Off Season (31 page)

She must have been a great teacher, Ben thought now, because she’d loved it so, because it seemed that every single child she’d ever taught had shown up at her funeral. They’d had to hold it in the open tabernacle because there hadn’t been enough room in the church.

As the wipers streaked a path across his snowy windshield, he rested his face against the steering wheel and wondered if he’d been wrong to marry Jill. Maybe it hadn’t been true love but merely another salve for his male ego, another Fern Ashenbach, this time with class, with grace, with smarts.

Who did he think he was, anyway? He certainly was no Paul Newman or Clint Eastwood. He was simply a
small-town architect and builder who’d once tried to live a moral life, who’d once put together a successful business, then thrown it all away on dreams and his libido, not necessarily in that order.

And now he had little money and even less of his business. If he had to start again, he wasn’t sure he’d make it. Or if he’d know where to start.

He looked back to the house and wished he’d never renovated it into a studio for Jill. He wished it was still the cozy place where he’d lived for years. He wished Louise were still there at the kitchen sink, when everything had been predictable and nothing ever hurt.

He sat there for an hour, before he put the pieces of his heart back into place, before he was able to face up to what he had to do.

“Jill?” Ben called up from the bottom of the stairs in the house on North Water Street. She wasn’t in the sitting room or the kitchen, in the sewing room or the music room. He looked up the long staircase, now wrapped in pine boughs fastened with big red velvet bows. Was she taking a nap? Perhaps the night and day and the gloom of snow had helped her succumb to sleep. “Honey?”

She emerged from the doorway of their bedroom and stood at the top of the steep stairs, looking down. She was fully dressed; she did not say hello.

He pulled off his cap and smoothed his hair. “Honey, we need to talk,” he said, and began to climb the stairs.

“No,” she said, “I’m tired of talking.”

He stopped on stair number five or six and held on to the mahogany banister. Okay, he thought. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

“I want to make this easier on you,” he said.

She shrugged and folded her arms. “Ben, you cannot
make this easier on me. It is not easy. It will not get easy until all of this is way behind us. If it ever is.”

He looked down at his caramel-colored construction boots, which had seen little work of late. He wondered if she’d be more forgiving if she knew he’d been thinking about suicide. He moved two steps closer to his bride.

“Maybe you were right,” he said. “Maybe we should tell the kids. If this were more out in the open …”

She did not respond. God, he wished that she’d respond.

He climbed two, then three more steps. He was almost to the top, yet still she hadn’t moved. He wondered if this was some kind of psychological game in which she needed him to be the one to reach out, while she remained steadfast in her position. “I’ve been out to Gay Head,” he said. “I’ve always done my best thinking there.”

Jill stood up straighter. “Did you see your friend Fern?”

He took a breath, then let it out. “No, Jill. I did not see Fern. I went to the cliffs, and then I took the long way home.” In the past, he had not had to explain himself or his every movement to her. He did not like the feeling.

“I went to Rita’s,” Jill said.

Something in her tone warned Ben that he was in trouble here, that whenever two women got together, the men ended up the losers. “Was she happy with the party?” he asked. “Did you tell her we enjoyed it?”

“Yes,” she replied, but said it only once, so he guessed that was supposed to answer both his questions.

He now stood three steps below his wife, at eye level with her waist, the slender waist he loved to hold within his large, work-toughened hands.

“You and Rita talked about me,” he said.

Her arms stayed folded. “I didn’t tell her about Mindy. I can’t bring myself to do that.”

He needed to feel her arms around him, to feel her forgiveness, to feel her warmth. “Thank you,” he said, but remained standing on the third step down.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. There was a time when that had felt comfortable, when Ben had known that he and Jill had passed the point where they needed to be always animated with one another, when quiet time between them still was filled with love. This, however, was not one of those times.

“What do we do next, Jill?” he said in the space and the air that hung between them. “I was thinking that maybe you’d want me to move back to the Oak Bluffs house. I can fix up a room upstairs. My workshop is still there. I can be out of the house when you need to be in the studio.” He wished that she would jump right in and say, “No. No, Ben, that’s not what I want.”

Instead of saying anything, Jill turned and went into the bedroom. Ben climbed those last three stairs and followed. “It’s not that I want to leave the house, Jill. It’s not that I want to leave you …” Inside their bedroom, he noticed open suitcases on the bed.

If he’d eaten anything at all that day, it would have risen into his esophagus. Instead, only a thin, acidic bile came. “I’m going to England,” Jill said. “I decided to go see my son.”

Rita was thinking of how, just once, she’d love to meet a man who didn’t turn out to be a bum. Then again, she supposed that that was an oxymoron, given the fact that most men had a penis and there must be some genetic link between stupidity and dicks.

It was Christmas morning, and though the snow had stopped and the sun was straining through the still-thick clouds, Rita was in the dumps. It could have been because she hadn’t slept well, or because baby what’s-his-or-her-name
was grinding against her innards most of the night, as if it already knew Santa was coming. Then again, maybe it was because from down the hall, Hazel’s snores had been exceptionally loud.

It could have been a lot of things that kept Rita awake and troubled her now, as she stood at her kitchen window, gazing at a plump red cardinal that waited expectantly at the bird feeder that she hadn’t yet filled.

But Rita knew that only one thing had sent her to the dumps. It was Ben Niles, and the grim reality that he’d turned out to be no better than the rest.

Though she’d tried to play it down to Jill to make her believe that it was no big deal, Rita knew differently. She knew that once illusions fell away, it was a long way to go back. She supposed it had some abstract thing to do with trust.

Above Hazel’s snoring, the telephone suddenly rang. She glanced at it warily, as if a man were calling, as if it were one of
them
.

Then she decided it wouldn’t be a man who mattered because she’d made damn sure none of them did.

It was not a man, it was a woman who wanted to list her house.

Rita perked up.

“I’m sorry to bother you on Christmas,” the woman said. “But I’ve only just made the decision, and I don’t want to change my mind. It’s an old house, but it has a few acres.”

Rita was not about to quibble with anyone about business, especially when the word
acres
was included. Acres on the Vineyard were like gold mines in them thar hills, whose commission could make a real estate person rich. And keep her from ever being dependent on a man.

“I’d like to put it on the market right away. How long do you think it will take to sell?”

“If you’d done this in September, it wouldn’t take long
at all. If you wait until June, the price will automatically be higher.”

The woman sighed. “It wasn’t mine to sell in September, and I’m not going to wait until June. Do you want to list it or not?”

Rita recognized exasperation when she heard it. “Of course. When can I look at it?”

“Today.”

She did not remind the woman that it was Christmas. “One o’clock?”

“Fine.”

“Where are you?”

“Menemsha,” the woman replied. “My name is Fern Ashenbach. The house is right next to the Menemsha House museum. Do you know the place?”

Hazel wanted to go with Rita, because Rita had made the mistake of telling her of Ben’s “indiscretion,” and now Hazel said she wanted to see for herself what kind of woman had lured the great Ben Niles away from his dying wife.

Besides, Hazel was intrigued that this woman had the audacity (a big word for her mother, reflective of crossword puzzles in the paper), the
nerve
, to expect that Rita would come out on Christmas Day.

Hazel had however packed a basket of leftover party treats—mini-quiches and Amy’s chicken things and the chocolate mint squares that Hattie Phillips had baked. Might as well be neighborly on this most neighborly of days.

Rita supposed that what Hazel really wanted was to ogle the woman, perhaps not without some envy, because perhaps she was not much more than Hazel—or for that matter, Rita—had been back in their days when they were young and sexy and went after any man, many men, single,
married, widowed, divorced, or anything, as long as they breathed, as long as they had one of those godforsaken, guaranteed-to-break-your-heart things dangling from their loins.

Rita shivered as she steered the car toward Menemsha. Hazel sat forward on the seat next to her, about to burst from the excitement. When at last they arrived at the house, Rita recalled the little girl she’d seen out there, the sad child who’d found her grandfather dead. But she stopped short of telling Hazel that she’d seen the girl: such news might encourage Hazel to open her big mouth and ask questions that were not her business. Hopefully, her mother—with her basket of Red Riding Hood goodies on her lap—would remember this adventure was, indeed, for work, and not idle island gossip.

There was no doubt that Fern Ashenbach could lure a man and lure him quickly.

She had the kind of legs Rita had prayed for when she’d been a short chubby kid. She had curves that Rita wished she still had beneath her blossoming belly. But more than that, she had a presence, a confidence that seductively suggested, “Hey, man, come to me, and I will be your slave,” which really meant that he would be hers, not the other way around.

Plus she was a blonde, and everyone knew that they had way more fun.

“I’m Rita Blair,” Rita said. “This is my mother, Hazel.”

Fern’s “pleased to meet you” sounded sincere enough. But it was hard to picture Ben with her, laden as she was with cheap gold jewelry and decorated with black mascara and bright green eye shadow. She was such a contrast to elegant, sophisticated Jill: she was much more like Rita, with no smoothness on her edge.

Hazel handed her the basket, and the woman seemed impressed.

Then she escorted them through the rooms, which were quite old and needed fresh wallpaper and a few hundred gallons of paint. But Rita knew the place would sell in a heartbeat. The location was spectacular, and out-of-towners would quickly snap it up. Maybe some burned-out yuppies would convert it to a bed and breakfast, as if the island needed another one.

After the tour, Fern offered tea. “You’re pregnant, huh?” she asked Rita. “When are you due?”

“April. Spring.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve been too busy for the ultrasound.”

“Did you know my father-in-law?” Fern asked, as if she’d tired of baby talk. She took three cups down from the cabinet and wiped them with a paper towel.

Rita shot a glance to Hazel, a warning not to mention that they were friends with Ben, Ashenbach’s longtime adversary. “I don’t think we ever met,” Rita said. “But of course, I knew his name. By the way, with all the real estaters on the island, why’d you call me?”

The enamel kettle whistled on the stove. “I saw your car the other day,” Fern said. “On the street in front of the house. You have your name on the side.”

“My mobile billboard,” Rita said with a laugh. “I guess it was worth the eighty bucks.” So far, Hazel was being quiet, and for that Rita was quite pleased.

“My daughter also told me she thought you were Ben Niles’s friend.”

Rita blinked, and Hazel coughed.

“Actually,” Rita answered, “I’m friends with Ben’s wife, Jill. We grew up together in Edgartown.”

The woman poured hot water over the tea bags with what looked like angry gusto.

“I saw her the other day,” Fern said, turning her back to them just long enough for Hazel to look at Rita and shake her head. “She’s some kind of celebrity, isn’t she?”

Rita wondered if Fern had been out of the country or just didn’t own a television. But something cautioned her not to be sarcastic, and not to give too much away.

“She was a celebrity. In TV news. But she gave it up when she and Ben got married.”

Fern turned and set two cups in front of them. “I think that’s so pathetic, when a woman gives up her career for a man, don’t you?”

Rita shrugged. “Depends on the career,” she said. “Depends on the man.”

Hazel drank her tea but did not say a single one of the twenty thousand things Rita knew she would say later, when they were safely in the car and out of earshot of the woman.

Fern laughed. “Well, I’m sure she’s learned by now that it wasn’t worth giving anything up. Especially for Ben.” A serious look came across Fern’s face. “I guess she didn’t count on the scandal.”

Rita scowled.

“What scandal?” Hazel asked, as if she couldn’t keep her mouth shut another minute longer.

Fern smiled. “Well, surely everyone knows.”

There was silence in the old, knotty pine kitchen. “No,” Rita said, “everyone does not know.”

Fern tossed back her hair and leveled her black-lined eyes first on Hazel, then on Rita. “Well, you could have asked my father-in-law, but he’s dead. So I guess you’d better ask Ben.” Then she cocked her head and sipped her tea and smirked like she’d won the lottery.

Mindy knew her mother was looking to start trouble.

After she heard her mother say those things, she left
the house, got on her bike, and pedaled down the snow-packed street toward West Basin Road as fast as she could pedal, as fast as she could get away from there, though she had no place else to go.