The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "I'm in my car on the L.I.E., heading back to the city," the Eighth Deadly said, "and I've got a book I want you to ghost. I just had brunch with her at the Maidstone Arms. Are you ready for this?"

  "Ready as I'll ever be."

  "The nanny who takes care of Bill and Melinda Gates's kids wants to quit and write a book. Tell the whole story. She's been on vacation in East Hampton for the last week."

  "Don't people like that sign a contract that says they'll never write a book or sell the story to the National Enquirer?"

  "Obviously there'll be a few details to work out. I put in a call to our lawyer. In the meantime, this woman has a story you wouldn't believe."

  "You'd be surprised what I'd believe these days."

  "You having a good time up there? Everyone talking about Evan Lambert and the Harvard girl who schtupped the wife and then him? That's a helluva story, but I'm not sure how long its legs are."

  I hadn't said in my answering machine message why I'd gone to Swansea; I'd just given the phone number of the motel. But I still hoped for something closer to a condolence call than this.

  "You're the first writer I thought of when I heard the nanny pitch her story."

  "Why's that?"

  "You're used to rubbing elbows with the celebrity genius types up on Swansea. I wouldn't think of you for Andre Agassi's life story, you know? Can you have lunch with me in the next few days?"

  I told him then that I couldn't, and why, and I know the phone call was longer than he'd intended it to be, but by the end, I had an idea for a book of my own, though I wasn't ready to discuss it with the Eighth Deadly. Henderson came back to my room and remarked on the change in my demeanor—"You're almost smiling"—even before I began to explain.

  When I finished, he said, matter-of-factly, as if he were my lawyer, "So you'll write both. You'll negotiate a two-book contract and be set for years. First you'll deliver the nanny, which will be a walk in the park, and then you'll write your story, which won't be. Isn't that what you're thinking?"

  But I wasn't yet thinking that clearly, and I didn't want to be. I wanted to lie back on the chenille bedspread and not make any decisions. I'd been running for hours, for days, chasing phantoms, leads, lost dogs, my history, my hysteria, which derives from the Greek word for womb, and my husband, whose death might turn out to be another riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but whose life was a more ordinary mix of contradictions, good intentions, bold gestures, compromises, and mistakes that it was too late to do anything about. When I used to compare him with Evan, there had been so many ways he came up short: Evans ambition, Evan's confidence, Evan's authority in the world, never mind the moral center, or amoral center, at the heart of it. Say what you will about Evan, he never stops believing in what he does, and succeeds in convincing a lot of other people—jurors and judges, for starters—that he's right. Will's authority was more hit-or-miss; and in the decades he was a spy and a CIA functionary, the line on the graph that mapped the conjunction of his convictions and those of the CIA split off sharply around 1968 and never met up again. But when he was at the helm of a sailboat, even the dinky runabout he could barely afford to keep running and moored, he was magnificent—as fine and sure of himself as Evan was when the NYPD showed up at his house and he improvised from start to finish. Will could do that on the water. He could do it in five or six languages in countries where he was not at all sure the United States ought to be mucking about. But closer to home—and at home—he often seemed lost, unmoored. He watched a lot of videos, ogled expensive sailboats on the Internet, got in touch with other sailors who needed crew to deliver yachts to Ibiza or Corfu, and occasionally went with them and came back feeling good about himself for three or four weeks.

  "Why don't I come back a little later?" Henderson said, "and we'll go see your stepkids. They said we could come by any time, but thought they'd have an early dinner."

  "I guess I'm a little distracted."

  "Of course."

  But that was better than what I'd been for the last twenty-four hours. The Eighth Deadly's phone call had been a kind of blessing, not only because it sparked the idea for my own book, but because it had reminded me that I had choices, more choices than almost everyone I'd encountered in the last few days. I was not trapped in a chicken coop, a celebrity love nest, a fake marriage, a lonely marriage, an affair with a man who did not love me, a coma, an aquarium, a coffin.

  And later that day, something else lifted my spirits. You see, my stepdaughters wanted to talk to me about matters other than their father's funeral. One thing led to another, and they ended up telling me far more than they meant to.

  14. The Night Before

  I HAD MET CLARE only three times, so I did not expect her to do what she did when she opened the door of the yellow gambrel at six that evening: embrace me as if we were sisters, crumple into sobs in my arms. I had gone somewhat apprehensively to the house with Henderson. It wasn't only that I anticipated a hostile gesture, some new twist in the funeral plans— oh, by the way, we're making Daddy a Muslim before we bury him —but that I had finally read the last six months of Will's diary and found a few things Henderson had missed, furry animals camouflaged in the woods. Clare's tears moved me and almost brought on some of my own, but when she pulled herself together, I felt the old coldness toward her: the bully, the drama queen. Henderson and I exchanged a split-second look: What a piece of work.

  I was on my guard, though no one else seemed to be. There was a feast on the dining room table—platters of smoked bluefish, gravlax, potato salad with bits of bacon, green salad with bright yellow tomatoes—and a lavish display of concern and affection that pulsed in every direction. Susanna's baby, Rose, slept in a wicker basket in the corner of the living room, swaddled in flannel and a flannel sleeping hat. Around the table the rest of us talked as if we were in an art museum—soft voices, respectful gazes. But I was nervous, picking at a plate of salad, waiting silently for the museum fire alarm to sound or the guard in the corner to herd us out. I tried to keep my eyes on whoever was speaking, but I found myself staring at a large painting over the dining room sideboard, a Winslow Homer-y seascape that reminded me of Will's semiserious instructions for the end of his life, always said playfully, wistfully, never wanting to believe there would be such an hour, such a day: When the time comes, put me on a rickety old sailboat with a case of Scotch and a carton of cigarettes and push.

  "Sophy, any news about the dog?" Susanna said.

  "It seems he died, though no one's quite sure how."

  "That's starting to sound like a familiar story," Ginny said.

  "Poor Will," Clare said, and reached for the salad bowl. "So many things left unsaid. Sophy, have pasta with your salad. This is not the time to diet."

  Clares tears at the front door had made me forget briefly what a dictator she was. This command brought it back, though she did not look the part. She was fifty-six or -seven, fit, youthful, with the accessories and air of a woman who sells high-end real estate. The smoothness of her skin may have indicated a nip and a tuck, or those injections of fat some women get, or plain good luck. Her lightweight knit blouse, salmon-colored, and off-white linen skirt hung on a tall, trim frame. Her hair, blond with frosted highlights, looked as if it were done every three weeks; she wore a gold necklace and heavy, ridged gold earrings that clung to her lobes like fists. Perhaps she was another reason Susanna lived in the mountains with no telephone.

  "Mom, leave her alone," Ginny said, "for God's sake."

  "Mourning requires calories," replied Clare, "and carbohydrates."

  "It does not require people telling each other what to eat," Ginny answered.

  "Speaking of eating," Henderson said brightly, "did you know I was on my way to a Swiss fat farm two days ago, where I was going to consume nothing but water for ten days? Last year I went and lost twenty-three pounds. It was a perfectly gruesome experience."

  "What happened?" Andy asked. "Why didn't you go this time?" W
hile Henderson told the funny story of his aborted plane trip, I stared at Clare and wondered at the spell I'd allowed her to cast on me. Why had I let her take charge of the funeral? Why hadn't I insisted, resisted, done something other than roll over and play dead? Because of my bacchanal with Daniel. Because I'd felt guilty about leaving Will. And was shy, maybe even ashamed, because the only religion I could offer up on this solemn occasion was the shadowy church-basement one, with cigarettes and coffee instead of communion wafers, and the only god a fuzzy, personal, invent-me-as-you-go-along sort.

  "Where do I sign up for this fat farm?" Susanna said, "and can I bring the baby?"

  "You'll lose the weight eventually," Clare said. "It's only been four months, honey."

  "You didn't say what happened to the dog," Ginny said. "Poor Henry."

  And I didn't say that I'd found buried in Will's diary a chilling comment amidst the general sorrow and specific anger toward me, written on his last birthday, in May: Would this be a better or worse day than any other? No, too unfair to the girls. Did he keep a bottle of pills in the safe deposit box? Or were his remarks just a diarist's ruminations? I asked myself: Would I rather learn that he had killed himself and died painlessly than that he had had a heart attack and struggled in terror across the bedroom floor?

  Of course I didn't tell Ginny and Susanna about Crystal, whose dark story of what may have been Will's last night swooped into my thoughts like a crow into a cornfield.

  I told them about the dog. About the ad I'd taken out in the Sentinel and the phone call from Bree Solomon, but as I started to describe my drive to the Humane Society, the baby began to wail. Our rhythms got rearranged. Susanna leaped up, and I was surprised all over again by how heavy she was, especially next to her rangy sister and svelte mother. She returned with a quiet Rose in her arms, and asked again about Henry, but his likeness to the baby, I mean a small creature who can't reliably get far on its own, made me too sad to speak, and I think the others realized that. Clare, in mind of her own losses, her son and now his father, reverted to heavy tears, and her display of emotion made me get a grip on my own: like her daughters, my reflex was to keep my distance from her.

  "This is too unbearable," she said softly, and at that instant she seemed as old as she was, and more broken down than at first glance. I could see how difficult it would be, if you were a daughter, to hate her for any length of time. She may have been a drama queen, but her grief was convincing. These were not crocodile tears.

  Ginny went to her, leaning down, folding her arms around Clare's shuddering shoulders, and I remembered once again that we were here because Will was dead—a most unimaginable circumstance, like lightning striking your house, or the boy Icarus falling out of the sky.

  Henderson began to clear the table. Clare shook her hands and her head, her territory invaded, and said, "Don't do that."

  "Don't be silly," Henderson said and kept clearing. "You've got more than enough to worry about."

  "As always," she mumbled, and I could hear a faint, collective sigh of exasperation in response to her self-pity, self-pity that she wore like those heavy gold earrings, garish, Clare-ish, de trop. I knew I'd given in to her funeral plans as much because of my skittishness and guilt as because she turned every encounter into "Queen for a Day" and was determined to win each round.

  "Henderson told me you wanted to talk about the funeral," I said, looking from Ginny to Susanna. My annoyance with mercurial Clare had peaked, and I was prepared to endure whatever new indignity they might foist on me.

  "Not actually about the funeral," Susanna said, the baby sleeping against her bosom.

  "But you are reading something, aren't you?" Clare asked. "We have you slotted between Will's friends Diane and Ben Gibbs."

  "Between?"

  "Is there somewhere else you'd rather be?"

  This was not what I had in mind, to be "slotted," one of several people in Will's life saying a few words. I wanted to be last; I wanted the last word—but I said nothing for the time being.

  "What are you going to read?" Ginny asked.

  "A poem by an Irish writer about the birth of his daughter. It's very celebratory." Henderson's friend in New York had faxed it shortly before we'd left the Lighthouse Motel.

  At that Susanna pulled Rose tighter against her and started to tear up. "Thank you, Sophy." Her sweetness made me remember another line from Will's diary, about his wanting to go to California to see Rose but putting it off until I feel better than this. When I read it, it made me think he had not killed himself, that he would not have chosen to die before seeing his granddaughter.

  "What we wanted to talk to you about," Ginny said, "is Daddy's house."

  "We're trying to figure out what to do with it," Susanna said. "Neither of us can be here for the summer, except for a few weeks. Mommy thinks we should rent it out for gazillions of dollars, but we don't want to right away"

  "I didn't say you had to," Clare said. "I merely said that financially, it makes sense to—"

  "We can't bear to go through Daddy's things now and try to make the house all nice for summer rental. So we wondered if you'd house-sit until Labor Day. In September we'll get a renter for the winter."

  It was a touching gift, but it couldn't have been more complicated. I don't imagine the girls had thought it through: the house stored the memories of everything I had yearned for and loved and abandoned. It was a branch of my psyche, and I didn't know how long I could stand being there.

  Then I was puzzled. Did they know the depth of their father's anguish, or was that clear only to those of us who'd read the diary? Would they change their minds about the house if they knew how deeply I had hurt him? "Thank you," I said softly. "I don't exactly know how to—"

  Susanna must have been reading my mind or the bemusement on my face. "We thought it was awful that he left you a dollar in his will."

  "On the other hand," Clare said, "you wanted the divorce."

  "Mother," Ginny said, "was that necessary?"

  "I only meant that's why he was hostile." When the rest of us greeted her explanation with stony silence, she went on: "I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has experienced Will's spitefulness."

  "Ginny and I didn't come here to bash Daddy," Susanna said.

  "I didn't either," I said, taking shelter in the lee of the girls' criticism and still smarting from Clare's jab at me.

  Her face darkened. Did she always say whatever came into her head? Or was there a coherent pattern to her personality that I was missing? Within seconds, she pasted on a thin smile and said cheerily, "How about some dessert?" She leaped out of her seat and moved toward the kitchen. I could see her daughters roll their eyes at each other as she pushed open the swinging door. "I picked up a splendid apple pie at the bakery on Main Street. And I'll make a pot of decaf for us."

  Once Clare was out of the room, Ginny turned to Henderson and me. "I can't believe the things that come out of her mouth." Two days before, Ginny had been keen on her mother's arrival, but she was being reminded that Clare did not wear well, though she had enough money to make a splashy entrance and enough chutzpah to promise she could part the sea.

  "There are people who hate to miss a funeral," Henderson said. "It's one of great stages for drama, the pageant of death. When my lover Ricardo died, I felt like the star of my favorite opera, La Traviata. And my favorite soap opera, 'General Hospital.' But all of that was nothing compared with what happened when Ricardo's mother arrived: Hello, Mommy Dearest."

  "I'm thinking about your offer," I said. It was easier to speak with Clare out of the room. "I'm touched, but I'm not sure if spending the summer there would be the way to get on with my life or to avoid getting on with it." I tried to picture Daniel and his children there, and to imagine a life without any of them. Could I douse every last spark that flew between him and me? Crush out of existence my tender feelings for the children? But when I considered my idea for a book about all of these lives and deaths, I thought Will's house
might be a fertile place to start writing it. Maybe the best place. Certainly the riskiest. The eye of the storm. But painful as it would be, wouldn't I rather be there than inside the mind of Bill and Melinda Gates's nanny?

  I looked from Ginny, whose face was soft and focused on mine, to Susanna, who had wandered deep into her own thoughts. Then she looked up at me, somberly, and at everyone around the table, except Andy, who had taken the baby to the couch. "I hadn't seen him in two years, not since Andy and I got married and he came to the wedding. The last time I talked to him was a few days after Sophy left. He cried. I sent him pictures of the baby and kept telling him to visit us. He promised he would, but I stopped believing it when he said he had to help someone deliver a sailboat to the Virgin Islands."

  Her hand on the table was close enough for me to touch. I wrapped my palm around it and saw her eyes glass over with tears. Should I tell her what I had read in the diary: his children frightened him; real life was terrifying; and sailing was the best way he knew to dull the terror. "He wanted to," I said softly. "I know he wanted to. He was just so ... fragile." So fragile, and I had left him. Should I have stayed? If I had, would he be alive now? Did his daughters need to know that these questions pressed on me like the March wind?

  "But he wasn't always fragile," Ginny said. "He used to be full of energy. Always planning adventures for us, wanting us to sail and rock-climb and learn Chinese. Remember the summer we were ten and he took us down the Wye River on a barge? And afterward we went to Bath, and he hired a horse and buggy to take us around the city center? We went about five times, like a merry-go-round we didn't want to get off. And the summer we both did Outward Bound and Daddy couldn't stop telling everyone? Do you know what we found, Sophy, when Mom and I were at his house this morning? His old passports. There was one from the 1960s, and every single inch of every page was stamped. Hong Kong, Saigon, Taipei, Manila, hundreds of trips. God only knows what creepy spy things he was doing, but he wasn't moping around feeling sorry for himself. That wasn't always Daddy's life. We have to remember that."