The Matchmaker (8 page)

And what would she do when she found him? What would she say?

She would say:
I want you to leave. There’s no reason for you to be here. You said you came back for me, but your mere presence on this island is making me…ill. Ill, Clen. I can’t handle it. I’m sorry, I do realize it’s a free country, but you have to go.

She gazed down Federal Street.

Post office? Was he mailing a letter back to Vietnam, to beautiful Mi Linh?

Dabney was jealous of Mi Linh, a woman who had thrown a perfectly good strand of pearls into a lake for a turtle. Surely that had been a joke?

Dabney headed to Saint Mary’s to light a candle for her father. Her father had never really liked Clendenin; her father had found him smug. Her father used to say,
That
boy is too smart for his own good.

Dabney walked up the ramp of the church, holding on to the hand railing. She was sweating. One place she was certain
not
to see Clendenin Hughes was the Catholic church.

Cool, dim, quiet, peaceful: the inside of the church was a salve. Dabney inserted two dollar bills into the collection box and said a prayer for her father. Then, something she had never, ever done before: she fed the box two more dollars and said a prayer for her mother.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie.

She emerged from the church feeling calm, light, and virtuous.

When she headed back up Main Street, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Clen’s bicycle was gone.

Exasperating!

That night, she couldn’t sleep.

The following night, no sleep.

The third night, at two o’clock in the morning, she called Box. He answered the phone on the eleventh ring. Anyone in her right mind would have realized the poor man was asleep and hung up.

“Professor Beech,” he said. He must have thought the call was a drunk student who had mustered the courage to complain about a grade.

“Do you love me?” Dabney asked.

“What?” Box said. “Dabney? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Do you
love
me?” she said.

“Yes. Of course I love you.”

“Don’t ‘of course’ me,” Dabney said. “Tell me something real. Tell me how you really feel.”

 “What on earth is wrong with you? Did you have a dream?”

“We aren’t close anymore,” Dabney said. “You’re always
working
!
We never have sex anymore.”

“Sex?” Box said, as though he’d never heard the word before. “You do realize that I have to administer final exams to three hundred students in the morning, right?”

“I don’t give a hoot about your three hundred students!” Dabney said. “I want to know if you love me. If you desire me.”

There was a pause. Then a sigh. “Yes, darling, I love you. You are my heart’s desire.”

“Am I?” Dabney said.

“Yes, Dabney. You are.”

“Okay,” Dabney said, but she was not placated.

“Good night,” Box said.

Dabney hung up.

She woke up in the morning exhausted and anxious, which was not good, because it was the day that she and Nina were interviewing job candidates. They had enough money in their budget to hire two information assistants and pay them twenty dollars an hour to answer the phones, which would start ringing nonstop the Thursday before Memorial Day.

One of the assistants would be Celerie Truman, who had worked at the Chamber the summer before. Celerie—pronounced like the underappreciated vegetable—was the most enthusiastic information assistant Dabney had hired in twenty-two years. Celerie had been a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota and had discovered Nantucket through her college roommate. She was the kind of peppy individual who could shout cheers in a stadium of sixty thousand people while wearing shorts and a halter top in minus-thirty-degree weather. And she had turned out to be a magnificent ambassador for Nantucket. Certain visitors had stopped by the Chamber office just to meet Celerie because she had been so helpful on the phone.

Dabney was relieved to have someone as knowledgeable and on the ball as Celerie back in the office. No training necessary. Celerie was a disciple of the Dabney Way of Doing Things. By the end of last summer, she had even started coming to work wearing a strand of pearls.

They had to hire only one other person. Nina had placed a classified ad, and this had garnered the usual hundred applicants. Nina, through years of experience, had winnowed the list of potential candidates down to three of the most promising for herself and Dabney to interview.

“The first guy is twenty-six years old, between years of dental school at Penn. He started coming to Nantucket when he was ten. His parents own a house in Pocomo, so he’ll live with them.”

“Dental school,” Dabney said, yawning. The lack of sleep had left ugly black circles under her eyes, and she thought her skin was turning a funny color. “That’s a first.” She checked with Nina for confirmation. “Right? We’ve never had a dental student?”

“Law school, medical school, Rhodes scholar, the guy writing his doctoral dissertation on the Betty Ford Clinic after having been there three times, the wacky woman who was writing the Broadway musical…”

“Ruthie,” Dabney said. “She brought the worst-smelling lunches.”

Nina held up her hand. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“A dental student sounds good,” Dabney said. “Clean, hygienic. Not like the guy from Denmark who never bathed.”

“Franzie,” Nina said. “Let’s not talk about him, either.”

“What’s this kid’s name?” Dabney asked.

“Riley Alsopp,” Nina said.

Dabney had been hiring information assistants for twenty-two years and her instincts were spot-on; despite smelly lunches and body odor, Dabney had never actually had to fire anyone. As soon as she met Riley Alsopp and noted his excellent handshake and heard his pleasant speaking voice and took in his brilliant smile, and his needlepoint belt featuring hammerhead sharks (“My mother made it for me”) and the copy of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
under his arm (“I’ve decided to go back and read the classics this summer”), Dabney’s mood instantly improved. She knew there would be no reason to interview any other candidates. When they were finished with Riley, she could go home and take a nap.

She sat Riley Alsopp down, brought him a cold bottle of water, admired his thick brown hair and his tapered fingers and his battered boat shoes, and asked the standard first question.

“Why do you want to work at the Chamber of Commerce, Riley?”

She closed her eyes for a second and thought:
Please do not say, “Because I want to work in town.” Please do not say, “Because it seems easy.” Please do not say, “Because I worked as a waiter at the Languedoc last summer and I got caught stealing from the till.” Please, please,
please
do not say, “Because Celerie Truman is my girlfriend and we thought it would be fun to work together.”

He took a breath and laughed a little. “I guess there’s only one reason. Because I love Nantucket.”

Dabney beamed at Nina and Nina squinted back at Dabney and gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Dabney knew what Nina was thinking:
We have interviewed scores of candidates together and only a handful have ever given us this simple, perfect answer.

Dabney said, “You’re hired!”

“Really?” Riley said. “Just like that? I memorized all these facts and statistics about the island. Don’t you want to hear them?”

“Nope,” Dabney said. “I trust you. But I do have two questions: when can you start and when do you have to leave?”

“I can start tomorrow,” Riley said. “And I go back to dental school on September fifteenth, so I can work until the twelfth or so.”

“Wonderful!” Dabney said. What a bonus! Most information assistants said they could work until Labor Day, but then their grandmother would die sometime around the twentieth of August, and either Dabney or Nina got stuck answering the phone for the remainder of the summer.

They all agreed that Riley would start work the following Monday, he would bring two forms of ID for his W-2, and he would meet Celerie.

As Riley Alsopp was walking toward the door, he stopped at Dabney’s desk and picked up a framed photograph of Agnes.

“Is this your
daughter
?
” he asked. “Or, wait…your sister?”

Dabney tried not to let any gloating show on her face. People always mistook her and Agnes for sisters.

“My daughter, Agnes.”

Riley Alsopp stared at the photograph. It was an artsy black-and-white shot of Agnes standing at the top of Main Street in the snow. She wore a white knit hat and gloves, and her long, dark hair cascaded over her white ski parka. “She’s beautiful,” Riley said. “Like,
really beautiful
.”

Dabney studied Riley for a moment, and something inside her unfolded. “Thank you,” she said. She, of course, thought Agnes was the loveliest creature ever to  grace the earth, but Dabney was always surprised when other people called Agnes beautiful. Dabney sometimes felt almost jealous, believing Agnes was hers alone to appreciate. But Dabney was pleased by Riley Alsopp’s compliment. She could tell that it was genuine.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Dabney asked. As soon as she asked, she realized the question was inappropriate and absolutely none of her business.

“I’m free as a bird,” Riley said. “The only two females in my life are my mother and my chocolate Lab, Sadie.”

His mother and his chocolate Lab, Sadie? What a doll! It took everything Dabney had not to swoon.

H
e stood at the lectern and read aloud the standard exam procedure while Miranda Gilbert passed out blue books to the squirming, anxious Econ 10 students. Box was dreadfully old-fashioned, he knew; nearly everyone else at Harvard administered exams via the Internet, but Box refused. Next year, he would have to capitulate. Next year, he supposed, the company that made blue books would be out of business.

He yawned, more loudly than he meant to, into the microphone. One of the students in the back row called out, “Late night, Professor Beech?”

A muted chuckle rippled through the room. Miranda turned to offer him a sympathetic smile, and Box said, “You all fail,” which roused genuine laughter.

He had not been able to fall back asleep after the phone call from Dabney.

Tell me something real
, she had said.
Tell me how you really feel.

He had really felt annoyed, and unamused. Two o’clock in the morning! Had she been drinking? he wondered. The call was entirely out of character. Dabney had never, ever, not once in twenty-four years of marriage, done anything like that.

We’re not close anymore. We don’t have sex anymore. I want to know if you love me. If you desire me.

Normally, after the Econ 10 exam, Box took Miranda to lunch; it was the only time during the semester that he did so. He liked to keep their relationship professional; this was really the best way, especially since they spent so much time together. It was always Miranda who tried to forge something like a friendship. She occasionally coaxed Box out to see a movie, which he agreed to only when the solitude was getting to him. They dined together with colleagues, but never alone, except for this one lunch. Box didn’t want people to talk, although he assumed people talked anyway. Miranda was a very beautiful woman, smart as a wizard, and she’d worked for him for four years, demonstrating her loyalty, patience, and steadfastness. Box could recognize all her enticing qualities without feeling anything romantic. His only mistress was his work, his reputation, his career. But it was helpful to have boundaries.

The phone call from Dabney was bothering him so much that he decided it was best, all the way around, if he passed on lunch with Miranda.

“I’m afraid the chap in row thirty-five was correct,” Box said. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I have to forego our usual lunch, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

“No apology necessary,” Miranda said, though her rich, plummy voice was clipped. He had hurt her feelings, he supposed. It seemed that where the women in his life were concerned, he could do nothing right.

T
hursday morning, there was an e-mail in her in-box from Clendenin Hughes. Subject line:
?

Dabney clicked on it, thinking,
?!???!!

It said: Meet me tonight at 9:00, Quaker Cemetery.

“Oh my God!” Dabney said, then she clapped her hand over her mouth. Again, the Lord’s name in vain! All the virtue she felt after lighting the candles on Monday evaporated.

“What?” Nina said. She squinted at Dabney and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is it Clen?”

Dabney nodded. It was a relief to have someone to tell. Keeping it bottled up inside wasn’t healthy. “He wants me to meet him at the Quaker Cemetery tonight,” she said.

“That’s spooky,” Nina said. “Will you go?”

“No,” Dabney said. “No way.”

On Thursday nights Dabney always stayed home for Sandwich and a Movie, and this Thursday, she decided, would be no different. She picked up a Cubano from Foood For Here & There, arranged it on a plate with some potato chips, fixed herself a glass of ice water with lemon, and switched on the TV in the den. She noticed that
Love Story
was playing on TMC, starting five minutes hence.
Love Story
was Dabney’s favorite movie of all time; that had been true even before she went to Harvard. One year, Dabney had dressed up as Jennifer Cavalleri for Halloween, which basically meant she wore what she usually wore—a red turtleneck, headband, and pearls—and carried a copy of
Love Story,
the novel, as a clue to her identity.

Dabney could have recited the script line-for-line: there was Jenny calling Oliver “Preppie,” there were Oliver and Jenny in Widener Library, there they were driving up to Ipswich to meet the coldhearted father, there were the hockey games and the scene where Jenny is beautifully tanned on the sailboat. Jenny wants to go to Paris, but there will be no Paris. The reason she can’t get pregnant is that she’s sick, she has leukemia, she is going to die.

Dabney sneaked into the kitchen during a commercial to put her plate into the dishwasher and get a bar of dark chocolate. She glanced at the clock. It was 8:45.

Dabney returned to the den to watch the end of the movie, but she couldn’t get comfortable. She had been taking antibiotics for three days, but she still felt lousy. And she was distracted. It was 8:48, then 8:50.

He would be there. She knew he would be there. They used to meet at the Quaker Cemetery all the time in high school.
That’s spooky,
Nina had said. What was spooky was that Agnes had been conceived in the Quaker Cemetery, Dabney was sure of it.

She put on her spring coat and left the house. She decided to take Box’s Wagoneer rather than the Impala. The Impala was the most recognizable car on the island.

She drove by the Quaker Cemetery at a few minutes after nine. She slowed down, her eyes scanning the southeast corner for the gravestone of Alice Booker Wright, Dabney’s great-great-grandmother, which had been their usual meeting place.

She saw the outline of him—a hulking, dark figure sitting on Alice’s grave.

He waved at her with his right arm.

She hit the gas.

She drove back through the streets of town thinking,
Go back, go see him, kiss him again.
Oh how she longed to kiss him again. She remembered the smell of the cut grass in that cemetery and the squish of mud under their feet and the rough-hewn edge of Alice’s headstone rubbing against Dabney’s back, the taste of Clen’s neck, his voice, his eyes, his knee bouncing up and down, his feet shod in Chuck Taylors, how he loved them, he was stubborn, he wouldn’t stop wearing them no matter how old he got. Desire presented in Dabney like mercury in her veins.
Go back to him!

But no, she wouldn’t. She pulled into her driveway and hurried back into the house, short of breath. She had left the TV on, and the final scene of the movie was playing: Oliver sitting alone in the snow.

The phone rang, startling her. Would Clen be brazen enough to call the house? Then she realized that the phone call was from Agnes. Agnes called every Thursday night at nine thirty because she knew her mother would be home for Sandwich and a Movie. Thank God that Dabney had come back! If Dabney hadn’t answered, Agnes might have grown worried and called Box, and then there would have been some explaining to do.

“Darling!” Dabney said.

“Mommy?”

Dabney said, “Honey, are you okay?” Did she dare hope there was trouble in paradise, Agnes’s engagement to CJ on the rocks? Oh how Dabney would inwardly rejoice!

“It’s my job,” Agnes said. “I found out yesterday that we didn’t get funding from National for the summer. The club is shutting down until the school year starts back up.” With these words, she started to cry.

“Oh, honey,” Dabney said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I knew it was iffy,” Agnes said. “I should have mentally prepared myself.”

“So what will you do all summer?” Dabney asked. She had a dreary picture in her head of Agnes working as a temp in CJ’s office, fetching coffee, answering the phone.

“I’m coming home,” Agnes said.

“What?” Dabney said. “To Nantucket?”

“Yes, Nantucket. I don’t hate it as much as you think, Mom.”

“I didn’t think you hated it,” Dabney said. However, Agnes didn’t love Nantucket the way Dabney did. She hadn’t been home for the summer since her freshman year in college. Agnes had inherited Clendenin’s taste for globetrotting. There had been trips to France and Italy in high school, then a summer in Ireland, then a summer working at a camp for disadvantaged children in the Bronx, which had eventually led her to her current job. “I just thought you might want to stay in the city with CJ.”

“He wants me to stay,” she said. “But Manhattan stinks in the summer. I’d much rather be at the beach. I can work as a counselor at Island Adventures; I already talked to Dave Patterson. I can plan the wedding. And I can hang out with you and Dad.”

Agnes was coming home for the summer! Dabney felt light-headed.

“CJ is really busy,” Agnes said. “He has to negotiate contracts before training camp starts for his football players, and one of his clients for the Yankees, I can’t tell you who, is in the process of being traded to San Diego. But I’m trying to get him to come up on weekends when he can.”

“Weekends,” Dabney repeated. She would spend a summer’s worth of weekends with CJ? When Dabney closed her eyes, she saw a thick, olive-green fog. Agnes’s coming home was the best surprise Dabney could have hoped for. Dabney could save Agnes. And Agnes, quite possibly, could save Dabney.