Beloved

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  The buffet, it seemed, was going to be a success.

  Relaxing, Mac said, "I think while everyone's out here I'll give Mrs. Adamont a hand cleaning up the kitchen."

  "No, you don't," Jane said firmly. "You should be looking after your guests. I'll do it."

  He looked surprised. "Thanks," he said softly.

  One syllable: Thanks. And yet it set every hair tingling. She left him and reported for duty to Mrs. Adamont, who handed her two trash bags and said, "Recycles in this one, the rest in this one." Billy's wife Carol was there, filling up the dishwasher, while her baby was screaming for a fillup herself.

  "I'm going to have to feed her again," Carol said with a sigh. "She must know there's a buffet going on." She sat discreetly to one side, unbuttoned her blouse, and began nursing Sarah.

  Jane went around picking up loose plastic and paper, then finished loading the dishwasher while Mrs. Adamont refilled some of the casseroles. All the while, she was replaying the way Mac looked and sounded when he said "Thanks." Somehow, in some way, she'd broken through some barrier. It was the first time Mac had let her do something for him, the first time he wasn't keeping her at arm's length.

  She felt ridiculously happy. All her suspicions about him, all her careful reasoning — gone. All her fears and all her worries about Judith Brightman — gone. In their place was a warm, glowing feeling — because he's let me do the dishes. Jane had considered many careers in her life, but scullery maid wasn't one of them.

  She laughed under her breath and shook her head. I'm as bonkers as Cissy.

  There was a knock on the kitchen door and Jane went to answer it. She was extremely embarrassed to have to greet Phillip Harrow, the only man on Nantucket not invited to Uncle Easy's birthday party. As carefully dressed as ever, Phillip stepped inside and meticulously wiped his muddy feet on the mat. He seemed to be dragging out the awkwardness of the situation, and she disliked him intensely for that.

  Carol, still nursing, adjusted her position away from him; it could have been taken as a snub. Mrs. Adamont, however, saved the day. "Don't just stand there like a little lost sheep, Phillip. Supper's on in the other room."

  "Ah, but not for me," Phillip said ironically. "I'm here because I have an urgent message for Cissy Hanlin."

  Nothing in Cissy's life was urgent, but Mrs. Adamont said, "Go on in and tell her, then."

  "I think not," he said, turning to Jane. "Would you mind?" he asked her coldly.

  "Yes, of course; I'll get her," Jane answered, beating a quick retreat into the keeping room. She didn't know who was being more gauche, Mac for not inviting him, or Phillip for coming over instead of picking up the phone. They were a hell of a pair.

  She found Cissy sitting with her mother and Bing, who were equally dismayed by Jane's disappearance. Jane made her excuses and took Cissy aside. When Cissy went out to the kitchen to Phillip, Jane busied herself gathering empty plastic cups. Seeing her hang back, Mac broke away from the company and came up to her.

  "What's up? Why did Cissy leave?"

  Jane had to explain that Phillip Harrow was standing like a little matchstick boy on his kitchen mat, then watch Mac's relaxed and expansive mood dissolve into the cold, brooding one she knew so well.

  "Maybe he's conveying a message from Cissy's husband," she said, mostly to give Mac someone else to think about. She filled Mac in on Cissy's situation, then was relieved when he shrugged and said, "That's none of my business."

  Mac returned to the company, and when Jane peeked into the kitchen, Phillip was gone and Cissy was looking ecstatic; so the message must not have been about Dave. It turned out that Phillip had to fly the next afternoon to Grand Cayman on business. He wanted Cissy with him.

  "Didn't I tell you?" she said jubilantly. "First the ring, now this! I have to leave now."

  "Cissy! You can stay to sing happy birthday, at least."

  After some arm-twisting, Cissy agreed to stay for the cake, but only if the gifts weren't opened first. Jane sent her back to her half-eaten meal, pleased that she'd thwarted Phillip's attempt to be a spoiler. She was taking sides, and she knew it. And she liked it.

  She dragged Mrs. Adamont and Carol away from the kitchen, assuring them that the dishwasher would go on without them, then sat them down with her mother and Bing, got a plate of food for Carol, and burped Sarah while her mother ate. Bing Andrews and Gwendolyn Drew had become thick as thieves while Jane was gone; her mother's tone was gay, even flirtatious, with him. As for Jane's little mix of islanders and off-islanders, it was a good one. Bing knew how to charm women, and it didn't matter if they were young or old, rich or poor, married or single.

  And yet.

  From across the room Jane could see Mac holding court with a group of his own. Jane recognized Mac's gorgeous cousin Miriam from the church bazaar, and one of the men from the Town Building, and two or three others she didn't know — and Celeste. There were no bursts of scandalized laughter over there, of course; but what laughter there was, was easy and intimate, as if these people had laughed together before.

  Jane was still finishing her own hasty meal when the dishes were cleared away and the cake rolled out. Uncle Easy, who'd been table-hopping all evening, sat down with a toddler on each knee and led the crowd in a lusty rendition of "Happy Birthday," then got all eleven kids to help him blow out all eighty candles on the sheet cake. After that he took a knife and sliced off a yellow frosting rose for each of them for their services, and ate the twelfth one himself. What was left of the cake was cut up and passed out with coffee and tea to the stuffed, contented company.

  Before Uncle Easy began opening his gifts, Cissy went up to him and wished him a wonderful, wonderful life, as happy a life as she was having. Radiant with joy, she went up to Jane and said, "I'm off to pack. Finally I'll get to wear some of the resort wear that would've got me laughed off the island. Oh, and Mac will be watching Buster for me."

  Jane hugged her and wished her a safe trip, and Cissy floated out of the house into the dark May night. The sounds of laughter brought Jane back to the keeping room; Uncle Easy was wisecracking his way through the opening of the gifts. Jane took the seat Bing had been saving for her.

  "If you jump up one more time, I'll tie you to that chair," Bing threatened in a low voice. "As a matter of fact, I may tie you to it anyway." He took her hand in his and held it down in mock captivity, then leaned over and brushed his lips against hers again.

  But something was different for Jane. This kiss wasn't like the earlier kiss. She felt no particular joy in having Bing claim her publicly; quite the opposite, in fact. Something had changed in the course of the evening, and she thought it had to do with the word "thanks." She glanced across the room where Mac was sitting, just in time to see him register a certain amount of disapproval over guests making out during gift opening.

  Jane watched as Mac leaned over and whispered something in his ex-wife's ear. Celeste nodded and reached down for her purse, then got up and, blowing a kiss first to Uncle Easy and then to her son, left the room.

  Mac followed her.

  Chapter 20

  It was as if all the air had gone out of all the balloons at the same time. Without Mac, the party wasn't the same. Even Uncle Easy seemed to feel it; his one-liners lost some of their punch. Or maybe it just seemed that way to Jane. She sat there with a poor excuse of a smile on her face, waiting for Mac to come back from what she hoped would be a quick walk to Celeste's car.

  The pile of torn wrapping paper and undone ribbons got higher. No Mac. Uncle Easy opened Jane's gift — a collection of jams and jellies and half a dozen of his favorite cigars — and complimented Jane's interesting split personality. Everyone laughed. Ignoring the knot in her stomach, Jane laughed too. Still no Mac.

  So this is what it's come to, she thought miserably. Pining away like a teenager because the boy I like sneaked out early from the party with the prom queen. I hate this.

  Uncle Easy, sensing that the company was getting restless, w
hipped through the rest of the presents quickly. The chairs got rearranged again into small groups; the early leavers left. The older girls were playing Monopoly, the boys Nintendo, but the smaller children were beginning to get bored and cranky. Uncle Easy surveyed the situation, then yanked Jane aside.

  "I ain't ready for this party to end. Help me round up the troublemakers. We'll herd 'em into an upstairs room with a game."

  Jane turned to Bing and her mother, who were deep in a discussion of fund-raising techniques. "Would you mind?" Jane asked her mother.

  Her mother waved her away without looking at her. Bing's blue eyes flickered unhappily, but he continued to hang on to every word that Gwendolyn Drew uttered.

  The son-in-law from heaven, Jane decided with a wry smile as she left them with their coffee.

  The game Uncle Easy had in mind was Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and the cutoff age seemed to be six or seven. Certainly Jerry and his pals weren't interested. "Too bad for them," said Uncle Easy.

  Despite Jane's objections, Uncle Easy chose Mac's bedroom to hang the donkey poster in; it was the only room that didn't have a chair rail in the way. "Mac won't care," the old man said breezily.

  With great care he opened the tattered cardboard box and unfolded the fragile poster. The game was now an antique; Uncle Easy had paid fifteen cents for it on an expedition to Boston half a century earlier. Although the original brass tacks were in the box, Uncle Easy had made a concession to modern technology and had a supply of plastic pushpins, because they were easier for a young hand to hold.

  In the meantime, Jane tried not to notice Mac's pajama bottoms hanging on the door, and tried not to wonder whether he ever wore the tops. She tried not to imagine him lying on the plain four-poster bed, and tried very hard not to speculate whether someone lying next to him would roll into his heavier weight. But most of all, Jane tried not to breathe, because the bedroom smelled intimately, irresistibly like books and leather and Old Spice and Mac McKenzie.

  She helped Uncle Easy organize the group into a kind of big-kid, little-kid pattern so that there would be a sense of drama. The first one up was Doris's grandson Stinky, a seven-year-old who was so sure he'd win that he asked to be spun around five extra times. Uncle Easy blindfolded him, spun him, and let him go. He pinned the tail on the donkey's nose. James, his four-year-old cousin, got so excited that they had to take the blindfold back off so that he could go to the bathroom. Lucy, also four, pinned the tail deliberately on the wall because she didn't want to hurt the donkey.

  And so it went, with the simple, old-fashioned game yielding more about each child's character than any Nintendo game ever could. When everyone had had a turn, Jenny, a shy and adorable three-year-old sitting in Jane's lap, looked up at her and said, "Now you do it."

  Instantly there was a clamor. "Do it! Do it! We'll help you! Do it!"

  Jane laughed and let Uncle Easy wrap his red bandanna around her eyes. She stood there, waiting to be spun around, but nothing happened. "Well? Isn't anyone going to make me dizzy?"

  There was another pause, and then some giggling, and then Jane felt two powerful hands take hold of her shoulders and begin to spin her slowly, slowly around. A low sound escaped her throat, of surprise and a sense of pleasure so deep it bordered on fear. Around she went, with one of his hands trailing across her back, the other sliding onto her shoulder in slow, fluid repetition. She was caught in a lasso of heat, and the pleasure it gave was almost impossible for her to understand. She let herself be turned; turned; turned. She would gladly have continued until the end of time.

  But he let her go, amid squeals of anticipation from the children surrounding them. "You're cold, you're cold!" they screamed as she groped the air ahead of her, feeling for the donkey poster. "You're warmer! Warmer!"

  Her free hand touched his face. "Hot! Hot!" the children cried, laughing hysterically at her error. She let herself fall under the spell of play, lightly skimming his high cheekbone, the cleft in his strong chin, the pronounced bridge of his nose. He did not move under her touch as she raised her other hand and pretended to get ready to pin the tail on him. The children were in an uproar. "No, no, no!" they shrieked. "He's a man! He's a man!"

  Jane whispered, "I know."

  He took her by the shoulders again and adjusted her direction slightly. Jane stepped cautiously forward while the children cheered her on. She found the poster, made her best guess, and drove in the pin to loud laughter and cries of relief. When she lifted the bandanna from her eyes, she saw that the tail was hanging from the middle of the donkey's chest.

  "Right about where the heart would be," said Mac from behind her.

  Wrong heart, she thought, turning to him. "I missed," she said in a small, sad voice.

  "Then you'll have to try again sometime." He stood there, relaxed and smiling, in no particular hurry. She'd never seen him like this before. His hands were in the pockets of his baggy khakis; the trendy red floral tie that dressed up his stonewashed denim shirt was loosened. She'd been staring at that tie all evening. For a man like Mac to buy a tie like that — well, he was wearing it for someone, that was for sure.

  The children were expecting something amusing to happen between Mac and Jane. When it didn't, they instantly lost patience and demanded their prizes. Uncle Easy worked out a system based on age, height, tail number, and sportsmanship. Everybody got a cash prize; Jane won fifty cents.

  "Don't spend it all on one man," said Uncle Easy, winking at Mac. "Was there plane trouble?" he added to his nephew.

  "We needed some time; she had the plane wait."

  Uncle Easy snorted. "She can afford it nowadays."

  They all poured out of Mac's bedroom, Jane with little Jenny in her arms. Mac said, "Thanks for your help tonight."

  "Don't mention it," Jane replied coolly. I'm jealous. Jealous, jealous, jealous.

  Mac looked baffled by the lightning shift in her mood. "Something I said?"

  "Very possibly," Jane answered. They descended the rest of the stairs in silence. Mac went off and Jane handed Jenny over to her mother, a clerk at the town post office. Then she rejoined her own mother, who was making noises about leaving.

  "I'm sorry now that I booked the car on the six-thirty ferry," Gwendolyn said with genuine regret, smiling across the room in Bing's direction. "Bing wanted to take us both to breakfast. What a perfectly wonderful young man he is. Kind, attentive, considerate; he's practically raised his sister, you know."

  "So I've been told," Jane answered, a bit snappishly. "I hope I haven't led you on about Bing, Mother. He is not the marrying kind."

  "Be serious, Jane. What man is, anymore? You just have to convince him that you know better. You're halfway there already," she added, lowering her voice. "Bing spent the better part of the evening raving about you. I admit, he has a certain ... elusiveness. But when a man like that finally does decide to make a commitment, he'll charge straight ahead. Mark my words."

  "Must we talk about this now?" Jane asked, amazed at her mother's indiscretion.

  Chastised, her mother said, "You're right. You're right. I'll take the car back to the house myself. You stay. Enjoy yourself. Bing can bring you back." Gwendolyn kissed her daughter happily, said good night to her new friends and acquaintances, and left.

  Bing came up to Jane immediately afterward. "Is there something going on around here that I should know?" There was a dangerous depth to his blue eyes, a darkness she'd never seen there before. "Your mother is giving me one set of signals about you, but you seem to be giving me another."

  "My mother talks too much. All mothers talk too much," Jane said lightly. But she was thinking, Is this a birthday party or an encounter group?

  "I think it's time to stop being coy with me, Jane," he said quietly. "If you're not interested, say so."

  "Bing! How can you ask me that here ... now?"

  "Evasive isn't any better than coy, Jane."

  "I'm not being either!" she said hotly, then lowered her voice in the steadi
ly emptying room. "But this really isn't the time or place. The truth is, I don't have a clue what's going on around here," she admitted, distressed. "I wish you would give me time to sort it out. If I could just get some time to think ..."

  "Falling for someone isn't like buying a car, Jane," he said, idly fingering a gold button on her blouse. "You can't sit down with a cup of tea and the latest edition of Consumer Reports and research the person. When it's right, you know it. For me, it's right. I want you to know it."

  He looked immensely appealing just then: tall and lanky and just ill-used enough to make her feel she was being pretty stupid to keep him at bay. And after all, what did she want? On paper — and in the flesh — Bing Andrews looked perfect. Everything her mother said was true, and more besides. If there was anything wrong with what he was telling her, she couldn't see it; not with him standing there with that rueful, beguiling look of his.

  "Maybe I —"

  "I would've preferred a yes or a no." He leaned over and kissed her gently on her lips. "But I can see I'm not going to get either. Do you want a lift home?" he asked, disheartened.

  "I'd better not," she said with a sigh. "I'll just say my good nights to everyone and walk back. It's a beautiful night."

  "It could have been," he said shortly, and left. She felt as if she'd turned down her first marriage proposal. When she thought about it, though, she realized that there was nothing new in what Bing had said. It was odd how good men were at implying that they were in love with you and wanted to spend the rest of their days at your side, when all they really wanted was to take you to bed.