by Jason Allen
“Yes, just like I said before I left. Is wanting some time alone so unfathomable?”
“And if I ask Pete if you were by yourself in the car, what do you suppose he’ll say?”
“That I was! How many times do I have to defend myself to you? I don’t have a mistress!”
“I know you’re hiding something. Was Gina here when you arrived last night? Did you two get to have some private time?”
“This is exhausting.”
“I’ve never understood your affection for her.”
“Gina is an employee, nothing more. Stop this nonsense, and be nice to her for a change.”
“You’re a son of a bitch.”
“And you’re—”
“Go ahead, Leo. Say it.”
“What’s the point. We’ve said all this enough times already, and I’m in no shape to go toe-to-toe with you today. My head is fucking killing me.”
Gina scooted over to one of the lakeside windows, pulled a chamois cloth from her back pocket and began wiping down the sill and frame, already regretting what she’d overheard, appalled that Sheila suspected that she and Leo might have some sort of romantic connection. She also knew Leo hadn’t come out from the city alone, though he’d used the male pronoun when they stood outside with Pete. Referring to his mysterious guest, he’d said he had already left. Why Leo wanted to keep that person a secret from Sheila, it didn’t really matter. Gina didn’t want to find herself facing Sheila’s questions, having to decide whether to blow his cover or reinforce more than one of his lies at once—buying her a conciliatory gift on his behalf, whenever she could escape the estate with Leo’s credit card in hand, would be plenty.
To her right, Tiffany and Angelique came strolling in. A moment after, to her left, Sheila flung the sunroom’s glass door open and entered the dining room with quick steps, scowling.
“Something wrong, Mom?” Tiffany asked.
“Your father’s a big fat liar, but aside from that, everything’s fine.”
“I feel for you,” Tiffany said. “Must be tough being a martyr all the time.”
“I love you, too,” Sheila said, exhaling loudly. “Please tell me that’s your first glass of wine today.”
“Sure, if it’s what you want to hear. Mother, this is my very first glass.”
“Cut the shit, honey. Let’s be good hosts and visit with everyone.”
Tiffany laughed and held the wineglass to her lip. “You really want to risk me saying what I think of them? You can handle chatting with the upper-crusties on your own, can’t you?”
“Now, Tiffany.”
Gina averted her eyes and moved a few feet closer to the corner and ran the cloth along the tall cherrywood window frame, hoping that by facing away they would pay her no mind. This tactic had worked well over the years—keep your head down and appear engrossed in some menial task so as not to invite the awkwardness. Be invisible so they won’t realize their family drama has been witnessed, so they don’t engage you in artificial conversation, so you won’t have to play along and add yet another decorative layer to the lie. The lie being that their life at the estate qualified as a real-life Town & Country exposé in the making, rather than a toxic zone of bickering and resentment and little drops of poison.
She sensed Sheila and the girls leaving the room through the hall by the kitchen, but then glanced over her shoulder and found that Angelique had remained standing beside the dining table, looking toward the sunroom, her face flushed red and her jaw stressed as though she’d just been slapped. Across from her, Leo stood in the doorway. He and Angelique stared at one another with an intensity that made Gina wish she could tiptoe out of the room unnoticed, but instead she continued on with the cleaning charade, wiping the same immaculate strip of wood with her head down, reciting affirmations to herself, knowing that although they hadn’t vocalized any recognition of her presence, the two must have been aware of her. She’d have to wait them out.
Angelique’s footsteps trailed off in the direction of the living room, followed by the floorboards creaking behind her under Leo’s weight. Gina turned slightly as Leo stopped the girl in the doorway and took her by the arm. She shrugged his hand away and whisper-shouted at him with a finger in his face. The only word Gina could make out was don’t. And neither said another word before they left the dining room.
Gina paused, looking out the window at the bright runway of light shimmering off the lake and the handful of guests milling about the lawn in shorts and polo shirts, bathing suits and sarongs. What the hell had she just witnessed? Had Leo Sheffield been having an affair with his daughter’s best friend? He was closing in on sixty and she was only eighteen or nineteen. Not that such a huge age difference mattered to some men. Rich and powerful men like Leo sauntered down the streets of the Hamptons all summer long with their trophy wives and flavors of the month at their sides, but this girl had practically grown up with the Sheffields, and Gina knew Leo well, or so she’d thought...
She pushed her hair away from her face and held it there, questioning her instincts about what she’d just seen and heard. Despite the terribly tense interaction with Angelique just now, Leo just didn’t seem the type to either do anything so reckless or to cross such a fraught moral line. Still, that shirk of his arm and their body language—something was all wrong. The thought of him waiting for her to be of age, or worse, so much worse, the idea that maybe they’d begun having sex even before she’d turned eighteen, made Gina sick. But if anything like that had happened, wouldn’t she have noticed something before? They’d had plenty of female guests at the estate over the years, some of them beautiful enough to be models, a few of them actual models, and Leo had never shown interest in any of them, let alone a girl as young as Angelique. Still, Gina couldn’t think of another explanation for the emotional intensity of that interaction.
The longer she thought about it, though, the more she felt a key piece had eluded her. If Leo had been meeting Angelique in secret, then why did he also want to keep the unnamed male guest a secret from Sheila? And why had he left that cryptic voice-mail message before Gina arrived at work? His slip-and-fall story reeked of bullshit. Who the hell had Pete driven out here last night, before Leo’s head got all bashed up—a friend of Angelique’s? Did the man from the limo hit Leo in retaliation after he’d done something to her? All these questions made the hand-holding on the porch so much stranger and more troubling. She worried that Corey had stumbled into a spiderweb; that Angelique had been spinning him all morning and already had him wrapped around her finger, planning to use him for some shady purpose. She worried that her son had been blinded by infatuation, high on the idea that this pretty girl from the Upper East Side or wherever she lived had taken an interest.
She had to get out of the house for a minute and clear her head. The only task she could think of that justified some time alone outside was cutting tulips in the flower garden to add to the already lush dining room arrangements, so she trekked out from the kitchen with a pair of shears and a bucket and crossed the lawn amid the sounds of tipsy guests, her head turned to the left to catch glimpses of them. Gretchen’s long, slender frame lay out on a blanket-covered chaise like a life-size Barbie with sunglasses, Andy Sheffield sunning himself beside her, a half-dozen others standing in the shallow end or dangling their legs in the water, everyone other than Gretchen laughing when Clay’s sheepdog scampered onto the diving board and launched herself into the pool.
“Naughty girl, Polly!” Clay yelled, already cackling along with the rest of them. Gina stood still and watched from a distance as the dog paddled the length of the pool. Clay pulled what appeared to be a soggy plastic sandwich bag from her mouth right after she climbed the steps and told her she was naughty again, admonishing her for chewing on trash as she ran over to the row of chairs. His dog then shook water from her shaggy coat and sprayed everyone lounging there, sending some of them scampering
back onto the lawn, squealing and shouting at her to stop. Andy laughed harder than Gina had ever witnessed, holding his stomach, meekly reaching his other hand out to console his distraught, uptight girlfriend, and at the same time Clay lunged to grab the sopping-wet dog by the collar, but missed. So then, of course, Polly made a beeline back to the diving board and took flight, all four paws outstretched when she hit the water with another huge splash.
The stasis in her legs relented and Gina walked on, entering the flower garden between one of the wrought-iron benches and the sundial. She kept walking until the path led her down a slope, where she soon found herself concealed by taller shrubs and the series of wooden structures with wisteria, thick as moss, clinging to the slats and beams. She set down the bucket, slid her hand to the base of her pocket and palmed the two loose pills, knowing she shouldn’t take them but knowing just as well that she’d already made up her mind. I need these, she thought, and placed the pills on her tongue. But before she managed to swallow them she stepped back, startled by someone whispering loudly from behind the thick row of privet to her right.
“There’s no excuse, I know,” she heard Mr. Sheffield say, his voice about half its normal volume. “Please accept my apology. I’m begging you. On the lives of everyone I love, I’m so sorry I scared you like that. I’ve acted horribly, but you have to believe me. If I’d been in my right mind—you have to know, I would never hurt you.”
Gina sank to the soil. On her hands and knees and with the pills tucked beside her molars, she listened to Angelique’s response. “My boyfriend thinks we should turn you over to the cops.”
“Please, you have to talk to him. Convince him not to say anything.”
“Don’t touch me!”
“Shh! Alright, Jesus, I’m sorry.” Leo’s voice shrank to a whisper. “But you have to convince him to keep quiet. Think of Tiffany. Think of what it would do to her to hear any of this.”
“I don’t want to tell anyone about last night, but we need money.”
“You’re blackmailing me?”
“I’m just telling you how this can all go away.”
In the brief silence, Gina swallowed the pills and felt a sudden need to pee. He’d apologized for hurting her, but that could mean so many things. Had he hit her? Forced himself on her? Gina’s gut told her it was the latter. Could Leo Sheffield really have assaulted a teenaged girl? The tone of their conversation implied that he had, and certain moments and phrases also triggered Gina to wonder if Angelique might be pregnant. Maybe she’d mentioned the money as a payoff for keeping her pregnancy a secret. Maybe some of it would pay for an abortion.
“All you have are accusations,” Leo whispered forcefully. “And I could press charges against him for assault just as easily.”
Gina crawled next to the row of privet, rose to her feet and found a sliver between the bushes where she could see the two of them in profile.
“He took pictures,” Angelique said.
“He what?”
“Photos.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Of your friend, in the pool, while you were getting another bottle and that blanket in the house. We know what you did, and we have the pictures to prove it.”
Mr. Sheffield stared with glazed eyes. “Well, then,” he said. “Guess you got me.” Sweat rolled along his jaw and gathered at his chin during a long, intense pause. Then he went on, speaking in an unsettling monotone. “So exactly how much do you and your bloodsucking accomplice want to keep quiet?”
Angelique took a second to push her hair back before answering, then leveled her eyes at him. “One million.”
“Seriously?”
Gina watched him raise an eyebrow, and for a brief flash she thought he may have grinned. But then his face went slack once more.
“Done,” he said. “You’ll have it tomorrow night.”
“Tonight would be better.”
“You realize how fucking difficult it is to get a million dollars in cash together when all the banks are closed? I’ll have it tomorrow. Here, just after sunset.”
“Fine,” she said, “but one more thing. I don’t want to see you till then. Don’t even look at me after we leave the garden—not till you hand over the money.”
Leo brought his hands to his face and exhaled so loudly it resembled a growl, then quickly reached out and grabbed her arm. She shoved his hand off. “I told you, don’t ever fucking touch me again.”
“Sorry, but hold on a minute. What assurances can you give me that you and this guy with the photos will keep quiet? And how do I know you won’t ask for more?”
“Sucks being at someone else’s mercy, doesn’t it? Kind of feels like someone just tackled you and pinned you to the ground?”
Gina had to get away before they left their hiding spot. She wished she hadn’t heard any of this, and definitely didn’t want to hear another word. What the hell had Angelique meant about photos of Leo’s friend in the pool? Sweating as she moved along the path, she thought again about the unnamed man from the limo and Leo calling her phone so early in the morning, asking for help. Then she thought back to Corey and Angelique holding hands, hoping her son had become the girl’s confidant and nothing more. Could Corey have had a hand in what happened to Leo? No, she decided right away, he couldn’t have. He’d been out doing whatever he usually did, probably drinking with his friends, not here at the estate in the middle of the night. The man in the limo, he must have been the one. But who was he?
She gathered the shears and bucket and frantically clipped a variety of tulips, hurrying to finish so she could return to the house. Leo claimed his head wound had come from slipping next to the pool, but Gina feared the truth involved the man Pete had mentioned, who may or may not be some boyfriend of Angelique’s, who may or may not have foiled Leo’s attempted rape or assaulted him as retribution for some such sick behavior with her in the past. Whatever the ugly truth, none of this made any sense. She’d worked for Leo Sheffield since her boys were little and had respected him all the while. On more than one drunken night at the estate he’d confided a paternal affection, stating that he thought of her as more than an employee, almost as family. But what she’d heard Angelique say just now, coupled with the girl’s reaction to Leo touching her in the dining room, it all seemed to point to some sort of assault. How hadn’t Gina seen the evil in him during all these years? How had he managed to hide his dark side so well?
With her bucket of flowers, she approached the end of the path, her heart beating in her throat. She leaned her head out from the flower-covered archway and saw the Sheffield boys and seven or eight guests still lollygagging poolside. The wide patch of lawn between the garden and the kitchen entrance looked clear, but it would take plenty of steps to get there. She focused on the distant doorway, preparing to walk a reasonable pace across the lawn—but then, with her very first step, she met Leo head-on, her hands out to avoid colliding with him as he came stomping with his head down from the other side of the curved privet wall. He stopped, and after staring for a moment with sweat dribbling down his forehead, he placed a hand on her arm.
“Gina,” he said, out of breath. “I think I need to lie down.”
She exhaled, eyeing him until he hung his head and brought his palms to his face. With her arms crossed and the bucket dangling below her elbow, she spoke as she would to one of her kids when they’d done something disappointing, formulating a sentence she never imagined saying to him.
“First,” she said, “I think you’d better tell me what the hell that whole conversation with Angelique just now was about.”
Leo tilted his head back and released an exasperated sigh. Then he faced her and responded with zero emotion. “I don’t know where to start.” Over his shoulder, Gina saw Angelique walking away from them, toward the chess pieces and the much larger sculptures. “I need to sleep awhile,” he said, taki
ng an awkward step to the side. “Help me upstairs, and if you promise to keep it between us, tonight I’ll tell you the whole thing. Everything that’s been going on.”
“Not sure I can promise the keeping-the-secret part. Not this time. Not until I hear the full story.”
“Fair enough,” he said, looking gut-shot.
“If you hurt that girl, she has every right to report you.”
“It’s a much more complicated situation than you can possibly imagine.”
“Well, I feel sick over what I just heard.” She took his arm as if yanking a child away from fire, and together they started toward the kitchen door. “I can see you’re not well, so I’ll have some mercy for now and let you sleep first. But you’re going to tell me everything when you wake up.”
He looked at the ground and nodded, the very personification of shame as she let him enter the kitchen ahead of her. The screen door slapped closed and she plodded alongside him past Josie and Michael, both of them preoccupied with their own chores while she helped him into the hall and up the stairs and finally into the master bedroom.
With Leo under the covers, she stood in the doorway and looked at him lying there on his side, facing the opposite wall, the square of gauze taped to his head discolored with a brownish-red splotch where his wound had suppurated at the stitch line. This man had shown so many kindnesses to her. He’d given her all those small loans, which were really gifts that he kept secret from his wife. He’d sat with her on the kitchen steps a number of nights last summer, and sometime around Fourth of July weekend calmly encouraged her to open up about her troubles with Ray. The contrast between those intimate conversations and the deeply disturbing one she’d overheard in the garden with Angelique was stunning. How could this be the same man? What had he done to his daughter’s friend?
She closed the bedroom door and walked downstairs in a daze, then wandered along the ground floor even more detached, as though sleepwalking, first passing by Tiffany, who sat cross-legged on the living room rug with a giant sketch pad in her lap, then past a white-haired couple who said hello and stared at Gina when she didn’t say anything in response. As she passed the kitchen doorway, Josie called out to her, asking for help with something, but her voice hardly registered, as if she’d spoken from a remote frequency, like a distress signal from a desert island through layers of radio static.
