The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “You can set it up on your phone, you know. If you haven’t already. There are instructions over at the table, on those small white cards. That way you’ll know if someone outbids you and you can place another bid.”

  “Cool,” said Rob noncommittally. Just what he needed: an opportunity to spend money he didn’t have.

  “Your mother is going for the African safari.”

  “Wow.”

  “She’s, like, really going for it.”

  “I’m not sure I can picture my mother on a safari.”

  “Oh, I can,” said Deirdre. “I definitely can.”

  They both glanced over at Judith and Eliza; indeed, Judith had taken her phone out of her evening bag and was examining it. Eliza was clutching a cocktail napkin. She looked like she’d just finished crying or was about to begin. Rob wanted to go over to her, to make sure that she was okay. He wanted to place his hand on the tender part of her heart, to protect her from any more sadness.

  But of course you couldn’t really protect people from sadness, you could only be there for them once it hit.

  Deirdre cleared her throat and the pressure on Rob’s arm increased. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  “Uh,” he said. “Is it about—” He lowered his voice and looked furtively around to see who might be observing them or, worse, listening. He didn’t see Brock anywhere. Gaggles of Barton women and groups (what was the masculine form of gaggles?) of Barton men were milling about, and among them were various unfamiliar faces: imports from Boston or Nantucket or the Vineyard, corporate sponsors, Judith’s nearest and dearest. He saw his dentist, Dr. Choo, and Zoe’s husband-and-wife orthodontist team, the Drs. Smith. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to Deirdre and him. He continued, “Is this about That Night?”

  Deirdre nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.” The African Sunrise was going down easy. His arm, which often throbbed by the end of the day, was merely thrumming pleasantly. “Go for it.”

  “Okay.” Deirdre took a deep breath and looked down, fixing her eyes on the tile. She said, “I’d like to say I regret that night.” Her next sentence came out in a rush, like the words were running over each other to get out. “But I don’t regret it even though I know I should.” Then she looked up, closed her eyes, and sucked in her breath sharply; she looked like Evie did immediately after saying something like, “I spilled chocolate milk on the couch” or “Your iPhone fell in the toilet.”

  “Oh,” he said. He squinted at Deirdre and started to feel a little bit nervous. He glanced over again at Judith and Eliza: they were laughing. Now his arm was throbbing. He might have to go for something stronger than an African Sunrise on the next round.

  He saw one of the gala minions watching them; she was quivering importantly, waiting to talk to Deirdre. He made a motion to indicate the minion but Deirdre ignored him and said, “Listen, Rob. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a few times lately where I’ve almost told Eliza what happened that night.”

  Rob’s heart jumped from his chest and landed somewhere near his ears, and when it was done jumping, he said—very quietly, almost in a whisper—“I know what you mean.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “And here’s why. It would seem, in the telling, like it was so much more than it was. At a time when Eliza is—well, she’s fragile. I’ve never seen Eliza so fragile. And who wouldn’t be? I don’t want to lay anything else on her just so I can feel better. Especially when the thing was, it was a stupid mistake, that I turned a conversation into anything physical. It was nothing.”

  “It was less than nothing!” Rob agreed heartily, and he thought he saw a trace of hurt flicker in Deirdre’s eyes and then disappear. “I mean, in the big scheme of things,” he hurried to say.

  “Right,” she said. A long moment slid between them. The minion gave up, sighed, and left. Deirdre said, “Just one more thing, Rob, then I have to go check in with the chef.”

  “Is it the coin? Did you find the coin?”

  She furrowed her brow. “The what?”

  “My ten-baht.”

  “Oh.” Her face softened. “From your dad.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was rough.

  “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t really need it. I just—”

  “You want it. It’s from your dad. I get it.” She closed her eyes and said, “For such a long time I thought of you, Robert Barnes II, as the one who got away.”

  Rob was at once flattered, perplexed, and a little afraid. “But how could I be the one who got away? I’ve only known you since the kids were born.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know. That’s what’s funny about it. But it’s how I felt. You’re decent, and you’re kind, and the way you listened to me that night at The Wharf Rat—I just hadn’t been listened to in so long. So I wanted to say thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Rob.

  “And, as far as anything physical goes…” She hesitated.

  Rob cringed. “Deirdre, we really don’t need to—”

  “No, let me finish,” she said. “This is important. You had a lot to drink that night.”

  If a cringe could get deeper, that’s what Rob’s did.

  “You didn’t…how should I say this? You didn’t have your usual faculties about you. And I, well, this is embarrassing, but I took advantage of you.”

  “You did?” asked Rob.

  “I did. I offered you a ride home, you remember.”

  “I don’t remember. All I remember is that we were in the bar, and then we were in the Tahoe kissing.”

  “Right. Only kissing! But even that—you tried to stop me, Rob. I ignored you. Then you got out of my car and drove your own car home.”

  “You did? I did?”

  “And then when I saw you outside St. Matthew’s, I let you think you were equally to blame. It was terrible of me.”

  “No,” said Rob. “I was equally to blame. It takes two to make a mistake like that.”

  “The funny thing is, the past few weeks things have been better than great between Brock and me.” Deirdre looked shy and sort of sweet, like someone had taken her sharp edges and filed them down to a rounder, softer version. “It’s like what happened between us made me realize that I should put my energy into that, into my own marriage, instead of, well, you know, envying someone else’s. And once I started trying harder, Brock did too.”

  “That’s great,” said Rob. “Deirdre, I’m really happy to hear that.”

  “I mean, the sex has been fantastic—”

  Rob held up his hand and said, “Okay, okay, we don’t need to—”

  “You’re right,” said Deirdre with a private smile. “We don’t need to. But it’s like what happened between you and me fixed whatever was wrong. And you’re not the one who got away anymore. You’re just—you’re just you. You’re just Rob.”

  “I’m glad,” said Rob, “about Brock. I’m glad I’m just Rob.”

  “So thank you.”

  “Well,” said Rob. He’d been attending social functions since before he could button his own suit coat. He came from a world where manners trumped everything. If there was one thing he knew how to do it was how to respond to gratitude. “You’re welcome,” he said, and meant it. “You’re very welcome, Deirdre.”

  53

  BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Eliza

  “You won’t believe it,” Deirdre told Eliza when they greeted each other. “One of the corporate sponsors who wasn’t even going to come called this morning to say that they were coming. With guests! We had to redo three of the front tables. I’m out of my mind.” But Deirdre didn’t look out of her mind. She looked blissful and in control. She was the happiest version of Deirdre that Eliza had seen in a long, long time.

  Everything had come together beautifully. Eliza was in awe. At each end of the long room se
parating the grand ballroom from the patio were two bars, and in between the bars were two long tables holding the silent-auction items. One of the most popular items was a donation from a new jeweler that had just moved to town: twenty-five “mystery boxes.” A clutch of women were holding up each box and shaking it in turn. The whole idea of shaking twenty-five mystery boxes of jewelry made Eliza feel exhausted, but the women were getting super into it.

  In the grand ballroom were twenty-five tables set for ten, with the simplest, classiest centerpieces Eliza had ever seen: tall thin vases filled with sand, each holding a single bloodred desert rose. There was a large screen set up at the front of the room, which for now was blank. Eliza saw Catherine Cooper and Sheila Rackley deliberating over something near one of the bars, so she went directly to the opposite one. Eliza was still getting her Barton legs back; she felt like a newborn colt, unbalanced one moment, sure of herself the next.

  Eliza ordered the signature cocktail of the evening: an African Sunrise, served in a highball glass. She found a small round bar table to sit at, from which she surveyed the scene. Glittery dresses. Tanned legs, tanned arms, manicures, pedicures. Perfume. Professionally straightened hair, professionally loosely curled hair, gold bracelets, silver watches. More money in Claire Foster’s earrings—pear-shaped diamonds, a famously extravagant “push present” from her husband after the birth of their third son—than some men in Little Harbor had invested in their boats or their houses.

  When a familiar voice said, “Excuse me, is this seat taken?” Eliza turned around: her mother-in-law.

  “I bought two tables,” Judith said. “Early on. Stocked them with my richest friends; I promised Deirdre they’d drive the silent-auction prices to the sky. And they will.”

  “Wow,” said Eliza. “Two tables! That was really nice of you.”

  Judith shrugged and said, “Nice, schmice. I love a good gala. People get drunk and they’re wicked and generous all at the same time. It’s the perfect storm.” She felt at her neck for her diamond-wrapped pearl pendant. “Of course,” she went on, “I did have a seat for Christine Cabot. She’s been known to spend at these events. But…”

  “I know,” said Eliza. “I know.” Christine effing Cabot.

  “We’re not speaking, just at the moment,” said Judith. “Christine and I.”

  “I’m not speaking to Christine Cabot at the moment either,” said Eliza, and Judith surprised her by laughing genuinely.

  Judith wore an asymmetrical peplum dress in white. Daring, for a woman of sixty-five, some might say, especially the white. But Judith made it work: she was like the Susan Lucci of—well, everything. Just when you thought she was done for she came back stronger and more alive than ever, with more extravagant hair. Judith settled herself in the chair opposite Eliza and arranged herself so she had a view of the glittering crowd. She took a long sip of her African Sunrise. “This goes down easy,” she said.

  “It does. I wonder what’s in it?”

  “Ethiopian coffee, grapefruit vodka, sparkling water, simple syrup.”

  How did Judith know so much? She knew everything!

  Judith leaned toward Eliza and said, “How are you doing, Eliza? Now that you’ve been home for a while. I know how it goes with these things, you’re so caught up in the details, the arrangements, that it takes a while for your feelings to settle. And of course it was all such a shock. And even when it isn’t, mourning takes a long time. There are so many ups and downs along the way. Of course you remember that, from when your mother died.”

  “I do.” The early, dark February days, the iron sky low over Little Harbor, the lobster boats and the traps pulled out of the water: it all seemed like one long, desolate winter’s dream.

  “I once heard it described as walking upstairs with a yo-yo.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “There’s just no way to rush it. Because life is long, Eliza. It goes on and on and on, and if we’re lucky we can recover from sorrow, and we can even reinvent ourselves. I understand reinvention, you know. I get why Robbie’s trying to do what he’s trying to do about the money.

  “You do?”

  Judith nodded, and her hair didn’t move. “Living with money is a complicated business. You haven’t learned how to do it yet. It takes years.”

  Eliza said, “I’ve had years.”

  “It takes more years, longer. Believe me, I know. It took me so long to get used to the kind of money that’s in this family.”

  “It did?”

  “Sure it did. Of course it did. I grew up decidedly middle class. In New Jersey. When I met Rob’s father he introduced me to a world that I hardly knew had existed before.”

  Eliza said, “Middle class? How did I not know that? I knew you were from New Jersey. But I always thought it was rich-person’s New Jersey.”

  “I don’t talk about it much. But it was not rich-person’s New Jersey. And it was lovely. Right along the shore, the beaches were something else. The boardwalk. Bruce Springsteen land, as it came to be known. My childhood was idyllic.”

  “I love Bruce Springsteen,” breathed Eliza. She thought about The Wheelhouse, the jukebox, the men coming in off the boats. She thought, “My Hometown,” and her heart constricted a little bit.

  “Come to think of it,” said Judith now, “Rob’s the only real native among us, when it comes to the money, the only one truly born into it. So he is the only one entirely comfortable with it. Which is why it’s so funny that he—oh, why talk about it. That’s all between the two of you now.”

  There was a brief, hopeful moment when Eliza thought Judith was going to reveal her stance on Rob’s financial misjudgment to be some sort of a joke—Eliza thought she might say, Of course I’m here if you need me. And so is my money!

  But Judith didn’t say that. Judith lifted her empty highball glass and said, “Another one?”

  Eliza wasn’t sure she was ready to be drunk under the table by her own mother-in-law. “Maybe in a minute,” said Eliza. “I need to get some food first.”

  The menu, both the sit-down dinner and the passed hors d’oeuvres, was a mix of East African–inspired cuisine and good old New England fare. Deirdre had arranged for a top chef from Boston to oversee the staff at the club.

  “Let’s try the lobster mac-and-cheese bites. I hear the meat is fresh off the boat,” said Judith. Eliza searched her mother-in-law’s face for signs of irony, but Judith’s expression was sphinxlike.

  “Okay,” Eliza said, even though sometimes the thought of eating lobster seemed cannibalistic, like she was eating one of her own children.

  As they waited for another waiter to come by with food they considered each other.

  “Eliza, are you crying?”

  “I know,” Eliza said. “I shouldn’t, I’ll ruin my makeup. I never wear this much eyeliner, I never should have—”

  “Don’t worry about the makeup,” said Judith. “That’s my advice to you and to girls and women everywhere: never worry about the makeup.” She said that with a face full of Estée Lauder, but at least she said it. Judith handed Eliza a cocktail napkin with a Malawi flag printed on it.

  Eliza closed her eyes and tried to see down the long tunnel that was the future, that was life going on and on and on, with its smooth patches and its bumpy patches and its messiness and chaos and beauty; she could even, she thought, see a time when she might feel okay about her father, when she might start to feel quite normal. Not yet, maybe not for a long time. But someday.

  She opened her eyes and took another sip of African Sunrise. Almost empty. There was a waiter heading their way, palming a tray of fresh drinks.

  “Lovely,” breathed Judith. She removed two glasses and set them down on the table. “Since the very first time Rob brought you home I’ve been intimidated by you, Eliza.”

  Eliza choked on her next sip. She said, “Excuse me? You were intimidated by me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Becau
se, well, you’re intimidating.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re so smart, and, pardon the expression, but you really pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and you work hard, and you know your way around a lobster boat and a scalpel, and you’re an amazing mother…”

  “Wow,” said Eliza. The liquor made her bold and she said, “I thought I was the consolation prize. I thought you always wanted Rob to marry Kitty Sutherland. All these years, I thought you thought Rob married down.”

  “Kitty Sutherland is a moron with a twentieth of your personality. Kitty Sutherland would have been the consolation prize. Rob married up, my dear girl. Rob married up.”

  Judith tipped her glass toward Eliza, and Eliza tipped hers toward Judith, and they clinked lightly, though the sound was swallowed by the background noise, by the party for the East African children.

  Maybe it was the cocktail making its way through her veins, or maybe it was the fact that Judith’s white dress gave her a faintly religious air, but Eliza was beginning to feel something wash over her that might have been absolution.

  The next morning, first thing when she woke up, she was going to find those papers from Phineas Tarbox’s office, and she was going to sign the heck out of them.

  “There but for,” said Judith, taking a sip of the African Sunrise. Despite the white dress, the coiffed hair, the glittering rings and necklace, Eliza could see in her a teenager, long-legged and lighthearted, buoyant and free, her whole life ahead of her, running along a twilit beach on the Jersey Shore.

  Eliza had never heard the quote shortened that way—that was nervy of Judith, like a lot of things about Judith were nervy: her hair and her clothing and her eyebrows and her attitude. But Eliza liked Judith’s version. It fit. It made for a good ending.

  Epilogue

  Two weeks after Deirdre’s gala, which netted sixty-two thousand dollars for East Africa Needs You, at approximately eight thirty one evening, Robert Barnes II got a call from one Nadine Edwards, who had just returned to Boston after spending the summer on the Vineyard.