The Matchmaker (15 page)

H
e received an e-mail from the Department of the Treasury: the president and the secretary needed him in Washington. He let the e-mail sit unanswered for nearly twelve hours while he decided what to do. Then, somehow, an aide tracked him down at the Connaught, and left a message with the front desk. A girl just out of university handed the message to Box with wide-eyed awe. It probably seemed to her like something from a movie, but to Box the news was merely tiresome. He threw the message away.

But when he awoke in the morning, there was a voice mail on his cell phone from the secretary himself. The president badly needed his consult; he was getting a lot of pressure from Wall Street about interest rates and trade sanctions in North Korea. Things were a mess now, but they might be looking at an even bigger mess, and “we all know how the president feels about his legacy vis-à-vis the deficit.” And, “Please, Box, as a favor to me personally, as a service to your country…”

Box sat on the edge of the bed and exhaled. First-term presidents were worried about reelection; second-term presidents, their legacies.

Dabney hadn’t wanted him to come to London at all. He couldn’t imagine her reaction when he called and asked if he could extend his trip for a week in Washington.

But it was the President of the United States, and the Secretary of the Treasury, and, more important, it was work. As at least one of his students pointed out each semester, most economic theory had no actual bearing on people’s
lives
. But this would. If Box didn’t go and put his hands on it, someone else would, and he or she would muck it up.

He called Dabney.

“Darling,” he said. He then launched into his careful argument: the Secretary of the Treasury, the nation’s economic policy, another week away, he was sorry. But even with a side trip to Washington, he would be back on Nantucket by the Fourth of July.

Dabney surprised him by saying, “Of course, darling, by all means, if the secretary needs you—go! I’m so proud and thrilled for you. What an honor!”

Box had to agree with her: it was an honor. He was glad that Dabney was back to her supportive and agreeable self. She was far more encouraging than he’d anticipated.

“Thank you, darling,” he said. “For understanding.”

“Don’t be silly,” Dabney said.

Her voice was light, even joyful. She must be feeling much better, he thought.

Box called the secretary back.

N
ina walked into the office wearing a chic new pair of glasses and announced that she had a date with Dr. Marcus Cobb for the following Wednesday night.

 Dabney was nearly speechless. “Who is Dr. Marcus Cobb?” she asked. The name sounded familiar, but Dabney couldn’t place it. It sounded like the name of one of the guys Oprah had elevated to celebrity status—Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz—but that wasn’t right.

“The eye doctor,” Nina said. “He joined the Chamber earlier this week.”

“Right!” Dabney said. She had just processed his application yesterday. “I am
losing
it!”

“He asked me out when he came into the office,” Nina said.

“Did he?” Dabney said. She was surprised that this was the first she was hearing of it. “Where is he taking you?”

“To the Galley for dinner,” Nina said.

The Galley Beach was not just a good first date, it was the
best
first date. “I can’t believe it,” Dabney said.

“You can’t believe someone would want to take me out?” Nina said.

“No!” Dabney said. “It’s not that.” She didn’t know how to explain what she was feeling. If Nina was finally going to go on a date, Dabney had wanted to be the one to set her up. She wanted to redeem herself for the Jack Copper debacle. “When do I get to meet him?”

“I’m not sure,” Nina said. Her face held an expression that Dabney couldn’t decipher. “I think maybe I’d like to take this one slow…maybe keep it to myself for a while…would you understand if I didn’t introduce you right away?”

“I promise not to say anything,” Dabney said. “I know I messed up with Jack, Nina. I would love to meet Dr. Marcus Cobb, just get a look at him, and I swear not to say a word about auras or smoke. I swear!”

“Dabney,” Nina said, “I’m asking for space with this one. Okay?”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “Okay.” She tried not to feel hurt. She supposed she should be glad that Nina had taken care of things on her own. Dabney was terribly busy.

She and Clen had been spending nearly every afternoon together—either at the pool or at the beach. Clen preferred the pool. It was less of a hassle and the wind didn’t ruffle his newspapers and there was indoor plumbing, as well as the blender for margaritas. Dabney was becoming accustomed to frozen drinks and homemade sandwiches—one more delectable than the last—delivered to her chaise.

Dabney preferred the beach because to her, the beach
was
Nantucket, and it returned her to the summers of her youth. Once upon a time, Dabney and Clen had been the King and Queen of Madequecham Beach. Clen was in charge of bringing the keg each Sunday, and Dabney organized the firewood, the charcoal grills, the hot dogs and hamburgers and marinated chicken thighs, the chips and potato salad and brownies. They played horseshoes and touch football and they threw the Frisbee. They listened to the Who and the Boss and Van Morrison.
Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you, my Brown-Eyed Girl.

They had good, long talks during those afternoons. Clen told her the story of how he’d lost his arm, which was so horrific and disturbing that Dabney couldn’t bear to think about it. She would reach out periodically and stroke the skin of his stump and think of what a brave man he was, what a resilient man.

She signed out on the log nearly every day, writing,
errands.
Her errands were: Beach. Pool. Sandwiches. Talk. Love.

Love.

Clen had said to her, “Take the words back. I want to hear you take them back.”

She laid her hand on his cheek and looked into the green glen and weak tea of his eyes. “I take them back.”

I don’t love you.

“Tell me you didn’t mean them when you said them.”

She said, “I didn’t mean them when I said them. I have always loved you, Beast, and I always will.”

It was, all of it, something like a state of bliss, but it was coming to an end. They had been granted a week’s reprieve when Box called to say he was going to Washington.

“The president?” Clen had scoffed. “Are you sure he isn’t exaggerating his own importance?”

Box had flaws like everyone else, but exaggerating his own importance wasn’t one of them. Dabney was just grateful for an extra week of freedom.

Agnes, however, was growing more curious by the day.
Where were you going today? I saw you driving on the Polpis Road. Why were you not at work? I called the office at three o’clock and they said you’d stepped out. Again. What’s going on, Mom? Is there something you want to tell me? Are you seeing Dr. Donegal again, because if you are, I think that’s great. Nina says you’re out doing errands. What kind of errands? Does Nina know where you’re going?

Dabney yearned to tell her daughter the truth.

Clen said, “Why don’t you?”

Maybe if she’d been having an affair with Dr. Marcus Cobb, or a young waiter from the Boarding House, she would have confided in her daughter. But Clendenin Hughes was a nuclear bomb.

A week after Agnes turned sixteen, Dabney had started teaching Agnes to drive in the parking lot of Surfside Beach. They went in the evenings after dinner, just the two of them, and Dabney rode shotgun and offered tips she thought might be helpful. They drove Dabney’s Mustang, which had been an impulse buy after her Camaro died. She’d had the Mustang for only eighteen months total (buying a Ford had been a mistake), but the car would have great importance to her because in it she had told Agnes the truth.

Dabney didn’t remember her exact words. What would she have said?

Honey, sweetheart, darling…Daddy—Box—isn’t your biological father. Your biological father is a man named Clendenin Hughes.

It had gone something like that.

He lives in Asia now. He left the country before I discovered I was pregnant and it was impossible for him to get back. It would have been far easier for me to go over there, but I couldn’t go, and so I told him to please let me raise you on my own. I’m not explaining this well, darling, it was very complicated.

Clendenin Hughes. He lives in Thailand now, I think, or Vietnam.

All Dabney could remember was Agnes’s high-pitched, hysterical screaming like Dabney was stabbing her in the eye with a fork.

She had waited too long. Dr. Donegal had said thirteen. Box had wanted her to know at age ten.

But Dabney was Agnes’s mother; Dabney was in charge of what her daughter knew, and when.

Dabney hadn’t wanted Agnes to know at all, ever.

What did it matter? Really,
what
?
Box had been a good father. He had been with Agnes since before lasting memory. Why mess up Agnes’s beautiful head with information she would never, ever need?

Because it was the truth. Because it was blood. Dabney and Box had done a lot of, if not actual lying, then sidestepping of the truth. Agnes had asked why she looked nothing like Box and Box had said, “Human genetics are capricious, my pet.”
Agnes had asked Dabney about the photographs of her and Clen together in the yearbook.
This was your boyfriend, Mom? Yes, I suppose it was. Whatever happened to him? Oh, he’s long gone.

Agnes had never seen her birth certificate. Clen’s name wasn’t on it. Dabney wouldn’t allow it; she’d been too freshly wounded, too consumed with baffling emotion. Dr. Benton, who was the doctor on Nantucket before Ted Field, had done the delivery and he had every idea who the father was, but Dabney looked him dead in the eye and said she had no idea. She said she had slept with a lot of boys the preceding summer.

On the line for father, it said
: unknown
.

Dabney had decided to confess on Agnes’s sixteenth birthday because of the birth certificate. Agnes needed a copy to apply to a summer study program abroad, and whereas Dabney had been able to handle the birth certificate up until that point—for school registration, Little League, etc.—now it was impossible to keep it out of Agnes’s hands. Agnes could have taken five dollars to the registrar at any moment and gotten a copy herself.

The screaming.
You lied to me. You lied about my very being. How can I trust anything you say ever again? How do I know you’re even my mother? I wish you weren’t. I wish you weren’t my mother.

Dabney was prepared for all this. Dr. Donegal had told her to expect it. Of course, it was one thing to know it was coming and another to actually experience it. Dabney was glad she had chosen to break the news while she was still in the driver’s seat of the Mustang. Agnes might have floored it—straight over the sand and into the ocean.

I wish you weren’t my mother.

Other girls Agnes’s age threw out lines like that all the time, Dabney knew, but Agnes never had. Dabney wouldn’t lie: it hurt, and it hurt worse because Agnes had every right to be angry. Dabney had withheld pertinent information, perhaps the most pertinent. Dabney
had
lied to her about her very being. Dabney had misjudged the timing. She had wholeheartedly disagreed with Box about telling Agnes at ten. What ten-year-old was mature enough to understand paternity? Agnes had only just learned what sex was. And at thirteen, Agnes had been going through puberty—she got her period, she started shaving her legs, her face broke out—no, Dabney wasn’t going to add to her worries by telling her about Clen.

At sixteen, Agnes was mature, responsible, intelligent, and calm. Dabney had thought she would take the news in stride. It explained why there were no pictures of Box with Agnes as a baby, and why they shared no physical characteristics.

But Agnes was hysterical. She was beyond angry, beyond upset. Dabney had driven from the Surfside Beach parking lot to their house on Charter Street while Agnes wailed. The windows of the Mustang were rolled up, but Dabney was still convinced that everyone on the island could hear.

When they reached the house, Agnes called Box in Cambridge. Dabney had thought that Agnes would be equally upset at Box for keeping the secret—but no. Agnes merely wanted Box’s confirmation that what Dabney had said was true (as if Dabney would lie about something like that?), and finding it so, she cried and cried, allowing Box, and only Box, to console her.

To Agnes, Dabney was the liar, the slut, the enemy. Agnes didn’t speak to Dabney for three weeks, and even after that, things were strained.

A mother first, a mother forever. Dabney had lived by these words, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made mistakes. She had made a mistake in not telling Agnes sooner.
I’m sorry, darling!

Box wasn’t happy with Dabney, either. She had suffered through a great big dose of
I told you so
.

Dabney wondered if she should have waited until Agnes was eighteen, or twenty-one. Maybe her mistake wasn’t in waiting too long but in not waiting long enough. Maybe she should have waited until Agnes had enough experience to realize that life was a complicated mess and you could count on being hurt the worst by the person you loved the most.

However, in the weeks following the revelation, she noticed that Agnes expressed curiosity about Clendenin Hughes. Dabney’s yearbooks ended up on the floor of Agnes’s bedroom. Agnes googled Clen on the family computer; she brought up a list of his articles and may even have read a few. And then Dabney found a letter addressed to Clen, care of the
New York Times.
It was lying on top of Agnes’s math textbook, in plain sight, as if Agnes had wanted Dabney to see it. More likely, it had been left there as a form of torture.

Dabney had wanted few things in life as much as she had wanted to read that letter.

Then, as it always did, summer arrived and Agnes attended her program in France, and she came home weeks later with a penchant for silk scarves at the neck, and for calling Dabney “Maman,” and a ferocious new love of macarons. She brought Dabney the foolproof baguette recipe, and mother and daughter baked bread together and ate it with sweet butter and sea salt—and once, magically, the addition of an ounce of dark chocolate—and everything pretty much went back to normal. Dabney was Mom, Box was Dad, and Clen’s name wasn’t mentioned again. Life went on.

But Dabney wasn’t naive. She knew she had done some real damage and inflicted some real hurt, just as her own mother had when she disappeared for good, leaving Dabney in the care of May, the Irish chambermaid. Dabney feared that perhaps her mothering was flawed and doomed because she had received such poor mothering herself.

But no—no excuses. Dabney had never felt sorry for herself; she was her own person. She had made a decision, right or wrong.
We all make choices.

But to tell Agnes that Dabney was now in love with Clendenin Hughes, her biological father, and having an affair with him?

We all make choices?

No.

Dabney woke up in the morning unable to get out of bed. She couldn’t describe it. There was pain…everywhere.

Agnes said, “Do you want me to call Dr. Field?”

“No,” Dabney said. It was not stress, or guilt. She was lovesick. “Just call Nina, please, and draw the shades.” The sun was giving Dabney a headache; she wanted the bedroom dark. It was such a sin, Dabney wanted to cry, but there was no option. Her body felt invaded by pain, colonized by pain.

Agnes brought a glass of ice water and two pieces of buttered toast. The toast would never be eaten.

“I called Nina and told her you were sick,” Agnes said. “Can I bring you anything else?”

“Just please don’t tell Daddy,” Dabney said. “I don’t want him to worry.”

The following day, Dabney woke up feeling fine. A little flannel-mouthed, maybe, but otherwise fine. So maybe not lovesick, maybe a twenty-four-hour bug.

“We’re going to dinner tonight at the Boarding House,” Dabney said. “Put on something pretty.”

Agnes said, “You just feel sorry for me because CJ canceled. I’m going to stay home and mope. Eat Oreos from the bag, watch bad TV.”

“Reservation at seven o’clock,” Dabney said. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant, though, because I have to run some errands.”