Off Season

by Jean Stone

  “Don’t forget to at least let Ben know where you’re at,” Rita said, “in case we need help with Sea Grove this winter.”

  He laughed again, this time, with a small edge. “Why would you need me? We’re still short two building permits, and we can’t break ground until spring.”

  Also in spring the baby would be born. But of course, he didn’t know that.

  Rita shrugged again. “Money,” she said with a light-hearted tone she did not feel. “We might need more of your money.”

  Then she turned and walked, not toward where Jill was but back to the parking lot. Because all Rita wanted now was to get in her car, drive down to the beach, and have herself one hell of a much-needed cry.

  “Why can’t the guys come for dinner tomorrow? Jimmy and—what’s his name?—Devon from Albany?” Amy asked her mother when Jill finally came home just after midnight.

  It had been a long day of shooting, made longer by selecting the scenes she thought they might use. Amy had stopped by the studio with sandwiches and chowder—an act that might have been mistaken for benevolence had she not lingered in the edit suite, watching every move made by the editor and the audio man until Jill could not think straight and asked her to leave. Nice as the guys were, they were employees and, worse, roadies.

  She slipped off her shoes, sat down on the tall kitchen stool, and rubbed her foot, knowing that no matter what she thought, her daughter would do as she pleased. She supposed she should be glad that Amy was showing an interest in men, though she was not sure which had caught her eye—Jimmy with the ponytail or Devon with the shaved head.

  “They can’t come because Carol Ann and John are coming,” Jill said wearily. “It’s a family dinner.”

  “Oh, Mother, that’s absurd. We’re hardly the Cleavers. Besides, no one does family dinners anymore.”

  Jill stood up, went to the cabinet, removed a large mug, and dropped in a tea bag. “Maybe it’s time to reinvent that.”

  “But Mom, it’s rude. You drag this guy to the island. You can’t just ignore him.”

  Oh. So it was Devon, the bald one, the one she’d dragged from Albany.

  “Jimmy is perfectly capable of entertaining Devon,” she said. “Besides, they have work to do.”

  “Well, I still think it’s rude.”

  Jill pressed a hand to her temple. “Amy, please. I’m tired. Tell me how your day was. How’s the Halloween party coming?”

  Amy averted her eyes the way she did whenever she was exasperated with her mother. “I decided to do the whole place in black light and decorate only in Gothic and glow. I hope you can manage to get there and not be out of town.”

  Black light, Gothic, and glow. Her daughter definitely had creativity. Not without guilt, Jill wondered if Amy’s talents would go undeveloped on the island and subsequently be lost.

  Ignoring the hint of sarcasm that had crept into Amy’s voice, Jill said, “Ben and I will be at the party. It sounds really great.”

  “It’s not great, Mom. But it’s the best I can do here on the Vineyard.”

  She didn’t sound as if she were complaining, but still, Jill could relate.

  “You’re not trapped here, Amy. You know that.” She wasn’t sure she was saying that to reassure herself or her daughter.

  “I know, Mother. I’m here because I want to be. I don’t need that other stupid world. Why won’t you believe that?” She turned on her platform sneakers and clomped from the room.

  Staring after her daughter, Jill wondered how it was that Amy knew herself so well, when Jill, twenty-eight years older, often didn’t know herself at all. She took her tea from the microwave and wondered if her daughter would lose some of that unbending allegiance to the island once she learned what had happened to Ben, once she learned what was going to happen if her mother, Mrs. Cleaver, did not reacquaint herself with that other stupid world.

  It was getting into the best scallop season, when the tiniest Nantucket Bay scallops were reaching their peak of melt-in-your-mouth sweetness. Jill hoped scallops would put the family in a wonderful mood and take the edge off the news she and Ben had to tell—and help Ben be more comfortable in telling it.

  She also wondered why her middle name had not been Pollyanna.

  Late that afternoon she had left Devon with a preliminary edit of the Cranberry Day story, hurried to the fish cooperative, then raced to the produce market, determined to create a magnificent dinner, even if it could not cushion the news. The important thing was that they were moving forward, telling the children, doing something that would make her feel more in control of the otherwise bleak situation.

  It would be out in the open, there would be no secrets, and they could talk about it like normal, grown-up adults who had nothing to hide from the people they loved.

  Then Jill could talk to Addie. Then she could secure a top-notch attorney who would make everything right. And then maybe some of the drawn, puttylike paleness would leave Ben’s face.

  She was taking homemade blueberry buckle from the oven when the telephone rang. She glanced at the clock: five-forty-five. Only forty-five minutes until John and Carol Ann arrived. She almost let the machine answer the phone, but it could be the studio: Devon or Jimmy might have a question. Setting the hot dish on the butcher block counter, she picked up the cordless.

  It was not the studio, it was John.

  “I hope you haven’t gone to a lot of trouble,” Ben’s son-in-law said, “because we can’t make dinner.”

  Jill’s gaze fell on the blueberry buckle. It looked as sumptuous as any her mother had ever created. “Oh,” she replied. “Is everyone all right?”

  The pause that followed could have been Jill’s imagination, but she did not think so.

  “Yes, well, I have some work to catch up on. And Emily has a cold. We hate to leave her with a baby-sitter.”

  Jill wanted to say that their family was more important than John’s work, and that she didn’t believe for a minute that Emily had a cold. She wanted to ask what was really going on. But John was Ben’s son-in-law, not hers, and Jill still was unsure what position was expected of the stepmother to a nearly thirty-year-old woman with a family of her own.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s too bad. Can we reschedule?”

  There was that pause again.

  “Let me get back to you, okay? We’re so busy.”

  She decided this was bull. “Ben needs his family, John.”

  “So do I,” John replied. “If he intends to tell Carol Ann, I can’t stop him. But I honestly feel he should keep this to himself and not drag her—or us—into it.”

  Staring at the blueberry buckle, she was surprised it did not explode into flames—an incendiary response to the heat and anger that now flared inside her. “You’re wrong, John. You’re not being fair.”

  “And another thing,” John added. “Don’t count on the kids going with you to Sturbridge. I think they should stick close to Carol Ann and me until this mess blows over. If Carol Ann knew the truth, I’m sure she’d agree. Take care, Jill.”

  He hung up as unexpectedly as he’d called.

  Jill sat there a moment, listening to the dial tone. Then Amy appeared in the kitchen.

  “What time does the rest of the family arrive?” she asked coolly.

  “They don’t,” Jill answered. “Carol Ann and John can’t make it.”

  “Great,” she said, her voice shifting to normal as she swooped down on the dessert. “Maybe I’ll run some of this over to the studio. Is it blueberry?”

  Ben was learning to kill time. He’d replaced the windows in the Oak Bluffs workshop, visited the contractor who was going to handle the house foundations at Sea Grove, gone out to the job site and walked around a few hundred times pretending to be checking things out though there was nothing yet to check and wouldn’t be until they broke ground in spring.

  He wondered if this was how he’d kill every day from now until the trial, then decided all he really needed was to kill t
his day, at least until dinner.

  He still didn’t want to tell the girls. But Jill was insistent, and he did not have the strength to argue, or the brains to sort it out and make a rational decision himself. He used to have brains. He used to have a quick mind that could calculate the cost of a high-ticket renovation right there on the spot, a mind that could visualize every post and every beam of a job before it was a job. But since his arrest, he often couldn’t remember where he’d left his keys. And worse, he often didn’t care.

  When he arrived back in Edgartown, he parked the car and walked up the path to the house. Instinctively, he went to the kitchen. Jill was there, sitting silently. Amy stood at the counter shoveling something with blueberries into a refrigerator container.

  Jill looked up. “They’re not coming,” she said.

  He slouched against the doorway. “Not coming?” She must have meant Carol Ann. She must have meant John.

  She shook her head.

  He glanced over at Amy, who seemed happy, unaffected by the knowledge of his problems. Carol Ann was probably happy, too. Perhaps he’d been right to leave them out of this.

  He turned to Jill, who looked as tired as he felt. “This isn’t going to work, is it?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied. “I guess not.”

  Amy loaded the container into a paper bag. “What’s not going to work?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He needed to ask Jill what really had happened, why dinner had been canceled, and if it was because of John. He needed to ask, but he could not ask with Amy right there.

  He pulled off his baseball cap, hating this cloak-and-dagger stuff, hating that he could not even be himself in his own goddamn house even though technically the house was his wife’s and not his.

  “Well,” he said steadily, “I guess that means all the more scallops for us.”

  “Not me,” Amy said. “I’ll be in Oak Bluffs.” She picked up the bag, grabbed her jacket, and blew out the door.

  He turned back to Jill.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” she said, standing up. “I’m sick to death of talking about it, so please, not tonight.”

  Chapter 9

  When Rita called in the morning, Jill was sitting in the bedroom, trying to decide when—how—she would tell Ben that she’d agreed to do Good Night, USA after all. They had not made love since that day in the workshop; despite their bond and what she’d thought was their love, the day-today edge was not going away. Last night’s aborted dinner had not helped. Nor had matters improved later, when she’d told him that his grandchildren would not be going to Sturbridge Village. He had gone to bed quietly at a quarter to eight.

  “So I haven’t told Charlie yet,” Rita was saying. “Now it looks as if I won’t have to, if he’s in Florida all winter. With that woman.”

  Jill tried to focus on what Rita was saying. “But it’s not right,” Jill said into the phone. “He should be given the choice.” Though the words conveyed her true feelings about Rita’s situation, Jill had an anesthetic feeling of being one person on the surface and another underneath. Friend on the surface, tormented soul beneath. Public persona versus reality. Once it had been an acceptable way of life. But then the stakes had not been as great because she had not really cared. Or loved. “Maybe Charlie’s testing you,” she added. “To see if you’ll notice that he’s gone.”

  “He asked me to find a winter renter for his apartment. That hardly sounds like a test. Which reminds me,” she added, “what about Amy? It would be perfect for her, Jill. And it’s only two blocks from you.”

  “No,” Jill said without hesitation. “I told you, she’s too young.” She was beginning to feel like the “broken record” her mother had always referred to when Jill asked for “permission” to do things with Rita.

  Can I go to the movies? Can I go to the dance? Can I go to Illumination Night without a chaperone this year?

  No.

  No.

  No.

  Don’t ask anymore. I’m not a broken record.

  Fast-forward another generation. Different sound system. Same record.

  “God, Jill, I don’t understand you. When you were her age, you left the island. You were totally on your own.”

  “Maybe I want her life to be easier than that. Maybe I want to protect her a little more. Besides, she’s not as mature as I was.”

  “Bullshit. She’s probably more mature. She’s been through more.”

  Jill made no comment.

  “She’d be happier, Jill. And Charlie would be thrilled.”

  And then she realized whose agenda Rita had in mind. And why. “Wait a minute,” Jill said. “If Charlie’s apartment is rented, he might be more inclined to leave the island for the winter. Then you could be sure of avoiding him, right?”

  What followed was silence—sweet, “so there” silence.

  “You say you don’t understand me, Rita. Well, I can say the same for you. You’re pushing Charlie into that other woman’s arms.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jill, stop overreacting. I’ve already told you I’m not going to marry him, so what’s the difference?”

  Jill closed her eyes and wondered why she was arguing with her best friend over things that really didn’t matter to her. She was so tired, worn out from talking and analyzing and trying to figure out how to do what and when. “Forget it,” she said. “Do what you want.”

  “I’m not working at the tavern now. I’m staying home to oversee my mother, who’s begun knitting booties. Anyway, keeping my distance from Charlie should help.”

  “What about the Halloween party?”

  “I told Amy I’d be there. Guess I’ll go as a pumpkin.”

  “Rita—”

  “No more advice, Jill. I know how you feel.”

  She paused a moment, then said, “No, Rita, I said before, whether or not you tell Charlie is your business. I just want you to remember that life, that relationships, are fragile. Even friendships.” She felt herself grin. “But I guess we’ve proved that.”

  Suddenly Ben came into the room holding what looked like a FedEx envelope. His teeth were clenched, and his gray eyes were dark.

  He stared at her a moment, then said, “Hang up the phone.”

  She looked at the envelope. And then she knew.

  “Rita, I have to go,” she said slowly, then clicked off without saying good-bye. She sat there, eyes glued to her demise, waiting for Ben to erupt as he probably would. As he probably should.

  “What the hell is this?” He tossed the cardboard envelope in her lap.

  She looked down at the white, orange, and purple. The tearstrip had been torn, and the contents were exposed.

  “I thought it was something for me,” Ben said. “Bids for Sea Grove. I thought wrong.”

  For the first time since she’d known Ben, Jill felt fury. And it was coming from him. “Ben, I—” she began, “I did it for us.”

  “For us?” Surprisingly, he did not shout, but his voice shook, and he had not moved, not a muscle, not a breath. “You lied to me—for us? Please explain how lying to me is going to help us.”

  “Please, Ben. We need the money.”

  He did not say a word, not even go to hell or screw you, lady. Instead, he just stood there a moment, then abruptly turned and went out the door.

  Was he going back to the tavern? He could live there now. He could rent the apartment from Charlie and not have to come home all winter. Or ever again.

  Perhaps their love had been too magical, too unrealistic, with the end of it only a day—or a FedEx envelope—away.

  Through choking-back tears, she pulled out the papers and glanced at the contract. It was neatly, properly written for the month of February: February, her first network job.

  Ben went to the tavern, because he had nowhere else to go. Since marrying Jill, he’d relinquished his privacy: she had taken over his old house in Oak Bluffs—his refuge—and right now it was occupied by a couple of odd-looking young men at di
gital controls. He could go out to the cliffs at Gay Head, but without Noepe, there was little solace there.

  He could not go to his house, and he could not go to his daughter’s.

  So he went to the tavern in search of a friendly face, or at least a face he did not want to scream at. Hopefully Ashenbach wouldn’t be there.

  Ashenbach wasn’t, but neither was Charlie. Amy was alone, standing on a chair, stringing gaudy fake cobwebs from the centuries-old beams.

  “I hope you’re not defacing a historic monument, young lady,” Ben said from the foyer.

  “Hey, Ben,” Amy said, turning slightly. “You’re just in time to give me a hand.”

  Great, he thought, something constructive to kill some more time and help take his mind off—no, he wouldn’t think about that.

  “Is this really a historic monument?” Amy asked.

  He shrugged, handing her more cobwebs. “I’m sure it was to your mother’s family.” He was proud of himself for not letting his voice crack when he said “your mother.”

  She jumped down from the table and surveyed her work. “I’m going to replace the lightbulbs with black light so that everything white and anything fluorescent will glow. Then we’ll have centerpieces made from orange and green lightsticks on every table. What do you think?”

  “Sounds ghoulish.”

  Amy laughed. “Wait until you see it! I’m glad you guys are coming.”

  He wondered what he’d wear for a costume and if “CM” should be embroidered on his lapel, and if it should be scarlet. He forced a smile. “We wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Well, I’m amazed Mom won’t be out of town.” She tacked a few bats to a wall print of a whaling ship. “Then again, I suppose it will be a good way to check up on me.”

  Ben scowled as if he didn’t know what Amy meant.

  “Do you think she’ll ever let me cut the cord, Ben? Take Charlie’s apartment. He’s renting it for the winter. Do you think for a minute Mom would let me have it? No-o-o-o-o. Forget it!”