Hugh glanced at Helen before settling into his chair. He tried to return to the pleasant sensation he’d had upon sitting down with Helen and Ed, but all he noticed now was the narrow space between two doorways where an African mask had always hung. The mask was gone, and it was terribly unnerving to see the empty space, which was no doubt contributing to his mood. When he’d asked about the mask several years ago, over an unusually pleasant dinner with his father, Mrs. O’Hagen had told him that she purchased it from an old woman in Dakar. She’d seemed pleased that Hugh was interested and had mentioned her decorative knives from the Congo; perhaps he might one day want to see them?
Hugh knew that Mrs. O’Hagen might remember him, but he was too reserved to ever act as if they’d met. There were reports that she conferred the honor of viewing her naked flesh upon a select few Harvard upperclassmen each year, but Hugh did not want to even consider that he could be among those few, as he would never—now that he finally had Helen—accept such a distinction.
“What?” Ed repeated. “What exactly don’t I take in? Look.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned in toward both of them. “When girls—not only girls—when anyone is skittish about my … personal candor, I know not to trust them.”
“Is that so?” countered Helen.
“I know not to trust them, because they clearly haven’t resolved their own personal problems. That,” Ed said, “is why they’re uncomfortable.”
“Maybe,” said Helen, taking a last long drag of her cigarette. “Or maybe they just find you overbearing.”
Ed waved her off. “What would I want with people like that?”
Mrs. O’Hagen sauntered toward their table with a bowl of cornichons. She described les especials—especially a leg of lamb with some nice spring peas—quite tenderly.
“You are ready?” Mrs. O’Hagen asked meaningfully. “Do you know what you would like?”
When the cake arrived, it sported one lit candle, and Hugh and Helen sang a shy but boozy happy birthday. Ed’s face lit up as if no one had ever done anything nice for him before that moment, and Hugh felt a strange flip in his throat that signaled his own special breed of crying (quick start, no end in sight) and he slugged down the rest of the Bordeaux. When Ed loosened his tie and raised his glass, it was easy for Hugh to picture how his friend would age, how he might lose his hair and get rounder at the middle but he’d always command a room without doing more than this: lifting a glass and—for one brief moment—looking deadly serious.
Ed twitched—a vigorous blink—just like he did when he’d been studying all night and insisted on recounting what he knew, even as Hugh had fallen asleep on the common-room couch, leaving Ed to rattle off dates and concepts until he was completely satisfied there was nothing he had missed. “You not only have to get it all in there,” he’d explained, when Hugh asked why he had to say everything out loud, “but you have to make sure none of it leaks out.” He talked about acquiring knowledge as if it was no different than fixing up a car, filling it with a full tank of gas.
“Hugh,” he said now, “Helen.” Again the big blink. “I want you to know that you are my friends. I would kill for you both, I really think I would.”
Hugh and Helen started to laugh. Ed did not.
“Don’t laugh.”
“Sorry,” said Hugh.
“Sorry,” said Helen.
“Thank you for taking me to this restaurant on my birthday.”
“You’re welcome,” said Hugh.
Mrs. O’Hagen came back to the table. She picked up the cake. “Happy birthday,” she said to Ed. “I will cut this into pieces. And maybe some crème?” She turned, and Ed watched her go.
“I have to sleep with that woman,” he said, his outpouring over their friendship clearly finished.
“What about getting back to how you’d kill for us?” said Hugh.
“She has slept with others,” Ed maintained, as if to soothe himself. “It is not out of the question.”
“I’d let that particular ambition fall away if I were you,” said Hugh, and Helen nodded, offering another cigarette to be lit. “What do you really know about her willingness? I think it might be nothing but wishful rumors.”
“John Winn has.”
“I’m sorry,” said Helen, “but that’s John Winn.”
“John Winn,” said Ed, “is a drunk who was kicked out of Harvard for holding up a movie-theater cashier with a water pistol.”
Helen shrugged giddily. “I’m only saying …”
“He held up a cashier—a movie cashier—”
“As if the type of cashier matters!”
“He held up a cashier with a water pistol. Are you saying he’s more sexually appealing than I am?” Ed was grinning madly now. “Connie Graff liked me!”
“Connie Graff married a dermatology resident and moved to Westchester. This is Mrs. O’Hagen,” stressed Helen, looking at Hugh for encouragement.
“It is,” offered Hugh.
Suddenly Ed backed his chair away from the table and dropped his napkin. The kitchen was at the end of a long narrow hallway and they could make out half of Mrs. O’Hagen, whose back was to them. They watched Ed approach her, stopping just shy of grabbing her behind. They watched as Mrs. O’Hagen turned around, holding a dessert plate. Ed took the plate from her hand and set it back down on the counter. Hugh and Helen said nothing, the older couple ate in silence, and the few other tables in the restaurant were empty, but, even so, no one could hear what Ed said to Mrs. O’Hagen that produced such a laugh, a laugh clearly ripening to become either a giddy reproach or—remarkably—an invitation. No one could hear what he’d said. In fact, it was as if the room was filling up with a thick and difficult silence. Hugh and Helen sat back in the banquette and, as if in response to what could only be described as the very real heat that Ed had somehow managed to generate in that small kitchen, Hugh put his hand up Helen’s skirt and Helen tilted toward him. But both of them still watched the kitchen; someone was bound to come back at any moment, after all.
Chapter Five
Solstice
“I’ve never been on a ferry before,” Ed said. “How is that possible?” He stretched out his legs and rapped his knuckles on the wooden bench. The deck was neither crowded nor empty and it was unseasonably warm for June. The sun shone, gulls swooped, and as he breathed in deeply, a salt scent came not only from the sea but also from the potato chips four pregnant women were noshing.
“You realize,” said Hugh, “we’re headed toward a special kind of nature preserve.”
Hugh had been talking cryptically and continuously since they’d boarded the boat half an hour before, and now Ed was barely listening. He preferred to look at all the mothers-to-be, at their tan calves and straw hats, and to imagine each one during their individual moments of conception. It certainly altered the view.
“Nature preserve?” Helen mumbled, from her prone state. She loved the sun; her eyes were closed.
Hugh lit a cigarette, looked out toward Fishers Island. “Sure,” he said, nodding at the four pregnant women. “We’re coming up on one of the last places left in the Northern Hemisphere where WASPs can successfully procreate without threat from outside forces.”
Helen sat up, fanned herself with the ferry schedule. “Okay,” she said. “That was funny. Now, are you almost done?”
“Sadly,” said Hugh, “no.” He stretched his arm around her.
“Hugh,” she said.
“Ed should really prepare himself.”
“I think I got the picture,” said Ed. “The man is not a fan of the Jews.”
“What did you tell him?” asked Helen, alarmed.
“Just the basic truth.” Hugh shrugged. “But your father knows Ed’s our friend. I imagine he’ll behave himself.”
“Yes,” said Helen, her voice tight, “I imagine he will.” She took a cigarette from her purse and Hugh lit it for her. “You know,” she said, “my father happens to have a deep respect for hard worke
rs. And, say what we will about Ed”—she smiled brightly—“he’s a hard worker.”
“True,” said Hugh. Though he wasn’t finished with it, he crushed his cigarette, stripped it to bits, and threw it out to sea. “Fishers Island is kind of like a zoo. A beautiful, impeccably maintained zoo. And there’s a deep fear of having to live outside the zoo. Did you know that?”
“Really?” Helen asked. “And did you go and do all the necessary fieldwork with the monkeys and the lions? Did they reveal their deepest fears? Hugh, seriously. My father would be mortified.”
“I would have assumed it anyway,” Ed assured her.
“Well, that’s hardly fair.”
“But he isn’t—as you so nicely put it, Ed—a fan,” asked Hugh. “Is he?”
“Well, no,” said Helen. “If you mean as a group? No, he is not.”
“Maybe it’s more of a hothouse than a zoo,” Hugh persisted. “Everyone in their summer states of mind. The island mentality. Forgive me—and I will get this out of my system—but it’s crippling being sequestered. People form dependencies. They stop paying attention.” He shook his head, as if he was unable to shrug off his mood.
Two of the pregnant ladies looked up from their magazines. Ed caught one’s eye and smiled. He imagined how her husband was likely finishing his week on Wall Street in an old-money firm, where—if you were from the right family—you could be a perfect idiot and somehow still, upon graduating, have a coveted position waiting.
“Please,” Helen said quietly. “You said you wanted to come.”
“Of course I want to come,” Hugh said, also lowering his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s your family. Of course I want to be with you if this is where you want to be. Plus, we’re going to show Ed a good time before he starts making his real dough and we never see him again.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Ed said, looking out at the horizon, heady from the saltwater, from other people’s problems. He pictured Fishers Island the way it looked on a map—a few dabs of land between Long Island and Connecticut; nothing to get worked up about. “I don’t care about any of this,” Ed insisted. “I just want to go swimming.”
“Sure you do,” said Hugh. “You do care.”
“Maybe,” said Helen, “he doesn’t care right now. Maybe we don’t have to care about the deeper aspects of our society twenty-four hours a day. Even Bobby Kennedy goes sailing with some regularity, you know.”
“Bobby Kennedy,” scoffed Hugh. “Bobby Kennedy’s a lightweight.”
“Again?” asked Ed. “We’re going to get into this again?”
“He was practically McCarthy’s right-hand man.”
“You know,” said Ed, deciding not to spend the rest of the boat ride arguing about degrees of liberalism, “I actually have plenty of sympathy for how people marry their own kind here and—”
“Sure,” said Hugh. “While playing golf and getting smashed and wearing their native attire, they’re simply carrying out their traditions. The Dani ritually kill other tribes, and our people just keep everyone at bay and pretend they don’t exist.”
“Don’t you think you’re sounding a tiny bit silly?” Helen asked.
Hugh grinned in his half-grinning way, blue eyes squinting into the sun even though he had a perfectly good pair of sunglasses on top of his head. “Of course,” he said finally. “Of course I am.”
As if she’d been reading Ed’s thoughts, Helen placed Hugh’s sunglasses gently on his face.
“I’m a product of this place,” Hugh said, by way of explanation.
“As am I,” Helen said. “And guess what? Last time I checked”—she held up her finger, where the late Mrs. Shipley’s engagement diamond sparkled so brightly Ed imagined it could start a fire—“you and I are getting married. We are marrying our own kind.”
Hugh shrugged. “Sarcasm is my only weapon.”
“You hardly need a weapon,” Helen said. Ed had thought she was angry, but he was evidently wrong. She was smiling, even laughing, now that Hugh was done with being funny.
Ed Cantowitz peered around the ferry deck. Everyone seemed friendly enough. He looked forward to sleeping on good cotton sheets and drinking gin from crystal. He’d graduated from Harvard summa cum laude. His father had wept. This was going to be a great summer.
As the ferry docked, Ed noticed the redhead in the yellow Mercedes convertible immediately, but he was surprised when she started waving wildly in their direction, for, although Kitty was a beauty, too, she looked nothing like Helen. Besides the lavish red hair, she had great big breasts and (he noticed upon closer inspection, as he shook her soft hand) explosions of freckles across her fleshy chest. She was smiley and chatty and without a trace of self-consciousness about talking nonstop from the moment she said hello. “Come on now,” she said. “I promised Mother we wouldn’t run late. We need to dress for dinner, et cetera. You sit in the front, Hugh.” She tied a scarf around her head and started the car. “Have you noticed she always thinks we’re going to be late and we never are?”
“Where are J.K. and Susannah?”
“Left them with Mother,” she said, backing out of the small lot. “Ooh, give me a cigarette, will you? Last time I left them with her it wasn’t pretty—Mother was crying when I returned, muttering something about J.K. taking after Johnny, and then she said that there was a reason people came east for an education. I’d only gone out to buy my kind of coffee, because Mrs. Mulroney won’t buy any of the ‘fancy kind,’ on principle. Even if I give her twice as much as she needs when she goes to the store! By the way, be sure to offer your condolences; as you might imagine, she’s distraught about the pope’s passing. Anyway,” Kitty said, lighting up the cigarette, “let’s get going.”
Over a bumpy road, through a tunnel of trees, Helen’s sister never paused for breath.
“Look at all the bunny rabbits!” she cried. “Do you see them? Ah, gee whiz,” she muttered, as she swerved to miss hitting one. “And look up. See the osprey? Where did they build their nests before telephone poles? Helen, look, oh, look—do you remember how we got sick on blackberries right over there? Or was it oysters? I do remember getting awfully sick in that cove. Oh, and there’s the Winston house. Hugh, you must remember Mrs. Winston from spending time here? You must. I adore her. She’s still alive but you know her children don’t summer here anymore. Just quick visits. Like me! Terrible! I’m one of those children now. I have to convince Johnny to let me bring the children for the whole summer next year. Don’t you think? They’ll be old enough to start sailing? Helen, do you know he wants to teach them to sail on a lake?”
She asked this as if it did not merit a response, which apparently it did not.
“As if there is any comparison!” Kitty continued, swerving again so as not to hit another bunny.
As the car swerved, Helen nearly fell into Ed’s lap, and he felt a twinge of sadness when she composed herself, taking away not only her body but also her distinct scent, which was something he could never quite place.
“I’m just not a lake person,” Kitty explained, ostensibly to Ed and Hugh. “I tried. Didn’t I try, Helen? The lake is too still. I’m sorry, Ed—that’s your name, right? I’m miserable with names; ask Helen. I was about to call you David. Anyway, you must think I’m terribly rude, I haven’t explained what I’m talking about, and, knowing my sister, she didn’t say anything—so, ready? I went and married a Californian.”
“Really,” said Ed.
“Seven years ago,” said Helen. “It’s not exactly breaking news.”
The road was narrow, and Kitty had to pull over in order to let an oncoming Cadillac pass by. She waved to the old lady behind the wheel. “That was Mrs. Winston!” she explained triumphantly, as she continued on the road. “I swear! Her ears must have been burning. I just love how small this island is. I miss it. Although, as you might imagine, Ed, these narrow roads can make for some particularly awkward encounters. I swear, Helen, I swear to you I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come
face-to-face with Mouse since I’ve arrived.”
“Mouse?” asked Ed. He had to.
“My ex-fiancé,” said Kitty. “I met Johnny,” she offered, as if Johnny was the end of more than simply her engagement.
“His name is Mouse?” Ed asked.
“Mouse is six foot six,” said Kitty, explaining the evidently ironic nickname, as she made a sharp right turn.
“Easy on the wheel,” said Hugh. “Please, Kitty,” he added.
“You’d better get used to some windy roads, isn’t that right? God knows what kind of roads they have where you’re going. Remind me where you’re going? Nairobi?”
“I wish,” said Helen.
“Ethiopia,” Hugh explained, “a village called Ciengach.” As if he knew he’d be repeating this many times throughout the weekend and it was his sincere wish to remain patient. “I’ll be assisting my mentor, Charlie Case, and another filmmaker from Paris.”
“Well,” said Kitty, “c’est magnifique.”
“C’est magnifique?” Helen asked, rather bitingly.
“Oui,” Kitty replied, as if to say: Go climb a tree. “Though I’m sure you’ll miss my sister, Hugh. It’s too bad you aren’t getting married before you leave.” There was an unprecedented moment of silence as they watched what looked like a turkey take its time crossing the road.
“You know what they say,” said Helen. “Better pheasants than peasants.” And they coasted down a hill.
“They don’t say that,” said Ed.
“Oh, but they do.”
“I’ll miss her very much,” said Hugh.
“And how long will you be gone?” Kitty asked.
“Yet to be determined, actually.” Hugh looked out at the passing trees. “One of the main things written about the tribe we’re filming is that they’re particularly visually striking, so … It sounds very promising.”
“Mmn,” said Kitty. “I’ll say.”
“Hugh is going to meet me in Paris when he’s finished,” said Helen. “Did I tell you? Raoul Merva set something up for me at the Sorbonne? Typing, yes, but typing in Paris.”
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