Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

  The phone rang, and Vita ignored it, even though she was standing right there. Sloane reached behind her and got it. “Hello, Mrs. Pasto.” She eyed Vita, who shook her head.

  After a few “uh-huhs,” Sloane hung up the phone. “Your mom just wanted to know how everyone liked the goose.”

  Vita knew that “everyone” meant Dr. Nicastro. Her mother had gotten it into her head that he had potential to be more than just a stomach for her daughter’s cooking, that he might appreciate her other charms as well. There was a time when Vita entertained some notions along those lines too, confusing, as always, feeding with loving, but that was over and done with. As she stirred, she rested her hips against the counter, exhausted. Luisa came running down the stairs with a single dinner plate and began to scrape its graveyard of bones into the trash.

  “Wait.” Vita grabbed Luisa by the wrist. “Whose was that?”

  “Dr. Nicastro’s,” Luisa said, backing away.

  Vita retrieved a bare bone from the pile, its marrow sucked dry. “Did he say anything?”

  Luisa moved her head slowly from side to side. “He very quiet, Vita, all night.”

  “Oh.” Vita laid the bone back in the trash. It was over. He had eaten her food for pure animal survival, not desire. She could have fed him garbage, just like el puerco Mrs. Suarez wanted the Club to raise, and it would have all been the same to him. Fine then. She would fall on her cleaver and prepare his cheese plate herself. She knew just what he liked, and she wanted him to never forget it.

  “Luisa, don’t go back up yet. I want you to bring this one to him.”

  With her hands bare, she centered a cluster of glaucous ruby grapes alongside the strawberry and papaya, and on top of a few arugula leaves, she arranged a lump of mild local chèvre at twelve on the plate. At four, she placed a Pecorino Toscano that smelled of the Italian hills where the sheep had grazed; then she closed the circle with a wedge of Persillé du Beaujolais, a blue cheese made with raw cow’s milk. Almost losing the bandage on her finger, she pawed through the red Bartlett pears and chose one so ripe it could be drunk rather than eaten, and felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. She cut the fruit lengthwise, placing one half cut-side down on the plate, rosy bottom up. After a moment’s consideration, she split open an intensely fragrant fig with her thumbs and pressed an almond into the flesh. To finish, she drizzled the bloodred sauce, signing her name.

  She handed the plate off to Luisa, who was staring at her. “You’d better hurry,” said Vita. “Helga said the society band wants to start setting up for the dance.”

  Before Luisa could comfort her, Vita wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her chef’s jacket, readjusted her toque, and turned away.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Small Ball

  FRANK NICASTRO stood up from his solitary table, his cummerbund creaking like the girth on a horse, and hit the back of his head on one of the tent brackets. He rubbed his skull with one hand while extending the other to Howard Amory, the winner of the Fothergill Cup.

  “Congratulations, Howie, quite a coup.”

  Howard, a thin, quiet man in his early sixties, smelling of soap, with red freckles across his nose, raised his pilsner glass of beer. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Frank tried to move closer, but his feet got caught in tenting that draped on the lawn, so he stayed where he was and reached for his goblet instead, clinking Howard’s glass. After drinking loudly, he smacked his wine-dark lips. “I guess they never even saw you coming. What’s the secret?”

  Howard examined the foamy contents of his glass, looking into other worlds, and Frank, familiar with his conversational lag time, patiently waited and gazed around the tent, filled with rustling silk and piped-in Bach. A warm breeze wafted through the open sections, bringing with it the first tang of autumn, making the crowd restless. They looked as if they might start flapping south for the winter any minute now. The red-faced men, flaunting new heart valves and hips, strained against their monkey suits. The women, severely pruned and carefully gowned, swiveled their necks, keeping everyone under surveillance. Beverly Freylinghuysen, the winner of the Nine Hole Ladies Challenge, glowed, having played cheerfully through her husband’s arrest and arraignment that day. Jay, on bail, sat by her side, basking in her glory.

  Just when Frank thought Howard had gone to sleep, he spoke ever so slowly. “Flexibility is the trick. When they moved that hole, I was able to change my game faster than the others.” He rested his glass against his pleated shirt. “Not only that, I changed my attitude. This summer I decided to accept my game as it was, no matter what, to know what the end would be and go on anyway.” He looked up at Frank and smiled. “It’s been a great season, while it lasted.”

  Frank stared. He had never heard so many words from this man before, who even in the liveliest of social situations, always seemed to be somewhere else. Frank always assumed that “somewhere” was the golf course, but now he was not so sure. “It’s hard to accept loss,” he said.

  Howard nodded somberly, and the two men stood for a moment, observing a silence. Frank breathed in as deeply as his engorged stomach would allow, hoping to catch the last whiff of goose in the air, but it seemed all the plates were gone now. The tent was no longer filled with the essence of old-growth forests and glacial streams. Instead, cut flowers released their fragrance as they died, and stale perfume rose from wrinkled décolletage. The candles in their crystal holders grew low and sent up thin pillars of black smoke. Such was his loss. Would he be able to accept it?

  The harsh crack of Palmer Stillington’s voice broke their reverie, and everyone in the room, from members to busboys, rolled a collective eye. At the other end of the cavern of white canvas, Helga, the stout maître d’, took Stillington’s abuse without expression. There would be no fluffing up of members on her watch. Her smile still had to do duty for three more hours, and she was not going to have it ruined by the likes of Stillington. What-ever his problem was, it went away when she did, turning on her efficient heels with a polite nod. His tantrum withered on the vine.

  “Talk about your turd in the punch bowl,” said Frank.

  “He drinks too much,” said Howard. “That’s his problem.”

  “We all drink too much,” said Nicastro, raising his crystal chalice and taking a deep swallow of his Clos Puy Arnaud 2000 Bordeaux. Dark and lively, the wine had held its own with the intensity of the goose. “But we don’t end every conversation in a pool of blood.”

  Howard laughed as slowly as he talked, and his freckles bunched up on the bridge of his nose. “No, but at least you know where you stand with him. The others plot dark revenges, all the while smiling in your face. Now that I’ve won the Cup, I’ll have to start watching my back.”

  Frank was shocked. Not that Howard would have to now watch his back, which was all too true, but that he referred to the members as “the others.” Howard was a second-generation Club member, and even though his family owned strip malls, Frank thought them quite established. But then again, so few at the Club were real Wasps. It was a dying breed, yet they all aspired to it, himself included, all trying to conform to the standards of a nearly extinct species.

  “I’m off,” said Amory. “They’re expecting me at the dais to collect my tribute.”

  After a warm good-bye, Frank stood a moment longer to watch the man work the tent. He was heartily congratulated, but as soon as Howie moved on, Frank could sense the members eating him alive, their heads closing in to the middle of the tables like carnivorous plants. But being cannibals did not make them complete monsters. By and large, they were kind to one another when they chose, attentive to their children, and loving to their pets. His meal had made him generous, and he blessed his fellow members with goodwill, that they might find what they sought in status, money, beauty, and love.

  He should be so content. He sat back down with a grunt and looked at the empty space where his plate once sat. The goose had made him want to tear hunks from a spit-roasted boar w
ith his teeth, wipe grease from a hedge-sized beard with the back of his hand, and clink a mammoth tankard with his brothers, the bowmen. He’d growled at Luisa whenever she came near to take his plate, but finally he had to let it go back from whence it came. Vita.

  Vita. He touched the tablecloth and wondered what to do. He should run down the stairs, lift her over his head, and march her around the dining room to further her glory. But he still couldn’t shake his suspicion that the kitchen was a front for hot goods. Why this need to have his chef be pure of heart? Was he so perfect? He could think of plenty of things in his life he was not so proud of. Wasn’t sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? Or was there no such thing as gander sauce?

  He cursed Madeline for ever suggesting something fishy was going on in the kitchen. He looked around the tent but did not expect to see her, although he heard that she’d gone to cocktails the night before in a scandalously short dress. Good for her. A scandal was a service to the community. Gave them something to chew on for the rest of the weekend. Although God knows she and her family had given them their meat and drink all summer, with Phoebe at the gates and Charles in the garage. Madeline’s problem was that she was such a poor liar. If she had only gone on in a chirpy manner, pretending that her family’s problems were no affair of hers, like Beverly Freylinghuysen over there, nothing would have changed. But she wore her unhappy heart on her sleeve, which meant that the other members could not pretend everything was fine in their little world. And that was unforgivable.

  He leaned over and touched his nose to the tablecloth, to see if any goose lingered in the fibers. Where could Vita have gotten her hands on so many wild geese, and where, in this day and age, did she learn what to do with them? He spotted a smidgen of sauce on the tablecloth and stuck his tongue out to lick it, but caught himself. Instead, he rubbed his finger on the spot and put it in his mouth. Oh, Vita! He wanted to massage the precious ointment on his arms, over his thighs, and across his chest. He wanted to feel it between his toes. Mi fa libidine. It gave him a hard-on.

  He sat up. People were staring. He was eating like a pig, and he didn’t even have any food in front of him. He looked over at the open flap that served as a door to see if Luisa was coming with his next course, and he caught the eye of that little leapfrog Hilary Fisher. She was dining with some fresh kill. New members. Both the Fishers waved furiously at him from across the room, as if they were still friends.

  He lifted his glass to them and took a sip. It might sound harsh to say that when Hilary had got all she could out of people she discarded them, but there it was. In the end, though, he forgave her everything when he heard her laugh and saw how she was enjoying herself. Her new friends laughed along, all without spitting out any food, as he’d been known to do. He would dump him too, if he could.

  He saw Luisa, the perfect handmaiden to the meal. Other waiters were more polite but less sincere, fussing over the members like decorators, and he had not wanted that sort of intrusion. Luisa just let him eat, allowing him to be lifted by the wings of the goose itself. She placed the fruit and cheese in front of him. A poem on a plate.

  “Vita, she make this one herself,” said Luisa.

  “Of course.” As the museum curator can tell whether a paint stroke is the master’s or the apprentice’s, so Frank could tell by the very arrangement on the plate that this was the work of Vita’s own hand. That and the fact that she had signed her name in sauce. As Luisa brushed a single surviving crumb off the white tablecloth, he heard the pear whisper, “Me first, eat me.” The fruit barely held its shape as he assisted it down his throat. He closed his eyes, feeling fructose rush through his veins, raising him from lethargic digestion.

  He reached for Luisa’s wrist and smiled conspiratorially. “Luisa, where did the geese for the dinner come from?”

  She looked over her shoulder and whispered, “You keep secret?”

  The doctor raised his hand to God.

  Luisa bent. “It is geese here at the Club.”

  “Impossible. Those stringy things would taste of lawn chemicals and Aquashade.”

  Luisa shook her head. “Barry don’t spray poison all summer, and Vita, she tend the island birds like babies. Up at five to feed, so no others have her goodies. She spoil them with food. What you taste when you eat, that is her love for them.”

  Nicastro’s face went cold. “Water,” he croaked.

  Luisa looked around the tent with her hands on her hips. “Where useless water boy go? I never get to tell him what to do.” She tapped the table with her knuckles. “I will bring it myself.”

  He nodded. What had he done? The geese were why Vita was at the Club at all sorts of shifty hours this summer. She had been hiding something, all right, but she hid it in the name of her art and for the good of the community. She hid it for him, who did not deserve such devotion. He’d listened to gossip that turned him against this woman, this alchemist who could turn golf course pests into gustatory splendor. He stared with desolation at the shuddering candle.

  Luisa returned with a silver water pitcher. Frank leaned close, for he had to know the truth. “Luisa, tell me. I went down to the kitchen a few weeks ago and the staff was tossing around some expensive shirts. Why?”

  “Stupid shirts.” Luisa looked like she might spit. “The Clays give them for us before they go out of country. Tips!” She snorted as she poured. “My cousin make them into smocks for the day-care kids.” She placed the glass down. “Something wrong, Dr. Nicastro?”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Ball in Play

  MADELINE ENTERED the club-house from a side door, wearing the plain black shirt, pants, and sneakers of a cat burglar. Hugging the walls, she maneuvered the maze of corridors to the library door, then paused. Sounds of the banquet drifted in from a window at the other end of the hall—the clinking of knives on crystal, the clearing of throats—as one member after another stood to toast the winner. Beneath the applause, beneath the goodwill, she heard a rumble of forced heartiness that made her sad beyond all words.

  Someone tested the microphone with a cough and a gurgle. Eugene Hollowell must have stepped up to the podium to give the president’s after-dinner speech in Humpy’s place. Perfect. Gene not only couldn’t separate his vowels from his consonants, but also couldn’t recognize when a thought had reached its natural end. The members would be held captive for a half hour or more, logy from dinner and drained from trying to decipher his muddy words. She closed the library door behind her, noiselessly, and shoved the forged latch into place.

  She reached for the table lamp, with its spiderweb of lead on glass, then decided against it. Instead she opened the heavy drapes, letting the security light shine in at an angle through the diamond panes, landing on the Oriental carpet in slashes. As she cranked the window open wide to let in the night air, insects began to settle on the screen. Below, on the window seat, was her bag, exactly where she’d left it the day before. She bemoaned the deteriorating standards of the Club, that the room had not been swept clean overnight, then laughed at herself for sounding just like Arietta. She was getting out none too soon.

  She had to keep moving. She did, after all, have a date to keep that evening: Charles had left a note on the bed while she was still unconscious that morning, asking to meet her at Plateau at ten. She could guess what he wanted. A divorce. Or perhaps something more sinister, like drowning her in the lake. It was uncanny that he—who had not left his garage in weeks—had obviously already heard about her and Scott, the memory of which made her wince to her bones.

  What had she been thinking? Was she that drunk? That unhappy? It was as if she’d set herself up to be caught in the act, in the same way she had once helped to set up Eliot and the hooker. There’s Karma for you, as Phoebe would say.

  Madeline panicked when she saw one of the cabinets ajar, thinking that someone had come looking for the book, but she realized, no, it must have been Gene, sifting through the books of golf jokes to prepare for his speech. S
he reached up and felt behind the undisturbed Thomas Mann collection for the key, then knelt down and took out, for the last time, the moldy stacks of National Geographics. She removed the false back and set it aside. It was difficult finding the keyhole without a flashlight, but she’d gone through the motion so often she could do it in her sleep. How many relationships had she brought to ruin with the turn of this key? How much heartbreak had she caused? The inner mechanism released and she lifted out the tattered leather book with great care.

  At the fireplace, she checked to make sure the damper was open. There would be no second chances. For all she knew, Gerard Wilton was lurking in the shadows, since he was no longer under the tree with Phoebe. She wasn’t sure where either of them was right now, so he might very well be back on the job. As for Phoebe, two empty Ben & Jerry’s containers in the trash meant she’d been home at some point, which was a huge relief in itself. Maybe Humpy, a lame-duck president with nothing to lose now, had freed her with some vegan concessions. But whether Phoebe’s sit-in worked as planned or not, Madeline was proud of her for putting her beliefs on the line. The fact that the Land Rover was gone meant that she’d probably already embarked on some new animal rescue mission, which was the only time she’d stoop to drive the gas-guzzler. Oddly enough, a little black Mercedes was parked in its place. It was vaguely familiar, yet none of Phoebe’s friends would have a car like that. Had she seen it at the Club? Did Charles have a lover in the garage with him? Or a lawyer?

  The trouble was, if Phoebe didn’t return to-night, Madeline would have to leave home in the acid-green VW, which meant, among other things, she’d have to be very careful about what she took with her. Which was just as well. How much of her present life was worth lugging all the way to Arizona? The less she brought to her mother’s home, already full of chimes, cats, and massage tables, the better. She needed to simplify while she figured out her next step. She pulled Ellen’s various legal forms from the book and crumpled them in balls on the grate, arranging pieces of kindling on top.