Twillyweed (21 page)

“No!” I protested. “He's just a little boy! He's adorable!”

“Yes, well, you're kind. In Wendell's case it's nothing more than a lazy eye—correctable in time with glasses—but his is particularly grievous.”

“That's a sad story.” I sighed. “But Annabel wanted to be good.”

Paige reared her head. “Oh, no. I'll tell you what she
wanted
; she wanted to fit in with the moneyed North Shore set. She was a nobody from the South Shore. She worked at the gift shop in Locust Valley. She knew what she was looking for, all right. That's how Oliver met her, buying a birthday gift for me if you can believe it; he complimented her bow tying. Told her she'd tied a perfect clove hitch. He teased her, saying he could have her hoisting his mainsail in no time at all. She hoisted his mainsail, all right. The minute she met him she switched gears and became a volunteer. Made herself a peer. Oh, she knew just what she was doing.” Paige rubbed her chin along her arm. “I have to admit they seemed to be happy as long as he was role-playing. You could tell they liked each other. As soon as he went back to his regular ways, though, gambling, sailing all the time, things started to go wrong. They began to argue. And she hated the water. But she wanted to come to lunch here, at the yacht club. That she wanted. She came. She sat right there where you're sitting now. Thought it was ever so chichi. But the truth is these women don't care about things like that. Fancy things. They just love to sail. It's in their blood. They live for it. And she doesn't want any part of it, Annabel. It made her a nervous wreck, the sailing. She couldn't do it. When she realized she'd never really fit in, she put on a new dress. One that would fit her better. A runaway.” Paige spat the word. “She'll find out she's no good at that, either. It's bad enough about Oliver. But Wendell wasn't a dog you adopt from the pound and then abandon. It's criminal. She's a criminal. And so is Patsy Mooney if you must know, always speaking well of her, defending her, never letting it go, making Oliver suffer, on and on …” She actually shook her fist in the air.

I shrank back. “But why didn't she just get a divorce? Surely she would have been better off.”

“Oh, that was the other thing. He made her sign a prenup. To protect
me
, he told her. She would have had to stay around a good while to have gotten anything.
That's
why she left. That's why she just took off.”

A rugged-looking woman approached the table. “Hello, Paige. Who's this?”

“Hello, Taffy. Taffy Henderson, this is Claire Breslinsky. She'll be photographing the race for
Town and Country
.”

“Ah!” She gave my hand a hefty shake. “Don't forget to get a good shot of the
Dauntless
. We'll be the winning skiff.”

“Oh, no you won't,” Paige promised. “The
Corinthian
will win. She always does.”

“We'll see about that. Your luck's changed, I hear.” Taffy closed one eye and aimed her tanned face at Paige. “Well!” She turned and hit her hips. “Nice meeting you, there, Kate.”

“It's Claire.”

“Yes. Claire. Enjoy your lunch.” She scuttled off.

I said, “What was that all about?
Town and Country
?”

“I just told her that,” Paige said, shrugging. “I lied. Serves her right. She was very rude coming over and asking who you were.”

I laughed. “It didn't bother me a bit.”

“Well, she shouldn't have. You're my guest. But these women sort of despise me because my outfits are coordinated. You know what I'm saying.”

I did.

She squinched up her face. “And they think I overanalyze the wind. They don't think I'm a
natural
sailor. That sort of thing is very important to them.”

A terrific-looking, elderly blond woman with blue-white teeth approached our table. She held up her clipboard and pen. “All right. Think about how much I can shake you down for. I'll be over after dessert to sign you both up.” She moved athletically off.

“What was that?”

Paige said, “There's a garden contest every September. She's selling the seeds now.”

“Oh, I don't care about things like that,” I said.

“But it's for charity. You'll want to play! The winner gets half.”

“Oh. So what do they usually collect?'

“Twenty thousand, give or take.”

“Ten thousand dollars to the winner?”

“Ten, yes. Or fifteen more often. Half to the winner and the other half to her specific charity.”

“I'll take a package.” I scrounged around my purse. “Sign me up,” I said. Just then my cell phone burst out a series of thunderous rings and I shuffled around in there to retrieve it. When I opened it, I realized every single person in the club was staring at me. “
Ach
,” I said to loudly to everyone, “it's the pope. He always calls when I'm eating.”

Paige lowered her eyelids at me. “Put it away, darling. There are no cell phones at the club. Ever.”

I closed it without even answering. We finished a bowlful of fragrant berries and Paige, on her third drink, signed up for the contest, then left. Considering the way she'd been belting them down, I figured she was toasted so I told her I'd drive.

“Don't be silly.”

But I slipped the keys from her easily and once buckled up, she nodded off into a cacophony of snores. These were music to my ears, for I could only mean-spiritedly think how unfeminine they would sound to Morgan.

I dropped her and her car off and hiked up my hill.

Teddy, bless him, had been a man of his word. He'd delivered a good twenty big cardboard boxes to the side of the road and had weighted them down with huge Montauk stones from the garden. The boxes were soft from the fog but not wet so I lugged them in. He'd left a thoughtful note on one of them. “Claire,” it read, “Will stop by later to help you chop up that old vine. Teddy.”

I'd be sorry to see it go, but I was glad for the help disposing it. The first thing I did was seek out those shallow aluminum serving trays from the shed and fill them with dirt. I lined them up along the south window and made little furrows and sprinkled in the seeds. I cut out the names on the envelopes and taped them onto toothpicks. In the back of the pantry I found a tin of anchovies and cut the fishies up into tiny pieces and poked them into the dirt. In three weeks there would be sprouts and not long after that flowers. What, Paige was the only one who could have a money garden?

Jenny Rose

That night, Jenny Rose sat by herself in the dark at the kitchen table. Patsy Mooney came in balancing a blue-and-white Limoges dish of half-eaten sausages and she snapped on the light. She came to a sudden halt seeing the girl, and the sausages rolled dangerously to the edge of the plate. “Jesus! Holy mackerel, you gave me a start!”

Jenny Rose stirred her soup. “I can't sleep. I hope you don't mind. I've opened a tin.”

“Why would I mind? Saves me the trouble.” Patsy went to the stove and heated what was left in the pot to a boil. She sniffed the air and made a face. “Oxtail soup?
Uch.
Better you than me.” She waited another moment then spooned the rest into Jenny Rose's bowl. She went to the bread box and tore off some Italian bread, got the good olive oil from the shelf, and set it down. She whittled away at the rest of her sausage and, with a great show of kindness, divided the pieces and nudged the other half onto Jenny Rose's saucer.

“Well, thanks.”

“Now what would you like special for saving Radiance? Come on, anything you like!” She eyed the vodka bottle over the fridge. “We'll have a real celebration!”

Jenny Rose mulled over this thought, then suddenly her head shot up and she said, “What I'd really like is to switch rooms with you, Patsy Mooney.”

Patsy Mooney moved back in her chair, scraping the floor and upsetting a basket of onions, most of them rolling off into corners. She bent over to pick them up with a groan and Jenny Rose sprang from her seat to help.

“That don't make no sense. Why would you want to leave that gorgeous apartment you got? And for my drafty place?” She leaned her fat elbow on the chair cushion and dabbed away at little dustballs from under the stepping stool with her hem. “There's plenty of rooms here. Paige's always saying how ‘charming' they all are.” She sat back on her haunches, her pinafore straining. “You notice she don't help her nephew Teddy out by offering him a room, though. That she don't do. And here they have this big house.” Thoughtfully, she rubbed at a smudge on the floor. “She's always bragging about how smart her nephew Teddy is and how ambitious. Talking him up. Like she's …”—she furrowed her brow in thought—“overcompensating. It's like she wants to pawn him off on someone else, like. And here they've got it all. You'll notice she's not so fond of sharing. Sends off a check in the envelope each week. Keeps the poor at arm's length, that's what. That's the rich for you, Jenny Rose. Don't you ever forget it.” She sucked a tooth.

Jenny Rose lurched toward Patsy and grasped both her hands in her own. “Oh, please!” she implored. “Let me move into your turret and you can have my cellar! I can't bear that dry, awful space without a decent window! And you said that you love it! Oh, please!”

“But you got that nice bright fluorescent light,” Patsy reasoned doubtfully, cringing from the contact, dusting her off. “And my room is cold these nights. It's drafty and noisy in a storm!”

“I told you I love a storm and I can't bear fluorescence and central heating from every direction! It makes my nose stuff up. I really mean it. A drafty turret is everything I could dream of. So romantic! I could wear my Greek cardigan and set up my easel and—”

Patsy leaned suspiciously forward. “Just be straight with me. There's nothing hidden in there with that cable box, is there?”

“What do you mean, hidden?”

“Like dirty movies or nothing …”

“No. Of course not. I'd say so if there was. The truth is, I wouldn't know, would I?” She thought guiltily of the blue gems and prayed they wouldn't show in her eyes.

Patsy flattened her mouth and looked over her shoulder worriedly. “All right, all right. If you really mean it. It's just that Mr. Cupsand had that apartment smarted up special for the au pair, he said, see? So I don't know if he'll like the idea. …”

“Then we won't have to tell him! I won't mention it if you won't. Okay? If they find out, we'll just say we decided to switch! Once we've moved our stuff they're not likely to do anything about it.” She looked beseechingly into Patsy Mooney's darty little eyes.

Already Patsy could see herself propped with her feet up on that comfy couch watching the Yankees. “All right,” she agreed. “But not a word to no one!”

Excitedly, their shoulders scrunched up to their ears in happy anticipation, they went to rearrange their stuff.

Radiance, theoretically at Twillyweed to recover, had returned unannounced and was staying in her father's rooms. She was on her sweet way to the porch to light her joint when she saw Jenny Rose and Patsy Mooney cavorting up the grand staircase. She stood now quietly in the foyer, unobserved, enjoying their stealth. They were up to something, those two. There was no one on the main floor now but her. She threw a lemon in the air and caught it. Threw it, caught it. When she slipped through to the dining room, she hesitated. Someone had been looking for something because they'd left the top drawer in the ladies' writing desk ajar. A piece of something was caught there behind it on its way to the floor. Without turning on the light, she felt her way over and grasped it, a sheet of old-fashioned letter paper, a soft shade of pink and edged with dahlias.

Claire

Armed with news, I telephoned my son and daughter. They were very cavalier about my state of affairs, though both of them were pleased I had somewhere to live. For them, Grandma and Grandpa's house could always serve as home base. And how close was I to the water? “
On
the water? No shit!” They forgot their manners and gasped. They liked that, had visions of themselves arriving with carloads of drunken friends on weekends when I wasn't here. And, to be fair, I don't think they'd been entirely sold on the idea of Enoch. Well, they both love their dad. I was very nervous calling my mother, however. I might be a mother myself, but you have to know mine to understand. You see, because she thinks she's the boss of the world, the whole world thinks so, too. I was nervous out of habit, I guess. My father picked up the phone.

“Hi, Dad, it's me, Claire.”

“Who is it, Stan?” I could hear my mother over Bill O'Reilly in the background.

“Some lady,” Dad said.

“Hello?” my mother said in her tart
whatever yer selling we'll not be buyin'
voice.

“Mom. It's me, Claire.”

“What's wrong?”

“Oh, I knew it was Claire all along.” My father's voice jollying in the background.

“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know I'm all right.”

“Made up with Enoch, have you?”

“No. I'm still out in Sea Cliff. I—”

“Sea Cliff! Are you with Jenny Rose?”

“Yes, actually. You see I—”

Excitedly, she rushed on, “Darlene Lassiter called from the rectory out there. Tell her I've bought seven copies of the
Post
! I'll have them polyurethaned and send them off to Skibbereen day after tomorrow! Now, you'd better bring Jenny Rose here on Sunday. I'll not have them speaking ill of me back home.”

Back home
to my mother will always be Skibbereen in County Cork. No matter she's lived here fifty years. “All right, I'll ask her.”

“No, you'll tell her. I'll make me famous meatloaf.”