The Guest Book

by Sarah Blake

  “She loves him.” Evelyn was sad. “I see that. But she can’t marry.”

  Reg shot her a glance. “Isn’t that up to her?”

  “Yes.” Evelyn was soft. “And she’s decided. She won’t marry, because she’ll pass it on. It wouldn’t be right. It would be shameful.”

  “Pass what on?” Reg paused and looked up at her across the table. “There’s nothing shameful about your sister.”

  “Of course not.” Evelyn narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “My sister is everything—good and great. It’s her condition.”

  “What condition?”

  Evelyn pursed her lips and didn’t answer. She would protect her sister to the end, Reg saw.

  She dropped her eyes. “Even aside from that. It can’t work. These things simply don’t.”

  “‘These things’? What are ‘these things’?”

  “Well,” she said, turning to him, “he’s a Jew.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly, so reasonably, it was stunning. Without any embarrassment, without any hiding, any pretense. Surely we could all agree. That’s just how things were.

  “Yes,” Reg answered.

  “You don’t marry a Jew.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Reg evenly.

  She nodded.

  And Reg saw that she believed they had settled something. It had been decided. He moved away from the table and back to the fire, released somehow, relieved. He almost wanted to thank the younger sister. Evelyn went on setting the table. After a little while, she turned and walked back up to the house to change for the party.

  Joan and Len were moving slowly back toward him, and Len, seeing Reg watching, lifted his hand and waved. Even from here Reg knew that look. The victor. Len couldn’t help himself, he was so certain all the time that he had won. He thought because he was here, he was there. He was through. He thought because the girl wanted him—and it was clear she wanted him—that meant she would have him. Watching his friend, Reg felt as old as Time.

  Thirty-eight

  THE BOATS ROUNDED THE point and came toward them, one after another in the slanting light, the figures standing along the gunwales bursting into motion as they neared. Hello! Hello! they called over the diminishing distance. Hello!

  “They’re here.” Evelyn ran down the lawn, a brilliant shock of blue, Joan and Anne following. And how Joan loved these first moments when anything at all might happen, the night ahead, and the sun just beginning to sink into the hills, the Island growing dark behind her. “Tie up here,” she said to the Fessendens, who’d just maneuvered neatly in alongside the boats tied stern to stem four boats deep from the dock.

  They had brought a cousin from the South possessed of a moist beauty, her pale gaze framed loosely by hair, light as wheat, her eyes perpetually wide as if she’d just been goosed. One felt she might wrap around the first upright man she met and never loosen her hold. For balance, Joan reflected, smiling at her.

  “Hello.”

  “I’ve never had such a bumpity ride.” Cousin Franny lifted herself from the bench in the cockpit and climbed out of the boat.

  Bumpity? Joan caught Moss’s eye. But he was the height of good manners, helping the girl over the gunwale and onto the dock beside him.

  “I hope there’s lots and lots of bad behavior,” she whispered to him as she turned to walk up the gangway. He nodded solemnly and winked at Joan.

  Peggy, Babs, and Oatsie Matthews sat in the bow of their father Cy Matthews’s boat. He had a dirty, irreverent mouth, which her father suffered, Joan knew, because he was an expert around boats and had proven himself useful during the banking crisis of ’32, having shown a surprisingly astute grip on when the financial winds would shift, long before others. He cut a wide swath around the gam and backed into the last open spot on the dock.

  “My getaway.” He smiled conspiratorially and handed Joan the painter. “You look lovely.”

  Teeni and Bing Lamont were right behind him with their son and new daughter-in-law, née a Ludlow of New York. Blond and sleek and high boned, she stepped onto the dock with the bowline in her hand. Where she walked, one imagined carpets unrolling before her, cloaks of ermine swirling around booted legs. Swords and lashes. Hounds. Having modeled for Vogue, she qualified as an out-and-out glamour girl, though she had first been born and bred a Brearley girl, so she was keen minded too. Her name was Constance.

  It was generally agreed that of the eligible possibilities, really only Elliot Lamont could have wed her. Joan had heard that Elliot had sat next to her on a transcontinental flight, and as can happen between a very attractive woman and an equally attractive young man, they fell into conversation and a good one.

  He asked her how she came to be a model, when was it she first knew that’s what she wanted to do, and then, somewhere over the middle of the country, he said, “Listen. What do you think about, standing there waiting for the cameras to click?”

  She had turned her lovely eyes and regarded him a minute.

  “Tick-tock,” she answered.

  And the fact that he had asked her, and the fact that she had answered, and then the final fact—that he had known enough to understand the brilliance of that reply—had won him Constance Ludlow.

  “Well, hello!” Kitty cried as Rhinelanders, Cabots, and Lowells streamed out of the boathouse. It seemed all of North Haven had arrived in one boat. Kitty kissed them and Ogden laughed and led everyone down the path toward the picnic grounds, where the fires had been started and the corn, soaked for the afternoon in its salt water pool, lay in husks around the embers.

  Ten pots full of water had been set to boil on the metal grills laid across the stones of the firepits where the fires had burned furiously upward and had now settled into manageable coals. Ogden loved the challenge set by the ridiculous odds of boiling sixty-odd lobsters for a waiting crew. The kettles would take the better part of an hour to come to a boil, and then keeping them boiling, Ogden instructed, would take a man at each pit. Reg and Len had volunteered for the job and stood a little to the side of the party as Dickie went round with bottles and a stack of paper cups, the Pied Piper of gin. Evelyn and Joan were passing plates of cheese and chutney on Ritz Crackers, and Moss seemed to be everywhere, shaking hands, earnest and warm in a madras jacket and Bermuda shorts, welcoming everyone in, a great smile on his face as he surveyed the shifting tide of people around him.

  There were men in sweaters, the sleeves pushed loosely up, tossing horseshoes across the sandy pit, the clang of the iron shoes against the stakes ringing timpanis into the evening. Several of the women had ranged themselves on the rocks around Kitty, their long legs extended from under their skirts.

  The Fillmore Baker Juniors arrived with Granny Baker in tow—one of the first to forgo the warmer waters of Long Island Sound and organize Fillmore Sr. to come up here and build an enormous, exuberant folly on the Thoroughfare. Behind them trooped the Cheevers, distant cousins of the Trumbulls, the right Cheevers, no relation to that author.

  “God, what a crush of people,” Mrs. Cheever drawled, kissing Ogden, and stalled at the edge. “Are they all our sort?” She winked at him.

  “Of course.” He took her elbow and guided her into the clump around Kitty. Hello, they cried, hello.

  A group had taken their drinks and wandered down the paths that stretched away from this spot farther into the Island. Through the trees, the blues and yellows, the linens and silks shimmered as they walked away. The lobster car had been filled with beers and moored to the rock at the end of the ledge, where it bobbed, cold.

  Len watched Kitty pull free of the group of women around her and cross over to find Dickie with his bottle, and even here, even in the midst of a crowd, Len saw, what Kitty did drew Ogden Milton’s gaze, as though she were the point of perspective, the vanishing point. He flushed and poked at the fire, and then quickly looked up and searched for Joan.

  She was moving easily through the clumps of guests, chatting, her sister beside her, the contras
t between them plain. Len found himself relishing the difference. Unlike her sister, Joan’s flame was banked but glowing all the same. There was the earnest, truthful faith inside her, a charity of soul. Though she seemed smaller to him here. The place defined her, the rituals, the small devotions, tending it, mending it. Defined all of them, he thought. Fine for the academics and poets, men who stayed in one place and spent their lives thinking, tinkering. Fine for Ogden Milton, in whose image the place was. But no good for him. He caught sight of Joan’s face in profile, nodding to a woman in a blue cardigan, that little smile upon her lips, that was always on her lips. His chest expanded. He wanted to show her how small this place was—how big she could be, they could be—together. He wanted to tell her all of it, all in a rush.

  He looked up and saw Reg standing by his own pit, staring at him, a bottle of beer in his hand and a peculiar expression on his face.

  Reg looked at Len, then down at the fire.

  “What are you doing?” Len wandered over to Reg.

  “What do you think?” Reg answered so quietly, Len had to lean toward him. Reg turned and looked him in the eye.

  “I know you,” Len said. “You’re about to do something.”

  Reg shook his head. The two turned back to the party.

  Dickie Pratt was wandering around with the gin, and Len held up his cup to be filled. Dickie halted. And for a second it looked to Reg like he’d refuse. But he poured, and then with the other hand, splashed the tonic into the cup.

  “Listen.” He stalled in front of them a minute, looking from one to the other. He was flushed. “I want to make something clear.”

  Reg drank, his eyes on him.

  “Let’s get it straight: I don’t dislike the Jews.”

  Len looked wordlessly back at him.

  “You and I work together,” Dickie protested. “And I’ve got a lot of Jewish friends.”

  Len nodded and looked out into the party. “You know what Otto Kahn said?”

  Dickie shook his head.

  “A kike,” said Len, turning to him, “is a Jewish gentleman who has just left the room.”

  Dickie stiffened.

  “Dickie?” Evelyn had appeared at his side, her eyes on Reg. “We need the gin.” And she pulled at Dickie, who remained where he stood, speechless.

  “Come on,” she said quietly to her fiancé.

  But Dickie stood there shaking his head, looking from Len to Reg. “What the hell?”

  “Dickie.”

  “What have you two got to be so angry about?” he burst out. “You’re at Milton Higginson, Levy, and you—” He stared at Reg. “You went to Harvard. You should be on our side. You should be part of the solution.”

  “The solution?” Reg whistled. “First solution, or final solution?”

  “Reg.” Len inhaled.

  “Oh, come off it.” Dickie frowned. “You’re at our party.”

  “That’s right.” Reg stared back.

  “Reg,” Len said again.

  The moment passed.

  Dickie relaxed. “I have nothing to be ashamed of.” He wagged his finger. “Nothing at all.” He put his arm around Evelyn and steered her off. The fire popped.

  “Jesus.” Len exhaled.

  “There,” Reg said. “You heard him.”

  Len drank. “Dickie is an anomaly.”

  “Man alive, listen to you—” Reg exclaimed. “It can’t hold.”

  “Why not?” Len said.

  Reg didn’t answer. Len glanced at him. Reg bent and grabbed a stick off the woodpile and slid it in under the grates.

  “You know it can’t.” Reg frowned. “You know it, Len. A little while ago, you’d have been the first to point that out.”

  Len’s jaw tightened. “None of them matter, Reg. Don’t you see? It’s just padding around in the dark, hitting wildly. They’re silly. All of this”—he took in the horseshoes, the genial melee—“doesn’t matter.”

  “Since when?”

  Len shrugged.

  “You’re bewitched,” Reg said to him quietly.

  Len glanced at his friend. “What if I am?”

  “You don’t want all this, Len.”

  “No,” Len agreed. “I want her.”

  Reg looked at Len, then down at his feet. The rip that had started in his heart tearing further. The great dumb ox that was his friend, the believer. The rip between them tearing wide. He kicked at the fire.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave, you know we can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, you know why not as well as I do.”

  “I want to hear what you say,” Reg answered.

  “Screw you, Reg. Don’t be a son of a bitch.”

  Reg hugged his cup to his chest. “They talk a good game. But it won’t matter.”

  “She’s not one of them.”

  Reg shook his head. “She’s just the same. Watch her.”

  “I am,” Len said quietly. “I watch her all the time.”

  A spark popped out of the fire onto the dry grass. Reg stamped it out.

  “You’re wrong,” said Len. “You think you’re right, but you’re wrong.”

  He went to find another beer.

  In that moment Reg wanted to be rid of all of them, even Len. Rid of their promises and their hopes and the hand that extended but did not include. He was not in any danger—it was not that simple—but he stood there by the fire, seeing Len’s shoulders move through the group, profoundly, intensely alone.

  “Reg Pauling?” A surprised voice spoke beside him, and a big woman with wide teeth and merry eyes held out her hand. “I spied you as soon as I got here, and said to Harry, that must be him.”

  Beside her, a beamy man with flyaway hair and a red bow tie nodded.

  “Ought we to be offended?” she went on. “You turn us down every year, and yet here you are.”

  “Yes.” Reg found his voice and took her hand. “Here I am. It’s good to see you, Mrs. Lowell.”

  * * *

  AT LAST, THE lobsters were pulled from the pots and set on platters, and the girls brought melted butter in bowls down from the Big House. Hot corn was tossed in baskets and It’s time, called Ogden, Come on, Kitty urged. Come get a lobster and take a seat at the table. The enormous single table was made up of five barn doors set on trestles, and benches Ogden had had the Rhinelanders’ man bang together for the feast. Down the center were the vases filled by Kitty with marguerites and rose hips, and carrying the charm of a summer house—its white beadboard and driftwood, cut glass and steep angles—out here into the open evening.

  “Here,” Ogden said to Len, “you’ll want these,” and handed him a pair of lobster crackers, which he took, and a paper plate.

  Suddenly, Joan was beside him in line. He could reach his arm around her shoulders and draw her in, easily, just like that in the gathering dusk. If he could have, he’d have sat her on his lap, wrapped his arms around her waist, and held her tight. Close wasn’t close enough. Her warm beating body beside him was a delicious torture. Nothing mattered to him more at that moment than this girl, this improbable girl on this island.

  They moved together, wordlessly, toward the end of one of the long tables. He set his two plates down, and the crackers. Then turned to take hers from her hands.

  She slid onto the bench. He slid down next to her. No one at the table paid them any attention. The lobsters steamed in their red shells. Around them, the others fell on the red bodies and pulled them apart, experts at maneuvering the sharp claws and the edge of the shells. Len considered the lobster on his plate.

  “I warn you, it’s messy.” She took the crackers and began with the tail, giving it a sharp twist to break the tendons and then ripping it off the body. Green bile poured out and streamed onto the plate. Neatly she set the freed tail aside and then tore the claws off with the same quick twist, separating the claw from the shoulder of the body. Her hands were covered in slime and juice.


  “Some people like to suck at the legs,” she said very seriously, pointing to the fifteen spindles attached to the body. “I don’t.”

  “Is that right?” he answered, equally seriously, and was rewarded by a darting glance at him.

  “Pass the lobster crackers, would you please, Joan dear?” Mrs. Gould asked across the table.

  “Here you are.” Len handed them over the shells heaped in the middle.

  “Hello there,” said Mrs. Gould. “Who are you?”

  “This is Len Levy, Mrs. Gould.”

  “Ah.” The older woman nodded, appraising his plate. “Is this your first lobster, young man?”

  “That’s right,” he answered, grabbing hold of the body and twisting.

  Ah, Joan heard the woman’s unspoken remark. But Len didn’t seem bothered. He wasn’t at all uncomfortable not knowing how to do the thing, or admitting to it. Joan looked down at her plate. That was part of his charm.

  He dipped a morsel into the butter between them and put it in his mouth.

  Mrs. Gould waited. He swallowed, looked up at her, and grinned.

  “Very good.” The woman gave a sharp nod of her head and turned to her dinner companion.

  Joan and Len ate and said nothing. After a little time, he reached for the bottle of wine at the center of the table and filled her glass, then his. One hand rested on the table, and his head bent to catch the drops of butter falling from the piece of lobster he put in his mouth.

  A breeze off the water curled through the grasses, and the picnic on the rocks, the laughter, the familiar group, with Len beside her, filled her. The liquid gold glinting off the water before her echoed the sunburnt gold behind her in the meadow, the swallows racing in and out of the twilight with the gulls. She could close her eyes and draw the place in around her like a hymn.

  “I would have made a good nun,” she mused, a twinkle in her eye.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But I would like to see all four seasons here,” she said. “I’d like to live here all year round.”