She shrugged. If only Jean-Rose read her journal… she’d written pages about how phony Ash was, how disappointing men could be.
“Well, his development is on hold. His backer fell through, but I’m sure you know this already.” Jean-Rose slid her foot in a semicircle. “He’s giving our deposit back. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
Heddy gathered Anna’s alphabet blocks into a bin. “Not especially.” She hoped her voice sounded cool.
“And he can’t come to my clambake on Saturday night. I’ll admit I’m a bit bruised by the RSVP.”
That was good of him to cancel, Heddy thought. Still, she’d stay inside and wash dishes, keeping her distance from the guests.
She wished Ruth would come back to work. There was no one to giggle with or snicker at how ludicrous their boss was, and Heddy just wanted to go. Once she made up her mind about something, it was hard going back, but she’d help Ruth however long she needed her. On the phone the day before, Ruth had been upbeat about her mother. But that was Ruth—always holding it together.
After cooking dinner, after baths and pajamas, after Heddy read the children several stories and they’d begged for more, after she washed and dried the dishes, folded and put away the clothes from the dryer, she had a minute to herself. She called her mother, like she’d promised.
“I’ve been thinking about the boys here—maybe you were right,” Heddy said it quickly, quietly, since Jean-Rose and Ted were watching television nearby.
Her mother sighed. “What did he do to you?”
She tried to cover. “No, I just changed my mind, is all. I’m going to come home a little early. We can have some girl time.”
A city bus roared through the other end of the line, perhaps the window was open, and she struggled to hear her mother’s voice: “Don’t come. Things aren’t so good here, Hibernia. They laid me off.”
“The laundry?”
Her mother sniffled. “Tiffany’s. All the older girls were let go. I gave them ten years, but I guess I’m not pretty enough anymore.”
Heddy pressed her eyelids together. “Mama, no. It’s not possible.”
“We’ll be okay, though. I’ll find other work.” It wasn’t much, but her mother loved that job. The little robin’s-egg blue boxes brought her pride, the way she starched her blouses, how she loved helping men pick out gifts for their wives.
Heddy tasted blood on the inside of her cheek; she’d been biting it. “I have seven hundred dollars. I’ll give you all of it. We’ll figure this out together, like a team.”
Later, Heddy collapsed into her bed with her journal. She wrote in big block letters: You fight and you lose. Again and again and again. Then she slammed the notebook shut and threw it against the wall.
A bang of thunder rumbled through the house, the humidity finally breaking open the sky. She checked her watch. It was a little after nine. She entered the living room, to a cloud of cigar smoke, the laugh track of The Andy Griffith Show.
“Do you mind if I go see Ruth?”
Jean-Rose glanced at Ted, who nodded. “Just be careful. You don’t have much experience driving at night,” Ted said.
She imagined sitting down and telling them the truth about Ash, that his name was John Green, that he’d stolen their money and never planned to give it back. She imagined that they’d applaud her, brag to their friends about how their babysitter took down a world-class criminal. The local papers would want to interview her, asking her when she’d known, if there had been clues. She’d say something smart, like she knew it all along, as soon as she saw the shine of his pistol in his closet, but she had to find the evidence, so she pretended to like him so she could snoop. Abigail Rhodes would be so impressed that she’d consider giving Heddy an investigative reporting job at the paper after she finished school and help her pay her way at school, too; it was the least she could do. She and her mother would laugh about that hard time they went through, with the distance of people who would never know a hard time again.
Ted guffawed so loud that Heddy startled, and Jean-Rose covered her mouth demurely, laughing at the TV. The sight of Ted’s popped collar and shiny watch, the gold band on his left hand, reminded her that they’d find a way to be the heroes of the story. If she turned Ash in, Jean-Rose and Ted would take the credit. They would find a way.
As soon as she got in the car, she knew where she’d go. The Clamshell, housed in a weather-beaten cottage off Main Street, was beloved thanks to its large screened-in porch. Even with the rain, the picnic tables were full of people eating steamers and lobsters under the awning, the smell of melted butter wafting through the sticky air. Sullivan wiped at a table, pushing the damp rag into his back pocket.
“Sullivan!” Heddy roped her arms around his neck, burying her damp cheek against his chest. He hugged her back, although his arms were limper than she imagined they’d be. He shifted out of the embrace. “I’m sorry about the other day. I don’t know why I was so cruel,” she said.
“Is everything okay?” He pushed his glasses up his nose.
“Can you get a break?”
“I’ve got tables.”
“Hey, lovebirds.” It was Jerome, baring his gapped teeth. “Order up, paper boy.”
She covered her face with her hands, so he wouldn’t see the tears. Sullivan hollered to Jerome.
“Cover for me, will you?”
Jerome snickered. “As long as I get the tips.”
Sullivan grabbed her hand, lightning flashing through the sky. They scurried along a row of parked cars until they found his and barreled inside.
“What happened?” he said.
She wiped at her eyes. “I don’t know. Everything.” With Ruth gone, she’d held it in for too long; she needed to tell somebody.
Sullivan clenched his fist. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, no. Not like that.”
“Then what is it?” He tapped his finger against the steering wheel.
Heddy sent him puppy eyes, a half smile. “Can we take a drive?”
He looked at her over his glasses. “You realize I may lose my job over this?” He started the car, shoving it in reverse. “Fuck it. Why do I care?”
Once they were on the road, the windshield wipers punching out a rhythm in the muggy car, Heddy turned to him. “I’m sorry for how I treated you at the club.”
Sullivan pushed his glasses up on his nose, smug and satisfied. “Unlucky in love?”
Outside, tourists in ponchos ducked in and out of the tidy shopfronts along Main Street.
“Okay, that’s fair,” she said.
He drove to the small lighthouse in town, the parking lot empty, the ice-cream stand shuttered. The ignition went quiet.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he said.
The surf pounded along the shoreline, splashing against a large piece of driftwood that washed ashore. A family in matching yellow rain jackets walked the beach. “It’s not good. It’s really, really bad actually.”
He stared at her, waiting. “And?”
“And. I don’t know.” The family carried two buckets of shells, and Heddy wondered if she would ever have two kids toddling behind her, if she and her husband would ever wear a matching raincoat and walk the beach in the rain.
She turned toward him. “What would you do if someone you loved did something bad? Something unforgivable?”
Sullivan ran his fingertip along the odometer, dusting it. “Is it illegal?”
She nodded. Outside, the kids were singing a song about the rain, and she thought of Teddy and Anna, how sad it was that after she left, she may never see them again. “Very illegal.”
“Did this person harm anybody?” His glasses were fogging, and he rolled his window a crack.
She hedged. “Not physically, just financially.”
“Did he have good reason?” he shot back.
“It may not be a ‘he.’ ”
Sullivan shifted in his seat, then cleaned his glasses on his shirt. “
I say let sleeping dogs lie. Don’t bother with the police.”
“Really?” She expected him to say the opposite, especially since he was the heir to a newspaper. Shouldn’t he want to investigate? Then again, Sullivan hated the news; maybe he hated it so much he fought against its core tenets.
He shrugged. “The cops will swarm. They’ll ask questions. If this person is your friend, you’ve got to consider if you were involved in what they did, even unknowingly. What if the blame is pinned on you? I say never involve the cops, unless you have to.”
She had a vision of Jean-Rose standing before her holding her diamond bracelet. Heddy was an easy mark, wasn’t she? The babysitter who was paid a modest salary, a girl who needed money to pay for her scholarship. Cops would find motive. She imagined strangers telling the cops that they’d seen Heddy in town in Ash’s truck. If she turned Ash in, she might implicate herself.
“You’re right,” she said.
“Can I go back to work now?” Sullivan drove past the lighthouse, its light flashing the windshield, then turned back onto Main Street. His spot was still there, and he pulled into it. When the car was off, Heddy leaned across the center of the seat and kissed him on the cheek.
“You’re such a good guy,” she told him.
“That’s why you picked me, right?” He slammed the door and ran into the Clamshell, not bothering to turn around.
And she knew then she’d lost him. She’d lost him forever.
TWENTY-SIX
From the kitchen window, Heddy, who was soaping the second round of cocktail plates, could see guests mingling in the yard, the skies pink with sunset. The Williamses’ unassuming backyard had been transformed into a gleaming party space, with twinkling lights, a dozen white picnic tables, and a gravel pit, where the makings of the clambake were tucked under the hot coals.
A bespectacled man in a shirt too small for his belly stuffed his mouth with a pastry puff. A slender woman laughed with Susanne, while Abigail Rhodes, smoking long skinny cigarettes, kept her eyes on Edison Mule and his wife, dark rings under her eyes. In all directions, clumps of guests pulled at meat on sticks, glasses of punch in hand, while a rectangular stereo speaker, the wire lowered down from the living room window, played Little Richard.
“Now aren’t these darling?” A sultry voice carried over the others, and Heddy startled, dropping a plate into the suds. Gigi, dressed in a low-cut spangly tank and pedal pushers, examined one of the table centerpieces: white buckets with lobster bibs, a lobster cracker, and decorative placemats of the island. “Ted, I just know you had something to do with this.” A throaty laugh.
With Ted’s back to Heddy, she watched his Hawaiian shirt jostle in response, and how he wiped his hand on the back of his khakis after shaking hands with the man on Gigi’s arm.
That man, who was he? A stranger with dark skin and imposing height, chiseled, but hardly an actor—no Cary Grant. Even from here, she could see the dull energy of the party had heightened with Gigi’s arrival, a rise in the octave of everyone’s voices, the darting of eyes, partygoers shifting an inch or so forward or back or sideways, trying to get a little closer to the actress, the intoxication of celebrity.
“Ted, what happened to my invitation?” Gigi pouted her lips, her eyes sultry and full of dare. “Am I not on ‘the list’? Your wife has been keeping those lists since high school, you know.”
A waitress rushed into the kitchen and slid another stack of plates into the sink, splashing Heddy’s apron with water. She dried her hands on the front, untying the apron and throwing it over the back of a chair.
Heddy hoped she didn’t look positively homely as she approached Gigi, who was nibbling on cheese with her date, but if she did, Gigi didn’t let on, pulling her into an embrace the moment she laid eyes on her.
“Did you hear anything from school?”
“They said no.” Heddy cast her eyes around until finding Jean-Rose, standing with friends near the back door, pretending not to notice Gigi.
“Oh, honey.” Gigi rubbed Heddy’s back. “We tried.”
Heddy got on tiptoe to reach Gigi’s swaying earring. “There’s something else… Ash Porter is a phony, and he was going to steal everything, and I’m not sure I can forgive him.” She’d whispered it, and perhaps, Gigi hadn’t heard or cared, because she pulled at her date’s hand.
“Heddy, this is Nelson Cruz, a friend from Darien.” She thought of Jean-Rose drunk on the couch at the beginning of the summer, repeating that name: Nelson. Was this him?
The man puffed on his cigar. He raised Heddy’s hand to his half-cocked smile, kissing it. “Pleasure.”
“Nelson owns Havana Nights Supper Club in New York. Have you heard of it?” He tucked his thumbs into his belt loops, puffing out his chest, making apparent his healthy ego.
Of course, Heddy had heard of it, as notorious for its airtight guest list as it was for hosting celebrities.
“Imagine my surprise when my agent and I go for a drink, and it’s Nelson who comes over. He and I grew up a few houses apart.”
“Nice to meet you,” Heddy said, but the man was staring over Heddy’s shoulder at Jean-Rose, her hair in a French twist, her white satin pantsuit glowing in the moonlight. Nelson grinned, his eyelashes long and thick, and tucked his cigar between his teeth. “Did you ever think we’d be at a party like this, Gigi? With the Sunday casserole crowd,” he laughed.
Gigi ran a hand along his chest, the top buttons of his shirt undone and the hair so thick it was bear-like. “Well, we still don’t belong here,” she said. “But we can have some fun.” Gigi grabbed his hand, placing his left palm on her right hip and swaying her hips. With his cigar in hand, he moved along with her, doing the merengue.
Nelson threw his head back, laughing like he knew people were watching. “Look at her. She swings like a senora,” he told Heddy.
Gigi unfurled herself from Nelson with a dramatic twirl, smirking at Jean-Rose, who was approaching them. “Well, Nelson, look who we have here. The island’s newest-named saint.”
“Nelson?” Jean-Rose tried to hide her surprise but her breath caught.
Nelson pushed the nub of his cigar out in an ashtray, fanning the smoke away from his face. “You did well for yourself, querida.” He pulled her into an embrace, and they hugged like people did in movies, going on a beat too long.
Jean-Rose seemed struck by lightning. “It’s been years. I can’t remember the last time…”
He kissed her hand, letting his lips linger near her princess-cut diamond wedding ring. “Let’s not think of that day.”
Gigi put her arm around Nelson’s broad shoulders. “You look as good in this suit as you did at the altar. I swear, this man doesn’t age.”
Jean-Rose’s nostrils flared. “I wish Gigi’d told me you were coming. I wish Gigi’d told me she was coming.”
“I thought she did.” His eyes sparkling, Nelson took Jean-Rose’s hands in his again, sizing her up. “You are happy, though. And that is what matters. It seems you chose well.”
Jean-Rose seemed to forget Heddy and Gigi were beside them. “I heard about the supper club. Your parents must be proud.”
He seemed disappointed by what she’d said; perhaps he’d wanted to tell her. “But you never visit. I want to show you.”
Heddy kicked Gigi’s yellow kitten heel, whispering, “What is happening?” Gigi tilted her head toward Heddy’s shoulder, shrugging, but her grin was mischievous.
Ted, who’d been drinking heavily in an act of defiance since Jean-Rose asked him not to drink at all, came to his wife’s side. “Do you know each other?” he slurred. His voice snapped Jean-Rose out of her trance, and she elbowed her husband off her arm, placing a hand on her silken hip.
“I was so sorry to hear about your rejection from the Island Club, Gigi—I tried to make a case to the board for your admission, I did, but apparently, you didn’t meet our decency standards.”
Gigi stilled a twitch in her lip. “Is that so? Because I pulle
d my application weeks ago.” She purred. “Is that all you got?”
“How dare you come to this party. You think this is funny?” Jean-Rose angled her body so Nelson was back in Gigi’s vision; he tipped his hat, shadowing one half of his face. “You don’t think this isn’t cruel?”
Nelson blew Jean-Rose an empty kiss, strutting past her, his shiny black shoes clip-clapping through the hush of the crowd. “I’m sorry, bella—Gigi said you wanted to see me.”
Gigi smoothed the fronts of her pedal pushers, strands of silver woven in the fabric. “Don’t let her think you’re not welcome, Nelson. She doesn’t have anything over us anymore…” Gigi bent down, so she was eye level with Jean-Rose, her cheekbones caked with foundation, her peach blush shimmering under the lights. “And it’s killing her.”
“Get out,” Jean-Rose said, studied measure in her voice. She looked around her, smiling at the other guests. The bartender, who’d been putting on a show juggling liquor bottles, set them carefully on the bar top.
Heddy knew she should go back to the dishes, but something percolated inside of her. Was it anger? Resentment? Or was she simply excited that someone was standing up to Jean-Rose? Words started coming to her, then sentences. She wanted in on this fight, but why? It wasn’t her past or her friendship.
Gigi glanced at the partygoers, winking at Susanne, but Susanne crossed her arms. “Can’t we be grown-ups?” Gigi said, wiggling her curvaceous behind. Someone whistled, pleasing Gigi.
“Get out. Now.” The album had finished and it skipped, the needle hitting into the center of the turntable, repeatedly bleating through the speaker.
Gigi looked down her nose at Jean-Rose. “What happened to you?”
Jean-Rose didn’t look away, clenching her fists. “I grew up. I got married, had kids. Stop hating me for having the life you wish you had.”
Gigi cocked an eyebrow. “Is that what you think?”
“I’m sorry I’ve always been the prettier one. The popular one. The daughter your mother wished she had. I’m sorry I landed Ted, and that your famous boyfriend is cheating on you.”
Summer Darlings Page 30