by Jean Stone
He stared into his cup now and wondered if a fortune lay there and, if so, could it save him now.
“Ben?”
He sighed. Because he could not stir his coffee, he put his hands onto his lap. “No,” he said. “It’s far from over.”
Out in the hall, the grandfather’s clock ticked, a symbol of all things sound and good, or at least dependable.
All things that he had always strived to be but now was not.
Jill attempted a laugh. “I actually had some hope that Fern Ashenbach had come to say Mindy changed her mind. That she said it was all a lie and that the charges would be dropped.”
Ben stared back into his coffee. “I don’t expect that’s going to happen.”
“But she’s Mindy’s mother! How can a mother allow her daughter to go through with this charade?”
“She doesn’t think it’s a charade, Jill.” He could not tell his wife that this was the ticket Fern had been waiting for all her life. He could not tell Jill that Fern had just asked Ben for half a million dollars to get Mindy to “change her mind.”
If he gave her the money, the Commonwealth could not prosecute: he’d be free.
Except that Fern would get away with blackmail.
And he didn’t have half a million dollars.
“Ben?” Jill asked.
“She’s not dropping the charge,” he replied. He did not add that at least the gag order was on his side: if she tried to sell her story to the tabloids, she would go to jail. He’d warned her about that, not because he cared if she was incarcerated, but because he didn’t want his face and Jill’s at every checkout counter in the country.
The clock ticked again. And again.
He stood up and dragged his heavy body across the floor. He stared out the back door into the darkness, past the porch, out to the silhouette of the Chappaquiddick ferry that had seen its share of scandal, that was docked now, snow-covered on the pier, waiting for the next passengers who might not come tonight. He thought of Jill’s career and wondered what would happen if—when—all the details leaked out.
“Maybe she wants money,” Jill said. “Maybe we should pay her off.”
He reminded himself that, unlike Fern, his wife was blessed with brains. She’d probably taken one look at Fern and known the woman’s agenda. Well, part of it anyway.
“We can’t do that, Jill. We’re cash poor. Between restoring this house, building the museum and the studio, and putting up money for Sea Grove—most of yours is gone and all of mine.”
“The money from Good Night, USA …”
Ben turned back to her. “Honey,” he said slowly, “that’s yours.” He lowered his voice. “And Bartlett’s too, I guess.”
“I think they want me full time, Ben. I could agree to do the show for a year.”
Heat rose in his cheeks. “No!” he said. “If you’re away from me for a year, I might as well be in jail.”
“I’ll only be in New York. I could come home on weekends.”
They were silent a moment.
“No,” he said. “If we pay Fern, it will be blackmail. I won’t let her get away with it.” He went back to the table and sat down.
“If it meant you’d be free, I don’t care what you call it.”
The steam had left his coffee, the heat had left his veins. “Don’t you get it, Jill? Even if we had the money, even if we paid her off, I would not be vindicated. You’d never know the truth.”
“I’d know the truth,” she whispered. “I’ve known it all along.”
He sighed heavily. “Jill,” he said, “there’s something you don’t know.”
He tried to force himself to look at her so she would see the truth that surely might show up somewhere in his eyes. “Fern is Mindy’s mother,” he said.
Jill scowled. “I know that.”
“But what you don’t know is that six or seven years ago,” he continued, aching inside, “when Louise was really sick, I did a very dumb thing.”
Keeping his eyes on Jill’s was perhaps the hardest thing he’d ever done, yet for some reason, Ben felt compelled to do it. “I met Fern when I first scouted out the land to build Menemsha House. She was living with Ashenbach and her drunken husband.”
Jill still said nothing, and he willed himself onward.
“We had an affair,” he said. “Louise was sick and dying, and I committed adultery. I had sex with Fern Ashenbach. Not once, but many times.”
Chapter 22
Looking out her window, Mindy thought about Santa Claus. As soon as the little kids on the island saw snow on the ground, they’d be convinced that he would come to the Vineyard, that he’d drive his sleigh, and presents would show up beneath their shiny Christmas trees, Barbies and jewelry kits and CDs of Ricky Martin and the Backstreet Boys.
Which, of course, was stupid.
“Put a white beard on Ben Niles this year,” her mother said last night. “He’s going to fund our future, as long as you don’t rock the goddamn boat.”
She’d said that at least a hundred times since Grandpa had dropped dead, but most times she’d been drunk, so Mindy wasn’t sure how much it counted.
And the picture of Ben in a white beard seemed no more real than the guys who stood on street corners, ringing their small red bells.
Besides, there wasn’t any Santa Claus, never had been, never would be.
She sat on her bed and hugged herself because there was no one else to hug, and she wished that she believed, wished that she’d ever, just once, believed.
• • •
It was the dawn of Christmas Eve. A veil of snow was draped over the Gay Head cliffs; the air was still and calm, pausing, waiting, as if needing reassurance that all was well, the storm had passed.
But the storm inside Ben had not passed. So he’d driven there, because he had nowhere else to go.
He’d driven out long before dawn, when he’d known there would be no sleep for him that night. And now he sat within shouting distance of the rust-colored brick lighthouse where only months before he and Jill had married, where he’d vowed for the second time in his life to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health.
He had not kept his vows with Louise. He had loved her, but he had not honored her in sickness. He had cheated on her with a woman who was two decades younger and half as smart.
From deep inside his guilt, Ben had wanted to tell Louise, had wanted to absolve himself of his lustful crime.
“No.” His friend Noepe had been adamant, right there upon the cliffs, so very long ago. “You are not a selfish man, Ben Niles. Do not be selfish now.”
Ben pulled his plaid wool jacket tighter now, against the shiver of the wind that crept up off the water. On the horizon, light was breaking, the pale light of December’s end, a silver wash that hinted of a cloudy sky, perhaps another touch of snow.
How he wished that Noepe were there, seated cross-legged atop the cliff, his long white ponytail caught in the breeze, his bronze skin burnished by the sun of many summers, the winds of many winters. His wizened eyes, Ben knew, would have been closed in silent prayer. Noepe was a tribal medicine man—a Wampanoag descendant who kept peace and kept tradition, and most likely kept his vows.
Not like Ben.
“Do not ask your wife’s forgiveness,” Noepe had said when, after three weeks of screwing Fern Ashenbach, Ben broke down and confessed his sin to his nonjudgmental friend. “Ask for forgiveness of yourself. You are the only one who can do that, Ben. But do not trouble your poor wife. She is in pain enough.”
It had been long and difficult, but finally Ben had done it. He had explained—not excused—his behavior to himself as coming from the need to feel like a man again, an uncontrollable hormonal thrust from nursing his sick wife for so long (had it been a year? two?) and not having been able to love her fully, physically, in the way God had intended.
It was an explanation, however thin.
In time he had forgiven himself. He thought he’d also forgott
en.
“Perhaps it’s why you were so kind to Mindy,” he could almost hear Noepe say, his words a whisper in the air. “Perhaps you felt her mother deserted both of you.”
The raw air cut across his face now. A seagull’s wail pierced the metallic sky.
Noepe would, of course, have been right. Because though it had been Ben who’d called it off, it had been Fern who’d up and gone, who’d abandoned her child and left him, too.
At the time, he’d been relieved.
Without Fern around, there was no concrete reminder of his deed. Without Fern around, he did not have to face the fact he had stooped to a loveless sexual relationship with a woman he would not want to be seen on the street with, a woman he had used.
She’d used him, too, or at least Noepe had suggested that.
“Her husband is a drunkard,” his friend had said. “What kind of life do you believe she’d had with him?”
She had been the aggressor, the one who’d come on strong to Ben. Yet he had known the word no. He’d simply failed to use it, and he felt the blame was his own.
And now he could only sit on the cold, damp cliffs and picture the look on Jill’s face yesterday, silently asking:
“How many more surprises, Ben? How much more will I be expected to understand?”
It was snowing again, and it was getting as icy as it was wet.
Despite the weather, Jill marched through the center of town as if she had a purpose, which she did not. Unless, of course, making a decision about whether to end your marriage could be considered purposeful.
Along the narrow streets, close to the snow-covered walks, the tall white houses stood, black-shuttered like her own house, where she’d been raised.
She walked another block or two, then turned right onto Main.
Shops lined both sides of the street. Some had closed for the season, and some were still open, though stock was sure to be limited to last-minute Christmas gift selections and stocking-stuffer items.
This was the first year she’d not made stockings for the kids. With Jeff in England, it seemed no longer to make sense. He’d not wanted to come home for the holidays, and as each week passed, Jill feared that soon he would consider England his home. England was where his father lived, good, bad, or in between. England was where the once-shy boy had made many friends—including Mick Daley, his roommate and best friend—none of whom cared that Jeff’s mother was “who she was” because over there, no one knew her.
She passed the hardware store, the bookstore, and the jewelry store, with windows that were dressed in tinsel, evoking joy she did not feel. She heard the creak-creak of a hanging sign on which a plump strawberry ice cream cone was painted. It looked silly dangling there in the snow on Christmas Eve.
Silly, lonely, out of place, the way she felt now on the Vineyard, the way she’d thought she’d never feel again.
She snapped her yellow slicker over her thick wool turtleneck and pulled the hood up on her head. She thought of Christopher, who’d said Maurice had enjoyed his weekend there with them, and wondered how he would feel if the news of Ben leaked out, throwing his long-awaited heroine into the fierce cauldron of a morals scandal.
Would it really matter that it was about Ben and not her? Was she denying that Maurice would be consumed by rage?
And would Christopher defend her—or him?
With a mittened hand, she wiped the snow from her cheeks. This seemed like the kind of thing insane people did: walking in misery, letting their minds run to rambling things, catching their death of cold and not caring.
Fact: Ben had committed adultery.
Fact: Jill had not been the “wounded” party. It had been his other wife, Louise.
Still, she mused now as she passed the town hall then the whaling church, if he’d done it once, he could do it again.
“Circumstances were different,” he’d said quietly last night.
Yes, yes, she knew that. He had not had sex for a long, long time. He was a man.
Child molestation.
Adultery.
Lies and cover-ups.
Where did one leave off and another start?
Who was the bigger fool here, Ben or her?
Was what she had “almost” done with Christopher any better than what he’d done with Fern?
But she hadn’t done the deed. Something had stopped her, and it hadn’t simply been Christopher’s nonresponse. Something, some switch, had clicked off in her brain before it had been too late.
Not so with Ben. Not once, but many times.
She spat a flake of snow that had fallen on her lip. Then she cursed every man that God had ever made, especially those she’d known, especially those she’d loved or thought she had.
How would Rita have handled this? Too bad she couldn’t tell her. But Jill wasn’t free to have a confidante, not even her best friend who had known her forever, who had once known everything about her life and had loved her anyway.
But she couldn’t tell Rita because Ben would be upset.
Ben. Whose life and problems apparently had become more important than her own, as if he mattered more than she did, as if her feelings did not count.
She swallowed down a great big lump. Then, at the next corner, she took a left.
“You walked?” Rita asked as she opened the door and hurried Jill inside. “Are you insane?”
“Nearly,” Jill replied, noticing that Rita looked quite round and positively glowing in a red sweatshirt with a jeweled Christmas tree on the front. Jill might have told her she looked terrific if there weren’t other things on her mind, or on what was left of it.
She stood in the living room of the ancient saltbox and breathed in the old, friendly warmth of the house she knew so well, which now stood in the weary yet still welcome light of Christmas decorations and postparty fatigue. “I thought you could use some help cleaning up. It was a wonderful party, Rita. We enjoyed it very much.”
Rita took Jill’s slicker and hung it on a string of pegs nailed up beside the staircase. “You left early,” she said. “You missed Jesse Parker’s reindeer imitation.”
“From too much punch, no doubt.”
Rita laughed. “He does that every year. God, it’s crazy what we do to entertain ourselves off season.”
Jill could not disagree. She followed Rita into the kitchen and was surprised to see that last night’s disarray had vanished. “Where’s the mess?” she asked.
Tossing a towel at Jill, Rita laughed. “Your daughter came back late to help. It was clean before I went to bed.”
Yes, Amy would have done that. Amy had the caring spirit of Jill’s father layered beneath the fire of her mother’s soul.
“Where’s your mother?” Jill dried her hair, her face, her neck.
“Believe it or not, she’s at the senior center. She’s playing Mrs. Claus at the Christmas party. She drove herself over and I haven’t heard from the police, so I guess she made it without incident.”
Jill set down the towel and tried not to wince when Rita said the word police.
“Sit,” Rita instructed. “There’s leftover chowder from last night. You look like you could use some.”
The Formica table in this kitchen was where Jill had spent so many hours of her youth. Sitting there was a welcome, familiar thing to do, an unexpected comfort after learning that her husband, the accused child molester, was an adulterer as well. “It sounds as if Hazel’s planning to stay on the Vineyard,” she remarked.
“She’ll never leave again. Not with the baby coming.”
Jill watched her friend move around the kitchen, pulling crock bowls from the cabinet, ladling chowder, heaping oyster crackers on a plate, then tearing off paper towels to use as napkins because that was Rita, simply Rita. Jill wondered why she’d ever hesitated to share this pain with her. Because it had been Ben’s request? Had that been good enough?
“It just goes to show you that life sometimes can be surprising,” Rita said, setting a croc
k of soup and a spoon in front of Jill. “Take you, for example. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected you’d show up at my door today. Let alone that you’d walk over in the snow.” She set another crock across from Jill and sat down with the thud of unaccustomed extra weight. “Speaking of snow, I guess everyone made it home okay last night. Even Hattie Phillips. I swear that old woman gets feistier every year. She and my mother never got along, you know. But now that so many of their friends are dead, it’s like she wants to be my mother’s best friend. She brought the chocolate mint squares to the party. Did you try one? I probably shouldn’t have, but I had two. Well, what the hell, I couldn’t have the punch.”
“I have something on my mind,” Jill said, interrupting Rita’s happy monologue. “I thought I could handle it myself, but I need to talk it out. I need to talk to you.” She lowered her head. Two tears slid down her cheeks, then dropped onto her lap. “Oh, God, Rita,” she cried, “what am I going to do?”
In a flash, Rita was by crouched by her side. Then Jill felt Rita’s arm around her and Rita’s “sssh-sssh, it’s okay,” whispered in her ear. And then Jill’s tears flowed freely, perhaps more freely than she’d let them in many, many years.
Finally, she could speak. “It’s Ben,” she said.
Rita held Jill’s hair a moment, then pressed her forehead to her friend’s. Then she sighed, stood up, and returned to her seat. She propped her elbows on the table, as if prepared to listen, as if she were not surprised. Ben. Men. Same thing. Same oil and water combination when mixed with women for too long.
“I found out he had an affair.” Jill surprised herself that those were the words that popped out first. Not “He’s been accused of child molestation.” She did not say that, but rather, “He had an affair,” as if, in the course of humankind, that was the more evil charge against him.
