What Matters Most

by Luanne Rice

  Something was wrong with Andrew. He drank too much, for one thing. Beneath his dark tan was the greenish-yellow tint of liver. He sneaked bottles from the kitchen when he thought himself unobserved, then placed them, empty, in the trash at night. He was arrogant, yes, but there was a distant and tender quality about him. He was divorced; Patricia, his ex-wife, lived in New York with their son, whom Andy never saw. The reasons for the divorce were never mentioned, nor was the reason he didn’t see his son.

  He’d sit at the kitchen counter, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin and tonics while Kathleen worked. She didn’t really mind—she felt sorry for him. He talked about “the Gulf,” how he had been deployed in the first Desert Storm. When Kathleen did the math, however, she realized that he had to be lying. He would have been too young to go. Other obvious lies included talk about several patents he held on things he had invented that would make him millions—much more than Patricia’s family. Her father held the patent on the hose clamp, and had three hundred and twenty.

  Three hundred and twenty million dollars, that is. That was how the Wells family talked. This family had forty, that family had eleven. Some families had more than one hundred. That Andy had been married to a woman whose family had three hundred and twenty—and then lost her—was considered a great family tragedy and scandal.

  So Kathleen indulged Andy, letting him keep her company while she prepared his family’s meals. He was always very appropriate. He respected the boundary between them, never making a pass or a suggestive comment. As she had in other positions, working for other families, in these moments Kathleen felt a bit like a therapist, listening in silence as a person unburdened himself. In this case, Andy spoke mainly about how his three siblings got all his parents’ favor—and money. They all received higher allowances than he did; his father would never forgive him for getting divorced.

  The closest Andy came to stepping over the line came one August afternoon. Kathleen had been taking her break outside, sitting under the oak tree, writing a letter she knew she’d never send. This was how she got by—writing to a boy she hadn’t seen in ten years. She poured her heart out on paper, knowing that no one had ever understood her the way he had, telling him her deepest fears, sorrows, dreams, wishes. Tears began to flow as she thought of him, wondering where he was, and she’d buried her head in her hands.

  Andy had seen. Just before dinner, he’d found her in the kitchen.

  “Seeing you out there, sitting on the ground,” he’d said, “cross-legged, bent over writing, concentrating so hard…sun coming through the leaves, tears on your cheeks…you looked so sad, and oh, Kathleen…”

  “I’m fine,” she’d said, frowning as she made hamburger patties.

  “I feel connected to you,” Andy had whispered.

  “Connected?”

  “You know what it is to feel lost,” he’d said. “Lost and sad. I’ll never forget that sight…. I’ll remember it forever.”

  “What sight?”

  “Of you, Kathleen,” he’d said. “Sitting there in your white uniform, the sun in your hair. Crying. You looked so beautiful…. There’s a mystery about you…. I just wish I could be the man you were writing to.”

  “Oh, Andy,” she’d said. “I’m a cook, a maid. I’m not in the Social Register! I’m not a girl for you….”

  “Still,” he’d said passionately, torment in his liquid brown eyes, “I wish you could be.”

  “Things like that don’t happen,” she said, smiling sadly. “Only in fairy tales, maybe…”

  “That’s what my sister said,” Andy said, his mouth dropping open with shock, as if Kathleen had just suggested the Second Coming.

  “Your sister? Which one, Wendy or June?” Kathleen asked, thinking that never had she met two less romantic, fairy-tale–like women than those two.

  “Neither,” he said. “Louise.”

  “Louise?” Kathleen asked. Why had she never heard of her?

  “We don’t talk about her,” Andy said. “My sister who believed in fairy tales…”

  “I used to, too,” Kathleen said, thinking back to St. Augustine’s, when she would look at James and see their future together. “But I don’t anymore. Fairy tales don’t come true, Andy.”

  She had smiled at him, her brow furrowed with pain and worry. He had seen something in her she always kept hidden, and she had to remind herself not to write outside again. He had sat there, silently drinking and smoking, lost in whatever thoughts were making his eyes so dark and anguished…possibly thoughts about this sister no one talked about, Louise.

  Outside, Pierce pulled into the driveway, parked his Porsche behind Andy’s, blocking him in. It was a metaphor for their relationship. Pierce always took the best parking spot. And everything else.

  Pierce was tall, dark, and gorgeous. He had a deep Bailey’s Beach tan, slicked-back brown hair, green eyes that lived up to his name—piercing, like a shark’s. At night he wore clothes from Prada; he wore shoes from Bottega Veneta. By day he dressed in candy-colored garments, each shirt costing more than Kathleen made in a month. Pink-peach lisle softer than rose petals; yellow linen crisper than his mother’s monogrammed stationery.

  Walking past Kathleen in the kitchen, he’d give her a look beneath hooded eyes and say, “Behave yourself, baby.” Then he’d leave. Returning, he’d toss his car keys in the basket by the door, stop to drink her in, his gaze lingering on the front of her white uniform, where the fabric pulled tightly across her breasts, and say, “One of these nights…”

  Kathleen heard his sisters talking. She knew that Pierce had left a trail of broken hearts from Spouting Rock to the Clambake Club. He was a rising star at their father’s small brokerage house. He had memberships in fancy New York clubs, an apartment on the Upper East Side, and a Porsche.

  Pierce Wells had been engaged to Madison Weatherby of Palm Beach, but had broken it off when he’d met Paulette Lander of Greenwich. Then Paulette had caught him in bed with Lisa Davis of Locust Valley, and that was the end of that. Kathleen pictured the streets Pierce walked paved with discarded diamond rings.

  His eyes were sharp but blank, as if he hardly saw the people he was staring right at. Sometimes he came into the kitchen while Kathleen was cooking, watched her without saying a word. His gaze made her skin crawl but somehow excited her at the same time. He’d stare at her while drinking juice out of the bottle in a way that let her know he wanted her. It gave her a feeling of power that she didn’t really like or understand.

  “You have an Irish accent. What made you come here from Ireland?” he asked one day.

  “My parents brought me here when I was fourteen,” she said.

  “Are they American?” he asked.

  She bent over the salad she was making, pretending not to hear him.

  “Are you American?” he asked.

  If I was, and I had half the advantages you did, do you think I’d be making fake potatoes and picking up after your family? she wanted to ask, but just stopped tearing up lettuce leaves and picked up a paring knife to cut tomatoes for the salad.

  “Two kinds of girls turn me on,” he said, moving closer. “Ones with dark skin, and ones with Irish accents.”

  “You don’t find many of either in Newport,” she said.

  “You do if you know where to look,” he said.

  “Like in the kitchen?”

  “You’re fresh,” he said, slapping and caressing her behind, making her jump.

  She flashed the knife at him, still dripping with tomato juice. “Don’t do that again,” she said.

  “Or what?” he asked. “You’ll stab me? Should I be scared?” A burning look spread across his face, actually splashing some warmth into his cold green eyes. A slow smile tugged his mouth, and she put the knife down.

  “Just don’t touch me again,” she said.

  “The next time I touch you,” he said, “you’ll be begging for it.” He tossed the words over his shoulder, not even bothering to look at her. “One o
f these nights,” she heard him say.

  Kathleen hated him for his arrogance—even more, she despised herself. His gravelly voice and nasty eyes did something to her insides, and she found herself wishing he’d come back.

  His father drove her to Almac’s, the grocery store, in the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud every Monday morning. The car had red leather seats, and she sat up front next to Mr. Wells. Wearing her white uniform, she went into the grocery store. Sometimes Mr. Wells pushed the cart for her.

  Occasionally Kathleen wanted to ask him about Louise: where was she? But she had grown up in a world where parents banished their children to places like St. Augustine’s Children’s Home; she just didn’t think it could happen in families like the Wellses. Here, when parents wanted to abandon their children, they did so to the care of servants. In any case, Kathleen and Mr. Wells didn’t say a word to each other on those grocery trips—not one word.

  He was heavy and white-haired—much older than his wife, who was at the beach. Kathleen knew that Mrs. Wells thought Bobby, the chauffeur, drove her to market after dropping the family off on Ocean Drive. Kathleen had no idea what strange things went on between the Wellses, why Mr. Wells liked to push her grocery cart, and why Mrs. Wells never asked him to go to the beach with her.

  At home, putting the groceries away, she would see Mr. Wells just standing there. Like Pierce, he would stare at her breasts. But Mr. Wells had the saddest, most hopeless expression in his eyes. It made Kathleen nervous, but she also felt compassion for him. She knew what it was like to long for something she could never have. She wished she had someone to tell about it, but she wasn’t friendly with Beth. Miss Langley was English, suspicious of Kathleen’s Irishness. And Samantha was just young.

  One day, Miss Langley punished little seven-year-old Jackie for being rude at Bailey’s Beach—sticking his tongue out at the granddaughter of Jean Trevor, the grande dame of Newport society.

  Miss Langley stuck Jackie in the kitchen with Kathleen, telling him he had to stay there all day. Kathleen watched the small, frail blond boy fidget on the counter stools, coloring pictures and holding back tears. She tried to talk to him, get him to sing her a song, but he told her that Miss Langley had said he wasn’t to have any fun.

  “But you’re a little boy,” she said. “You’re supposed to have fun!”

  “She said I’m not allowed to.”

  “What you need is a friend,” Kathleen said. “Someone who understands the oppressor.”

  “The what?”

  “The person bossing you around, telling you that you can’t have fun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can always have fun, Jackie,” she said, thinking of the old days in St. Augustine’s. “Any time you want to. No one can take that away from you.”

  “But I’m not at the beach with the other kids,” he said. “Playing in the sand and the waves…having ice cream.”

  “Sometimes you can have more fun in a place no one else would ever want to go,” she said, thinking of the old courtyard, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, weeds growing out of cracked pavement. How much fun she and James had had there…And to think of all the years she had fantasized about her real parents, their wonderful life, their beautiful yard. She shivered, remembering her old dreams.

  “Like here, you mean?” he asked. “Instead of the beach?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be your friend.”

  “But you’re just the cook,” he said, staring at her coldly. “I’m not allowed to be friends with the cook.”

  That was a little knife in the heart—but just a little one. Kathleen had experienced much worse. She smiled at the little boy, gave him a scoop of ice cream. He pushed the dish away, saying Miss Langley had told him no treats. An hour before dinner, when Miss Langley finally returned from the beach with Jackie’s sister Phillippa, Kathleen watched his face.

  The kitchen door opened. Miss Langley waddled in—she wasn’t as fat as Sister Theodore, the nun who used to show up unannounced to check on James, but she was very stout and dour, and reminded Kathleen of the rotund nun. Her face was humorless but not cruel. At the sight of her, Jackie jumped off his chair and flung himself sobbing into her arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Nanny,” he wept. “I’m sorry for being bad. Please take me back, love me again!”

  “I do love you, Jackie,” Miss Langley said, her English-accented voice breaking, and somehow Kathleen knew that she meant it, and was reminded of the nuns, women who took care of other people’s children the best they could. Miss Langley was Jackie’s nanny, just as she had been his father’s.

  The moment made Kathleen cry, but she turned her back so Miss Langley and Jackie wouldn’t see. Her mind swirled with memories, of where she had grown up and where she had moved at thirteen, of people who said they loved her versus people who really did, of cobbled-together families compared to blood relations. Her heart split open—as it did so often—thinking of James. Where had he gone that summer day when she’d last seen him on the beach?

  Oh no, she thought. It was going to be a James day. She tried to fight it, but it was too late. Once he entered her consciousness this way, the sorrows and regrets began to flow, and it was all over. She’d be overtaken with a grief so enormous and complex, it was as if every single person she’d ever known or loved had just died. Her heart ached, and her knees felt weak. The hurt rolled in, washed over her.

  There were variations she used, methods for chasing the sorrow; she had used them over and over these last ten years, in differing ways. That night, sweating in her attic room, she lay on her back with the window open. Oak leaves rustled in the breeze, and crickets chirped in the garden three floors below.

  When the downstairs clock struck midnight, she climbed out of bed. The Wellses were already in bed; the daughters and June’s husband were at a party on someone’s yacht, and the sons were at a party at Hammersmith Farm. Soon Andy and Pierce would be home, brawling over the Social Register.

  Naked beneath a white robe, Kathleen padded barefoot down the hall and the back stairs. She walked silently along the second-floor hallway, past the parents’ closed door. Mr. Wells’s snoring was loud and constant.

  When she reached Pierce’s bathroom, she went in, closed the door behind her, and looked in the mirror. Her face was bright, flushed from the heat. Her eyes sparkled—only James would know that the light in them was from splinters of grief, little ice chips that had migrated from her heart into her gaze. Someone else might take the sparks as happiness, excitement, or lust. But James had them, too, and he would know what they were.

  The bathroom was marble, and the stone felt cool under her bare feet. Sitting on the edge of the tub, she turned on the faucet. A stream of water flowed in, filling the tub slowly. She kept one ear cocked, listening for cars in the driveway. Only when she heard the low hum of the brothers’ Porsches did she light a votive candle.

  The flame illuminated her face in the mirror. She looked straight into her own eyes. Is this what a zombie looks like? she wondered. Behind the sparks, she saw death, as if her soul had already left her body. Her spirit was gone. All that remained was flesh, screaming to be touched. That’s how she knew she was still human, because she still needed to have someone hold her now and then.

  Footsteps and voices in the parlor downstairs—Pierce and Andy scuffling lightly for first look at the Social Register. Then Kathleen heard Andy go to the kitchen for a nightcap, and Pierce start upstairs.

  She let her robe fall to the floor, set the candle on the tub’s rim, slipped into the cool water. She poured a thin stream of bath oil, borrowed from Mrs. Wells’s bathroom, into the tub. Lying back, she closed her eyes and pretended to be an actor. Her assignment was to play an exhausted young servant, stealing a moment in the master’s bath, because there was only one broken shower on the third floor. The fact that it was true made the scene no less difficult to play.

  The bathroom door opened. Pierce walked in—exclaimed and
jumped a mile.

  “Jesus!” he said.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Kathleen said, feigning modesty as she pretended to cover up. She was desperate, and so lonely, and she’d seen him looking at her; she knew how to use her body, and she hated herself for it, but her skin hurt, just ached, every inch of it, craving to be touched, her body needing to be embraced. “I was just so hot upstairs, and I didn’t think you’d be home so early. Please, forgive me….”

  Pierce was already taking his clothes off. He dropped them to the floor, pulled her onto her feet. He kissed her so hard, his teeth drew blood on her lip. Stepping out of the tub, into his arms, Kathleen heard water slosh all over the floor. His hands were all over her body, touching her breasts, sliding between her legs. Towels thrown down on the floor, the bathmat, her robe…

  In the hallway, she heard Andrew stumbling toward his own room. Kathleen’s stomach clenched as the nice brother, the one who cared about his phantom sister Louise, who had seen something of Kathleen’s true self outside under that tree—her white uniform in the sunlight, he’d said—passed by. Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t go for the kind one, no, she couldn’t. It had to be Pierce, the cold, shark-eyed brother—that’s who it had to be for Kathleen.

  Pierce entered her, right there on the hard, stone bathroom floor, not even wanting to take her into his bed, and she didn’t care. She had arms around her, a man’s lips on hers, and he was inside her, filling her up, whispering that he’d known she’d wanted it, had known all the time, she hadn’t fooled him for a minute.

  Eight

  Before going to work, Seamus made tea. He sat at his kitchen table, reading the Irish Times. His flat was small, but it was all his. It was a stretch, affording it by himself. Before Kevin had asked Eileen to marry him, he’d been pestering Seamus to share a flat with him. “Seeing you at work is bad enough,” Seamus had teased. “You think I want to see you on my days off? Think again!” Someone else might have wanted a roommate, but not Seamus. After living his first thirteen years in a group home, he liked his privacy, didn’t want to share his space with another guy.