“But you did.” A new note crept into Russell’s voice. It almost sounded—well, to call a spade a spade, it sounded accusatory. And also a little wounded.
She kept her voice purposefully light, even blithe, and said, “I did.”
There was a long pause then and Eliza studied the table in front of her. Across the room someone made a whooping noise and someone else said, Motherfucker! You’d get kicked out of the club in Barton for yelling that.
The table was rough and scratched with the history of a million bottles of beer, a thousand fishermen’s hands resting where hers were now. Back when you could smoke in public places in Maine and the smoke hung thick and impenetrable around the bar there would have been an ashtray on this table, right next to the napkin dispenser. Eliza had to go to the bathroom and her stomach was roiling from the beer but she didn’t want to get up. She was rooted, and she remained rooted until Russell said, “Do you ever think about it?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
Oh. Oh, God. They were going to talk about it. They were going to talk about the Thing They Would Never Talk About.
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“We were eighteen, Russell. It was another lifetime. We were babies.”
Then Russell was reaching under the table and grasping her hand, and that felt so familiar that her thoughts got tangled with each other. It was too loud in the bar all of a sudden, and the universe was tilting, and it felt like each piece of her colliding worlds was contained in that fraction of a moment. Also, there was no air in the bar. Where had all the air gone?
“I have to go outside,” she managed. “I’m sorry, I—” She slid out of the booth and pushed her way through the crowd. She heard footsteps behind her, and then Russell’s voice.
“Liza? Eliza, you okay?”
She walked toward Russell’s truck, taking deep, shuddering breaths. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry, I couldn’t—I just couldn’t breathe all of a sudden.” She leaned against the truck and looked up at the sky. Night had fallen while they were in The Wheelhouse, and a fingernail of a moon hung just above them. Russell stood next to her, close enough that his hip pressed against her waist. Her thoughts were all mixed up. Your whole life was a quest to recapture the feeling you had the very, very first time you fell in love. The fight with Rob, her dad, missing her family but also, weirdly, missing the place where she was at that exact moment. How could you do that, how could you be homesick for a town you’d left lifetimes ago when you were in that town right then?
She was going to ask Russell that, and so she turned her face toward his, and that’s when she saw that he was looking at her in a certain, familiar way, and then he was leaning toward her and she wasn’t sure if—
But as it turned out, her stomach, that unpredictable, capricious organ, had its own ideas for the evening.
“I’m going to be sick,” she said. “Oh, God—”
Eliza had enough forethought to turn away from the truck and toward the untended, scrubby grass at the edge of the parking lot, where she threw up four beers, a turkey sandwich, two cups of coffee, and a lifetime of confusion and pain.
When she was done, when her humiliation was complete and her insides were empty, Russell, bless his gigantic and forgiving heart, put Eliza gently in the passenger seat of the truck and drove her in an indecipherable silence back to her father’s house.
23
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
“Go!” Judith said. “Just go, Robbie.” She was curled up on the sofa with Zoe on one side of her and Evie on the other. “The girls and I are fine, we’re going to have cocktails and watch a Dance Moms marathon.”
Rob said, “Cocktails?”
“Mom doesn’t let Evie watch Dance Moms,” said Zoe. “She says it’s too crass for a nine-year-old.”
“Zoe, I’m ten.”
Judith said, “Anyway, while the cat’s away…”
Rob repeated, “Cocktails?” and rubbed his temples.
“Virgin coladas,” clarified Evie. “Except Judith’s isn’t a virgin.”
“I bet it isn’t,” said Rob.
The argument with Eliza over the phone last night had left him with an unsettled sensation deep in his stomach. All day he’d known he should apologize, and all day he had failed to make the call. He was mad at Eliza, but at the same time he was sad for her. And the mad and the sad were all wrapped up together. The longer he waited, the harder it was to pick up the phone—even though he knew dwelling on a stupid argument, on a hastily flung offense, was an insult to Charlie’s illness.
Besides that, it had been another doozy of a day on the Cabot project. Anytime something went wrong with the Cabot project Rob worried about the thing he’d done with the money, the thing that he couldn’t undo.
Until this year, Judith had deposited in Rob and Eliza’s bank account a tidy sum that came from her stock dividends. The stock itself would pass to Rob eventually. The dividends alone represented a significant amount—enough to pay for a good percentage of their lifestyle. But then he turned forty. He had his own business, and his business was doing well; the mortgage on the house was small, due to a generous down payment (also funded, admittedly, by Judith). Glowing on the horizon like holiday lights on a tree was a tantalizing string of new work. The Cabot project was under way, and Mrs. Cabot, who was absolutely delighted with the brilliant plans from such an up-and-coming architect, had many friends who were interested in building second and third homes in the same area. She’d be sure to pass Rob’s name along to as many of them as he wanted. Added to all of that, he knew that Eliza had always been mildly sickened by the knowledge that so much of their life was underwritten by Judith. He wanted to prove to her that they didn’t need it. He wanted to make himself worthy of her. He wanted to cut the cord.
“We want to support ourselves,” Rob told Judith. “On my income alone.”
They were in the Avery Bar at the Ritz-Carlton at the time; Judith had tickets to Pippin at the Boston Opera House.
Judith put the empty glass down and raised her hand to signal the waiter for another and said, “Let me get this straight. You don’t want any more money from me.”
“Correct,” he said. “I want us to live on my salary alone.”
Judith said, “Salary!” and wiped her mouth with a cocktail napkin. To Judith salaries were like the maraschino cherry in a cocktail: a pretty garnish, and also tasty, but not the thing itself. “What does Eliza think of this plan?”
“She supports it,” said Rob. “One hundred percent.” He added, “She wanted to come today, to talk to you. But Evie had a birthday party to go to.”
In point of fact he hadn’t exactly told Eliza. He was certain that if he told Eliza she would indeed support it one hundred percent. He just didn’t want to tell her until it was official, until he’d nailed Cabot Lodge (literally and figuratively) and put at least one more project on the books. He wanted to surprise her.
“I think it’s ridiculous, Robbie, to do this. Money begets money, you know. With what your father left me when he decided to stay in Thailand with Malai—”
Left me was a bit of a euphemism for what Rob’s father had done with his money, but it seemed unwise to bring that up now. Judith had fought tooth, nail, and everything in between for what she deemed her fair share of the estate of Robert Barnes I. (“For pain and suffering,” she’d snarled into the constant phone calls with the attorneys.)
“It might seem ridiculous to you,” said Rob. “But I promise it makes sense to me. To us. To Eliza and me.”
“Just don’t come back and tell me you’ve changed your mind,” said Judith. “Because once you’ve made your decision, you’ve made your decision.”
Judith had a stubborn streak a mile wide and fourteen breadths long. When Rob’s father had taken up with Malai, Judith had said she never wanted to talk to him again, and she hadn’t, not one single syllable of one single word for more t
han three decades. By the time Rob was ten his father had as good as dropped off the face of the earth. Rob could have a dozen half-Thai half siblings running around the outskirts of Bangkok and he wouldn’t even know it.
Better that way, most agreed, although sometimes, like when the club started organizing the spring father-son golf tournament, Rob felt a pang of sadness so violent it almost sent him to his knees.
“I won’t change my mind,” he said.
“Good. Because I’m going to take the money I’ve been giving to you and I’m going to put it in an investment my financial adviser and I have been talking about for a while now.”
“So it will be—”
“Inaccessible,” Judith said. “Think of it as a long, long-term investment opportunity. I won’t be able to get the money back without considerable time and expense on my part. Which I will not be willing to undertake. Because you are certain.”
“Got it,” he said. “I’m certain.”
Now, with his sober daughters curled up next to his tipsy mother, he needed to get out for a while, to sit somewhere quiet—no daughters, no mothers, no Mrs. Cabot, no females at all—where he could think.
You don’t work with your hands. That was a cruel thing to say.
But Eliza was never cruel. Sure, she could be grumpy, especially when she didn’t get enough sleep or overindulged in fried food or had a hangover, but she wasn’t cruel.
And if she wasn’t cruel, then maybe she was just honest. Maybe, in fact, she was right.
He thought he’d stop in for a beer at Don Pepe’s, but when his fingers were on the door handle he saw through the glass a bunch of semi-familiar women at the bar, a lot of highlighted blond hair being tossed, and he lost his desire for a shot of tequila and a steak fajita.
The same thing happened at Boardwalk (there was no boardwalk in Barton, but the bar prevailed) and Mainsail: gaggles of women, more dolled up for each other than they ever got for their husbands. Tuesday night in Barton was Ladies’ Night Out, an unofficial designation, and one that Rob had forgotten. It was a world without husbands, a world without men. So much for getting away from females: they were everywhere.
Rob settled finally on The Wharf Rat, the only dive bar in Barton. No wharf nearby, and hopefully no rat, but really you never knew. Outside, under the awning, a few twentysomethings were smoking. Rob was peering through the cigarette haze, trying to get a read on the bar’s dim interior, when a familiar figure came weaving down the street: Deirdre Palmer, wearing an outlandishly brief shirt that showed off her nut-brown, toned shoulders.
She grew closer and closer and finally, recognizing Rob, leaned toward him. “Hey, hey,” she said. “What are you doing out on Ladies’ Night?” There was a strong scent of perfume, and something else too—limes? From the margaritas at Don Pepe’s, probably.
“Nothing,” said Rob. “I mean, I’m just out. I didn’t know it was Ladies’ Night.”
“You going in here?” she said, pointing at the bar. Rob shrugged. “I’ll come too,” said Deirdre. She took his arm and led him inside, toward two adjoining barstools. It was not Ladies’ Night at The Wharf Rat. Deirdre was one of only two females in the place, the other being a fiftysomething biker with a tattooed wrist and a navy bandanna tied to her head, so Deirdre’s appearance garnered significant attention. She took in this fact nonchalantly and said to Rob, “I’ve lived in this town fourteen years, and I’ve never been in this place.”
“Me neither,” said Rob. The bartender leaned toward them, his eyes resting on Deirdre’s shoulders, and Rob said, “Two Buds. Bottles.”
“Bud bottles,” said Deirdre. “Look at you. You speak Townie.”
“I guess I do.”
The bartender slammed the beers down on the bar like a challenge, which Deirdre accepted; she downed a third of hers at once. “So. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I love your mother.”
Rob absorbed this news along with a healthy gulp of his beer. He wasn’t going to let a woman beat him at beer drinking. The Bud was fantastic. It made him feel like he was back in college, that first pour from the keg, the feeling that the night was young and anything could happen: anything. He said, “You do? What am I missing?”
“Oh my God,” said Deirdre. “Love. She’s hilarious, she’s absolutely hilarious. We talked a lot on the Fourth of July and she agreed to help me with the gala.”
“Interesting,” said Rob, taken aback. His mother had earned a lot of adjectives in her life, but hilarious was not a common one.
“All these details she thought of in one conversation—boy oh boy, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have so much to learn.” Deirdre paused and tugged on her top. “She freaking loves Eliza, huh?”
Again Rob was stymied. “She said that?”
Deirdre scratched one of her brown shoulders. “She didn’t have to. It’s obvious, the way she talks about her. She admires her, the way she came from nothing.”
Rob stiffened. “Eliza didn’t come from nothing.” He thought of Charlie’s tiny two-bedroom, the little square of kitchen, the town with the single main street. More than once Eliza had driven him by her high school, a low, unassuming building painted a tired tan color with a single playing field and a chain-link fence separating the whole place from Route One. “She didn’t come from nothing,” he repeated. “She just came from different.”
“Oh, don’t take that the wrong way,” said Deirdre. “You know what I mean. Your mother admires Eliza’s smarts, and her guts. She thinks she’s a great mom.”
“She is a great mom.” To the bartender: “Keep ’em coming.”
“I know,” said Deirdre defensively. “That’s what I told her.”
“She went to two years of medical school! And part of the third!”
“I know she did.”
“And then when Zoe was born early she thought it was because of the stress…so she decided to stop.”
“Rob, I know.”
Why did it feel like they were arguing, when they were saying the same thing?
“It’s called ‘stopping out,’ you know. When you take a break in medical school. Eliza calls it the euphemism of all euphemisms.”
“Got it.”
“She could have gone back. She should have gone back! Eliza would have made an amazing doctor. It’s killing her, that she has these connections that could get her dad into a clinical trial and he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
“I know,” said Deirdre. “She told me.”
“I mean, what do you do with that? How do you help a guy who doesn’t want to be helped?”
Deirdre coughed and said, “It’s awful.”
“I just wish there was something else I could do—”
Deirdre paused respectfully.
Now that Rob was on this track he was thinking about when Eliza saw a gunshot wound for the first time—the bullet had nicked some poor bastard’s scrotum, and one of the guys on Eliza’s team passed out, had to be treated himself. Not Eliza! She held her ground, applied pressure, got through it, came home high as a kite over it. She was amazing.
Except for what she’d said the day before: that had really wounded him. You just draw the pictures so other people can build what you draw with their hands. She didn’t say the next part, but she easily could have. For men to make with their hands. Real men.
“I can’t believe your mother bought that boat for you,” Deirdre was saying.
“Eliza hates the boat.”
That was unfair. Eliza didn’t hate the boat. She just thought it was ridiculous that anyone spent that amount of money on one item. Whereas Rob thought, What is money for if not to use it for Hinckley-level irrefutable beauty? A Family Affair represented the underlying tension to any of their arguments: a fundamental difference in the way they saw the world.
“That boat is stunning,” said Deirdre. “That boat is perfection. Brock thinks so too. It’s one thing we’ve agreed on lately. About the only thing.” She sighed and rubbed at her forehead
. She looked genuinely sad. “Your mother gave you what is probably the best fortieth-birthday present ever given.”
“She did. She really did. But I can’t talk about my mom right now. Thinking about her makes me think about Cabot Lodge, and I’m trying to get my mind off Cabot Lodge.”
“Ohhhh, right. How’s that going?”
“Badly.” Big, big gulp of Bud. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I lose the job.”
Just then his phone, which he had laid on the bar, buzzed, and he glanced at it, in case it was his mother or the girls or Eliza. You just draw the pictures.
“Speak of the devil,” observed Deirdre, looking at the phone too. “Christine Cabot. Should you get it?”
Rob was already feeling the beer—no, he decided, he should not get it. “No way,” he said. His voice sounded blurry. “I’ll call her another time.”
“Anyway, you’re not going to lose the job,” said Deirdre. “You’re the architect. You’ve already designed the house. How can you lose the job?”
“It’s complicated,” Rob said. “But believe me, it can happen.” You draw pictures for other men, for the real men, to build with their hands. What was Ruggman doing right now? Probably something manly, watching, oh, who knows, manly internet porn, or drinking moonshine or washing his balls or downing a large glass of raw eggs, Rocky style.
“I get it,” Deirdre said, nodding, drinking, nodding and drinking, all at once.
“You do?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “Everything is complicated.” He wondered how her top stayed on when she shrugged; there must be some sort of magical work with elastic or tape, because the shirt didn’t move. “People think nothing is complicated, if you live in a nice house and have a boat. But that’s bullshit. Things can still be hard.” She hiccuped, and Rob saw that she was drunker than he’d realized. Well, sure. She must weigh about three pounds.
“Right,” he said. How nice it felt to have someone utter those three simple words: I. Get. It.
He reached for a new subject. “When’s that tennis camp start?” If Eliza was going to be in Maine for a while longer, pushing through her scheme to help her father, he’d better get a handle on the scheduling end of things.
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