Beloved

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  He had the same thick, half-wild hair his father had, and as he drove the tractor toward her, she saw that he also had his father's calm and inscrutable hazel eyes. "Hello," she said, madly trying to remember if she'd heard his name. "I'm looking for Mac McKenzie."

  The boy put the tractor in neutral and gazed down at her from his metal perch with a look of quiet pride. I'm driving this machine, his look said, because I'm a guy and that's what guys do. "Dad? He's over in the house, making chowder," said the boy, jerking his head in that direction. Jeremy — that was his name.

  Jeremy put the tractor back in gear and rumbled off at three miles an hour or so, sneaking a look back at Jane to see if she was admiring his driving skill. Jane was standing there, paralyzed, thinking, Now what? I can't barge into a man's kitchen and demand to learn all he knows about some dead person. Mother would say it just isn't done.

  "Hey." the boy yelled back over his shoulder. "It's okay. Just knock on the door. Go through the wart — the little lean-to on the side," he explained when she hesitated.

  Now she felt stupid. Left with no choice but to follow through, Jane decided to knock and just, oh, double-check about when McKenzie was taking the holly. Tomorrow, right? Fine. Then she'd get the heck out of there. She fluffed up the few brain cells that were still working and stepped through the lean-to and knocked on the tongue-in- groove door with its single diamond-paned window.

  "C'mon in, it's open," came his shout from inside.

  She pressed down on the door latch and stepped back in time two hundred years, into one of the most delightful country kitchens she'd ever seen, from the exposed beams laden with drying herbs, to the cavernous brick fireplace at one end. This one was the real thing.

  McKenzie was in jeans and a plaid shirt, standing in his stockinged feet on wide-board floors at an enormous black stove, where he was frying up a batch of onions. He looked up, not at all surprised, as if it were her habit to drop in at seven-thirty in the morning on a weekend.

  "Hi," she said. "Smells good." She didn't want him to think she was inviting herself to a breakfast of fried onions, so she added, "Jeremy said you were making chowder." That sounded as if she was trying to weasel her way into his son's affections, so she said, "He looks just like you." Since that sounded as if she was trying to score points with McKenzie, she just stopped talking altogether, gliding to a bumpy halt like a single-engine plane that's lost power.

  But McKenzie seemed not to notice her babbling. He was in a wonderfully mellow mood — for him — and actually seemed to want to chat. "Jerry's a good kid," he said as he crisscrossed a cleaver over stacked-up onion slices on a board. "This is the first time I've let him run the tractor himself. Without hovering, I mean," he said with a smile. "It's killing me not to run to the window every ten seconds. Has he plowed through the hoop house yet?"

  He looked up at her with a good-humored grin and Jane caught her breath: the man was transformed, completely transformed, by his love for his son. His hazel eyes shone with a kind of luminous goodwill and his mouth, normally so set, so unyielding, suggested that he was capable of gentler, sweeter language than she had heard so far.

  "N-no-o," she stammered, "he's being very careful. I don't think he'll be breaking through any sound barriers quite yet."

  "He'd better not," McKenzie said, plowing the onion slices into the soup pot with his cleaver. "My neighbors out back would love an excuse to haul me before the Zoning Board."

  "Are they the same ones who don't like your rooster?" she asked. When he nodded she said, "I never hear him crow."

  "Of course not. I ate him," McKenzie said, stirring the onions. "Had to."

  "Oh." She didn't know what to say, so she said, "That was considerate of you."

  He gave her a wry look and went back to his onions. "So," he said without looking up, "what brings you here?"

  "Well, first of all, I'm here to thank you for the hand drill." She saw he didn't want to be thanked. "And to just make sure about the holly. You're coming tomorrow?"

  "Oh, hell," he said, slapping his forehead. "I forgot about the holly. Jerry flew in early this morning for the three-day weekend. It was a last-minute thing; his mother was called out of town. I don't think —"

  "Of course; you'll be making other plans," she said quickly.

  "On Nantucket, in March?" He snorted. "Not likely." He thought about it a moment and then said, more to himself than to her, "maybe I'll have him help me move it. It'd be something he'd remember ...."

  He seemed to stop himself from sounding too keen on trees by making a big deal of stirring a bowlful of clam liquid into the frying onions. The mixture hissed and bubbled, then settled down. He kept on stirring while it thickened.

  "Well, look," Jane said, "just play it by ear. I may or may not be at home myself," she added, implying that her calendar was completely penciled in.

  "All right," he said with a noncommittal glance. "We'll leave it at that. Did you want to sit down?"

  It was the merest formality. She was aware that the air between them was cooling again, and she wondered why. Was it the talk of hollies? The talk of ex-wives? She shook her head, not wanting to stay on sufferance, and said, "Thanks, but my shoes are muddy. And I do have to be going. This is a wonderful kitchen, by the way," she said, genuinely impressed. She took in one last sweep of the sunny, homey room with its multipaned windows and simple Shaker and Mission furnishings. It was a superb restoration.

  McKenzie took a bowl of potato chunks and began shoveling them into the brew. "Yeah, well, my ex had a thing about everything being original. She and her interior decorator had at least three false ceilings taken down from this room alone. We spent four years camping out in one corner or another while they took away every memory I'd ever had of the place — at least, on the first floor," he muttered with a dark look.

  It was a look Jane knew well. Uh-oh, she thought. Best to avoid the subject of change. Still, she did risk saying, "It turned out beautifully."

  He turned to her with an almost baffled look on his face, as if he didn't understand how he could resist a room so warm and charming. "Yes. Celeste was a perfectionist," he said quietly.

  Jane had had her hand on the door latch for the past five minutes, despite the fact that her mother had taught her that lingering in the hall was the worst possible form. She said, "See you later, then."

  Just then a kind of send-off committee sauntered in from the room beyond: an old, big gray cat with huge yellow eyes that narrowed when he saw her. Beat it, he seemed to say. You're on our turf now. He threw himself down on the braided wool rug and began grooming his belly.

  "That's Wicky," McKenzie said, by way of an introduction. "Is he your beast in the basement?"

  "Maybe ... no ... I'm not sure," said Jane, crouching down to give Wicky her fingertips to smell. The cat sniffed her hand regally, then bared his fangs in a nasty hiss. "Whoa!" she said, drawing her hand back. "Yes, that's him, all right." She stood up, embarrassed by the rejection, until she remembered that her hands smelled like Buster.

  She remembered something else. "Cissy said that my aunt was supposed to have had a three-legged cat at one time. Do you know how it got that way?"

  "Yep. Someone shot out a foreleg," McKenzie said in a flat, controlled voice.

  "Oh, no," Jane said, dismayed. "Is the cat still living?"

  "No. She never would stay inside for Sylvia. Eventually something caught her. Dog, probably."

  "That's sickening. Who would shoot a cat?"

  McKenzie put a lid over the pot and turned down the heat. "He knows who he is," he said without looking at Jane.

  "I suppose I should be grateful that Cissy's version isn't true," Jane said dryly. "Someone told her that my aunt needed the paw for a spell."

  McKenzie grimaced. "That'd be my aunt. She lived in Bing's house with my uncle before they ... up and sold it," he said, the muscles in his jaw working. "Aunt Lucille saw a witch under every toadstool. No one took her seriously."

  "C
issy did."

  "Cissy would."

  She felt a nudge on the other side of the door; in came Jerry, his cheeks flushed with accomplishment.

  "I checked the oil, Dad," he said triumphantly, as if he'd actually discovered some instead. "You're down about a quarter of a quart. Or maybe a fifth. But you're definitely down."

  "Go to it, Jer. You know where we keep it," McKenzie said in a carefully offhand way.

  Jerry turned and skipped away. McKenzie watched him with a look impossible for a nonfather to understand. Jane felt like an intruder.

  Time's up, she thought, and this time she meant it. She left without being any the wiser about Judith Brightman.

  Chapter 9

  When Jane got back to Lilac Cottage, she saw a white Toyota pickup in her drive with a license plate on it that read BILLYB. Billy B. himself, a man in his early twenties at most, was prowling around the house with a clipboard in his hand, madly taking notes. Jane could see in his face that he thought he was looking at a year's supply of Pampers and Gerber's, at least.

  Jane waved and they introduced themselves. She said, "I don't think I'll be doing much to the outside of the house besides patching the roof —"

  "I can do that," Billy B. said eagerly.

  "And replacing the two bad steps —"

  "I can do that."

  "And of course I'll have the house painted when the weather turns warmer."

  "I can do that, too."

  "Gee. You sound pretty versatile," she said vaguely. How much experience could he have? Two years? Three?

  They went inside and it was the same thing in every room. Move a wall? Install cabinets? Replace the plumbing? New flooring? Billy B. insisted he could do it all and more besides.

  He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But so had everyone else she'd talked to. The people that Bing recommended were absolute pros. The difference was that Billy B. was not a buy-it-all-new maniac. Jane liked that in him, that willingness to compromise and patch when possible. The kitchen cabinets, for instance. Billy B. said they were perfectly usable; all she had to buy were new fronts. When they were in the basement, he even found the old fronts: glass-paned doors that Jane hadn't noticed, hidden in the clutter.

  She trusted him, despite his threadbare jeans and straggly hair. In the end, it all came down to price. "How much do you charge an hour?" she asked him bluntly.

  When he told her, she was amazed; kids in Connecticut got almost that much for flipping hamburgers.

  "If I got a lot of work out of this, that price would be negotiable," he quickly added.

  Jane folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the ancient Frigidaire. "That's less than anyone else has quoted me," she said, studying him with a sideways tilt of her head. "How come?"

  "Well, my wife just had a baby and had to quit her job at the liquor store," he said, pulling nervously on his baseball cap. He added, "And business ain't exactly been coming my way. I'll be honest with you," he said after some hesitation. "You'll hear it anyway. I got into some trouble a couple of years ago. With the law."

  Let me guess, she thought. Car theft.

  "I stole a car and took it for a joyride."

  Jane shook her head wonderingly. "What is it—some kind of rite of passage around here?"

  He shrugged. "Not much else to do off-season. It was only a misdemeanor—they can't get you for nothin' more than that unless they can prove you stole the car to sell it for parts, and that ain't possible on an island like this."

  "Is that true? Has the law always been that way?" she asked, thinking of McKenzie and the stolen Porsche.

  "Dunno. I think it used to be tougher. Anyway, the owner was really mad—even though I didn't damage nothin'. Right after that, I got married and settled down, but people have long memories, y' know. I really could use the break, Miss Drew. I'm good. That's no bullshit. I've been doin' general contracting almost since I could lift a hammer. My dad was in the business."

  How could she say no? She'd feel like the villain in a Frank Capra movie. So they struck a deal, work to begin midweek, and Billy B. walked away with a new spring to his step. Despite some misgivings, Jane was feeling upbeat. McKenzie was going to remove a holly for free, and a contractor was going to put her house in order at a wage she could afford. The work she was doing was moving along at a reasonable pace. And best of all, her shoulder had stopped hurting, at least for now.

  ****

  That night Bing pulled out all the stops. He took Jane to Le Petit Pois, a tiny, elegant restaurant located in the heavily beamed basement of an art gallery on Centre Street. Le Petit Pois was new and didn't know it couldn't make a living in the off-season; but judging from the nearly empty dining room, it was learning fast.

  Bing ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate the passing of winter, while Jane tried to keep him in perspective. But that wasn't easy, not by candlelight, so she reminded herself that he was thirty-eight, and he was a bachelor. Bachelor. Dread word. She and her single friends all had a healthy fear of it.

  "The worst is over," Bing said, lifting his glass to hers. "Before you know it, it'll be July."

  "I know you don't believe me, Bing," she said with a rueful smile, "but I won't be here that long. Once Lilac Cottage gets fixed up, I'm hanging a For Sale sign in the window and heading back to Connecticut to look for work. I may or may not find it there, but I know I won't find it here."

  In the soft ambience of the room her words sounded jarring and defeatist, even to her. Feeling like a wet noodle, she picked up her menu and opened it. Bing folded the menu back up for her, then wrapped his hand around her wrist and gave her a beseeching look. Oh, he had it down cold, that movie star sincerity.

  "Isn't there anything else you can do besides graphic design?" he asked with gentle irony.

  "You sound like my mother," she quipped, trying her best to fight the seduction of his gaze. Bachelor. Bachelor. She repeated the word to herself, like an incantation.

  "Your degree is in fine arts, isn't it?" he pursued. "What about oil painting?"

  "Unless it's the side of a house, I doubt that there's any money in it," she said, trying not to wilt under the heat of his touch.

  "Okay, okay. Let's think about this. You have a great eye for color — that peach silk thing you're wearing looks terrific with your hair and green eyes. Have you considered interior design?"

  She laughed at that one. "Just what Nantucket needs, another interior designer," she said, rolling her eyes. "Bing, don't think I don't appreciate this," she said in a softer voice, turning her hand up in an almost imploring way.

  "But," she continued, "I have a plan of my own. If I sell Lilac Cottage, I'll be able to set up my own business in Connecticut. It has to be in Connecticut," she added when he looked stricken. "My contacts are there; my old accounts are there. My professional future is there. I can do the job better and cheaper than the firm that fired me, and I will."

  "You sound like someone with something to prove," he said, trailing his fingertips across the palm of her hand. "Could it be you're still smarting from having been let go?"

  Jane dropped her gaze away from his. "I suppose I am," she admitted. "No one likes rejection." She opened the menu and buried her nose in the dazzling selection of fine French cuisine. "Let's order, shall we? I'm starved."

  The plain truth was, being fired had been the single worst humiliation of her life. Jane was Phi Beta Kappa, clever and intuitive and hard-working, a woman on the fast track to fame and fortune. She'd spent the booming eighties moving steadily upward, courted by one firm after another — and then, somehow, suddenly, she was out. Just like that: boom. Rejected.

  She'd learned the hard way that there was no such thing as company loyalty, not anymore. With a flick of a pink slip, her whole value system had come crashing down. And yet she still had all this unspent ... she didn't know what. Passion? She hesitated to call it that, and yet there it was: a feeling as deep and wide as the ocean around her that ther
e must be something still worth striving for in life. Something had to be worth all the hard work, all the devotion, all the intensity. There had to be more to life than dull bottom lines and empty profit margins. There had to.

  "Or ... perhaps you'd rather I made a choice for you?" It was Bing, embarrassed. The waiter had approached the table discreetly to be of service, and Jane had left them both twisting in the wind.

  "Mmn? Oh, I'm sorry ... everything just looks so wonderful."

  They could have been offering Hamburger Helper, for all she knew; she hadn't read a word. "Yes, why don't you choose for me?" she said, covering her lapse.

  The waiter was sent on his way to rustle up some escargots and a rack of lamb. "I'm sorry for trancing out like that," she said, reaching her hand across the table to Bing. "So tell me, did you manage to nail down that Edward Hopper painting for your museum?" she asked with a warm smile.

  "It's ours," Bing said. A look of unmistakable satisfaction lit up his face. "I'm on a roll, come to think of it. I've also nailed down a landscape by Thomas Cole and a series of sketches by Thomas Eakins—and I have a shot at an early Georgia O'Keeffe."

  Jane conjured images of each artist's work, from Cole's lush Catskills to O'Keeffe's rich red poppies. It was so good to be with someone who cared about real art, someone who'd never had to swim in the shark-infested waters of commercial advertising. Bing Andrews was the dream date from heaven.

  But his obvious joy in his work made Jane even more depressed that she herself had chosen so badly. For the first time, she wanted to discuss it with someone. With him.

  "I haven't talked about being let go with anyone up until now," she said with startling abruptness. "I never even went to see the psychologist they provided for us, even though everyone else who ... who got the ax, went to him for counseling."

  Bing switched gears with ease. "Good lord, Jane, why not? There's no stigma to being let go; every company in the country is downsizing, from GM to IBM. It's a fact of life. It will be a fact of life for the next decade, especially in New England."