “Only if your father gives us a maid as a wedding present. You’re a slob.”