The Black Sheep

by Patricia Ryan

  Harley allowed Tucker to help her stumble up the stairs to her room, wrapped in the sheet, but then shooed him away, preferring to wash and dress unassisted—a challenging task. She was confused and uncoordinated, aware that she had been sick, but fuzzy on the details.

  It was almost noon before she sat down to Tucker’s offering of toast and ice water at the umbrella-shielded table on the patio, only to find she had no stomach for the toast. It was cooler than the day before, and overcast. She wore crisp cotton—a sleeveless pink shirt and white shorts—and her usual ponytail.

  She pushed away her plate. “How did you know I was named after a motorcycle?”

  He reached across the table to pour some more water for her. “You told me. At about 3:00 a.m. You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head. “About 3:00 a.m.? Was I awake all night?”

  “No, you were mostly pretty much out of it.”

  “But you were awake.”

  “Yeah, up to a point. I remember the sun rising, so I guess it was past dawn by the time I conked out. I do know you were down below a hundred by that time.”

  “I had a fever? Was I sick?”

  “Heatstroke.”

  She groaned and nodded. “Of course. I’m so stupid.”

  “You did keep mumbling something to that effect.” He pointed to the toast. “You’re not going to eat that?” She shook her head, and he picked up a slice and took a bite.

  She was pensive for a few moments. “You sat up all night with me. You took care of me. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said with a full mouth.

  “And I’m sorry for being so creepy when I first woke up.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  “Did you see me naked?”

  He sighed, and this time he waited until he had swallowed before speaking. “Yes.”

  She felt heat flood her cheeks. “How can you just say yes like that? You should lie to protect my feelings!”

  His eyes widened and he laughed. “You want me to lie to you?”

  “Of course! There’s such a thing as being too honest, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know anything of the kind. I don’t lie.” He took another piece of toast.

  “Ever?”

  “Not if I can avoid it.”

  “Well, try to avoid avoiding it with me sometimes.” she said. “Try giving me the answer I want to hear, just to keep me happy.”

  “I don’t want to keep you happy.”

  “You don’t—”

  “You’re magnificent when you’re angry.”

  “Good. This is your lucky morning, then, because there’s something I’m really—” She reined herself in, not wanting to come off as shrewish, especially after the scene at the pool the night before last. “Angry may be too strong a word. Something I’m curious about.”

  “Shoot.” He popped the last of the toast in his mouth and dusted his hands.

  “How come you just sneaked away yesterday morning with no word at all? I thought you’d left, that you’d gone for good.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  Yes. “No.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You could have left a note.”

  “I don’t leave notes. I’m bad about things like that.”

  “I’ll bet you’re not very good at saying goodbye, either. I mean, I just get that feeling.”

  He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook it. “You’re right, I’m not.”

  “Are you gonna smoke?”

  “We’re outside. I thought that wasn’t a problem.”

  “It’s just that I feel a little woozy. It’s all right. Enjoy your cigarette, I’ll go inside.” She started to rise.

  He quickly replaced the pack and reached out an arm. “Stay. Please.” She sat again, and he said, “I have a question for you, too. I don’t understand why you went out in the heat yesterday and pushed yourself till you dropped. I mean, you were out way too long, you drank way too little. You know better—you’re a smart woman. What were you thinking?”

  I was thinking of you. “I don’t know.” He kind of shrugged, as if to say, is that all? She found she couldn’t look at him. “I don’t know. It was stupid. I have no explanation.”

  His candid brown eyes seemed to search her, looking for a better answer. Presently he said, “Fair enough.”

  Of course, Harley knew it wasn’t fair. She made a practice of smoothing out life’s rough spots with gentle untruths. So did everyone else she knew. Except Tucker Hale. He never lied. In their sparring, they used different weapons: her lies, his truths. She had yet to decide which weapon conferred the superior advantage.

  “Here you are!” came a voice from behind Tucker, and he turned to see Phil, black bag in tow, rounding the corner of the house. “Can’t you hear the doorbell from back here?”

  “No.” said Tucker. “It comes in handy.”

  Phil threw him a look and came straight to Harley, dumping his bag on the table and taking a seat next to her. Tucker made introductions as Phil proceeded, without ceremony, to wrap a blood-pressure cuff around her arm.

  When he had his reading, he dug his phone out of his pocket, thumbed the screen for a few seconds, then pushed it across the table toward Tucker. “What do you think?”

  The picture on the phone showed the front of a large brick Colonial house surrounded by boxwoods.

  “Thirty-four-hundred square feet,” Phil said as he took Harley’s temperature. “I built it nine years ago. I mean, not like you build houses, with fucking logs and mud and dung and shit.”

  “Mud and dung?”

  “Between the logs? No?”

  “You’re a moron, Zelin.”

  “Maybe so, but at least I know enough to hire professional fucking builders to build a house. That right there is one helluva good house,” he said, pointing to the phone. “It’s on that cul-de-sac at the end of Windward Lane. Four bedrooms, three and a half baths, master suite with Jacuzzi, finished basement with wet bar, all new wall-to-wall. Oh, yeah, and a new oak kitchen with Sub-Zero fridge, two ovens, and a stainless steel island big enough for not one, but two cadavers should the need arise. It’s on half an acre, professionally landscaped.” Beep. “Great, cool as a cuke.”

  Harley aimed a what-the-fuck look in Tucker’s direction.

  “He wants me to trade him my new Jaguar for his house,” Tucker explained.

  She cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard right.

  Tucker said, “What you have to understand about Phil is, he’s always had this peculiar sense of humor, and sometimes it’s not too clear when he’s joking and when he’s for real.”

  “This is not a joke,” Phil said, looping his stethoscope around his neck. “My house for your Jag, and I’ll throw in the window treatments.” To Harley he said, “You want to unbutton your blouse, please?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she glanced at Tucker, who rose. “I think I’ll go have a smoke.”

  He sat on the stone wall overlooking the beach. On the Tilton side, Jamie, Brenna, and Baby Hazel frolicked in the surf. The current Mrs. T., Marie, aka Mimi, lay on a towel reading. Despite the gray sky, all of them wore swimsuits, with the exception of the baby, who was naked. Brenna’s teeny bikini was lime green with big pink polka dots.

  After a few minutes, Phil joined him and delivered a favorable report on Harley’s condition. Tucker looked back toward the patio, where she reclined in her chair, head back, eyes closed, and whispered, “Thank fuck.”

  Phil said, “That’s some pool R.H. put in. There’s an inground pool behind my house, did I mention that? Not Olympic-size or anything, but who needs that much water in their backyard?”

  Tucker nodded toward the Sound. “As far as my father was concerned, there could never be too much water in his backyard.”

  “Guess not.” Phil breathed deeply of the salt air. “I always loved this beach. I missed it when the old man wouldn’t let m
e come over anymore. I’m near the beach now. Oh, that’s another thing—the house is a five-minute walk from the Sound. Learned to sail so I could fit in with my neighbors and discovered I liked it. Got a nice little Flying Scot I call the Pacemaker. She’s no Anjelica—just nineteen feet—but I’m crazy about every one of them. You should take her out while you’re here.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “About the house,” Phil continued. “I replaced the water heater two years ago, and added a deck the year before that.”

  “Doesn’t Kat have something to say in all this? She might not like you trading her home for a car.”

  A pained look crossed Phil’s face. He glanced briefly toward Harley, motionless in her chair. “Let’s go down and walk on the beach.”

  Tucker shook his head and indicated the leg. “Can’t.”

  Phil looked him in the eye. “What happened?”

  “Flew my plane into the side of a mountain.”

  Phil’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t see it coming?”

  Tucker said, “My turn to ask a question. What happened with you and Kat?”

  Phil groped for his cigarettes. Tucker lit one for each of them.

  “We’re separated,” Phil said.

  Disappointment bloomed within Tucker. “What happened? You’ve been together forever.” Tucker had introduced them when they were teenagers—the slightly bent cabbie’s son from Brentwood and the cool blond heiress from Hale’s Point—and was surprised when they took up together, stunned when he found out they were engaged. He even tried to talk Phil out of it, worried that their dissimilarities couldn’t support a marriage. Yet, during his infrequent phone conversations with Phil over the years, his friend had painted a bucolic picture of the union. More than once he thanked Tucker for bringing her into his life, told him how crazy he was about her, how empty life would be without her.

  “I made a mistake,” Phil said, his voice practically a monotone. “About six months ago. There was this nurse.” Tucker groaned. “It got back to Kat. She took the boys and went back home, back to the castle.” Kat’s parents owned the largest house in Hale’s Point, a gothic revival monstrosity just down the road. “Now my lawyers talk to her lawyers. I haven’t seen her since she left. She won’t return my calls. She’s... she’s very proud.”

  “Of course she is,” Tucker said. “Any woman would flip out, Phil. No wife likes her husband to have an affair.”

  “It wasn’t even an affair. It was twenty minutes in a broom closet, for fuck’s sake. Twenty goddamn minutes, and there goes my whole marriage—my whole life!” Suddenly Phil’s proposed trade of his house for Tucker’s Jag seemed not so much funny as poignant. He was losing almost everything—why not give away the rest? “It was the first time—how’s that for irony? I was tempted, I was restless. I figured Kat would never find out, no harm would come of it. Don’t ever cheat on your wife, Tucker, no matter what the temptation. I mean, if you ever get married.”

  “They’ll be flinging snowballs in hell when I make that mistake. Marrying, not cheating, although I’m not a big fan of that, either. You know how I feel about marriage. Fidelity is only one of its drawbacks, but it’s a big one. If you get married, you’re making a commitment. One person forever. If you stay single, you can have all the broom closets you want, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “See...” Phil had that look on his face, that look that said, Tucker, you shithead, you just don’t get it. “The operative phrase in that sentence is ‘It doesn’t matter.’ And that’s where I guess we part company. Because I want there to be things in my life that matter—and there are. My kids matter. Kat matters. I love her. I’ll never be able to stop loving her.” His voice was unsteady. “She matters. More than anything. I don’t think I can live without her.”

  The depth of Phil’s emotion awed Tucker. For a minute he didn’t speak, letting his friend get his bearings. A movement from the patio caught his eye. Harley was stretching like a cat in her chair, back arched, arms and legs quivering. A strange kind of ticklish warmth filled him, as if someone were gently stroking his scalp. For a fleeting moment he had a sense of what Phil felt for the woman he had spent two decades of his life with, created children with, built his world around. It would be as if that warm tickle never stopped, just went on and on, filling him with contentment day after day.

  What a gift to have it; what a tragedy to lose it.

  Phil was still morose, but calm. Tucker said, “I take it you’ve said these things to Kat. Told her how you feel, begged her to take you back.”

  “God, no. She’d only have contempt for me.”

  “What?”

  “You know how she is. She’s got this bizarre, otherworldly reserve. She hates displays. If the tables were turned, she’d never in a million years come crawling to me, and she’d think I was a spineless worm if I came crawling to her.”

  “My God, it’s catching.”

  “What?”

  “The Hale’s Point syndrome. Your upper lip stiffens and it keeps spreading until it reaches your brain, and that’s when you’re really in trouble.”

  Phil scowled. “You’re not talking about the deer-tick thing.”

  “God, you’re such an idiot! You and Kat both!” He grabbed his cane, stood, and gestured with it toward the beach. “And that witless little Princeton snot down there. And venerable old Liz Wycliff, and, last but far from least, the king of restrained good taste and excellent judgment himself, my beloved sire, Raleigh Hale, Esquire!”

  In the distance, Marie looked up from her book. Jamie and Brenna shielded their eyes to peer at him. They almost certainly couldn’t hear his words, but they were probably curious as to the cause of this unseemly outburst. He looked toward Harley, once again immobile, her eyes closed.

  Phil sat staring at him. “Are you done?”

  “No! No! Don’t you understand? A pattern is emerging. This is fascinating, it really is. I can’t be the only one who sees it.”

  Phil grinned. “You know, there is a psychiatric unit at the medical center if you ever feel like you want to discuss this with a professional.”

  Tucker used the fingers of one hand to help him track the relationships. Finger number one: “Liz is in love with R.H., but R.H. is carrying a torch for Anjelica and doesn’t notice. Liz, a lifelong victim of Hale’s Point syndrome, feels it would be bad form to clue him in.”

  Finger number two: “Jamie Tilton believes himself to be madly in love with the au pair, one Brenna.”

  Phil said, “Who? I don’t know these people.”

  Tucker pointed to the beach. “See the blond kid? That’s Jamie. See the redhead?” Phil emitted a feral groan that spoke volumes. “That’s Brenna. Young Jamie, afflicted with the syndrome since birth, conceals his feelings from said Brenna, thus ensuring that he will eventually lose her to a man who knows how to take what he wants.”

  Finger number three, and now his delivery became more subdued: “You love Kat. Kat loves you.” Phil made a face. “She’s hurt, but she still loves you, you have to believe that. Kat was born with the syndrome, she can’t help it. You, by reason of your lowly birth—” Phil raised an eyebrow “—for which you should be extremely grateful, were spared it. However, now, in a bizarre twist, you have actually begun imitating the symptoms of the syndrome—aloofness, denial of emotion—because you believe that this is what your wife prefers. When, in fact, she doesn’t prefer it at all, she just can’t help it! She’d love it if you threw yourself at her feet and begged forgiveness and pleaded with her to take you back. It’s what any normal person would want and expect of a loved one who had wronged them. It’s also what she deserves, after what you did.”

  “Throw myself at her feet.” Phil looked skeptical.

  “Absolutely. Make some grand gesture. Have a thousand helium balloons made up with ‘I Love You, Kat’ on them, and send them to the castle.”

  “A thousand helium balloons.”

  “Something. My God, are you willin
g to give up so easily?”

  “It’s not a matter of giving up. If I’m going to go out, I at least want to go out with some dignity.”

  Tucker shook his head. “Well, I think it’s a damn shame. I say, do not go gentle into that good night.”

  “Wasn’t it Dylan Thomas who said that?”

  “Well, now I’m saying it.” Tucker stamped his cane. It stuck in the soil beneath the grass, and he yanked it free.

  “And it was about death, not divorce.”

  “What’s the difference? The end of life, the end of love.”

  “Big talk from the king of the broom closets. Have you ever even had a serious relationship?”

  “No, but I’ve got imagination.” Harley rose from her chair, clasped her hands over her head, and bent from side to side. That warm tickle crept along his scalp again, and he smiled.

  Phil followed his gaze. “She recovered quickly. She’s a healthy young woman.” He smiled, too. “Very healthy.”

  Something in Phil’s tone, in the way he was staring at Harley, made a silent alarm go off in Tucker’s head. He said, “What happened to that professional reserve I was admiring so much yesterday? Not to mention your undying devotion to Kat.”

  Phil said, “Harley is cured. She’s not my patient anymore, so I’m allowed to take an interest. And as far as Kat is concerned, it’s true that I’m deeply and undyingly devoted to her.” He let out a long sigh. “I’m also lonely. It’s been six months, and there’s been no one. I know now that Kat will never have me back. I just want... I want a warm body to reach over and touch in the middle of the night.”

  “Uh-uh. You know better than that. You’re a doctor, for God’s sake. You should know that you have to treat the cause of a problem, not just slap on a Band-Aid.”

  “There is no cure for my underlying problem, regardless of your optimistic advice. All I can do is treat the symptoms. And I choose her—” he nodded toward Harley “—as my treatment of choice.”

  For a few seconds Tucker watched Harley stretch first one leg and then the other behind her while holding on to the back of her chair. Finally he said, “Choose someone else.”

  It took Phil a moment, and then he said, “So she’s just the house sitter, huh?”