“You could do that, you know,” she offered.
“Yeah, then I’d be driving a Range Rover instead of my old pickup,” he joked. “But I’m not. My paycheck hasn’t much changed in a dozen years. I’m doing what I want, too.” He smiled at her. “So, yeah, I get it.”
Chapter 12
Stuck Together and Rather Happy About It
“You should go. I don’t want to monopolize you more than I have,” Ryan said. “I mean, you are the First Lady of Sea Crest Stables.”
She threw her napkin at him playfully and said, “Don’t ever call me that.” Caroline looked over to see that Gigi, Rosie, and Theo were now at the arts and crafts area with the sitter, Francis, getting their faces painted. Thankfully, she could stay.
Ryan placed the beer bottle on the table and leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head again. He studied Caroline’s features: the delicate mouth, the large blue eyes, the black hair against her fair skin. The curves on her upper thighs were more prominent the way she was sitting now. She was really pretty, but not seductive. Just really pretty. Period. Again, he said, “Honestly, don’t you think you should . . .”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I’m good.”
“Okay, then let’s just chill here,” Ryan said. He was relieved. He didn’t want her to leave, and he didn’t want to toddle after her into the crowd either. He wondered about going out to The Palm for dinner with Eddie and Caroline, and bringing his wife, Suzy.
It wouldn’t work. Eddie Clarkson wouldn’t be able to hide his disdain for people like Ryan, who reminded him of where he came from. Besides, Suzy would wonder why they were socializing with Eddie and Caroline all of a sudden. And be alone with Caroline? It wouldn’t be easy to come up with an excuse to see her, or make it seem normal. He didn’t do that kind of thing, flirt with women, or lead them on. Now that he heard Caroline’s last name, he knew the whole story. He considered mentioning it right away, but instead he started slowly. “It’s nice to hang with someone from school,” he said. “I’m sure we have a ton of people in common.”
“Like who?” she asked.
“And, just, uh, there’s something I figured out when I heard your last name. I didn’t want to mention it at first, but . . .” Ryan looked down at his feet and shuffled his foot back and forth across the grass.
“Go ahead,” Caroline said. She wondered, Has Eddie done something horrible to this guy in a real estate deal? Have they crossed paths?
“It’s kind of depressing in the midst of this beautiful, almost summer day, but Joey Whitten was on our Ocean Rescue squad,” Ryan said. “I used to be the older kid sending him out on drills.”
“Wow, yeah, then you certainly did know him,” Caroline said. She tried not to show any reaction. She wasn’t sure how to talk about Joey, but she was also glad Eddie hadn’t been too much of a brute with Ryan at some point.
“I didn’t really hang out with Joey because he was years younger, like you, but I knew him,” Ryan said. “I knew he was a great waterman, even back then. By the time he was in college and really in charge of things on the beach in summers, I was in grad school.”
“Wow,” Caroline said again. Wow was not a word she usually used, and now she wondered why she had said it twice, as if hearing that Joey commanding a beach was extraordinary. He practically lived there.
Ryan balled up his sweater and leaned his elbow on it. “I really liked that guy, and I just want to say that to you,” he said. “I mean, we might have become friends if we had hung out when we were both in our twenties. Not that I acted like an adult in my twenties.” He paused and added, “You know, we might have been good friends if all that terrible shit hadn’t happened.”
“Yeah, well, that was a really screwed-up summer for me,” Caroline said. Just then, the image of the Boston Whaler from days before flashed across her mind. She welcomed a connection with someone who had lived through the vestiges of the same tragedy she had. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail again and let it drop, brushing the top of her shoulders like a comforter.
“Let’s just hope that was the single most screwed up summer of your life,” Ryan said. “But, listen, you don’t have to talk about it.” He was surprised he hadn’t made the link earlier, just seeing her across the juice bar: Joey Whitten’s girlfriend, of course. Then, for whatever fucked up lining up of the stars, Eddie Clarkson’s wife.
Ryan told her she didn’t have to talk about it, and she didn’t talk about it. She looked off toward the kids again and it gave him an opportunity to study her face a bit more. It hadn’t changed so much in, what, the twenty years since they’d been in school. Caroline’s features were nineteenth-century beauty material, he decided. But it was almost as if she were hiding it. He could detect no makeup, and that thick hair covered her gorgeous cheekbones.
Caroline waved to Gigi, and yelled out, “I’ll be over when you’re done, honey!” To Ryan, she said in a quieter voice, “And no, I don’t mind talking about Joey, it’s fine. I actually like it sometimes.
“My kids are happy. Eddie is in heaven welcoming the crowd. I secretly hate horses,” she said, laughing a little. “I’m convinced they’re going to chomp my shoulder if I get near them, and I always walk, like, ten feet behind them so they don’t buck me. But my daughter loves them, so she walks them right over to me, at the fences, guiding their heads too close to me on purpose. She wants me to kiss them, which she knows terrifies me.” Caroline felt that was a boring thing to say, made her look kind of flaky somehow, which she wasn’t. She looked over at the kids again, and sipped her Corona. She crossed her arms and placed her foot up against the bottom of the tent pole, searching, in vain, for a position that made her look relaxed. “Plus, I hate the bullshit small talk that crowds always share. I freeze up, and my husband wonders why I’m acting shy. It’s like, say what you mean or be quiet—that’s just how I am. I don’t like wading into a sea of moms talking about their Gucci sneakers and Balenciaga totes, don’t feel I have something to add that they care about.”
“No one’s more out of it than I am,” Ryan said. He looked over his shoulder for his wife. He saw her talking to girlfriends at a cocktail table. She saw him and he nodded to her. He turned back to Caroline and crossed his own arms, venturing no closer. He started wondering if he should leave, if this was a conversation he should not be having with someone he should not be having it with. He asked, “You sure it doesn’t make you uncomfortable if I ask you more about Joey?”
“It doesn’t. Not at all.”
“I think about him sometimes, still. Especially when I’m on Atlantic beach. In fact, I always think about him there,” Ryan said, unfolding his arms. “His drowning never made sense to any of us. I mean, that kid could have swum to Europe if he had to. I remember the whole thing. Most of us who grew up out here remember it too. And your part in the story is coming back to me. I can’t believe I didn’t place you at first.”
One thing he didn’t tell her: he didn’t say that everyone had found it weird that such a pretty girl went from such a nice guy to such a dick. Maybe that’s just the way things go. The coolest girls go for the worst guys. Suddenly, he felt a little fed up with life. He said to Caroline, “Do you remember that fight Eddie and Joey had?”
“At the Ultimate Frisbee game,” she said, nodding in an exaggerated fashion, to relay, who didn’t remember that game.
“In the corner of the high school field. It took like five of us to get Eddie off of Joey. I thought he was going to strangle him. You know, he had his hands around the guy’s neck, right?” When Caroline didn’t say anything, Ryan felt like he’d been too harsh, and added, “I mean, in some way, I’m sure there was a reason for that aggression. We just didn’t understand, is all. It obviously wasn’t just a Frisbee game. It must have been some girl they were fighting over.”
“It was. Of course it was. Joey had taunted Eddie, telling him he’d never get me,” Caroline said. “I was all his at the time, and I g
uess, you know, Eddie had really strong feelings for me too back then, when I was with Joey. Eddie is kind of, you know, insanely competitive, not just in Frisbee. Yeah, that huge fight really sucked.”
“Sucks to be in demand?”
“Stop,” she said, and smiled. Boys had always liked her, but someone to fight over? No, she didn’t remember it at all that way.
“Now that I realize you were that girl who was with Joey, I don’t think I ever really talked to you back then, did I? Except for that architecture-class project, but guys would mention your name a bunch.”
“Oh?”
“You know, a girl guys wanted to be with.”
Ryan stood. It gave her an opportunity to leave, but she didn’t take it. “I’m getting more chips,” he said. “You want some?”
“Sure,” Caroline said. She watched him wander over to the bar. He was exaggerating. Some guys had crushes on her, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who was noticed by kids in other grades. It was only after Joey died that they paid attention. Her hair was so much longer then, bohemian tresses extending to her waist. It was different now, chopped at the shoulders, framing her face, but maybe the old way was more alluring somehow. She liked her thirty-eight-year-old mom hair fine.
A woman she barely knew came over to say hi. Caroline stood and talked to her, hoping she’d linger a little. She didn’t want Ryan thinking she literally couldn’t talk to anyone. But then the woman excused herself and headed for the bar. Caroline was alone again.
She saw Eddie in the distance. She waved to him, but he didn’t notice, too busy guffawing over some joke he’d told to a bunch of Wall Street veterans. They gathered in a tight, protective circle, like football players in a huddle around their quarterback. With the kids settled, and her husband working the crowd, Caroline figured she could safely catch up with an old high school guy she sort of knew.
When Ryan came back, he brought a huge basket of chips and a pail of guacamole. “My family is still over there,” he said as he sat down. “They may wander over.” The reminder of his marital status was more for him than for her. “I’ll introduce you when they’re done gabbing.”
“No rush, and thanks for the chips,” Caroline said. She upended her bottle of beer and drained the last drop. She didn’t usually drink during the day, but the tart bubbles sliding down her throat like soft little clouds made her wonder why she didn’t.
“You know, I rarely get to talk about Joey and that summer. I kind of like remembering,” she said, the beer making her feel a little looser. “It’s funny, though, between a girlfriend last Thursday and you today, I’ve talked more about Joey Whitten than I have in months.”
Ryan placed his elbows on the table and leaned in to reach the chips. Between chomps, he said, “Remember that dog he had? Lucky?” A bit of guacamole fell from his lips to his sleeve. “Jesus Christ, you must think I’m a slob.” His shirt was still damp from spilling water at the juice bar and now this. He wiped up the guacamole with a napkin, spreading a green stain even wider.
“That dog was unbelievable. Lucky never left his side, even that day.”
Ryan crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back—and that gesture somehow hurtled Caroline back in time. Now that his flexed arm was just a foot from her face, she could see he was really strong. An image flashed before her of him walking around town during high school. She remembered: he was a cool one back then.
“You know how they say dogs know more than we know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“You’re spacing out,” Ryan said, chuckling.
“Sorry. Busted. I was just . . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Ryan said. “I do that all the time in conversations. I start thinking about something someone said and I get deep into it in my head and never hear the next thing the person says. I was asking about Joey’s dog, how he knew something was wrong.”
“Yeah, that was heartbreaking too.”
Ryan touched her upper arm. “I know he was howling by the shore until God knows what hour, waiting for Joey to come home. That sound stayed with so many of us for so long. That dog crying out, it was so futile. It really scared me, and haunted me for years, still does I think. It was like the dog knew.”
Caroline sniffed in, and rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t crying, it was just a reflex.
Ryan backed off. “Oh, who knows what dogs know, right?”
“Maybe he didn’t know what happened to Joey. Maybe he just missed him,” Caroline said. “Or, sometimes . . .” her voice trailed off.
Ryan smiled and took a gulp of beer. A drop seeped out of the corner of his mouth. He wiped it as quickly as he could but it made him remember again the mess on his shirt. He bent his left arm across the stain on his chest.
His self-consciousness—about his clumsiness, about bringing up Joey, about talking to her in the first place—made Caroline think that even if she ever did agree to an affair, it would not be with this man. He was too safe, too kind, too married, too close to home. Maybe someone like him, though. She thought about all the possibilities. Who and when?
No. Not at all was better.
“And, and . . .” Ryan said, making circle motions with his hand, encouraging her to actually finish her sentence.
“Sorry! Anyway, just, who knows what Lucky knew or didn’t,” Caroline said. She looked out in the distance for her husband again. She’d barely spoken to him all morning, and she never did fetch him that pink smoothie. “Anyway, you work as an architect ever on the big houses?”
“Yes and no. I mean, I’m in a firm and I focus only on the small cottages and restoration work. But we have architects who are building houses that are so huge you could fit a basketball court in the foyer, you know, for everyone out here who is just interested in the shiny and new.”
“Exactly,” she said. “That must drive you crazy. Like, this one client just asked for curtains with a little sparkle in them and I tried so hard to explain that sparkly fabric is for a high-rise condo in Manhattan, to match the twinkling lights of the city at night, not for a bungalow out here, with the blue of the ocean and the ochre of the sand. You know?”
Caroline felt she was talking too fast. As Ryan explained his favorite preservation techniques in old homes, she glanced at his thighs, and noticed that they splayed out on the chair. She liked meaty men, and had never been with a skinny man. Joey was lean, but he wasn’t slight. As every second ticked by, Caroline’s mind and body were warming up to the idea of Annabelle’s maybe-not-so-insane plan.
As Ryan gazed across the field, she took note of his nose, strong and sturdy like a Greek statue’s. When his wife waved to him, he jumped up so fast he shook the table.
“Nice talking to you,” he said, a little more coldly than she would have liked. Maybe his wife beckoned him because she felt he had stayed too long at the table, alone with a woman she didn’t know. Maybe Ryan hurried off because he felt he had stayed too long too. Either way, Ryan knew what he was doing: his abrupt departure threw some water on whatever fire had been kindled between him and Caroline.
Chapter 13
The Citiots Are Here
With Ryan gone, Caroline really wasn’t in the mood to play the one-upmanship games that dominated conversations with people from the city. Even when these women dressed down in T-shirts and jeans, they had to wear pre-distressed five-hundred-dollar Golden Goose sneakers in case anyone forgot they were loaded. Any fake conversation she would have now would just annoy her.
Right on cue, Linda Cockburn approached her table. She wore the requisite Memorial Day white slacks with a green, horsey H Hermès belt, even though she’d never been fifty feet from a saddle in her life. On her feet, a silly choice: hot red suede Gucci slides with fur outlining the soles, already destroyed by the dust and mud of a stable. Locals called idiots from Manhattan Citiots, and though Ryan had left, she bet he would have made that call once he witnessed the filthy Gucci fur lining.
Linda saw a need to rearrange the
wildflower bouquet on the cocktail table next to Caroline’s. Her substantial and perky breasts (unusually so, for a woman with four children) exploded from her blouse, their points resting just under Caroline’s nose. “I don’t know why messy is so in. I’m a genius at flower bouquets,” Linda said. “You should have called me to help. You should have hired me! Party design can be very tough.” It was always the same: Linda bombarding Caroline with a fusillade of advice on how she could live better, more like a real city person.
“Hire you? That’s an idea,” Caroline said. The trademark silver trim on the collar of Linda’s pale pink Brunello Cucinelli blouse announced its exorbitant cost. Annabelle had taught her to spot one, informing her that the shirts cost over a thousand dollars. “And, by the way, I just love the new toy.”
Linda had arrived the previous night on a black Sikorsky S-92 copter. She’d posted an endless Instagram story of her kajillionaire family being ferried from the city in her “new toy,” as she called it, eating pretzels as if they were at a Met’s game at Citi Field. As she descended from the helicopter, and as pilots rushed toward her with outstretched arms to assist her down the stairs, she continued to document the journey on her shaky, shitty, self-aggrandizing video story.
The week before, Eddie had insisted they go to Linda and her husband Henry’s for dinner at 71 East Seventy-First Street, a ploy Linda used to give the side entrance of her building, as if to pretend she didn’t want anyone to know they’d bought a sixteen-room apartment at the infamous 740 Park Avenue. This historic building was inhabited in the early 1900s by robber barons and Rockefellers and now by present-day hedge fund magnates. Saying please come for dinner at 71 East Seventy-First Street was the Upper East Side equivalent of saying you went to law school in New Haven or Cambridge. Inane pretentions aside, there was no denying the lily-white Park Avenue neighborhood they’d lived in for three years was now packed with people who made “very serious money,” as Eddie put it. It seemed everyone on her block had chosen lifestyle over love.
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